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There was still glitter on her face. It shone, red and gold and green, in the warm bathroom light. Downstairs, Fig could hear quiet Christmas carols still playing. When she left, her mom and Jawbone were swaying together in a half-dance, the last ones in the living room. It felt like the kind of perfect Christmas Eve that only existed in movies: everyone gathered together, singing and laughing and eating as snow fell gently to the ground outside. Even though they were all too grown to really believe, some of the old excitement for Santa still hung in the air. They’d decorated the huge tree in the living room a couple weeks back, Jawbone and Gorgug dragging it into the house with snow in their hair and melting off of the limbs. Adaine made Riz levitate to help hang tiny glass ornaments and the crowning star on the top of the tree. Sandra Lynn helped Fig unpack carefully wrapped ornaments saved from her childhood- a porcelain cradle from her first Christmas, plastic and wood framed photos from elementary school, painted handprints turned into cartoony santa faces- all carefully collected and hung on a new family tree with all her friends.
Fig felt, quietly, a little sad. It was the kind of Christmas she’d always dreamed about as a kid, but a little to the left. Gilear and her mom happy and celebrating, but with other people. A beautiful tree, filled with new and different ornaments beside the ones she recognized. Everyone decorating cookies in the kitchen together, but without her dad there to steady her shaking hands. Christmas movies never showed the gentle grief that always came alongside nostalgia. What wasn’t tucked in beside what was and what could be.
Christmas movies never showed the moment of taking off makeup and brushing teeth at the end of the night, alone.
It was late, everyone settling into beds to catch some sleep before waking up stupidly early for presents and breakfast in the morning. Mordred Manor was bursting at the seams, all of their friends and families pressing into guest rooms and sleeping piled together in a kind of huge holiday sleepover. The Thistlesprings were staying in Fig’s bubble room under the piano and Gilear and Hallariel were using the other turret guest room and Fabian and Riz were sleeping on the floor in Ragh’s room while Fig stayed with Adaine for the night. All her favorite people, cradled safely under the same snowy roof.
Fig finished brushing her teeth, smiling at her reflection again as she heard Jawbone’s barking laugh echo up the stairs. It wasn’t her first Christmas with him- with any of them- but he still managed to make it feel special, new, every year. Fig couldn’t tell if Jawbone just really liked the holidays, or whether he relished the opportunity to get everyone together and give gifts and celebrate as a family; but either way it was infectious. A kind of child-like joy Fig thought she’d lost in middle school. She washed her face, carefully wiping away the glitter from her eyes. She’d already changed, stealing a festive set of Christmas pajamas that Jawbone had given her years before from her room before Gorgug’s parents settled in for the night. Staring at her reflection, barefaced, with smiling reindeer on her shirt, Fig grinned. She looked so young. Not someone who’d fought and killed monsters and demons. Not someone who’d taken her father’s place as an archdevil of hell. Not someone who’d gone triple platinum after her first world tour last year. Just Fig. Just a girl on Christmas Eve, after spending the day with her family.
Someone knocked quietly on the open bathroom door and Fig turned. Gorgug looked soft in his worn Owlbear’s t-shirt he’d borrowed from Ragh, fluffy red pajama pants slung low on his hips. He was wearing Fabian’s posh house slippers, nudging his foot absentmindedly against the edge of the door.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” Fig echoed, turning her body to face him and leaning her hip against the sink. All the boys had retired back to Ragh’s room almost an hour ago, “Can’t sleep?”
Gorgug shrugged, bony shoulders jutting beneath the thin fabric of his shirt. Fig wrapped her arms around her waist, fighting against the familiar urge to run her hands over his shoulders, down his arms, take Gorgug’s hands in her own. He was watching her, gaze steady and unwavering, brighter than any spotlight. More and more, they were having moments like this. Moments that Fig, for all her lyrical genius, couldn’t find the words for.
Fig remembered, once, Adaine trying to explain magic as harnessed potential energy. Pulled from the world around them with the right words and gestures, molded with intention into something more. That was the closest thing Fig could find to describe it. The moment before a spell was cast, hands raised and words waiting on the tongue, air fizzing with magic slowly coalescing. Fig and Gorgug, standing a room’s length away, with potential hanging heavy in the space between them. Something neither of them knew how to reach for, what words to say to make the spell land home.
“Your mom’s still downstairs dancing with Jawbone.”
Fig smiled. “Yeah, it’s weird but kind of nice… she and Gilear never did that kind of thing, at least not while I was growing up. But now- I’m just glad they’re both happy, they deserve that, you know?” Gorgug nodded, shifting to lean against the door jamb. He was like something out of a Christmas catalog: fuzzy festive pajama pants, hair loose and soft around his face, a gentle smile. He looked like he should be holding out a cup of hot chocolate and standing beneath a sprig of mistletoe. “I don’t know,” Fig continued, shaking away the mental image, “is it weird I find it kind of romantic?” She looked down at her hands to avoid Gorgug’s gentle gaze. Even as soft and tired as his expression was, it still felt as heavy as new fallen snow. Kristen had painted Fig’s nails bright red during movie night a few days back, and the edge of her thumb was already chipping. “I mean, it’s my mom and Jawbone. But like, they’ve been out there dancing by themselves to Christmas music since all the rest of us left to go to bed. Just the two of them… it’s just. I guess it’s just kind of sweet.”
“Yeah,” Gorgug murmured. Fig looked up from her nails; he was still watching her. “Do you- uh. You can ignore me if this is weird, but would you maybe wanna dance? With me?”
Fig’s breath caught in her throat. She blinked at him, but Gorgug just shot her his familiar sideways grin and slowly raised his hand. Reaching out.
Merry fucking Christmas, Fig thought to herself, and took it.
Gorgug’s fingers were warm and rough with callouses. Fig knew hers were, too, from the red hot strings of her bass. There was something in that, she thought, as Gorgug pulled her out of the bathroom and down the hall by the hand. Matching callouses, hands pressed together- almost a lyric.
The small balcony at the top of the stairs looked out over the living room below. The tree with its clusters of arcane lights and baubles and new and old ornaments all clustered together. A bunch of dirty mugs from their hot chocolate abandoned on the coffee table. The speaker in the corner was playing a jazzy instrumental rendition of a Christmas carol Fig didn’t recognize. Jawbone in his fraying gray cardigan and her mom’s loose bun bobbing as they swayed across the carpet arm in arm.
Mirroring their position, Gorgug held his arms out for Fig. Easily, eagerly, she stepped into his embrace.
She couldn’t remember the last time she slow danced with someone. Gilear, maybe? At some elven father-daughter dance when she was in middle school? Or earlier than that, even, some distant relative’s wedding they went to when she was a child, still young enough to stand on her father’s shiny shoes as he walked them across the dance floor. Regardless, it had never felt like this. Like it was an excuse, more than anything, to be close to someone. She could smell Gorgug’s deodorant, the peppermint on his breath. He exhaled shakily, like he was as nervous as she felt. Gorgug’s fingers tapped lightly along to the rhythm of the song against her hip. Fig felt swallowed up by all the details of him, in the way she’d always tried to stop herself from becoming before. The tiny strand of hair falling in his eyes, the way his eyelashes brushed against his cheek when he blinked, the soft wrinkle of his t-shirt and the warmth of his shoulder beneath her palm. The way he couldn’t seem to look away from her, either.
They were barely moving more than a gentle sway, but Fig was breathless.
For the first time, she understood the appeal of all the regency dramas Adaine and Aelwyn loved to watch. The focus on hands clasped together, how everyone seemed to be giddy and flushed beyond the apparent exertion. There was something intimate about dancing together that cracked open everything unsaid between them like an egg.
The weeks of tentative smiles and dropped gazes. The hours spent in the middle of the night talking about nothing, just to hear his voice in her ear. The electricity crackling between them onstage. Every one of Adaine’s knowing looks or Fabain’s pointed whispers at the lunch table. All of it, every tindered hope Fig had swallowed down for fear of getting burned, rose up inside her all at once.
It should have been overwhelming. It should have been too much, she should have buckled between the cumulative weight of her weeks of uncertainty. (Was it worth it? What if he didn’t feel the same way? What if he did, and it didn’t work? What if it ruined their friendship? What if it ruined the band? What if it ruined the bad kids- their whole haphazard family all in one fell swoop?)
But it wasn’t. Uncertain or overwhelming. How could it be, when Gorgug was looking at her like that? Like she was something wonderful, potential magic made kinetic in his arms.
“Gorgug?” She asked.
“Fig,” he answered.
Fabian always complained that they were psychically connected. Too much time spent back to back on the battlefield, too much time spent communicating through mouthed words and eyebrows across a deafening stage. More often than not, they could read each other better than any of the other bad kids; even Adaine. Fig could tell what Gorgug was about to say before he even opened his mouth. Gorgug always anticipated Fig’s next move, on and off stage. Things that felt little in the moment, but huge when she stared into her best friend’s eyes and knew they understood each other.
Gorgug looked up. Fig followed his gaze.
“Mistletoe.”
There, tied with a red ribbon and hanging from the rafters overhead, a tiny bunch of greenery and white berries. Kristen’s doing, probably, Fig saw her sneaking around the day they pulled out all the holiday decorations. She wondered whether Adaine was in on it, the self centered part of Fig daring to wonder if this was why someone had hung sprigs of mistletoe around the manor and under door frames, entrapping people into kisses. It sounded like something their friends would do, Adaine getting a vision and teaming up with Kristen to make it a reality. Her ridiculous matchmaking best friends.
She loved them so much.
Fig lowered her eyes from the ceiling, landing on the familiar shape of Gorgug’s face. Jutting nose, soft chin, pursed lips. Eyes like an ocean she could fall into. Warm certainty dripped down her spine. Gorgug was still holding her hand and her hip. She squeezed his shoulder.
“Well,” Fig whispered, “it’s probably bad luck, you know?” Gorgug hadn’t looked away from her. She didn’t want him to. Fig wanted him to keep looking at her like that, maybe forever. Call her selfish; but she’d keep looking at him back.
“Mm?” Gorgug hummed, but there was a smile playing at the corner of his mouth that said he knew what she meant.
“To not kiss, you know, under the mistletoe.” They’d stopped dancing, Fig didn’t know how long ago; but she was still out of breath, cheeks warm like she’d stood too long by the fireplace.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Fig murmured, swaying an inch closer.
“Wouldn’t want bad luck,” Gorgug said, close enough that she felt his breath against her nose.
And then he leaned down. Fig closed her eyes. He pressed a kiss against her cheek, right at the corner of her mouth. Close, but not close enough.
Fig was scowling before she even opened her eyes, glaring up at Gorgug’s shit eating grin. She wished she was wearing her platform boots, so he wasn’t so much taller than her. So she wouldn’t have to tug so hard, sliding her hand to the place where his shoulder met his neck, and pull him down to her level. But she did anyway.
“You know that’s not what I meant,” Fig said. Their faces were closer than before, almost forehead to forehead.
“I know,” Gorgug whispered. “But I was hoping-”
She kissed him. Swallowed the words as he said them. Gorgug’s mouth was open and warm against hers. She could taste peppermint and toothpaste. A terrible combination, but Fig didn’t care. This was something she’d been dreaming about for longer than she wanted to admit. But now she had it. And by the way Gorgug’s arm wrapped around her waist, tugging Fig up onto her tiptoes and pressing her even closer; it was something she was going to keep.
“I was hoping you’d do that,” he mumbled against her mouth.
“Making me do all the hard work,” she retorted, smacking a wet kiss against his cheek. Gorgug shuddered a quiet laugh against her, something she could feel more than hear. It was a delightfully new sensation, and Fig pressed a line of kisses down his cheek and across his neck, just to feel his laughter under her mouth.
“Okay, okay,” he said, still laughing, and finally let go of her hand- the last vestiges of their slow dance falling away- to tuck his fingers under her chin and guide Fig’s face back up to his. And then they were kissing, really properly kissing, again.
And shit, maybe it was the sappiest thing she’d ever thought, but Fig couldn’t help feeling like this was the best Christmas present she’d ever gotten.