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Ash tapped one stilt-like foot against the floor as she waited on the other side of the door. “Kaleb, unlock this door.” She waited, her patience growing thin with him the longer he refused to answer. “Kaleb!”
A deep voice shouted from the other side of the door, “Kaleb isn’t home right now. Please leave a message and he’ll promptly delete it and never get back to you.”
She pounded on the door again. “If I have to go get the key to unlock this door, you are not going to like me!”
“I already don’t like you much right now!” he protested.
“You have until the count of three!” she said like an angry mother. “One!”
The door opened and Revenant glared at her. She refused to be intimidated, even when he stood just inches from her face, his looming figure towering over her.
“This is stupid,” he mumbled.
Ash looked at the tuxedo T-shirt he wore and slowly her hand moved to cover her face. She cycled air through her filters and slowly looked back up again. Revenant was really testing her patience today.
“I said a tuxedo,” she said.
“I’m sorry, they didn’t have any in my size, so this is what I got!” he snapped. “What’s even the point of this? Everyone throws out our crappy Christmas cards without even opening them anyway!”
“It makes me happy when we pretend we’re a normal family for once,” she said as she pushed past him. She began digging through the closet for her own attire for the photo shoot.
Revenant still thought this was stupid. They were never going to be a normal, happy family, so in his eyes, what use was there in even pretending? He looked at the rat sitting on the counter wearing a little red and green plaid outfit with white trim that made him look a bit like a fancy napkin. A tiny rat-sized headband with a gold star sat atop his head. He was sickeningly adorable. Revenant almost cringed when he first saw him.
Ash emerged from her room wearing the Christmas dress she had picked out in mid-July. It was very festive, a sparkly gold color that hugged her curves in just the right places and was sheer at the bottom with a matching black and gold sheer shawl, and Revenant only lamented that he wasn’t allowed to touch her until after the photo shoot. She promised to mail each of his parts to a different planet in Christmas packaging if he did anything to damage her dress or get any unsightly stains on the fabric before the photo shoot.
Ash looked at herself in her gorgeous, floor-length dress, her festive little man sitting on the desk eating a peanut, and then Revenant, who was scrunkly as ever in a T-shirt that made him look like a teenage boy that was forced by his girlfriend to go to prom. It was amazing. Her expectations were already low, and yet she was still disappointed.
Well, at least he was clean. She’d gotten him to admit that he was a bit grungy and convinced him to take a bath the previous night, and he hadn’t killed anyone or gotten caught in any explosions since then, so he still had that fake chemical apple smell of dollar store bubble bath.
“Can you at least attempt to make yourself a little more presentable before the photographer gets here?” she demanded.
Revenant suddenly looked confused and offended. “Photographer? You actually hired a photographer?”
“I did.”
Technically she had asked one of the photographers responsible for the glamorous photo shoots of the legends in promotional shots if he would do it for her, and he agreed as long as he could use the nicest ones he got as part of his portfolio. Joke’s on him, Revenant probably would ruin as many photos as he could, so none of them would be usable for his portfolio. She fully expected that this would take all night just to get him to take a single nice photo.
She looked at the photo framed on the wall in the living room, all the legends together, every single one of them waving and smiling and looking happy, and then there was Revenant, in the back, arms straight down at his sides and making a face like he was dying at the exact moment when the photo was snapped. They hadn’t noticed him until they got the photo processed, and by then it was too late for a do-over.
“Stop looking at that photo and sighing!” Revenant said.
“We are not going to have a repeat of that!” she insisted. “We are going to have a nice photo, you are going to pretend you want to be in it for five seconds, and then we are going to put it on a Christmas card and send it to everyone so that they can promptly put it in the trash when they see our names on the envelope!”
“Glad you’re at least honest about where they’re going,” he mumbled.
She pointed towards the bedroom. “Make yourself presentable!” she ordered.
He started grumbling and marched into the bedroom. While was in there, smashing around like a drunk hippo, Ash floated around the room trying to get everything ready. She sighed when she looked at the Christmas tree that Revenant had picked out, sad and scraggly looking with gaps between the branches, and tethered to the wall with rope because it wouldn’t stop falling over under its own weight. Rat-themed ornaments tried to fill up the gaps in the tree to make it look presentable, but not even the gorgeous, sparkly lights could salvage the trainwreck he’d brought home.
“I got it on discount because it was the fugliest one in the lot,” he’d said before he threw it through the front door and let it sit in the middle of the floor for an hour before he set it up.
Most of the presents under the tree were empty boxes that were primarily meant for display. Ash had wrapped them herself because the last time she asked Revenant to wrap anything, he used toilet paper and duct tape. The colorful wrapping paper glittered under the lights, by far the best looking part of this display.
Ash wouldn’t be so self-conscious about how her tree looked if it wasn’t meant to be the backdrop of the photo. She rearranged ornaments, straightened the star on top, and rearranged the ornaments again before she was satisfied, and yet she still felt like something was wrong. All the while her rat climbed through the pine branches and had to be shooed away every so often when he started trying to play with the ornaments.
Ash’s phone lit up and began vibrating on the table. She checked the screen and saw the text from the photographer that he had just pulled into the parking lot now and was just getting his equipment.
“He’s here! What is taking you so long?” Ash shouted to the other room.
Revenant emerged from the bedroom, looking exactly the same as he did before, except now he was wearing pants. She looked him up and down and slowly her hand moved over her face again.
“I didn’t know what you wanted me to do, and I figured it probably looked weird that I was wearing a shirt but no pants,” he shrugged.
She gestured at the candy cane pajama bottoms that he’d chosen. “And that’s what you went with?”
“It was the only thing festive I have!” he insisted.
Technically they weren’t even his, the neighbor had accidentally left them in the communal dryer and he’d swiped them when he went to clean the gross stains out of Ash’s sheets at her command.
There was already a knock at her door. She tried to take deep, calming breaths, cycling the air through her vents like she would through her lungs if she had them. It was too late to try to make him more presentable. The photographer had a limited amount of time before he had to make his rounds to his next gig.
“What will it take you to get a nice photograph this evening?” she asked as she heard the knocking at the door again.
Revenant looked her up and down. “Let me get you in that dress later,” he requested.
She didn’t seem too thrilled with the idea of potentially ruining such a nice dress, but she gave in. “Fine. But only if you take that off first.”
Revenant looked at his T-shirt and candy cane pants and shrugged. “Don’t gotta ask me twice.”
The photographer was in the midst of texting her again when she flung the door open. Upon seeing her in her dress, his face lit up, no doubt already thinking of how lovely she’d look on a Christmas card. When he stepped into the apartment and saw Revenant, his smile became a little more forced as he realized how not-lovely Revenant would look on a Christmas card. The rat was already sitting on the stool in front of the tree, waiting patiently in his little napkin outfit and star headband.
“So we’re taking the photo by the tree, correct?” he asked.
“I already moved the furniture away so you can set up your lighting,” Ash replied.
The photographer looked at the tree and his strained smile turned to a horrified grimace, no doubt having thoughts running through his head about how he didn’t want this in his portfolio anymore. Well, maybe he could photoshop the tree to look better. And then photoshop Revenant out of it. He was sure the photo would look fine if it were just Ash and her rat.
The man was definitely a trooper. Ash would have walked out of this apartment the second she saw Revenant’s tuxedo T-shirt, candy cane pants combo if it were her taking the photos. As he programmed his camera drone and set up the lighting for the best angle, she sat on the stool beside the tree and dragged Revenant over to stand beside her.
“I know you’re used to living like trash, but can you pretend to not be for a few minutes?” she mumbled under her breath.
“I’m trash? We found you in a dumpster under a can of rotting Spam!”
The photographer looked at them through the lens of the camera drone. “Okay, Revenant! Could you take your hood down please?”
Revenant pulled his hood down, and suddenly the glint of the Christmas lights off his bald head blinded the camera.
“Put it back on! Put it back on!” the photographer pleaded.
“Take it off, put it on, make up your mind!” he said as Ash kneed him in the thigh from her stool.
He really didn’t like the effect the black hood had with the T-shirt…or anything that he was wearing for that matter. The photographer desperately tried to find a way to salvage this.
“Do you maybe have a hat that you can wear? Something fancy?”
Revenant hummed. “I have a baseball cap that says ‘Deez Nuts’ on it.”
Ash quickly butt in, “You are not wearing that in our Christmas card, Kaleb.”
“He’s the one that suggested it, not me!”
The photographer sighed. “Okay, well maybe…a festive looking scarf or something?”
After some fumbling through a closet, Ash had a glittery green and red shawl stolen off a Mrs. Claus lawn ornament wrapped around Revenant’s head and draped over his shoulders. She thought he looked like shit. He thought he looked like a little old babushka lady about to serve beets to her grandchildren. Either way, they both agreed that they weren’t happy.
“You said this would take only a few minutes!” Revenant said as his patience began to wear thin.
Ash glared at him as the photographer further tried to salvage trash.
“Okay, Revenant, I just need you to move closer, and Ash, can you get the rat to stand still?”
Ash steadied her rat on her shoulder while Revenant took a step closer, still leaving a considerable gap between the two of them.
“I need you to move closer,” he said as he waved Revenant over. Again, Revenant only incrementally moved closer to her. “Closer!” Revenant started to move closer. “Okay, stop!”
Revenant lost his balance and fell on Ash just as the drone took a snapshot. They had a lovely photo of Ash falling off the stool, Revenant knocking her over, and the rat flinging his tiny limbs as he shot up into the air.
“Well I didn’t do it on purpose!” he said after she slapped him in the face.
The photographer sighed. “Okay, we’re going to try this again,” he said as they started over. “Revenant, maybe put an arm around Ash. Make it look like you really love each other.”
Ash hummed as Revenant’s arm snaked around her. The drone lined up the shot just perfectly and awaited the orders to take the photo.
“Okay, good. Hold it. And…”
The second the photo snapped, Revenant quickly slipped his hand around Ash and groped her. Her normally neutral expression looked shocked as her optics flared brighter at the unexpected hand on her chest.
The photographer texted his next appointment that he was going to be late while Ash pounded on the bathroom door screaming, “KALEB! GET OUT HERE NOW!”
“Put down the Mastiff and tell me how much you love me first!” Revenant demanded from the other side.
When Ash finally managed to calm down enough for Revenant to feel comfortable leaving the bathroom, the rat had already fallen asleep waiting on the stool. Ash woke him and plucked him up into her hands, fixed his headband, and placed him on her shoulder.
“We could have been done by now if you just stopped fucking around,” Ash snapped.
The photographer got the drone ready as Revenant got into place, this time keeping his hand firmly on her shoulder. “Okay, get ready!”
She suddenly heard Revenant mumble something that sounded an awful lot like, “Bitch…”
The drone snapped the photo just as Ash angrily socked Revenant as hard as she could in the stomach, catching him in the act of flailing in pain.
The photographer watched a stop motion Christmas special on TV with the rat while he waited for the two of them to finish their screaming match, and quietly added on an extra fee to Ash’s bill for emotional suffering.
Ash smoothed out the ruffles on her skirt while Revenant sulked in the background. Her rat still looked like a proper little gentleman waiting for his closeup as he sat patiently, nibbling another dry roasted peanut while he waited for them to get ready.
Ash waited for him to finish the peanut and scooped him back onto her shoulder. She grabbed Revenant by the red and white-striped tie on the front of his candy cane jammie pants and pulled him closer. She was clearly just as fed up with this as usual.
“If you still want me to wear this dress for you later, I suggest you behave yourself!” she hissed.
Revenant glared at her. “Me? You’re the one that sucker punched me! I was ready to take a lovely photo and then you ruined it!”
The photographer sighed as he texted his next appointment that he might not make it at all and would have to reschedule. “Alright, let’s just please get this this over with. I promised my wife I’d help her decorate the tree today.”
As they both posed for the photo, Revenant wrapped his arm around her shoulder, his left hand slowly sliding onto her thigh and taking her hand. “You know, you really do look gorgeous in that dress,” he said.
She tried to stay mad at him. She knew exactly what he was trying to do by flattering her. “Nice try. Keep smiling for the photo.”
“I bet you’d look even more gorgeous once I can take it off you…”
The gentle squeeze of his hand around hers caught her off guard and she could suddenly feel her faceplate heating up.
“Ready?” the photographer said.
“Too bad we have to wait for this to be over though, right?”
The photographer ended up having to delete a few of the resulting photos that the drone had snapped as he yelled at the two amorous simulacra rolling on the floor under the tree, “Get a room!”
“You’re in our house! This is our room!” Revenant snapped back.
Another hour, several more mishaps later, and the rat growing restless and peeing down Revenant’s leg, forcing him to thankfully take the goddamn candy cane pants off, only for the photographer to beg him to put on something else when he realized the downside to having Revenant not wearing any pants while Ash was wearing that dress, and they finally had a perfectly usable photo. They looked at the rough cut together and went to ask the photographer when the final, edited version would be available, only to realize he was no longer in the apartment and his van was racing away.
“I think it looks nice,” Ash said. “As long as you can ignore the ugly tree in the background and the fact that you decided to wear purple booty shorts that said ‘juicy’ across the cheeks…”
“Hey, it was what your neighbor had in the dryer,” Revenant shrugged.
Ash made a note to ask the photographer to photoshop a more festive looking outfit onto Revenant than what he was wearing so that he wouldn’t look like he had his photo taken at the gym.
“So how do you think this is going to look on our Christmas card?”
Ash pondered the question as she stared at the photo as it was, Revenant wearing his ridiculous choice in clothes next to Ash and her rat, who by that point was starting to look annoyed with the delay and had kept trying to take his little star headband off.
“We’ll never be invited to another Christmas party again.”
“Good. Send three of them to Loba,” Revenant replied.