We Survived the Snowmageddon

[worktodo]

Who: Albert Rosenfield (worktodo) and whoever is congregating at the Justice Farm for the Christmas holiday!
Where: El Rancho del Justicia, aka Albert's house in Saffron City
When: Anytime between Monday the 24th and Wednesday the 26th!
Summary: A lot has changed in a month, but some things never do. Losers getting together to fail their way through the holiday season is one of them.
Rating: Individual threads may vary, but let's go with G overall and warn otherwise!
Log:

Despite generally doing a very excellent Grinch impression, Albert doesn't actually hate Christmas. Granted, it's not one of his favorite holidays the way that Thanksgiving is — it's a little too overdone, a little too commercial, lacking in some of the spirit of togetherness in favor of the spirit of consumerism — but it is decidedly a holiday, and once again Johto has presented him with a situation where he is forced to make a choice. For the second time this year (by Albert's reckoning), Johto appears to have done everything in its power to prevent them from putting on a holiday, including but not limited to summoning up the actual apocalypse. The question that begs to be asked, therefore, is simply: is Albert willing to surrender Christmas in the face of all these apparent attempts to ruin it?

The answer, naturally, is: oh, hell no.

It is, however, an undeniably different atmosphere from the one that filled the house on Thanksgiving. Most of the occupants of the house are worse off now than they were then, be it emotionally or physically — some from spooky encounters, some from harsh truths, and some from going out in the apocalyptic snow like the damn fools they are — so if there's slightly less pep and enthusiasm saturating the grounds, that could certainly be why. Any decorations applied to the outside of the house have been battered at best and outright wrecked at worst. But as the slightly paraphrased song lyric goes, "Though the weather outside is frightful, by the fire it's so delightful", and the interior of the house is a thankfully different story.

On Monday, Albert will be spending the Eve of Christmas largely in the kitchen, having allotted the whole day for getting all the components of Christmas dinner prepared and readied in advance; on Thanksgiving, it's a fundamental part of the holiday tradition to run around the kitchen like a madman trying to get dinner to the table on time, but for Christmas, he'd rather everything just go smoothly. Early arrivals are welcome to hang out in the cozy parts of the house, grab some cocoa, and carefully avoid him; otherwise, they might get drafted into menial labor like shoveling out the front walk or putting the finishing touches on the interior decor before the party officially kicks off.

By Tuesday, it's all Christmas all the time; there is no victory quite so sweet as the one that comes hard-won, and as far as Albert is concerned, the most effective "screw you" to Johto's Snowmageddon is putting on an occasion that is positively bursting with holly and jolly anyway. Somewhere near the kitchen, Zack the Porygon2 is contributing by blasting from his Gear's speakers a concert of every Christmas song he knows (of which there are three: "Feliz Navidad", "Grandma Got Run Over By A Stantler Reindeer", and the Weather Girls' "It's Raining Men"). A stately (albeit slightly lopsided) Christmas tree that is probably the Johto equivalent of a Douglas fir is set up in a corner of the living room near the fireplace — which is burning merrily — and its branches are decorated with makeshift ornaments like Pokeballs and paper throwing stars along with the standard colored bauble variety. Stuff your presents below; there'll be time for opening them later, but for now they're part of the decor. There's holly on the piano and fake candles in the windows, and you better believe at least half of those doorways have mistletoe strategically placed near them. Don't get caught! (Or do, if that's what you're here for.)

The one new and interesting addition to the house can be found in a corner of the living room, where a little space has been carved out for a small end table topped with coasters, a chair, and a tripod apparatus just the right size for holding a standard Pokegear. Got someone to call and wish a Merry Christmas? Do it from the comfort of this corner like it's Masterpiece Theater.

But however Tuesday is spent, there's sure to be a lot of love, gifting, and good Christmas cheer. Or else.

When Wednesday comes along, it'll be the standard post-Christmas wind-down — leftovers aplenty in the kitchen, trash bags of crumpled wrapping paper tucked into the corners, and a nice low-pressure environment in which to interact, gush over gifts, and enjoy the spirit of the season a little longer before getting right back to work on Important Business. For some, that might mean playing in the snow or having a snowball fight; for others, that might mean coordinating federal agent business for the future. But either way, it's another Christmas survived, and that's what really matters, right?


[OOC: Just like last time, this is an open log for everybody coming to Albert's for Christmas! Feel free to start your own threads as you please — open them to everybody, close them to specific people, whatever works for you. Just make a note in the header of what day it's taking place on and who all's invited, and have fun, everybody! Also, for people who aren't physically present at the Farm on Christmas, feel free to use the designated Skype Thread™ to chat with them over video anyway!]

Comments

[doitrockapella]

[She's used to the feel of his hands there by now; really, at this point he's the one person in the world (possibly any world, even) who can hold her this way without prompting a flinch or a silent but significant readjustment of their positioning. This is all right. This is different than what used to set her nerves on edge all those months ago. This is familiar because it's him, and it's something she wants — having learned to distinguish between the feeling of being gathered in and being trapped.

She pulls on his collar, moves her hands up, gets her fingers in his hair — it's an improvement, the lack of gel. Not something she'd want all the time, lest it lose its novelty, but today is, after all, a special occasion.

When she does break for air, she uses the moment to her advantage, flicking her gaze pointedly upward — and if he happens to catch a glimpse before she kisses him again, he might just see a sprig of mistletoe overhead after all, held obligingly in place by someone's rather familiar Vine Whip tendrils.]

[tapestodiane]

<sub>[The sight of the mistletoe and the knowledge of who's providing it makes him smile in a mixture of mirth and fondness for both the pokémon and her trainer, and Carmen will probably be able to find that smile no problem when he kisses her back and moves a hand towards her face.]

[He'd been smiling a fair bit into that first kiss, too. She's always handsy, just not normally this blatantly so, but he can't mind the occasions when she takes it up a notch. Especially not with hands in his hair. It makes him lean into her just a little bit more.]

[Still, though, this isn't private and despite some notable public displays of affection Cooper isn't going to indulge her too much here. The withdrawal is smooth if she allows it, but it's far from separation.]</sub>

[doitrockapella]

[That's a natural balance, too, between them — Carmen pushing the boundaries as a means of seeing just how much she can get away with, and Coop regulating her momentum to keep the both of them from getting carried along too far by it. So it's not unusual, that smooth withdrawal, and it's not something that inspires more than a token dash of disappointment; it's one more distinction she's learned how to draw, not a rejection but simply a signal of the end of a round of the game.

Her game and his. Her detective.

(She doesn't believe in luck, but if she did, she'd be tempted to ask herself how she ever got so lucky.)

Already beginning to come down from her original spike of energy and mischief, she takes a moment to just look at him — the hazel of his eyes, the faint circles beneath them that never seem to fade, the way his smiles quirk at the corners of his mouth as they slowly grow on his face — and continues to run her hands through his hair, smooth and petting and affectionate.

And then, using the calm of the moment to very deliberately focus her attention on making the words come out, she greets him properly at last.]

Joyeux noël, détective.

[Carmen, he'd said so fondly, French is just right.]

[tapestodiane]

<sub>[He remembers that, too. Their first meeting - the first time he used her name and knew the face behind it, in fact. He has no doubt that's what she's thinking about when she manages to speak in French (in itself an impressive feat) out of all the other languages she could pick to adress him in.]

[It makes him fall in love with her a little bit more. Not even necessarily the fact that she remembers her use of French back then (or maybe she's referencing something that goes even further back; Voltaire was French) but the very knowledge that this is who she is. Someone who surprises him. Who keeps him on his toes.]

[He doesn't even try to match her with a foreign language on his own tongue - he wouldn't even get close - but instead gives her a warm smile and runs a few fingers through her hair as well.]</sub>

You took something of mine.

_{[He could hardly be bothered. He's just looking for confirmation.]}

[doitrockapella]

[It's a testament to just how comfortable she's become with being around him, what happens next — there's the sensation of fingers in her hair, and her expression relaxes from something playful and coy to one much softer, her eyelashes long and dark against her cheek as her eyes fall closed, like she's abandoning her sense of sight to devote her full attention to memorizing the way it feels.

(And yet even with her eyes closed, the memory of his smile lingers. Weeks ago, she'd thought she might never see it again. And now it's not just here once more, but it's here because of her, something she inspired, something that's hers.)

Christmas has been bothering her because, among other things, she hasn't quite known how to cope with the unfamiliar warmth and affection directed at her. But this brand of warmth and affection, oh, she's had plenty of practice with already.]

That's what I do.

[Taking things. She'll never let him forget she's a thief; it's part of who she is as much as his fears are a part of him. It shouldn't be perfect. They should have their faults and conflicts. It just makes it all the more telling, that there are things they can dislike about each other while still lov—

She frees one hand from his hair, running her fingers down the back of his neck and over his shoulder to rest lightly on the left side of his chest, nestled in carefully between them.]

Did you want it back?

[tapestodiane]

Eventually.

<sub>[He's not in a hurry. Tucks some of that hair behind her ear only to have a few wisps of it escape to fall towards her eyes again.]

[And changes the topic. Why not?]</sub>

I have a gift for you.

_{[Besides the new ring tone, which he's made sure she's already noticed.]}

[doitrockapella]

[She's thinking of the new ring tone, too — how startled she'd been when it had gone off for the first time, and how realization had slowly dawned as she remembered her own scheme in Olivine, the streetcar bell, and now it'd come full circle (and she couldn't decide whether to reprimand or hug Zack for it, either). And the way his fingers brush through her hair is distracting, enough so that her next words slip out before she's really had a chance to consider them.]

You didn't have to.

[He didn't, and when the sound of her own voice reaches her ears, her expression shifts slightly — brow furrowing, eyes softening. The words are the acceptably modest thing to say, but she didn't intend them that way when she'd said them.

She doesn't need gifts. She's never gotten them, not unless she's taken them for herself. And she's happy just like this. And the stack of boxes with her name on them beneath the tree, it's so foreign, so uncertain, and even now she still doesn't quite know what to do about it.

And so in the end she just flashes him a look that she hopes he'll be able to read as well as he's always been able to her others — a brief reveal of just how uncertain she is about all this, and how it's been bothering her, and implicitly requesting that once again, he help guide the way toward what she's supposed to do.]

[tapestodiane]

I wanted to.

<sub>[And in that lies the answer. While some of it is customs, norms and obligations, what it should be and often comes from is just the urge, the wanting to give. There's no real difficulty in that and not on the other side of the coin either. Someone wanted to give you something. You accept that.]

[It might be overwhelming at times, but in the end, it's still pretty simple. Maybe that's just it, though; the simple things are the ones that people tend to overcomplicate.]

[Moving his hand away from her face, he takes her hand and tugs on her fingers slightly as he steers them towards the Christmas tree and once there picks out a small, roundish package. The only thing on the label is her name and he hands it over without flourish, just presenting it as what it is: a token of affection.]</sub>

[doitrockapella]

[Taking is what she's used to, and keeping is even rarer still; it's always the caper that's the real reward, not whatever she's made off with at the end of it. So the things she does have, they're priceless in a way she can't always articulate — and maybe that's part of what does it, too, that she's reacting to her gifts beneath the tree the way an average person might react to being showered in diamonds.

She takes the package when he puts it in her hand and regards it for a minute, running her finger over her name on the label. His handwriting. So many little things to treasure about this, and she hasn't even opened it yet.

When she leans up to kiss him lightly again, it's not in thanks but as a way of seizing something familiar once again, putting herself back into a situation she knows, regaining some of her slipping poise with something that's long since become a very pleasant habit.]

I'm... [She wants to say flattered, or touched, but the thought trails off unfinished.] Thank you.

[Her fingers creep carefully beneath the tape, lifting it away and undoing the wrapping the way she would a puzzle, refusing to rip even an inch of the paper as she works. If that's not a sign of how significantly this has impacted her, she doesn't know what is.]

[tapestodiane]

<sub>[She'll likely notice the beads beneath the wrapper before she gets it off to reveal the bracelet inside. He stands by her side as she opens it, close but not hovering.]

[Like any other gift-giver, he'd like to see the reaction, so he watches her face rather than her hands despite having noted the delicate way she's opening the gift. He already knows what's there, after all.]

[What he doesn't know is what she'll think of it.]</sub>

[doitrockapella]

[She doesn't know what she was expecting to find when the paper came off, honestly. She'd felt the beads, of course, or at least the presence of something rounded over and smooth, but somehow the thought that it might have been jewelry never clicked in her head as she'd briefly considered what it possibly could have been. A bracelet would've been too mundane of a gift, perhaps, or too predictable, or too...

...significant.

But it's a bracelet, and it comes into sight as the paper lifts away, and for a moment she just looks at it, the warm polished colors a lovely contrast to the white of the paper. Beads, a clasp, and a claw. A bracelet. A gift for her.

(It's a, um...oh, right, a netsuke! Of Bear. It's for me?)

She runs her fingertips gingerly over the beads, stopping for a longer perusal of the claw, and as she's tracing its sleek lines, the word leaps to her mind — Coyote.

No, not coyote, not in Johto...but that's what he wants her to see when she looks at it. Raven and Coyote, the trickster figures. They'd talked about them before. He'd asked her if Raven's story was her own.

Maybe now Coyote's is hers, too.

She looks up and over at him, breathes in, swallows; for once her thoughts are showing on her unguarded face as clearly as if they've been written on a chalkboard, and she discovers a second later that she's holding the gift in her hands like she thinks it's made of glass.]

[tapestodiane]

<sub>[As much of a raven as she is ... to him, a she just might be more of a coyote. It's not the simple explanation of trickster that does it, either; they both already knew. No, it's about what the coyote does. He's playful, resourceful, intelligent and inspiring. More importantly, he uses that inspiration and charisma to urge people to change their lives, to learn from their mistakes.]

[It wasn't a conscious decision on his part, to pick the coyote (or well, the equivalent). Things just happened that way sometimes. But after remembering and quietly reciting the keywords he knew about the wild dogs his decision for the gift had only solidified further.]

[The original idea is from a girl he only barely remembers, but he recalls her necklace, her animal claw. They're linked together, her and Carmen - he knows this with an intuition he doesn't ever bother questioning. There's a link to him, too. And a boy.]

[But maybe, right now, none of that is important., What is is the look on Carmen's face, the stunned touched silence, and he quietly takes the bracelet from her to help that. He opens the clasp and slips the bracelet on her left wrist, letting the claw rest against the back of her hand, and then takes a moment to kiss her, softly.]</sub>

[doitrockapella]

[It fits. The beads circle around her wrist like a handcuff and the claw is smooth and cool against the back of her hand, and he's kissing her but her mind isn't there — it's still lingering on the strange new weight against her left hand, and the gradually dawning recognition that he must've known this about her, just like he knew the basis for her connection with Raven when he transposed it onto Coyote, just like he knows everything about her in one way or another. It fits like it was made for her. And that's good, because now that he's put it there, it's never coming off.

It's as she kisses him, her fingers tracing over his neck and shoulders as always, that she feels them pass over the cord beneath his shirt and remembers that she's never seen him without Algiz, either. Not since she put it there.

Oh. Is that what he's done?

She thinks it is.

And the world realigns.

Suddenly it makes sense, and the recognition bubbles up inside her in a way that makes her want to laugh against his mouth. Leave it to him, Special Agent Dale Cooper, her detective, to find a way to give her for Christmas the one thing she'd always wanted all along, beneath the chases and clues and conundrums, the crimes and capers and challenges. The weight of the bracelet is light and negligible and yet she can't stop feeling it, this new pretty clasp that she'll never take off.

When she pulls away, it's not because she's tired of being kissed (as though such a thing were even possible), but because she wants to see his face; she doesn't have the words to say what she thinks of this, not in any language she knows or any she could try to force through Johto's translation, but she can show it, and she tries—

For a minute, she just looks at him, her eyes never leaving his as she strokes her hands through his hair again (slow and affectionate, something that's evolved beyond her earlier petting into the outright urge to please him by it), and then she simply steps into his arms and puts her head on his shoulder, implicitly waiting to be held.]

[tapestodiane]

<sub>[It's no surprise that she understands the significance of what it means. It's clear in the way her touch shifts on his skin and even moreso when she withdraws to look at him - it's right there in her eyes. As is the fact that she wants him to spot it.]

[And he just looks back, in turn letting her see all the affection he has for her, the way that he's in love with her ... because it's indesputable by now, it really is, has changed from just the flirting and the pursuit and into something he just really wants to hang onto. That's not what the bracelet is, though. It's not meant to be a claim because he'd never lay claims on her. But she'd told him once that all he has to do is ask her to return and she will, and maybe that's what it's supposed to be.]

[Not a question, but a reminder of one. A token of the fact that he wants her there.]


[He leans into the way she pets him but when she leans on him, it's her turn, and he doesn't hesitate to put his arms around her.]</sub>

Merry Christmas.

[doitrockapella]

[For a minute, she closes her eyes and just...drifts, content to be where she is and for once finding it possible to just let go of her usual train of thought — where she is, how things feel, the glittering array of stimuli to focus on and memorize and try to make sense of — and stand, quietly, with his arms around her. For a minute, that's all it is: warmth, and safety, and the feeling of being surrounded — no, enveloped — no, encompassed by his embrace and his love.

Because he loves her.

It's Christmas, and he loves her.

You took something of mine, he'd said, and she'd known what he meant. But now, suddenly, she's not so certain of that anymore. After all, it's starting to feel as though he's made off with something of hers, too.]

Don't let go.

[It slips out, soft like a sigh against his shoulder, and she doesn't regret it or second-guess it, or wonder if she'd meant to say something different.]