“Emmy!” Lauren shouted loudly, bursting in through the door of the motel room with a large shopping bag in each hand. Her friend looked up from the large spider plant she’d been decorating with colourful baubles and ribbons.
“You’re back!” Emmy said joyfully, a smile creeping onto her features. “I sent the boys off on a really long errand, so we should have enough time to actually organise Christmas without them wandering in.”
“What did you send them to do?” Lauren asked curiously, throwing her bags on the nearest bed with a huff.
“Told them I was going to send my family some gifts and I needed a certain kind of ribbon to send it off in,” she said with a shrug. Lauren rolled her eyes with a smile.
“You’ve got them whipped. If I asked for something like that they’d have told me where to go.” Lauren started unpacking her bags, pulling out pre-cooked turkey and ham slices, egg nog and microwavable vegetables. She pursed her lips in thought, “We have a microwave, right?” she asked, dropping her purchases on the bed and wandering over to the kitchen area of their unusually spacious motel room.
“Yeah,” Emmy replied absentmindedly, still decorating her spider plant, “Sam and Dean really splashed out on this one.”
“Well, hey it is Christmas,” Lauren said, gathering her pre-cooked Christmas dinner together and piling it in the kitchen. “I figure I’ll need to start soon if I want it to be ready by the time they get back,” she said.
“Sure will,” Emmy agreed, putting the finishing touches on her plant. “Okay...” She picked a checklist that had been neatly penned by Lauren a few days ago and crossed ‘Christmas tree’ off it. “Just dinner and present wrapping to finish up then we’re done.”
Emmy pulled her duffel bag out from underneath her bed and pulled it open, revealing a large number of plastic and paper bags hiding inside in the place of her clothes. She removed them one by one and laid them on the single table the motel room had to offer. “Hope they like the presents, it’s not like we had a huge amount to spend on them.”
“Or anywhere decent to buy them out of. I mean, garages and local knick-knack shops...” Lauren chimed in.
“Exactly,” Emmy agreed, “Well, here’s hoping.”
Sam and Dean Winchester approached the motel door to the sound of singing and the smell of burnt meat that had been masked by a large quantity of cinnamon scented room spray. They exchanged a look. Christmas hadn’t been expressly banned but it wasn’t like they were expecting to celebrate it. There had been too many bad Christmases in the past and there was no way they wanted to add to the list. Dean pulled his key out of his pocket and stuck it in the lock. He gave his brother one last look of trepidation before he opened the door. But he hadn’t expected what he saw inside.
Every available space on the walls was taken up by ragged looking tinsel and lights. The windows were covered in fake snow, the kind that came from a can, and there was a large spider plant in the middle of the room that had been assaulted with ribbons and baubles. Dean had expected Lauren and Emmy to stop singing when they entered, instead they sang louder, belting out a slightly out of tune version of Rudolph the red Nosed Reindeer. They’d found themselves red Santa hats and stood around the tree with mad grins on their faces as if they’d just created the greatest thing since sliced bread. Behind them Dean spotted the source of the smell, a microwaved Christmas dinner looking a little forlorn on the motel room’s table.
The brothers just gawped.
Emmy took it as a good sign. “You like it right? Merry Christmas!” She shouted with a grin on her face. Dean’s mouth opened and closed for a few seconds. Then Sam laughed. It wasn’t his usual laugh, he was completely thrown off by the absurdity of it all, but it was infectious, soon the four of them were laughing so hard they were gasping.
“You did all this?” Sam asked once he’d recovered.
“Yup,” Lauren replied, proud of the work she and Emmy had put into getting all this together and not giving the game away.
“Wow,” he breathed.
“You’ve haven’t seen anything yet. We should have dinner soon.” Emmy said to Lauren, who gave a nod of affirmative. “Then you can open presents.”
They sat down to the oddest Christmas dinner any of them had ever eaten. Lauren had managed to almost set the microwave on fire when she stuck the vegetables into it in their tin wrappings and she’d burnt some of the pre-cooked meat to a crisp when she’d tried to heat it up on the stove. It tasted as funny as it looked but everyone ate all of it anyway, just because it was Christmas dinner. Dean and Lauren even managed to pull a cracker together without there being an argument.
“That was... interesting,” Emmy said patting her stomach.
“At least it was edible, which is more than I can say for dessert,” Lauren said, glancing balefully at the closed fridge. Sam decided it was better not to ask.
“Presents anyone?”
Guessing what the boys wanted hadn’t been easy, but they managed somehow. Lauren had bought Sam a pair of socks and a flashlight that attached to a headband, which he politely thanked her for but secretly could never see himself using. Emmy had bought him a copy of All Kinds of Feelings which turned out to be a lift the flap book written to help children understand their feelings. Lauren had been more than uncomfortable with buying Dean something but her salvation came in the form of him having broken his lighter a fortnight ago and not having bothered to replace it. She gave him a new shiny silver lighter. He’d even thanked her... must have been the egg nog talking. Emmy had bought him some new cassette apes from a run down old store she’d stumbled across the other day and he loved them, even if their taste in music was a little different.
“Sorry we didn’t get you anything, after all this trouble,” Sam said, rubbing the back of his head with his hand and smiling apologetically. Emmy waved him into silence.
“It’s not like you knew we had this planned, we’re terribly sneaky.” She winked at Lauren.
“Well,” Dean said, stretching in his seat, “Here’s to us. How about we stick around and do this again.” He raised his glass of egg nog.
“Here here.”
Merry Christmas xx
LOL! This was totally epic! Loved it.
ReplyDelete'They’d found themselves red Santa hats and stood around the tree with mad grins on their faces as if they’d just created the greatest thing since sliced bread.'
ReplyDelete'Lauren had bought Sam a pair of socks and a flashlight that attached to a headband, which he politely thanked her for but secretly could never see himself using. Emmy had bought him a copy of All Kinds of Feelings which turned out to be a lift the flap book written to help children understand their feelings.'
PERFECT. JUST PERFECT.
The ending was incredibly bittersweet. Thank you so much, it's brilliant!
Glad you like :) I wasn't going to post it until my 5am self decided it would be a good idea...
ReplyDeleteChristmas ftw