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fic_ception2018-12-06 05:02 pm
chlorhexidine) wrote in fic_ception2018-12-06 05:02 pm
Universe - Christmas
A couple of days later a faint commotion outside Ignis's door drew his attention. He was putting the last few citations in an essay when he heard the noise of someone in the corridor. He wouldn't have thought much of it, but one of the voices was definitely Nel, and another was Apache.
He opened his door as the kitchen door swung closed, leaving the corridor empty, and their voices, and whatever they'd been carrying, disappearing along with them. He could return to proofing his essay. Doubtless he'd find out what they were up to in due course regardless. On the other hand, a part of him welcomed the opportunity for a distraction. He'd read his own words over enough times now that they were losing all meaning.
Ignis glanced down at his unshod feet. He wasn't in the habit of walking around in his socks, not least because he didn't want to discover how sufficient a job the others made of the cleaning rota with his toes.
After ducking back into his room to slip his shoes on, he ventured into the kitchen where Apache and Nel were fighting against a box for ownership of a synthetic mass of green branches. “Ignis!” Nel called, immediately volunteering him to help, “you hold, we'll pull.”
Ignis didn't put up argument and gripped the exposed bit of Christmas tree in both hands while Nel joined Apache at the other end. There was a sense of resistance, as if the tree was vacuum sealed into the box, and then it came away with a scrape of plastic and cardboard. “Hang on, there's another bit,” Nel said, retrieving the part Ignis was holding and laying it on the floor.
“I've got it,” Ignis reassured her, and reached in, taking hold of the scratchy plastic branches buried deeper in the box and dragging them out a little more easily.
Apache tipped the box upside down, and some plastic legs clattered to the floor. “I hope we got enough decorations,” she said, standing the now empty box up against the wall.
Ignis glanced around until his eyes alighted on a plastic bag dropped into one of the seats. “Well, there's only one way to find out,” he said. “What did you get?”
“Baubles and tinsel,” Nel answered. Her nose wrinkled as she added, “We didn't have enough to get lights.”
Ignis worked to keep his face neutral. At home, his mother favoured pure white lights, and the tree was decorated in plastic holly, very old baubles that depicted various nativity scenes, and an odd mishmash of increasingly battered handmade decorations that had come along every year up until Ignis was twelve, courtesy of his activities in Sunday School. He wouldn't have admitted it out loud, but there was a part of him that longed for gaudy multi-coloured lights and Father Christmas effigies. “What colours?” he asked.
“I thought you weren't interested?” Apache asked, giving Ignis a slightly smug look.
“I didn't say that,” Ignis replied, a touch more defensively than he intended. “I said I don't see much point when none of us will be here to enjoy them.”
“We're here now,” Apache pointed out.
Ignis refrained from telling her that it wasn't Christmas yet, despite the tsunami of Christmas music that had washed over the country's airwaves. He didn't particularly want to explain to Apache and Nel that in his family not one scrap of tinsel went up until Christmas Eve, and then it was Christmas all the way until twelfth night when the decorations would come down again.
“We got red and gold,” Nel said, answering Ignis's original question. “It was easier to find.”
Ignis watched as Apache retrieved the plastic pieces she'd dumped onto the floor and started examining them. She slotted one piece onto another with a look of calculated curiosity, and then, satisfied, repeated the action with the remaining two pieces to make the tree's base. “Would you like some help to decorate?” he offered.
Apache grinned at him, seeming to enjoy Ignis's gentle back-pedalling on the subject of decorating. “You can help,” she said. “It's gonna take ages to fan all those branches out properly.”
Between three of them, 'ages' turned out to be a solid twenty minutes, with an extra five for the subtle rearranging of branch positions, and the untwisting of spears of leafy plastic that, against all reason, had become wrapped around the central branch during the process of being fanned out. For a synthetic tree that had cost all of twenty pounds and change, it wasn't half bad. Nel and Apache had opted for one seven feet tall, instead of a more modest six feet, or frankly disappointing five.
“We wanted it to be taller than most of us,” Nel explained.
Ignis found himself liking the effect. At a hair under six feet tall, he could eyeball the tree topper his mother preferred at home. Looking up to the top of this tree made him feel younger again. It was an effective shortcut to transporting him back to memories of when Christmas was fun.
Where to place the tree was the next issue they had to tackle after its construction. They hadn't been able to purchase lights, so a socket wasn't one of the concerns, but nor did they want to have the tree either in the way, or tucked away where it could be ignored. After some debate, Nel and Apache settled on moving furniture in the seating area so the tree could be planted next to the window.
Then the tree had to be dressed. The bag of red and gold decorations yielded a number of baubles, and multiple reams of tinsel. Working methodically, and with Ignis trying not to actively take over the decorating despite his every urge being to instruct, they wrapped the tree in tinsel first. What looked to be a lot of tinsel did not turn out to be a lot of tinsel when it was wrapped as evenly as possible around a seven foot tree.
They filled the space with baubles. The packs of baubles had their hanging strings separate from the actual decoration, so Ignis was relegated to a chair attaching strings as quickly as he could while Nel and Apache hung the baubles one by one.
Gladio and Yylfordt entered the kitchen as Ignis was working on the last pack of tiny golden baubles. “Nice!” Gladio called, dropping a bag onto the floor next to the dining table and admiring their handiwork.
Ignis looked up, watching Yylfordt give the tree an appraising look that made it clear the tree had not passed inspection. “Did you not get a fibre optic one?”
“They're at least eighty quid,” Apache told him with a scowl.
Yylfordt gave a shrug, as if the notion of spending upwards of eighty pounds on just a tree didn't faze him. “Where's the lights then?”
Ignis tied the last string to the last couple of baubles and handed them to Nel before admiring their handiwork. The tree was tastefully, if simply, decorated, but he had to admit that it did look a little bare.
“We couldn't get any,” Nel said.
In an unusual display of self preservation, Yylfordt refrained from speaking further, but Ignis caught a glimpse of his curled upper lip as he turned towards the fridge. “It does look a bit naked without lights,” Gladio said.
“Well if Mr Moneybags wants to contribute,” Apache spat, her eyes fixed on Yylfordt, “maybe we could get some.”
“Why the fuck should I buy your Christmas decorations?” Yylfordt asked, retrieving a can of coke from the fridge and cracking it open.
“Either pony up or shut your fucking hole about the tree we got,” Apache retorted.
“I suppose we could skip Sunday dinner this week to get some more decorations?” Ignis offered. He enjoyed their Sunday tradition, but with a full blown Christmas dinner to plan, it wouldn't be too much of a loss to skip it for one week.
Gladio shifted, and Ignis found his attention drawn irresistibly towards him as he folded his arms and shook his head. “Definitely not,” he said, catching Ignis's eye. “I'm looking forward to Sunday.” Ignis dragged his eyes away and tried not to let the thrill of delight he felt at those words show on his face. “You're doing a Christmas dinner too, right?”
“That's the plan,” Ignis confirmed, “but it'll require everyone to chip in equally.”
“Which we'll make sure they do,” Nel said. The words felt as if they were directed at Yylfordt.
“I don't mind paying towards stuff I can eat,” Yylfordt called back from across the room.
“Aren't you generous?” Apache commented.
“I can buy some lights,” Gladio said. “It needs some more tinsel, too,” he added, “and a star for the top.”
“You don't have to pay for everything,” Nel said, although to Ignis's ear she sounded grateful for the offer, and as if she wasn't about to fight very hard to turn Gladio down.
“It's no big. I can always leave some of my Christmas shopping until I get home,” Gladio answered. His warm and genuine smile coloured his words.
“At least someone gives a shit,” Apache sniped, back in Yylfordt's direction.
“I'll take a shower and then we'll go,” Gladio said.
Nel winced. “I have a couple of thousand words to do on my creative writing,” she said, “you'll have to go without me.”
“I'll go,” Ignis volunteered, before he had time to think about what was coming out of his mouth. “At least then if we get something awful you can blame it on me,” he offered, as his reasoning for why he was so eager to jump on a shopping trip with Gladio.
“Nah,” Gladio replied, his smile widening into a grin, “you've got great taste, Iggy. Give me half an hour?”
An hour later, Ignis had folded himself into the passenger seat of Gladio's '03 Volkswagen Polo. The inside smelled faintly of gym clothes, old pizza, and the dying ebbs of perfume from the tree shaped air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, but the car itself was clean. It was secondhand, Gladio had explained, and a present from his parents just before he'd come to university.
“That was generous of them,” Ignis commented, thinking of his own parents and their unwillingness to name him as a driver on their insurance due to the effect it had on the premiums.
“I think my mom just wanted to make sure I could get back home,” Gladio replied, with a bright smile. “My dad says I'll crash it before I finish.”
Ignis murmured unhappily. “Statistically speaking--” he began.
“Don't you start.”
Ignis allowed himself a laugh as Gladio's hand tapped him on the shoulder in admonishment without him ever taking his eyes off the road. “How long have you been driving?” he asked, dragging the subject gently off the road of car crashes, at least while they were in motion.
“Six months,” Gladio answered. “Cars, anyway,” he added, slowing down and indicating as they approached a junction. The lights of B&Q beckoned, because Gladio had been adamant that quality was more important than cost when it came to electrical fittings, and Ignis hadn't been able to disagree. “I've been driving tractors for years with my dad.”
Ignis let himself picture that, for a moment. Gladio, seated in a tractor cabin, slightly grimy with dirt and sweaty with work. He made himself stop thinking about it. “What is it you farm?” Ignis asked, finding himself reflexively watching for traffic as they turned. Gladio wasn't a bad driver, he decided; he could probably trust him.
“Cows,” Gladio answered, and then elaborated, “beef cattle. We've got a few horses, too. My mom runs the stables.”
The car pulled in to the car park, and Gladio found a parking spot without too much difficulty. The wind outside was picking up, and the air was cold enough that Ignis could see his breath as they walked towards the store's entrance. Gladio tucked his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie as they walked.
Inside was rather warmer, and the display of Christmas decorations was easily picked out. It was the aisle that sang, as coloured lights danced off the shelving. Ignis took a moment to admire the trees on display. The smallest ones were as large as the one Nel and Apache had bought, and they were dressed in lights and tastefully deliberate colour schemes that made them look as expensive as their price tags suggested.
Gladio gave an appreciative whistle. “Our tree never looks that classy,” he said.
“Nor does ours,” Ignis confessed, looking up at a nine foot tree with built in white lights, carefully decorated with snow and silver stars.
“They're too classy, if you ask me,” Gladio said, after a moment, nudging Ignis with his elbow as he began to move on. “Like something out of a home design catalogue, instead of something you've decorated yourself.”
Ignis smiled, faintly. “I suppose it's not the same without the homemade decorations.”
Gladio laughed, his deep rumble carrying down the aisle and lifting Ignis's spirits. “You've got those too?” he asked.
“Doesn't everyone?” Ignis thought back to the crude, handmade paper chains, and laminated paper circles with poorly coloured religious iconography that had bedecked his family's tree for over a decade.
“My mom keeps them in a special box,” Gladio said. “We always put the tree up together on the first weekend of December,” he added, approaching the display of blinking strings of lights with a definite hint of sad wistfulness. “I hope they waited for me this year.”
The corner of Ignis's mouth twitched upwards at the image. He could picture Gladio, with his younger sister and his parents, deciding where to put the really embarrassing, old homemade decorations this year. These day's Ignis's own efforts always found their way to the back of the tree, where nobody else would have to see them. “We don't decorate until Christmas Eve,” he answered.
Gladio turned and stared at him. “Seriously?”
Ignis felt as if he'd misstepped, somehow. Gladio looked a combination of surprised and distressed at the idea. “My mother's a rather traditional Catholic,” he explained, quietly. “We don't put any decorations up until Christmas Eve, barring the advent candle, and then we go to midnight mass.”
“Oh,” Gladio answered. Silence bloomed awkwardly between them. Gladio broke it by adding, “I didn't know you were religious.”
Ignis offered him a soothing smile. “I'm not,” he replied, “my mother is.” One rather fell out with Catholicism, he thought, when one tried to reconcile the idea of a loving God with one that would make him attracted to men, and then condemn him to Hell if he so much as thought about it. And that was before you started thinking too much about the inherent cruelty of teaching teenage boys that everything they were going through was somehow wrong. “To be honest, I'm enjoying the idea of trying out a traditionally non-traditional Christmas this year.”
He could feel Gladio's eyes on him, and he fought to ignore it as he examined the lights. There was helpful information about how many lights would adequately cover how many feet of tree, which advised them to get at least two hundred and forty bulbs. “White, or multi-coloured?” he asked.
“Multi-coloured,” Gladio answered, without hesitation. “White's boring.”
Ignis smiled, glancing sidelong at Gladio to find his attention had turned to the display of flashing, rhythmically blinking bulbs. “Quite.”
“These ones?” Gladio asked, nodding towards one of the strings, with his hands still resolutely in his pocket.
Ignis looked down to the listed prices. “Gladio, they cost more than the tree.”
Gladio gave an unconcerned shrug. “It's worth it. At least they won't burn the kitchen down.”
Ignis hesitated. He didn't want to demand Gladio spend that sort of money on decorations when the dorm between them had raised only slightly more than that for the whole affair. “You can't spend that much,” he insisted, looking back at some of the other lights. “What about these?”
Gladio, to his credit, looked at Ignis's suggestion, which was nearly half the price of the ones he'd chosen. “They only do one thing,” he pointed out.
“They're lights,” Ignis replied, “what more do you want them to do?”
“I like settings,” Gladio replied, maintaining a completely straight face. “They can blink,” he said, “they can be on all the time,” he added, and lost his serious facade as he added, “they can blink differently.” Ignis laughed, unable to help himself in the face of Gladio's steadfast resolve. Gladio broke into a bright smile as he picked up a box from the pile of his first choice, complete with their options of different blinking settings. “Unless you're going to stop me?”
“Well I'm not going to fight you for them,” Ignis conceded. The grin that Gladio bore in response as he turned away to head further down the aisle reminded Ignis strongly of a cheeky schoolchild. Had it not been for his height and hirsuteness, Gladio wouldn't have looked out of place wearing a cap, blazer, and shorts, with a skew-whiff tie. It was, Ignis thought, rather charming.
“Now,” Gladio began, still walking up to where the tree toppers were displayed. A number of them lit up, and seemed rather too large and heavy to sit comfortably on top of any tree below nine feet tall. “Star,” he asked, “or angel?”
“Which do you prefer?” Ignis asked, reflexively. They had an angel at home, that represented Gabriel, and that Ignis's mother would settle atop the tree after they'd attended mass. Ignis always felt as if it was watching him. The decoration was now so old that the ivory satin and lace of its gown was yellowing.
Gladio shook his head. “Doesn't matter what I want,” he said. “You came, you have to pick something.”
Ignis chose a star, although they ended up moving further down to where the less ostentatious tree toppers lived if only because of the fact that most of the ones in easy view would likely topple the tree. They picked up another pack of baubles on the way, red ones that were covered in glitter, and which Ignis could foresee them spending the rest of the year sweeping up.
He managed to talk Gladio out of buying canned snow on the grounds that they'd have to undress the tree in order to apply it, and in any case, it warned to only use it in a well ventilated room and they wouldn't want to set off somebody's asthma. When they reached the tinsel, Gladio draped a long stream of mixed red and gold over Ignis's shoulders like a particularly tacky scarf and circled it loosely around his throat.
Ignis tried to glare, but found he didn't have it in him, especially when Gladio stood there and responded to Ignis's feigned annoyance by draping another ream of tinsel around Ignis's neck.
A third string went around Gladio's shoulders, and then they made their way to the till to pay for their purchases. The price made Ignis cringe, but Gladio handed over a credit card without so much as blinking. The defiant grin he flashed at Ignis a second later stopped Ignis from protesting about the cost again. Gladio looked like he knew what Ignis was thinking of saying, and Ignis wasn't going to win the second turn at the argument, either.
When they got back to the dorm the kitchen's population had rotated. Levi was critically examining the tree, and, if Ignis was any judge, overseeing Bert's efforts at cooking for himself without being so crass as to tell Bert that's what he was doing.
“What do you think?” Gladio asked, pausing by the dining table to lay their recent purchases out.
“There's a plastic bit of forest with some balls hanging off it in our kitchen,” Levi replied.
“It's not finished yet,” Ignis answered, picking up on the obvious disapproval and even less subtle note of derision from Levi.
“It's shedding,” Levi added, pointing to the spikes of green plastic that had fallen to the floor sometime between them putting the tree up and decorating it.
Ignis refrained from commenting about that. It would vaccuum up easily enough, but there was little point in doing it before they'd got all the decorations on, because more would only come off as the tree was disturbed. “It's new,” he said, “it's just loose plastic. We'll clean it up.”
Levi gave an unhappy grunt and sat himself down in one of the chairs, giving a glance over towards Bert at the stove. “Is that more balls?” he asked.
“They're called baubles,” Ignis answered, “and we got some lights, and more tinsel, too.”
“And a star for the top,” Gladio provided, fishing the lights out of their box first.
Ignis looked at the tree critically. The routine for dressing the tree at home was always the same, lights first, followed by tinsel, followed by the baubles. Here, everything had been a bit haphazard. “Do you want to put the lights on first?” he asked, glancing at Gladio.
“Sure,” Gladio answered, flashing Ignis a bright smile that made his spine tingle and his mouth dry out.
Ignis made himself turn away, and distracted himself by taking the new pack of baubles to Levi. “You can help?” he offered, holding the pack out. “The strings need tying on, and then they can be hung anywhere there's a gap.”
Levi glanced at the box of baubles Ignis was offering out to him. “I'm not touching those,” he replied, “I'll get covered in fucking glitter.”
Ignis frowned, feeling his good mood frittering away. He hadn't expected to enjoy putting up a Christmas tree with the others, but he had been. He just wished Levi could join in.
It must have shown on his face, because before he could say anything Levi was sighing and rolling his eyes. “I'll help with the lights,” he said. “You can get covered in glitter.”
Ignis's unhappiness retreated again, and he smiled. “Fine,” he answered. “Make sure they're all working, first.”
A look of confusion crossed Levi's face. “Why wouldn't they be working?” he asked.
“Sometimes you get duff bulbs,” Gladio answered, plugging the string of lights in and already going through them. “We can take them back if they're not right.”
“Have you never decorated a tree before?” Ignis asked. The lights they had at home were old ones, that needed a bulb or two changing every year without fail in order to get the string to work at all. He found it hard to believe that Levi had never, in all his life, experienced a bulb failure like that.
Levi threw Ignis a look that suggested he'd just asked a very silly question. “Why the fuck would I have decorated a tree before? I'm Jewish,” he answered, “and my birthday's Christmas day. That's two reasons not to care about Christmas.”
Ignis stared. Behind Levi he could see Gladio was staring too. Ignis wasn't sure which part to address first. The fact that Levi was Jewish was enough of a revelation on its own without being appended to the fact of his birth date. “Your birthday is the twenty fifth?” Ignis asked.
“Yeah,” Levi answered with a shrug, his voice going leaden.
“Tough break, man,” Gladio commented, with genuine sympathy.
“Thank fuck I'm Jewish or it'd really suck,” Levi replied, keeping his attention on the string of lights.
“You never said,” Ignis replied, with an edge of accusation.
“You never asked,” Levi pointed out. “I don't know when yours is, either.”
“February seventh,” Ignis answered, quietly.
“So,” Gladio said, his deep rumble cutting through the air, “I guess that makes this your first Christmas?”
Levi gave a shrug that was intended to show he didn't care, but only served to make him look slightly awkward. “First tree,” he said, “which is a stupid tradition you people have, and first Christmas dinner. Last week was my first time trying ham too.”
Ignis frowned at the reminder. “Shouldn't you be keeping kosher?” he asked.
Levi turned to give Ignis a sharp look. “Have you ever looked up the rules for keeping Kosher?” he challenged, his nose wrinkled as he spoke.
“No,” Ignis admitted, “but I know pork certainly isn't allowed.”
“It's a shitload of work,” Levi answered. “I keep kosher at home but I'm not doing it here. I'd rather be a bad Jew,” he concluded. “Just don't tell my mom that.”
Ignis frowned and looked down at the baubles, still safely in their packaging. The moment he removed them from it, he was going to get glitter all over his trousers. He felt unable to quite process this information about Levi and marry it into the picture of him that he maintained in his head. Levi had never come across as religious, and he'd never given any indication that he was doing anything out of the ordinary up until now. “I didn't know,” he said.
Levi caught his eyes, and Ignis caught the slight wince that crossed his face. “It's more habit,” he defended, turning away again to help Gladio, “I don't really believe it.”
“So it's like with Iggy being Catholic?” Gladio asked, looking up at Ignis and shooting him a brief smile. Ignis returned it, briefly, and then Gladio bent to unplug the lights and lift the cable, carefully wind it up again so they could start running it around the tree without trailing wires.
Levi looked at Gladio, and then stared at Ignis with whiplash speed. “You're Catholic?”
Ignis felt his chest tighten, and he ignored it in favour of standing up to go and retrieve a tea towel from across the kitchen. “My mother is,” he replied, crossing the kitchen without looking back. He could still feel Levi's eyes on him.
There was a pause, and then Levi said, “That explains a lot.” Ignis didn't bother to respond; he could guess what Levi was referring to. His uptightness, his unwillingness to come out, they all held their roots in his upbringing. “So were you confirmed?” Levi asked. There was a dangerous note of amusement in his voice.
Ignis picked up a towel and turned to glance at Levi, who wore a grin that bordered on dangerous. “Yes,” Ignis answered, warily.
Levi's grin grew wider. “What is it?” he asked.
Ignis felt his hair stand up on end at the potential impending embarrassment and gave Levi the flattest look he could muster. “No.” He knew what Levi was asking about, and he wasn't answering that question. Certainly not in present company.
“What?” Gladio asked, having no clue what subject the discussion had moved onto.
“No,” Ignis repeated, firmly.
“Catholics get names when they're confirmed,” Levi explained, with an airy helpfulness that bordered on mocking. “If Ignis won't tell us what his is, it must be bad.”
Ignis scowled and retreated back to the chair. He didn't look up, instead making a point of putting the towel across his lap and then opening the box of glittery baubles onto it.
“It can't be that bad,” Gladio said, charitably, and naively.
Ignis looked up. The only people in the room were himself, Bert, who was carefully staying out of the conversation and stirring his pan slowly, Levi, and Gladio. “Aloysius,” he answered, barely above a whisper, and waited for the inevitable snorting and giggling.
Snorting came from Levi. A glance at Gladio told Ignis that he was trying his best not to laugh, and struggling with it. “Yeah, that's pretty bad,” Gladio conceded.
“I think it's a nice name,” Bert said, softly.
“Ignis Aloysius Scientia?” Levi intoned, the sound rippling with poorly restrained laughter.
“I'm aware that it's terribly middle class,” Ignis told him, without looking up. “I'd appreciate if you didn't repeat it.”
“For what it's worth,” Gladio said, fixing Ignis with a fresh sympathetic grin that Ignis caught at the edge of his vision, “mine's actually Gladiolus.”
Ignis could hear Levi cackling, even though he'd disappeared around the back of the tree.
Once the tree was wrapped in lights, and some extra tinsel, it looked much more finished. The glittery baubles filled in the few gaps that were left, and the star on top had it finally looking like a Christmas tree instead of, as Levi had put it, a plastic bit of forest with some balls stuck to it.
The atmosphere at Sunday dinner was different that week with the Christmas tree blinking away in the corner. It was hard not to smile, even though sweeping bits of green plastic out from under the tree had to be added to the list of daily chores.
Ignis's good mood continued into his next history lecture, where Erwin Smith, true to his word, was wearing yet another Christmas jumper. This one had reindeers with light up noses prancing across his chest. If the professor's plan had been to ensure his lectures maintained their attendance figures even with the holiday approaching, it appeared to be a successful one.
Ignis filmed Smith doing a twirl on demand, the lights of his jumper bouncing off the whiteboard behind him, and sent it to Levi.
The reply came through a few minutes later reading, simply, “He looks much better with the jumper off.”
Ignis responded with another shot of Smith, mid-lecture, wearing the jumper, which was still terrible even when it wasn't lit up. He looked ridiculous, and the image showed that perfectly well without needing a caption.
Ignis wasn't sure if the nod Smith gave him as he left the lecture was in his imagination or not. He hadn't asked Levi if he'd told Smith that Ignis knew about them, or that, while it went against his better judgement, he wasn't about to report them both. A little digging had revealed that Levi was right, and that while such relationships weren't approved of, they also weren't illegal. It could jeopardise Smith's position, but how much of that, Ignis wondered, was down to homophobia instead of the actual moral issue of pursuing a relationship with a student?
A student that wasn't his, Ignis reminded himself, and getting himself tied up in the fact that he was Levi's friend, and Smith's student only made the concern self-centred.
He stopped by the campus shop to purchase some cards before he went back to the dorm. They had a shopping trip planned to pick up the necessary accoutrements for Christmas dinner later that day, and the turkey, which was not a kosher turkey despite Levi's revelations, was waiting for them at the butchers.
Ignis's last lecture was history on Friday morning. They'd decided to do their Christmas dinner that evening because a few of them were set to be leaving over the weekend, making the dinner one last hurrah together before they parted ways for Christmas. Ignis usually had a Research lecture following history, but there had been an email waiting for him that morning informing him that it was cancelled.
It meant that he could get back in time to start working on dinner. There were pigs in blankets to make, and the turkey to put in to roast, and Ignis wanted to take full advantage of the fact that their kitchen was fitted out with two ovens.
His final history lecture looked to be as full as every one before it, if not, Ignis thought, eyeing some unfamiliar faces, a little more full than usual. Word seemed to have spread. Students were allowed to sit in other lectures if they so wanted, and Ignis couldn't help but wonder how many people that were here now weren't Smith's students, but had come along for the show.
When Smith finally walked into the room he was wearing a bright red jumper with a large Christmas tree seemingly sewn to the front of it. Phones were produced around the hall, Ignis's included, and Professor Smith stopped at the dais and faced his class.
“I don't have this many students in this class,” he said, scanning the rows. “Who isn't a history student?”
At first there was no reaction, and then, very slowly, a couple of hands began to rise. They were followed by more, until a good ten percent of the students in attendance were admitting to not actually taking the subject.
Smith scanned the raised hands and then gave a nod. “Just to warn you,” he said, “there's a test, and if the collective score is less than eighty percent there'll be another essay. Anyone that isn't one of my students, feel free to leave now.”
Ignis felt his chest tighten at the mention of a test. They had been warned that they'd have to impress the Professor if they wanted to see his final jumper, and attendance was obviously only a part of that, but he hadn't expected a test. None of them had, from the hurried whispers and groans of dismay that went around the room.
A few students stood and moved to leave. Ignis suspected their friends had urged it. No one wanted an extra assignment because people that weren't in the class had dragged the test scores down for everyone.
A few more people departed as the exodus began to gain momentum, until there were only one or two that Ignis didn't recognise still lingering. “Last chance,” Smith called, as he moved to the front and began handing out a test sheet.
Some hurried whispers took place behind Ignis, and then another two students left. Professor Smith closed the door behind them, and then the test papers went around.
Ignis smiled when he saw it. It was ten questions of multiple choice, and so long as people had attended lectures so far, none of the questions would be difficult. When the papers had made their way around to everyone Smith made his way back to the front. “If you do well,” he said, “you'll get to see what this jumper does. If you don't there'll be an assignment for you to do over the holiday,” he said, adding, “as well as the essay you already have that I know you haven't started.”
Ignis bowed his head and read over the questions. He had started his essay already; he didn't see the point in getting behind with it. The sooner he attended to the workload, the sooner it would be done, and the better he could make it with revisions and further attributions. Of course, Ignis also recognised that his work ethic was viewed as being an overachieving swot by most students. He'd been called that for most of his life.
The test took fifteen minutes, and that was only because Smith read through every question and answer with them to ensure no one marked an incorrect answer due to missing a word somewhere. Ignis circled the correct answers and spent most of the rest of the time planning his afternoon. There were parsnips and potatoes to roast, and Ignis wanted to try braising the carrots instead of simply steaming or boiling them for a little more flavour. The sausages needed to be wrapped in bacon, and there was a lot of chopping and other preparation to do before they began cooking.
And, of course, there was the bird. It only just fit into the oven, and that was if they removed the spare rack. That alone would take four hours, so when Ignis got back from this lecture, he'd set to stuffing it and roasting it first. The rest could come afterwards. At least there'd be plenty of hands to help with preparation. Apache had been very enthusiastic about helping to make the sides, and Levi was as intrigued to try a Christmas dinner as could be expected even if he wouldn't admit to it out loud.
At the end of the lecture Professor Smith had them slide their test papers along to the person next to them and called out the correct answers. The person Ignis marked had scored an easy ninety percent, one tricky question asking when the Articles of Union were ratified having tripped them up, as the possible answers included the year they were presented to Queen Anne.
It seemed to trip at least half of them up, in the end, but their overall score was still above eighty percent, which allowed Ignis to take a nice lengthy video of Professor Smith, and his jumper singing “Rocking around the Christmas tree” as the Christmas tree sewn to the front danced and lit up.
He sent the video to Levi, and saved a copy for himself in case it became useful in future to remind Levi just who he'd taken up with.
Then he was free, and with a gleefully wished 'Merry Christmas' from Professor Smith, Ignis returned to the dorm to make a start on dinner preparations. He was pleased to get in to find Apache was already working with Bert on making the stuffing.
“Do you need any help?” Ignis asked, rolling up his sleeves.
“Nah,” Apache answered, without turning around, “you had the recipe there.”
Bert looked up from where he was squeezing the meat out of some raw cumberland sausages. “There's going to be a lot of food,” he said.
Ignis, who had been half concerned that there might not be enough to go around, replied, “There are a lot of us.”
He left Apache to mix the fried onion and apple with the sausagemeat while he tended to the turkey. It had been a challenge to fit it into the fridge, but some careful rearrangement had yielded enough space. Next time, Ignis had vowed, without thinking too much about his automatic assumption that there would be a next time, he'd get the measure of the thing with a tape measure, as well as its weight.
He prepared the roasting tin with foil and settled the bird into it. While Apache mixed the stuffing, he brushed the turkey with butter, and then sprinkled it with grated nutmeg, a little salt, and some bay leaves. “Would you like to stuff the bird?” he asked Bert, giving him a smile.
Bert shook his head. “I'd only mess it up,” he said.
“It's not difficult,” Ignis told him, wishing that Bert had just a little more self confidence.
“I'd still mess it up.”
Which was how Apache got a photograph of Ignis more than elbow deep inside a turkey, which she put on snapchat with the caption, “He's an expert at fisting birds”.
With the turkey stuffed, coated, covered, and in, Ignis gave his hands and arms a good wash before he moved on to chopping and preparing vegetables. None of them would need to see any heat for at least three and a half hours, but if everything was chopped and prepared, it would be a simple matter of turning an oven on, or firing up a hob.
They were joined by Annie as Ignis was slicing carrots, and Apache was wrapping streaky bacon around chipolatas ready for cooking later.
“It smells good in here,” Annie said.
“That's the stuffing,” Ignis answered. The aroma of cooked apple and sage still filled the air, and Ignis had to admit, it was making his own mouth water.
“You know,” Apache began, slotting another wrapped sausage into the roasting tin they were using for them, “we could probably cook some of these. Just to try them,” she added, giving Ignis a conspiratorial look, “make sure they're as good as they should be.”
Ignis wasn't sure they'd have enough to go around if they started doing that. His reluctance showed in his frown. “That might not be wise,” he began.
“Oh, come on,” Apache pleaded. “It's lunchtime, we're starving, and the place smells of food. Just a few?” she suggested. “As a taste test?”
The look in her mismatched eyes was all puppy dog, and Ignis felt like a harassed parent. “A few,” he conceded. “We still need to make sure there's enough for dinner.”
“Score!” Apache cried, and immediately waved Annie closer to recruit her into helping.
Ignis watched them for a moment, and then returned to the parsnips he was preparing with a shake of his head.
Between himself and Bert, they'd completed the vegetable preparation before the batch of pigs in blankets Apache and Annie were roasting had finished cooking. The scent of rich, roasting meat permeated the air, and Ignis had to admit, he could probably eat a few pigs in blankets himself now.
As if summoned by the scent of non-kosher food, Levi entered the kitchen. “What's that smell?” he asked.
“Pigs in blankets,” Apache answered, as she bent down to check on them once more. The timer on her phone stated that they still had a couple of minutes to go, not that it would really make much difference, from the smell of them.
“Sausages, wrapped in bacon,” Ignis clarified. “They need to be coated in honey and worcestershire sauce yet,” he added.
“Because Ignis is fucking extra about food,” muttered Apache.
“You said you wanted to taste test the recipe,” Ignis pointed out, “so let's do it properly.”
He took over when the pigs in blankets came out of the oven, loosening them from where they'd stuck to the bottom of the tin, and then drizzling the sauce and honey over the top. With the roasting tin on the hob to let them glaze, the kitchen took on a mouth-watering smell, and it didn't take long for them to be done to Ignis's satisfaction at last.
Apache dove in with a fork, picking her prize directly out of the tin and darting away again before she could get thwapped with a spatula.
Levi went in a little more cautiously. “They will be hot,” Ignis advised, unnecessarily. Even Bert was eyeing the sausages with a calculating, hungry look.
“No shit,” Levi answered, and then took his first, delicate bite.
Ignis waited, realising he felt nervous. The pigs in blankets would be a litmus test for the recipes he'd compiled for dinner, and if these went over like a lead balloon, the whole dinner was going to be a disaster. If you got pigs in blankets wrong, you were beyond help.
“Pig tastes delicious,” Levi declared, and then took a much larger bite. Ignis released the breath he'd been holding, and then settled the roasting tin on a cooling rack to allow Annie and Bert to help themselves directly from the tin. There was little point in insisting on side plates, after all; it would only create washing up.
By the time Nel, Gladio, and Yylfordt arrived they were making a second batch. Ignis had protested, on the grounds that there wouldn't be any left for dinner, and was silenced when Apache pointed out that chipolatas and streaky bacon weren't in short supply, and they had two hours to go and get some more.
He didn't have the heart to refuse in any case. Gladio looked like a kid in a toy shop, and even Yylfordt looked endearingly earnest in his pleas to get to try some. So Ignis oversaw as Apache made the second batch, guiding her through the last steps verbally so that, when she got home, she could make them herself for her family's Christmas dinner.
“I'm having you on speed dial Christmas day,” she told him, while vigorously rolling the sausages around in the tin over the hob to ensure they got an even coating.
“Oh my god,” Nel declared, melting into a chair when she took a bite of her first sausage. “Ignis, marry me.” Her request was punctuated by a positively lewd groan of pleasure from Gladio, and a quiet expletive from Yylfordt.
Ignis laughed, and rode the wave of pride and joy that crested at their reactions. He enjoyed cooking, certainly, but he enjoyed the reactions of others to his cooking more. It made him want to try new things, and more complicated recipes so that he could keep getting those reactions.
Bert and Yylfordt were tasked with going out and obtaining more sausages and bacon. Ignis gave Bert very precise instructions as to what type of sausages, and what type of bacon to purchase, so that he could be sure of consistency of ingredients. There was a risk that Yylfordt would ignore what he was told, but Bert didn't have the confidence to go off script of his own accord.
An hour before they were due to serve, Gladio, Nel, and Levi set the tables. There were napkins, and wine glasses, and Levi made sure that each knife and fork was properly polished. White wine and bottles of beer chilled in the fridge, with wet paper towels wrapped around the bottles to help chill them faster as they hadn't been able to store them in the fridge overnight with the turkey taking up space. A bottle of red was opened and allowed to breathe, ready. The plates they had were mismatched due to being made up of two different sets; one Ignis's own, and the other Nel's, but it didn't really matter. No one would see the plates for the food in any case, as Nel was quick to point out.
Once the turkey came out of the oven it became all hands on deck. The carrots were set to braising, along with the roast potatoes and parsnips that had both been sliced, par-cooked, and rolled in goose fat to finish. Ignis had also eschewed the typically steamed sprout in favour of sauteeing them in oil, garlic, salt, and pepper. Yylfordt, Gladio, Annie, and Bert were all on the side of those that claimed they didn't like sprouts, but Ignis was determined to win them over.
There were pickles and cranberry sauce set out on the table, each with their own spoon in the jar, and Nel mixed up a batch of gravy from the turkey juices.
When it came to serving, Ignis carved the bird, and Levi and Nel portioned everything out fairly onto the plates, letting people come to the counter to collect their own, and then take their seats. The table wasn't being enough for everything to be laid out there, and they expected the roast potatoes and pigs in blankets would be gone in short order if they let people serve themselves.
Gladio poured Ignis a glass of red wine as he made it to the table, seated next to Levi, and across from Gladio. Christmas music played, at a mercifully unobtrusive volume, from Yylfordt's speakers, and the tree's lights glittered by the window.
After the food was eaten, and while they waited for the christmas pudding to thoroughly cook – Ignis had refused to let them use the microwave, and had been unhappy enough about it being a shop-bought pudding – they pulled crackers and took photographs.
Ignis got a rather good one of Levi with a paper crown slipping down into his eyes, which was followed up with the same shot and the inclusion of Levi's middle finger in the immediate foreground.
Yylfordt, in an unusually generous mood no doubt fostered by having a stomach full of pigs in blankets and turkey, agreed to use his phone to take a group shot of all of them, party hats included, which he then sent on to all of them by bluetooth.
Ignis examined it as he returned to his seat while Nel and Apache cajoled Annie into doing Charlie's Angels poses with them. Levi stood at the front, trying to mask his smile and failing. Bert was pink-faced and not looking at the camera, too distracted by Annie standing just in front of him. Yylfordt had made his way back in a hurry before the timer went off to sling his arms around both Nel and Apache, and Gladio, in the seconds before the camera had flashed, had thrown his arm around Ignis and pulled him to a more central position in the picture.
It was, Ignis reflected, probably the most fun he'd ever had at a Christmas dinner.
After the pudding was served, and at least Ignis had got to make the custard himself, everyone grew quiet and sleepy. There was a dreadful amount of washing up to do, and the kitchen needed scrubbing from top to bottom.
“No,” Nel admonished, when Ignis made to start filling the sinks to wash up, “we'll do that.”
“Who's we?” Yylfordt asked.
“Me, you, and Gladio,” Nel replied, firmly. “We didn't do any cooking, so we do the washing up. It's only fair.”
“Sounds fair to me,” Levi replied.
Which was where Ignis left them when he retreated to his room. He was full, and sleepy, and content, and there was a book calling to him. He had Levi's birthday present still to wrap, too.
A couple of hours later the noise in the kitchen had died down. Ignis was just pondering the merits of a coffee when a knock came at his door.
Curiously, he opened it, to find Gladio on the other side.
“Hey.”
Ignis looked Gladio over and settled on, “Hello.” Gladio looked like he wanted something, but that was hardly advanced deduction when he'd knocked on Ignis's door.
An oblong parcel of slightly off-centre Christmas wrapping paper was offered towards Ignis's chest. “Merry Christmas,” Gladio said.
Ignis looked down at the parcel. He didn't move to take it. They'd agreed, as a dorm, that they wouldn't get each other presents on any sort of formal basis, but if the individuals within wanted to get presents for other individuals, that was fine. Which was why Ignis had got something for Levi. He hadn't got anything for anyone else. “I didn't get you anything,” he said, looking back up at Gladio.
Gladio shrugged one shoulder. “I know,” he said, urging the gift forward, “I don't expect you to,” he added, “but I saw it and figured you might like it. It's nothing big.”
Ignis found himself lost for words, and further protest, so he reached out and took the present carefully from Gladio's hand. It was slim, oblong, and deceptively weighty. “You really didn't have to,” he said, feeling tremendously guilty that he hadn't tried to get Gladio something so he could return the sentiment.
Gladio flashed him a slightly awkward grin. “Yeah I did,” he said. “Consider it a thanks for dinner tonight.”
Ignis's breath escaped in a shy half-laugh. “It wasn't all my own work,” he pointed out. “Everyone did their part.”
“Yeah, but we probably wouldn't have done it if you hadn't been here,” Gladio replied, “and I had a good time, so I wanted to say thank you.”
Ignis swallowed over his increasingly dry throat. “So did I.”
“Yeah?” Gladio asked, with a soft, genuine smile that lit up his eyes and made Ignis feel lost in them. He nodded in reply, unable to find words, and Gladio's smile broadened. “Good. I'll see you in the new year.”
“Happy new year,” Ignis responded, and watched as Gladio flashed him another smile and then turned to leave.
He closed the door, his heart pounding, and then carefully tucked the present into the bag he was taking home.
He opened his door as the kitchen door swung closed, leaving the corridor empty, and their voices, and whatever they'd been carrying, disappearing along with them. He could return to proofing his essay. Doubtless he'd find out what they were up to in due course regardless. On the other hand, a part of him welcomed the opportunity for a distraction. He'd read his own words over enough times now that they were losing all meaning.
Ignis glanced down at his unshod feet. He wasn't in the habit of walking around in his socks, not least because he didn't want to discover how sufficient a job the others made of the cleaning rota with his toes.
After ducking back into his room to slip his shoes on, he ventured into the kitchen where Apache and Nel were fighting against a box for ownership of a synthetic mass of green branches. “Ignis!” Nel called, immediately volunteering him to help, “you hold, we'll pull.”
Ignis didn't put up argument and gripped the exposed bit of Christmas tree in both hands while Nel joined Apache at the other end. There was a sense of resistance, as if the tree was vacuum sealed into the box, and then it came away with a scrape of plastic and cardboard. “Hang on, there's another bit,” Nel said, retrieving the part Ignis was holding and laying it on the floor.
“I've got it,” Ignis reassured her, and reached in, taking hold of the scratchy plastic branches buried deeper in the box and dragging them out a little more easily.
Apache tipped the box upside down, and some plastic legs clattered to the floor. “I hope we got enough decorations,” she said, standing the now empty box up against the wall.
Ignis glanced around until his eyes alighted on a plastic bag dropped into one of the seats. “Well, there's only one way to find out,” he said. “What did you get?”
“Baubles and tinsel,” Nel answered. Her nose wrinkled as she added, “We didn't have enough to get lights.”
Ignis worked to keep his face neutral. At home, his mother favoured pure white lights, and the tree was decorated in plastic holly, very old baubles that depicted various nativity scenes, and an odd mishmash of increasingly battered handmade decorations that had come along every year up until Ignis was twelve, courtesy of his activities in Sunday School. He wouldn't have admitted it out loud, but there was a part of him that longed for gaudy multi-coloured lights and Father Christmas effigies. “What colours?” he asked.
“I thought you weren't interested?” Apache asked, giving Ignis a slightly smug look.
“I didn't say that,” Ignis replied, a touch more defensively than he intended. “I said I don't see much point when none of us will be here to enjoy them.”
“We're here now,” Apache pointed out.
Ignis refrained from telling her that it wasn't Christmas yet, despite the tsunami of Christmas music that had washed over the country's airwaves. He didn't particularly want to explain to Apache and Nel that in his family not one scrap of tinsel went up until Christmas Eve, and then it was Christmas all the way until twelfth night when the decorations would come down again.
“We got red and gold,” Nel said, answering Ignis's original question. “It was easier to find.”
Ignis watched as Apache retrieved the plastic pieces she'd dumped onto the floor and started examining them. She slotted one piece onto another with a look of calculated curiosity, and then, satisfied, repeated the action with the remaining two pieces to make the tree's base. “Would you like some help to decorate?” he offered.
Apache grinned at him, seeming to enjoy Ignis's gentle back-pedalling on the subject of decorating. “You can help,” she said. “It's gonna take ages to fan all those branches out properly.”
Between three of them, 'ages' turned out to be a solid twenty minutes, with an extra five for the subtle rearranging of branch positions, and the untwisting of spears of leafy plastic that, against all reason, had become wrapped around the central branch during the process of being fanned out. For a synthetic tree that had cost all of twenty pounds and change, it wasn't half bad. Nel and Apache had opted for one seven feet tall, instead of a more modest six feet, or frankly disappointing five.
“We wanted it to be taller than most of us,” Nel explained.
Ignis found himself liking the effect. At a hair under six feet tall, he could eyeball the tree topper his mother preferred at home. Looking up to the top of this tree made him feel younger again. It was an effective shortcut to transporting him back to memories of when Christmas was fun.
Where to place the tree was the next issue they had to tackle after its construction. They hadn't been able to purchase lights, so a socket wasn't one of the concerns, but nor did they want to have the tree either in the way, or tucked away where it could be ignored. After some debate, Nel and Apache settled on moving furniture in the seating area so the tree could be planted next to the window.
Then the tree had to be dressed. The bag of red and gold decorations yielded a number of baubles, and multiple reams of tinsel. Working methodically, and with Ignis trying not to actively take over the decorating despite his every urge being to instruct, they wrapped the tree in tinsel first. What looked to be a lot of tinsel did not turn out to be a lot of tinsel when it was wrapped as evenly as possible around a seven foot tree.
They filled the space with baubles. The packs of baubles had their hanging strings separate from the actual decoration, so Ignis was relegated to a chair attaching strings as quickly as he could while Nel and Apache hung the baubles one by one.
Gladio and Yylfordt entered the kitchen as Ignis was working on the last pack of tiny golden baubles. “Nice!” Gladio called, dropping a bag onto the floor next to the dining table and admiring their handiwork.
Ignis looked up, watching Yylfordt give the tree an appraising look that made it clear the tree had not passed inspection. “Did you not get a fibre optic one?”
“They're at least eighty quid,” Apache told him with a scowl.
Yylfordt gave a shrug, as if the notion of spending upwards of eighty pounds on just a tree didn't faze him. “Where's the lights then?”
Ignis tied the last string to the last couple of baubles and handed them to Nel before admiring their handiwork. The tree was tastefully, if simply, decorated, but he had to admit that it did look a little bare.
“We couldn't get any,” Nel said.
In an unusual display of self preservation, Yylfordt refrained from speaking further, but Ignis caught a glimpse of his curled upper lip as he turned towards the fridge. “It does look a bit naked without lights,” Gladio said.
“Well if Mr Moneybags wants to contribute,” Apache spat, her eyes fixed on Yylfordt, “maybe we could get some.”
“Why the fuck should I buy your Christmas decorations?” Yylfordt asked, retrieving a can of coke from the fridge and cracking it open.
“Either pony up or shut your fucking hole about the tree we got,” Apache retorted.
“I suppose we could skip Sunday dinner this week to get some more decorations?” Ignis offered. He enjoyed their Sunday tradition, but with a full blown Christmas dinner to plan, it wouldn't be too much of a loss to skip it for one week.
Gladio shifted, and Ignis found his attention drawn irresistibly towards him as he folded his arms and shook his head. “Definitely not,” he said, catching Ignis's eye. “I'm looking forward to Sunday.” Ignis dragged his eyes away and tried not to let the thrill of delight he felt at those words show on his face. “You're doing a Christmas dinner too, right?”
“That's the plan,” Ignis confirmed, “but it'll require everyone to chip in equally.”
“Which we'll make sure they do,” Nel said. The words felt as if they were directed at Yylfordt.
“I don't mind paying towards stuff I can eat,” Yylfordt called back from across the room.
“Aren't you generous?” Apache commented.
“I can buy some lights,” Gladio said. “It needs some more tinsel, too,” he added, “and a star for the top.”
“You don't have to pay for everything,” Nel said, although to Ignis's ear she sounded grateful for the offer, and as if she wasn't about to fight very hard to turn Gladio down.
“It's no big. I can always leave some of my Christmas shopping until I get home,” Gladio answered. His warm and genuine smile coloured his words.
“At least someone gives a shit,” Apache sniped, back in Yylfordt's direction.
“I'll take a shower and then we'll go,” Gladio said.
Nel winced. “I have a couple of thousand words to do on my creative writing,” she said, “you'll have to go without me.”
“I'll go,” Ignis volunteered, before he had time to think about what was coming out of his mouth. “At least then if we get something awful you can blame it on me,” he offered, as his reasoning for why he was so eager to jump on a shopping trip with Gladio.
“Nah,” Gladio replied, his smile widening into a grin, “you've got great taste, Iggy. Give me half an hour?”
An hour later, Ignis had folded himself into the passenger seat of Gladio's '03 Volkswagen Polo. The inside smelled faintly of gym clothes, old pizza, and the dying ebbs of perfume from the tree shaped air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, but the car itself was clean. It was secondhand, Gladio had explained, and a present from his parents just before he'd come to university.
“That was generous of them,” Ignis commented, thinking of his own parents and their unwillingness to name him as a driver on their insurance due to the effect it had on the premiums.
“I think my mom just wanted to make sure I could get back home,” Gladio replied, with a bright smile. “My dad says I'll crash it before I finish.”
Ignis murmured unhappily. “Statistically speaking--” he began.
“Don't you start.”
Ignis allowed himself a laugh as Gladio's hand tapped him on the shoulder in admonishment without him ever taking his eyes off the road. “How long have you been driving?” he asked, dragging the subject gently off the road of car crashes, at least while they were in motion.
“Six months,” Gladio answered. “Cars, anyway,” he added, slowing down and indicating as they approached a junction. The lights of B&Q beckoned, because Gladio had been adamant that quality was more important than cost when it came to electrical fittings, and Ignis hadn't been able to disagree. “I've been driving tractors for years with my dad.”
Ignis let himself picture that, for a moment. Gladio, seated in a tractor cabin, slightly grimy with dirt and sweaty with work. He made himself stop thinking about it. “What is it you farm?” Ignis asked, finding himself reflexively watching for traffic as they turned. Gladio wasn't a bad driver, he decided; he could probably trust him.
“Cows,” Gladio answered, and then elaborated, “beef cattle. We've got a few horses, too. My mom runs the stables.”
The car pulled in to the car park, and Gladio found a parking spot without too much difficulty. The wind outside was picking up, and the air was cold enough that Ignis could see his breath as they walked towards the store's entrance. Gladio tucked his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie as they walked.
Inside was rather warmer, and the display of Christmas decorations was easily picked out. It was the aisle that sang, as coloured lights danced off the shelving. Ignis took a moment to admire the trees on display. The smallest ones were as large as the one Nel and Apache had bought, and they were dressed in lights and tastefully deliberate colour schemes that made them look as expensive as their price tags suggested.
Gladio gave an appreciative whistle. “Our tree never looks that classy,” he said.
“Nor does ours,” Ignis confessed, looking up at a nine foot tree with built in white lights, carefully decorated with snow and silver stars.
“They're too classy, if you ask me,” Gladio said, after a moment, nudging Ignis with his elbow as he began to move on. “Like something out of a home design catalogue, instead of something you've decorated yourself.”
Ignis smiled, faintly. “I suppose it's not the same without the homemade decorations.”
Gladio laughed, his deep rumble carrying down the aisle and lifting Ignis's spirits. “You've got those too?” he asked.
“Doesn't everyone?” Ignis thought back to the crude, handmade paper chains, and laminated paper circles with poorly coloured religious iconography that had bedecked his family's tree for over a decade.
“My mom keeps them in a special box,” Gladio said. “We always put the tree up together on the first weekend of December,” he added, approaching the display of blinking strings of lights with a definite hint of sad wistfulness. “I hope they waited for me this year.”
The corner of Ignis's mouth twitched upwards at the image. He could picture Gladio, with his younger sister and his parents, deciding where to put the really embarrassing, old homemade decorations this year. These day's Ignis's own efforts always found their way to the back of the tree, where nobody else would have to see them. “We don't decorate until Christmas Eve,” he answered.
Gladio turned and stared at him. “Seriously?”
Ignis felt as if he'd misstepped, somehow. Gladio looked a combination of surprised and distressed at the idea. “My mother's a rather traditional Catholic,” he explained, quietly. “We don't put any decorations up until Christmas Eve, barring the advent candle, and then we go to midnight mass.”
“Oh,” Gladio answered. Silence bloomed awkwardly between them. Gladio broke it by adding, “I didn't know you were religious.”
Ignis offered him a soothing smile. “I'm not,” he replied, “my mother is.” One rather fell out with Catholicism, he thought, when one tried to reconcile the idea of a loving God with one that would make him attracted to men, and then condemn him to Hell if he so much as thought about it. And that was before you started thinking too much about the inherent cruelty of teaching teenage boys that everything they were going through was somehow wrong. “To be honest, I'm enjoying the idea of trying out a traditionally non-traditional Christmas this year.”
He could feel Gladio's eyes on him, and he fought to ignore it as he examined the lights. There was helpful information about how many lights would adequately cover how many feet of tree, which advised them to get at least two hundred and forty bulbs. “White, or multi-coloured?” he asked.
“Multi-coloured,” Gladio answered, without hesitation. “White's boring.”
Ignis smiled, glancing sidelong at Gladio to find his attention had turned to the display of flashing, rhythmically blinking bulbs. “Quite.”
“These ones?” Gladio asked, nodding towards one of the strings, with his hands still resolutely in his pocket.
Ignis looked down to the listed prices. “Gladio, they cost more than the tree.”
Gladio gave an unconcerned shrug. “It's worth it. At least they won't burn the kitchen down.”
Ignis hesitated. He didn't want to demand Gladio spend that sort of money on decorations when the dorm between them had raised only slightly more than that for the whole affair. “You can't spend that much,” he insisted, looking back at some of the other lights. “What about these?”
Gladio, to his credit, looked at Ignis's suggestion, which was nearly half the price of the ones he'd chosen. “They only do one thing,” he pointed out.
“They're lights,” Ignis replied, “what more do you want them to do?”
“I like settings,” Gladio replied, maintaining a completely straight face. “They can blink,” he said, “they can be on all the time,” he added, and lost his serious facade as he added, “they can blink differently.” Ignis laughed, unable to help himself in the face of Gladio's steadfast resolve. Gladio broke into a bright smile as he picked up a box from the pile of his first choice, complete with their options of different blinking settings. “Unless you're going to stop me?”
“Well I'm not going to fight you for them,” Ignis conceded. The grin that Gladio bore in response as he turned away to head further down the aisle reminded Ignis strongly of a cheeky schoolchild. Had it not been for his height and hirsuteness, Gladio wouldn't have looked out of place wearing a cap, blazer, and shorts, with a skew-whiff tie. It was, Ignis thought, rather charming.
“Now,” Gladio began, still walking up to where the tree toppers were displayed. A number of them lit up, and seemed rather too large and heavy to sit comfortably on top of any tree below nine feet tall. “Star,” he asked, “or angel?”
“Which do you prefer?” Ignis asked, reflexively. They had an angel at home, that represented Gabriel, and that Ignis's mother would settle atop the tree after they'd attended mass. Ignis always felt as if it was watching him. The decoration was now so old that the ivory satin and lace of its gown was yellowing.
Gladio shook his head. “Doesn't matter what I want,” he said. “You came, you have to pick something.”
Ignis chose a star, although they ended up moving further down to where the less ostentatious tree toppers lived if only because of the fact that most of the ones in easy view would likely topple the tree. They picked up another pack of baubles on the way, red ones that were covered in glitter, and which Ignis could foresee them spending the rest of the year sweeping up.
He managed to talk Gladio out of buying canned snow on the grounds that they'd have to undress the tree in order to apply it, and in any case, it warned to only use it in a well ventilated room and they wouldn't want to set off somebody's asthma. When they reached the tinsel, Gladio draped a long stream of mixed red and gold over Ignis's shoulders like a particularly tacky scarf and circled it loosely around his throat.
Ignis tried to glare, but found he didn't have it in him, especially when Gladio stood there and responded to Ignis's feigned annoyance by draping another ream of tinsel around Ignis's neck.
A third string went around Gladio's shoulders, and then they made their way to the till to pay for their purchases. The price made Ignis cringe, but Gladio handed over a credit card without so much as blinking. The defiant grin he flashed at Ignis a second later stopped Ignis from protesting about the cost again. Gladio looked like he knew what Ignis was thinking of saying, and Ignis wasn't going to win the second turn at the argument, either.
When they got back to the dorm the kitchen's population had rotated. Levi was critically examining the tree, and, if Ignis was any judge, overseeing Bert's efforts at cooking for himself without being so crass as to tell Bert that's what he was doing.
“What do you think?” Gladio asked, pausing by the dining table to lay their recent purchases out.
“There's a plastic bit of forest with some balls hanging off it in our kitchen,” Levi replied.
“It's not finished yet,” Ignis answered, picking up on the obvious disapproval and even less subtle note of derision from Levi.
“It's shedding,” Levi added, pointing to the spikes of green plastic that had fallen to the floor sometime between them putting the tree up and decorating it.
Ignis refrained from commenting about that. It would vaccuum up easily enough, but there was little point in doing it before they'd got all the decorations on, because more would only come off as the tree was disturbed. “It's new,” he said, “it's just loose plastic. We'll clean it up.”
Levi gave an unhappy grunt and sat himself down in one of the chairs, giving a glance over towards Bert at the stove. “Is that more balls?” he asked.
“They're called baubles,” Ignis answered, “and we got some lights, and more tinsel, too.”
“And a star for the top,” Gladio provided, fishing the lights out of their box first.
Ignis looked at the tree critically. The routine for dressing the tree at home was always the same, lights first, followed by tinsel, followed by the baubles. Here, everything had been a bit haphazard. “Do you want to put the lights on first?” he asked, glancing at Gladio.
“Sure,” Gladio answered, flashing Ignis a bright smile that made his spine tingle and his mouth dry out.
Ignis made himself turn away, and distracted himself by taking the new pack of baubles to Levi. “You can help?” he offered, holding the pack out. “The strings need tying on, and then they can be hung anywhere there's a gap.”
Levi glanced at the box of baubles Ignis was offering out to him. “I'm not touching those,” he replied, “I'll get covered in fucking glitter.”
Ignis frowned, feeling his good mood frittering away. He hadn't expected to enjoy putting up a Christmas tree with the others, but he had been. He just wished Levi could join in.
It must have shown on his face, because before he could say anything Levi was sighing and rolling his eyes. “I'll help with the lights,” he said. “You can get covered in glitter.”
Ignis's unhappiness retreated again, and he smiled. “Fine,” he answered. “Make sure they're all working, first.”
A look of confusion crossed Levi's face. “Why wouldn't they be working?” he asked.
“Sometimes you get duff bulbs,” Gladio answered, plugging the string of lights in and already going through them. “We can take them back if they're not right.”
“Have you never decorated a tree before?” Ignis asked. The lights they had at home were old ones, that needed a bulb or two changing every year without fail in order to get the string to work at all. He found it hard to believe that Levi had never, in all his life, experienced a bulb failure like that.
Levi threw Ignis a look that suggested he'd just asked a very silly question. “Why the fuck would I have decorated a tree before? I'm Jewish,” he answered, “and my birthday's Christmas day. That's two reasons not to care about Christmas.”
Ignis stared. Behind Levi he could see Gladio was staring too. Ignis wasn't sure which part to address first. The fact that Levi was Jewish was enough of a revelation on its own without being appended to the fact of his birth date. “Your birthday is the twenty fifth?” Ignis asked.
“Yeah,” Levi answered with a shrug, his voice going leaden.
“Tough break, man,” Gladio commented, with genuine sympathy.
“Thank fuck I'm Jewish or it'd really suck,” Levi replied, keeping his attention on the string of lights.
“You never said,” Ignis replied, with an edge of accusation.
“You never asked,” Levi pointed out. “I don't know when yours is, either.”
“February seventh,” Ignis answered, quietly.
“So,” Gladio said, his deep rumble cutting through the air, “I guess that makes this your first Christmas?”
Levi gave a shrug that was intended to show he didn't care, but only served to make him look slightly awkward. “First tree,” he said, “which is a stupid tradition you people have, and first Christmas dinner. Last week was my first time trying ham too.”
Ignis frowned at the reminder. “Shouldn't you be keeping kosher?” he asked.
Levi turned to give Ignis a sharp look. “Have you ever looked up the rules for keeping Kosher?” he challenged, his nose wrinkled as he spoke.
“No,” Ignis admitted, “but I know pork certainly isn't allowed.”
“It's a shitload of work,” Levi answered. “I keep kosher at home but I'm not doing it here. I'd rather be a bad Jew,” he concluded. “Just don't tell my mom that.”
Ignis frowned and looked down at the baubles, still safely in their packaging. The moment he removed them from it, he was going to get glitter all over his trousers. He felt unable to quite process this information about Levi and marry it into the picture of him that he maintained in his head. Levi had never come across as religious, and he'd never given any indication that he was doing anything out of the ordinary up until now. “I didn't know,” he said.
Levi caught his eyes, and Ignis caught the slight wince that crossed his face. “It's more habit,” he defended, turning away again to help Gladio, “I don't really believe it.”
“So it's like with Iggy being Catholic?” Gladio asked, looking up at Ignis and shooting him a brief smile. Ignis returned it, briefly, and then Gladio bent to unplug the lights and lift the cable, carefully wind it up again so they could start running it around the tree without trailing wires.
Levi looked at Gladio, and then stared at Ignis with whiplash speed. “You're Catholic?”
Ignis felt his chest tighten, and he ignored it in favour of standing up to go and retrieve a tea towel from across the kitchen. “My mother is,” he replied, crossing the kitchen without looking back. He could still feel Levi's eyes on him.
There was a pause, and then Levi said, “That explains a lot.” Ignis didn't bother to respond; he could guess what Levi was referring to. His uptightness, his unwillingness to come out, they all held their roots in his upbringing. “So were you confirmed?” Levi asked. There was a dangerous note of amusement in his voice.
Ignis picked up a towel and turned to glance at Levi, who wore a grin that bordered on dangerous. “Yes,” Ignis answered, warily.
Levi's grin grew wider. “What is it?” he asked.
Ignis felt his hair stand up on end at the potential impending embarrassment and gave Levi the flattest look he could muster. “No.” He knew what Levi was asking about, and he wasn't answering that question. Certainly not in present company.
“What?” Gladio asked, having no clue what subject the discussion had moved onto.
“No,” Ignis repeated, firmly.
“Catholics get names when they're confirmed,” Levi explained, with an airy helpfulness that bordered on mocking. “If Ignis won't tell us what his is, it must be bad.”
Ignis scowled and retreated back to the chair. He didn't look up, instead making a point of putting the towel across his lap and then opening the box of glittery baubles onto it.
“It can't be that bad,” Gladio said, charitably, and naively.
Ignis looked up. The only people in the room were himself, Bert, who was carefully staying out of the conversation and stirring his pan slowly, Levi, and Gladio. “Aloysius,” he answered, barely above a whisper, and waited for the inevitable snorting and giggling.
Snorting came from Levi. A glance at Gladio told Ignis that he was trying his best not to laugh, and struggling with it. “Yeah, that's pretty bad,” Gladio conceded.
“I think it's a nice name,” Bert said, softly.
“Ignis Aloysius Scientia?” Levi intoned, the sound rippling with poorly restrained laughter.
“I'm aware that it's terribly middle class,” Ignis told him, without looking up. “I'd appreciate if you didn't repeat it.”
“For what it's worth,” Gladio said, fixing Ignis with a fresh sympathetic grin that Ignis caught at the edge of his vision, “mine's actually Gladiolus.”
Ignis could hear Levi cackling, even though he'd disappeared around the back of the tree.
Once the tree was wrapped in lights, and some extra tinsel, it looked much more finished. The glittery baubles filled in the few gaps that were left, and the star on top had it finally looking like a Christmas tree instead of, as Levi had put it, a plastic bit of forest with some balls stuck to it.
The atmosphere at Sunday dinner was different that week with the Christmas tree blinking away in the corner. It was hard not to smile, even though sweeping bits of green plastic out from under the tree had to be added to the list of daily chores.
Ignis's good mood continued into his next history lecture, where Erwin Smith, true to his word, was wearing yet another Christmas jumper. This one had reindeers with light up noses prancing across his chest. If the professor's plan had been to ensure his lectures maintained their attendance figures even with the holiday approaching, it appeared to be a successful one.
Ignis filmed Smith doing a twirl on demand, the lights of his jumper bouncing off the whiteboard behind him, and sent it to Levi.
The reply came through a few minutes later reading, simply, “He looks much better with the jumper off.”
Ignis responded with another shot of Smith, mid-lecture, wearing the jumper, which was still terrible even when it wasn't lit up. He looked ridiculous, and the image showed that perfectly well without needing a caption.
Ignis wasn't sure if the nod Smith gave him as he left the lecture was in his imagination or not. He hadn't asked Levi if he'd told Smith that Ignis knew about them, or that, while it went against his better judgement, he wasn't about to report them both. A little digging had revealed that Levi was right, and that while such relationships weren't approved of, they also weren't illegal. It could jeopardise Smith's position, but how much of that, Ignis wondered, was down to homophobia instead of the actual moral issue of pursuing a relationship with a student?
A student that wasn't his, Ignis reminded himself, and getting himself tied up in the fact that he was Levi's friend, and Smith's student only made the concern self-centred.
He stopped by the campus shop to purchase some cards before he went back to the dorm. They had a shopping trip planned to pick up the necessary accoutrements for Christmas dinner later that day, and the turkey, which was not a kosher turkey despite Levi's revelations, was waiting for them at the butchers.
Ignis's last lecture was history on Friday morning. They'd decided to do their Christmas dinner that evening because a few of them were set to be leaving over the weekend, making the dinner one last hurrah together before they parted ways for Christmas. Ignis usually had a Research lecture following history, but there had been an email waiting for him that morning informing him that it was cancelled.
It meant that he could get back in time to start working on dinner. There were pigs in blankets to make, and the turkey to put in to roast, and Ignis wanted to take full advantage of the fact that their kitchen was fitted out with two ovens.
His final history lecture looked to be as full as every one before it, if not, Ignis thought, eyeing some unfamiliar faces, a little more full than usual. Word seemed to have spread. Students were allowed to sit in other lectures if they so wanted, and Ignis couldn't help but wonder how many people that were here now weren't Smith's students, but had come along for the show.
When Smith finally walked into the room he was wearing a bright red jumper with a large Christmas tree seemingly sewn to the front of it. Phones were produced around the hall, Ignis's included, and Professor Smith stopped at the dais and faced his class.
“I don't have this many students in this class,” he said, scanning the rows. “Who isn't a history student?”
At first there was no reaction, and then, very slowly, a couple of hands began to rise. They were followed by more, until a good ten percent of the students in attendance were admitting to not actually taking the subject.
Smith scanned the raised hands and then gave a nod. “Just to warn you,” he said, “there's a test, and if the collective score is less than eighty percent there'll be another essay. Anyone that isn't one of my students, feel free to leave now.”
Ignis felt his chest tighten at the mention of a test. They had been warned that they'd have to impress the Professor if they wanted to see his final jumper, and attendance was obviously only a part of that, but he hadn't expected a test. None of them had, from the hurried whispers and groans of dismay that went around the room.
A few students stood and moved to leave. Ignis suspected their friends had urged it. No one wanted an extra assignment because people that weren't in the class had dragged the test scores down for everyone.
A few more people departed as the exodus began to gain momentum, until there were only one or two that Ignis didn't recognise still lingering. “Last chance,” Smith called, as he moved to the front and began handing out a test sheet.
Some hurried whispers took place behind Ignis, and then another two students left. Professor Smith closed the door behind them, and then the test papers went around.
Ignis smiled when he saw it. It was ten questions of multiple choice, and so long as people had attended lectures so far, none of the questions would be difficult. When the papers had made their way around to everyone Smith made his way back to the front. “If you do well,” he said, “you'll get to see what this jumper does. If you don't there'll be an assignment for you to do over the holiday,” he said, adding, “as well as the essay you already have that I know you haven't started.”
Ignis bowed his head and read over the questions. He had started his essay already; he didn't see the point in getting behind with it. The sooner he attended to the workload, the sooner it would be done, and the better he could make it with revisions and further attributions. Of course, Ignis also recognised that his work ethic was viewed as being an overachieving swot by most students. He'd been called that for most of his life.
The test took fifteen minutes, and that was only because Smith read through every question and answer with them to ensure no one marked an incorrect answer due to missing a word somewhere. Ignis circled the correct answers and spent most of the rest of the time planning his afternoon. There were parsnips and potatoes to roast, and Ignis wanted to try braising the carrots instead of simply steaming or boiling them for a little more flavour. The sausages needed to be wrapped in bacon, and there was a lot of chopping and other preparation to do before they began cooking.
And, of course, there was the bird. It only just fit into the oven, and that was if they removed the spare rack. That alone would take four hours, so when Ignis got back from this lecture, he'd set to stuffing it and roasting it first. The rest could come afterwards. At least there'd be plenty of hands to help with preparation. Apache had been very enthusiastic about helping to make the sides, and Levi was as intrigued to try a Christmas dinner as could be expected even if he wouldn't admit to it out loud.
At the end of the lecture Professor Smith had them slide their test papers along to the person next to them and called out the correct answers. The person Ignis marked had scored an easy ninety percent, one tricky question asking when the Articles of Union were ratified having tripped them up, as the possible answers included the year they were presented to Queen Anne.
It seemed to trip at least half of them up, in the end, but their overall score was still above eighty percent, which allowed Ignis to take a nice lengthy video of Professor Smith, and his jumper singing “Rocking around the Christmas tree” as the Christmas tree sewn to the front danced and lit up.
He sent the video to Levi, and saved a copy for himself in case it became useful in future to remind Levi just who he'd taken up with.
Then he was free, and with a gleefully wished 'Merry Christmas' from Professor Smith, Ignis returned to the dorm to make a start on dinner preparations. He was pleased to get in to find Apache was already working with Bert on making the stuffing.
“Do you need any help?” Ignis asked, rolling up his sleeves.
“Nah,” Apache answered, without turning around, “you had the recipe there.”
Bert looked up from where he was squeezing the meat out of some raw cumberland sausages. “There's going to be a lot of food,” he said.
Ignis, who had been half concerned that there might not be enough to go around, replied, “There are a lot of us.”
He left Apache to mix the fried onion and apple with the sausagemeat while he tended to the turkey. It had been a challenge to fit it into the fridge, but some careful rearrangement had yielded enough space. Next time, Ignis had vowed, without thinking too much about his automatic assumption that there would be a next time, he'd get the measure of the thing with a tape measure, as well as its weight.
He prepared the roasting tin with foil and settled the bird into it. While Apache mixed the stuffing, he brushed the turkey with butter, and then sprinkled it with grated nutmeg, a little salt, and some bay leaves. “Would you like to stuff the bird?” he asked Bert, giving him a smile.
Bert shook his head. “I'd only mess it up,” he said.
“It's not difficult,” Ignis told him, wishing that Bert had just a little more self confidence.
“I'd still mess it up.”
Which was how Apache got a photograph of Ignis more than elbow deep inside a turkey, which she put on snapchat with the caption, “He's an expert at fisting birds”.
With the turkey stuffed, coated, covered, and in, Ignis gave his hands and arms a good wash before he moved on to chopping and preparing vegetables. None of them would need to see any heat for at least three and a half hours, but if everything was chopped and prepared, it would be a simple matter of turning an oven on, or firing up a hob.
They were joined by Annie as Ignis was slicing carrots, and Apache was wrapping streaky bacon around chipolatas ready for cooking later.
“It smells good in here,” Annie said.
“That's the stuffing,” Ignis answered. The aroma of cooked apple and sage still filled the air, and Ignis had to admit, it was making his own mouth water.
“You know,” Apache began, slotting another wrapped sausage into the roasting tin they were using for them, “we could probably cook some of these. Just to try them,” she added, giving Ignis a conspiratorial look, “make sure they're as good as they should be.”
Ignis wasn't sure they'd have enough to go around if they started doing that. His reluctance showed in his frown. “That might not be wise,” he began.
“Oh, come on,” Apache pleaded. “It's lunchtime, we're starving, and the place smells of food. Just a few?” she suggested. “As a taste test?”
The look in her mismatched eyes was all puppy dog, and Ignis felt like a harassed parent. “A few,” he conceded. “We still need to make sure there's enough for dinner.”
“Score!” Apache cried, and immediately waved Annie closer to recruit her into helping.
Ignis watched them for a moment, and then returned to the parsnips he was preparing with a shake of his head.
Between himself and Bert, they'd completed the vegetable preparation before the batch of pigs in blankets Apache and Annie were roasting had finished cooking. The scent of rich, roasting meat permeated the air, and Ignis had to admit, he could probably eat a few pigs in blankets himself now.
As if summoned by the scent of non-kosher food, Levi entered the kitchen. “What's that smell?” he asked.
“Pigs in blankets,” Apache answered, as she bent down to check on them once more. The timer on her phone stated that they still had a couple of minutes to go, not that it would really make much difference, from the smell of them.
“Sausages, wrapped in bacon,” Ignis clarified. “They need to be coated in honey and worcestershire sauce yet,” he added.
“Because Ignis is fucking extra about food,” muttered Apache.
“You said you wanted to taste test the recipe,” Ignis pointed out, “so let's do it properly.”
He took over when the pigs in blankets came out of the oven, loosening them from where they'd stuck to the bottom of the tin, and then drizzling the sauce and honey over the top. With the roasting tin on the hob to let them glaze, the kitchen took on a mouth-watering smell, and it didn't take long for them to be done to Ignis's satisfaction at last.
Apache dove in with a fork, picking her prize directly out of the tin and darting away again before she could get thwapped with a spatula.
Levi went in a little more cautiously. “They will be hot,” Ignis advised, unnecessarily. Even Bert was eyeing the sausages with a calculating, hungry look.
“No shit,” Levi answered, and then took his first, delicate bite.
Ignis waited, realising he felt nervous. The pigs in blankets would be a litmus test for the recipes he'd compiled for dinner, and if these went over like a lead balloon, the whole dinner was going to be a disaster. If you got pigs in blankets wrong, you were beyond help.
“Pig tastes delicious,” Levi declared, and then took a much larger bite. Ignis released the breath he'd been holding, and then settled the roasting tin on a cooling rack to allow Annie and Bert to help themselves directly from the tin. There was little point in insisting on side plates, after all; it would only create washing up.
By the time Nel, Gladio, and Yylfordt arrived they were making a second batch. Ignis had protested, on the grounds that there wouldn't be any left for dinner, and was silenced when Apache pointed out that chipolatas and streaky bacon weren't in short supply, and they had two hours to go and get some more.
He didn't have the heart to refuse in any case. Gladio looked like a kid in a toy shop, and even Yylfordt looked endearingly earnest in his pleas to get to try some. So Ignis oversaw as Apache made the second batch, guiding her through the last steps verbally so that, when she got home, she could make them herself for her family's Christmas dinner.
“I'm having you on speed dial Christmas day,” she told him, while vigorously rolling the sausages around in the tin over the hob to ensure they got an even coating.
“Oh my god,” Nel declared, melting into a chair when she took a bite of her first sausage. “Ignis, marry me.” Her request was punctuated by a positively lewd groan of pleasure from Gladio, and a quiet expletive from Yylfordt.
Ignis laughed, and rode the wave of pride and joy that crested at their reactions. He enjoyed cooking, certainly, but he enjoyed the reactions of others to his cooking more. It made him want to try new things, and more complicated recipes so that he could keep getting those reactions.
Bert and Yylfordt were tasked with going out and obtaining more sausages and bacon. Ignis gave Bert very precise instructions as to what type of sausages, and what type of bacon to purchase, so that he could be sure of consistency of ingredients. There was a risk that Yylfordt would ignore what he was told, but Bert didn't have the confidence to go off script of his own accord.
An hour before they were due to serve, Gladio, Nel, and Levi set the tables. There were napkins, and wine glasses, and Levi made sure that each knife and fork was properly polished. White wine and bottles of beer chilled in the fridge, with wet paper towels wrapped around the bottles to help chill them faster as they hadn't been able to store them in the fridge overnight with the turkey taking up space. A bottle of red was opened and allowed to breathe, ready. The plates they had were mismatched due to being made up of two different sets; one Ignis's own, and the other Nel's, but it didn't really matter. No one would see the plates for the food in any case, as Nel was quick to point out.
Once the turkey came out of the oven it became all hands on deck. The carrots were set to braising, along with the roast potatoes and parsnips that had both been sliced, par-cooked, and rolled in goose fat to finish. Ignis had also eschewed the typically steamed sprout in favour of sauteeing them in oil, garlic, salt, and pepper. Yylfordt, Gladio, Annie, and Bert were all on the side of those that claimed they didn't like sprouts, but Ignis was determined to win them over.
There were pickles and cranberry sauce set out on the table, each with their own spoon in the jar, and Nel mixed up a batch of gravy from the turkey juices.
When it came to serving, Ignis carved the bird, and Levi and Nel portioned everything out fairly onto the plates, letting people come to the counter to collect their own, and then take their seats. The table wasn't being enough for everything to be laid out there, and they expected the roast potatoes and pigs in blankets would be gone in short order if they let people serve themselves.
Gladio poured Ignis a glass of red wine as he made it to the table, seated next to Levi, and across from Gladio. Christmas music played, at a mercifully unobtrusive volume, from Yylfordt's speakers, and the tree's lights glittered by the window.
After the food was eaten, and while they waited for the christmas pudding to thoroughly cook – Ignis had refused to let them use the microwave, and had been unhappy enough about it being a shop-bought pudding – they pulled crackers and took photographs.
Ignis got a rather good one of Levi with a paper crown slipping down into his eyes, which was followed up with the same shot and the inclusion of Levi's middle finger in the immediate foreground.
Yylfordt, in an unusually generous mood no doubt fostered by having a stomach full of pigs in blankets and turkey, agreed to use his phone to take a group shot of all of them, party hats included, which he then sent on to all of them by bluetooth.
Ignis examined it as he returned to his seat while Nel and Apache cajoled Annie into doing Charlie's Angels poses with them. Levi stood at the front, trying to mask his smile and failing. Bert was pink-faced and not looking at the camera, too distracted by Annie standing just in front of him. Yylfordt had made his way back in a hurry before the timer went off to sling his arms around both Nel and Apache, and Gladio, in the seconds before the camera had flashed, had thrown his arm around Ignis and pulled him to a more central position in the picture.
It was, Ignis reflected, probably the most fun he'd ever had at a Christmas dinner.
After the pudding was served, and at least Ignis had got to make the custard himself, everyone grew quiet and sleepy. There was a dreadful amount of washing up to do, and the kitchen needed scrubbing from top to bottom.
“No,” Nel admonished, when Ignis made to start filling the sinks to wash up, “we'll do that.”
“Who's we?” Yylfordt asked.
“Me, you, and Gladio,” Nel replied, firmly. “We didn't do any cooking, so we do the washing up. It's only fair.”
“Sounds fair to me,” Levi replied.
Which was where Ignis left them when he retreated to his room. He was full, and sleepy, and content, and there was a book calling to him. He had Levi's birthday present still to wrap, too.
A couple of hours later the noise in the kitchen had died down. Ignis was just pondering the merits of a coffee when a knock came at his door.
Curiously, he opened it, to find Gladio on the other side.
“Hey.”
Ignis looked Gladio over and settled on, “Hello.” Gladio looked like he wanted something, but that was hardly advanced deduction when he'd knocked on Ignis's door.
An oblong parcel of slightly off-centre Christmas wrapping paper was offered towards Ignis's chest. “Merry Christmas,” Gladio said.
Ignis looked down at the parcel. He didn't move to take it. They'd agreed, as a dorm, that they wouldn't get each other presents on any sort of formal basis, but if the individuals within wanted to get presents for other individuals, that was fine. Which was why Ignis had got something for Levi. He hadn't got anything for anyone else. “I didn't get you anything,” he said, looking back up at Gladio.
Gladio shrugged one shoulder. “I know,” he said, urging the gift forward, “I don't expect you to,” he added, “but I saw it and figured you might like it. It's nothing big.”
Ignis found himself lost for words, and further protest, so he reached out and took the present carefully from Gladio's hand. It was slim, oblong, and deceptively weighty. “You really didn't have to,” he said, feeling tremendously guilty that he hadn't tried to get Gladio something so he could return the sentiment.
Gladio flashed him a slightly awkward grin. “Yeah I did,” he said. “Consider it a thanks for dinner tonight.”
Ignis's breath escaped in a shy half-laugh. “It wasn't all my own work,” he pointed out. “Everyone did their part.”
“Yeah, but we probably wouldn't have done it if you hadn't been here,” Gladio replied, “and I had a good time, so I wanted to say thank you.”
Ignis swallowed over his increasingly dry throat. “So did I.”
“Yeah?” Gladio asked, with a soft, genuine smile that lit up his eyes and made Ignis feel lost in them. He nodded in reply, unable to find words, and Gladio's smile broadened. “Good. I'll see you in the new year.”
“Happy new year,” Ignis responded, and watched as Gladio flashed him another smile and then turned to leave.
He closed the door, his heart pounding, and then carefully tucked the present into the bag he was taking home.