2019-12-24 - All I Want for Christmas is You

It's early Christmas Morning and Lilith is passed smooth out in Byron's bed, probably sleeping harder than she has in a good while. It's also probably later than she means or expects to sleep given it's the anticipated holiday morning she was looking forward to celebrating in true Christmas fashion. Though they both agreed the cat should not be brought to the penthouse apartment just two days before, they brought it anyway when the man picked her up using the 4WD SUV of hers that she lent him in lieu of the Wraith so he could get around in snow. She had to work open to close at the Pawn Shop the day before Christmas anyway, given the nature of loans, gifts, and last minute arranging for customers, then had some last minute wrapping to do once she was back at Byron's in the evening to stay the night.

It had been a busy day for both of them and she's sleeping like she feels all of the holiday stress and bustle finally caught up. The cat Smog (Smaug), he's in the guest bathroom at the end of the hallway with the door closed for general tree and gift preservation.

While tangled in bed covers, dark hair a mess on the pillows from squirms and turns through the night, she's dressed in a lace-trimmed slip nightie that's incredibly bright red for the season and silken, clinging softness. It has a matching diaphanous robe hanging from one of the hooks on the bathroom door for her to get into first thing Christmas morning because yes, she planned her Christmas night and morning sleep outfit just like any holiday occasion outfit.

But for as much as she meant to get up and arrange something on the sly for Byron, he's a much earlier riser. And she's still asleep.

It's been quite the week, but the year was only now beginning to ramp up to reach its holiday crescendo before the New Year arrived. The stresses of the season did not leave Byron unscathed. He had a lot of work to do before the actual holiday hit. There was a casino up for grabs, so he spent quite a bit of time moving money around, gaining the interest of investors who might want to ride his tailcoat on this investment with promise to offer his own support to their various projects if they assist.

Even with Lilith and Smog over to help celebrate Christmas Eve with, there was a good portion of time that he spent on the phone. Luckily for him and his time zone, that one day of the year to be Merry hit the East Coast before reaching Gray Harbor, so aside from foreign clients, they had much of the evening to themselves.

If this were any other day, Byron would have woken up for a bit of coffee and his morning work out routine, then hit the road with an exhilarating run in the wintry cold.

The eye-opening aroma of freshly brewed coffee wafts through the room. The big bushy tree all lit is a spectacle to be seen this cold morning. Then... there's the gentle sounds of keys bring pressed on the piano in the main room. It almost sounds like a warm up, ensuring that piano itself were well tuned one note at a time.

Lilith was sleeping very deeply, but she's not a heavy sleeper so much when it comes to outside smells and sounds. Because of that, when she's gradually rousing to mental consciousness with her olfactory senses spurred by the delicious and waking aroma of coffee... the piano noise kind of confuses her. After opening her eyes, she blinks a few times and looks drowsily around Byron's bedroom to make sure she's not in a dream and that she's in the same circumstances she was in when she passed out.

And she is, so that's nice and assuring after a brief and unwitting beat of paranoia due to general town-related traumas. Then she gets a little wary, remembering the cat is here and maybe out of the bathroom and out walking on the piano, and oh no, the tree and presents and... wait. That's not chaotic cat noise. It's Christmas morning, it smells like coffee, so that's Byron in there, no doubt, tinkering on those keys. What is he...

Lilith sits up, shoves out of bed, moves to the bathroom, makes a brisk run of washcloth over her face and brushes down the mess of hair some, though the waves and tousles do stay to a degree to give her that bedhead look, just more stylized. She puts on tinted cherry-vanilla lip balm when she's fresh with visage, and despite the drowsiness on her features that lingers to fade, her eyes can't help but be bright with more solid understanding of the morning's date with her mind awake.

After putting on the robe to leave open and trail sleeves and length about herself in her festive, silken nightie, she comes out in rather short order at wander from the bedroom and hall to stop in the framing that vaults to the main room of the Penthouse, the snow and tree the first things visible from the angle she comes in at. Her flushed lips turn up at the sight of a true vision of a snowy Christmas morning. But then she sees Byron at the piano and takes one, then another step to wander closer while staring at him.

With Lilith wanting this year to be a full blown Christmas experience for her, they'd spent quite some time decorating the place leading up to this special day. There's tinsel everywhere, wreathes, stockings hung up by the fireplace. The abundance of presents that they'd bought one another and those still that they needed to go out and deliver today were beautifully displayed beneath the tree. Byron also planned ahead and ordered some pastries from Vyv's shop which he'd snuck out to pick up some time during the evening. The chocolates and flaky treats are arranged perfectly on a big red plate.

It's Christmas morning and Byron didn't care to dress up, wearing only a black tee and comfortable jeans as he sits there at the piano with bare feet. Lilith was right, it was Byron who was tickling those keys, testing them out. He could sense her stirring in the other room and so when she does emerge, he already has good feeling that's she's there. Watching him. His usually perfect hair is capped by a red and white fuzzy Santa's hat.

At first, he doesn't even pay her any mind, letting his fingers do the work. He's not a concert pianist, but Lilith knows that he plays every so often and this morning, he's playing a little Christmas melody, lending his voice to the music.

I don't want a lot for Christmas
There is just one thing I need
I don't care about the presents
Underneath the Christmas tree
I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true oh
You know that all I want for Christmas is you

Oh, Smaug/Smog is out of his 'cage' and looks like a perfectly content glaring bread loaf resting atop the back of his couch. Why is the cat not sitting on the piano? He's not that well trained yet.

Lilith isn't much of a weepy woman, even when she's massively hurt, scared, or upset, let alone when she's happy. But there's a lot of things about what she's seeing and hearing that are making her feel emotional, and it's a bit consuming for so many different feeling reasons. All she can do is stare for a good number of heartbeats after stilling with realization once the melody and singing starts. And she feels those things, she drinks in the sound, the sight, the sentiment, the sheer celebration and love of it all.

It almost gets her. Lilith would be a hell of a mental read right now. Her lashes bat a few times fast when her eyes mist up unwittingly, and eventually she remembers to breathe, catching her breath audibly there in her little space behind and aside from Byron at the piano. After wetting her lips, she resumes walking somewhere toward the end of the verse, eyes riveted to him despite all the other available festive sights that were in her eye line to give the initial pause as she came out of the hall. She hasn't even seen the damn cat yet, impressive (and angry) as the sight is to have him just lounging on the back of the couch content in the festivities.

It's such a simple, soft and quiet gesture. Lilith pets her fingertips in soft caress over the back and side of the man's neck right as he finishes the line about what he wants for Christmas.

With just a hair's breadth space between her silk-clad body and his back, touching him in that one spot with fingertips exuding love and gratitude, Lilith is practically breath-stolen and glowing with soft, feminine melt of affection, absolutely speechless.

Byron is a man that gets what he wants, eventually. He very much has Lilith in a Christmas morning heart snare.

While some of that nervousness can be heard in his voice when he sings the first verse, Byron gains some confidence the longer the song goes, growing all the more comfortable even when he finally allows himself to share a Christmas morning smile with her, his gaze moving with her before he refocuses his attention on his sheet music. This was not your normal rendition of the song 'All I Want For Christmas', as Byron had made his own arrangements with the lyrics.

I won't ask for much this Christmas
I won't even wish for snow, and I
I just wanna keep on waiting
Underneath the mistletoe

I don't need to hang my stocking
There upon the fireplace
Santa, he won't make me happy
With a toy on Christmas day

The smile on his lips increases a touch, feeling her gentle fingertips toying with the dark locks at the back of his head. The melody played shows just how much practice he'd put into such a simple song, but he's taking pride in his own efforts, trying to push his best, most confidant face forward as he croons.

Lilith is more of a sing along kind of singer that only really holds her own with the radio helping and emboldening her, but she has a naturally pleasant speaking voice that can go from bright and animated, to hissing venom, to downright droning purrs that ooze sex. So really, humming along pretty and faint with Byron's melody for Christmas morning (her) isn't that hard and it creeps up on her like a contagion as the man gets more confident in the rhythm of accompaniment and song to croon.

Lilith's hand softly dusts to one side of his shoulder before pulling back to tug up the length of her robe in gather to step over with a bare leg and straddle sit some space on the piano bench next to him as he plays. She's leaving him arm and hand range while she watches and hums with an utterly charmed, helpless smile and a bit of an emotionally overloaded expression, but her voice doesn't crack while she's still touched with overwhelm at the very idea and sentiment of it.

And somewhere in the middle of humming, Lilith breathes out a sudden laugh when her eyes really focus on on the hat. The Santa hat. Yes, Byron Thorne is sitting here wearing a Santa hat over that perfect hair first thing in the morning, playing and singing for her. Granted, there are small spells where she's watching his hands instead of his face or looking at him with the room as a whole, like she's trying to sear the moment into her memories with vivid details.

Doing that makes the woman do a bit of a double take, though, visually, to see the cat loafed up on the back of the couch looking content somehow with that angry face. Maybe she's just getting used to looking at the damn thing, but she didn't expect it to be out soaking up the moment too instead of tearing things up! It somehow adds to the moment on principle, even though Byron probably woke that cat up with a mental shot to the brain to be good.

But mostly, she's riveted to watching Byron's face as he sings and plays, and she keeps humming, one hand resting on the edge of the piano, the other going to rest atop one of his thighs with subtle fingercurl and press.

He's concentrating, needing to not trip over his words or make a fool of himself this morning and looking completely focused on the song at hand. Byron will at least try to look relaxed ever so often, all the while pressing down on those keys. Sometimes the song gets the better of him, filling him with this sense of Christmas spirit and one can tell when he's really in the zone as he sings. He's emotive when he sings his heart out and even more so when he hears Lilith humming along.

I just want you here tonight
Holding on to me so tight

With Lilith taking a seat beside him on the piano bench, he leans gently her way, looking directly at her with these loving eyes, his gaze only briefly flickering back to the music sheet, right before he utters these last few lines of the song soulfully.

What more can I do
You know that all I want for Christmas is you

"Merry Christmas, sweetie." He says, hands finally leaving the keys, before he leans in further to press a kiss upon Lilith's lips.

There are several cameras set up to record this very moment at various angles. Byron was probably thinking of immortalizing the event, but not exactly due to his musical skills alone, but to capture her reaction to this show that he'd put up just for her.

There's girls in life that Lilith's never understood, especially the ones that jump up and down at wedding proposals or cry when they're happy, but... she thinks she gets it now. To degrees, anyway. And to be fair, some of her emotions are barbed through with old guilt she can't quite help, seeing Byron like this, remembering all the tiny things he used to do for her even as just kids, the surprises, the twists on ways to make sure she was fed and taken care of and happy despite her home life, the way she shut the door on...

Does it matter? She's never, ever thought something like this before, and maybe she doesn't think it very long, because she knows that she made a witting choice, to do what she did all those years ago. But suddenly, she thinks the thing guilt would never let her think or feel better about-- what if they had to hurt for a while to have happy like this right now? There's no light without shadows. There's no rain without clouds. Maybe knowing misery is how you know what happiness really is when it happens.

Lilith is so swelled with love and stunned overwhelm right now, she allows herself to be okay with herself for just a little while, because when he's looking at her with that much love in his eyes and going through all this to show her... how could she not love Lilith-as-she-was and Lilith-as-she-is just a little bit more too? The cracks will always be there, but somehow, she feels so whole and loved, repaired by Byron in a sense. But she doesn't know how to really explain any of this and her eyes are misting up again, and then the mist turns to gloss of tears before her lashes and blinks free them to roll just as he comes in for the kiss after the song. He can feel the heat of them dripping down her face, and while she's not exactly physically crying, the tears are being very slow to staunch now that they've started.

Against Byron's mouth, Lilith immediately takes to murmuring as her arms fling up against his neck and shoulders, then the kiss turns rampant after the slightly sniffled spill of hushed and rushed words, "Merry Christmas, babe. You're not a prince. You're a king. I love you. I'm so sorry for everything ever that's been bad or anything that will be bad, but I love you." Then after half-laughing with disbelief, she nuzzle her nose tip against his cheek while side-eyeing one of the cameras, "... are you sure you don't want a toy for Christmas, though? Not even one we can both play with?" Oh, Lilith. Yes, she means that dirty as it sounds in fleeting humor. Who actually KNOWS what's in her gift boxes.

When people look at Byron, they often see a man brimming with confidence. Someone who always knows the right things to say. Someone who made it on their own. They see the tailored suits and the slick hairstyle and his sometimes cocky attitude. During the course of the song, however, this made man who accomplished so much in his life, was afraid that his voice would crack or that he would forget some of the lyrics to the song in his nervousness. His belly was filled with butterflies, but he knew that this was something he wanted to do. Was there anything that he really need to prove to her, though?

No. There was not.

Yet, he's burning up with pride, this far-too-pleased smile on his lips when he realizes just how touched this gamble made her feel. In this close proximity, he can feel the hot tears on her cheeks, see the wet glistening of her eyes though she doesn't bawl or cry out nor does she sob like other might. He won't mention it, keeping it to himself, not wanting to make her feel self-conscious about it all. Instead, with that Santa hat still on his head, he leans forward to, his forehead pressing against hers and for this quiet moment he lets his eyes close.

The crack of a smile pulls in amusement at his lips and she can feel his body tremble with laughter, his eyes still closed. "You really are something else you know that?" It's only once those words are spoken that he opens his eyes to stare deeply into her vibrant depths. "Mistletoe." He says, his gaze shifting up to the perfectly placed mistletoe hanging high above the piano seat. He already kissed her once, but this time a hand reaches to cup at her chin and the side of her face, this eagerness for another taste of her lips pushing him forward to further close the distance between them.

"King." Lilith repeats at the man with exhaled emphasis when his hand reaches to cup her face and caress her skin, eyes having followed Byron's up to the oh-so-perfectly placed mistletoe that she missed during her sweeping survey of this whole Christmas morning scene. Any other time she might actually have called him something along the lines of 'clever ass' or 'magnificent bastard' in that dryly appreciative tone of humor and fondness that's so common for her. But right in the space before they're falling into another kiss that floods into more and more kisses, when she emphasizes that word 'king' for him, it's weighted with reverence and affection.

There's a shift that Lilith makes at some point while melting into Byron's hold and leaning back, knocking the piano keys with cacophony in brief. It scares the cat straight out of doze and into a 'mrowl' of surprise after all that silent time when they were kissing and drinking each other in while the cameras capture the aftermath and glow for each other. Abruptly, with a dose of the giddies, Lilith starts to giggle right into the man's mouth with blissful humor and glee, the noise not at all one of her signature huffs or half-laughs or amused hums. As the giggle turns into warm true and breathy laughter at Byron's lips, she draws back to look at the cat now on the arm of the couch, staring at her looking angry. Maybe actually angry this time, but who can tell?

"Mad cat. But mmmm. You know, we'll never get our presents opened if I don't stop fan-girling over you and we have some running to do. Coffee and sweets first? Go sit on the couch and don't move, I'm bringing you your cup, every pastry, your boxes, everything hand and foot. I'll even wash you in the shower and dry you and do up your dashing cuffs and tie your tie." Speaking of cuffs, he's going to find some fabulous antique art-deco cufflinks in one of those boxes, but he'll figure that part out soon enough.

The point is, he's king and he treats her like a queen. Why not treat him like royalty all day and then some?