Isabella

Chapter 20

A/N - It's been like 20 minutes....

So much for "in the week" I HATE WAITING

~~~

6:47am. Christmas Day bitches.

As far as I was concerned, my brothers were all lucky I'd given them the courtesy of sleeping in this late on such a special day; I'd had about four hours sleep and woken up at quarter-past-six.

After staring at my ceiling for half an hour I decided I couldn't wait any longer, so after zipping up my gingerbread man onesie and slipping on my grinch slippers I stepped out of my room and sighed contentedly.

Knowing there would be one brother who would definitely share my enthusiasm, I crept into Xav's room and frowned when I saw that he wasn't even in bed. Only then did I hear the dragging of hangers coming from his wardrobe and him muttering to himself, of course he was already up too.

"Xav?", I whisper-yelled, perching on the end of his bed and waiting- his room was a mess. Not just a few things thrown around here and there - messy as in it looked like a fucking earthquake had struck, a tornado had appeared, and a bomb had hit all at once.

"It's Christmas!", he cheered, emerging in a full-on Santa costume: hat, beard, the lot, "feliz navidad hermanita".

He wrapped his arms around me and kissed the top of my head, the beard brushing over my nose as he did so and making me sneeze.

"Merry Christmas to you too", I sniffed, "your room's looking clean". After rolling his eyes he looked around it almost in pride, a small grin on his face when he looked at me again.

"Isn't it just?", he grinned, "come on, 7 o'clock is way too late to be asleep on Christmas". Precisely.

~

"It's Christmas!", Xav and I screamed at the top of our lungs in the middle of the hallway, the groans that came from some of the bedrooms made us turn to each other and roll our eyes.

"We've gotta see if Santa's been guys", Xav said in a sing-song voice as he tapped his knuckles on all of the closed doors, "Ander...I know you're awakeee".

"Shut the fuck up Xav!", he was definitely feeling the Christmas spirit, "it's the crack of fucking dawn!".

"And he's on crack by the sound of it", he whispered to me and I laughed into my sleeve, "Cubby....come on out man".

"I will kill you", came Caleb's deep voice from the other side of his door, "I've had two hours sleep".

"That's seventy-two-hundred seconds, you'll survive", how'd he do that so quickly?, "all of you get the fuck up! It's Izzy's first Christmas here since she was 2, show some respect". Silence filled the entire house and Xav sent me a weak smile, adjusting the Santa hat on his head; Chase's door was the first to open as I predicted, he pulled me into a hug straight away and kissed my forehead.

"Merry Christmas Izzy", he pushed his glasses up his nose and tugged the hood of his hoodie over his tangled hair, "you excited?".

"Of course", I rocked back and forth on my heels, "it's gonna be-".

"Exhausting? Loud? Expensive?", Caleb appeared in the hallway, shirtless, all of his tattoos on show- I hadn't seen this many until now.

The most prominent ones were of course the skull on his throat, a scorpion on one of his pecs, a load of butterflies going from his chest to a shoulder, the year '1999' going down his chest - shit there were tons.

"You've got a lot of tattoos", I still didn't know where to look, he literally looked like the page of a notepad that someone would use for doodling.

"No shit", Xander came out of his room in a black dressing gown and ruffled his hair, "ho, ho, ho and whatever". Christ.