The Monsters In Our Heads (Book 7 Arrow/SPN Crossovers)

Let The Festivities Commence

Sam's text woke me up."On the way, see you around one."  

Coyote and I had stayed up late the night before getting things ready. Oliver and the rest had flown in to Denver late Tuesday and were hopping a flight to a small airport in Nebraska which was about a two hour drive away. They were planning to get in around eleven. Roy ended up having to find ways to stall Sam since they'd finished off the vamps a lot sooner than we'd thought they would. He'd actually ended up finding another job for them to take on which surprised Sam since they'd already been on the road for three weeks. Roy's excuse was, "Well, it's not too far. May as well get it out of the way." It'd been risky since jobs can go sideways fast but it'd worked out.

"Got it, see you soon." I sent back then rolled out of bed. Coyote had been giving me good- natured crap all week about how into this whole thing I was getting. Since she'd said she was on board with having everyone over I'd dove headlong into it. I'd told her this was sort of my way of repaying Sam for the last minute, impromptu Christmas thing he'd thrown together before I went to Hell among other things. We'd ended up moving to another room that night because the combined smell of his air freshener tree decorations gave us headaches but it didn't matter. Never having a real home was always the worst around the holidays. Dad had tried to do what he could when we were kids but there's only so much you can do in a motel room. Bobby'd thrown some parties for us but in general holidays and birthdays were something normal people did, not us.

When we took our month off at Oliver's place he'd told me about Amelia getting him a cake for his birthday and how much it'd meant to him, even though he was totally confused at first as to what she was doing. Both of us tend to forget when our birthdays are. We'd done Christmas at the Bunker over the last few years, it was usually just him and I though. Cas had come by one year but he didn't really understand the point of the holiday, Jesus had been born in the spring after all.

There was a lot of reasons that going all out on this felt right but the one that kept running around in my head the most was probably the cheesiest but it was also the most important. I could still remember what it was like to have a big, happy family holiday, barely, but I could. Sam didn't have that and that needed to change. Being with Coyote gave me something I hadn't had in years, or maybe ever; hope and actual happiness. I'd managed to work my way through the things that finding out what Azazel had done to me had brought up and in a lot of ways forgiven myself for things I never should have felt bad for in the first place. The only reason I'd ever had the chance to do that was because Sam refused to give up on me, seeing as how  that was one of the most important things in my life I wanted to say thanks in the most over the top way possible.

So sure, the living room was horribly, almost painfully over decorated for this but I didn't care. Coyote had drawn the line at decorating with anything that had glitter though, that shit gets everywhere and never really goes away apparently, but other than that she'd given me free rein. It looked like the birthday section of a craft store had been dropped off by a tornado, I had crap hanging from everywhere but the look on Sam's face was going to be worth every bit of it.

Coyote and I had grabbed tons of food so I headed down to the kitchen to start prepping what we couldn't prep the day before. She wasn't too far behind me, she was about as excited as I was for this to get going. I'd never understood why people who do these things are so wiped out the next day, at least until now.

"If they don't eat every last scrap of this food I'm going to be pissed," I said.

"There's always left overs, part of the fun. You end up with food for a week, which is good because you're sick of cooking after you get all this done."

"I can see that." I looked at my watch, "Are we going to get all this done before they get here?"

She finished slicing the vegetables she was working on and set that bowl aside, "That, my dear, is why you provide snacks. They can snack while the rest of this is getting done."