12 Days of Christmas

Day 1

"You home?" Elena shouted, as she hauled in a ton of plastic bags.

"I sure am," Damon said, coming to the front door, his mouth falling up as he saw her, "did you buy all of Target?" Elena rolled her eyes at him, as she sat the bags down on the floor.

"There's more in my car, would you mind helping me?" she smiled sweetly at him. He frowned slightly, but went to the car to help her anyway. He was surprised at how many more bags were in the backseat - what on earth had she been buying? He grabbed as many as he could carry and went into the house.

"Do you wanna tell me what all of this is?" he asked, as he put down the bags next to the ones she had brought inside.

"Christmas decorations, of course!" she said, her smile looking impossibly big.

"This many?" he asked, looking at all the bags.

"Well, it's a really big house. Do we have a ladder somewhere?"

Damon chuckled. When she had brought up Christmas, he had figured she would forget all about it, come December, but apparently not. It seemed like she had decided to go all in on this one. And why not humour her. After all, this was pretty sweet.

"There's one in the basement. How about you start unpacking, and I'll get the last of the bags and the ladder?" he said, kissing her cheek. She smiled at him.

"Sounds great."

***

When he came back up from the basement, "all I want for Christmas" was blasting from the stereo, Elena was dancing around, starting the decorating. She was even wearing a Santa hat.

"Oh, good! Thank you for getting the ladder," she said, smiling at him. Boxes and boxes of lights and garlands and decorations he'd never even seen before were laid out on the big persian rug, ready to be put into their place.

"Do you realize how long all of this is going to take, to get down?" Damon said, staring at it all. Elena giggled.

"Well, that's also a part of Christmas. Taking down the ornaments just before New Year's!" she said, grabbing a pile of stockings, "will you start hanging the stuff that needs to go up high? Like the garlands?"

"Sure."

***

It took them hours to decorate, but Damon found that he was actually kind of enjoying it. He wouldn't have thought it was his scene at all, even after he'd let go of the badass vampire image, but it really wasn't too bad. Plus, seeing Elena smile the way she was, made it even better. There had been a few moments where he'd been a little sad, thinking about how nice it would have been to do this with Stefan and Caroline. He knew Elena had invited them over, but Caroline was still grieving Stefan and spending as much time as she could with the girls. She'd said they might come by later.

"Alright, well, now there's only these left..." Elena said, taking a box that he hadn't noticed before. He wasn't even sure that had been out on the rug.

"What are they?" he asked, looking at the box. It didn't look like a traditional ornament box - more of a package from Amazon than anything else.

"Well, I got them from Etsy... they're handmade," she said, handing him the box, "I think you should open them." He frowned and looked at her, taking it. She had already cut open the packing tape, but left the box closed. Curious about what this could be, he opened the box, to find the most beautiful glass snow-flakes inside of it. He took the top one out and held it in the light. It was a little smaller than his hand, and shone beautifully in the light from the fireplace. The middle of the snowflake was different than a normal snowflake. It took him a second to recognize the crest, but when he did, it tugged at his heart. He hadn't seen that crest since he left his daylight ring on Stefan's grave, and the little S in the middle, made him miss his brother even more.

"There's one for everyone we've lost..." Elena said quietly, "they go in the windows."

Damon didn't know what to say, but it seems Elena understood his emotions, without him saying a word. 

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