#vanityfestive

No ficlet yesterday because of the tumblr blackout. 

Vanessa groaned and let her head fall against Charity’s shoulder, her arms wrapped around her waist. “Why?” she grumbled. She wished more than anything that she was back in bed, wrapped in a warm duvet and her girlfriend’s arms rather than slugging through a foot of snow with more swirling around them with nothing but the moonlight to see by and two hyper children and a surly teenager in tow. “We’ll never get the kids up for school.”

Charity just shrugged. “Who cares, Vanessa? We’ll let them stay home.”

At that, Noah actually looked up from kicking the ground. “Really?”

“Sure, kid,” Charity threw over her shoulder, drowning out Vanessa’s protests. “Come on, babe, it’s the last week of term. No one does any work anyway.”

“When did you do any work, ever?” She muttered, not quietly enough for Charity to miss.

“Hey, I run a successful business I’ll have you know.” Some of the time, anyway.

It felt like she was dragging a seventy pound weight behind her when they finally reached the top of the hill, even though Charity was the one pulling the sledges. The cold was nipping at her skin, making her feel just a fraction more awake, but she still wanted her bed more than anything else. But then Charity turned around with a smile that sparkled in her eyes. “Share a sled with me, babe?”

“What about the kids?”

“They can find their own way down.”

“Or you can take Johnny, I’ll take Moses and we’ll meet at the bottom.”

I've finally written a vanity fic 😲 and before vanityfestive has finished! It's only short but I hope people enjoy and see what I saw in my head when writing this fluff 😊

THROW PROMPTS AT MEEEEE

Vanessa shuffled into the house, casting her eyes from side to side like a fugitive. “All right there, babe?” Charity called from the sofa. Her girlfriend jumped like she had been caught raiding the till at the shop.

“Charity!” Her voice was even higher than normal.

Charity propped herself up on her elbows to look at her properly. She was beaming, but it was strained and her eyes were too wide. She looked like a demented bush baby. Charity raised her eyebrows. “What have you got behind you back?”

“Nothing!” She used the same bright, high pitched voice. Charity rolled her eyes. Vanessa was such a terrible liar she wondered how she ever managed to convince anyone she was straight. When she told her as much, Vanessa glared at her. Whatever she was hiding behind her back shifted and a tiny piece of red poked out.

“Are you going to show me or not?”

Vanessa sighed and pulled the parcel from behind her back. It was wrapped in tissue paper, but there was something red poking out of the corners. Something knitted and red. She prepared herself to smile and tell her girlfriend whatever she had knitted now was great, but she had only just got used to wearing the scarf and she flat out refused to wear the bobble hat. “My gran knitted this.” She held it out. “For you.”

Charity blinked at her. “What?”

She unpeeled the wrapping and shook it out. It was a jumper. A red Christmas jumper with a reindeer and antlers and baubles hanging from the antlers. “You don’t have to wear it, I mean, I know it’s not really you and my gran’s always knitting daft things, even I don’t wear all of it. But I’ve been telling her about you and I know you’ve never actually met her but she gave me this today and said this is for that nice girl you like, so of course I wasn’t sure she was even talking about you at first-”

“Oi!” Charity was snapped out of her trance by the insult, but then she smiled. “You’ve told your gran about me?” A gran who had knitted her a jumper.

Vanessa shrugged. “Course. She was one of the first people I told, one of the only ones who never asked me when I was going to settle down and find a husband.”

Charity looked again at the jumper. It was bright but neat. Not that she knew anything about knitting at all, but it looked that way. “She really made it for me?” Her own gran had never done anything like it. She had gone to live with her, briefly, after her dad chucked her out, but they had only made it through two weeks before she was out of there too and they had not been happy ones. She had been a mad old bat, to put it bluntly, going on and on about Charity’s sin and repentance. Then she had decided there were just some people who couldn’t be saved.

“She could have meant one of the other girls I’ve got my eye on I suppose.”

The brightness was starting to make her eyes sting. Or maybe it wasn’t that. “Come on, it’s not that bad, is it? You don’t have to wear it in public, only when you meet her.”

Did you just put fake antlers on the dog? << I mean, this prompt just sort of ran away with me. 

Charity raised an eyebrow and stared down at the tiny dog pawing at her knees. “You aren't going to get around me with those eyes,” she told it, firmly. She was really beginning to regret coming here in the first place but she had signed all the paperwork and there was a beaming volunteer handing her the dog's lead and saying something about how sad the little thing had been for weeks until she had walked in and she could hardly give him back then. She bent down and scratched the top of the dog's head. “Stuck with each other now,” she told him.

Getting a two year old excitable shitzu through the front door undetected was a lot harder than she had imagined. She scooped him up when they got inside the pub and held him to her chest where he wiggled, eager to get down and try all the new smells. “You've got to be quiet,” Charity whispered, even though the pub was packed with lunchers. “You're a surprise.”   

He licked her nose.

Followed by a few strange looks from the villagers, she successfully smuggled the dog upstairs just in time to hear the back door open and Vanessa’s voice floated up the stairs. “Did you actually get to go to the moon?” she exclaimed.

Charity had mentioned the idea of a dog to Vanessa. Sort of. But the old objection to Johnny’s constant pleas had been too much time spent away from the house, but now they were all living at the pub there was always someone around. And she was sure Zak would have no problem with dog sitting every once in a while. Anyway, her girlfriend loved dogs along with every other animal on the planet. And Johnny’s one Christmas wish had been that ‘every doggie in the world would find a forever home with lots of toys and cuddles’.

She put a finger to her lips and dug out the tiny antlers from underneath the bed she had tracked down on Ebay for this exact purpose. The dog didn’t protest at all when she slid them over his head. He bounced in a circle like he wanted to show them off to anyone who might be able to see.

Slowly, Charity pulled open the door, peering outside to check no one was coming up the stairs. “Behind me,” she hissed to her companion. “But be quiet.” The dog cocked its head and dashed past her. “No!” Charity flew after him. “Come back!” But the dog bounded down the stairs, barking excitedly at the thought of new friends.

The living room door flew open at the same time as Charity stumbled down the last few steps. “What’s all the racket? Is Mont-” Vanessa’s eyes fell on the obviously-not-Monty dog who was skipping around her legs, then back to Charity.

Then Johnny and Moses came flying into the hallway too. “Doggo!” screeched Johnny as Moses plonked himself down on the floor and reached his arms out. It was the look on the boys’ faces exactly now that had prompted her to drag herself out of bed at the butt crack of dawn two days before Christmas to pick the thing up. And the look on Vanessa’s too. It morphed from shock to delight as she bent down to greet him too, using a weird baby voice that made her sound like her kid.

“Is he ours?” she said, craning her neck to stare at Charity like she was Santa Claus himself.

She rolled her eyes. “Looks like it, don’t it? Can’t exactly take the little bugger back now.”

Set last year before official coupledom.

Charity crept towards the front door as soon as Tracy was out of sight, armed with mistletoe and blue tack. With a quick glance towards the windows, she pinned it to the frame at the top of the door and knocked quickly before she could pull it down and walk away.

At first there was nothing but an annoying bird twittering somewhere to her left but then she heard footsteps and a shadow against the windows. “What have you forgotten now?” Vanessa grumbled from behind the door.

When she pulled it open at last she barely had time to blink before Charity grabbed the front of her jumper and tugged her close enough to kiss. Her lips were chapped from the cold, but Vanessa kissed her back, and even after weeks of it, it still felt like being spun around on a rollercoaster, dizzyingly high and upside down.

When she finally pulled away moments, days, years later she looked as dazed as if someone had just clubbed her around the head with a bat. “What was that for?”

Day nine. Amazed I've lasted this long tbh. Thanks for the likes and reblogs! I know it's late but technically it's still the 9th for five minutes so it counts.

“Are you going to help me hang these lights or not?”

“Is not an option?”

“No.”

Charity rolled her eyes and made a noise that sounded like a cow giving birth as she threw her hands down either side of her and pushed herself up from the sofa. She stomped like a child towards the door, her head thrown back like she was having trouble getting her entire body to come with her.

Vanessa rolled her eyes. “Come on. Once we're done you can have a mince pie and cream.”

“Oh goody. Can I have a milkshake too?”

Vanessa ignored her and threw on her own coat, scarf and bobble hat. She chucked Charity's coat and earmuffs at her. Still grumbling she shrugged on her coat and followed her girlfriend out of the door.

There were already two step ladders set up at either end of the cottage and the lights spilling from a plastic Tesco bag. They clinked together when Charity pulled them out. “Be careful!” said Vanessa like she had thrown them to the floor and stomped on them, so she waved them around in the air, shaking them hard. Vanessa sighed again, but there was a smile twitching on her lips.

It took so long to untangle them that Charity was close to actually smashing them by the time they had a long enough string of lights to hang. Vanessa was humming Deck the Halls like she was having the time of her life (it almost made it worth it).

Vanessa climbed up one step ladder and commanded her to take the other, both of them holding one end of the lights. She wanted to wrap them all around the front of the cottage and hang them on the drain pipes at either side. With a huff, Charity climbed her own step ladder. If her girlfriend was going to make her do this she was going to have some fun with it.

Vanessa reached up as far as her arms could reach. “How’s that?”

“Little bit high I think, babe. Bring it down a bit.” While she did, Charity raised her side higher. Vanessa turned to check. “Gone down too far.” Turning back to the wall she pulled them back up a notch. Charity let hers drop. “See now you've come up too much.”

Vanessa caught on at last, pulled off her hat and threw it at her. Charity ducked, cackling, and tugged on the lights so they slipped out of Vanessa's hands all together and swung down the wall, brushing through the snow..

“Charity!” She jumped off of her ladder, but instead of picking up the lights she scooped up a handful of snow. Charity tried to scramble down but she was too late to dodge the snowball. It hit her on the shoulder and exploded, powder flying into her face.

Leaping from the ladder and dropping her own end of the lights to the ground, Charity wasted no time packing her own snowball. Vanessa ran but not fast enough to get away from the missile her girlfriend sent her way. They chased each other out into the empty road, chucking snow and ducking out of the way.

Vanessa screeched so loudly it drew other people out of their cosy cottages and when Charity saw Noah walking away from the bus that had just pulled up, she couldn't resist. Pressing a finger to her lips, she scooped up another handful and Vanessa did the same. Together they crept closer and hurled them both at his back. One missed but the other hit him dead centre and he spun around with an “oi” shaping his lips but he just scowled and kicked at some of the snow when he saw who it was.

“Who's meant to be the kid around here?” He grumbled, but Vanessa was wearing a wicked grin.

“How about we gang up on your mum?”

It looked for a moment like Noah was going to scowl and storm away, but then he bent to the ground and Charity started running.

She felt two snowballs explode against the small of her back and her leg and swung around. But the “Hey!” never got a chance to make it out of her mouth before another hit her in the chest.

Her eyes narrowed. “Right, that's it. You're both going down.”

“What is that?” Vanessa wrinkled her nose at the smell. She could actually taste the burning. Rounding the corner she found Charity in the kitchen over a saucepan leaking thick, dark smoke and a smell like charred car tires. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing!” Charity tried to block her view of the stove but she had already caught a glimpse of something black and gnarled at the bottom of the pan. The smoke alarm dangled from the ceiling, its battery light flashing.

Vanessa sighed. “Are you trying to burn us all to a crisp this year?” Last week it had been candles on the tree where there was still a patch of skin on Charity's hand that was an angry shade of red.

Charity pouted, glaring at the saucepan like it was its entire fault. “I was trying to make mince pies, wasn't I?”

Were you? She wanted to say but her girlfriend was looking put out enough that she bit her tongue. She sighed again, but more fondly that time. She really did love Charity's mayhem but sometimes it was like having another child around.

“Come here.” She used a towel to pick up the saucepan and dump the entire thing in the bin (that stuff was stuck there for life) and pulled another one out of the cupboard. “Gentle heat. And weigh it out properly.”

“All right, bossy,” Charity mumbled, not quietly enough for Vanessa to miss. She flicked a raisin at her. “Oi!” She picked it out of her hair and dropped it down the back of Vanessa's top.