kitchen_maid | Christmas Party! Millitimed Vaguely to "Sometime Around Christmas"

Christmas Party! Millitimed Vaguely to "Sometime Around Christmas"

Anne and Amy have been very very busy over the last week or so, transforming their usually simple white room into the perfect place for a Christmas party.

There are garlands of holly and balsam strung around the room, leading away from the wreath between the windows (and there's a grumpy looking crow, perched in the middle of the wreath, trying to figure out how to get the red ribbon from around his neck). A Christmas tree, candles ablaze, stands in one corner, with presents tucked under its branches.

Welcome, dear friend, to Anne and Amy's Christmas party.

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"Not well," Anne says, ruefully. "I'm afraid he suffered from a very bruised dignity."

"Tragic," Logan says, shaking his head. "And there's just no cure for that. No matter how much ice for it you offer."

"None at all," Anne says, regretfully. "Although I find laughing about it often helps."

"Only if you're lucky and have a sense of humor," Logan says, grinning. "Some people don't and it's totally the saddest thing in the world."

His gets lost as often as not, but he tries.

"Wll, it isn't easy," she admits. "I've only been able to laugh at my mistakes very recently, and even then it's touch and go at times. It's far too easy to take things much too seriously."

"And how," he says fervently. "I've made an art of mocking self-deprecation, but it's not really the same, is it? It's easy to appear amused at your foibles and not really be at all."

"Is it?"

Anne looks at the tree, reaching out to touch a delicate green branch lightly.

"Do you think it helps?"

Logan thinks for a minute. "Yeah," he says. "Make fun of something long enough, and it becomes funny. Some things never do, but it throws people off guard, at least."

"I suppose so," she says, uncertainly.

"I've never really thought about things that way before."

"You wouldn't," Logan says kindly. "I can't see you needing a great deal of bravado in your life."

He envies her that. Some days it seems like bravado's all that he has.

"Not much," she agrees.

"Except when I am trying to walk ridge-poles. Bravado isn't much use in Avonlea--everyone knows everyone else's secrets there, anyway."

"Ridge-poles?" Logan asks, amused.

"Neptune's the same way," he says. "At least, it seems that way. A lot of secrets stay buried, but Veronica Mars does like to ferret them out. We're just supposed to pretend we don't care, I guess."

Anne giggles.

"It sounds as though she'd get along well with Mrs. Rachel. And yes. You know."

She waves a hand, vaguely.

"Ridge-poles of a roof. I tried to walk one once, on a dare."

"She'd pump Mrs. Rachel dry in a minute and be looking for new material," Logan says wryly. "Kid's too smart for her own good."

Logan grins slowly. "Oh? And how did that work for you?"

"I fell off and broke my ankle," she admits, ruefully.

"But I look on the bright side. I may have fallen off on the other side, and broken my neck, so it all turned out alright in the end."

"Ouch," he says, wincing, then laughs.

"You were born a philosopher, Anne Shirley. And under a lucky star, which is maybe more important."

She laughs with him, girlishly.

"Oh, I would like to think so. It's the only explanation for how I've managed to get out of so many scrapes."

She sits down on the windowseat nearby, and smiles up at him.

"What were you like as a child, Logan? You said Davy reminded you of yourself."

"It's probably my vanity speaking," he says lightly. "I was a nut, always running around, always busy, always doing stupid things to make Trina - that's my sister - mad, or plaguing the life out of Lilly Kane. That was also a hobby for many years before I started kissing her."

Not that it stopped after that. Just changed its shape.

Anne thinks back to a fateful schoolday, with a small smile of her own.

"Why were you always teasing your sister and Lilly?"

Logan grins. "Because they were funny when they got mad," he says. "Plus, Trina always cared more about boys and clothes and stuff - she's like, eight years older than I am, so sometimes it was the only way to get her to notice I was even around."

Pause.

"And Lilly - I think I fell in love with Lilly the first time I saw her, and teasing her was definitely pre-pubescent flirtation."

Anne grins back. It all sounds mildly familiar.

"It must be nice, having an older sister like that, though," she says, a little wistfully. "Do you see her often?"

Doesn't it?

Logan rolls his eyes. "She's off chasing the fabulous life of the starlet," he says. "She wants to be an actress, but she kinda can't act. And when she comes back to pokey old Neptune, she condescends to everyone."

Beat.

"She always did come through in a pinch, though."

Like when you show up in Risky Business attire at your school dance. That kind of pinch.

"Well, that's what older sisters are supposed to do," she smiles, and then claps a hand to her mouth.

"Goodness, what an idiot I can be. Here we are, right by the tree, and I have yet to give you your present."

She gets up from her seat and ducks to pick up a brightly wrapped package, which she hands to him with a smile.

"Merry Christmas, Logan."

Logan beams and produces a package himself. "I got one for you, too. It isn't properly Christmas without gifts. Merry Christmas."

Inside a lovingly (and professionally) wrapped present, is a scarf, in green.

Anne is delighted.

"Thank you, Logan!"

He will find, when he opens it, a package of freshly baked cookies, and a blue hat, to go along with the scarf Amy had given him.

The scarf is promptly wrapped around her neck, and she sighs in delight.

"It's perfect."

She stands on her toes, and kisses his cheek.

Christmas Party! Millitimed Vaguely to "Sometime Around Christmas"

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