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POSTED ON Dec 7, 2022 16:50:38 GMT

[attr="class","samjer"]

[attr="class","samjermain"]Christmas was one of the few times of year when Memo remembered being happy at home. His large extended family would come round for multiple days and though he and his siblings would be relegated to sleeping in closets or the pantry or on the kitchen floor, there was always much fun to be had: Tia Soledad would get absolutely blasted on cava, Ester and their mother would make enough turron to feed an Armada, and the entire family would fight over the roscón to the point where threats on each other’s lives were made.

He was determined to capture that feeling and bring it into his new life.

He would have to ask Alex about his traditions and find some way to weave those in, as well.

The kitchen smelled like garlic and spice. Trans-Siberian Orchestra sang softly in the background.

“And the best part is,” he said to Guadaño, who had been helping him slice the chorizo, “I don’t have to go to mass~.”

[attr="class","samjertag"]Alexei Ivanov
mission: festive flirts

[attr="class","samjerpoke"]

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POSTED ON Dec 7, 2022 17:39:21 GMT

“We never went to mass either, you know,” he hummed from his position on the dining table—which had temporarily been transformed into a macaron assembly line.

There were… obviously, there were Wooloo trundling around his feet. The very obvious jingling of the crown signaled William’s appearance.

There were multicolored shells scattered everywhere, and he was piping the filling onto mismatched red-and-green shells, truly festive desserts wouldn’t you think?

“We had… well, the earliest I remember is we would like have some kind of mini advent calendar. One small gift a day leading up until the date itself. Then… oh, Christmas Eve dinner. Like, we’d have dinner very late. I’m talking, like, midnight late.”

He continued to pipe and assemble holiday-themed macarons while his boyfriend was busy in the kitchen.

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Memo

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POSTED ON Dec 10, 2022 17:50:55 GMT

[attr="class","samjer"]

[attr="class","samjermain"]“I don’t think you understand,” Memo said, voice suddenly dire, “just how much power Christmas mass had in our family.” He cranked up the heat on the stove and plopped a pan on the flame, drizzling in olive oil. “We’d go to midnight mass and then my mother would put recorded VHS tapes of previous masses on throughout all of Christmas.”

Other kids watched The Grinch and A Christmas Story. Memo got to watch MASS, 2003, in grainy VHS on every TV in the house.

“Ooh, we should do an advent calender. There’s still time to do a 12 day one, I think?”

Into the pan went the chorizo, onions, garlic, diced tomato. He inhaled, exhaled. "God, it's so nice to not have to go to mass."

[attr="class","samjertag"]Alexei Ivanov
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[attr="class","samjerpoke"]

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POSTED ON Dec 15, 2022 15:34:53 GMT

“The… the whole fucking day?!” he cringed.

He’d stopped piping the macarons in order to pay more attention to what the other was sharing.

“Mass… recordings? On tapes?! For the… oh hell no, that’s not—” he stammered, his mind unable to accept and comprehend the insane reality that the other had laid down.

The suggestion of a shorter Advent calendar did catch his attention though.

“Well… if you must know… we celebrate Christmas twice, not just once, whenever this time of the year came around.”

He then returned his attention back to the macarons and continued piping filling on them before continuing to assemble the little mountain of macarons that they would be snacking on later.

He could already smell the food his boyfriend was cooking.

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Memo

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POSTED ON Dec 17, 2022 19:20:13 GMT

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[attr="class","samjer"]

[attr="class","samjermain"]The cringe and change in pitch in Alex’s voice is exactly how Guillermo felt every single goddamned Christmas. “All. Day,” he said, with a shake of his spoon to punctuate each word.

He turns back to the stove, adding chorizo to the pan. “It was horrible. 2011 was my mom’s favorite. The choir was in excellent form that year.” His voice hollows out to the pompous, stereotypical Galarian accent known from TV.

Alex’s mention of a second Christmas caught his eye.

“Two Christmasses?” he asked, feeling like he’d only ever heard of that from his schooltime friends with divorced parents.

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POSTED ON Dec 25, 2022 18:51:59 GMT

He couldn’t help but chuckle with quiet amusement as his boyfriend’s Galarian accent emerged the more they dwelled on old, grainy tape recordings that made both their skin crawl out of disgust.

“You’re starting to sound Galarian again, love,” he hummed as he continued his task of piping the macarons and assembling them into a neat pile.

While he was letting his hands do the work, he knew he had the other man’s attention when he mentioned that they celebrated Christmas twice and not just once.

“Yeah, twice. Once for the actual celebration, and the second one’s on January 7… because of religious-related shit,” he hummed.

Then again, he was pretty sure that his mom’s name didn’t have the same linguistic roots as his own and his dad’s did, so there was that as well.

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POSTED ON Jan 8, 2023 23:36:02 GMT

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[attr="class","samjer"]

[attr="class","samjermain"]“But of course,” he says, in his best Michael Caine impersonation-- but he can’t keep a straight face, and snickers at the end of it. “God, I’m so happy I don’t actually sound like that. Could you imagine?”

He turned away from the stove to let everything sizzle, watching Alex painstakingly pipe the filling into his macarons. His voice got a little distant and dreamy in his focus.

“Oh. I mean, we kinda did that, too. But there was only the one Christmas, and then we had another celebration for the three kings.” Even now the talk of religion put a bad taste in his mouth.

“I’ll be happy with just the one, this year. With my family.”

It felt so right to say it.

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POSTED ON Jan 13, 2023 14:24:46 GMT

The way his boyfriend had taken the pompous, stereotypical Galarian accent made him stop frosting the macarons for a bit because the wheeze of laughter bubbling up from inside him just had to be released upon the world!

“That—that was the most ridiculous—” he wheezed, shaking in fits of silent laughter because holy shit if he could laugh now only Zubat could hear him at this point.

“If you did, though, I’d be giving you the most stereotypical Unovan accent as well,” he continued, letting his own ‘forgotten’ accent bleed through for a few moments.

~~(Yes he sounded like someone from Jersey City. Or Newark. Take your pick. No he was absolutely 1000% not sorry about this at all.)~~

“Only one?” he continued, once he’d gotten all the laughs out of his system and mellowed down once more to a state of seriousness.

He did turn red at the mention of the ‘family’ though, because right now it was just them, and his herd of unruly Wooloo, and his own indoor Pokémon and—

Yeah.

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Memo

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POSTED ON Jan 14, 2023 21:44:10 GMT

[attr="class","samjer"]

[attr="class","samjermain"]“Yeah. One Christmas with the gifts. The rest was just… running through all of my family. My old family.”

They had never been there for him. They didn’t care.

In a single, smooth movement, he long-steps across the span of kitchen tile, pushes up onto the toes of one foot, and presses a kiss to the corner of Alex’s mouth. He can taste the sugar where he’d swiped tidbits of macaron filling.

“This one’s better,” he said, resting his head against Alex’s shoulder for a split second, before dance-stepping back to the stove to continue cooking as though the little interlude of domestic fluff had never happened.

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POSTED ON Jan 28, 2023 16:17:06 GMT

“How much better, on a scale of one to ten?”

Now that they were on the topic, he wasn’t going to shut up about it.

Christmases back then… back when things hadn’t taken a turn for the dark—they were just like any other. The three of them—him, Addy, and Thea—would get up as early as they would on Christmas morning and literally race each other down to the tree (well it was mostly him and Addy) and try to pick out which presents belonged to who.

As the years passed, though… that picture… faded over time. More and more of his time in and out of the hospital, watching the world move forward without him—

“We do have a lot of things in common,” he hummed quietly afterward as he forced himself out of the quiet little reverie he’d sunken into.

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POSTED ON Feb 18, 2023 16:31:50 GMT

[attr="class","samjer"]

[attr="class","samjermain"]“Uh, like, a trillion,” he answered, without hesitation. The chorizo was beginning to warm, the grease of it spreading out into the pan and mingling with all the other lovely flavors, filling the kitchen with a slightly spicy scent.

He put his back against the countertop and crossed his arms, smiling across at Alex.

“We do. For better or worse, we do.”

And they had found each other.

[attr="class","samjertag"]Alexei Ivanov
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POSTED ON Feb 26, 2023 0:01:45 GMT

The Wooloo hanging around his feet let out a small ‘baa?!’ of surprise as he rolled up towards the herd master, hopefully sniffing the air for a macaron before he looked down.

“No, Will, you can’t have these, this has way too much sugar for safe ovine consumption,” he chastised, before the smile upended itself and he got a bonk to the calf before said ovine rolled away towards Memo, in an attempt to get some scraps because he was hungry!

“Uh-oh. Beggar alert imminent!” he cackled softly, watching as the Wooloo gave his boyfriend the ‘cute ovine eyes’ mode.

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POSTED ON Mar 8, 2023 16:39:50 GMT

[attr="class","samjer"]

[attr="class","samjermain"]“Here, Will, you can have some soup,” Memo said, getting down a small bowl and ladeling the spice-rich broth into it before setting it on the ground for the Wooloo to lap up.

He grinned over at Alex.

“You know I can never resist him. Or you.”

He winked.

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POSTED ON Apr 10, 2023 22:02:50 GMT

Of course he would side with William.

Of fucking course he would!

“Love, I don’t know if Wooloo like spicy things, because they’re mostly herbivorous, and—” he trailed off as the Wooloo took a few sips of the soup, before letting out a ‘baa?!’ of surprise and his cute face started to steam.

“Uh-oh!” he couldn’t resist saying, unable to stop the break into another fit of laughter.

“I told you!”

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