impersona | I thought I'd write you this song, maybe I'd make you smile

injury – minor	soulbonding	shopping	neck kisses	bad day
cloud watching	~~candlelight dinner~~	honeymoon	nuzzling	anniversary
first fight – making up	~~first holiday together~~	WILD CARD	candles	anniversary – miles apart
kidfic – bedtime	kidfic – first injury	kidfic – vacation	baby – adoption	making out
karaoke	bedtime rituals	birthday – surprise party	sick in bed	hot cocoa

Knocked out the Schmoop box First Holiday Together, and also the 31 Days prompt for the 14th, you fear blood more and more. The 31 Days prompt screamed of Galen, and I really wanted to get a Galen/Devo fic into here anyways, SO.

I could never do the Devo accent :< Angie, you need to get a Babelfish option for her, English -> Devonese. Story takes place in Christmas 2005, I think that makes Galen 24 and Devo 23.

~~(The box for Baby- Adoption will be Galen, Devo, and their beautiful angriest ward Ivona Devony-Vitali)~~

Will probably return to this story for tune-ups.

God help Devo if she thought she thought she could expect a decent, normal holiday for a damn change.

Even if this was her first holiday that included her boyfriend at the family table, she didn't bet that things could get as bad as they did. Generally, she even didn’t hang much importance or pride on Christmas in the first place, so she hadn’t thought about how perfect it should have been until the evening was well already chucked out the door.

The ham sat steaming in the trash now - not much you could do with it once its been bled on. Her mom, Keiran and Brenna went out to get some Thai instead - couldn’t say how well that’d go with the home-cooked cranberry sauce and potatoes, but her mum was goiing to have a damn Christmas dinner tonight, because that was what the Devony’s had every year.

It sucked that her mum had to go navigate the streets at this time of night, and on top of that shell out more money for a single dinner. Still, Devo would’ve liked to say she was the one most put out by this whole mess, but not for the reasons everyone thought. She missed her stupid once-a-year ham and all the leftovers it promised. She botched her first go at slicing the roast for her family, and of course then she had to go through the humilation of getting it healed up in front of the family.

Only five years ago she was a demon-carving goddess. Brenna threatened to give the story to the newspaper hounds, and Devo simply loved to imagine what kind of story they’d make of this. Angelic Grace: Does Not Guard Against Lopping Off Own Thumb. Kieran noted, in an attempt of his kind of humor, that she at least still had her favorite bird finger to give the press response with.

Then, presently, on top of everything else, she had to put up with her boyfriend being a bigger bitch about this entire thing than even Brenna had tried to be.

Devo tried to concentrate on her staticky, blurred football but damn was Galen making it difficult. He milled around between the kitchen and the dining table, fussed with some of the plates and food, but mostly muttered to himself. Probably thought most of it was out of her range of hearing.

“And why the hell did we have an electric carving knife around anyway?” he muttered, for example, when he had passed the dinner table again.

“You borrowed it from your parents,” she called out. Devo turned her shoulder, crossed her arms, and smacked her feet on top of the glass coffee table. “You thought it’d impress Mum. Well, didn't it?”

That answer, true as it was, was of course not the answer he liked. Galen swore to himself, paced into the kitchen. He pushed his hand back through his hair in that nervous way of his, except with the way he was flexing his fingers, it was like he'd rather be making fists with his hands.

"Mate." Devo pointed with her good fingers at him. “Mind tellin' me what the fuck is your problem?”

He turned towards her and pressed his palms into the island countertop. “I don’t have a problem.”

"Then sit down." She held up her bandaged hand - mostly bandaged as a precaution, even if the skin was sealed. "Boo boo's all better, right?"

"That's not the point."

She laughed at him, the kind of laugh that jabbed like silvered spikes. “Ya’ve seen demons rip me apart better, and now a little knife slip got you pissin' ice.”

“You weren’t fighting the god damn ham,” he said. Galen pointed to the abandoned dinner table between them, candles and all still going. “It was just supposed to be Christmas dinner.”

She pushed herself out of her seat. Bit of a stupid thing to do, with a bum hand. She glared at him and he stared back, not out of pride, dammit, but he was searching her face, looking for the indication that it hurt her. When she realized he was seeking out a sign of pain in her, it made her furious. To prove her point, as soon as she stalked over to him, Devo jabbed her bandaged finger right into his arm, gave him full view of her not wincing, not pained face to really drive it home.

“Galen Vitali,” she warned, “you aren’t going t' do this to me.”

His face, voice, entire countance went stony. “Do what.”

“Throw this-” and god, Devo didn’t even have the word for what he was doing to her now “this girlish little prat-fest over any little thing that happens to me. You didn’t do it years ago, and I'm sure as hell not going to take it now.”

“Things are different now,” he said, and he crossed his arms and put out his chest a little like he always did when he felt threatened. “There’s no reason for you to get hurt anymore.”

“What'dya want me to say, Galen? That there will be no more accidents, ever?” She turned her nose up in his face, pressed the flat of her hand to his chest. “What would make you happy? Should I stop going outside? Cause I can’t stop a moving bus, or a disease, or some fanantic wanker’s gunshot any better than I can stop a stupid carving accident.”

“Fia,” he growled, the name that he never used, which made her even angrier-

“Shit is going to happen and you can’t stop it.” Devo shoved him back - not far, she was too slight for that, but enough to get him off his step. Her glare, though, could have pushed him off a cliff. “God dammit. If you can’t handle that, then you sure as hell can’t handle any of me.”

He wasn't a man who looked away from someone who accused him. Galen faced her, undoubtedly deeply angry in his own right, yet wordless. And of course he wasn't going to reply to her, cause he didn't admit he was wrong so easy.

Well, she wasn't going to wait for him to come around either. She put herself on the couch, elbowed into a few of the pillows, and set herself to watching the fuzzy football broadcast. The volume on the TV went to full-blast static, better than hearing him pace around anyways. The door was right there for him to use, she thought. She kicked her feet, half-watched the tellie and wondered how long he'd stew before deciding she wasn't worth this. Wondered exactly when she would hear that door slam shut.

So what if he didn't left immediately? Maybe he'd give up on her in an hour and leave. Or maybe he wouldn’t slam the door on her today, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t tomorrow, or a year from now-

Devo was pretty sure she heard nothing but running water instead. It bothered her until she got onto her knees and looked over into the common room, to the kitchen, to see what the hell it was.

His elbows bent over the sides of the sink as he washed the dishes. Washing being a delicate term, cause with the way his arm muscles worked, it seemed like he was set on pulverizing the scum off of their plates.   She watched, and wondered how she forgot his predictable reaction to a fight.   He didn’t slam doors or wreck rooms. He stubbornly hung around, and he cleaned the everloving shit out of things when he got angry.

And to think, she knew him well enough to realize that.

So his guilt trip did get to her, in a way. Even if he overblew it, in the end, she was angry at a man for worrying over her. And she was thinking about him walking out on her while he was doing her dishes. Devo stared at him, tried to rally up her temper again, until she decided that it was all pretty stupid on both of their ends. More on his, of course, but enough to get her off the couch and make the best sort of peace she knew how.

As always, her bare feet didn’t make the slightest noise when she decided to move. Devo padded in silence right up behind him, then royally smacked him upside the back of his head. “You fucker.”

“Jesus.” He shifted his shoulder and glared back at Devo. She stared at him back. He had a wide array of pissed off emotions, everything from chargrin to all-out frustration, all of them played clearly through his dark green eyes. But what Devo feared from him was one thing she never once saw in his eyes - real hate.   His glare lost its edge, and she felt something had softened in her gaze too.

Galen sighed and turned back to his dishes, like she was interrupting something important. “What is it?”

“Just wondering what stupid things go through your head.” She jabbed her elbow into his side, but also lowered her hand, found the back pocket of his jeans with it. Her hand did sting a little bit, but touching him did usually have a way of making her feel better, one way or another.

“Right now?” He put his arm strength into scrubbing out the big greasy ham pan. “Thinking Christmas next year should be bacon strips and pre-cut fish fries.”

She nearly choked. “Is that what you’ve decided?” And then Devo pinched him, hard, if only for the joy of getting him all startled again. She pressed her shoulder against his side, not giving him an opportunity to jump away. “Guess that puts me out of potato-peeler duty too.”

“Out of the question,” he agreed. He spoke so bone-dry that a lesser girl would have thought he was making serious declarations. “We’ll have no cakes either. We’ll buy a fruit jelly, or something soft like that.”

“Too generous, mate. I might get myself with a spoon.”

“If you’re good 'n all, I’ll feed you with mine.”

She got him with another hard pinch. Nice to get him joking, but she was still a bit too angry for his flirting. She shoved her elbow into his side and pressed her cheek to his shoulder, batting her rich brown eyes at him. “Maybe I’ll take the spoon from you,” Devo whispered, darkly, “then get you with it.”

“I can handle you." She grinned, thinking he was playing back. But he turned his face, and he looked down at her. What he said sounded less like a joke and more like an answer.

"Really?"

The corner of his lip curled. "You handle even better after drink."

"That's what I think of you too, luv'," Devo said. She started to lift her chin to get her face closer to his, and that was when Brenna slammed open the flat door and immediately made up for her lack of holiday rioting.   While she screamed back at her sister, Devo's hand slid out of his pocket and patted his back.

It wasn't the best Devony Christmas on record, or at least not the best one for Galen to be introduced into. But she watched his soapy hands, and reckoned she at least had the next one to improve upon.