Hitting publish on this post from our ER waiting room. My daughter basically owes her life to this blog update. If I hadn't been staying up to prep this post leading up to midnight, I would not have heard the strange sounds in her room that led me to checking on her and finding her unresponsive, ashen, with blue lips and hands.

I don't know why I'm sharing that, but here we are.

Onto the goods ...

Chapter 16: ♬ Simply Having a ♪ Wonderful ♪ Crisis time ♫

Sometime early on Christmas morning, Grace stirred when the mattress shifted with Alastor’s departure. She was in no rush to start the day so she fell back asleep only to wake an hour and a half, maybe two hours later. Alastor had not returned.

He had his own business, likely Overlord things that didn’t concern her. Things she didn't want concerning her. Truth told, Grace didn’t want to feel left-out, but she also didn’t want to be that woman: the jealous, clingy bitch who needed to have her fingers in every aspect of her man’s life.

She tried, anyway, and failed. 

She’d never before struggled to give a man his space—she had always preferred her own space, after all, to pursue her next great lay—and really didn’t want to start fighting that battle now with Alastor. She didn’t doubt that would drive him away.

So she dressed and left his room in not the best mood, definitely feeling neither merry nor bright, only to be greeted in the hotel hallway by the most intoxicating scent of coffee. But it wasn’t the usual coffee smell. The wafts carried on them hints of cedar and burnt sugar—the telltale aroma of New Orleans style coffee.

Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes!

Feeling now a little more merry and bright, Grace followed the scent into the kitchen where she found Alastor wearing red and white horizontally striped long johns with green cuffs and collar.

He was clearly in his own little Alastor world while baking, fumbling a bag of confectioners sugar as he attempted opening it. Grace leaned against the countertop’s edge with a quiet sigh.

Alastor startled, a claw sinking carelessly into the plastic as he whipped around to see who stood behind him.

The bag of powdered sugar did then what bags of powdered sugar do best and puffed a healthy plume of white across Alastor's face.

Grace laughed before she had any hope of stifling it.

“Grace.”

She froze, her breath lodging in her throat, rendering her unable to swallow her phlegm.

The air in the kitchen warped into a blazing vacuum, Alastor's expression a twisted scowl of embarrassment.

This? This embarrassed him? Out of everything that had happened to him since Grace came into his afterlife, this? Really? Red blossomed in his cheeks, visible even through the layer of powdered sugar. 

He swiped his thumb across his mouth to clear the powder away.

Glowered at it.

Hesitated.

He then glanced at Grace with an expression so different from his usual that it terrified her.

Alastor approached her with an extended arm and dragged his white-powdered thumb across her lips, that terrifying expression turning wicked.

No.

Impish?!

No, playful. Playful!

Playful?!

On anyone else, Grace thought it might even be flirtatious.

As she stood, wide-eyed, breathless, and frozen in horror, he simply laughed. Leaving her rooted in her spot with the remaining sugar on his face, he returned to his task at hand and poured the powdered sugar into a sifter to garnish the beignets cooling on a baking sheet.

Grace stared, keenly aware of her heart racing.

He set the sifter aside, turned to Grace, his gaze falling on her mouth where she hadn’t yet, in her terror, removed the sugar he’d smeared there.

Without a word, he pulled her against himself, lightly sweeping the sugar from her mouth with his tongue. He angled his head and turned a utilitarian action into a slow, deep kiss, his tongue parting her lips gently as he backed her against the countertop, white-knuckling its rounded marble edge on either side of her waist.

Alastor didn’t break away until a helpless little whimper escaped Grace’s throat. He leaned back to catch his breath, his eyes wide and pupils enormous. After a moment, he blinked several times as if clearing his head before brushing some powdered sugar from her nose that she’d transferred from his cheek during the kiss.

Grace could feel her pulse as a throbbing heat radiating through her ears.

He held her gaze while he ran a trembling hand through the tuft of hair over his forehead, sending white powder into the air.

He stared like he couldn’t sort out his feelings.

Alastor rarely kissed her on the mouth, and even more rarely like that.

She couldn’t recall anyone kissing her like that, for that matter.

That felt to her like a profession of something infinitely more profound than ‘you’re the least objectionable soul here.’ Or maybe that was her own feelings she was projecting onto him.

He cleared his throat, grabbing a nearby towel to remove the remaining sugar from his face. “Help me take this stuff to the tree for everyone to share?”

Grace, of course, jumped at the request, stunned that he actually requested her help.

Everyone had already gathered around the tree with a small collection of gifts.

Grace set the tray of beignets on the nearby table, and Alastor followed with the coffee, which everyone eagerly helped themselves to.

Following a small bite of beignet, Vaggie waved the rest of the pastry at Alastor and remarked, “I will never understand how you can eat what you do but then make food that tastes like this.”

Alastor was, indeed, and enigma of epic proportions: an amazing chef with a taste for human flesh; an asexual with unreal stamina in bed and virtually no rebound time; a creepy fucking smile with the sexiest bedroom eyes, and a practically perfect penis.

No. There’s no ‘practically’ about it. Grace bit her tongue to keep her face from revealing her thoughts.

Bit by bit, gifts were exchanged for those who’d brought them to give. 

Angel Dust gave Grace a mug that declared in bold red typeface, “I ♥️ DIKS.”

Kofax gifted Grace that little red teddy she saw at Victoria’s Secret.

Trying to keep from revealing what the gift was to everyone else around the tree, Grace asked her stiffly, “How did you know—?”

“Oh come on, that was a no-brainer.” Kofax smirked, glancing at Alastor. “We all know red’s your favorite color.”

Grace’s cheeks decided then to turn a very deep shade of her favorite color.

Angel even gave Alastor a gift: a neon sign that warned, DO NOT THE RADIO DEMON. 

Alastor glanced at him questioningly.

Angel explained, “It’s for the door to your broadcast booth.”

Probably in an attempt to deflect attention from him and his general unwillingness to show gratitude to anyone—lastly Angel Dust—Alastor turned around and presented a wrapped box to Grace.

Grace couldn’t imagine a single thing that Alastor might be inclined to give her, so she opened the plainly wrapped box just enough to peek at its contents. She promptly slammed it shut, tears springing to her eyes. Without explanation, she jumped to her feet and stumbled out of the room with the box crushed against her chest. 

She ran to a nearby, vacant sitting room, where she collapsed to the carpet, sobbing breathlessly over the box.

Kofax had followed, standing silently in the doorway with concern etching her forehead. She asked softly, “You okay there, Graceful?”

There wasn’t much Grace could say—between the heaving, ugly sobbing that winded her, and knowing fully well how Kofax would respond if she did answer.

The Hacker Demon would insist this was a gift given out of love.

But the mere thought of that was enough to make Grace’s whole body clench in protest. She waved at Kofax in dismissal and barely managed to gasp on a gagged breath, “I’m fine, it’s okay.”

Frowning more deeply now, Kofax replied, “You’ll have to excuse me that I don’t believe it.”

“Please—! K!”

“Okay …” Kofax held up her hands in surrender. “If … if you need me, I’m here for you.”

“I know. I know.” Grace wiped the snot from her nose along her right sleeve for lack of facial tissues and handkerchiefs. 

With marked hesitation, Kofax backed away and left Grace alone. A moment later, Grace heard her whisper something, and if Grace wasn’t mistaken, there was an even quieter, staticky noise of affirmation in response.

And no further interruption. 

Grace took her time to regain what little composure she could. The mere thought of rejoining the group around the Christmas tree overwhelmed her, so she elected instead to take Alastor’s gift with her outside. She went to a patio overlooking the pool, one she liked to use for watching the rain since there was a balcony overhead that kept it dry.

Christmas day had dawned bright and clear, and surprisingly cool for a day in Hell. It was probably hardly even triple-digits yet.

Her gaze dropped to the box in her hands. She set it on the ground and opened it fully, extracting a small teddybear dressed in a white, short-sleeved shirt with vertically striped overalls and a matching railroad conductor cap. Grace clutched it to her breast as if hugging her son by way of the stuffed animal, once more attempting—and failing—to fend off tears.

It had soft, curly chestnut brown faux fur all over its body, and cornflower blue safety eyes. Alastor couldn’t have known that was the same combination of hair and eye colors that Hunter had. It was nothing more than dumb luck that amplified its meaning to Grace. Although she knew the onslaught was nowhere near ending, she brusquely cleared the tears from her cheeks with the heel of her hand.

Alastor appeared at the railing beside her. He popped from his shadows in silence, stood there in silence. Leaned his forearms on the railing in silence. Cocked his head toward a shoulder and watched Grace in silence, a quizzical little smile tugging his mouth upward in the corners.

She got the impression he had no intention of talking but just wanted to be there with her—in silence, or otherwise.

God, I love you, Alastor.

Her voice wobbling, Grace said, “Hunter always laughed at the sound of people coughing. The paras who worked with him liked to say he would’ve been a ray of sunshine in a TB ward.”

Alastor cocked his head. “TB?”

“Tuberculosis?” she clarified.

He shrugged.

Right, right. Turn of last century. “You’d have known that disease as consumption. He’d have been a ray of sunshine in a consumption sanatorium.”

Alastor had a good, hearty laugh.

I love you.

As his laughter petered out, he rested his hands on his stomach to catch his breath.

Grace looked down at the stuffed animal in her arms.

Tears welled and fell, anew. “Thank you,” she barely managed to whisper.

Genuinely confused, Alastor asked, “Why are you crying, Little Fawn? I … figured … if your relationship with Hunter was anything like mine with my mother, this would be something you’d like.”

“Oh, it is, it is! I love it, Alastor!” Whoa, that was close. Grace took a steadying breath. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? Whatever for?”

She couldn’t even jokingly reply, ‘Power? Control? Boredom?’ Grace said somberly, “There’s nothing I can buy that means to you what this means to me.”

Alastor’s head whipped away so that she couldn’t see his face, his hair puffing up. There was an agonizingly long, heavy silence. Finally, he turned to meet her gaze.

I love you.

It was then that Grace realized they were standing just as they had before Alastor went in for their first kiss.

“Your sincere gratitude,” he replied quietly, “is gift enough for me.”

Grace side-stepped closer to him, slipping her left arm between his waist and his right arm. Sliding her hand into his.

His immediate reaction was to tense up. But then he threaded their fingers together and squeezed her hand, staring down at them all the while. “I’m glad you like it.”

I love you.

What came of Alastor’s statement and her subsequent thought was an internal argument unlike any Grace had ever had:

Why are you so afraid of telling him that?

I’m afraid it’ll scare him off, that’s why.

It’s not like he’s skittish and afraid of commitment; he asked to own your soul for eternity. That’s only slightly longer than a gym membership, and probably about as difficult to cancel.

You tell him you love him and what’s he gonna do? Revoke the soul contract? That would be stupid of him.

He could get weird about it.

That. That was why Grace kept the sentiment to herself; he seemed an expert at getting weird about things with her.

Oh, Gracie. It’s cute that you think he’s not fully aware that you love him.

He isn’t aware of jack shit. He wouldn’t recognize love if—

She glanced at their entwined hands.

—if it stood beside him and held his hand and never wanted to let him go.

“‘Like’ is an understatement, my Demon Overlord.” She squeezed the teddybear with her right arm and his hand with her left hand. “I love it.”

I love you so much.

“You’re very welcome, Little Fawn.”

Next update, deer friends, will NOT be this Sunday but the following Wednesday so that you can ring in the new year with Alastor and Grace.