To: @merouses
From: @morphogenetic
“heyo, this is the first fic i’ve ever written – only fitting that it was for zecret santa, I suppose. (still not sure why I decided to make it two chapters. whoops.) it was written for @merouses on tumblr – I hope you enjoy it!”
CHAPTER 1
“Light, I’m going out!”
“Please tell me you’re at least wearing something reasonable for the weather, for once.”
Clover rolls her eyes, even though there’s not much of a point. “We’re in Nevada, bro, come on!” she shouts back. “It might be December, but it’s not as cold as it was back in Japan!”
She can almost feel the exasperation from this voice as he replies. “Fine, but I really hope you’re wearing something longer than a miniskirt.”
“Of course I am, Light,” she says, running her hands over her half-bare thighs. “Why would I lie about that?” She smiles as she pecks him on the forehead. “Anyway, I’ll be back in a bit. Tell the bodyguards that they don’t need to keep up with me today. Have fun with your boyfriend!”
Light just sighs as his sister makes her way to the door, recognizing the swishing noise as Clover’s self-described “business-professional bubblegum bitch” skirt. He only has the resolve to say a “Aoi is not my bo-” before he hears the door click shut.
“I can’t believe we have the same parents,” he mutters to no one.
–
Clover pulls her phone out of her pocket, checking to see if there’s any new texts from Alice. They’ve been planning on a shopping date for a few months, but the two of them have continuously been busy with SOIS work – or busy working at a coffee shop as cover, in Clover’s case – such that they haven’t had any simultaneous free time in a while. She had had to convince Alice to use up some a day of the vacation time she’d accumulated so that they could go Christmas shopping, a task that was, despite Alice’s general workaholic nature, surprisingly easy. Clover was used to having to convince her girlfriend to spend money on little things once in a while – “Come on, treat yourself! Live a little!” – so her easy acceptance of this date did seem a bit odd. But, then again, Clover’s experienced things a lot odder than an easy date acceptance in her lifetime.
Her phone buzzes, and she looks down to see a text displayed on her screen. I’ll be there in a few. got stuck in traffic when I was traveling back from L.A. from that business meeting. She smiles, typing back don’t worry, you’ll be about twenty minutes early. like usual. Alice responds about a minute later with a picture of her, with a mock-exasperated expression and the caption “Better early than 45 years late like you always are.”
Clover is about to reply with an angry face emoticon when she hears the sound of a car pulling up t the curb. She doesn’t even need to look up to know that it’s the Jeep she drove out of the Nevada desert a little over three years ago – the rumble of its engine is unmistakable. She’s a little surprised that Alice has decided to pick this car for a date, given that she basically has the pick of the SOIS’s most secure vehicles, but the thought disappears quickly once Alice rolls down the window and grins while pushing up her sunglasses onto her forehead.
“Miss me?” she says in a smooth tone. “It’s been a while since the last time, hasn’t it?”
“If you mean the last time we went on a date, yeah,” Clover replies while walking to the passenger’s side of the car. “If you mean the last time I saw you, I literally talked to you yesterday. About that case with the religious cult that might be hosting that one terrorist who’s going to bring about the end of humanity?”
Alice waves her comment off as she gets into the shotgun seat. “Not what I meant, and you know it. Also, we do that every day. It’s in the job description, remember?” She turns the radio dial up before Clover can rebut with a sarcastic remark of her own. It’s tuned to a Top 40’s pop station – not the kind of music Alice would be listening to if she wasn’t on a date with one of the biggest unironic fans of the genre in the known universe. She just smiles as she starts the car, Clover already working on her rendition of Carly Rae Jepson’s “Boy Problems.”
“Isn’t that song a decade old by now?” Alice cuts in during the instrumental section. “Why on earth is it still playing on the radio?”
“It’s a classic now, obviously. I’m more surprised that you didn’t ask why I’m singing along to a song called Boy Problems.”
“…Fair enough.”
They don’t talk much for the rest of the drive – it’s not as if they need to at this point, after three years of having known each other. At this point, even being in each other’s presence is enough. Clover continues belting out the lyrics to pop songs that are definitely too old to be playing on the Top 40 any more, while Alice makes her way through Las Vegas traffic, driving towards the nearest non-casino-associated shopping mall. After about half an hour, she manages to find a place, but it takes another ten minutes to find a parking spot in a lot crowded with holiday shoppers.
“Guess we probably should’ve gone shopping earlier, huh?” Clover remarks when she notices her girlfriend’s frustration at the lack of empty spots. “I’m not going to say “I told you so,” but….I told you so.”
“Listen, when you work for a top-secret governmental agency, it’s hard to find time off. Criminals don’t exactly stop for holidays.” Alice glances from side to side, keeping her eyes out for a vacant parking lot.
“Neither do baristas,” Clover rebuts, “but I don’t see that getting in the way of a holiday shopping excursion. Oh, there’s a spot open right over there.”
“Sometimes, I feel like you get a little too into the coffee shop cover.” Alice pulls the Jeep into the empty lot with practiced ease, making sure the wheels are even before turning the engine off. “Anyway, you ready for some Christmas shopping?”she asks while unbuckling her seat belt.
“Boy, am I ever!”
–
The two of them make their way through all the holiday displays, taking moments occasionally to stop and admire the festive decorations adorning almost every inch of the mall. Clover marvels at the Santa photo-op taking up a significant section of the main lobby.
“What, want to sit on Santa’s lap?” Alice says with a smile. “You’re about the right size for it.”
“First of all, heck off. Secondly, I could do that if I wanted to without waiting for Christmas to come around.”
“Touche.”
They browse stores ranging from confectioneries to holiday-specific clothing stores, trying to hide what they’re getting for each other and barely succeeding. At one point Clover goes into a lingerie store and comes out with a lacy set that is definitely too big for her, face tinged a pale shade of pink, to which Alice just shakes her head in both disapproval and mild amusement.
After a while, Clover says that she needs to use the bathroom, to which Alice says she’ll be waiting just outside. When she comes out, however, Alice is nowhere to be found – not in the bathroom, not in the nearby shops, nowhere. Clover can feel her heart starting to race in her chest as air catches in her throat. She pulls out her phone with shaking hands, barely managing to type out a alice where are you please tell me before sprinting as fast as she can down the mall lobby, not quite knowing where she’s going but deciding that running is better than standing still. Almost barreling over at least four grown men in the process, she races around faster than she has since the second nonary game.
“Clover? CLOVER! I’m right here!”
She whips her head around and comes to a screeching halt, her breath finally catching up with her. Her panic bubbles up in her voice as she shouts “Where were you, Alice? You know you can’t just – can’t just – disappear like that!” Alice looks down and furrows her brows as Clover continues.
“Honestly, what the hell were you thinking, leaving me like that? You know we aren’t supposed to just, I dunno, abandon each other, right?”
“I wasn’t abandoning you, Clover! I was-” Alice halts herself in the middle of her sentence. “Look, it’s not important what I was doing, but I definitely wasn’t doing whatever you think-”
“You broke protocol! You’re supposed to at least tell me that you went somewhere and that you didn’t just, I don’t know, get kidnapped or something!” She pauses to wipe her eyes before murmuring, “You didn’t think I would be worried about that after it’s happened to me twice?”
Alice just looks down to the floor, running her hands through her hair before speaking. “I’m sorry. I should have known better, I just…wanted to surprise you.” She holds out her hand before Clover has a chance to interrupt her. “In retrospect, it was kind of stupid, but….well, there’s a good reason for it, trust me.”
“Am I going to learn this reason?”
“Eventually. Not today, though.” She gives an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I should’ve known better than to just leave you alone without telling you were I was going. Anything you want me to do right now?”
“Can we just…sit for a minute?” Clover points to a bench nearby. “Still gotta…catch my breath…”
Alice obliges, helping her over to the seat and rubbing her back as she closes her eyes and breathes as deeply as she can, trying to still her shaking. She rubs the palms of her hands with her thumbs, focusing on centering herself as she traces slow circles. In, out, in, out. She opens her eyes and gives her girlfriend a shaky smile. “I-I’m okay,” she says, trying to convince herself of it more than she’s trying to sell it to Alice.
“You sure? Your eyes still look red.”
“I’ll be back to normal in a minute or too,” Clover says – a bit of an over-exaggeration, but not too much of one, when she can feel her heart slowing down from its horse-race tempo a few minutes ago. “I’m sorry for wasting some of our date time.”
“You don’t need to apologize, Clover,” Alice says, looking her in the eyes as she says so. “I should be the one apologizing for pushing you into an anxiety attack.”
The two of them don’t say anything else for a minute, taking a breather, before standing up together once Clover indicates she’s ready.
“Well, anything you want to do to end our date on a better note than that?”
“Actually,” Clover says with a mischievous grin, “I saw that they just opened up an ice rink next to the mall.”
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Alice replies, shivering at the mere idea of skating with a jacket as thin as hers is right now. “In this?”
“Uh, yeah, obviously? You just bought a coat.”
“You’ve got a point,” Alice sighs. “Alright, I’m up for it. But I’m warning you, I’m probably a better skater than you.”
“Game on!” Clover says, mouth spread into a toothy grin which gets even the ice queen smiling.
–
As it turns out, Alice is most definitely a better skater than Clover is. Sure, at first she needs to hold onto the backboard of the rink while moving her feet five inches forward at a time, but, after a few minutes on the ice, she’s the one who has to pull her partner up from constant falls. Clover, as a result, slips into making puns in an attempt to show her dominance.
“Hey, this ice rink is just as frozen as you are!”
“Very funny,” Alice says while rolling her eyes, though Clover can tell she finds the joke mildly amusing despite the obviousness of the pun. “Honestly surprised that you didn’t go for a ‘Hey, this rink is All-ice!‘”
“That’s too blatant of a joke,” she replies, deadpan. “I’m not going to go for something that obvious.”
“And the frozen ice rink joke wasn’t?”
They pause before each of their overly serious expressions causes the other to break into laughter, Clover’s higher-pitched giggle melding well with Alice’s lower alto laugh. The two of them hold loop their hands together, skating in circles around the rink. Alice starts moving her feet into fancy patterns, almost going into a twirl at one point before Clover has to remind her who’s linked to one of her arms. In response, she picks up the girl in pink, putting her into a piggy back around her while she spins.
“Enough, enough!” she laughs. “I get it, you actually have talent on the ice. What aren’t you good at?”
“Well, I’m certainly not good at being you,” Alice replies with a smile. She leans down to peck Clover on the forehead – a gesture to which she immediately blushes – before asking if she’s had enough skating.
“Theoretically, I could skate forever,” Clover replies. “In actuality, I’m freezing my butt off, my feet hurt, and I really just want to go and get dinner.”
“Can’t blame you for the last two, though that first one is a little too literal for my tastes.”
“Shut up,” she says while brushing bits of ice off the back of her skirt. She bends down to untie the laces of her rented skates, sighing at relief when she gets one of the boots off. “I didn’t mean it that way and you know it.”
“Suuuure you didn’t.” Alice continues on as Clover glares at her. “Anyway, what did you want to have for dinner? I was thinking Chinese would be nice.”
At that, her girlfriend’s eyes light up, and she nods furiously, not even needed to reply out loud. She stands up after taking off her other skating boot and putting her own shoes back on, leaning up on her toes to kiss Alice on the nose before taking her hand. The two of them grin at each other while making their way out of the rink to Clover’s favorite restaurant a few blocks away, knowing that they can count on just enjoying one another’s company. Their relationship isn’t perfect by any means, but is certainly one which both of them would miss if it was gone.
–
Earlier, at the mall:
“Hey, isn’t that Alice?” Junpei asks Akane, who’s sitting next to him drinking hot chocolate after a long hour of holiday shopping themselves. He squints, not quite sure if that’s her at this distance, especially when his knowledge of her in this timeline is fairly limited to selfies that Clover has sent him.
Akane turns her head around and glances into the storefront “Yep, that’s her. Not exactly sure what she’s doing in a jewelry store, though – she’s not really the type to do buy something for herself.”
He shrugs a bit, before his eyes widen in possible realization. “Wait, is she – “
“Unless you want to ask her yourself, I doubt you’re going to find out.”
Junpei sighs, knowing that going up to a tiger and poking it with a stick would probably be less scarring than walking up to Alice out of nowhere and asking her what she was doing buying jewelry. Probably for the best, as she walked away a few minutes later, putting the tiny bag into one from a clothing store in what he thought was an attempt to hide it.
Why would she need to hide a jewelry bag? he briefly thinks to himself, before shrugging and returning to inhaling his smoothie. Guess I’ll find out eventually.
CHAPTER 2
Alice presses the doorbell of the Kurashiki apartment, hearing a “Coming, coming!” a few seconds later before the door opens to reveal a grinning Junpei. “Hey, Alice, nice seeing you!”
She follows him into the living room, where everyone is gathered around a tree that looks like it was decorated by an eight year old with too many baubles at their disposal. She’d honestly rather be at the Fields’ house for celebrating Christmas, with at least one less Kurashiki at that kind of party than here, but, alas, Akane and Aoi have the biggest apartment, and so, by default, host the annual holiday party. She takes off her jacket and puts it on the coat rack, smiling a bit to herself as she thinks, Well, I’ve got a bigger audience this way.
Alice has barely entered the living room before she hears a cry of “Alice!” and feels a vice grip of a hug surround her. “You’re gonna love the present I got you.”
“Same goes for you,” she says with a smile as Clover unhooks her arms from Alice’s waist.
They take seats next to one another on the carpet, opposite Junpei, who’s sitting between Akane and Carlos and looking at both with glances of adoration. Light, who probably arrived at the same time Clover did, has his arm around Aoi’s in a way that seems to indicate more than just a blind man needing physical guidance. Phi sits between the people she now knows as her parents, looking even more uncomfortable than usual – she probably didn’t want to even go to the party, Alice thinks, but probably felt obligated to, after everything that had happened in the last few years. She is a bit surprised to see Eric, who is looking just as uncomfortable as usual, but figures that Junpei must have invited him in a gesture of kindness. Even Hazuki and the man everyone continues calling Seven despite knowing his actual name are here, probably because of – or maybe despite – Akane’s invitation.
“Well, let’s get this party on the road, shall we?” Junpei says as he stands up. “We don’t really have any order set up for this, so whoever wants to start can, I guess.”
“I’ll go.” Carlos raises his hand, then picks up a package wrapped with simple white and gold striped wrapping paper. “This one’s for you, Junpei.”
He opens it carefully to reveal a flannel, to which Akane, Aoi, Seven, and Hazuki all start laughing while he simply says, “Haven’t had one of these in a while.” Carlos then whispers something neither Alice nor Clover can hear into his ear, to which Junpei blushes and mutters “Thanks.”
The gift-giving goes on for a while, the party-goers presenting each other presents from the cute (“Aw, a scarf covered in kittens!”) to the overly utilitarian (“We don’t need another blender, Light,” followed by a “So tell me, what do you need that you couldn’t just buy yourself?”) to the frankly weird (“….a giant gel creature?” “It’s a jellyfish toy!” “…….Pardon, but why are you giving me a jellyfish toy?”). By the end, though, Clover notices that her girlfriend hasn’t given her a present at all – weird, when she’s usually one of the first to go – a concern quickly put to rest when she claps loudly to grab the attention of the living room.
“I have a gift that I didn’t give to Clover earlier,” Alice says with some degree of hesitance. “I thought it was better to wait until the end.”
“Well, give it to her, then!” Aoi yells impatiently, to which Alice just smiles and nods. She reaches into the pocket of her dress before taking out a small rectangular box and dropping on to one knee. Clover’s eyes immediately widen as she claps her hands over her mouth to try to cover an “Oh my god…” from escaping.
“Clover Field, in the three years that we’ve known each other, I have grown to trust you more than anyone else in my life. From the moment you picked me up off the side of a road in the middle of the desert, I knew you were going to play an important part in my life, but I didn’t realize just how important until you joined the SOIS – and, after that, when we started dating.” She pauses a moment to glance for a moment around the room, noticing all the open-mouthed faces around her before she continues.
“You are the most beautiful, most caring, most kind person I have ever met, and I would be honored if you wanted me to spend the rest of my life with you.” She pulls the ring out of the box. “Clover, will you marry me?”
“Yes, oh my god, yes!”
ZEcret Santa 