Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was a relatively early morning when Lumine woke up. Well, early for Christmas at any rate. Not many people woke up at 8am on a holiday after all, but Lumine was too used to the routine of waking up early to break it off. She looked out of the window of her room to see snow piled up and smiled slightly - a snow white Christmas brought her memories of her brother.

With a mournful sigh, she lamented not being able to spend this Christmas with Aether, coming and going from Liyue was too costly for them to afford. Dragging her sluggish body off bed, she decided to splash her face with water to stop any gloomy thoughts.

Lumine stopped at her door in surprise to see Childe up and raring to go. Wasn't he going to be busy all night with work? How come he was already up? Before she could ask him, however, he spotted her first.

“Hey, girlie!” there was a wide grin on his face "Guess what? It snowed through the night and now we have enough of it to make snowmen! We should go make some!"

"How do you have so much energy- nevermind, don't answer that. Snowmen? Really?"

Childe cocked an eyebrow "Don't tell me you're too grown up for snowmen, girlie. Too mature to have fun?"

Lumine could sense it. If she didn’t agree to this, Childe would tease her for the whole week about it. She considered the pros and cons and decided it wasn’t worth it to endure Childe’s teasing or whining for a whole week.

“Fine. But I need to wash up first and eat breakfast.”

“Okay! Breakfast is ready anyway!!”

—

After breakfast with an overly excited Childe, Lumine set out to build some snowmen with him. As she was adding the details on her snowman, she frowned a bit, but it hardly took a second before she was hit with a snowball. The frown quickly changed to a grimace and then a scowl towards Childe. Settled on the fact that their snowmen would hardly live to see the day, they ended up as ammunition for their crazy snowball fight.

Technically there were no winners, but if their smiles were anything to go by, both of them had won something.

They were drenched from head to toe, though, so as soon as they called truce due to the lack of ammo, Lumine sneezed. It was an unspoken sign that this was enough tomfoolery for today. 

"Aw girlie, I should have bundled you up better," Childe said with the innocent smile of someone who hadn't started a snowball fight. He pulled his scarf off his neck and wrapped it around her. "Here we go."

"You know this scarf is also pretty drenched from the fight right?"

"It's the thought that counts, girlie." He winked. Lumine tried to groan at him, but ended up laughing.

—

Once clean and dry, Lumine thought she'd just resume her day as usual after humouring Childe, but apparently it wasn't enough for him. Not if the look on his face had anything to say about it.

"Let's go out for lunch!"

Lumine took the suggestion into consideration for a second, it was already late enough for lunch but…

"Is there nothing in the fridge to eat? I thought we had some leftovers-"

"Aw come on, let's eat something special today. We can leave leftovers for tomorrow!" Childe grabbed Lumine's coat, despite her protests. "I'll treat you, so how about it?"

Well, if he's treating her… "Fine, let's go." She said as she snatched her coat back.

—

Childe has gotta be kidding her.

"Um, Childe? That's a restaurant hosting couples' Christmas specials."

"Yep- and the discount is 50% off! It's far too good a deal tomiss it now."

"But Childe we-"

"-look great together, right? It'll be easy to get the discount!" He winked at her and pulled her along by the arm to get in line.

Now, he had done this a couple of times before, but with this silly idea of pretending to be a couple and the fact it was cold enough to warrant them being close… Lumine felt flustered. Childe was pretty warm after all, and their height difference allowed her to rest her head on his shoulder perfectly without issues. She tried to snap out of it– they were friends and roommates for crying out loud, it'd be awkward to create any sort of hope in that aspect.

Once inside, there wasn't anything unusual — they placed their orders, talked and laughed as they usually would — but deep in her mind, she kept thinking back to when they were pressed together with their arms intertwined.

On the way back, Lumine was once again distracted, when she ended up slipping on the snow and falling- but, instead of the crash, she found herself being held by Childe. Almost like at the end of a dance number.

"Don't go falling for me now." And he winked. Winked!!

Lumine quickly got back to her feet and scowled "As if!" But being too flustered to think of a proper comeback. She was blushing up to her ears. She could hear his laughter and then he came up to her and put an arm over her shoulders to help keep her steady.

"Okay, but just to be safe, I don't want you hurting yourself now."

"What if you fall?"

"I grew up in Snezhnaya! A little snow and ice won't get to me."

Lumine grumbled, but accepted his arm over her. It was pretty warm after all.

—

Lumine isn't a typically lazy or low stamina person… but all of this running around with Childe left her quite exhausted. She didn't even remember when she fell asleep on the sofa for an unprompted nap. As she was getting up, removing the quilt covering her (wasn't this Childe's?), she realized… The apartment was completely decorated for Christmas. When did Childe even have time to buy all these decorations and how did he put them all up without her noticing? She could even smell food being prepared!

“Childe?” Lumine called out, wondering if it really was his handiwork alone. It shouldn’t be possible, yet all their friends went on vacation…

“Oh! Girlie, you’re up!” Childe’s head pops from behind the door leading to the kitchen. “Com’ere, I can use another pair of hands!”

Rubbing her eyes still, she slowly got out of the warmth and comfort of the quilt (it smelled nice too) to get to the kitchen. She immediately realized Childe was making cookies. Lumi couldn’t attest for the taste yet, but she giggled as she saw how hideous they looked.

“Hey! What’s so funny, huh??”

“Childe, the arms are uneven, one leg is bigger than the other and the head is cracked… and I’m only looking at the first cookie.”

“I didn’t have a cookie cutter, ok!? If you can do better, then why don’tcha! I can finish making dinner in the meantime.”

“You’re making dinner?” She thought they’d be ordering something, but he's really cooking dinner for them? Not that he’s a bad cook, decorating cookies aside, he’s just too busy most of the time. And suddenly he’s free for the whole day-

Her train of thought was interrupted by an apron being tossed over her head.

“Of course I am! Now, you’re on cookie duty while I finish over here!”

Seeing as how she couldn’t just let him do all this work on his own, at least not as she thinks of eating his home cooked food after so long, she reluctantly agreed to finish the cookies. And much better decorated than what Childe had managed, at that.

Through the entire cooking process, Childe kept talking to Lumine and they exchanged more than a few laughs over it.

—

They have dinner later that night, Lumine lowkey lamented it was only the two of them rather than having more of their friends around, but she didn’t voice it out loud. After all, Childe was in such a chipper mood, she didn’t want to ruin it. Though it did make her wonder… How did he have so much energy? He's been almost unstoppable ever since the morning!

And as expected, Childe’s cooking was delicious and the cookies actually looked decent once Lumine was done with them. Once Lumine thought the day was finally over, Childe trapped her on the sofa with hot cocoa, the quilt from earlier and a cheesy hallmark Christmas movie . She couldn’t believe him.

Alas, she was trapped, and in between all the cringe lines she had to endure while Childe laughed his ass off (seriously, what was so funny in it?), she ended up blurting the question that plagued her the whole day.

“When did you prepare all of this and why?”

“Hm?” Childe was wiping tears from his eyes when he looked at her.

“Like… You planned this, right? But why? I thought you’d be busy with work, then you’re not and you’re roping me into all kinds of activities… I just wondered why?”

It seemed like her question sobered Childe up really quickly from his fit of laughter, though his face quickly looked somewhat bashful. With only the light of the TV to let Lumine see him, she couldn’t tell very well, but was he blushing ? Before Lumine could question him on that, he just shrugged.

“Ah, well, you seemed really down when you said you couldn’t visit Aether for the holidays, and I just thought how you’d be all gloomy the whole day, so I, uh,” he scratched the back of his head. “I planned this so you’d be too distracted to be sad. It’s Christmas after all! You shouldn’t be gloomy today!”

“You planned this ever since then-? B-but I mean… It’s Christmas!”

“Yeah?”

“It’s like…. You could be with anyone else in the world for Christmas. Like— People important to you such as– your family, your friends, literally anyone … but you decided to stay with me?”

Childe scrunched up his face, looking to the side as if in deep thought, she knew that look on his face when he'd just pretend to think hard, before nodding and grinning. “Yeah. I mean, why wouldn’t I? It’s you we’re talking about, girlie.” He poked her nose, breaking her surprised expression before he continued. “You’re not just ‘anyone’, okay? You’re exactly someone I’d want to spend Christmas with.”

At her stunned silence, he ended up chuckling and adding “I mean, I thought you’d get it with the restaurant couple special and the hallmark movie-” before he was interrupted with a really hard facepalm from Lumine that surprised him. “Girlie?!”

“I should have knoooown, my god, only you would do such a roundabout way of saying you like someone!”

Childe laughed awkwardly as he attempted to compose a reply to that “Yeah, well-” but he paused when he noticed Lumine changed from facepalming to hiding her face in her hands. “Um, girlie—? Lumi?”

“I think we’re just both dumbasses,” she laughed but removed her hands from her face, to reveal her teary eyes. “But thank you, Childe.”

Cheesy movie completely forgotten, they shared their own cheesy Christmas first kiss.