Day 1: Mistletoe

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I'm going to be flooding your f-lists. Sorry not sorry.

As part of a yearly tradition with yabamena, we write each other drabbles for the 12(+1) days of Christmas. This is the one I wrote for Christmas Day. These two are step-siblings who met (and were interested in each other) before their parents did and then later found out there were going to become a family. Awkward.

Manny had to admit that Christmas in Connecticut was actually pretty nice. The forecasted snow showers had begun a few hours earlier than expected, dusting the lawn and streets in soft white powder. Even if it turned out to be nothing more than flurries, it still meant he was getting a white Christmas, and he'd take it.

The festivities were mostly over now, and the last few stragglers were leaving the Lee-Miles holiday party. Manny, his mother, Michaela, and her father were cleaning up the last of the food, putting away anything perishable and worrying about everything else tomorrow. It was late, and Alan and Manny's mom insisted they were tired and wanted to go to bed to make Manny suspect only the latter part was true and gross because he didn't need the mental image

Not that that's what he was focused on. As he put away the last of the non-alcoholic punch his eyes strayed to the mistletoe that hung in the wide archway between the living room and the den. Several hours earlier, he and Michaela had crossed paths, managing to be under the thing at exactly the same moment. With family and too many other people around, Manny bent and gave her the most brotherly kiss on the cheek he could possibly manage, but the expression in his eyes was anything but.

An hour later, when he was sure their parents were asleep or otherwise occupied, Manny cut through the Jack-and-Jill bathroom to sneak into Michaela's room.

"What took you so long?" Michaela asked, her voice that balance between slightly irritated and come hither that always made his knees a little weak.

"I had to get something," he replied with a shrug, climbing onto her bed and caging her with one arm pressed against the wall behind her bed. The other held the mistletoe from downstairs above their heads.

Many's cocky grin slid off his face just before his lips met hers in the kiss he couldn't give her before and had longed to for hours.

They never noticed when he dropped the mistletoe.