AN: Happy Holidays to everyone! Thought I'd write a Christmas themed oneshot as a sort of early present (hopefully a good one) to everyone in this fandom. I also really wanted to thank Wolfy, and wish her a happy Christmas and New Year, because she puts up with my rambling all the time and has been such a brilliant friend this year. Thank you so much for helping me write everything we do together, it means so much.

Speaking of which, here's a message from her to you all!

"I want to thank you guys for all the support. I'm just helping with ideas here and there, bit seeing all the positive feedback is really rewarding. Here wishing a very happy xmas and new year to all the readers and to our dear teamJNPR. Thanks for letting me take part in your awesomeness. Wolfy heading out."

It Always Goes Wrong On Christmas

Luka was ready. The decorations had been put up weeks ago, the lights outside were flashing merrily away despite her neighbours giving her dirty looks from across the road. The biscuits she'd made were in the oven, making the house smell suitably festive.

God, but she really fucking hated Christmas.

The decorations were put up because of constant nagging, the lights on due to not wanting to be outdone by her awful neighbours, and the biscuits in the oven to impress, since the dinner was being brought over later on, since a whole turkey wouldn't fit in her tiny oven. There was only one thing left to do.

Every year, without fail, Christmas carollers came around to her street. And every year, without fail, Luka had to stand and listen to them drone on with a smile plastered on her face. If they'd been kids, she would've felt a little more festive cheer, but no, these were adults, looking to spoil what was Luka's rightfully grumpy Christmas. But this year, the stars were aligned in her favour, since there was snow, and a hell of a lot of it.

This meant war.

Luka had prepared a small, well, fortress was putting it lightly. It was in front of her window, on her miniscule front lawn. From this vantage point, she couldn't see much, but she didn't need to. As soon as she heard the first words of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" she'd make those carollers wish they'd never been born.

There wasn't long to wait now. Luka had wrapped up warm, and she was wearing hard-wearing boots and thermal socks. She even had thermal underwear on. Luka hadn't known thermal bras were a thing, but apparently, they were.

She was taking no chances.

Footsteps, crunching through the snow. They'd stopped a few doors down. Three knocks on the door. Waiting. The door opened with a creak, and Luka heard a gasp of surprise.

'Oh, how… lovely.'

They started to sing, and Luka stayed crouched behind her hiding place. It wouldn't be long now. She had to be ready. Looking at her pile of snowballs, she knew then, that she would win. They would be no match against her weaponry.

More footsteps. They were coming her way. Three, two, one…

Blam! The first snowball made its target, and she heard a squeal of surprise. Another, and another, with a chorus of shouts that made Luka positively light up with holiday cheer. This was perfect. Her ideal Christmas was just a few more snowballs away. Throwing a few more over her fortress, Luka ducked back behind as a snowball came her way.

That wasn't in the plan.

She poked her head over the wall of snow.

Oh, shit.

Stood in the middle of Luka's garden path was one lone soldier, holding a snowball in her mitten. Two tell-tale twin-tails cascaded down from her woolly hat, and Luka felt a pang of guilt as she took in how absolutely soaking wet Miku was. Miku, her girlfriend. Miku, who's parents were coming over for Christmas dinner to meet her for the first time in a couple of hours.

'Luka.' Her voice was deadly calm. 'Would you like to tell me what the hell you're doing?'

'Uh,' Luka said, eloquently. 'I was…'

Miku held up a finger. 'Don't finish that sentence.'

Silently, Luka got up from behind her fortress and went to the front door, opening it. Miku stomped up the rest of the garden path, murder in her eyes, and without warning, reached up, and dropped her snowball on Luka's head.

'I… probably deserved that.'

'Yes, yes you did.' With a satisfied smirk, Miku dusted off her hands, and headed inside. 'Um, Luka? Something's burning in here.'

'Oh, no!' She ran inside, grabbing her oven mitts and rescuing her poor, poor biscuits. Snow from her head dripped off and fell on to the foil, sizzling as it hit. 'Do you think we can rescue them?'

Miku wrinkled her nose. 'Luka, they're like charcoal. No, I don't think we can rescue them. Not even with copious amounts of icing. Why were you making biscuits anyway?'

Luka shuffled her feet, abandoning her creations on the worktop. 'I thought, well, maybe I could impress your parents.'

Miku's face softened. 'We'll make some more, if you've got any ingredients left. But first, I think we need to get changed.'

After a while of sorting through clothes and trying to make Miku look presentable in one of Luka's smaller jumpers, they returned downstairs and started to gather up ingredients. Miku wrinkled her nose as she picked up the printed out recipe with the edge of her fingers.

'What happened to this?'

'I, uh, kind of dropped mixture on it.'

Miku pinched the bridge of her nose, holding back a laugh. 'I'm gonna need a drink for this, aren't I?'

'Well, there's some wine in the–' Luka started, but Miku was already rifling through her cupboards.

'Ooh, look, Baileys!'

'I was saving that for your parents.'

'Pfft, they like wine, they can drink that. Now all we need is ice.'

'That stuff is way too sweet for me,' Luka said, shaking her head. 'But have at it if you really want.'

Rolling back the sleeves of Luka's jumper, Miku fixed herself a drink. 'Right, let's get started.'

'Why were you with the carollers, anyway?' Luka asked, as she measured out flour.

'I… wanted to sing you something,' Miku said, taking a drink and looking away. 'Why were you waiting with snowballs?'

Luka looked away. 'The carollers come every year, and I kind of grew to hate them.'

'You're a real Scrooge, you know that?' Miku teased, making Luka blush slightly. 'Anyway, lets get this ready. I've never actually baked before, but it can't be too hard, right?'

'Well, I managed to do them,' Luka said, ignoring the fact that the ones that went in the oven before were actually batch number three. The first batch had turned into, well, sludge, really. The second one she didn't want to think about anymore.

Unfortunately, having an extra pair of hands did not mean that they were more successful. Miku looked at the mess they'd made with pure disdain written all over her features. Silently, she picked up the bowl, and scraped… whatever it was, into the bin.

'Okay, take two,' Miku said. She'd already finished her first small glass and was already halfway through her second. Somehow, Luka thought she was a little louder than before. 'We can't go wrong more than once, surely.'

"Take two" was, in a word, disastrous. How they could've gotten it worse than the first attempt, Luka didn't want to know. She looked at the clock and thanked her lucky stars that Miku's parents weren't due for another hour and a half. Without uttering another word, Miku picked up the bowl and once again, tipped its contents into the bin.

'Why did you have to pick the most complicated biscuit recipe on earth?' Miku grumbled, slamming down the bowl on the worktop, beginning to measure out the ingredients. 'And why did you buy so much?'

'I panic-bought.'

Miku huffed, and they began to work again, Miku finishing off her fourth drink. Her hands were wobbling slightly, but she was keeping remarkably quiet throughout the process.

'Okay,' Luka sighed, once the mixture was made with no hiccups. 'We'll wait to put them in the oven until your parents arrive in… half an hour. Shit.'

'Ah, we'll be fine,' Miku said, dragging out the last word. She looked at Luka, then down at herself, and began to laugh. 'Okay, maybe not.'

Luka glanced down at herself and gulped. She, and Miku, were absolutely covered in flour and sticky patches of biscuit dough. Before they could make a move, there came a knock on the front door. Miku looked out of the window quickly, and turned around to Luka, face a little pale.

'They're early.'

'I can't greet them like this!' Luka said. She grabbed a kitchen towel and began to dab it furiously over her clothes. But the dough patches spread, and the flour coughed up in the air, coating her more. 'Oh god, I'm going to die a horrible death.'

'Well, let's face your horrible death together.'

'You're not coming with me?'

'To the afterlife? You're on your own, girl,' Miku said, laughing and heading to the front door. 'Come on, let's answer the door.'

Luka walked over with Miku, head up, shoulders squared. She'd face death proudly.

They opened the door, and Miku's parents stood on the other side, laden with packages containing food and presents. Luka looked at them, then down at the ground. Oh god, she couldn't do this. Not when she looked the way she did. She was sure there was flour in her hair. And maybe dough as well, she didn't know.

'Merry Christmas! Luka, it's so good to finally…' Miku's mother's words trailed off as she took in them both. Miku's father started to cough back laughter.

'Hello, Mrs. Hatsune,' Luka said, trying to appear nonchalant. Was this what death by humiliation felt like? 'And Mr. Hatsune. Would you like to come in?'

Miku was laughing. Luka was going to kill her, if she didn't die of embarrassment first. Then she'd haunt her from the afterlife.

Miku's mother's mouth was twitching. She was doing a lot better holding her laughter in than her daughter and husband. Luka thought it was a small miracle, all things considered.

'Please, call me Mari.' She gave a look to her husband, who was still laughing. 'And you can call him Makoto.'

'Thank you, I'll help you with those packages. You make yourselves at home,' Luka said, taking some of them off their hands and staggering to the kitchen with Miku in tow. Once they were in the clear, Luka whispered. 'What the hell do I do now? I look a mess, you've drank half a bottle of Baileys, I bet you any money those biscuits are going to burn–'

A cough from the doorway. Shit, it was Mari. 'I just wanted to see if you needed any help plating up?'

'We'll be absolutely fine,' Luka said. 'Please, you've come a long way, just sit down and relax.'

'Yeah, Mum,' Miku said. 'Really, I'll help Luka then help you guys get settled.'

'If you're sure,' Mari said, smiling and walking out of the room.

'Oh, god, she knows,' Luka said, putting her head in her hands.

Finally, after Miku managed to coax Luka's hands away from her face, they plated up the Christmas dinner together, Miku taking not-so-sneaky drinks straight out of the bottle. Luka managed to put the biscuits in the oven without having a meltdown. They even managed to bring the food to the table in one piece, even though Miku was swaying slightly by this point. They sat down, table sagging with the amount of food that Miku's parents had brought along with the crackers and nice plates that Luka had bought in her panic induced shopping spree.

Thankfully, Miku's parents took it all in stride, and they were all laughing and joking soon enough, though Luka noticed that Miku was growing quieter and quieter as they got through the dinner, and her wine glass was growing emptier and emptier. When they were about three-quarters the way through the meal, and Makoto had just finished telling a joke, Luka heard a slam.

Miku was face first in her dinner.

'Oh my god!' Mari cried, leaping up from her chair and rushing over while Luka watched in horror, knowing exactly what had happened. 'Oh thank god, she's just asleep.' She prodded her daughter with a disdainful look on her face. 'Miku. Miku. Miku!'

'Mmmpf,' was Miku's reply. She lifted her head up, covered in gravy. A small piece of stuffing that was affixed to her face fell off on to her plate with a thud. 'What? Did I miss something?' She put a hand to her face. 'Ah.'

A ping shocked them out of their silence.

'Uh, the biscuits are done,' Luka said, seemingly into the void. Apparently, this just made Mari and Makoto begin to laugh, though Luka couldn't do anything more than blush and look at the table in abject humiliation. 'I'll just… go get those.'

She sloped off to the kitchen, and rescued her and Miku's creations. They actually looked… okay. That made her sniff, and she rubbed at her eyes before placing them on the worktop.

'Hey.' It was Mari. 'Luka, honestly, there's nothing to be worried about. I'm not going to bite your head off or anything. I know what my daughter's like around alcohol. You should've seen her at her twenty-first.'

'Yeah,' Luka said, and she sniffed again. Mari came over and pulled her into a hug. 'Oh, no, I've got flour on me.'

'I don't care. It was like yesterday that I was constantly covered in baby sick. I've got something that'll cheer you up while Makoto cleans up Miku.'

They headed to the dining area again, and Mari rifled through the packages to bring out a book. Pulling a chair close to Luka, she laid it out on the table. Opening it, Luka saw the cutest pictures she'd ever seen in her life.

'Miku's baby pictures!' Luka gasped, and Mari laughed.

'She'll hate me for this, but I couldn't resist.' They flipped through them, giggling and cooing over the cute ones. 'You know, she never stops talking about you, so I guess I'd better do the Mum talk. Don't hurt my baby girl, okay? 'Cause if you do, it's definitely not going to be my husband you answer to. He's far too soft for that sort of thing.'

'Of course,' Luka said seriously. 'I love her lot, so you can count on me.'

'You. I like you.'

'Mum? What're you – oh no, not those pictures!' Miku cried, running over and slamming the book shut with a harrowed expression. She turned to Luka, eyes wide. 'How much did you see?' Mari just tapped her nose, and Miku pouted. 'Not fair.'

'You got what you deserved,' Mari said. 'Now, let's open some presents!'

Full, slightly less mortified, and with a couple of new presents from Miku's parents, Miku and Luka waved them off as they drove away in their car. The sky was dark, clear, and the air was so cold that they could see their breath.

Miku and Luka headed inside, and Miku flopped on the sofa, flinging her arm over her eyes.

'I can't believe I fell asleep in my dinner.'

Luka shook her head. 'Oh, yeah, I've got a present for you.'

'So do I! My parents brought it over for me,' Miku said. Then she grinned. 'Can I open mine first? Please?'

'You're such a child,' Luka said, with a laugh. Fetching Miku's present, she passed it over to her, and Miku immediately began to scrabble at it, looking for an opening. She managed to open it, and lifted the lid off the box. Tears filled her eyes. 'Oh, Luka, it's beautiful.'

'Do you like it? I got it for your concert next month. I know I got the measurements right, but we can always take it back–'

Miku flung her arms around her, letting the dress fall into her lap. 'No way! I'm wearing this at shows for the next million years. Now, your present. Go go go! Open it, open it!'

Luka started unwrapping it, and opening the box, she gasped. 'Oh, how cute!' It was a hair clip, shaped to look like an octopus, with matching coloured accessories. 'Thank you so much!'

Leaning forward, she planted a kiss on Miku's lips, and they stayed together like that for a moment before pulling away.

'Merry Christmas,' Luka whispered. Miku smiled.

'You know, you're still covered in flour.'

With a grin, Miku got up, and ran away, making Luka get up and chase after her.

Maybe Christmas wasn't so bad, after all.