Disclaimer: I recently got obsessed with Game of Thrones, but doesn't mean I own it!
Story: It's that time of the year. The annual Stark-Baratheon Lannister family gathering is at hand. For Sansa, this year things are the same and not. Though...maybe a little more not, if some of her interactions are any indications. After all, some of her guy friends are being really strange with her. Maybe it's just the holiday spirit? Then again, she's still cooking with Tywin and snarking with Renly, and maybe she's still awkward around Roose -but that's just been the way of things, right? Well the hell did Oberyn come from though?! (Kicking off this Universe like I should've ages ago)
Set as a gigantic modern AU universe.
Spoilers: Nope.
Warnings: Nope.
Pairings: (Main) Roosa (Roose /Sansa), Stansa (Stannis/Sansa), and Tysan (Tywin/Sansa). (Side) Oberyn/Sansa for much fun and irritation XD

Deck the Halls
Chapter One: Jingle Bells, Joffrey Smells

Madness. That was all that could describe the scene at the Stark family home.

Well, that and chaos.

Sansa was pretty sure the two were interchangeable however. But then again, in her opinion, she'd always been the most sensible Stark child, and was doing her best to ride the craziness as well as she could.

Which also included the 99 missed calls from Renly, the one Baratheon she was really close to. Honestly, even if he was older than her, he acted younger than her most of the time. Then again, it was holiday time and he always swore up and down to her that his family, his brothers and extended, drove him insane. He had made sure this time of the year that she definitely was coming with her family and provide him with "sane" company.

Unfortunately, the Tyrells were sticking to Highgarden this year, so no Loras for Renly to snuggle with (and help Sansa with Renly) and no Margaery for Sansa to be girly and gossip with. The only upside of that was saving Sansa from the constant bickering of Margaery and Renly (and inevitably Jaime) from who was her best friend.

"Spacing out again?" Arya huffed, leaning against Sansa's doorway.

"Only because I'm trying to escape from the family," she replied back dryly, giving her sister a look.

Arya smirked. "Too bad, Sis. You're stuck with us, no matter what!"

Sansa rolled her eyes. "Please tell me you packed at least one dress. We'll never hear the end of it."

Her shorter sister made a face. "Ugh! Yeah, yeah. I shoved one in my bag…I think. Whatever, it'll pass."

Sansa was skeptical but just let it be. If Arya didn't, she'd just have to disappear from the scene before Catelyn Stark laid into Arya about it. In the meantime, she should finish her own packing before she joined the others.

"Rickon! Stop running naked around the house with Shaggydog!"

Sansa inwardly sighed and yanked her luggage closer to herself.

A large family (and very much close with each other), Sansa knew the Starks tended to be very different about family, against the other high society families. They didn't mind their closeness nor showing it. They were all really close and they enjoyed being and acting a family.

It was such a shame that families like the Baratheons or Lannisters were much the opposite.

Sansa knew, as she entered the foyer of the Baratheon family home, that the Baratheon brothers were the epitome of dysfunctional, which echoed into Robert Baratheon (her father's best friend and 'uncle' to her and her siblings) own family with Cersei.

And now that woman was a piece of work.

"I'm spacing out," she mumbled to herself, shaking her head. She looked around at her own family though, lingering on Arya for a bit.

No matter what, even if she got along less with certain siblings than others, she wouldn't trade them for anything. She loved them all dearly.

With a soft, fond smile, she leaned forward and tugged Arya's hair harshly.

"Hey!" Arya turned to her indignantly. "Why'd you do that?"

"Payback for flinging some of this morning's breakfast and staining my blouse," Sansa said dryly, giving her a pointed look.

Arya blushed but grinned widely. "Then I got off lucky."

Sansa huffed but kept quiet, not letting her sister know she was still plotting her revenge. It was one of her favorite blouses!

As they were beginning to head further in, the door behind them opened and she turned to see familiar faces. Grinning to herself, she saw the Boltons enter. There was Domeric, Ramsay, and —of course, Roose, her father's other best friend (not that Robert would ever need to know that or would ever acknowledge it) and also one of Stark Industries' employees.

"Roose, good of you to come," her father said solemnly, though a hint of a smile showed through as he came over and grasped Roose's arm and hand in greeting.

"Thank you for the invite," he replied softly. "Are you sure your friend won't mind?"

"No, he won't," Ned Stark said with a conviction that Sansa actually didn't echo —Robert could be kind of weird about her family…Um, just a bit possessive, she supposed.

"Don't know, Dad," Robb said her thoughts aloud. "Uncle Robert is weird about us."

A small smirk flitted across her lips.

At that, Ned looked awkward and coughed. "Right. Well…Glad you and your boys can make it."

"Thanks for inviting us, Mr. Stark," Domeric said politely while Ramsay grinned manically and waved. Ah, the slightly deranged Bolton…who she somehow was friends with.

She still had frequent visions of making the family dogs rush and maul him whenever he drove her crazy.

As the even larger group started to head in, she suddenly locked eyes with Roose, and couldn't help her breath hitching at the intense look in his eyes.

Dear Gods, she'd forgotten how mesmerizing Roose Bolton's marbling gray eyes were.

Directed to the rooms that they usually stayed in whenever they were there, Sansa had lugged her suitcase after herself quickly to avoid any of the crazy mess that she was hoping to avoid that might've started already. Only Robert had come to greet them boisterously (eying Roose with a narrowed glare that she worried at).

She'd just gone into her room and had pulled in her luggage, when her door opened again and Renly appeared in the flesh, grinning in relief.

"Darling! You're home!" he said exaggeratedly, before grabbing her hand and speeding out of there.

Sansa pressed her lips tightly closed. To warn off a smile or frown, she wasn't sure. Renly could be a force of nature when he wanted to be, and of course as soon as she had tried to settle down in her room, he'd suddenly appear and basically kidnapped her.

"Renly! My arm hurts!" she protested, a slight pout forming.

He immediately let go and looked chagrined, his handsome face looking apologetic.

"Sorry, Sans. I'm just excited you're here. Finally, some sane and wanted company," Renly said with a wink, but Sansa caught the glimpse of bitterness and annoyance her best friend had when it came to his brothers and 'extended' family.

"Christmas will be over soon enough, and then you'll see Loras," she promised and Renly cracked a smile.

"We'll get to see him in a few minutes," he revealed to her. "But I'll get to be with him after Christmas. We were thinking of spending New Year's in maybe Sunspear or Lysene. Want to come with us?"

"I've got no plans," she thought about it. "If you two don't mind me crashing your duo."

"Babe, you and me are a bad love song you can't get rid of," he snickered. "Or rather that Loras can't get rid of."

Sansa giggled and rolled her eyes, and relented to being pulled into Renly's room once they had reached it. The way too extravagant suite made her feel almost out of place, before it was pushed out of mind when Renly brought her to his bed and snatched up his laptop. Making herself comfortable on it and beside Renly as he set up the video call, she waited patiently until Loras appeared on the screen.

The effeminate, pretty man (whose looks still made Sansa swoon sometimes) smiled brightly at them.

"My two favorite people in the world! Merry Christmas, my daffodils! How're things?"

"Sansa just came, thank the Gods," Renly started first, tossing her a playful air kiss. "I've been driven absolutely mad here by myself until now. Since Sansa's finally here, I'll tell the both of you the absolute insanity that I've had to endure. You two should be proud of me."

"Absolutely, baby," Loras soothed while Sansa just raised an eyebrow, lips upturned slightly.

"Okay, so when I arrived, dreadful Joffrey was the first to see me and made the usual stupid comment about my fabulous gayness. Something stupid like 'how was my bum?' or something incredibly inappropriate like that. Ugh, that brat needs boot camp!" Renly sneered.

"I don't think even boot camp could straighten him out," Sansa wrinkled her nose.

"Tch! Tell me about it," Renly grumbled. "Anyway, I got myself settled and then I had to sit through dinner with Robert's family. Seven Hells, that was a nightmare! Cersei and Robert wouldn't stop sniping at each other for a second, and if by miracle they did, it was only to see who could drink the most! Joffrey joined in on the excessive drinking and poor Tommen and Myrcella sort of awkwardly sat there, tried to finish their plates as soon as possible, before looking at me in apology and abandoning me at the table to hide out somewhere!"

Sansa patted his back comfortingly while Loras did his best to soothe him through the screen.

"And then hell continued when both Stannis and Tywin arrived the next day! I'm just glad they didn't arrive at the same time, but still! Stannis was his usual grumpy self, but Shireen was her usual bright and sweet self. Oh! Looks like she's been practicing the hairstyles you and me taught her to hide those unfortunate ears of hers," he directed to Sansa.

Sansa remembered, knowing how self-conscious Shireen could be, mostly due to her face and her ears. She remembered last time how she and Renly had taken her aside to help her do something to cheer her up and help her out a little with at least her ears. Sansa didn't think it was a big deal, even though she knew that Shireen was probably never going to be the prettiest girl. But she did know how not having any confidence in one self had a lot to do with how one saw themselves, and she didn't want Shireen to feel horrible about herself.

She just had to drum up some confidence in herself and ignore the idiots around her!

"Maybe we can experiment a little with makeup and help her hide her scars," Sansa brought up.

"Oooh, good idea," Renly nodded. "Someone has to make her feel pretty and confident in herself. The Gods know Selyse and Stannis aren't doing anything."

"Yeah, though beauty isn't everything, Ren," she reminded him, though between Loras and Renly, the two men were insufferably picky and focused on looks.

Renly waved her off. "Yes, yes, I know. But I'm sure Shireen would like to at least find a way to get the focus off of those features and we can build up that confidence of hers in the meantime. Plus, she gets to be pampered and treated like a princess. Who doesn't want to feel like a princess?"

"I'll try to mix up color samples so match Shireen's skin tone," Loras told them. "When I'm done, I'll send you guys those samples so you can try out the makeup on Shireen's skin."

"Thanks, my flower prince," Renly playfully batted his eyelashes at his boyfriend.

"I have to go," Loras told them regretfully. "Otherwise I'd love to spend all night talking with you two."

"Aww," Sansa gave him an exaggerated pout. "We'll miss you too, Loras! Tell Margaery I said hi!"

"Bye, my daffodils! I'll tell Marge, but you know she'll be furious she missed you, Sansa," Loras gave them a 'yikes' look before waving and logging off.

Sansa moved to get off the bed when Renly's hand shot out to grab her wrist.

"Don't go yet," Renly's shoulders slumped. "Please stay a bit?"

She gave a soft smile. "Oh, alright. But don't hog the bed, Ren!"

"It's King! Plenty of damn room, Firecracker!"

Started 12/19/19 – Completed 12/25/19

Omake!

"Well…it's not perfect."

"Better than before —all blood and guts, fighting, and human idiocy!"

"I rather liked the blood and guts and fighting."

"The human idiocy was kind of funny too."

"Never mind all that! At least we've got another do-over and we can keep our favorites on the table."

"Ramsay's never been a favorite though."

"…Hm, we did try to fix that mess."

"He's better than before?"

"He's still got a few screws loose."

"I did say this world wasn't perfect…"

Started 2/2/20 – Completed 2/2/20

A/n: Happy belated Christmas fic XD I didn't manage to finish this during the Hols, and I thought I'd just save this for this year's holidays, but…Then I realized I need to get this published, so I can actually get this universe established and start in the spring break portion of this universe for the future (so here's to a chapter a day!) XD So here we are! Welcome to this mess of a universe :D

Quick Points:

1. Current GoT Fics: Her Song of Fire and Ice (SansaxRoose/Stannis/Tywin), A Red King Bowed (Roose/Sansa), March to My Heartbeat (Stannis/Sansa), and Deck the Halls today, to get started on that 'verse~