Chapter Text
"December Holiday, you will look me in the eye when I am speaking to you."
She'll never admit it out loud, not in a million years, but sometimes her mom scares her. Not physically, or for her safety—even the threats to kick her out, when she got caught smoking and the scolding had turned into a screaming match, hadn't hit home. It's something deeper than that. Something in the way she holds herself, like it's only by an act of supreme will that she refrains from some further, unimaginable escalation. Her eyes flash like chips of ice catching the Antarctic sun, so cold you could burn yourself on it. The worst part, though? Her voice never so much as shakes.
Dess sneers.
"What, does that make it better for you?"
"Dess, honey—" Her dad: gentle but firm, and almost immediately cut off by her mom's response.
"Do you actually think we enjoy this?" She fixes Dess with a permafrost stare, her mouth a line so severe it could cut steel.
"Well, you sure seem to be getting something out of it." Dess lasts ten seconds before looking away, focusing her glare on her dad instead. That's the trick: hold onto the edge, even if it cuts your fingers. Keep chipping away and eventually her mom will break, not into a concession but into a fury so incandescent she'll storm out of the room. Consequences will be meted out later: a week's grounding, confiscation of whatever was deemed to be her most precious pastime, more rules for her to break.
In other words: Dess wins.
Instead, she feels her stomach drop as her dad steps forward.
He's usually present whenever her mom yells at her. The good cop to her bad, which Dess probably should resent, but it's hard when he so clearly means it. He manages to talk her mom down a bit, most of the time, reminds her that Dess is, in fact, a monster with a soul and not just a loose cannon to be managed.
"Dess. We're not doing this to punish or humiliate you. But kiddo, you gotta understand. What you did was… I mean, Kris is—"
"It's not like—"
"You were caught with your hand down the Dreemurr child's pants, December. I don't know what kind of rebellion you think this is, but it—"
"Fucking Angel above, I did not—" She'd had her hand on their waist, there was nothing below the belt! They'd never—she hadn't even thought about it.
"Dess, baby, you were… well…"
"We were kissing, okay! Is it so much of a fucking crime that you can't even say it?"
The withering look she receives makes her regret her choice of words. Fuck her for caring still, for letting her mom make her feel like she was an idiot for opening her mouth. And fuck her twice for doubling down:
"It's not like I was forcing myself on them! They wanted it, too!" Fuck. That sounded bad. "It's just—" She grapples for words, and finds none.
Dess is an angry crier. It's pathetic, humiliating, and exactly what her mom expects of her. The only way out was through: to grab the white hot edge of her fury and ride it all the way through. She feels herself losing it, now.
"Kris is a child. You are nearly seventeen. Whatever sort of interest you have in them is grossly inappropriate, and a flagrant abuse of their trust in you. It doesn't matter what they say. They are not old enough to know what they want."
There it is. Shame and humiliation burned away in an instant, vapor on the surface of the sun. Her hoof hits the floor so hard she feels the impact in her hip. If there had been anything in arm's reach, it would have joined the new dent she stamps into the hardwood.
"Why does everyone talk about them like they're not even a person?"
No one has an answer for that. Not one they're willing to admit, anyways. The fight goes incendiary. Dess is a disappointment, a poor example to her sister, and a danger to those around her. She's got plenty of choice words for her mom, too, but apparently calling her a huge bitch is over the line. Her dad intervenes, and Dess takes her dismissal with grace: she stomps up the stairs and slams the door to her room hard enough that she hears a vase break in the kitchen.
If you said it started with a bet, you'd be half right.
It was more of a joke, really. A kiss if you can beat me—a joke, because Kris was 10 at the time, and "good at games" didn't mean shit against someone who'd picked up a controller before they were born.
Dess thrashed them, obviously, and their pout probably didn't have anything to do with the prize on the line—they'd always been a stubborn, prideful kid—but it was funny to tease them about, and usually got a rise, so she never really stopped.
It took them a year and a half to get a win on her. Dess wishes she could say that she was distracted, or that her hand cramped, but no. That day, Kris just brought their A game. The kid had it.
The kiss, if you could even call it that, had been nothing. An awkward sandpaper peck—Kris's lips were always chapped back then, but they hated the feeling of chapstick. They'd lick them more to try and alleviate it, which inevitably made it worse.
They'd blushed and hid under their hair, and Dess had to steel herself to the fact that yes, she was doing this. She was a monster of her word, damn it, and Kris had won fair and square.
She ended up having to grab their chin just to get them to stop staring down at their lap. She went in too hard, bumped her tooth against their lip, and had just enough time to notice how warm they ran before pulling back. Kris stopped squirming.
"That's it?"
"Hey!" She cuffed them on the back of the head, lightly. "What, were you expecting tongue?"
"No," they said, sulkily, and frowned. "…I don't get it. Why it's such a big deal."
"Eh." Dess leaned back on the couch, and picked up her controller again. Her trusty Fox had failed her—maybe she was getting too predictable. "You'll understand when you're older." Maybe. She herself didn't really think kissing was all it was cracked up to be, but there was no way she was admitting that. "Now, c'mon, I want my revenge. Best of three."
If you could spread the various disasters making up December Holiday's life out on a table like a royal flush, someone—maybe a protective mother who'd never missed a day of church—would point to that day and say, there, that's it. The moment her lips met Kris's for that half second, some lecherous seed of evil awoke in her dark, twisted heart. She liked 'em young, human, and unreasonably good at Smash.
Where it really began with was a compound fracture, twelve missing teeth, and a two week suspension from school.