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It was that time of year again.
Christmas Shopping at the mall.
Itsumi was sitting at the desk in her and Salty’s bedroom, tapping her pencil against her lip, wondering what would be the best Christmas present to get her joyfriend. All she’d jotted down was an album of a band ey really liked, and Itsumi was blanking out trying to come up with anything else.
And that’s why she decided to invite Connor, Hunter and Ava to go Christmas shopping with her.
Once everyone made it to the mall, they all discussed their ideas for gifts that they could give to Salty for Christmas, and after they finished talking, Hunter was the first to choose one. Unsurprisingly, she swooped into the nearest restaurant in the mall and picked up a salt shaker of all things - it fit because it was in the name, she’d insisted - but it didn’t stop the manager of the restaurant seeing her holding the salt shaker and sternly insisting she put it back.
And she did, much to everyone’s relief, despite the sulky look on her face and her grumbling something about “party poopers”.
After that, the group set off to get Ava’s suggestion for a gift: a sketchbook. They didn’t have to go far to get to the mall’s art supply store; once they got there, they were wondering what size sketchbook to get, but after a bit of thinking, they opted to get 11x14 and 14x17 ones; after all, Salty did draw so much in a sketchbook ey was given as a gift from school that ey ran out of blank pages over the course of 3 weeks.
Connor’s gift idea was next; he opted to get Salty something tech-related. He made it clear it wasn’t at the mall, and that he would show it to the others when they went to his and Ava’s apartment to wrap everything, so once they took the portal to the apartment building Connor and Ava lived in in Las Vegas, it was time to start wrapping and for Connor to show it off.
Itsumi and Ava had no trouble wrapping what they got for Salty (though Hunter needed a little help since she was getting pretty tangled up in wrapping paper and tape); even then, they were intrigued when Connor showed them what he got for Salty: augmented reality goggles. He told them he spent some time over the past week building these goggles with Wyatt, and encouraged them to take a test run, and test it they did; the goggles had everything from a display of the time and a digital map to even a little playlist to play music from.
Once they agreed to give them to Salty, Ava decided to help Hunter with wrapping it.
And when Christmas itself finally came, it turned out Salty got the others gifts of their own as well; Connor was given a nice, navy-blue coat to wear for cold winter days (and nights), Ava was given a cute little beanie, Hunter was given a phone of her own, and Itsumi was given a heart-shaped locket with a picture of her and Salty together on it.
Once ey got through with the other gifts - and ey really liked the augmented reality goggles in particular - Itsumi gave em a square-shaped gift she got for em.
When ey opened it, ey was at a loss for words.
The top read “SOME NIGHTS” in large text, and there was a picture of two people in what was likely a hotel room, both looking down at their hands and tinkering with something.
It was an album for one of eir favorite bands.
Before Itsumi could welcome em, she was immediately knocked to the ground, a pair of lips crashing onto her own, and once they both fell to the ground, Salty had buried her face into her chest, so unbelievably happy that ey was sobbing eir eyes out and thanking her over and over again. Itsumi reciprocated the hug, pressing an occasional kiss to eir forehead and murmuring soothingly at em, gently stroking eir hair as ey cried it all out.
This Christmas, all was good.
…Though it was a miracle neither of them ever noticed Hunter hanging a mistletoe over their heads when they started kissing, but it was likely they didn’t care about that.