chapter 1
Winter definitely has to be one of my favourite seasons, if not my favourite. I used to hate it because I would just dread Christmas. I would hear everyone talking about what a great holiday they had with their family all while my Christmases were spent watching my siblings gush over their presents my parents gave them, yet I was always given presents that clearly had no thought put into it. A book about banking when I was ten. Socks. Five dollar gift cards. Knickknacks from the dollar store.
And I know Christmas isn't about the gifts, but it's hard to see it that way when I was given clearly cheaper gifts compared to my siblings.
It wasn't until I moved in with Daisuke in his family that I truly got to appreciate Christmas. For once in my life, I was treated like family. I came to enjoy the holidays because of them.
And now that I also have an amazing group of friends, I look forward to it even more. We always throw a Christmas party together, so it's no surprise we're always doing it this year. I'm the one who likes planning it, and my friends tried to convince me to let them plan it instead since Christmas is so close to my and Daisuke's wedding.
I told them they can plan it when I'm dead.
"Ow!" Ray suddenly says as he pulls his hand away from the table decoration he's helping me make for the wedding. He shakes his hand.
"Don't tell me you burned yourself again," I say, reaching for the burn cream that has been sitting on the coffee table ever since he burned himself the first time.
"Uh..." Ray hesitates, though it's quite obvious what the answer is. "Uh... I don't think so?"
I sigh as I hand Ray the burn cream. "You don't have to lie about it, Ray."
"Okay, then yeah, I burned myself," Ray says, taking the burn cream from me to apply it on his new burn. I won't be surprised if he has burns all over his hand by the end of the night.
"I don't get why you're making him work with a glue gun," Sterling says. He and Johan are always helping me make some of the wedding decorations since they are the most crafty out of all my friends. Ray isn't really crafty, but he's my best man so of course I want him to help.
"Well, it was either a glue gun or the sewing machine," I say. "And I'm pretty sure Ray would somehow either sew his clothes to the fabric or run the needle over his finger."
"That is not true," Ray objects. "I'm not completely useless, you know."
"We're not saying you're useless," I say.
"I'm saying that," Sterling says.
I glare at Sterling before I look back at Ray. "You've never used a sewing machine before. You might accidentally hurt yourself and just think, if you do, you might not be able to pitch in the upcoming baseball season. Glue gun burns don't take long to heal, but you never know what can happen if you accidentally run the needle over your finger."
"Never mind, I'm okay being useless when it comes to sewing," Ray says. All I have to do with Ray to get him to see my side of things is to connect it, somehow, to baseball since it's his most favourite thing in the world. After knowing him for five years, I'm still convinced he has a baseball rattling around in his head instead of a brain.
But his cluelessness and naivety makes him endearing, so it's totally fine.
Ray ends up burning himself again not too long after he gets back to work, so I tell him to take a break from making the decoration for a bit. He pouts only for about five seconds before getting distracted by the TV, which has been playing a Christmas movie this whole time.
The front door opens and closes, then Daisuke and Archer walk up the stairs from the entryway, each carrying two boxes. Archer knows that Ray will end up running to him to get a hug, so Archer puts the boxes down on the ground.
And it's a good thing he did because sure enough, Ray jumps up from the couch, saying, "Archie!" before running over to him and giving him a hug.
"Seriously, how are you twenty?" Sterling asks Ray. "You act like a little kid." Ray's reply is to stick his tongue out at Sterling. "Yeah, you're proving my point even more."
"We were able to pick up everything to make the gift bags for the guests," Daisuke tells me.
"Ooh, what's going in the gift bags?" Ray asks.
"It's a surprise," Daisuke says.
Ray huffs. "Then how come Archer gets to know? He went with you to pick it up. Archie, quick, tell me what's in the boxes."
Archer stares at the boxes before he says, "I don't know."
"Huh? How can you not know?" Ray asks. "You went with Daisuke, dummy."
"The boxes were already packed when we picked them up," Daisuke points out. "And even if they weren't, he wasn't really paying attention. He was just off in his own little world like usual."
"He was probably thinking about Ray the entire time," Johan speaks up from the kitchen table where the sewing machine is set up. He has the most experience with sewing, so he was more than happy to make the cloth napkins.
And he definitely isn't wrong. Archer always has two things on his mind; baseball and Ray.
"Ooh, Archie, look what I made." Ray walks over to the coffee table and picks up one of the finished decorations. "Isn't it cute?"
"He burnt himself five times," Sterling says.
"Huh?" Archer asks. "Why would you burn yourself, Ray?"
"It was obviously an accident," Ray says. "And the burns don't even hurt anymore. You can barely see it too. Look." Ray shows Archer his hand.
But, of course, that only makes Archer panic more. He holds Ray's hand to examine it. "Why would you burn your hand? It's risky to hurt your hand."
Ray pulls his hand away. "Oh, relax, it was just a small burns from hot glue that was already in the process of drying. Geez, you're such an overbearing husband."
Archer scowls. "Sorry."
Ray gently pats Archer's cheek before kissing it, then dragging him over to the living room so he can show Archer how he made the decoration.
I get up from the chair I'm on and walk over to Daisuke. "What do you say to having a Christmas movie night tomorrow while we put together the gift bags? We can order some pizza and wings, have some chocolate and candy, I can even bake some of my brownies beforehand."
Daisuke smiles at me. "That sounds perfect." He gives me a quick kiss. "I can't wait to marry you."
I smile back at him. "Me too."
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there are a few couples in this series and daisuke and mason are my second favourite <3 (ray and archer are my favourite since they're the epitome of sunshine and moon lol) also very fitting for me to update today since november 3rd is mason's birthday so happy birthday mason <3
anyway, yay for (some) of my baseball boys being back! if you haven't read any books from the series yet, there are a lot more of them and they are very chaotic when they're all together. (i'll just list the names here because i forgot to list them in the synopsis part: there's giovanni, stetson, mo, maddox, nico, scott, kenton, vinny, remi, and taio)(ray, mo, maddox, and remi are the chaotic ones lol)
(also peep at archer and ray being married)
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Winter Wedding
Teen Fiction*from the Charged by Battery series, but can be read as a standalone* Mason Jenkins has always had a dysfunctional family, with a homophobic mother, an alcoholic father who won't stand up for his children, the golden child of a bully older br...
