Our House - 1. Our House

Our House

It was a beautiful fall morning, crisp and colorful, but still warm enough for me to drive home with the windows down, which I did. I smiled as I pulled into the driveway of our house. I supposed it was silly that I still got a little tingle when I saw it, we had moved in together over the summer, but I still savored the way it felt in my mind. Our house.

I noticed that there were several new items on the porch, faintly illuminated by the porch light that Basil always made sure to leave on for me for when I came off night shift. As I approached, I could see them more clearly. Several hay bales were stacked up with a few pumpkins and a smiling scarecrow perched on top. Basil said that he was going to pick up a few things from the Halloween store to decorate. I smiled. It was cute.

I unlocked the door and closed it behind me. It was still dark inside and I stubbed my toe on something and bit back an angry curse as I fumbled for the light switch. I found it, flipped it and my jaw dropped.

At first, I was sure I had walked into the wrong house. There were spider webs and black crepe draped over every available surface. Looking around I saw a coffin propped up near the fireplace with an honest to God cauldron setting over the logs. Tiny rubber bats hung from the ceiling and an unnervingly authentic looking skeleton lounged in one of the arm chairs. There was an elaborate centerpiece on the coffee table that involved lots of candles and skulls. A witch lurked near the entrance to the kitchen, which I cautiously approached. The kitchen was also decked out in decorations, but nowhere near the level of the front room. Basil was at the stove, cooking breakfast. He was bare-chested and in his sleep pants, looking better than any human had a right to after only being up about half an hour. He glanced up and grinned as I entered the room.

“Hey baby,” he said, scooping some eggs out of a pan and sliding them onto a plate along with bacon and sausage. I moved in to take it with a quick good morning kiss.

Well, it was supposed to be a quick good morning kiss. What it turned into was a long, lingering passionate kiss that still made me weak in the knees and I quickly set my clattering plate down on the table before I dropped it.

Did I mention that we are disgustingly in love? Because we are.

I sat down at the table and Basil deposited a bowl of fruit and decaf coffee on the table as well. Sharing breakfast with him was one of the highlights of my day and I dug into my meal with gusto. See why I love him? He’s hot and a good cook.

But I couldn’t keep from staring at the ghoulish decorations as I ate. Most were pumpkin themed, which at least made some sense, but from where I was sitting, I could also see things like some fake eyeballs in our fruit bowl.

Eyeballs.

“Um...” I finally said, glancing at the fake spiders crawling over the window valence. “These decorations…”

“They’re great right?” Basil said with a grin. “I set them up while you were at work.”

“Yes…but it’s a bit much, don’t you think?”

“Well, yeah. But you know I love the holidays.”

“I know, I know. But maybe you could have put up a little less? Or done it more gradually?”

“I wanted it to be a surprise!”

“Well, it was!” I agreed. “But damn, baby, this must have taken hours.”

“Oh, I’m not done!” Basil said. “I haven’t done the outside yet.”

“The outside?” I echoed nervously.

“Yes. I got tons of orange string lights and another bunch of decorations for the yard.”

“How did you pay for all of this?”

Basil looked hurt. “I saved up for it.” He stood up and gathered up the dishes from breakfast. “I thought you loved Halloween.”

“I do love Halloween.” I said, quickly getting up and joining him at the sink. “I just didn’t realize you got this into it. You didn’t last year.”

“I had roommates last year,” Basil said. “They were cool with the most god-awful tacky Christmas decorations, but God help us if I put a single pumpkin on the front porch. Besides, you love Halloween too.”

“I do?”

“Yeah. Remember that one party you came to dressed as a vampire?”

I smiled. “Yeah, and I spent the whole night sucking on your neck.”

“Yeah.” Basil smiled. “And then when the party was over you said that you couldn’t go out into the sun, or you would die.”

“I had a migraine!” I exclaimed. “I spent the day in your bed.”

“Yeah, you did,” Basil said with a wink.

“Sleeping,” I said.

“Is that what you called what we did?”

“I’m standing by it.”

“We’ll just have different recollections of that night then.” Basil grinned again. “But seriously, do the decorations bother you?”

“No. But it’s only October first. Don’t you think you’ll get tired of them by the time Halloween gets here?”

Basil shrugged and turned away. “I doubt it. But if it really bothers you, we can take them down.”

“I never said they bothered me, and I don’t want to take them down. I was just curious about why you wanted to turn our house into something from The Addams Family.”

“I guess…I don’t know.” Basil looked down at the dishes he was rinsing. “My parents weren’t around a whole lot growing up, you know. My Dad was always traveling, and my Mom worked weird hours at the hospital. And the holidays weren’t really high up on their priority list. Especially not “silly” ones like Halloween. But I would go trick or treating around the neighborhood and see all these cool decorations, and wish we had some. And there was always this one house that just went all out and had the front yard set up like a cemetery or a haunted forest and you had to go through part of it to get to the door. And they had fog machines and there was usually one of the house owners hiding somewhere in there to yell at you and scare you a little. And it was just so much fun. And then I always thought, when I had my own place, I was going to decorate it the way they did for Halloween.”

I smiled at him, caught up in his excited enthusiasm.

“But…” he continued. “This is not my place. This is our place. And I should have asked you before buying and setting up all this stuff.”

I moved in to hug him. “It is our place and that’s all that matters to me. That it’s ours. And if having Halloween decorations covering every inch of the place makes you happy, then dammit, that is what we’ll do.” I stepped back and gave him a kiss. “Give me a few hours of sleep, and then I’ll help you put up all those lights.”

“And ghosts hanging up in the trees.” Basil added. Before I could answer, he gave me another kiss. “Go to bed.”

I took his hand and gave him a wink. “Maybe you could leave those dishes for later and come to bed with me.”

He grinned but didn’t resist as I started to lead him to the stairs. “If I go to bed with you, you know you won’t be sleeping.”

“I know.”

~END~