A night in December (SoDani one-shot)

A night in December

A/N: hey! i started writing this during the holidays and it took me... a while to actually finish it 😅 hopefully you're still in the holiday spirit enough to read it, enjoy, and sorry for any typos! 💙

The apartment already looked like Christmas had exploded in it.

A half-open cardboard box sat abandoned by the couch, spilling out strands of tinsel in three different shades of red, a handful of ornaments still wrapped in thin tissue paper, and one very bent-looking gold star that clearly hadn't survived its last year intact. There were fairy lights draped over the back of a chair, not plugged in yet, their wire looping messily.

None of it matched.

Sophia had clearly tried.

The tree, still unassembled, leaned against the wall near the window, its branches compressed and uneven, a few fake pine needles already shedding onto the floor. Someone had propped a Santa hat on top of it, like a placeholder, just in case anyone forgot what the goal here was.

Despite the chaos, the apartment felt... alive. Warm. Full.

The kitchen, just a few steps away, buzzed with a different kind of energy. Lara had claimed the counter closest to the sink, sleeves rolled up, hair tied back as she chopped fruit with exaggerated care, glancing down at the recipe on her phone every few seconds. Manon hovered nearby, occasionally leaning over to steal a piece of something, only to be immediately shooed away.

"Hey" Manon protested, grinning. "Quality control."

"You're going to contaminate it" Lara shot back, though she was smiling too.

Dani stood between them, rinsing something in the sink, she'd lost track of what while listening to their back and forth with a faint smile tugging at her mouth. They were sticking to foods that required minimal effort: things that could be assembled rather than cooked, snacks that wouldn't burn if someone got distracted mid-conversation.

From the living room came Sophia's voice, loud and animated, punctuated by bursts of laughter.

"No, no, wait, that one goes there" she said, pointing emphatically at a spot near the window. "Trust me. It'll look better once everything's up."

Megan stood on a chair, holding a string of lights above her head, eyebrow raised. "You said that about the last three things."

"And I was right" Sophia replied instantly, entirely unapologetic.

Yoonchae, kneeling on the floor nearby, was sorting ornaments into loose piles, round ones here, oddly shaped ones there, occasionally glancing up to watch Sophia move around the room with the kind of enthusiasm that made it impossible not to smile. She handed Sophia things without being asked, clearly used to this rhythm, this exact brand of festive chaos.

It had been Sophia's idea, of course.

With everyone flying back to different states or countries, different homes, different versions of Christmas, it had felt wrong to just... let the season pass. Someone had mentioned it off handedly at first, how fast the year had gone, how strange it felt knowing they wouldn't all be together in just a few days. After months of promotions, rehearsals, travel, and the constant blur of hotel rooms and late nights, they'd gotten used to existing in each other's pockets.

Tour buses, backstage hallways, shared meals eaten off plastic containers, voices overlapping from morning until long past midnight, together had become the default. The idea of suddenly scattering back to separate lives and separate homes felt... abrupt. Sophia had latched onto that feeling immediately, unwilling to let the closeness slip away without marking it somehow.