Every winter holiday season Ashton has ever experienced had been, to some degree or another, stressful. She was fairly certain this could be explained by a large portion of her extended family being similar enough people that they were all willing to subtly one-up each other just to look good and caring and competent, but, frankly, she also knew this was probably projection. It did normally get him outside of Destiny City for the winter holidays, and especially for Christmas, which was also a desirable state of existence: other cities, Ashton had known for a long time, did not see such strange occurrences as Destiny City - and certainly not with the same amount of eerie regularity. What had it been this year? Honestly, she hadn't even been paying attention, she'd been too busy trying to make sure a couple she knew stayed together -- it was more advantageous to have them in one place and playing off of each other when they all went out as a group, and, really, they were terribly cute together. If not a little mutually toxic. But the toxicity was mostly harmless, if kept in moderation, and that was the point of oversight.

It was not a vacation he really should have been taking, given his studies, but the extended Carver family was not about to take "I am trying to become a surgeon, please let me melt my brain in peace" as a reason nor an excuse to skip out on an extended family reunion. And this was one of the ones where it included the great-grandparents, too, those fusty old bats, so there was absolutely no mildly slutty behavior to be seen lest an eighty-two-year-old woman go on her rampage about in her day. They'd all been doing this for years; everyone, more or less, knew the drill about what specific sights and/or topics might set Great-Aunt Thomasina -- or any of these absolute fossils -- off.

It was a minefield. But, really, every social situation forever for the rest of time could become a minefield if navigated inappropriately; this had just been one that could have considerably more irritating consequences, and also one that Ashton had very much been physically trapped in until just this morning.

Gazing out of the airplane window was not her most elegant moment, but did it matter, when there was nobody specifically looking? Ashton knew he was reasonably attractive. Often she made good use of it, and often she utilized a variety of methods to ******** around with it, as it went. It didn't matter in the long run if he tilted his head this way or that as he rested it on his hand; it didn't matter if his fingers were crossed or twisted or carefully laid crossed between each other.

Also, the plane had Wi-Fi (thank ******** god, she felt she was going insane), and even a bitty little netbook and a set of earplugs was better than spending the next four hours listening to screaming children coming off their sugar rushes. Ashton had a variety of favorites. Children were not one of them in any way, shape, or form.

[wc: 523]