AN: Hey guys! Just finished exams and essay season! And, to celebrate the season (and the fact that CTV is bringing Flashpoint back in January! HOLLA!) Imma write some Christmas-fluff. My computer is, again, in the shop. I spilled, ahem, water on the keyboard which now no longer works. So I've snagged my mum's for a couple hours. Hopefully. Well, enjoy.
...
"Seriously though, Wordy, what do you want for Christmas?"Spike badgered, tugging his uniform shirt over his head.
"I already told you. For Lily and Em to stop pulling each others' hair long enough to be civil for a full day. One full fighting-free day." Wordy shrugged, leaning against his locker. His daughters' were coming of the age where their favourite activity, next to driving their parents nuts, was making the other bat-shit crazy. They fought over EVERYTHING. Who would get the first bath, who got the last juice box, who got to play with which Barbie. They fought over everything and, more often than not, nothing at all. They bickered and sniped. All. The. Time.
"That's not a real Christmas wish!" Spike insisted leaning over to knot his laces.
"Sure it is." Ed argued, grinning. "You'll get it someday, Spike. When you have kids. And peace and quiet is but a fond and distant memory."
Spike made a disgusted sound. "What do you want Sam?" He asked, spinning to the only other bachelor on their team.
Sam shrugged. "Nothing. I don't do Christmas." He said.
"What? What do you mean you don't do Christmas?" Spike sputtered.
Sam lifted a shoulder and let it fall casually. "It's just ... not a big deal." He answered nonchalantly. Greg's worried eyes were boring holes into him, so he turned away to carefully fold his off-duty clothes onto the locker shelf. Casually, he hoped, he eased the locker doors shut and leaned against them. The team, gaping before him, ranged from concerned to skeptical and shocked.
"You don't put up lights and buy a tree?" Wordy asked.
"Where do you think I'd buy a tree in Kandahar?" Sam rolled his eyes.
"You were here last Christmas." Ed pointed out.
Yeah. He'd spent the night sleeping in the most insidiously uncomfortable hospital chair known to man, listening to the rhythmic beeps of Jules' heart monitor. He shuddered unconciously at the memory. They'd come so close to losing her.
"Why bother? You're just killing a perfectly good tree for nothing." Sam keep his eyes carefully averted. He was praying the buzzer would scream and Sydney would announce a hostage situation or a bomb call or, goddamnit, a paper-cut at reception. He was not in the mood to have this conversation.
"No Christmas dinner with the family." Greg asked gently.
"I think the General's in Belize right now." Sam smiled grimly. He preferred it that way. Family Christmases were awkward at best, painful at worst.
"Seriously? There isn't one thing in the world you want for Christmas?" Spike asked.
Sam shrugged.
"Nothing some fat man in a red suit could stuff down a chimney." He replied. A moment later his prayers were realized as the alarm sounded and the team rushed to the garages to deploy.
Sam hoisted himself into the passenger's seat beside Jules'. He hadn't even buckled the seat belt before she floored the black SUV and they rocketed out of the garage towards whatever disaster awaited them today. His mind involuntarily rolled back, sixteen years, to that last Christmas where he'd truly believed.
... ... ...
Sam's head itched beneath the woolen toque. He kept it pulled snugly over his ears though, for it was freezing cold even inside the mall. Beneath it his hair was sheared close to the scalp in the typical military haircut his father preferred. Sam shifted from foot to foot, waiting. The crowd of people in front of him slowly diminished and the line inched forward. His mothers gloved hand clasped his firmly - a little more tightly than it had last year.
"We don't have to do this." He told her gravely. Mother hadn't left the house very often since the accident. She'd walked around the kitchen like a ghost. And even late at night Sam would hear her crying - the deep and sorrowful sobs of a woman in mourning for her child.
"Of course we do." His mother's voice was too high. Too bright. She pushed back blonde hair, shades darker than his own, and leaned over so they were face to face. "We need a little normal in our lives Samuel Arthur Braddock." He winced. He knew, when she used his full name, that she meant serious business.
His stomach felt hollow - his feet, weighed down by the enormous winter boots, felt leaden and stiff. And, despite the fact that, moment ago, it had been incredibly chilly, he felt suddenly burning hot. He heard, distantly, the girl ahead of him ask for an E-Z bake oven.
"Your turn." His mother gave him an encouraging pat on the bat, urging him forward as the tiny red-head in a yellow snowsuit scrambled off Santa's lap.
The man perched on a candy-cane throne, elves prancing about him. His pants and shirt were a vivid red, his black belt slashing across his rotund middle. His boots were so shiny Sam could see his own reflection in their gleaming surface. A beard, white like winter, spilled down over his chest and it shook as the man chuckled. Tiny wire-framed glasses balanced on his nose.
The carols that piped out from some hidden speakers sounded almost sour to Sam as he shyly stepped forward. Santa's big arms reached down, hauling him up into his lap. The man's coat was velvety soft beneath his clammy hands.
"And what do you want for Christmas, young man?" Santa asked in his deep, baritone, his voice rolling with merriment.
Sam swallowed hard. He looked over at his mother, too thin in last year's winter coat, white-knuckled hands clutching each other. He wondered, too, if she was thinking of Sarah.
"I want my sister back." He said solemnly, glacing up in Santa's charcoal-grey eyes. "Just Sarah."
He heard his mothers' voice crack with fresh tears, calling his name.
That year he'd gotten a new bike. Shiny red frame and more speeds than he could possibly ever use.
He'd have traded it in a heartbeat for the bratty little sister he'd lost that June morning on the way to the playground.
...
"Sam?" He snapped to when Jules' said his name. He jerked, rapping his leg against the underside of the dashboard. Fuck, he though, absently rubbing the stinging knee as he hurriedly adjusted his communicator.
She spared him a glance before refocusing her attention on the traffic in front of her, weaving through the lanes of grime-covered sedans as she sped towards the scene. He'd been acting strangely this week. And, while they were involved anymore, damnit, she still cared about him. She was worried for him. Strictly as a friend, she mentally lectured herself. Strictly as a friend.
"Sorry. I'm here. I'm good." He murmured.
Except he wasn't, she frowned, inching the SUV through a tight knot of pedestrians onto a side-street.
Christmas was never anything more than a disappointment. It meant staring across the table at a seat that shouldn't have been vacant. It meant the sadness in his mothers' eyes as she carefully strung the ugly ornament Sarah had picked out for her over an empty branch. It meant listening to other men, his teammates and brothers in arms, talk wistfully about their children and wives knowing he'd go home to an empty base apartment. Alone, always alone. Yeah, Sam thought, rubbing weary eyes, Christmas had always been a bit of a disappointment.