AN: This is my offering for Thanksgiving in the US. It's based on artwork done by typing, as a sort of collaborative thing. It's the most family-centric thing I've written for fandom, and will likely remain that way. The fully omniscient third person was also a fun departure and experiment, as was the gimmick I played around with, where the characters basically introduced each other's names in dialogue and prior to that I only referred to them by descriptors. I mean it as Hanna/Zombie, Worth/Conrad, and Veser/Toni, but aside from the last line all of these pairings can be more or less completely ignored. And as always, the comic is the property of the marvelous Tessa Stone and I mean no trespass or insult and no profit has been made by me.
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THE FAMILY YOU MAKE
-by: Lira-
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The apartment was usually like a hurricane. It was possessed of a calm eye in the center of the living room where Hanna could play videogames and peruse his small collection of arcane texts, but was otherwise an absolute wreck. That afternoon, all of the boxes and piles of miscellaneous detritus had been cleared away, banished to the corners of the bedroom, even piled up in the bathtub where surely no one would look. For once the carpet was fully visible, a folding table erected upon it with a narrow paperback under one leg to keep it stable. None of the chairs matched and a few were uncomfortable metal folding ones, but spaces for all had been achieved.
From the tiny kitchenette came the smell of cooking meat and fresh baking. The counters were lined with casserole dishes, bowls, platters, all of the flatware heaped with a variety of delicious foods. Wearing a bright orange apron with a cartoon turkey on the front and little horns of plenty around the trim, a curiously green-complexioned man was adding garnish to the dishes, carving the turkey, dishing up a few last minute additions. The spread was virtually complete, but still a rich, somewhat cinnamon-y scent came from the oven, and a minute later a loud shrilling filled the small room.
The oven timer was going off.
Back in the living room, one of the folding chairs was housing an occupant dressed in a sweater-vest, who was just in the process of unsealing a small baggie with his teeth. The motion was quick and practiced, and shortly after he applied his mouth to the scrap of tubing extending from a packet that was surely meant for intravenous treatments. Beside him, a girl was standing, hands contorting grotesquely right before his face. The motions she was making did not seem to in any way put him off his food, but perhaps that was simply because it was difficult to put a vampire off a dinner of human blood.
"-So that's when I grabbed his head-" the girl was saying, her hands clenching together. Her feet, in classy boots, were planted firmly, so that her stance was almost challenging.
The vampire only slurped his blood in response to her intimidation, nodding his head slightly to indicate that he was listening to her tale. Considering that he was looking quite healthy for the undead, the blood might have been more of an excuse not to speak than a necessary meal.
"-and slammed it against the edge of the table," the girl continued. "I wasn't going to let that fucker get back up. It's one thing to be hitting on girls like you're some kinda hot-shot Casanova, but if she tells you to back off you had best listen, and not yank her around like some kind of rag doll. I bet he didn't like it nearly so much when I did it to him."
The vampire nodded again, but his eyes had gone slightly glazed, and he sucked at the straw in the bag only to produce a wet rattling sound. Envisioning the bloody temple of the man from the story must have distracted him from the very real blood currently within his grasp. Perhaps he might have liked something a little warmer, something straight from the source, but delirious extras meant for nothing more than drinking from did not make the best guests at a Thanksgiving dinner.
"-I had to yank him up by his collar before he could slump to the ground," the girl said, pulling one hand back in a motion similar to what she was describing. "I mean, he was bleeding all over his forehead but I didn't want to scramble his brains any worse than I had already. I was going to try and stop the bleeding, but he was already dripping all over my- Conrad? Are you okay?"
The vampire, Conrad, blinked twice and opened his mouth, but the timer from the kitchen shrilled louder and for a moment the girl turned away, her bright blue ponytail swishing against the side of her face.
"Pie!" a voice squealed, before a short redhead dashed out of the adjoining room, his arms full of a bright orange tablecloth.
The man in the apron strode out from the kitchenette, the pie tin clutched in his bare hands. There was a faint scent like wood smoke accompanying the stronger aroma of baked pumpkins, but no one in the room remarked. The girl with the story spun back around, and before she could level her gaze, Conrad rolled his eyes once in exasperation. He didn't appreciate hearing her stories nearly as much as she enjoyed telling them. The redhead made a grab for the pie, but the baker in the apron only raised it high above his head, well out of the reach of those more vertically-challenged than himself.
"A little excited, Hanna?" he asked, voice mellow and smooth as butter, as smooth as perfectly pureed pumpkin pie filling.
"Pie?" the redhead, Hanna, asked again, as if that answered everything.
The man with the tin smiled slowly, the corners of his mouth twitching up and up as his grin widened. Slowly he shook his head back and forth, the expression of amusement unfaltering.
"No," he said simply. But there was a simmering warmth beneath the word, and Hanna seemed to pick up on the fact that he was being teased.
"Come onnn," Hanna whined, making another grab for a pie that was now held high aloft the other man's head. "Lemme just sniff it, please? I won't break the crust or anything!"
"Desserts are for after dinner," the man murmured. "You'd find a way to fill up on the fumes."
Hanna pouted, his face falling in like a kicked puppy. It was clearly an expression the man in the apron was used to, because he only shook his head in amusement and turned around, sweeping the pie back into the kitchenette. Hanna trailed after him, with more pleas for pie falling from his lips every second.
There was a creak as the front door to the apartment swung open, and then a loud bang as it was shoved so hard that the handle impacted the wall.
"I bring ye booze!" a voice announced, striding into the room with a bottle in each hand.
The voice belonged to a young man with silver-gray hair and a grin too wide to mean anything good. He strode inside and deposited the bottles on the table, grabbing a handful of crackers out of one of the snack bowls already taking up residence on that surface.
The man in the apron poked his head out of the kitchenette yet again, still holding the pie in both hands. It was letting off steam from vents he had recently sliced into its crust, enough steam to show that holding it with bare fingers should have been torment. Hanna popped out behind him and made yet another grab for the dish, in response to which the man merely held it aloft yet again. Behind the bearer of booze, who was still chowing down on crackers, bent over so that the fin on the back of his hoodie almost stood up and it appeared as if a shark was circling the table, another man poked his head into the room.
"Um... Thanks for having me..." he murmured, glancing around as if he didn't know what to do with himself.
Hanna ceased grabbing for the pie, tripping past the man bearing it in order to dash over to the newcomer in the fancy, olden-style dress. The man rubbed the back of his head, mussing his salt-and-pepper hair just slightly as he gave Hanna a sheepish look.
"Not a problem, Ples!" Hanna announced cheerfully. "You and Veser brought something too? Come on in, it looks like just about everyone's here! Oh man, that means we can eat!"
Hanna's eyes lit up even further as he said it, proving that he must feel as if starved. His attempts to secure the pie for himself only indicated the same. The man in the apron had ducked back into the kitchenette, but the next moment he was striding back into the living room bearing a platter upon which the turkey had been artfully arranged. Most of its body was intact, but the legs had been neatly trimmed off for easy access, and a quantity of the breast meat had been carved into manageable hunks for the assembled guests to consume.
"Feh," a voice muttered from beside the door, as the man it was attached to crossed his arms over his chest. "Yeh all are like a buncha children waitin' fer momma t' serve yeh dinner. Fuck, Ah've got better manners'n this."
"Shut up, Worth," Conrad snapped, before anyone else could respond. "I genuinely wonder why Hanna even invited you."
"Ah'm his fam'ly doctor," Worth returned, pushing off from the wall where he was leaning and moving over to the table. He bent forward, resting one spread hand on its surface so that he could level Conrad with a look. "Everyone knows yeh invite yer doctor fer Thanksgivin' dinner."
"Everyone who?" Conrad objected. "Maybe you'd invite a /real/ doctor, but not a back-alley hack who's liable to spike the food with vicodin."
"Wouldn' waste my drugs on yeh, Fagula, yer thinkin' too highly of yerself," Worth said flatly.
"Hey, hey!" Hanna interrupted. "It's Thanksgiving, so be thankful it's dinner time and sit down! C'mon, I want to eat, everyone gather 'round!"
"Sure thing, Hanna," the girl said, sashaying around Conrad to the other side of the table and sitting down beside the vampire.
"Thanks Toni," Hanna said, with a quick grin. "So hey, do I sit at the head of the table or what? I've never had a family dinner like this for Thanksgiving!"
Toni chuckled, and Ples gave a bit of nervous laughter as he sat down beside her, but after a moment they both realized that Hanna wasn't joking. This truly was the first time he had this many people together at once for the holidays, and he was loving it. Conrad scooted his chair in closer to the table, and Veser stopped demolishing the crackers with his teeth long enough to sit down opposite Toni. The man in the apron had positioned the turkey by the head of the table, and was just then depositing a bowl of stuffing and what appeared to be a green bean casserole on the table beside it.
Hanna beamed at everyone, and with a genuine skip in his step, bounced over to the chair at the head of the table and plopped himself down.
Worth had been leaning on the table just to the side of Hanna's place, and with just a little bit of grumbling, removed his hand from the tabletop and slouched into an actual chair. The man in the apron reappeared again, depositing a few more dishes on the table before heading back for plates and silverware. Hanna engaged the group in conversation that he didn't realize was a bit awkward, and the man in the apron set the table even as everyone sat at it.
"Doesn't everything look delicious?" Hanna finally asked. "I feel like I could polish off all of this myself! But, haha, I don't have to do that, since everyone's here too for dinner! Should I say a few words? Or does everyone just want to dig in?"
Conrad glanced away at that, fingering the half-full bag of blood he still held in his hands. Clearly he didn't mind what the rest of the group decided to do; he'd had the majority of his dinner already and didn't want to have to deal with anything relating to normal human food.
"I could say something," Toni volunteered, leaning forward in her chair.
"Why not!" Hanna agreed.
"Thanksgiving is a time for family," Toni began, looking around the table at everyone. "Sometimes that means the one you're born into, but sometimes that means the one you make for yourself. The important part is that you keep this family close, sharing the good times, the bad times, and meal times. Because hey, even ghosts aren't gonna keep you apart."
Hanna smiled at her, bashfully, and quickly rubbed his eyes with one hand. "Thanks Toni. You... You guys are the best, you know? I'm really, really glad everyone could make it."
Toni grinned back, and in the brief silence the sound of Conrad's blood bag crinkling, and Worth giving a quiet "hurumph" could be heard. A moment later, the sound of Veser's silverware clinking together was added to the mix. Everyone was becoming impatient, uncomfortable with Hanna and Toni trying to turn the dinner into a touching moment.
"You make this seem like the start to a race," the man in the apron murmured, from just behind Hanna.
"Then I guess this is the green flag!" Hanna laughed, cheerfully enough. "Should I carve the turkey? I mean, heh, you kind of already did that, Gregory."
"I think it would be best if everyone merely served themselves," decided "Gregory," even as he moved one of his hands to rest on Hanna's shoulder.
Veser took the words as an abject invitation, spearing a chunk of meat off the plate of turkey with his fork and maneuvering it to his own plate. The other guests looked up and down the table, seeming to possess better manners than the silver-haired boy.
"Well, dig in!" Hanna encouraged, when nothing of the sort was truly beginning.
Everyone, even the proper gentleman known as Ples, was soon heaping quantities of the various dishes onto their plates. Even Conrad, who could not palate that sort of food any longer, took a small piece of turkey and some cranberry sauce, demurring quietly to Toni that he liked to be able to smell it. Plates were full and mouths were stuffed fuller, half of the assembled willing to talk even as they chewed. Domination of the conversation passed from Veser to Worth to Toni and back again, Toni too charismatic to shut up and Worth too much of an asshole to let anything drop. Veser simply seemed to enjoy the conversation, and Hanna would pipe up every so often with his opinion.
Halfway through the meal, the man in the apron brought around fresh glasses, and the first of the bottles of alcohol were popped open. The contents proved to be spiced rum, which was sampled by all, even Conrad. Toni told her story about the bar fight with the lecherous asshole again, only in the new telling, her embellishments with her hands were helped along a little too much by the free-flowing drink. When she finished the tale, she sagged forward across the table in satisfaction, pushing her plate to the side so she wouldn't fall in it. Veser met her halfway, still laughing over the mental image of that asshole with his head bleeding like he'd sprung a leak.
"I think it's time for party games!" Hanna declared, even as he tried to push himself up from his chair.
The man in the apron had to catch him, he was already that sloshed himself. Hanna was helped over to the couch, which had been pushed into the corner for the occasion, and slumped over the arm rest when his support was taken away. His helper, "Gregory," only shook his head and sat down beside the redhead, allowing Hanna to slump against his shoulder instead.
"Perhaps you should have begun the games before beginning an unofficial drinking contest," the man murmured, so quietly that no one else heard.
True to those words, Worth and Ples were still sitting upright at the table, a small array of glasses with the scum of alcohol in the bottom littered around them. Even then Worth was topping off two more glasses, and both men knocked back the contents like pros. Worth upended the bottle again afterward, but only a few lingering drops trickled from its rim into the waiting cup below.
"Yeh got another bottle aroun' here somewhere?" Worth asked, although in a tone of voice more like issuing a demand. He glanced around at the table, looking for the rest of the booze.
"I was certain Veser and I brought three bottles for the occasion," Ples returned. "We can't have finished off every one of them already. Can we?"
"Wiv these lightweights?" Worth asked. "Connie! Conrad! Fucking Count Fagula tutu princess fairy wings!"
"Shut up, Worth," Conrad groaned, from where he'd slumped on the table near Toni and Veser.
Toni and Veser were having a thumb war, but no one was paying attention to them.
"My head feels like it's going to explode," Conrad continued to moan. "What did you guys put in the rum?"
"Why, nothing," Ples said, sounding taken aback. "That was very good rum, I'll have you know. O-Only the best for... Well, for family."
Conrad peeked up over Toni and Veser's heads, as if he couldn't believe what he'd heard. At the other end of the table, Worth snorted.
"Gettin' sentimental, old man," he told Ples. "Think th' other bottle's jes' disappeared under th' table. Yeh wanna grab tha' fer us?"
Ples ducked under the table for a moment and came up with a bottle of scotch, and then the drinking contest was off again. The man in the apron hailed Ples and Worth, and a minute later he was cradling a tall glass of scotch, which he offered to Hanna as if the redhead really needed more to drink. But a few sips of the stuff seemed to warm his belly and rouse his affectionate feelings, because Hanna followed the offering up by burrowing into the other man's side. He had one of his hands curled around the near side of the glass, even as the other was held by the man in the apron.
"We never cut the pie, Hanna," the man murmured.
"Pie?" Hanna groaned, forcing his eyes back open from where they had drifted shut. A moment more, and they snapped open fully. "And I was... Really looking forward to that, too."
After just a few words, Hanna was mumbling again, and the man beside him stretched out the arm not steadying their glass in order to drape it about Hanna's shoulders. Hanna only scooted closer, making small disappointed sounds but making no effort to rise from the couch and rescue his pie.
Toni and Veser had found their second wind, the effects of the alcohol seeming to have worn off. Veser grabbed her by the hand and dragged her into the kitchen, where they stumbled upon the still-warm pie where it had been left in the oven for safekeeping. Toni was the one to find the oven mitts, and together they rescued the pie from the cooling oven and sliced it into pieces. Only one stool was left in the kitchenette as far as seating arrangements went, so they perched on it together in order to dig into one large piece of pie with two forks.
"Oh god this is so good," Toni moaned into her fork, delicately licking off each and every last crumb before delving into the plate for more.
"That zombie man does know how to cook a mean pie," Veser agreed. "He's the one who whipped this up, right?"
"I think so," Toni agreed, humming and popping her fork back into her mouth.
Veser bumped her shoulder on the stool and reached out his hand to brush pie crumbs from her cheek with one thumb. Toni only laughed and leaned away, stealing another bite of pie when Veser wasn't looking. He made a mock-angry sound and raised his fork, endeavoring to scoop Toni's bite away from her before she could eat it. They both soon dissolved into helpless giggles fighting over pie, not so far into sobriety yet to have their usual judgment or sense of humor.
Conrad was still slumped over the table, watching as both Worth and Ples became increasingly more and more drunk. The bottle of scotch was halfway empty and seemed to be having an effect at last.
"Yeh said," Worth began. "Yeh said yeh had trainin'... Trainin' in classical dance, did yeh?"
"Oh yes," Ples agreed, with a little hiccup. "I also quite enjoy the piano. Keeps the fingers quite nimble."
"An' we both know wot tha's good fer," Worth laughed, before starting to cough into his sleeve from the force of his hilarity.
"N-Nothing of the sort!" Ples protested, by that point truly quite red in the cheeks.
"So wot else are yeh good fer, old timer?" Worth asked.
"I resent that, you know," Ples commented. "I don't believe I am much older than you are. And if you must know, I... I can sing, too."
"Classically?" Worth asked, with a snicker.
"O-Or more... P-Popular tunes," Ples insisted, before knocking back the last of what had been in his glass like he needed the courage.
"Aye think yeh should sing sumthin' fer us," Worth goaded, prodding Ples in the arm a few times with the side of his glass.
Ples made a disgruntled noise and slid back his chair. He almost fell on his face, but after catching himself and taking a long moment to reassert his balance, he cleared his throat. Past that point, the only thing to be heard in the room besides Hanna's giggling from the couch were the lines to Tik Tok sung A Capella. Worth did not interrupt for the entire rendition, mostly because he was staring at the man with jaw slack. Even Conrad had forced himself upright from the table to listen to the performance.
"Fuckin' hell," Worth muttered.
"This is why I don't listen to popular music," Conrad groaned, before slumping forward again.
In the corner, Hanna had fallen asleep on the couch at last, cushioned quite successfully against the man who was even then still in his apron. Three drinks more and Ples was down for the count, and Conrad insisted that Worth help him drag the gentleman over to the couch, where he could be laid out in a configuration to prevent him from vomiting on himself. By the end of the endeavor Worth was unable to walk himself, and settled for slumping on Conrad and refusing to move. Conrad gave an unhappy little whimper and sank to the floor, needing a moment to decide what to do.
After finishing off slightly more than half of the pie, Veser and Toni wandered back into the living room with arms linked together. They took one look at the tableau of their drunken friends and immediately burst back into giggles. In the end they seated themselves at the table and began to chat, Veser encouraging Toni to recount more tales of bar fights she had gotten into and other incidences of violence. She challenged Veser to match her tale for tale, although the majority of his stories centered around bullying attempts gone wrong where Veser happened to kick the crap out of some assholes. He even kept his storytelling primarily to events that had actually occurred, without too much embellishment given in hopes of impressing.
Conrad left Worth on the living room floor in disgust, instead turning to poking through Hanna's linen closet and bedroom for some blankets. After much searching he found one tatty old rag to drape around Ples, and a more comfortable afghan to help the man in the apron tuck around Hanna. The man declined Conrad's help to pry him loose from the redhead, even with the suggestion that they lay Hanna out proper. Conrad gave up without too much struggle, figuring that as twined together as the two were, it wasn't worth the bother.
Conrad spent the next hour cleaning Hanna's apartment, because Hanna was too unconscious to stop him and Veser and Toni simply didn't care what he was up to. But as soon as the apartment was at least most of the way tidy, Conrad could no longer pretend he was too busy to worry about Worth. He woke the doctor in defeat, and helped the man stumble down the hall to Hanna's bathroom. There, out of something like guilt, he made sure Worth didn't throw up on himself, although all he received for his pains were a quantity of insults and a little sick up on the sleeve of his shirt.
No one left the apartment that evening, as everyone was deemed by Conrad to be too drunk to travel. He insisted that they sleep it off – even Toni and Veser, who somehow ended up in Hanna's bedroom all by themselves, and no one else wanted to know what they'd been up to – and the next day everyone departed with quantities of home-cooked food on paper plates wrapped in tinfoil.
When Hanna finally felt like venturing around his own apartment, he found "Gregory," in the kitchen tidying the last of the food mess, and when Hanna came forward and clutched at the front of that apron where the little turkey was stitched, he was met by hands tilting up his chin and planting a soft kiss directly to his lips.