Gingerbread Men
By Kay
Disclaimer: I OWN EW LIKE I OWN NEW YORK. WHICH I DON'T.
Author's Notes: Cranberries are the ninja fruit. David is not. David is sulking in a gen!drabble about Christmas (even though it's February) and so I hope you enjoy it, late as it is, for a moment or two. Thank you!
Christmas rolls around and shoves itself in David's face entirely too early—he can deal with being trapped in another world, constantly on the verge of death, but glittery ribbons and fat men in red are too much for the boy. He's getting sick of being unable to turn on his radio and hear anything else besides bad holiday pop in the Buick. It's not like his mom even bothers with a tree; just some scrappy, three foot tall bit of plastic with blue bulbs that don't blink anymore.
So while everyone is busy getting jolly, David's crossing in and out of his real world consciousness and waking up in Everworld with relief. No matter how insane and ugly this universe becomes, it does have a lack of gaudy Christmas light displays and little Santa figurines in every window. The blood, he can believe. The grit and the way his chest heaves after he's killed something, that he can trust. Holiday miracles are crusted and false pieces of a world he's long left behind.
Just the same, when Christmas Eve rolls around and David is slumped in the woods of some godforsaken hellhole, listening to the sounds of the wilderness and the stilted, half-whine breathing of Christopher in his sleep, he maybe, just a little, not even enough that he admits it, wishes he were home for just a moment. Because if he's right about the time (and for all he knows, David thinks with a pang in his chest, the real world's already passed this time and moved on to New Years), his mother will be baking gingerbread men out of those stupid, commercialized Ready-To-Bake kits from the grocery store three blocks away. The house will smell like cinnamon and the sharpness of winter, and when David sets the table for the first time in the year, it will feel just a little like they're a family again instead of two people who happen to walk in each other's footsteps silently, like ghosts, every day for the rest of the year.
But David is in Everworld, and the air is not cold. He finds himself sniffling a little, anyway, hands frozen shut around the sword of Galahad like any moment they will turn to ice.
"Merry Christmas," he says, and wishes he could at least see the stars.
The End