Merry Little Christmas
A/N: HAPPY HOLIDAYS! I've always wanted to write one of these, so here's an early holiday fic.
The first time Kid celebrates Christmas is when he's thirteen and Elizabeth and Patricia have been around for almost a year.
The year before they didn't celebrate Christmas because Kid found the two on the street a week after everybody had taken their lights down, and he never celebrated that anyway.
He never celebrated it before, because even though everything was covered in festive lights and holiday music blared from speakers around the town, he never felt emotionally invested in this celebration. Gift-giving. He had nobody to give gifts to, so what was the point? (Besides, almost nobody in Death City is Christian. In fact, nobody is Jewish, or Muslim either or any other of the many world religions he has studied. They mainly celebrate Christmas for the presents and the time of unity. They all worship one being: Death.)
Besides, so many of the decorations were asymmetrical it was hard to step out of his house at that time of year.
But now, when he's thirteen, Patricia really wants to celebrate Christmas like any other year, only better.
(He really wants to ask the sisters how they celebrated Christmas on the streets, anyway, and then realized that it probably involved a lot of stealing and mugging and happiness, and that he really didn't want to know.)
First he tells her not to be silly, that he's never celebrated Christmas, that he isn't even of the religion, but Elizabeth gives him such a scathing look he guesses one year will be okay.
First the girls go out to buy decorations, silly baubles and lights.
He promptly throws most of them away and says that if the baubles aren't identical, he isn't going to go along with this.
He easily dodges Elizabeth's punch.
Finally, they end up with a tree that's somewhat asymmetrical but that he can stand (it only makes him want to throw up a little), with identical baubles (gold) that are stragetically placed so that the tree is even more symmetrical.
(He doesn't let either of the girls decorate, and it takes him a week on his own.)
The Christmas tree is very small.
It looks funny in the middle of the near-sterile living room, dwarfed by everything in it and the very size of the place.
But it's there.
Then they begin to buy gifts, and they are all wrapped professionally.
Kid will have nothing less.
He has a perfectly symmetrical stuffed giraffe made for Patricia. It's beautiful and very expensive. He thinks it's very nice.
He actually knits a scarf for Elizabeth, black and thin and elegant. It's symmetrical and very expensive. He thinks it's very nice.
He doesn't know what the girls get him until Christmas day, and doesn't really care.
All he knows is that getting the presents felt pretty good.
After the gifts, the day before, they bake cookies.
Elizabeth and Patricia make the cookie dough, and he cuts all of it out in different shapes.
Because they can't do it as well as he can, damn it!
On Christmas morning, he is woken up quickly by Patricia, at about eight in the morning.
It's a good hour, so he gets up.
Elizabeth is dragged down the stairs with much grumbling, and then they all kneel before the small tree that has only four presents under it, and begin to open them.
Patricia giggles when she sees hers and hugs him, which is uncomfortable so he doesn't hug back, but still he feels happy.
Elizabeth carefully inspects hers, and says, Woah, Kid, this is perfect!, and he replies, I made it.
She smiles at him and looks at him as though seeing him for the first time.
Elizabeth gets him two night-lights, one for each side of his room, and first he blushes because he really shouldn't still be afraid of the dark, being the son of the Death God, and everything. Then he feels immensely touched because she is the first person who has known so much about him.
Patricia gets him a teddy bear, one that is small and black, and has a white smile stitched on to it's mouth and two perfect button eyes.
He looks at the presents and happiness replaces his urge to cry in a heartbeat, and he smiles at the two girls.
They're so symmterical!
They eat out for dinner, and don't have turkey because none of them can stand the non-taste it has. Instead they get hamburgers.
(Four, Kid insists, because if he's going to be ruining his perfect figure, he's going to be ruining it with symmetry.)
It tastes good.
At the end of the night, they all go to bed happy.