Thanks to kristelalugo, BBFree, and lychee loving for reviewing!

December 20, 1963

"Hey, 'Ro, you awake yet?" Scott asked.

Ororo didn't answer. She knew it was morning from the faint light behind her eyelids and knew it was cold because her nose and ears felt about ready to snap off. The last thing she wanted was to wake up. She was comfortable and warm under the covers.

That was the disadvantage to curling up in Scott's bed. There was companionship and warmth and they told secrets in the dark when she hadn't known he had any. But he woke up in the mornings when she wanted to stay in bed and be lazy because she could. Because in America you didn't walk half a mile to the river and have to get moving before the heat.

"C'mon, I know you're awake."

Ororo said nothing.

"I know 'cause you snore."

Ororo opened her eyes. "You fart in bed," she retorted.

Scott laughed. "Why is it girls seem to think they don't fart?"

"Girls fart."

"Yeah, I know girls fart, you fart. You fart in your sleep, it punctuates the snoring!"

Ororo poked at his belly. Scott squirmed away, but they had limited space with neither of them willing to risk the cold. He laughed and tried to push her away until he was laughing too hard.

"Victory!" she announced. "Victory by… huh…" Her expression slipped as she tried to recall the word. "Victory by… what's the word for what I did to you just now?"

"Tickling."

"Victory by tickling!"

They laughed. Feeling left out, Artie mewled. Her very well trained human scooped her up and scratched her chin.

"I guess she is a little… cute," Ororo allowed. 'Cute' did not appeal to her. Cute meant vulnerable and reminded her of what she had once been—then add in the way Laurie used the term to describe Sean and the world pretty much stood on its head. "The way her tongue sticks out, all pink. That's cute." Right?

"I wouldn't know," Scott murmured.

"Right. Uh, sorry about that, blind man."

"Whatever, blondie," he retorted. "So… are you going to tell me what's been bothering you?"

She considered huffing off, but decided against it. The floor was too cold for that nonsense. Instead she snuggled under the covers again and issued an affectedly weary, "Stop trying to be Charles." Mostly she did not want to talk about it. She wanted to go on sulking uninterrupted.

"I'm not."

Many of the men she had observed in Cairo were not so different from the men in the United States. It was less true here, with Ruth, but plenty of men were loud, belligerent, and aggressively stupid. Meanwhile her friend was so soft-spoken, sometimes she wondered if she ought to teach Scott how to wear the hijab.

She sighed. "Snow was supposed to be fun."

"Hm?"

"Snow. I waited for so long to see it, to feel it, like it was a part of me the way heat is. But they ruined it. I tried to make snow and I couldn't. Now I don't want to, not ever."

Ororo left her remarks there and Scott stayed quiet a while, letting the low rumble of Artie's purr dominate the conversation.

"What if we changed it?" he asked.

"Hm?"

"Come on. Let's play in the snow."

"I don't want to—"

"My bed, my rules. Besides, it'll be fun, I promise."

Ororo groaned and crawled out from under the covers. "And put your new jeans on," she reminded him. "I don't know why you like the shabby clothes so much but no one likes it when Charles is in a mood."

"Professor Xavier doesn't care what I wear."

Ororo laughed and left, presumably going to her own bedroom to change.

At first, Scott insisted he couldn't wear his new clothes. A person ought to wash new clothes, he said, given how many people tried them on at the store. He managed to argue for two days that they were damp. Ororo was right though. The Professor was running low on patience with the torn, shabby jeans.

Scott pulled on the stupid new jeans. They felt like sandpaper.

When he and Ororo sat outside, talking her through snow proved easier than he might have expected. She felt it. She felt the weather, every drop of water, every hint of moisture. She felt the tension like a gentle headache when there was no water in the air… and the next thing they knew, flakes of snow drifted down.

"You're doing it!" Scott observed. "That's great!"

She rolled her eyes. "You said this would be fun."

Scott grinned and Ororo would swear that if she could see his eyes they would be glinting with mischief.

"You think Charles would mind if we had a tree?" Sean asked.

"A tree?" Alex echoed. "A Christmas tree?"

Sean nodded.

They sat in the lounge, enjoying a lack of homework and warming up with coffee that might, possibly, have a hint of something stronger in it.

Alex did not have the fondest memories of Christmas, mostly because it made his adoptive mother sad and things were more than tense at home when she was sad. He liked what Christmas did to other people, though. Everyone wanted to be happy and festive.

Sean came from a less turbulent background, though. In many ways, he was a kid. It was a difficult thing to fault someone for, wanting Christmas.

"Doubt he'd complain," Alex said.

"Yeah."

"I'll ask."

"Serious?"

Alex set his coffee down and a snowball smacked him in the chest. A second later, before he or Sean finished processing the snowball in the lounge, another flew at Sean. They both noticed who had thrown the snowballs by then. The twerp stood in the doorway, grinning.

Alex and Sean looked at one another. They bolted out of their seats at the same time and gave chase.

If they had been thinking, they would have noticed that Scott hesitated a second too long. They would have noticed that a boy who outran both of them during krav maga warm-ups nearly let them catch him. They would have noticed—Alex might have known from the look on his brother's face.

Only they weren't thinking so clearly. They were just chasing a kid who needed his butt kicked in a snowball fight.

Scott ran for the front door and held it wide open. He didn't leave it open—he held it open.

"Now!"

Alex was a few steps ahead of Sean. He noticed the figure in the snow first and skidded to a stop as the snowstorm attacked them. The two were white-painted in seconds.

Scott scrambled out from his hiding spot behind the door and went to join Ororo. "Well?" he asked.

"Fun," she admitted.

"Now run."

"What?"

They tricked Alex and Sean, giving them an easy first shot. From there any sense of order melted away. It became a snowball fight, and then snow sparring, then Alex holding Scott down and stuffing handfuls of snow into his sweater. Sean and Ororo were not actually siblings, so they knocked each other down a few times and called a truce.

Eventually all four trooped back indoors. There was snow melting on the floor.

"I'll clean up," Scott offered. "It was my idea." He did not need to explain himself and he knew it: none of the others would argue to mop up. He had shed his soaked sweater and one t-shirt, leaving him in a long-sleeved thermal top.

"How many shirts were you wearing?" Alex asked.

"It was cold. I dressed in layers."

Alex laughed and ruffled Scott's hair.

The others headed into the kitchen; hot drinks on a cold day were cliché for a reason. Returning armed with mop, rags, and bucket, Scott asked, "Hey, do you remember when we were kids—"

"No," Alex interrupted.

"Not a little?" Scott pressed. Ororo and Sean traded glances, each confirming the other's awkwardness. They knew this wouldn't go well. "You had this hat—you chewed on everything? Mom tied it on but you'd always manage—"

Two things happened with unfortunate timing. The first was Charles taking himself out of research for five minutes. The other was Alex snapping, "Just shut the fuck up, Cinderella."

Scott looked at him in disbelief and Alex remembered a moment too late that most of those Disney princesses seemed to be orphans. He knew that was why Scott looked so stricken. He was sensitive about his orphan status.

And, really, Alex should have apologized. He knew there was no reason the next word out of his mouth was not 'sorry'.

Instead he said, "Aw, lighten up, orphan boy."

That was when Charles joined the conversation. That was the first thing he heard. He had not forgotten the night a few months ago when Alex goaded Scott by claiming his parents had abandoned him. Alex and Scott did not know they were brothers at the time, but it was too much for Scott and Charles had not like hearing it, either.

He disliked hearing Alex lean on that same sensitive topic and snapped, "Alexander Summers!"

"It was a joke," Alex grumbled.

Charles opened his mouth.

Seeing the look on his face, Scott asked, quickly, "Why doesn't Alex get middle-named?"

He rarely misbehaved enough to warrant it, but a few times, Scott had been given his full name. If what Alex had said to him was rude enough to warrant an 'Alexander', where was his middle name?

Having a handful of teenagers, plus an Alex, taught Charles that even a paraplegic could walk a tightrope where maintaining the peace was concerned. "If I knew Alex's middle name—" he began.

"Cole!"

Scott needed to hear it so badly. Everyone heard the need in his voice, though no one quite understood it.

"Alexander Cole Summers, if I ever hear you speaking that way to your little brother again you will be washing dishes until everyone forgets we are meant to have a rotation."

There were three very different interpretations of that remark.

Ororo's was that there was a way to avoid washing dishes. It just meant tricking Alex into cussing out Scott in front of Charles—and if she needed to, she could do that.

Sean heard the simple joy of a close friend being told off.

As for Alex and Scott…

"Oh, I told you!"

Alex bolted across the room and grabbed Scott in a headlock.

"I'm older!" he crowed. "I'm the older brother!"

"We were talking about Christmas," Sean said. "Alex and I."

"Yeah," Alex said. "We were thinking it might be nice to have a tree. Like, if you didn't mind."

"Um, actually, it would—I would really like to have a tree," Sean added.

Scott huffed. "Who cares. Who cares about Christmas, anyway!"

No one in the group had a reputation for normalcy, but that remark earned stares—even from Charles. Scott had been shy last Christmas. He had not been angry. Of course Christmas could be stressful, but who hated Christmas?

"You don't like Christmas?" Sean asked.

Scott ducked away from Alex and left, shoving the air out of his way.

"So… no tree?" Sean surmised.

The disappointment in his tone was clear and a quick glimpse into his mind gave Charles a surprise. There would be no tree, Sean thought, because it upset Charles's pet.

Charles had changed over the past fourteen months and much of that was due to Scott. He had been prepared to sulk around his mostly-empty mansion like Dorian Gray's portrait, until Moira found the boy. It was Moira Charles wanted to stay, Moira he wanted to be a part of his life. If she had, he would be a very different person now.

He wanted a partner. Instead he was given a charge—another Raven, another Erik in a half-broken child. Yes, Scott mattered as a moral obligation. There was good in him so much closer to the surface. And yes, Scott mattered as a person. Charles cared about all the students, but Scott was almost like family.

Had that been so obvious?

Had he shown so much favoritism?

"No," Charles told Sean. "Get the tree. We should have Christmas."

"Hey. Let's just do it," Sean suggested. "It's barely snowing."

Less enthused but still interested, Alex said, "Sure. Right now?"

"No, let's sit around and talk about it. In fact, let's form a committee."

"Let's have an election."

"I nominate myself."

"I'm not voting for you. I intend to run against you."

While Sean and Alex bantered about Christmas Congress, Charles and Hank shared a look of superiority. It was softened by the knowledge that they were in not, really, superior. In fact, they enjoyed Alex and Sean. It didn't matter that Sean was too young to vote, let alone run for office. There were no rules in the Christmas Congress.

There were, however, surprises.

"I want to go."

Like most thirteen-year-olds, Ororo thought she was at a peak of maturity. The look on her face was certainly determined, but with the overalls, pigtails, and pink coat, that determination was more… cute. She would have been livid if she knew.

The silence stretched on too long and she repeated, "I want to go. I want to get the tree with you."

"Ororo," Charles began, gently, "are you sure that's wise after—"

"You can't keep me trapped here just because I'm African," she replied, something in her tone suggesting she was learning American cadences of disrespect, how to defy while keeping just within the lines of acceptable behavior.

Charles shook his head. "No, I suppose not. All right—if Alex and Sean say you may."

Ororo gave them a look somewhere between a plea and a command. Suddenly very on the spot, the boys looked away and made awkward, vaguely positive sounds.

'Look after her. Keep her close.'

Sean and Alex both received the telepathic message and both nodded just slightly.

"I'm driving," Sean announced.

"Keep tellin' yourself that," Alex retorted.

Alex did not have a car. Generally he borrowed Ruth's whenever possible, but asking to borrow a Jewish woman's car for a Christmas tree seemed rude. He asked Charles instead and the three of them clambered in. Ororo raced for the font, but Sean was bigger.

"No way."

"Alex!"

Alex looked between the two of them. He had a few years on Sean, but never expected to be forced to mediate. Wasn't that why they stuck close to Charles? Shirking responsibility?

He unlocked the door. "We can all squeeze in. Whoever doesn't like it can sit in the back."

Ororo came from a background with far less expectation of privacy and personal space than one found in the United States, and Sean was too proud to give in. She turned the dial for the radio.

"What song is this?"

"I got no idea," Alex replied.

"Your brother would know."

"My brother is scrawny and whines a lot."

"Yeah, but he knows music."

"Hank would know."

Alex switched off the radio. When Ororo reached to turn it on again, he tugged one of her pigtails. She shoved him.

"What the hell!" Sean objected. "You can't do that while he's driving! We could all die!"

"Oh, was that her?" Alex asked. "I thought a gnat bit me."