A/N: Well, hopefully this is the point where you'll start getting more answers than questions. Not all the answers, because I do still intend to write a whole story about Riley's past, but enough answers to keep you all from hunting me down after Christmas.

The Perfect Christmas
Chapter 14/25: Gingerbread

Abigail Gates smiled as she surveyed the mass of ingredients spread out in front of her, running through a mental check list to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything. Pieces of gingerbread cut out to exact sizes and left to harden overnight, check. Cardboard for bases, check. A massive bowl of frosting with a knife as well as a tube to squirt with, check. Enough gumdrops to feed a third world country…

"What are you doing, Abby?" Riley asked from behind her, and she was proud to say she only jumped a little before turning and smiling at him.

"We are making gingerbread houses, Riley."

A couple of very befuddled blinks followed before Riley tilted his head to the side and raised an eyebrow. "We as in you and me?"

"Yes! Unless you'd rather be helping Ben and Dad clear off the sidewalk." Abby couldn't help but smirk a little at this as Riley looked out the window to see Ben hard at work shoveling snow, and Patrick working just as hard telling his son he was doing it all wrong.

"Er…I'd love nothing more than to make gingerbread houses with you, Abby! Let's get started." Riley plopped himself down in one of the chairs, looking over the table with a mixture of aw and disbelief. "Unless you're planning on making a full sized one, in which case I may go see if I can apprentice myself to Patrick."

"No, just two decently sized ones," she grinned, grabbing her piece of cardboard and a knife full of frosting, which she spread across the base as a perfect foundation before grabbing her first two pieces for walls.

Riley followed her lead, although not nearly as skillful at making his frosting look more uniform and less like someone had thrown on a pile of frosting and then tried to clean it up by wiping at it.

"Why, exactly, did you decide this was an activity for the two of us, Abs?" Riley questioned a few minutes later as they waited for the walls to settle.

"Oh, I just thought we hadn't done any real holiday activities the last couple of days, and it might be fun to do something kind of traditional." Abby grinned as she grabbed to tube of frosting and stated lining the tops of the walls for the roof pieces.

"I can't say that this is what I would have thought of as a traditional Christmas activity. I can't even say I've ever met someone before who has made an actual gingerbread house with real gingerbread," the younger man ran his finger along the excess frosting on his cardboard, liking it clean before continuing. "Most of us just get milk boxes and graham crackers as kids."

"Most people don't go on traditional sleigh rides either," Abby teased.

Riley didn't respond as he was concentrating very hard on aligning the roof pieces just right—his tongue sticking out of his mouth and everything.

Abby bit back a giggle, spreading the last of the frosting that would serve as the cement on the house before sitting back and waiting for it to dry. "You're getting frosting all over your sleeve."

The other glanced down, slightly surprised to find this was true. "Uh…oops?"

"Why don't you just take it off?" She frowned a little, wondering, not for the first time, why he even had it on to begin with. He hadn't gone outside today that she knew of and the house itself was plenty warm.

"No, that's okay. I'll just be more careful." Riley grinned at her as he brought the sleeve up to his mouth and attempted to lick the frosting off.

Abby rolled her eyes, standing up and moving behind him. "Come on, Riley, just take it off. You've got to be too hot in that thing."

"If that were true, than I'd have a girlfriend," came the easy reply as he attempted to twist away from her. "Why's it bothering you so much?"

"Because you're going to make a mess that I'm going to have to clean up, and it would be much easier if you would just take the hoodie off to start with." She folded her arms across her chest and looked down at the younger man in what she hoped was an intimidating manner. "What ever you're trying to hide, you don't have to from me."

It must have been an effective look, because Riley shrunk back, "what makes you think I'm hiding something?"

"The fact that there is absolutely no reason to keep it on, and yet you insist on it, maybe?"

Riley seemed to consider this for several seconds before, with a very put upon sigh, sliding the piece off his shoulders and hanging it off the back of the chair.

Abby was first struck by just how scrawny he looked in only his t-shirt, and how incredibly pale his arms were. It looked as though his arms hadn't seen the light of day for a while.

This was probably why she could see the scars so easily. On both his lower arms, towards the middle, there was a matching set of old faded scars. Abby couldn't think of when she'd seen a pair of more odd looking scars, either. They were perfectly spaced lines that, if you extended them out, looked like a swirl—like a burner on a stove. She frowned at them, trying to figure out in what way they could maybe even possibly have been accidental. She couldn't think of one.

Blue eyes followed her's down to the scars and he sighed, "go on, I know you're dying to ask."

"Who did that to you?"

From the slightly startled look on Riley's face, that hadn't been what he'd given her permission to ask. He shrugged, looking away, "what makes you think somebody did anything to you?"

She took his arm in her hands, twisting it to try to demonstrate. "You don't grab pots like this, and they're too perfectly matched, almost identical. You couldn't possibly do that accidentally. No way."

"That's what got me in trouble the first time," Riley smiled, a little sadly. "I tried telling one of my teachers that I'd done them myself on accident. He didn't believe me either."

Abby pondered this silently, trying to piece some things together in her head. She knew that Riley had grown up in an orphanage. He knew that before that he'd lived with his mother, and reason said they had to have been very poor. Therefore, the only really logical conclusion had to be that he'd been abused and taken from her.

"Riley…"

"I know what you're thinking," he said darkly, finally pulling his arms away. "And the answer is no, I'm not suicidal. I never have and never will inflict pain upon myself. I'm not depressed in anyway."

"That wasn't what I was thinking." Since she no longer had his arms, Abby reached up and ran a hand through Riley's hair instead. He looked surprised by the intimate gesture. "I was going to say that I'm sorry you had to go through that, and I don't know how anyone could want to hurt you."

A look of confusion before the young man looked down. "My mother didn't do it either. Not directly anyway."

Abby pulled back, grabbing her chair and sitting next to her friend, "you don't have to tell me, if you don't want to…"

"No, it's alright. You and Ben were probably going to find out eventually anyway." He rubbed his arms a little before seemingly realizing what he was doing and stopping himself. "What you have to understand right off is that my Mom was really young. I think she'd be…maybe a year older than Ben at most."

Abby held back her gasp, but it was a near thing. What that translated to was that his mother had been, under the very best of circumstance, barely sixteen when she'd had him, since Ben was fourteen years older than their young companion. In all likely hood, she'd been only fifteen.

If Riley noticed her surprise, he made no comment on it. "As you can imagine, she didn't finish high school, so the jobs she did have didn't exactly pay well, and her she was too stubborn to live with her mom…even though Grandma loved her dearly and I know she offered several times until she died. We lived in this little tiny apartment, the two of us and a friend of my mother's…Shirley."

He didn't have to say what Abby knew he was going to. The brief look of terror and distaste that flew across his face as he said her name, and the thick swallow afterwards, was all the answer she needed.

"Oh, Riley…"

"She didn't like kids," he continued, almost as if he couldn't stop once he'd started. "She had no patience for the mistakes I would make. My mother never hit me. Didn't even spank me when I deserved it. The most she would do is cry, and that was punishment enough for me. But she didn't…stop Shirley either. A lot of the time, she would just watch. I don't think she even realized what was going on half the time." Riley sounded bitter, and his fists seemed to be clenching reflexively on his knees. "After I showed up to school with these, the judge ruled it was all the same thing."

Instinctively, Abby reached down and hugged the young man close, "I'm so sorry."

He stiffened a little, but didn't pull away. "It was a long time ago. It's okay now."

"I'm still sorry. You didn't deserve that." She pulled back, smiling at him. "Thank you for telling me."

"You wouldn't lay off until I did," Riley muttered, but he gave her a half-smile. "Do me a favor and explain it to Ben, will you? I don't really want to repeat it again."

"Sure thing." Abby sat down, reaching for the frosting.

Riley pulled it out of her grasp and grinned at her. "You do realize that I can't just let you walk away with my secrets though, don't you?"

She frowned, reaching to grab the frosting, "oh? What are you planning on doing about it?"

Riley removed the spatula from the frosting and ran it down her face in answer.