Damian had only been living in his father's house for a few months, but he already knew that Grayson was the most tolerable of everyone he now had to reside with. The man's sappiness was disgusting, but no one who had seen him fight could reasonably accuse him of having let sentiment make him soft. He was a teddy bear with stuffing made of steel, and for some reason Damian couldn't help but respect that.

Knowing that, he should have expected the reaction that Dick had when he first heard that Damian had never experienced Christmas. "Never?!" he exclaimed.

"...No. Why would I have?"

"I don't know, I just...it's not like your mom follows some other religion or anything like that. I mean, she knows about Christmas."

"It's Talia," Bruce rumbled from the other side of the Thanksgiving dinner-laden table. "Just because she knows something doesn't mean she's going to share it with anyone else."

"Dick has a point, though," Tim pitched in. "She sent him out into the world an expert in a dozen things, but she left out a cornerstone of Western culture? That doesn't make sense."

"I know about Christmas, Drake," Damian huffed. "The same as I knew about Thanksgiving before today."

"You've just never experienced one," Bruce filled in for him.

"...Right."

Dick clapped his hands together. "Well that's an easy fix!" he announced, his eyes shining. "We'll just have to do a ton of stuff this year to make up for lost time."

"Or we could not," Damian griped.

"Aw, c'mon, Dami; don't you want Santa to bring you a ton of presents? People without Christmas spirit don't get anything."

"Santa, Grayson? Did Pennyworth hit you in the head with a platter when he changed the courses?"

"Okay, okay, you're too old for Santa. I had to try. But the stuff I'm thinking of for real is fun."

"Besides," Bruce informed him, "Alfred happens to like Christmas, and he has a big say in what makes it under the tree. If he thinks you don't want to participate in other seasonal activities he might assume that you don't want to participate in the holiday at all."

Damian eyeballed his father, trying to determine whether or not he was being led on. After a moment he decided that it probably wasn't an exaggeration; Pennyworth could be almost as squishy as Grayson, albeit that he tended to keep his expression of such emotions restrained. If there was anything about Christmas that he was truly interested in it was the presents aspect, and consequently the threat that had been made was a powerful one. "...Ugh, fine," he muttered finally, then stuffed more turkey into his mouth in effort to chew over Dick's hoot of joy.

Thus it was that he found himself standing at the top of a long, snow-covered hill one evening a week later. "You ready to do some sledding, Dami?" Grayson grinned beside him.

"...This is ridiculous." Even if sliding down turned out to be amusing, they would have to trudge all the way back to the top in order to do it again. "We're just going to get cold and covered in snow for no reason."

"You won't get cold," Dick promised. "And fun is an excellent reason to get snow-covered."

"And yet I notice you let Drake out of this 'fun' little outing."

"Timmy wanted to come, but he has finals to study for. You don't, and you've never been sledding. So...on the count of three?"

"If we have to." Maybe he could just do it once, then get into the warm, running car they'd driven to the base of the slope in and take a nap while Grayson gave himself hypothermia. He wasn't particularly tired, but anything had to be better than this.

"Okay. One, two, three!"

Dick ran a few steps, threw himself forward onto his long plastic sled, and took off down the hill. Damian watched him go, then let out a heavy sigh. He couldn't stay up here all night, he grimaced, and sliding was the fastest way to get back to civilization. Sitting down atop his conveyance, he muttered a half-formed thought about useless pursuits and pushed off.

It was boring until he reached the trees. Blasting past where Grayson had tumbled off into a drift, Damian continued into the woods. Trunks rose out of nowhere, giving him little time to dodge. He managed the feat only by wrenching his body back and forth and keeping his eyes narrowed at the darkness ahead of him. It was a challenge, and by the time he finally ran out of momentum and coasted to a stop the beginnings of a grin had appeared on his face.

"Dami?! You okay?!" a call came from somewhere behind him.

He rolled his eyes at the overburden of care in the question. "I'm fine!"

"…There you are," Dick said when he appeared from the trees a minute later. "Do you want some pointers on braking? We should have gone over that first. That could have been bad just now. Here, you just-"

"No," he stopped him. "I like going into the trees."

"...It's kind of dangerous. You're not wearing a helmet or anything."

Standing up, Damian crossed his arms. "Look, Grayson, we're throwing ourselves down a hill on a piece of slippery plastic. This isn't exactly a safe activity to begin with. If you're going to suck what little fun there is out of it, then I'm done."

Dick frowned at him for a long moment, then gave in. "…Okay, little brother. You do it your way. So long you're having fun. Just…just be careful, okay? No cracked skulls at Christmas."

"I don't particularly want one of those either, you know."

"Good. Then we're on the same page." The smile that Damian had come to accept as being Dick's standard expression reappeared. "Want to walk back up together?"

He considered the offer. The idea of coming back through the forest at high speed was alluring enough to make him drag himself to the top at least once more, and if he went with Grayson maybe the trudge wouldn't seem so long. "Fine," he agreed. "But you're going first."

"Using me to break trail for you?" A smirk appeared on the man's face. "Clever bird."

"…You're not mad?" The others would have been put out, he was certain. But then Grayson wasn't like them...

"Nah. So long as you're having fun tonight, Dami, I don't mind breaking trail." He jerked his head towards the top of the hill. "C'mon. We've got sledding to do."

Dick turned and began to walk away. Damian stared after him until he was almost out of sight, busy musing on the fact that throwing oneself down a mountain wasn't turning out to be so bad after all. Maybe he would try Grayson's launch method on this next go-around; if nothing else it might ramp up the difficulty of dodging the trees, and that could only make things more interesting.

Provided that all of the Christmas activities Dick claimed to have planned were like this, he thought as he hustled to catch up, he might end up not hating the holiday as much as he'd expected to...

He survived sledding despite several close calls with frozen trunks. On more than one occasion during the following week he found himself drifting off in school, replaying tricky tree encounters in his mind and trying to determine how he could more successfully navigate them next time. As little as he wanted to admit it, he had ended up enjoying himself out in the cold with no one but Grayson. The prospect of a 'next time' should have made him curl his lip in disgust, but he couldn't bring himself to hope that it never happened again.

That feeling was driven home when he heard what was planned for the next weekend. He'd been forced to participate in several annoying events in the evenings since they'd gone sledding – decorating the tree, cutting out sugar cookies in various vexing shapes, watching some absurd old film about angels and suicide and the spirit of giving – but what Grayson came up with next almost sickened him. "A Christmas market?" he scoffed, trying not to wince. "Why? Going to the regular market is bad enough."

"The Christmas market is fun, Dami," Dick insisted. "Even Bruce thinks so. Don't you, Bruce?"

The billionaire looked up from his newspaper long enough to concur. "I'm going with you, so there's that."

"The crowds are terrible," Tim opined, "but it's worth it. I wouldn't want to go to it every day or anything, but once a year is okay."

"Can't we just go sledding again instead?" Damian mumbled.

"Aw!" Dick beamed. "You did have fun last weekend! I knew it!"

"I did not," he lied. "…It just sounds better than going to some stupid market."

"What if I buy you a big ginger cookie?" Grayson tempted.

"We have those in the kitchen."

"…A gingerbread house?"

"Only if it's big enough for me to actually live in."

"How about nothing, and you go anyway because we're all going?" Bruce stepped in.

"So what, it's non-negotiable?"

"Isn't that what I just said?"

"Ugh..."

And so come Saturday he was forced to pile into an SUV with the others in order to make the drive into the heart of Gotham. There were carols on the radio the entire way, none of them known to him but all of them tweaking the nerve he kept tuned as an alarm against kitsch. As if that wasn't bad enough, the market was set outdoors, a fact that he hadn't been apprised of. "It's outside?!" he protested.

"That's the best part!" Dick nudged him with an elbow. "C'mon, I'll buy you a hot chocolate if you promise to just give it a try."

"Keep me in hot chocolate the whole time we're here, and I'll comply," he counter-offered.

"Deal."

Ten minutes later he was frustrated again. "We've passed like five places selling hot chocolate," he accused as he stomped along beside Dick. "You said we were getting some."

"We are, Dami. There's just this one place that makes the best...you can't buy hot cocoa from anyone else here, it's not the same. I'm actually surprised that the others went straight off shopping instead of coming here first like they usually do...ah-ha!" He pointed ahead to where a long line was snaking through the crowd. "There it is. They're always super busy."

"...I am not waiting half an hour for a cup of chocolate water. Just give me five dollars and I'll go get my own somewhere else."

"No, little brother, it's got to be this place," Dick said, steering him into line. "It won't take as long as you think; they're fast, and they've got it streamlined so that practically all you have to do is walk up and hand them your money."

"Grayson-"

A plea cut him off. "Just let me do Christmas right for you, okay? I know it's all new, but...just let me try to make it special. Please, Dami?" His eyes widened as his lower lip began to pooch out. "I want you to have fun, and the best way I can think of to do that is to show you all of the things that make this time of year special for me. The cocoa they serve here is one of those things. Don't tell him I said this," he glanced around, "but it's the only stuff I've ever found that's better than Alfred's. So just try it once, okay? If you don't like it, we won't come back."

It bothered Damian immensely that the man's begging was so effective. Making a mental note to ask him how he hypnotized people with his pout, he shuffled around to face forward again. The line had advanced several steps just during their short argument; maybe Grayson hadn't been exaggerating about the workers' speed, after all. "...This had better be the best thing that's ever been in my mouth," he warned half-heartedly.

Hands landed on his shoulders and pulled him back into an awkward hug. "It will be, little brother," Dick swore. "I promise."

Author's Note: My apologies for breaking this story into two parts, but it is turning out too long for me to write in one day. Part two will post tomorrow. As a total aside, let me just say how much I wish we could have outdoor Christmas markets where I live. Drinking hot cocoa while browsing under a warm roof just isn't the same!