A/N: Merry Christmas everyone!

This is for raidenraccoon who asked for Drake and Negaduck spending the Christmas holiday together (and I hope you feel better soon!). Song is by The Piano Guys.

If she was entirely honest, the purple suit threw her off when she opened the front door.

But she hid her hesitation well, smiling brightly and saying, "Merry Christmas!"

Negaduck glowered at her from under the violet fedora.

They'd decided it would be easier to explain why Darkwing Duck was visiting for Christmas instead of Negaduck. It had been Drake who had suggested "Darkwing" come to his house since it would continue to give weight to the idea that Drake Mallard and Darkwing Duck were two separate ducks.

Negaduck, though, had never fully jumped on board, something that was confirmed when he muttered, "This is stupid."

"I have one of your suits in my room; you can go upstairs and change," Gosalyn assured him.

Negaduck looked somewhat taken aback at that, but he ground his teeth and scowled. "Like wearing this dumb costume is the problem."

"You don't have to stay if you don't want to," Gosalyn said, trying to hide the disappointment at the thought of him leaving early. It was impressive that he'd shown up at all; she needed to remember his limits and not get caught up in her own needs to have him close during the holiday.

"But at least come in out of the snow for a few minutes," she said, stepping out of the doorway and motioning inside.

Negaduck eyed the hallway, swallowing as he shifted his weight. "I don't know how Christmas is supposed to work," he confessed, panicked eyes flying up to Gosalyn's face.

She smiled at him softly, her heart breaking at how desperate he looked. "Let's start by getting you warm."

Negaduck took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and marched inside.

Closing the door behind them, Gosalyn asked, "Do you wanna stay long enough to change into your own suit, or do you just want to taunt Dad then leave?"

Negaduck glanced up from the living room to upstairs before regarding her. "Who's here?"

"Me, Dad, and Launchpad."

"Not your boyfriend?" he sneered.

"When you don't have the pressure of Christmas on top of what will be a very awkward day, maybe you and Max can be in the same room."

"So looks like Max is here to stay?" Negaduck grumbled.

Gosalyn nodded. "Can I say the same about you?"

Negaduck blinked, hurt flashing in his eyes. "You're…. Are you actually asking—?"

"For today," Gosalyn quickly amended. "Sorry, I was trying to be clever and— I know you're always gonna be around." She laughed nervously and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "This is off to a great start, huh?"

Negaduck shrugged. "I wouldn't know. Don't have much experience with Christmas."

"What's taking so long? Is he afraid to show his face?" Drake asked from the living room.

"Only because I don't want anyone seeing me in your stupid suit, Duncewing," Negaduck shot back.

Gosalyn smiled. "You wanna stay?"

Negaduck sighed. "I have to now. Can't have him," he nodded to the living room, "thinking I'm a coward."

"Too late!" Drake called.

Negaduck ripped the fedora off his head. "You know what—"

Gosalyn placed her hands on Negaduck's shoulders and pushed him towards the stairs, saying, "Go change. Your suit's on my bed."

Negaduck's eyes returned to her face as he studied her. "Knew I'd be staying, huh?"

"I hoped." She nodded towards her room. "Go on."

After making sure Negaduck had gone upstairs, she returned to the living room. Her father glowered at her from the couch and Launchpad smiled from one of the armchairs.

"Please try and be civil," she said.

"Only if he will," Drake countered.

Gosalyn shook her head, at a loss for what could be done. She'd just have to believe Launchpad when he'd told her that both mallards would try to get along for her sake because so far? Not going according to plan. "Guess we'll see how this goes, then," she said around a sigh.

Drake eyed her before he, too, sighed. "I know this is important to you, Gos, so. I'll try."

Gosalyn sat down beside him and kissed his cheek, which took some of the tension out of his shoulders.

When Negaduck came back down to the living room, now dressed in his normal suit, he glanced at Gosalyn and groused, "Your room's a mess."

Drake's eyes grew wide and he uncrossed his arms. "I've been telling her that for years."

"Does she keep a clean room in the Negaverse?" Launchpad asked.

"Not really," Negaduck said. "But it's got nothing on that."

Drake looked over to Gosalyn. "Will this finally get you to clean your room, young lady?"

"None of this is very Christmasy," Gosalyn said.

"Want me to toss some tinsel around in there to get you in the holiday spirit?" Negaduck asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Not like you'd be able to tell it was there with all the other stuff lying around," Drake pointed out as he shook his head.

"Negaduck, do you wanna sit down?" Gosalyn asked, motioning to the free armchair by Launchpad.

"I'll sit there!" Drake said, all but leaping over to it. "I, uh, like the angle I get." He settled into the seat awkwardly. "You can see the whole living room without having to turn your head."

"And it leads to Darkwing Tower," Negaduck said, taking the free seat by Gosalyn on the couch. He sat forward, not relaxing, but he was sitting. In her living room. Which was progress.

"What?" Drake asked, his voice high. "That's — where did you get that idea—?"

"I've been here before," Negaduck pointed out. "And I have— had the same thing rigged in my house."

"Is your Tower not useable anymore?" Launchpad asked, catching Negaduck's change from have to had. Just like Gosalyn did.

"It was barely usable to begin with," she said.

"I was afraid for my life when we were hiding out in there," Drake said. "And that's saying something since we were in the Negaverse at the time."

"And to think, all this time, all I needed was a rusting Tower to defeat you," Negaduck said with a roll of his eyes.

Gosalyn covered her beak to hide her smile while Launchpad coughed to disguise his laughter.

Drake scowled and said, "Can we go back to how messy Gosalyn's room is?"

Negaduck ended up staying for about an hour before he and Drake really started to argue, but Gosalyn was willing to work with an hour.

More than willing.

The two had sort of gotten along until the topic of recent crimes came up. The park incident was mentioned, and nothing nice was said after that, both mallards swearing up and down that they would have been the one victorious if Gosalyn hadn't intervened.

Gosalyn took Negaduck back up to her room to change while Launchpad took Drake to the kitchen to check on their dinner.

"You can stay if you want," Gosalyn said, sitting on her bed and smoothing the Darkwing cape Negaduck was borrowing. "For dinner."

"Kid, that was as close to Christmas as I get." Negaduck stepped out of Gosalyn's closet, tugging down the sleeves of the Darkwing jacket. "Is that all you do on holidays? Just… talk?"

Gosalyn shrugged. "Kind of hang out in general. We eat a big meal, too. Exchange gifts. And speaking of—"

"If we do a gift exchange in Darkwing Duck's house, I'll never speak to you again."

Gosalyn smiled. "Relax. I need to set up your gift in your house. When's a good time for me to come over?" She reached out to take his Negaduck uniform from him, which he'd balled up and shoved under his arm currently.

But he didn't hand it over. Instead, he shifted it to his front, fingers digging into the fabric.

Gosalyn looked up at him and he wouldn't meet her eyes. "You can be there when I am," she assured him. "I'll even let you watch me set it up—"

"You can't come over anymore," Negaduck said.

And there was definitely more to that explanation, so Gosalyn waited in the silence.

Eventually, Negaduck sighed. Still not meeting her gaze, he said, "There's no home to go to."

"What happened?" she asked, keeping her tone gentle. Because if someone had attacked his house, Negaduck wouldn't be so reluctant to talk about it.

His knuckles were white, his grip unrelenting on his costume. "I, uh. Set it on fire."

"On purpose?"

Negaduck scowled at her. "I'm not that irresponsible."

"But you were that angry." Gosalyn forced a small smile. "At least you're not bottling up your emotions anymore."

"Yeah, who knew it would take Christmas to get me out of this slump?" He flung his costume to the ground.

Gosalyn studied him for a moment. She had to be careful — so careful — about how she approached this. "If you were that upset about coming over, you could have told me," she eventually said.

"It wasn't anger," Negaduck growled, running a hand through his feathers. "It was… I wasn't angry."

Knowing all too well about Negaduck's trouble with self-loathing, Gosalyn searched for the right words to soothe him. It was clear that he didn't want to talk about it (because not-anger wasn't a real answer to anything). And he was probably terrified out of his mind about how the next few minutes would go.

He had, at least, started destroying things again, which he hadn't been able to do since he'd returned from Oblivion.

But his house.

The one place he'd called his own and protected with a ferocity he did with little else.

"Do you have somewhere to stay in the meantime?" Gosalyn eventually asked.

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, as if he was waiting for some other reaction to eventually play out. "I'll go to one of my arsenals."

"To cozy up with all your weapons?"

He shrugged, dropping his gaze back down to the floor.

Sarcasm wasn't working right now.

Back to careful sincerity, then.

"Does it have heating?" she asked.

He blinked and looked up at her. "It's a warehouse."

Translation: no, it didn't.

"Do you have some sort of cot there?" she said.

"What does that have to do with anything?" he demanded.

Translation: no there wasn't.

"Okay, you're staying here." Gosalyn stood, Darkwing cape in one hand and purple mask in the other.

"What?"

"Well, not here here," she amended, handing him the cape. "At the Tower. There are beds and central heating there. And a fully stocked kitchen."

"I'm not—"

"You're really going to stay at your well hidden arsenal and inevitably give away its location with all your comings and goings?" Gosalyn raised an eyebrow.

Negaduck snatched the cape out of her hand and secured it around his shoulders. "Dipwing'll never agree to this."

"You're homeless on Christmas," she said gently.

"Gos," Negaduck said around a sigh. "I'm not gonna stay in the Tower."

"Give me five minutes with Dad," she said, handing over the purple mask. "And pick up your costume. I know how easily it wrinkles."

As Negaduck predicted, Drake was not enthusiastic about letting his arch enemy stay at his secret hideout. "He's gonna steal my stuff!"

"If he wanted to do that, he would've already done it one of the times he was there," Gosalyn pointed out.

"He'll learn all my secrets!"

"He's you from another universe! He already knows everything."

"He'll learn S.H.U.S.H. secrets."

"It's Christmas."

"Ha!" Drake pointed at her in triumph. "You don't have an argument for that!"

"Dad," Gosalyn said, stepping forward, her tone gentle. "Please."

Drake studied her. "What if there's a crime that Darkwing Duck has to answer to?"

"Then you'll go and fight crime."

"With him just there?"

"Dad, he has nowhere to go."

"Then put him up in a hotel somewhere."

"While he's dressed as Darkwing Duck or Negaduck?"

Drake sighed, clearly not willing to have his heroic image tarnished by checking into a hotel on Christmas Day.

"Do you want me to stay there with him?" she asked.

Drake blanched. "On Christmas?"

"Okay, not tonight," she quickly soothed. "But maybe the next few days? While we figure stuff out."

Drake sniffed. "Does that mean he'll sleep in my bed?"

"I'll sleep there. He can take mine."

Drake crossed his arms. Then put his hands on his hips. "I'm running out of excuses."

"I'll keep arguing if you want," Gosalyn offered, smiling at him.

Drake shook his head. "I want to go on record as saying I do not like this."

"So, he can stay?"

"If S.H.U.S.H. is infiltrated after tonight, I reserve the right to say 'I told you so'."

"He has no interest in S.H.U.S.H.." She hoped.

Drake sighed and threw his hands into the air. "Fine. It's not like you needed my permission; you were gonna do it anyway."

Gosalyn hugged him. "Not without asking you this time."

Drake returned her embrace and kissed her forehead.

Negaduck staying in Darkwing Tower all on his own wasn't how Gosalyn had envisioned Negaduck spending his Christmas, but at least he wasn't freezing to death back in the Negaverse. And he had a bed (after confirming three separate times that it belonged to her and not Drake or Launchpad).

He sat on the edge of her bed, looking around his surroundings, and nodded when she said she'd be staying the night with him tomorrow and until they figured out a solution. He didn't say anything, not even when Gosalyn left for home.

But he and Drake had walked away from Christmas unscathed, so Gosalyn was already calling it a success.

Upon returning home, Gosalyn found Launchpad staring out of the living room window. He turned to face her with a smile on his beak.

"Turned out to be a white Christmas after all," he said, nodding to the window and the gently falling snow beyond.

Gosalyn smiled in return and settled to watch the snow with Launchpad. They were eventually joined by Drake, who brought cocoa with him.

Definitely a success.

Weird and awkward, but a success.