#5 I consider Alan Deaton my real father.

In the enormous front window of Do-Rite Dry Cleaners, someone had erected up a pair of tinseled monstrosities that could possibly have been intended to be shaped like Christmas trees but had ended up looking like a modern art installation composed entirely of green light bulbs. They threw Rafael McCall's face into strange relief, bathing in green light as he finished his phone call.

"Keep me in the loop. I have to go." There was a hard edge to Rafael's voice as he ended the call and slid the phone into his jacket pocket, turning his full attention back to the road. The traffic light shifted to green as well, and they drove off. "Sorry about that"

"What's up?"

"A case I'm working had a development. As the special-agent-in-charge, they're required to inform me."

"Dad—"

"Don't worry. It can keep."

Scott sighed. "I know we don't hang out a lot, but I'm sure Mom has told you that my senses are sharp enough that I can tell when people are lying to me." He had gotten better at that skill over the years; Alan had helped him refine it.

Rafael's eyes cut over at him before going back to the road. "I didn't lie."

"But you aren't telling the whole truth, either."

His father kept driving, and the silence was only broken by the hum of the wheels on the pavement.

Beacon Hills wasn't the largest city in California, so most of the stores and restaurants had closed early on Christmas Eve. People were still rushing to those few stores which remained open, desperate to get what they needed before everything shut down, though there weren't any crowds. The cold downpour which poured unceasingly from the overcast sky had encouraged most people to hurry home. No stars could be seen nor even the moon peeking between the clouds.

Trying to pretend that he wasn't seeking to avoid any further discussion of the call, his father tried to make a big show of looking at the street signs. It didn't work; Scott simply kept staring at him. Scott had had plenty of practice defeating Stiles's evasion techniques, and his father was a rank amateur in them when compared to his best friend.

"I didn't lie," Rafael repeated. "It was about a case, and there has been a development." "They've found Monroe."

"No," Rafael emphasized, "We found a possible lead to Monroe's present location. That's all I'm going to say about it tonight, because, right now, I'm hungry and I want to find this damn restaurant. I could have sworn the Noble Mandarin was on this block."

"Dad, it closed down ten years ago."

An uncomfortable silence reigned in the car, as his father's fingers tightened around the steering column. Scott could hear the vinyl squeak in protest.

"Oh, I didn't know that. Is there another Chinese restaurant you like?"

"Crazy Eights Buffet is pretty good. Corner of Cordova and First."

Rafael turned the car in that direction.

"Mom and I started going there after I was Bit. I tend to eat a lot now."

"That's not going to be a problem. I've got my Visa with me." Rafael went for an awkward joke, but Scott appreciated the effort.

They pulled into the parking lot as the rain finally stopped. The buffet was still open for another two hours even with the weather and the holiday.

Scott waited until his father was reaching out for the front door to ambush him. "So, where's her possible location?"

"We're not doing this." Rafael let the door handle slip from his hand. "I'm not going to talk about it."

"Dad—"

"It's Christmas Eve, we're having dinner together, and we're not doing this." "I'm not a child anymore, and I have a vested—"

"Enough, Scott." His father raised his voice as he yanked the restaurant door open once again. "This isn't about you. Well, yes, it's about you. But not talking about it, that's about me. Or, more accurately, that's about us. Now come on."

Scott chuffed as he watched his father go inside. He lost his chance to press the conversation as they were greeted by the hostess. She seated them and took their drink orders before pointing them at the buffet. Since the last time he had been here, the place had added a Mongolian grill in addition to the array of Chinese dishes and American bastardizations of Chinese dishes.

Realizing he wouldn't get any more information out of his father without a fight, he grabbed his plate and headed toward the food. He stopped in front of the sushi bar in surprise; he had forgotten that they had one. When Scott had lunch with Alan during those periods when he was in town and the veterinarian was free, they sometimes ordered sushi so Scott could get an appreciation for it. It was in preparation for a day that he hoped wasn't too far in the future. He sighed before moving on. This wasn't the evening to deal with those feelings.

Instead, he piled his plate high, going a little heavy on the pepper steak. He was never sure if his attraction to meat was due to being a growing boy or the lycanthropy. He had been too embarrassed to ask the other wolves he knew, and it seemed too trivial to ask the experts to which he had access. He wondered what Alan was doing tonight. Did he celebrate Christmas? Or Yule? Or neither?

Rafael eyed his plate as Scott sat back down. "Are you going to save any for the rest of us?"

Scott shrugged back at him. "I've got to keep my strength up, especially if I'm going to be fighting again, soon."

"Okay." His father rubbed his face. "I'll tell you what. Tonight we're going to have dinner, then we're going to go home and finish decorating the tree, and then I'm going to prepare a McCall family tradition for you. We're not going to talk shop. Tomorrow, you'll go spend the day with your mother and her ... new husband."

"Chris." Scott didn't smile at his father's discomfort, but it was a close thing.

"Yeah. Him." His father took a drink of water. "At eight a.m. on the day after Christmas, if you still want to know, we can talk about that phone call. Deal?"

"Deal. So, what are we going to talk about instead?" "How about you tell me about school."

Scott shoved a fork full of green peppers into his face, belligerently. He felt nettled because while he wanted to know, his father wasn't being unreasonable about drawing boundaries. Rafael had spent a lot of effort wheedling him into doing Christmas Eve right, and, for once, he was making good on his promises to focus entirely on them.

"I've managed to finish the first semester of my freshman year," Scott finally said. "It only took me two years."

Rafael deftly avoided the implications of that statement. "And how did it go?" "Go?"

"What type of grades did you get?"

"Oh. A bunch of Cs, mostly."

His father hesitated and then decided to push ahead. "Honestly, I'd thought you'd do better. Is there something the matter?"

"Uh, yeah. I missed a ridiculous amount of classes in high school." "Your grades were fine."

"My grades were fixed." He felt a strange sense of relief that he could express his irritation in a way didn't seem petulant. "Which sounds really cool until you realize that the problem with getting grades for work you didn't do is that you didn't actually do the work. Considering I spent the next eighteen months after high school fighting fanatics, my retention for what I did learn wasn't the best."

"You shouldn't talk like that about yourself. You're a smart kid."

"I'm not that smart." He shoved a won ton in his mouth. He chewed it deliberately while Rafael struggled for something to say. Finally, he couldn't bear to leave his dad hanging. "I'm not giving up. But I know it's going to be tough, and you should, too."

"Then maybe—"

"Uh-uh. No talking shop."

"You didn't know what you were going to say."

"You were going to spout some bullshit about how maybe I could concentrate on school more and

my duties as alpha less."

Rafael frowned. "Okay, I was. Sorry."

They continued to talk about Scott's classes as continued to eat. Scott talked about how, given his time constraints, he had initially been upset about having to spend time taking elective and general education courses, but in the end, he found that he had enjoyed the change of pace they offered. If he had taken all his courses in the hard sciences, he would have bit someone out of sheer frustration. Deaton had suggested a composition class and a freshman seminar on indigenous cultures. They had turned out to be so interesting that he told his father he was thinking about a minor in either religion or folklore.

"Seriously?"

"Considering I'm a little bit of folklore myself, I didn't think it'd be too demanding." "I thought you might want to ... you know ... stay away from all that."

"Dad." Scott had found a new way to say that word ever since his father had been let into the know. No matter how accepting or helpful he was when it came to pursuing Monroe, Rafael tended to treat Scott's lycanthropy like other adults would treat a mortgage payment — an imposed obligation which would have dire consequences if you ignored it. He subtly tried to push Scott into treating it the same way. Sometimes he just had to remind his father that a werewolf was what he was now; it wasn't a problem that would go away eventually.

"Okay, okay."

"So what's this tradition you want to show me?"

"It was passed down through generations of McCalls. I already bought all the stuff we need for it in a car. On Christmas Eve, my parents would make everyone in the house a Tom & Jerry."

Scott smirked at him. "I'm assuming you don't mean the cartoons."

"It's a drink, Scott. You add rum and brandy to hot eggnog and spice it appropriately. It's time that I show it to you."

"Uh ..."

"Of course, we won't actually be using real alcohol, but I found a way to make it so it tastes almost identical. I'm not absolutely sure it'll work, but at least you'll have the recipe if you want to make it for yourself."

"That's ... that sounds pretty cool." "I do have a good idea occasionally."

The McCall family was a new topic between them. In the distant path, Scott vaguely remembered meeting people who could have been his father's parents, but he had been very young and he wouldn't' have been able to identify them now. It had only happened once or twice before his dad had left. His mom only spoke about the McCall family rarely and then she never went into much detail. He knew that his father had come from a large family with three brothers and three sisters. He asked after them.

"They're fine," his father said, nonchalantly.

Scott blinked.

"Some families are closer than others. My father worked two jobs to keep us clothed and fed, and so he had to leave raising us to my mother. Seven kids meant her hands were full. We never starved, but we weren't rich by anyone's measure."

"I know what that's like."

Rafael met his eyes over the table, as if trying to figure out what Scott had meant by that, but he missed it.

"We learned to be self-sufficient. To set priorities and fulfill them." "And family wasn't a priority."

Rafael frowned and looked away. "I guess not, though it wasn't as mercenary as you make it sound."

After paying for dinner, they drove back through the night to Scott's apartment, which was actually the converted second floor of an older home. The rain had started again while the temperature had dropped, turning their breath to little clouds. It would drop well below freezing that night; they could possibly have a White Christmas.

They had already assembled the tree earlier that afternoon, but they still had to decorate it. When they had cleared out the old McCall house, Melissa had left all the old ornaments and lights for Scott to choose what he had wanted, since the Argents already had their own stuff. Scott had studied the pile and then taken all of it.

It was sort of ridiculous. It would take an hour if they put up every single thing in the three cardboard boxes marked X-mas. School started in three-and-a-half weeks; he would have to take it down long before then, and he would probably have to do it himself. If they got a lead on Monroe, he'd probably be on the road for at least a week of the recess. If he got to take the trip that he had in mind, he would be gone for another few days. The chance that anyone else would see the decorations was miniscule.

But that wasn't really the point. Scott watched his father trying to untangle some garlands, when he was really trying to steal from the past the Christmas Eve's when Rafael had been elsewhere. There had been more than one.

In the end, it wouldn't be possible, but Scott appreciated the effort. So, in return, he would help his father put up far too many blinking lights and try not to drop any of the glass ornaments. He had lived in this place since the end of August, living at U.C. Davis during the week and staying here on the weekends. Luckily, he had realized before the semester had started that it would be impossible to run a battle against anti-supernatural fanatics from his freshman dorm room.

"What do you think?"

Scott thought it was over-the-top and it would probably take him until March to take it all down. "Perfect."

His father smiled but then headed toward the tiny kitchen. "Now, to make the Tom & Jerrys. Come on."

It felt a little desperate, but he understood the urgency of his father's need. Before he became an alpha, he couldn't imagine his father suddenly wanting to be part of his life after being gone so

long, but Scott now had too much experience with taking things for granted. So many parts of being a teenager had vanished while he was desperately trying to come to terms with the strange world in which he had found himself. He would give anything to have had those moments.

Rafael wanted to be his father again. It was that simple.

Scott would play along. They would have a Merry Christmas. There was no need to tell Rafael that he could never really be the person he wanted to be in Scott's life. That position had already been taken by someone who had never left. Who had helped him when he needed it, who didn't have anything to make up for, who understood what Scott was going through when no one else did.

To say it out loud would be cruel.