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John had always loved the Christmas season.
He loved hanging shining, multicolored lights from every surface in the house; loved the whispered promises of wrapped presents sitting quietly in a pile; loved the powder-white snow that crept across the ground and offered immediate snowball ammo anytime, anywhere; loved snowmen and snow angels and pink cheeks and scarves; loved to flee back indoors for blankets and hot chocolate. There was simply nothing to not like about Christmas!
This year would be different from other years, however. The game did a lot of damage, not the least of which was the destruction of Earth and Alternia, leaving the humans and trolls to a gathering of new planets—mostly the humans’ planets at this point. This meant there would be no Black Friday shopping, no cute Christmas TV commercials, no groups of people caroling at random doorsteps.
At least everyone was alive again. The completion of the game may not have given them much, but it did restore the lives of the lost, or so John figured.
Dad, Rose, Rose’s Mom were back, anyway, and if they were back—well, then the others were more than likely alive and breathing as well. True, it had been a whole year since he had finished the game and seen anyone else, but surely they were healthy somewhere. Surely.
It was one day during the winter holidays, a tiny fire burning in the fireplace and John struggling to hang paper snowflakes from the ceiling (“What? Stop looking at me like that, Rose. I was bored.”) that Rose decided to drop The Bomb. Said Bomb went a little something like:
“John, I have some news to share with you.” Rose announced, crossing her legs at the ankle and leaning forward in her seat, watching him struggle but doing nothing to help him, as was typical.
“What’s that?” He asked through clenched teeth, wondering why the stupid stupid tape was not sticking already.
“I believe that I have located Karkat and Kanaya.”
“What?!” Whoops, there went the snowflake. Oh well, there were much more important things to address right now. John spun around, half-frantically, half-excitedly, snatching Rose’s hands out of her lap to hold their delicate softness in his own. “How? Where? Can we go see them? Now, preferably?”
Rose gave him an amused look, taking her hands away from him, which was probably a good idea because it felt like he was about to explode or do something extremely stupid in excitement. “They are currently living together on Jade’s planet—” Oh, that meant they lived where it was currently snowing! It never snowed on John’s planet for whatever reason. “—quite a bit a ways from her tower. I was hoping that you would fly us over.”
“Of course!” John exclaimed, flailing so hard he almost lost his balance. “What do you take me for, anyway? Come on, Rose, we have trolls to visit!”
She hummed, standing elegantly (don’t ask him how someone can stand up elegantly, because he really doesn’t know. The Lalondes were just special like that) from her seat with a coy smile on her dark lips. “I’ve already informed my mother about our plans. You might want to talk to your own parental figure before we leave.”
Right. “Okay! Just wait right here. Don’t move.”
He scuttled off to the kitchen, where the scent of dough and cake mix was cloying and thick. The countertops were dusted in a fine layer of flour, ironically reminiscent to snow, and home-made cakes were lined up on every flat surface available, an army of pastries waiting for their Sergeant's orders. Said Sergeant happened to be bent over the oven, carefully scooping out a naked confection.
“Dad!” John called just a little too loudly, trotting over.
His father shot him a questioning look over his shoulder, paused in the act of removing his oven mitts. Those combined with the pipe sticking out of his mouth and the fedora sitting on top of his head made him look like the ludicrous poster-child for domestic living.
“Rose thinks she found some of our friends, so we’re going to head off for a visit.” He stated, folding his arms across the little free space on the counter next to Dad, grinning up at the older man. “If it’s real, we’ll probably be there for the better part of the day.”
Dad nodded, pulling off his gloves at last. “Alright, son. I trust you.”
John lunged forward, hugging his father briefly—briefly, very briefly—before turning tail and rushing back to the living room. Rose was still there, standing patiently at the window, her pale fingers curved around the white lace curtains as she stared out at the dark land of LOWAS.
“Ready?” John asked, bouncing excitedly in place.
“Always,” Rose replied, stepping back from the window and dropping her hand. “To the transportalizer?”
“Yeah.”
Jade’s planet was the closest to how Earth used to be, John thought.
The scenery and climate changed with the seasons, much like Earth, though LOFAF only had two versus Earth’s four. Summer was hot, humid, and overwhelmingly green; winter was an icy wonderland complete with little froggie-cicles and a blazing green and violet horizon.
With the Christmas season in full swing, LOFAF had converted to a beautiful landscape featuring untouched snow dunes that stretched for miles and a chill that bit at the cheeks and pinched the nose. The sky had smoothed the clouds above out into a single sheet of pale gray, snowflakes falling daintily through the air to gather on either kid’s eyelashes and clothes, turning Rose’s hair off-white and giving John what looked to be a bad case of dandruff in the hair poking out of his hat.
Jade’s old tower stood, lonely and snowed-in, in the center of the snow dunes, severed from its rounded top, which lay a few meters away like a huge, heavy snowball.
Rose shivered, tucking her chin into the scarf her mother lent her, breath fogging in front of her. “I forgot how cold Jade’s planet could get.”
John pulled his toboggan down over his ears, eyeing the cloudy sky warily. He didn’t think it would hinder their flight too much; after all, he hadn’t planned to fly too high, though it might increase their travel speed. Oxygen wasn’t quite as abundant on LOFAF, and if they flew too high without enough breaks there was a serious concern of suffocating.
Gloved fingers wiggled in front of John’s face, causing him to jerk back and abandon his line of thought. Rose was raising a fair eyebrow at him, but she didn’t look so much entertained as she did concerned. “Everything alright?”
He cleared his throat, coughed once into his gloves. “Yeah, yeah. Just thinking. Are you ready to go?”
She stared at him for another minute, drawing her hand back to herself slowly. “I believe so.”
“Then let’s go!” He offered his hand, and after a beat he felt her bundled-up fingers clench around his, squeezing tight. It was all the signal he needed to go; so he just . . . did.
Calling on the Breeze was kind of weird, to be honest. It was natural, like interacting with an old friend, a force that was both outside of him but close to him. All it took was a request, not one with words but one with intention and purpose, and because the Breeze served him as the Hero of Breath, it always answered affirmative. When the wind swept around them, guiding them up into the cold sky, it tugged at his clothes and whispered in his ears in greeting, caressing his face affectionately, but John for the most part ignored its ministrations. He had more important things to focus on!
With a gentle push and a demand that was more thought than spoken, the Breeze wrapped around the two of them, encasing them securely into its currents, and began to carry them away, sailing on the waves of frosty eddies.
“Just keep going straight for now!” Rose shouted over the Breeze. “I’ll tell you when we need to change our direction!”
John gave her a thumbs-up with his free hand, shooting a doofy grin over his shoulder at her. He immediately felt guilty when he noticed her jaw shaking, teeth chattering so hard he could almost hear it. It was then he realized, Holy shit! It’s cold out here!
An intelligent observation, one must admit. The clever logic of it was astounding to all.
Fortunately, John had made sure to pack some extra scarves and sweaters before they left for the trolls’, so he ejected them now, caught on the Breeze so they wouldn’t blow away in the wind. He offered two to Rose, who gratefully accepted them, and then piled the other two onto his own face, sinking his nose into insulating cotton goodness. The sweaters, on the other hand, stayed in his sylladex for now. He was pretty sure both Rose and himself were not currently willing to take off their jackets so they could slip on a few sweaters, even if it would help a hell of a bunch.
The scarves at least kept their faces partially warm, so there was much less chattering teeth. Always a good thing, that was.
It felt like forever had passed when Rose finally directed him eastward, and by that point John couldn’t tell if he was somehow warming up or going numb. Probably the latter, but frostbite wasn’t a very pleasant thing to contemplate (and it wasn’t like freezing to teeth was heroic or just), so he happily pretended that his body was heating up through sheer force of will.
Rose continued giving him seemingly random directions, and John continued to blindly follow them, few questions asked. There was one point when he paused for a split second, wondering aloud, “How did you find them, anyway?”
His friend blinked at him, eyelashes nothing more than thin tufts of icicles around her violet eyes, and smirked. “Magic, of course.”
And that was the last question of the evening.
When a little house came into view hours—maybe days, minutes, who really knew?—later, John thought he was hallucinating. He was prepared to continue zooming right over it, chalk it up to a false construction of what his minded wanted to see, but Rose leaned forward and tugged on his arm, whispering an oddly excited, “There it is.”
He startled, but mentally asked the Breeze to set them down, coasting down a sloped current of air and gliding to a stop on the snow-dusted porch step of the tiny little cottage.
It was a dark thing, black-painted walls stark against the soft mounds of snow surrounding it, its windows bright with the warmth of the light inside, barely-there voices caught on the edges of the Breeze still circling around John’s frozen, wary form. The house was strangely normal besides its dark paint, its shape small and rectangular, rough a bit spikier than the human homes John remembered, but otherwise it looked strikingly similar to what John would have called a human abode.
But he decided not to dwell on it with his asscheeks currently freezing themselves together.
One knock, two knock, three, four—and there went the door, swinging fast and violently inward, revealing a pajama-clad, barefooted Karkat blinking in the entryway, dancing penguins decorating his pants and a red sweater thrown over his torso.
Karkat gasped when he took in the two humans heavily frosted on his doorstep, managing to blurt out only one, angry, “Fuck!” before he pulled the two in by their wrists, slamming the front door behind them.
Oh sweet Betty Crocker, it’s hot in here.
Turning his head, John glimpsed Kanaya sitting on a mundane little couch, paused in the act of sewing . . . something, staring at the humans like they were potatoes that suddenly grew faces and started singing to her. Karkat was doing much the same, his eyes still wide and mouth slightly agape. Rose was pushing down her multitude of scarves to smile at the trolls, her face beet-red from the cold.
Hmm. That probably wasn’t a good sign, was it?
“You . . .” Karkat started, stopped, tried again, though no sound would come out of his flapping mouth. It took a few seconds, but he seemed to notice as well, and recovered quickly. “The fuck happened to you two? You look like you engaged battle with an icy monstrosity and lost. Badly.”
Rose’s smile widened just a tad, and John felt his own grin curl the corners of his buzzing mouth. “You could say that,” Rose conceded.
Karkat went back to silently staring.
Kanaya seemed to force herself to relax on the couch, patting the place next to her tentatively, her eyes still stuck with something like disbelief. “You may want to sit down. I doubt standing around will do anything to improve your current health.”
Rose waddled over and took the seat next to Kanaya, sinking down into the couch with a soft, content sigh that had John convinced that sitting down would be the smartest thing he’d do all evening. He quickly copied her, trotting over to the longer, much freer couch to park his chilled buns down, curling into a ball of limbs and cold fabric in the corner. Karkat took the opposite end, still staring like he wasn’t sure what to think.
“How the hell did you find us?” He finally asked, glancing between Rose and John.
John could practically hear Rose’s smirk. “Magic, of course.”
Of course.
“Did you fly all the way out here?” Kanaya inquired, sounding rather concerned. John hunched down deeper into the folds of his clothing, hiding his tingling face from view. “In this weather?”
“Are you two fucking stupid?” Karkat spat.
Karkat always had this way of making John feel all warm and fuzzy and cared-about. He was so glad that the troll had kept that careful, gentle nature of his.
“We wanted to see you guys,” John mumbled into the inside of his coat.
“What? Someone translate. I don’t speak moron.”
“Are you positive about that, Karkat?”
“Don’t patronize me, Lalonde. I’m not the idiot with my body slowly retreating into my giant uglyass coat.”
“I’m sure you would be in the same position as John if you spent several hours out in the cold.” Kanaya pointed out, voice calm and diplomatic. John suddenly liked her a whole lot more.
Teeth were chattering somewhere, and at first, John thought it might have been coming from him, but then he heard Rose mutter a low, “Sorry,” and Kanaya reply, “You shouldn’t apologize for your bodily defenses. Here, this should help.” Rustling cloth, another content sigh. He had no idea what Kanaya was doing, but he liked that she was so willing to help out. Consider her likeness-level increased!
Next to him, he heard Karkat huff, and suddenly there was a long, solid line of warmth pressed against his side. He peeked out of his coat curiously and met with a hot hand against the top of his head, pushing him back down. “Stay in there, douchemaggot. I’m trying to warm you up.”
Oh. Well. That was kind of really nice of him.
John burrowed back into his jacket, and maybe he leaned into Karkat a little (a lot) more, but if he did, no one would ever know.
Sometime later, one of the girls must have turned on the TV or put in a movie (did they have a television? John didn’t see one when he came in), because he could hear it playing through the dense layers of cotton and wool around him, something with cheery music and passionate actors. Unfortunately, the movie did not seem to host Nic Cage, but John was willing to forgive only because he couldn’t see the movie anyway.
Eventually, he started to warm up, though it was by small increments. His torso and face grew warm enough for him to poke his head out and join the others watching the TV (oh look, there it is!), then his arms, his legs, hands and feet (though his fingers felt swollen and clumsy, so he kept on his gloves). Karkat didn’t move away from his spot at John’s side, but he couldn’t really tell if that was because the Cancer was completely absorbed in the movie, which ended up being some kind of chick flick, or if it was because the troll simply didn’t mind. John would have preferred the latter, but he understood trolls and Karkat in general were kind of weird, so.
When the movie or whatever finally went to the credits, Rose and John were still bundled up, but they both seemed to be much happier.
“I wasn’t aware that Alternians celebrated Christmas,” Rose commented, snuggling into the couch cushions.
What? Was that a Christmas movie? John felt so out of the loop.
“We don’t,” Karkat grunted, still firmly planted into John’s personal space, “Gristmas is a stupid, unnecessary holiday.”
“Then why are you wearing Christmas-y pants?” John inquired, shooting a glance down at Karkat’s cheery penguin pajamas.
It might have been his imagination, but he swore Karkat’s face went the tiniest bit red. “They’re not—how are the fat quackbeasts part of Gristmas? They have nothing to do with Satan or your weird human religions!”
Rose hid a laugh with a cough, but John wasn’t as subtle. He was howling. “Oh my—! No, no, dude, it’s Santa, not—not—oh my gosh, I can’t—”
“Stop laughing at me!” Karkat snarled, slapping him upside the head.
“I—I can’t—”
Karkat stood with a hiss of fury, storming out of the room with curses trailing after him, all the while John collapsed back into the sofa and laughed and laughed and laughed. By the time he had finally calmed down, his stomach was aching and his eyes were watering, a few stray tears racing down his cheeks.
He sloppily wiped them away, a late giggle or two catching in his throat as he pushed himself off the couch. Rose was smiling, at least, but Kanaya was frowning at him.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh,” he said, scrubbing at his eyes with a sleeve. “But gog, I needed that. That was great. Ha, I’ll go find him and apologize now.”
“Right,” Kanaya said, her stare as sternly disapproving as his dad’s.
He tried not to feel too much like a guilty child as he turned and trotted down the small hallway Karkat had used, swallowing another snicker. Karkat wasn’t in the hall, so John tried a few of the rooms, knocking first and cracking each door to peer in only long enough to confirm that Karkat wasn’t inside. Eventually, he found the troll sitting in a pile of black sweaters in his room, tearing one such item of clothing to pieces with his claws.
“Get out, Egbert,” he rumbled, not bothering to stop his abuse of the poor sweater or look up at John.
“Aw, come on, Karkat,” John started, grinning just a little too much, probably. He ambled further into the room, completely ignoring the warning yowl his palhoncho made. “Look, I’m sorry for laughing at you, okay? I know you don’t know this stuff that well. But even you have to admit it’s kind of funny when one of us humans get your troll culture stuff all messed up!”
“No, no I fucking don’t. And you want to know why, Egbert? Because it’s not fucking funny!”
“So you’re telling me you don’t find it even a little bit funny?” He asked, plopping down on the very edge of the sweater-pile. Karkat bared his teeth and hissed at him, but he ignored it. “Tell me you didn’t laugh a little when I kept screwing up my quadrant stuff.”
Karkat leveled him with a look that he had come to know as the holy mother of gog you are a handsome idiot look. And no, he didn’t “add” the handsome part. It wasn’t something that could be added; it was understood that John was very handsome. One could consider it a fact of life. “No, John. No, I didn’t find it even a little funny. I did not utter a single chuckle or snort or snicker or annoying giggle like you are wont to do. Do you want to know what I did, Egbert? Do you want to know what I felt when you didn’t listen to a single damn word that came out of my sound flaps just to explain to your ignorant, mushy thinkpan?” He leaned forward into John’s space, eyes blazing, close enough that the human could feel each hot puff of breath against the skin of his face. “I’ll tell you what I did. I felt such untamable fury that I was ready to flip my ever-loving shit like I’m about to do right now if you don’t back off!”
Yeah, he was totally lying through his teeth. It was totally hilarious when someone didn’t know what they were talking about.
John opened his mouth to reply, but Karkat held up a hand and leaned back, scrubbing roughly at his face with a sigh. “No, don’t talk. You’ll only spew more stupid ramblings that I don’t want to hear.”
Tch. Rude.
“And I will have you know that it was Kanaya who is response for the human holiday decorations,” Karkat sniffed, expression turning indignant. “I couldn’t care less about your shitty Earth celebrations, but Kanaya loves them for whatever fucking reason. Hell, she’s the one who sewed me these ugly garments,” he spread his arms out and gestured to his pajamas, which John actually thought looked awesome, not that he would be telling Karkat that, “and she’s the one who started putting Gristmas stuff all over the hive. Just look at that uglyass plant hanging from the ceiling!”
“‘Uglyass’ . . .?” John repeated dumbly, following Karkat’s pointer finger upwards to see . . .
Oh no.
“I don’t even know what it is!” Karkat complained, glaring up at the mistletoe like it had personally offended him. “But she insisted on hanging it. Said it was ‘important for the holiday spirit’ or some bullshit like that. Don’t ask me where she got it from, either, because like hell do I know.”
“Uh . . . Karkat . . .” John choked, staring at the dangling plant in horror.
“What? You know I can’t hear your thoughts, right?”
“That’s . . . um, that’s a mistletoe.”
“A missile what?”
Oh man. Was he really going to have to explain it? He tore his gaze away from the Christmas plant long enough to glance over at Karkat, who was giving him a confused, slightly irritable look.
“Mistletoe.” He swallowed, pulling awkwardly at his collar. “It, uh, has this really dumb tradition tied into it, kind of. A really dumb-gross human thing.”
Karkat continued to stare, eyes slowly narrowing. “What kind of dumb-gross thing?”
He was actually going to have to explain this, huh? “Well . . . usually when two people are caught under it, they have to. Like, kiss. And stuff.” He couldn’t look at Karkat as he finished, and fuck did his face feel like it was on fire. “It’s a really, really stupid tradition though. So.”
The other was so uncharacteristically silent that John couldn’t stop from looking over at him again, but instead of looking repulsed, like he had expected, Karkat actually looked . . . contemplative. Like he might be considering it.
“Alright.” He said after a minute, nodding to himself.
John eyed him. “Uh, alright what?”
Karkat turned back to John, leaning forward with such a serious expression that John couldn’t help but become slightly nervous. “I will engage in this inferior human ritual with you. But only this once.”
“Uh, look, you really don’t have to,” the human protested, leaning backwards.
“Egbert.”
“Er, yeah?”
“Shut the fuck up and come here.” Karkat scooted back and grinned, flashing a wide row of fangs. “I won’t bite you this time.”
This time?
He wasn’t given much time to ponder that thought; Karkat’s hands fisted into his jacket and yanked him forward, almost falling face-first into the pile, and then he was eye-to-eye with a pair of burning red eyes, and his breath was mingling with Karkat’s, and then smooth, foreign lips were on his. It wasn’t really intense like John had feared; instead it was gentler, exploratory, the curious brush of a mouth on another.
It took him a minute, but he realized very quickly that he wasn’t the only one lacking kissing experience.
When Karkat pulled back, a thoughtful hum leaving him, John was out of breath. Ha ha, imagine that: the Heir of Breath, breathless. Dave would probably have a field day over the irony.
“That was . . . interesting,” Karkat mused, tapping a clawed finger against his chin thoughtfully. “Not quite what I expected, but interesting. This will require further investigation. Come on, Egbert, we have other mistletoes to find.”
“Uh . . .”
Karkat grabbed his hand and bodily yanked him up, forcing John to stumble after him as he marched out of the room, fingers tight around John’s. “Worry not, John, I know where Kanaya hung the others. And if we run out, well, I’m pretty fucking sure she hid a box of them around here somewhere.”
“A box?” John squeaked, a little higher than he meant. “How many are in a box, exactly?”
“Don’t know. But I’d bet a whole hell of a lot.”
Oh man.