Chapter Text
John and Steve sat around the small wooden table in the base’s main hall as they watched other soldiers decorate for the holiday celebration that was set to start later that night. It had been a long time since everyone seemed to be in such a good mood, and the overall atmosphere of their tired and worn base was finally one of happiness instead of fear. Of course nobody was sure when exactly Christmas was since the calendar had been shredded during one of the battles a few weeks back, but it had started snowing on and off about 3 or so weeks prior, so they estimated it was probably close by at the least.
Decent decorations were hard to come by despite being able to be found back in the ruins of one of the near by cities. All of the decorations that were even remotely salvageable were still heavily damaged most of the time, but nobody really cared all that much. The idea of having a Christmas party on the base was brought up originally as a joke at one of the weekly meetings, but un-ironically gained traction after a few soldiers started remembering back to before the world ended and shared various and silly stories to lighten the mood. John had listen to the whole conversation play out from all different odds and ends when he finally announced that a festive party could be fun to host if there was any down-time to spare. Luckily for them during this December, there had been.
Ted had done a fantastic job of building a tree-like shape out of spare planks of wood and bricks, and invited some others to help spray paint on some ornament shapes to really pull the image together. Steve had gone around earlier arranging the wooden crates and metal tables all into the one biggest room the base had, the meeting room. This was of course where the party would take place since it’s where they had the best luck of being able to comfortably fit everyone who wanted to attend.
Surprisingly, over half of the base had shown an interest, if nothing more than some positive nostalgia of the “before times” or even just as a break from regular duties. It was pretty safe to say that the vast majority of the soldiers weren’t anywhere near religious at this point, but it still felt friendly and familiar to a lot of them, so that didn’t seem to matter much.
Another sniper who’s name Captain had forgotten had even gone out and found a heap of shredded tent fabric that he tore into long strips and used as streamers to hang on the walls. One of the medics had already brought in a large metal supply bin to use as a fireplace, and was preparing it by one of the windows so all the smoke would drift outside safely. Other soldiers were using empty supply boxes to make other decorations to stick around here and there too, and before long things were looking about as good as they could!
Steve walked around and couldn’t help but smile sweetly as he admired everyone’s hard work, absolutely thrilled with how things had shaped up. Of course it was still ultimately a pitiful display, (the world had literally ended after all) but for only being able to work with what they had available around here, things looked more than good enough. John watched from the table as Steve went around congratulating and complimenting everyone’s collective efforts, and in that moment he was glad he’d approved the party after all. Before long, it was time for the party to officially start!
“Ok everyone, listen up!” John shouted while standing on top of where he’d just been seated, “Everything here looks great! You all did one hell of a job making the best out of all this shit, and you should all be proud of yourselves!”