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When Scary answered the door she didn’t know who she was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t the piss boy Lincoln Li Wilson. He stood with his hands shoved in his pockets, his brows furrowed and lips pressed tight which was NOT at all cute, wearing a soccer jersey and full cleats because what else would he be wearing.
“Linc? What are you doing here?”
“Hey Scary. Uh… Merry Christmas.”
“Yeah, Merry Christmas. Linc, what—”
“Scary, is that Lincoln?” Terry Jr. called from the dining room. Cutlery clinked as he helped clear the table of Christmas dinner.
“No, Terry!” Scary yelled back.
“It sounds like Lincoln,” Scary’s mom chimed in accusingly.
“Well, it’s not.” Scary grabbed Linc’s wrist and dragged him to her room before Terry Jr could offer him their Christmas leftovers like the embarrassingly polite try-hard he was. She tried not to concentrate on how skinny Linc’s still-growing wrist was. Beanpole was only gonna get taller, goddammit. Of course one of the only guys taller than her had to be this lame-ass. It was just her luck for Lincoln Li Wilson of all people to qualify as an acceptable height to date. The rain never stops in hell and for Scary it brings the fucking lightning.
Scary shut the door behind them and let go of Linc. She casually rubbed her hands on her black denim skirt.
“So,” Scary tossed her hands out and let them drop back down, slapping her sides audibly. “What’s up?” Tight smile. Casual.
“Nothing much,” Linc said, not looking at her. He did the little thing he does when he’s trying to not feel feelings, where he shakes his head minutely and shrugs his shoulders.
“So you came over to my house on Christmas for nothing,” Scary clarified.
“What, I can’t visit my spouse on Christmas? Is that a crime?” He studied the old soccer trophies on her dresser very attentively and Scary felt heat rise up her neck and to her ears. She wished she’d have just thrown those out already.
“Oh, so you’ve been to Norm’s and Taylor’s and Hermie’s?” she pushed.
“Hermie? God no,” said Linc.
“The others, then.”
“Look, Merry Christmas, Scary. That’s all I’m here to tell you.”
“Is that so.”
“Yep.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Arms folded across her sweater, Scary watched him watch the trophies. Eventually his eyes flicked to her for a moment before finding her cello. Coward. His fingers ran delicately along its long neck, tapping the strings occasionally to conjure a soft buzzing. Scary’s fingers tapped softly on her bicep.
With a sigh and an eye roll, Scary plopped down on her bed. It didn’t take long for Linc to drop down next to her. He still wouldn’t look at her.
“I like your sweater,” he said.
Scary looked down at the black sweater she was wearing. It had an image of Santa in the Family Guy pose and covered in blood stitched on it with the words ‘I killed Santa, you’re welcome.’
“Yeah, Terry Jr got it for me for Christmas.” She tugged at its bottom hem with her fingers. “Kinda weird.”
“Yeah, ‘you’re welcome’… I don’t really get it,” Linc said.
Scary slapped his shoulder with the back of her hand. “No, you dingus! Terry and Christmas. It’s weird.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“It’s like, my real dad doesn’t do Christmas. But now there’s like, some guy here doing Christmas. And it’s bad, right? Because he’s just some guy. But I don’t know, since the Black Parade and since I… since he… He’s Terry. And he’s doing Christmas. And it’s somehow more weird than bad? And that’s even weirder.” Now it was Scary avoiding eye contact, but at least she could feel his eyes on her now.
“My dads have been pretending to be Santa for my whole life.” And there went Linc’s eyes, right back to the trophies. Scary, however, was now looking at him utterly aghast.
“Linc, you just found out about Santa Claus?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised.” Linc did his little head shake/shoulder twitch again. “It’s not like my dad didn’t lie about literally everything else growing up.”
“You shouldn’t be surprised because a centuries-old man spying on every kid in the world to bring them all presents in one night via flying reindeer is creepy and crazy!” Scary exclaimed.
“No, Scam Likely was creepy and crazy! The jolliest, nicest, goodest person in the world who knows for sure that you’re a good boy and smells like candy canes and sugar cookies with a twinkle in his eye and who spreads goodwill and cheer is a perfectly reasonable person to exist!”
Scary just stared.
“Okay, maybe Santa was too good to be true. It doesn’t matter anyways. Good people don’t exist. What’s one more person my dad has killed? One more piece of my childhood he’s ruined?”
Scary looked down at her sweater and its murdered-Santa-ness. Fucking thanks Terry. She folded her arms across it again.
“Things used to be good and nothing’s like it was.”
Scary felt her stomach pang. Linc looked like such a sad loser, sitting on her bed next to her with his annoying eyebrows furrowed like that and his lips drawn so tense. She had the absolutely INSANE urge to hug him.
Instead she said, “Fuck dads.”
“Fuck dads,” Linc agreed.
They sat for a long while like that: Linc with his stupid eyebrows and lips, Scary with her dumb-ass sweater. Eventually, Linc sighed through his nose and dropped his head onto Scary’s shoulder. Scary rested her head on his. His hair smelled like grass.
“Merry Christmas, Scary.”
“Merry Christmas, Linc.”