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All things considered, if you were to observe him and live to tell the tale, you could probably make a fair, if not easy assumption to say that the Celestial Toymaker would enjoy Christmas.
There were many things to take into consideration here. His manner was one of the first: in just about any encounter, there was with him, always, a profound cheerfulness: a tendency to do anything, if possible (and if not possible, he would find a way) with almost a childlike whimsy. This of course was not separated from his less-than-comforting ability to pretty much destroy the world; but, even with that fact, one could be assured that if he did so chose to do so, he would inevitably do it in a rather fun way.
The second was the way he dressed. Covers make for poor observations of books, but the Toymaker, as it happened, belonged to that lot of creatures where the cover told you exactly what you needed to know. And amidst the garish colors and feathers and sparkles and bright costumery outfits, there were – on the occasions when he was not trying to make an Impression, but live normally (or, as “normally” as an omnipotent god living amongst humans with a Time Lord as bedfellow could feasibly do) – he often wore knit vests and jumpers: formal in a way, but cozy, something warm in a type that Earth was distinctive for. He surrounded himself with that warmth. And vests and jumpers, as often as they were made, tended to fall into “Christmassy” appearances.
Then the third, it was the entire nature of his being: he was, quite literally, the God of Games, a toymaker, which was just about as fitting a profession for Christmas as any there was. It was self-explanatory. Granted, it was a quite literally inhuman enthusiasm he carried for his passion, and one he could not exactly choose to divest from himself, but he did genuinely at heart really love everything playful and bright. Christmas was all about that – his shop looked, after all, like a set fresh out of a vintage holiday movie. Wind-up dolls, stuffed animals, puppets, and toy trains, all of which he would wrap up in prettily papered boxes, sitting back with satisfaction when he had finished with them. It was his element.
These icons, however, would be taken in error: by some sheer accident of the universe (or, rather, the space below the universe that he crawled out of), he in fact hated the holiday.
“It is a mockery,” he protested, “there is nothing left of it that has any relevance. That you think I should like it, that is an insult.”
By necessity the Doctor hid a smile that bordered dangerously on a chuckle. They had been strolling together down a sidewalk, in the midst of a small cosmopolitan district. Where they stood now, there was a shop that often held toys in its windows – stuffed animals, mini bicycles, or electronic gadgets. The Toymaker loved it, of course, and always took the Doctor’s hand to guide him on over, kneel at the window to get a better idea of what games had been put out. Always – almost always. Because now, where the toys once sat, a Christmas tree’s explosion worth of goods shimmered: strung ribbands of twinkling lights and plastic holly, stuffed snowmen with artificial carrot noses, nutcrackers and fake snow, and hanging along the ceiling from almost invisible wire, a tiny sleigh with eight reindeer. The Toymaker sneered down.
“Superficial plastic things.” He bristled at the sight of the gutted display.
“I think it’s sweet,” the Doctor returned.
He sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. “It’s not sweet, Doctor, it is pathetic.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” he maintained firmly, yanking his gaze away to stare boldly at the ground. “Humans have ruined the holidays they once had. They are all so tame now-a-days. Bending beneath the law – flimsy human traditions! I ought to start one up myself. Demand a better holiday, something with –” he waved a hand, “Actual games. Things with consequences. Blood sports.”
“They already have had those,” the Doctor mused, taking his arm in hand and guiding him away, “in fact, I think they’ve had more violent ones than not.”
The Toymaker continued with determination. “Yes, that is why I don’t get why we have Christmas.” He paused, and then clarified. “Modern Christmas, that is. I like how it was celebrated back in King Richard’s times.”
The Doctor hummed. “I do recall that one.” He did. The last time he had gone, he had ended up sprinting down the cobbled street in escape from a drunken mob. The 80s – the 1380s, that was – were wild times.
They had begun to walk past, the windows of the shop fading out into the background of red-and-green decorated buildings. Though it stayed where the Doctor trod, the frost surrounding the Toymaker’s footsteps melted and steamed, apprehensive of the celestial wrath marching above it.
“You see – Christmas died when it lost Misrule.”
“Oh? And why’s that?”
“You know why.” The manic sort of grin began to creep back into him, and his voice rose. “Revelry, dear Doctor – not celebration, but revelry in the streets. The false king elected to reign, the chaos of it all –” he closed his eyes as if savoring the rush of it all, hand out in the air before him, before snapping his expression wild again. “I was the Lord of Misrule in those days, who they called the Abbot of Unreason, the one in control of it all: the one to whom the peasants stopped their work for, to one to whom the soldiers crowned who offer their sacrifice to Saturn, take their knives and –”
The Doctor cut him off there. “How about we take a stop there, love,” he patted him on the shoulder. The Toymaker turned and frowned at the interruption.
“Killjoy,” he sniffed.
Ignoring his pout, the Doctor moved a bit closer. “Listen: I’ll celebrate yours with you in medieval times, if you’d like to go – but I celebrate modern Christmas,” he pointed, “and I don’t need a reason.”
The Toymaker harumphed, not wanting to admit defeat. The Doctor still looked at him fondly.
“Well, the reason why I bring up Christmas, is because I’m hosting this year, and–” he placed his hand over the Toymaker’s, “I was thinking, you could maybe spend the day with me and the Nobles, on Christmas Eve. I’m having dinner with them.”
A pause longer than he had intended stretched between them.
Slowly, incredibly slowly, the Toymaker turned his head, fixing his gaze on the Doctor’s.
“Me,” he pronounced, “over for Christmas?” He emphasized the first word with curiosity, and the last with derision. His brow raised at the Doctor’s nod, and he actually moved back a bit, as if that shocked. “Doctor, you can’t be serious.”
“I’ll ask you again, if you don’t think I’m actually proposing it.”
“You cannot!”
“I am.”
The Toymaker glared intensely, filling his stare with heat, but the Doctor’s expression did not waver an inch. He made a “tcht!” noise between his teeth. Him over for Christmas? He took a moment to think it over – himself, a literal god, going to the house of a Time Lord for a silly holiday only one of them celebrated, which neither of them even should celebrate, to have a dinner with humans. He didn’t even really know why the Doctor had a house on Earth. He was never quite the most sedentary traveler. Why the dinner, either – neither of them even regularly needed to eat! (Well alright, the Toymaker had adopted the practice, in truth he admitted it, in order to share meals with the Doctor – but the point still stood.) It was absurd, it broke rules, and it made no sense.
All for a Christmas.
He shook his head and hissed. “Ridiculous.”
❅❆ ◌ ❆❅
With a scratch and a hiss, an automatic record player in the corner spun itself into activation, and a slow, waltzing music bloomed outward to drift through the air.
It was at his workbench when it came up again. The Toymaker was sitting at his half-earthly craftroom; that is, the one created in a liminal space between the Soho Toyshop, in the world, and his domain, tucked off between spaces. His elbows were braced on the gilt oak edge, and he squinted through thin pince-nez glasses as he meticulously moved a small carving knife against a piece of wood, carefully taking off papery, curling pieces of timber. It was a mouse he was making – a small, teak mouse. Right now, though, it was nothing more than a forming cube of wood. The knife hardly made a noise as it glided.
Leaning roguishly on a beam behind him, the Doctor sighed. “It’s a holiday practically dedicated to toys,” he said, “I’m not sure what qualms you would have with it.”
The Toymaker didn’t look up, nor lose focus. “The toys are wasted.”
“I’ve seen you waste toys before, and that aside, you don’t have to bring anything.”
“But the principle is wrong.”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow that said, Since when did you ever care of principles? but did not speak it aloud. Instead, he moved closer to the workbench and, by laying his hands down first to push himself up, sat on the table, allowing his legs to hang off the end. He didn’t say anything, but closed his eyes and took a deep breath to inhale the scent of the space – mild glue, and sharp varnish, and earthy pine.
The Toymaker angled the knife again, and curled off another few flakes of wood.
Outside, in the real 21st-Century London, a middle-aged woman was stumbling down the street. Idly glancing out the window from the vantage point the room afforded him, the Toymaker could read her immediately: she was distraught, clearly looking for something, but concerned on not spending her time well. In her daily life she had felt an emptiness, but without knowing what it was for or what would fill it. She was, in other words, Lost. He nudged the curtains of reality open a bit, allowing her to see the shop. It caught her eye from the corner – how had she never noticed it before? She had walked this street many times.
And, like a hapless little fish to the shiniest piece of bait, she walked a bit quicker towards it.
Inside, he stood up, making eye contact with the Doctor before he puffed his breath to send a small dusting of wood-shavings fluttering downwards. They drifted in the air, one landing on the tip of the Time Lord’s nose. The Toymaker smiled at the image, but then pulled the gravity back into his voice.
“It would not go well. That human companion of yours hates me,” he pointed out. “Don’t you remember when she even found out–?”
He left the “about us” unspoken, and the Doctor shuddered. The UNIT crisis meeting had been scathing enough. Donna’s mixed ire, shock, and indignance however, was a thing of an entirely different caliber.
“That’s true,” he admitted, “But I don’t think this would go too poorly.”
The doorbell of the shop rang out a little ting as the woman entered. The Toymaker gave the Doctor a look so quizzical that no words were necessary.
“But Rose loves you,” he countered, “and Shaun is warming up, ever since you fixed that engine for him. Wilf enjoys your company.”
“Rose will befriend anything that has sentience. But again, Donna,” he paused, so that he could enunciate each word distinctly, “will-try-to-kill-me.”
“No, she won’t. She also can’t.” He slipped off the side of the table, walking around to the other side and standing there. “She doesn’t even like Christmas either. Too many bad memories. Maybe you can bond over it.”
Close to him, the Toymaker sighed heavily, but then smiled softly as he looked up to meet his gaze, eyes crinkling in the corners. And then, as he brought his head back down, he allowed the manners of his old shopkeeper self to slip back into his visage, pursing his lips to a bedeviling smirk. There was a twinkle in his eye when he returned. “Vell, Doktor, I do say that I must go – there is eine customer ge-looking all lost out there, and perheps Ich must show her around, nein?”
The Doctor looked him up and down, and then brought his hands up to dust off his sleeves from the wood shavings. He fondly brushed his palms along the fabric, giving him a gentle squeeze on the shoulders, and then a peck on the lips.
He wasn’t even going to begin on the fact that he was also going to invite Kate, Mel, and Colonel Ibrahim too.
❅❆ ◌ ❆❅
With artificial plastic strands bristling in his hands, he hung up tinsel on the TARDIS. “She deserves to be festive too,” he defended, when he could feel the Toymaker’s judging glare coming from behind him.
“Your little ship,” he began, “can decide if it wants to be ‘festive’ if it so wants to.”
“She can,” the Doctor clarified, “And I’m just doing my part in it. It’s my obligation to add what I can.”
He scoffed. “This is absurd,” he said, walking away through a doorway that had suddenly come into existence, “and that is coming from me!”
❅❆ ◌ ❆❅
“Why do you even want me to go?”
“I just think it’s nice.”
His withering scowl was lost beneath a sip he took from the mug of cocoa he held in both hands. (Really, hot chocolate – how did he not enjoy Christmas?)
A debate wasn’t going to win anything this way. The Doctor shifted tactics.
“I didn’t always love it,” he confessed. His voice was different – honest, now, and softer. “Well, I did. And then I didn’t. I lost some people I really loved on Christmas – people I couldn’t save. I couldn’t bear the sight of it, when every holiday season I had meant there was a new catastrophe around the corner – something to hurt the people I loved, something to devestate the earth or wreck mayhem.” He paused for a long moment, and tilted his head to the side. “But I learned to love it again. It took me a while, but I did.”
The Doctor turned, and sighed thoughtfully. “But, even with that – it’s been a while since I could enjoy a nice Christmas,” he said honestly.
It was true. Indeed, Earth had a bad knack to face some global, if not universal threat every year just around the holiday – most Earthly Christmases, when he had not rewinded for a specific one, had ended with an alien invasion, or temporal split, or re-emergence of some villain of old: just general chaos. But, ever since he had split with himself, he had found that Earth somehow tended to face a lot less of its biweekly threats. Maybe it was some change of fate for him. Maybe it was just his fortune finally turning to the good.
“Don’t worry about it,” his other self had said to him, with a pat on the back. “I’ll handle it for the two of us, now.” He offered in return that he must be able to do something – must be able to help out somehow. Two TARDISes were better than one, he reasoned.
“Take a rest for me, will you now? And talk with your friends. They deserve it.”
“And,” he continued, “I want to spend it with you.”
There was something in the Toymaker’s face then – something concealed, but still there. His brow lifted by just a fraction; his lips parted in the expression anticipatory of a word spoken, but none came out. He just looked the Doctor in the eyes like that, searching and silent, and then turned away.
❅❆ ◌ ❆❅
A ladder was in the doorway when he next passed through. On the top of it, there was perched the Doctor: decorations in one hand, steadying himself with the other, one roll of tape round his wrist like a bracelet. Of course, he was stringing yet more baubles to the ceiling.
The Toymaker slowed, and then stood and watched. His eye caught the image of what he had in hand: a small bit of leaf and twig tied in a red ribbon, with pale green rounded leaves and small star-white berries.
One moment – maybe two – was all it took. Noticing that he had paused for just a little too long, the Doctor turned to his side, looked down. He smiled and nodded a greeting, and then picked up the leaf again, holding it out in a gesture.
“Do you know what this is?”
A scoff. “It’s that I don’t like Christmas, Doctor; not that I’m unaware of it.”
“Oh? Then, won’t you tell it for me?”
The Toymaker looked up, and then back again. “Mistletoe,” he muttered.
“That’s right,” the Doctor said in a hushed tone, and then looked down with a glance much too strong to be casual, “And you’d know what mistletoe means, right?”
“Yes,” he answered curtly, “It was the one thing that could kill Baldr. His doting mother made every creature swear not to harm him – yet she forgot that parasite stalk in the trees. So when Loki made it into an arrow, and pierced his heart –” he was interrupted by the Doctor hopping off the ladder on the other end of the threshold, the sprig tied nicely above. “– he died. And ever since, all the humans have loved the mistletoe.”
Their eyes met as they walked nearer to the bough, warm blue to dark brown, and–
In one abrupt movement he had grabbed the Doctor by the arms and tackled him to the wall, causing him to make a short “ahk!” noise before his lips were claimed with the god’s own, and within a few minutes the both of them were sufficiently breathless to set aside any pretense of their debate.
❅❆ ◌ ❆❅
The record player slowed as it wound to the end of the song, whirring quietly as the needle came off the track.
“Yes,” he said.
The Doctor looked up blearily. “What?” He had been nodding off, chin dipping towards his chest and eyelids shutting.
The Toymaker took a breath. “Yes,” he repeated, though there had been no question in over an hour that would have demanded it, “I’ll go with you.”
Still blinking the half-sleep from his eyes, the Doctor stared, but a calculating gaze took over in his face as he realized. Then a smile crept in, an awkward three-quarters thing that showed his teeth.
“Wait –” he scrambled to his feet, suddenly having enthusiasm enough to break free of the blanket on his lap, “I have something for you.” He held out a finger that said, Stay here, and then he ran off into the hallway.
Inquisitively the Toymaker watched as he disappeared into the hall. Only a few moments passed before he startled upon hearing a profound crash, and subsequent thud of various materials, some alarmingly humanoid sounding. He sensed through a dimension to feel if the Doctor was hurt – he was not. He relaxed a little bit, albeit with mild irritation, leaning back into his seat. Leave it to the painfully fragile Time Lord to not clarify if he is alright, he huffed internally.
Half of a minute later, the Doctor came back out, holding a Christmas box. It was of a rectangular shape, large and flat. There was a broad ribbon wrapped around the lid.
With a smile the Doctor proffered it, and the Toymaker raised an eyebrow as he took it into his hands. “I thought these were reserved for the actual celebration,” he mused, disguising his delight at the well-wrapped box.
“This one, well, it’s not.” He tilted his head obligingly.
It was more than what the Toymaker was accustomed to to take delicate care in avoiding the damage of boxes; with decorated boxes, of course, he was all the more gentle. In his opinion, which was entirely correct, boxes had a certain sort of specialty to them, being chosen so specifically for their items: they were an extension of the gift, the toy, sacred in their own right. (Wrapping paper too – unless, naturally, it was the particular effect of children losing all civilized thought as they tore through the paper in mad search for a toy, their toy, an effect he smiled to have some stake in first founding.) He removed the lid: beneath it, there was a yarn-spun, off-white fabric, knitted with four symbols: a heart, a spade, a diamond, and a club, repeating. The pattern struck him: he ran a finger along it, instantly pleased by the connection. Then, putting the box down on his lap, he carefully removed the cloth, allowing it to unfold. At this, he realized what it was.
What he was holding was a Christmas jumper.
He sighed, and looked the Doctor in the eye.
The Doctor beamed.
❅❆ ◌ ❆❅
Within a few minutes, the Toymaker reflected with a level of triumphant satisfaction, the Doctor had wholly abandoned his drive to decorate the TARDIS. The other victory was that he had continued this secession as they moved back into the house, and now, asleep, he couldn’t even return to hanging up the ornaments at all. Not anymore, not until morning, when he would inevitably try to stay in bed because honestly, was there ever a Time Lord that liked to sleep more?
There was only one day more to go; doubtlessly, he would be a bit rushed. But there was still time, of course; there would be no problem in hanging the final decorations before the day came. As if time mattered for either of them! No rush, no rush at all.
The Toymaker hung them up for him either way.
❅❆ ◌ ❆❅
In a flat box decorated with glossy paper he laid down a set of crochet hooks for Rose, straightening each to nestle within valleys of tissue paper. They were the good kind, of course – not made of any flimsy universal matter, but whittled out of pure manifestation. He had seen to it himself. Next he turned to the side, to a paper with neat, dark ink scrawled about it. Gently folding the sheet with sharp creases, he set down on top the instructions for a few starter projects: patterns of a cat, a squirrel, a guided missile, and a typical humanoid doll.
He let the ribbon glide between his middle and forefinger as he laid the red silk flat across the top of the box, holding it taut in place before whisking it under and back around. Then he turned it to a 90 degree angle, crossed the ribbon again, and then brought the two ends together. Lastly he tied the bow once, twice with a tug, and then gently pulled each loop out until they hung nicely.
Then he set it aside.
For Donna – he paused here, not for show, but genuinely. After some consideration, he wrapped a childhood toy of hers that she had lost decades ago.
Wilf didn’t need too much deliberation. He would be happy with many a sort of things. He wrapped a board game, pieces carved elegantly from dark and light wood.
Candlelight flickered in his workshop as he knit together a form, and he considered how many toys he had made since he had given up older ways, when the Doctor had asked him to: one hundred and seventy-three – one hundred and seventy-four, now. Souls were an awfully fun material; but, he was welcome to the change. The wool thread he passed in bends between his fingers worked well enough. It sure did mean a whole lot more of what was called “harmless fun,” and a whole lot less of the predator-and-prey chase… but oh, who could miss it in exchange for this?
Indeterminately he arranged the boxes in largest to smallest, and then largest to smallest, then by the order of color on the ribbon and paper. He sat back in his chair to observe them together again, and then sighed, conflicted in just how much he did love the appearance of presents in spite of his (righteous) hatred of Christmas.
He rearranged them one more time.
❅❆ ◌ ❆❅
He opened his eyes just as the footsteps could be heard on the porch.
Festivity laced the room everywhere: spattered in the dining room, smeared on the banister. At the epicenter, the Doctor was wearing a tremendously ugly sweater. Even worse than the one he himself was currently in, all adorned with card symbols knitted in red and black. It was garish, red and green and sparkly, and the Toymaker could only wish it represented anything other than Christmas – because to see the Doctor in something so ridiculous made something flip in the fleshy piece of heart he had placed inside his own chest. He loved ridiculousness, after all.
Crackling, staticky noises came from the record player, playing something festive about pomegranates and lovers. The air hung thick with the smell of cinnamon sugar and roasted apples, credit to a candle that the Doctor had found that is of the title, “cinnamon sugar and roasted apples.” It was much better than the last peppermint one, which had carried a smell so noxious that upon walking into the sunroom the Toymaker had immediately snapped it out of existence entirely. The Doctor had admitted that such was a due fate. It had been terrible.
When the doorbell rang the Doctor rushed up, smiling as he nearly skipped over to the door to usher the wool-coat-clad Temple-Nobles in. He contemplated the faces of all three of them when they saw the Toymaker behind him: thinly veiled displeasure on Donna’s, joy on Rose’s, and a puzzling sort of ambivalence on Shaun’s, who looked to his wife and daughter both for an idea of what to think. Wilf and Sylvia both looked happy regardless. He went forward to give them a hug each, commenting, of course, on how happy he was that they could make it; that he had prepared what he hoped would be a pleasant dinner, so on and so forth, the classic opening moves of dialogue for any host.
From across the room the Toymaker watched them come on in. Donna’s eyes caught his, and she gave a disapproving frown.
He looked down to study his nails.
Mel arrived not ten minutes later, carrying a dish and crate of small wrapped gifts in tow, but Kate and Colonel Ibrahim could not make it – mysteriously, the both of them had the same excuse, of an identical prior arrangement. The company all oohed at that. The Toymaker snickered; those two had been the least subtle as could be. Worse than how he had been, the few months before the Doctor had revealed themselves. (And neither of them had been particularly good at it.)
So the Christmas Eve began: the room was filled with a mellow chatter, little groups forming and dissolving with the prospect of a Party! making conversation flow somehow far more freely than it would have in any other situation. An hour or so was spent like this, talking and laughing and retelling. At some point, Rose joined him on the sofa, and pulled up her phone to show him photos of plushes she had recently completed and begun working on. They are an odd mix of some sewn forms of monsters – Daleks, Weeping Angels, the Ood – with little sparkle-coated tentacles and silky fabric talons. Even with his harshest (and most ambiguous) criticism, he could see her hiding a smile before enthusiastically thanking him for his feedback, swiping to the right to show him another and then, following it, a meme she had seen that reminded her of him. She explained what a meme is, along with it.
He did not tell her that he was well enough digitally literate to have seen that very one already on the exact same forum, and allowed her to assume otherwise.
They took their seats at the table, Wilf rolling up into the spot left open for his wheelchair, Mel next to Donna, Rose next to the Toymaker, who was next to the Doctor, as did not dictate any namecards because there weren’t any, but they seemed to find the spots good enough.
Conversation naturally shifted into one of the Doctor’s more recent adventures, though he made a great effort to guide it into what Shaun had recently picked up as a hobby (foraging!), despite protests from even Shaun himself. Yet inevitably he stopped resisting, and so the Doctor began to animatedly relay the story of their visit to the planet of the Jobblil kingdom, positioned in space just near a dying star, and how they navigated the exceedingly interwoven court structure there. It caught all of their attentions, as he continued on, leaving space for the Toymaker to correct him when he pretended to forget the name of a local tournament challenge they had engaged in there.
The Toymaker knew he was only pretending, but played along.
Given the heterotrophic nature of humans, dinner followed. Somehow, the Doctor (I’m finally learning cooking! he had beamed proudly, in spite of the fire departments that had tried to stop him) had prepared several dishes, but as did the guests: arranged, there was a bowl of mashed parsnips, brussel sprouts, roast potatoes, and bread rolls. At the center there was something called a Vegan Turducken Roast, which the Doctor had specially obtained for Rose’s sake: the Toymaker could not resist that he found it terribly amusing. Three in one yet none real at all; a three in none, if anything. A delightful paradox of human creation. And too was there a Christmas pudding, which the Doctor had just insisted on, miniature mince pies, and – of course – though made with vegan gelatin, a bowl of jelly babies.
As would happen, the Toymaker’s denigration of Christmas’s cheap plastic toys (hardly fit to call them toys) was proven again, when he walked away and returned with a box of crackers, and the whole of the table – even Donna – participated. He won, of course; bearing spoils of a crown made from the thinnest paper in existence, a plastic spinning-top, and a joke-sheet inscribed with, “What do You call a vacationing Christmas presetn? On holliday!” His triumph was not dimmed by the nature of the crackers to leave everyone with a prize.
He hated Christmas, plain and simple. It was a mockery to everything cheerful.
So the party went on.
The beginning of snowfall was what finally drove them out. They exchanged pleasantries – and this time, the Doctor had him come up alongside him, to the door, to be with him in seeing them out. A few flakes of ice were indeed falling, spackling the ground like sawdust. The Toymaker watched through the doorway, streetlamp glow shining on the white chips that drifted, before he returned his gaze to the departing. When she looked back just briefly, he gave Rose a wink. She grinned and returned it.
With a click the door shut, once they had gone from sight, and a pleasant silence settled. The crackle of the radio had faded, a speck of dust just touching the wordless speaker as they cleared the table. The Toymaker sat down when they were done.
Outside, the snow fell without a noise.
“Well,” the Doctor said, “I don’t think that went too poorly.”
“That is what you say.”
“No, that’s what I believe.” He tidied a decoration that had fallen over, a little velvety red bow. “You did good.”
The Toymaker snorted, and made another fold on the piece of origami he had in his hands. He would later on swear, that it was not meant to look like a paper snow angel.
Somewhere a clockbell was ringing, marking midnight. The Doctor perked up, looking in the direction of the muffled bell, and then relaxed back into the quiet of the room. Looking to the Toymaker, he smiled, a mischievous smile, a you-know-what-this-means smile, a fond smile.
“Happy Christmas,” he whispered, dropping a kiss to his head before sitting down next to him.
As he leaned his head on the shoulder next to him, taking comfort in the warmth of the touch, and as the Time Lord extended his arm around him to pull him closer, the Toymaker considered: he hated Christmas. He really did.
(This one was an exception.)