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Pete was never really big on Christmas.
It was a thing in the Conlan family, probably still is. Thanksgiving would end and they’d already be yelling about the tree and how it needed to go where it always goes with the tinsel and the ornaments and the star on the top that always fell off as something or other jostled it and Pete got yelled at for it as though it was always his fault.
It was mostly his fault, to be fair, but not always.
Christmas in the city is a different beast, and one he’s got a lot more tolerance for. He’s not a Scrooge or anything, he can appreciate a bar crawl but for hot chocolate that half the bars in the borough seem to be participating in with the best of them, but that’s more about the free shit than the holiday. Yeah, the decorations are pretty. Yes, there’s a certain magic in both the literal and metaphorical senses to a city all covered in snow and glittering lights, full of happy people focused on their joy and their loved ones’ joy, even if only for a moment before the muck and the grime rudely reintroduces itself.
All that to say: he’s a little hesitant when Kingston invites him over for a Christmas thing.
“Not actually on Christmas,” Kingston says, calm and affable like he didn’t just incinerate a snowman, the city’s power grid eagerly bending and twisting under his hands. “Liz and I are both working on Christmas, and I figure you and Sofia have your own plans later in the month, so we’re doing something earlier. That work for you or should I reschedule?”
The no, thanks dies in Pete’s mouth at that. “You don’t have to reschedule for me,” he says instead, though he’s touched that Kingston would. About a year ago, Kingston was saying he’d take Pete out in a heartbeat if it was him or the city, and here he is, willing to shake his Christmas plans for him. And it’s not like there hasn’t been a year of them getting closer and working together as the Voxes, Pete knows that, it’s just…it means something to him, that’s all.
Kingston scoffs, though there’s a warmth, a fondness in his eyes that makes Pete feel seen. Makes his skin itch. Makes his chest ache with a feeling that should be unpleasant but isn’t, somehow. “That your way of saying you can make it that day?”
Well, what the hell. He sat through almost two decades of Conlan family Christmases before he had to get the fuck out of there; he can deal with one more. “Sure. I’ll be there.”
They get swept up in the fight after that, and once that all blows over — literally, a particularly fierce burst of wind taking out the last of their enemies into harmless flurries of snow, kind of anticlimactic — Kingston’s busy talking with an uncharacteristically anxious Ricky about anniversary plans, Sofia’s all misty-eyed in a way that means she’s thinking about Kugrash and/or Dale, and Rowan’s been too busy with her Faerie stuff to hang out lately, so he puts his too-cold hands in his not-warm-enough pockets and makes his way back to his new apartment.
The place is fine. Kinda shitty, a bit crowded, absurdly expensive, but his roommates are chill and leave him to his own devices. No one’s tried dragging him into Christmas plans. Any plans, really.
It’s nice to be included, so why is he so damn anxious about it? He likes his friends, a better family than his actual family ever was even when things were kind of good and he was too young to know any better, so what’s making him nervous about this? It’s fine! It’s Christmas! Who hates Christmas?
Fuck, maybe he is a Scrooge. He has the excuse of being attacked by a bunch of Santa clones, at least?
Late that night, the time he really should be sleeping, not even as the Vox but as a person who has to open tomorrow because Zee called out, Pete texts Kingston: is wally invited?
Kingston is an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of guy. Pete always thought he was, anyway. But he texts back right away. Yes
Pete snorts. He forgot that for all Kingston’s Vox Populi-isms in person, he’s still an older guy and bad with texting. rad. thanks, ma
Kingston sends a handshake emoji, then a thumbs up emoji, then a Ignore the handshake text, and it calms Pete enough that when he sleeps, his dreams are just the usual things with Nod and not the nightmare that he could feel waiting for him.
The day of the party rolls around and he makes his way to Kingston’s apartment, idly hoping for some sort of crisis to emerge that he can tackle. Nothing bad, just enough to sidestep the party a bit. Pete always does better in an emergency than he does in downtime. He’s just that kind of guy. People like him in a fight; they don’t like him when he’s twitchy and anxious about, like, sitting in a friend’s place without anything obvious to talk about.
That’s stupid, a voice in his head that sounds a little like Kingston and a little like Nod reminds him. You’ve spent a year with these people. They like you. Sofia tried to hook you up with one of her hairdresser friends and Ricky invited you to work out; that’s a shining endorsement from both of them.
Counterpoint, he thinks at them both. I’m a disaster of a person who doesn’t know how to be normal and I’m going to fuck this up.
The voice in his head sighs, which seems odd. Maybe a Vox Phantasma thing, maybe a forgot to take his aripiprazole this morning thing, maybe a good old-fashioned “there’s something wrong with Pete” thing. It really is like a childhood Christmas all over again.
Whatever. Whatever! He’s here, he’s at Kingston’s door, and he’s sure he can be regular-guy awkward and not event-ruining awkward for an hour or two, long enough to find a good excuse and then get the hell out of there.
He knocks on the door. It opens so soon that Kingston must have been waiting by it, the nerd. “Pete! Come on, get inside, too damn cold out to wait out here.”
Pete grins, sure the look is equal parts confident and manic. “Merry Christmas, man.”
Kingston smiles back. “Merry Christmas.”
Sofia calls out from the other room. “It’s the first of December! Ugh, we should’ve done the ninth to celebrate the anniversary of all of us meeting.”
“I’ve known Kingston for years,” Ricky says calmly.
“You know what I mean, Mr. March,” Sofia says, and Esther’s tipsy enough to be giggly because she laughs at that even though it’s nothing at all.
Pete braces himself for an explosion of green and red and tinsel and glitter and a giant tree and all the Christmas bullshit of years past when he walks in. And there’s some of it, sure, a few drawings of ornamanted trees that are endearingly bad enough to obviously be from Kingston’s younger cousins, some eggnog in front of Esther and Liz (but not Sofia, he notices, and feels weirdly guilty for noticing), literal Santa in the form of Wally over in the corner, but nothing giant and overwhelming.
He’s immediately relieved by it. Naturally, he ruins it by opening his mouth and blurting out, “What, no tree?”
Kingston just laughs it off and pats him on the back. “You find the space for a tree in here, I’ll get the best damn tree this city’s ever seen.”
“Do not,” Ricky adds, unable to help himself. “They’re horrible fire hazards.”
Sofia pouts. “I have a Christmas tree.”
Ricky closes his eyes. “Okay. Okay. Please water it.”
“You have to water a dead tree?” Pete asks, baffled.
Ricky’s forehead creases further, not yet opening his eyes. “Pete, do not get a Christmas tree.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Pete mutters. “You’ve seen my apartment.”
“If it helps, the lights on my tree are all magical,” Sofia says consolingly. “And I don’t have a fireplace or anything.”
Ricky relaxes. “Good. Don’t burn your house down this year.”
Sofia sighs, put-upon. “Pete, how many times have I burned down my house?” She takes her purse off the seat next to her and pats it.
Pete tries not to cry at having a space saved for him and sits next to her. “Literally only one time,” he says.
“Thank you! See, Ricky, once is just a thing you’ve done. Twice would be a habit.”
“Most people don’t burn their houses down even once,” Ricky says.
Esther pulls him into a sidehug that should be awkward but isn’t, because they’re such a sweet couple it makes even Pete’s non-candy teeth ache to see them sometimes. “Let it go, babe.”
Ricky relaxes even further under her touch, giving her a soft smile before he turns back to the table. “How it’s going, Pete? How’s the shop?”
“Good,” Pete says on rote, realizing that everyone’s looking at him. Not with judgment, but with a gentle expectation that he’s got more to say and they’re there to listen. Nothing like the holidays of years past; everything like the months he’s spent with these people.
Why’d he get so in his own head about the Christmas of it all? He knows everyone here. He loves them. They even love him back.
“We just got this new shipment of books, and oh my God, if I never see James Patterson’s name again, it’ll be too soon,” he continues. Esther’s nodding her agreement even before he finishes saying James. Sofia keeps pressing for gossip on the coworker of his she’d always found the most annoying even though he doesn’t have anything to do with this story. Kingston listens, intent and engaged, in a way Pete’s never seen from anyone but him.
If this is what Christmas is gonna be like from now on, maybe it’s not so bad.