THE FIRST YEAR

        She has never understood why, of all the ways to enter a house surreptitiously in the dead of night, her family opted for the chimney.

        The chimney.

        Most houses don’t even have a chimney.

        It’s not that she’s particularly...large, or even slightly large, but it’s not exactly a pleasant way to spend one’s Christmas Eve, shuffling through people’s chimneys like a goddamn caterpillar.

        Or something.

        “Shit,” she hisses when a thread of the old sack gripped in her right hand gets caught on a brick. She tugs at it, but to no avail. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she growls, pulling a little harder. “I hate everything,” she mumbles when it doesn’t budge.

        Anna dislikes being stuck three-quarters of the way down a chimney. She really does. Not to mention, she’s still going round North America, and there’s, like, three continents still to get through in about as many hours.

        Summoning up all the strength she has left, she gives the bag a final heave, and almost sighs in relief when it comes free – only to let out a screech when she realises – a little late – that it will come crashing down on her.

        It does. Both her and the bag end up in the fireplace. Again.

        “You’d think this would get a little easier after forty-one millionth time,” she moans in despair, standing up and rubbing her backside with a wince.

        “Hello?”

        “Oh, damn,” Anna whispers, then clamps a hand over her own mouth when she realises that speaking isn’t going to help her chances of getting out of this unscathed and unnoticed.

        “Is anyone there?” The voice belongs, presumably, to a male (or a female with very strangely developed vocal chords), and Anna can catch the slightest quiver in it. She backs away from the source of it instinctively, only to end up walking straight into a cabinet with a lot of knobs that really aren’t helping with the sore state of her butt. “Ow,” she squeaks. “I mean – oh shit, oh shit – ” Several things start clanging to the ground around her, and she remembers that she has a sack slung over her shoulder. Anna settles for squeezing her eyes shut and staying very still until the noise recedes.

        When she opens them, a tall, broad-shouldered blonde towers over her, armed with what looks like a baseball bat gripped in both hands. Anna tries to make out his features in the soft darkness, but to no avail.

        Instead, she manages to choke out a feeble: “Please don’t knock me out.”

        The boy studies her for a few moments more, still poised to strike, before hesitantly lowering the bat. She can just catch sight of his eyes, narrowed and dark with caution.

        “You have one minute before I call the police,” he announces, baseball bat still by his side and very much in the picture.

        “Uh, I’m not breaking into your house! Or anything! I swear!” she blurts out. “Well, I kind of am – but not for anything bad! Like, I’m not stealing anything or – ”

        “Oh, yeah?” he raises an eyebrow, and nods towards the rather large and admittedly suspicious looking bag slung over her shoulder. “What’s that, then?”

        There is a long, drawn out silence, as Anna struggles inwardly. But human, she thinks. But baseball bat, she retorts. But blowing entire centuries-old cover for our whole family! she tells herself furiously. But baseball bat.

        “They’re presents,” she sighs.

        Anna watches the boy’s eyebrows crease in confusion. “Presents?”

        “Haven’t you ever heard of Santa Claus?” she asks, and if there’s a little bit of dryness in her tone, it is so totally not her fault.

        “Okay, firstly, I’m pretty sure we all stopped believing in Santa Claus at the age of around ten,” the boy says in an unamused tone of voice. “And if he did exist, there is a general consensus that he is of the male gender. Which you aren’t. Unless this poor lighting is more deceiving than I previously thought...”

        “Hey!” Anna can’t help the injury that slips into her voice. Okay, so her boobs aren’t exactly huge...

        “My point still stands,” he continues, oblivious to her breast-related inner monologue. “Santa Claus doesn’t actually exist.”

        “Oh?” Anna moves a little bit away from the cabinet she crashed into previously. “Who leaves the presents under your tree every year, then?”

        “Uh, my parents?” the boy almost scoffs, cocking an eyebrow.

        “Where are they, then?”

        “It’s only two in the morning. They’ll get up in a few hours. I know they do it,” his tone has become a little harder now, more defensive. “I’ve heard them get up before.”

        Classic case of little boy’s dreams being torn apart by careless parents, Anna muses. She shakes her head. “No, you haven’t. You’ve heard dear old Saint Nicholas stuff his ass down your chimney, and make enough noise for you to think that it’s your parents.” Anna purses her lips, thinking of Nick. “Sometimes he throws in imitations of them to convince you even more. He’s pretty good at that.”

        “So you’re not him!” the boy says, and Anna thinks it would be funny how triumphant he is if she wasn’t suddenly face to face with the baseball bat. Again. Wow, did I miss you, she thinks to herself.

        “No,” she says slowly, backtracking into the cabinet once more in an attempt to widen the distance between her and the bat. “He’s my brother.”

        “Your brother?”

        “Sadly,” she sniffs.

        “Geez, how much of an age difference is there between you two?”

        Anna snorts. “Oh, don’t worry, Nick isn’t your jolly old big fat man in a red suit with a white beard so long it trails on the floor. That was my grandfather.”

        “Grandfather?”

        “Uh huh,” Anna nods. “Nick is my twin brother. And he likes to think he’s God’s gift to mankind. Like most human teenage boys, to be honest.”

        “You’re not human?”

        “We might as well be humans. We look like them, act like them, pee like them...” she trails off thoughtfully.

        “This is crazy,” the boy shakes his head. “Why am I even listening to this?”

        “I don’t know,” Anna tells him seriously. “But thank you for doing so. You would not believe how long it’s been since I’ve had a conversation with someone of at least average intelligence.”

        “More like someone who puts up with your crazy,” the boy mutters. “Where did you run away from, the lunatic asylum?”

        “That’s rude,” she says, before remembering the baseball bat. “That is – I’m not crazy! I’ll prove it to you.”

        He sighs. “Go on, then.”

        “What did you ask for for Christmas this year?”

        “Seriously?”        

        “Yes, seriously! What did you ask for?”

        The boy studies her for a long moment with incredulity painted across his face, before letting out another sigh. “A new car,” he says eventually.

        “Okay,” Anna swings the bag from off her shoulder (she was beginning to feel a little too much like a lumberjack, anyway), and dips her hand inside. After a few minutes, she still hasn’t found what she was looking for, and she can feel the judgement rolling off the boy opposite her in waves. “It’s dark!” she says defensively. “Give me a second.”

        He leans back and crosses his arms, a clear fine, you can have another second, but you’re still going to have a little trouble trying to find something that isn’t there.

        More minutes pass, and she’s beginning to think maybe her plan was a little flawed when her finger brush against a small package shaped very much like a car key.

        “Aha!” she cries triumphantly, fishing it out of the bag and waving it in his face. “What do you say to that, non-believer?”

        “I...” The boy looks very much like he might topple over and faint. “No way,” he shakes his head. “Santa is not real.”

        “The sled’s on your roof, if you want to see that too,” she grins, part of her a little too happy at having the upper hand for the first time in their conversation.

        His eyes widen. “This is crazy,” he whispers. “Properly, full out, totally...”

        His statement is cut off by the neighing noise from above them. Anna only rolls her eyes. “That’ll be Dasher. Better get going before he gets grumpy and starts kicking the roof tiles off. Because he did that last time and I just really hope that family has insurance. But I left them some money just in case they didn’t. America’s the country that pays with dollars, right? Because I thought that it was, but the last time I’ve ever been here is when Nick dragged me, and that was, like, sixty years ago, I think...what?”

        The boy is staring at her with eyes so wide it’s almost comical. “It’s all real,” he murmurs under his breath. “All of it.”

        “Yeah!” Anna says brightly. “Isn’t it awesome? But I should probably leave these and get going...still got all of Asia and stuff, so...where’s your tree?”

        He gestures slightly to the aforementioned tree in the corner of the room, which is tall and glimmering with lights, laden with so many decorations she’s surprised it hasn’t collapsed. “Wow. You guys are way better than the last house.”

        “That’s down to Flynn, mostly,” he replies, and she sees a smile flicker across his face for the first time, pale and fleeting in the dim early morning light.

        “Is Flynn your brother?” she asks as she kneels and begins to arrange the presents carefully on the ground underneath the tree.

        “Yeah, he’s four,” he replies, and she feels her heart warm slightly at the fondness in his tone, because she is a total sucker for happy families.

        “Well, you should tell him that Santa Claus totally loved his decorations,” Anna gets up with a smile, brushing off her clothes as she does so.

        “Will do,” he replies, expression matching hers. She looks at him for a moment, then sighs.

        “Well, oughta get going,” she says lightly, carrying the now empty sack to the fireplace and peering up the chimney with disdain, attempting to plan her route up it and back to the sled. “Don’t know how anyone expects me to get back up that thing without breaking a leg, I mean, really – ”

        “Wait!” It seems that during Anna’s inspection of his chimney, the boy has somehow conjured up a plate of carefully iced cookies, as well as a tall glass of milk. She blinks in surprise.

        “Flynn makes these every year,” he explains, and his tone is, for some reason, bordering on apologetic. “Well, with my help...anyway – usually I have to eat them because Mom and Dad always forget and I don’t want him thinking Santa doesn’t exist,” here, he stops and lets out a breathless laugh, probably realising the ridiculousness of the situation. “So...do you want some?”

        “Oh my God, yes,” Anna says, perhaps a little too eagerly. “I’m literally starving – you would not believe how hungry you get doing this – ” she makes a grab for a cookie, stuffs it in her mouth, and makes a face that she’s sure is either mildly pornographic or wildly disgusting. “Thish ish sho gud,” she manages through a mouthful of shortbread. “Oh my God,” she swallows. “You made these?” Anna questions breathlessly, already reaching for another.

        “Flynn made them,” he corrects. “I just...helped.”

        “Of course,” she nods. He holds out the glass of milk for her and she takes it gratefully, chugging it down at a speed that could probably equal that of light.

        “Someone’s thirsty,” he says lightly.

        “Thank you so much,” she takes another cookie. “This is seriously the best Christmas present ever.”

        “Do you even get Christmas presents?” he asks curiously.

        “Hm, no,” she mumbles through the shortbread.

        “Why not?”

        “I don’t know,” Anna swipes some crumbs from her lips with her sleeve, pensive. “I guess our family doesn’t really celebrate it.”

        He snorts. “Well, that’s ridiculous,” he says.

        “But true,” she finishes off her final cookie and brushes her sweater off.

        “Nice sweater,” he comments, grinning. She glances down at it, a deep red with white and green reindeer all over it. “Matches your hair.”

        “Hey,” she says in an insulted tone, tugging at the auburn plait self-consciously.

        “There’s nothing wrong with it,” he replies. “I just never really expected for Santa to be a redhead, is all.”

        “Yeah, well, fifteen minutes ago, you didn’t think Santa even existed,” she huffs. “And I’m not even Santa,” she adds. “Nick was too lazy to wake up and we couldn’t even get him in the sled because he’s so damn lethargic, so Mom panicked and made me go instead.”

        “Right,” he nods, but shakes his head immediately after. “This is crazy,” he says, not for the first time during their conversation.

        “You’ll probably get used to it,” she says, a little apologetically. “Although...if you could kinda not mention this to anyone else...”

        “Who would believe me?” he grins. Anna has to admit he has a point.

        “If you run into Nick next year, maybe pretend you don’t know about this,” she warns. “He likes knowing he’s the centre of attention. He’ll probably throw a tantrum if he finds out that you already know about the big bombshell he’ll end up dropping.”

        “Right,” the boy nods. “Is he ginger, too?”

        Her eyes narrow playfully. “No. He is not.”

        “It was just a question,” he holds his hands up in mock surrender.

        “Of course,” she turns back to face the chimney, stepping carefully into the fireplace, then looks back. “Thanks for the cookies,” she grins. “Seriously, they were good. And I mean good. Like, amazing good. They were – ”

        “You’re welcome,” he cuts her off with a smile, and now that her eyes have adjusted to the darkness, she can see it properly on his features, which are almost blunt but soft in nature. “I never got your name, by the way.”

        “I’m Anna,” she says.

        “Anna,” he repeats thoughtfully.

        “Yeah, with a long a at the beginning,” she tells him, just in case he didn't catch on it the first time. “I never got your name, either.”

        “I’m Jonathan.”

        Jonathan. Typical American name, but, she thinks, it suits him. “Well, Jonathan, thanks again for the cookies. And say hi to Flynn for me,” she adds with a soft smile.

        “Do you need some help getting up there?” he nods at the chimney with a knowing smirk.

        “I’ve managed to get up the past forty-one million chimneys quite easily, actually,” she sniffs.

        “Okay,” Jonathan shrugs, but the glint is still in his eye.

         Anna gets around halfway up before she calls down and says okay, maybe it would help if Jonathan gave her a one-up. Or three.

_______________________________________________________________________

a/n: I TRIED TO STOP MYSELF FROM WRITING A CHRISTMAS STORY I REALLY DID

leigh (leigh_) is also writing one, idk if she's posting hers but we're cheering each other on so hey ho TIS THE SEASON 

the chapter names are based off the old christmas carol "the twelve days of christmas" so i wouldnt get your panties in a twist about it if i were you im just weird like that

anddd yeah! this has been in my head for like two years but idk i've only just got proper motivation to write it - i'd love it if you told me what you think! 

- mariam