Chapter Text
3:26 AM was too late, even for Emily, who was a night owl by nature. Yet there she was, perched on her boyfriend’s parents’ couch, watching what she thought might be Die Hard 3 (but she had never seen it before and she wasn’t paying much attention) while she crocheted as fast as her aching fingers would let her.
She had promised she would have this blanket for his grandmother ready by Christmas morning but it was taking a little longer than she had planned. She wouldn’t have even stayed up to work on it, but she was so close to finishing, it still seemed possible to get it done in time. She was progressing at about the rate she expected—projected last stitch: around 5, 5:30 AM—but her eyelids were seriously starting to droop. Coffee could only do so much and she had already drunk a whole pot. It wasn’t the first time she had ended up in a situation like this, desperately working to finish a gift by Christmas, but it was the first time it had ever kept her up quite this late.
It was fine. She would be fine.
Look at the pattern, count the stitches, you can do this, Em.
There was a quiet “fwish” from the direction of the fireplace and she turned toward it just in time to see… no, that was impossible. An enormous man materialized out of a cloud of golden shimmer and that man was inarguably Santa Claus. The costume was nothing if not distinctive.
He seemed caught off-guard by the lights being on, the television being on, and Emily, staring at him from the couch, frozen mid-stitch. He cursed quietly under his breath and then there was a long moment in which they only looked at each other.
“You’re dreaming,” he said quietly. “You fell-sleep a half hour ago.” His words slurred slightly together.
She narrowed her eyes and looked around the room. “Well, that would be the most logical explanation for this, but… I’m actually pretty confident I’m awake.”
“I mean, dreams always seem real at the time, right?”
“Did you just quote Inception at me?”
He took a deep breath and sighed. “I dunno what that is.”
“Are you…” she took a deep breath, feeling ridiculous saying it out loud. “Are you Santa Claus?”
“Uh… yeah, I am.”
She nodded, sucking on her teeth, thinking, while he reached into a fur-lined bag he was dragging behind him, pulling out a beautifully wrapped gift and tossing it beside the tree.
Emily didn’t remember ever believing in Santa Claus. She knew she had at one point, when she was really little, because she did remember the family controversy when her cousin had told her, too young, that he was make-believe. She remembered feeling guilty, like she should have pretended to keep believing for her parents’ sake; they had seemed so upset. But she had no memory of sitting on the knee of a mall Santa, writing him a letter, waking up to any gifts that were not under the tree the night before.
… and yet, there he was, not ten feet away.
She laughed quietly. “I have to be dreaming.”
“I told ya,” he said quietly, moving back toward the fireplace.
“You’re not real,” she added.
“Yeah, let’s go with that,” he replied.
“But… if I was awake… that would mean you were.” And she was so sure she was awake.
He turned back to look at her. “But we agree that you’re sleeping, right?”
“I just—” her heart ached and her voice came out a little smaller, a little sadder than she meant for it to, “if you’re real, why did you never bring me any presents?”
He looked sad too, then, his eyebrows drawing together, but he gave her a halfhearted smile from under his mustache. “I gave you one present, when you were five. It was the only time you ever asked me for anything.”
She opened her mouth but closed it again before any words got out.
He sighed.
“What was it?” she asked.
A genuine smile replaced the sad one. “It was a stuffed donkey, from a show you liked.”
“You gave me Eeyore?”
He nodded. “He was your favorite because you—”
“—felt so bad for him!” she interrupted, suddenly excited.
“His house always fell down,” he smiled. “You wanted him to be real so you could build him a house that would keep him warm and safe and dry.”
She nodded, feeling tears prick her eyes as a flood of memories hit her. In fact, she had built him a house, with Lincoln Logs. It had stood in the corner of her room her entire childhood. She took a long moment to let herself remember, and he stood there, waiting patiently.
“It wasn’t my fault I stopped believing,” she finally said.
“I know. But you never went without, your parents bought you the things you wanted. You always had a good Christmas.”
She nodded, suddenly feeling like she had lost something really important before she could even appreciate it.
“I loved that thing,” she said, going back to Eeyore. “I still have him, you know. I mean, I obviously haven’t played with him in a long time, but he’s on a shelf in my room.”
He smiled. “I’m… um…” he swallowed and looked around. “Hey, are there any cookies?”
“Oh! No. Sorry, um… I mean, we might have some cookies from… I think one of the neighbors made them a tray, do you want me to check?”
He shook his head. “Nah, it’s fine. The folks next door always have cookies for me. Probably shouldn’t eat them at every single house, anyway.”
“You’re actually not in bad shape for someone who eats a hundred thousand cookies in one night.” Or for anyone, she guessed. He carried a little bit of weight around his belly but it wasn’t the bowl-full-of-jelly he was usually portrayed as having.
He laughed and it was a legitimate ‘Ho-ho-ho.” It sounded so natural in his voice. “I… yeah. I have a cookie-based diet all year, actually. I could probably eat better, but…” he shrugged.
“Oh, come on, you’re the one person in the world who can be as fat as he wants. Nobody expects a skinny Santa.”
He laughed again. “You’re not wrong. I should go. Merry Christmas, Emily.”
She smiled. “Merry Christmas.”
He bent down by the hearth, brought a gloved finger to his nose, and was gone in another shimmer cloud, up the flu.
She sat there for a while, blinking at where he had been, then looked down at her crocheting. She ran the yarn between her fingers and it felt real. If this was a dream, how did she make herself wake up? She didn’t know, but on the impossible chance that she actually was awake, she just kept crocheting.
She finished the blanket, only a little later than she had planned, without ever waking up, and went up to Dave's room, crawling quietly into bed beside him, where she did fall asleep, in spite of her restless mind. A few hours later, when he woke her, it was Christmas morning. The blanket was done, folded in the corner, and everyone else was already up, eating some kind of eggy casserole and drinking orange juice, gathering around the tree.
She couldn’t keep her eyes off the one present that didn’t match the others, the one she had seen Santa Claus put there. Had it been there the whole time? Did they wrap it differently so Kira, Dave’s niece, would think it was from Santa? Had Emily noticed the night before and her sleepy brain filled in the rest? Regardless, it was a doll and it was Kira’s favorite gift. “Exactly what she wanted,” in fact.
Emily quietly asked around, later that day, about who had bought Kira the doll, and nobody remembered.
“We probably bought it like eight months ago and just forgot,” said Kira’s mother.
“We do have that paper somewhere,” said Kira’s grandfather.