i was @stonebees secret santa for the slenderverse secret santa event this year! they wanted anything with jay and tim (marble hornets), so i wrote them a short sorta-christmassy fic! i hope they like it!!
As far as days go, this one had been alright. No weird phone calls, no eldritch abominations interfering, nothing out of the ordinary. Things could almost be considered... normal. Tim wasn't quite sure how to feel about that. He was almost too busy with possible 'what if?' scenarios to register that Jay had just spoken from the passenger seat beside him.
"It's almost Christmas."
“Wait, what?” Tim asked, slightly startled by the interruption in his thoughts.
“I said, it’s almost Christmas,” Jay repeated, turning slightly in his seat to look at Tim.
“And? No offense, but I think we have more important things to worry about than a stupid holiday, Jay. Like, you know, how we’re going to pay for a hotel with the last of our money,” Tim said with a slight shake of his head.
Jay glanced off to the side for a moment. He knew Tim was right, but things had gone fine recently, hadn’t they? No Alex, no... whatever that thing was, no masked alternate personas popping up to mess with them, things were almost back to some semblance of normal. Would celebrating one little holiday make that much of a difference?
“We don’t have to do anything big, Tim. I just thought that since things had calmed down a bit, we could do what normal people do and celebrate a bit. Don’t you want to at least pretend to be normal?” Jay asked.
“It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that we literally don’t have any money to do anything vaguely in the spirit of the holiday, Jay.”
“You don’t need money to spend with people, Tim.” Jay responded.
“I know that, Jay.”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Are we gonna at least fake some holiday cheer?”
“...Fine. I won't be much help with planning though, it's been so long since I've celebrated Christmas,” Tim said, attention once again fully on the road.
“Right now, I’m okay with that,” Jay replied.
----------------------
As it turned out, Christmas came a lot faster than either Jay or Tim had anticipated, and now Jay was part of the last-minute holiday shopping scramble. Between the two of them, there was enough money left over after their latest hotel stay for Jay to get a present or two for both of them. He doubted Tim would get him anything, but that didn’t really matter.
Purchases in hand, Jay returned to the hotel where he and Tim were staying. He doubted that he’d get the chance to wrap anything, so he’d opted for decorative gift bags instead.
Opening the door to the shared room was a bit harder when his hands were already occupied, but all it took in the end was a bit of awkward fumbling with the keycard in the end. Entering the room, Jay noticed that Tim was gone, which worried him a bit. He placed the bags on his bed, then pulled out his phone to see if he’d somehow missed a message from Tim. Nothing. When several messages went unanswered, Jay grew even more worried.
“He chose a bad day to disappear… Wait, what day is it?” Jay muttered to himself, checking the calendar on his phone. “December 24th, Christmas Eve. Really not a good day to vanish, Tim…”
After a short moment, Jay decided to start calling Tim to see if he was okay. As he raised the phone to his ear, the door opened, revealing Tim and the bag he was holding.
“Where were you? I tried texting you, like, ten times, why didn’t you respond?” Jay asked, ending the call and rushing over to where Tim stood.
“It’s Christmas Eve, isn’t it? I found some money in one of my jacket pockets and figured I’d go and get some stuff for us,” Tim said, shifting the bag behind his back a bit while shutting the door.
“Some stuff? Like what?”
“Normal people usually get other people presents for Christmas, don’t they?”
Jay mentally facepalmed. Of course that’s what Tim was doing. Jay’s worry wasn’t quite gone yet, though.
“That still doesn’t explain why you didn’t message me or call me to say you’d be gone.”
“My phone’s been on the fritz ever since our last encounter with Mr. Tall, Dark, and Faceless, remember? I haven’t had time to get it fixed lately,” Tim replied, moving past Jay towards the other bed in the room.
Another mental facepalm. He’d been there with Tim that last time, how could he have forgotten?
“You mentioned the whole gift-giving thing earlier, and I have to ask, what’d you get me?” he asked, curiosity rising.
“You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out,” Tim replied, smirking slightly.
“You’ll have to wait too, then,” Jay said, picking up the bags off his bed. He leaned over, opened a drawer on the nearby nightstand, and placed the bags inside before shutting it.
“I should have seen that coming, shouldn’t I?” Tim said with a soft chuckle.
“Yep. But hey, we don’t have too long to wait since it’s pretty late,” Jay replied, a quick glance at the nearby clock showing that it was currently 11:02 PM.
Quiet settled over the two as they got ready for bed. After they were both comfortably situated under the thin hotel sheets, Jay spoke up.
“Hey Tim?”
“Yeah?”
“Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas, Jay.”
And with that, the two fell asleep.
