HAVE SOME MERRY JOY!

HAPPY NEW VOTE!

Prompt: Staying up for Santa. 

https://youtu.be/EPWRQO0AtFo

He found the idea completely foolish and unneeded. 

The underground didn't have Santa, he wasn't going to save them or feed him like he did for those above. Christmas was just another day, if you survived it at least. December only made the chilly and damp places worse and most that didn't find decent shelter simply died from the cold. 

Christmas was simply forgotten and never mentioned. Most didn't even teach their children about Santa because it was a waste of hope for them all. 

So, of course he's never stayed up for Santa before. 

He didn't need or want to see the man that was meant to be bring joy, love and peace to them all and had simply given them the middle finger instead. 

If Santa was real then his life would have been so much nicer, but it wasn't. 

But as much as an asshole he may act to be, he couldn't spoil her fun. She never once pitied him, not like some did when learning over his background. She pitied him for all that he missed out on and the memories he never made. She didn't pity him for being a street born rat but because he never go to feel the warmth that happiness gave. 

It's why he agreed to such a foolish idea she had planted on him on the eve of Christmas eve. It was their first, real first, year at living together. They shared a room back at the campsite for years, before and after they were married. But this year, they had finally found a small cottage to call their own home far from the camp to live in when they weren't working or needed. 

This would be their first Christmas spent together, alone and without risks of soldier's bursting in for some silly report or problem that truly didn't need them to handle. Or their friends and comrades drunkenly stepping in because they were the closest and needed caring for. 

This Christmas will be spent by just the two of them. 

Not as captains but as Mrs and Mr Ackerman instead. 

Even if he had to rethink over his wife standing as a captain when she decided they were both going to wait up for Santa on Christmas eve. Apparently some memories didn't have a time limit to them and she was going to make some with him.

Replace the cold and deathly Christmas he survived through with warm and joyful memories that'd make him feel warm whenever he thinks over them in the future. 

They couldn't change the past and they couldn't control the future but the present .. they could at least face that without fear or regret. 

Regrets came in the future, when the present was a past they couldn't undo. 

So, trying his best to please his wife that he loves more than he's ever love anything before. The women he'd never be able to live without and never wish to live without. A women who is the air in his lungs with every breath and the reason to keep hope for humanity. 

Her smile was worth more than gold and he'd help place those gorgeous smiles on her lips by accepting her plan. 

It's how he found himself on the sofa with her snuggled up by his side and having them both buried under blankets while the fire was put out. Couldn't risk burning Santa after all, some childhood innocent was needed to make this work. 

Hot tea was left on the coffee table and a finished book beside them along with the board games they had pulled out. Doing an all nighter was normally easy for them when they were busy with paperwork or trying to stay alive. But when the night was calm, safe and content it made them run out of reasons to stay awake. 

But he didn't care for the boredom when he had his wife tucked perfectly against his own body and knew Santa was worth believing in if it ended up giving him moments like this with her. 

Santa might not have arrived in their home like most child staying up would hope for but he still gifted him with the greatest gift known to him. He gifted her happiness to him and that's all he's ever needed.