#greggo

12/23/202X

“I think … they’re done.”

“Ooh! Lemme see!”

A little over a year after the horrible events at the Pizzaplex had been resolved, Vanny still couldn’t believe she was there. This time last year, she had only just been released from the hospital. Back then, she was still so, so afraid that Glitchtrap would come back – much too afraid to trust herself alone with the blonde ex-security guard she’d almost murdered a dozen times over. And much too guilt-ridden to allow herself the enjoyment of standing in that same woman’s kitchen doing something so innocent as decorating sweets for Christmas.

That same woman, by the way, had eagerly made her way over to get a better look at the icing-laced designs Vanny had just finished on her portion of the sugar cookies. Placing a hand on Vanny’s shoulder and peeking over, Ava’s green eyes grew wide, and she grinned. “Awe, they’re so cute! Like from a real patisserie! You’re too good at stuff, Van.”

Ava’s fawning was something she feared she’d never get used to. She huffed out a red-cheeked sigh, then cleared her throat. “It’s really not that impressive. I did all that work tinkering with tiny parts in the animatronics, and then I made some miniature models to present to the design team. Like Moon, remember? So I’m good with my hands, that’s all.”

“Oh, I’m very aware of how good you are with your hands.”

Vanny imagined her cheeks must have resembled the red of the Christmas stockings hanging a few feet away. Noticing the response, the blonde burst into a fit of uncontrollable giggles, which only flustered Vanny more. Before she could muster any adequate response, though, another person stepped through the doorway to the kitchen.

Gregory’s tongue stuck out just a bit as he concentrated hard on not dropping the plate of carefully decorated cookies in his hands. Five sugary figures of what looked like the Glamrocks had been meticulously detailed in colorful icing, and he was determined to get them to their place on the counter without messing them up. Once he set the plate down, he eyed the two women suspiciously. Vanny looked pointedly away, though that made her embarrassment even more obvious. Ava, on the other hand, looked the picture of innocence with her usual sunshiny smile.

“You guys are being weird again,” Gregory commented, his eyes narrowing.

“I have no clue what you’re talking about.” Ava stepped over to get a better look at his designs. “Holy cow, Kiddo! Those look amazing!” She waved Vanny over and nodded in the direction of his cookies. From the way the brunette’s expression melted free of embarrassment and into some mild surprise, it was obvious she was genuinely impressed.

“I didn’t know you were an artist,” she said mildly. “Not bad at all.”

“I know I’m good,” the boy grumbled in response, crossing his arms. “I draw a lot.” Vanny couldn’t help the tiny smile that tugged at her lips. (Ava deliberately did not bring up the very well-done but incredibly macabre comics he had been producing over the last year; she was pretty sure Vanny wasn’t aware of them quite yet.)

Vanny, meanwhile, was still looking over Gregory’s decorating skills. “Oh, you did Bonnie too.” Her eyes widened a bit as she noticed the neon-blue icing of the fifth cookie.

“Well, you said you were fixing him so he’d be back in the band again.” Gregory reached forward and adjusted the placing of the cookies so they stood in a straight row. With a low mutter, he added, “Six months ago.”

Vanny sighed. “We talked about this. You’ve done a great job helping me rebuild his frame, but repairing a CPU that was as damaged as Bonnie’s can be difficult – if not impossible. Doing things right takes time. Plus, with the M.X.E.S. programming taking up so much of my focus-”

“Yeah, yeah. You have more important things to do.”

Vanny and Ava traded glances. Before Ava could come to her girlfriend’s defense, Vanny gave a quick shake of her head, so the blonde stood down.

Gregory huffed and turned to leave. “I’m going to my-“ Abruptly, he paused, eyes trained on the space at the top of the doorway. Hanging there was a sprig of mistletoe, its white berries glaringly obvious against its green leaves. He spun around again, his face contorted in disgust as he pointed accusingly at the offending foliage. “No wonder you guys were being so weird. I can’t believe you actually put that up.”

Ava “snnrked” out a laugh but shook her head. “Good guess and all, Kid, but neither of us put that up.” Vanny groaned out a sigh, and Ava snickered again. “Either way, it’s cute! It’s just a silly tradition.”

Gregory rolled his eyes. “A dumb tradition gross adults made up so they’d have an excuse to kiss.”

Taking a few steps in his direction, Ava let out a long, drawn-out “Hmmm.” She tapped thoughtfully – exaggeratedly so – at her chin and mused, “You know, it sounds to me like someone’s jealous.”

Gregory scoffed. “Jealous? Of gross adults kissing?”

She took another couple steps. “I mean, maybe I’m just reading into it too much or something, but you’re complaining an awful lot. Sounds kind of like you’re just mad you’re missing out on all the kisses.”

The boy squinted in her direction suspiciously. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Ava shook her head sadly. “I just didn’t realize you felt so left out! I’m a terrible guardian. Everyone should feel included.”

Gregory’s eyes grew wide as dinner plates, and he took two steps back. “Vanessa Avalon Andros, you’d better not!”

From her comfortable spot a few feet away, Vanny held her hand up to cover the grin growing up her cheeks. “Oh, he used your whole name, Blondie. He must be serious.”

“Not as serious as me~” In a flash, she had scooped the boy up, his arms pinned against his sides as she kissed the top of his head. Vanny bit back a laugh as she considered that the image looked a lot more like a chicken pecking at grain than a grown woman delivering a dozen obnoxious smooches to a boy’s messy mop of hair. For his part, Gregory fussed and kicked his feet back and forth futilely, but her grip around him was too tight.   

Once she was done peppering kisses, she let go, allowing him to land on his feet. "There you go, Squirt! Your share of Christmas smooches."

He huffed and pushed her away. "I hate it here," he grumbled; though there was an exasperated smile tugging at his lips that made it seem that the complaint wasn’t entirely genuine.

Still, he turned to leave for his room, so she piped up, "Oh, wait! The icing on the cookies will be dry in like, an hour or something. You're still gonna come help us eat them, right?"

"After that? I shouldn’t," he answered blandly, "but yeah. I just promised I'd do a video call with my friend. I'll be back in a little while." After he was out of sight down the hall, he called back, "But don't eat Monty before I get back like you did last year!"

The blonde turned back, eyed the plate of Christmas cookies with interest, then murmured conspiringly to Vanny, "No promises~"

Though Vanny smiled back, her mind was caught on something. "This time last year,” she asked slowly, her smile fading a little as she thought back, "he was already staying with you. Did you guys actually celebrate Christmas? Or..?"

"Oh." Ava started cleaning up all manner of messy baking ingredients from their earlier cookie preparations. "Well, sort of. I tried, I mean. But he apparently hadn't celebrated Christmas since he lost his parents a few years ago, and after everything that happened last September... He's a lot more open to celebrating this year, I guess is how I should put it. We both are."

Vanny nodded wordlessly, staring down at the kitchen counter without asking anything else.

Ava began scrubbing a little too hard at a spot of icing that had begun to stain the counter linoleum. Her voice was uncharacteristically cautious when she asked, "You-... Did you-..  I mean, Bunny said you guys never had Christmas, growing up. Is that true, or..?"

Vanny groaned. "Did she tell you every miserable detail about our life?" She sighed. "No. Our family didn't celebrate any holidays. At least, not with us. And once we lived on our own, I focused so much on work that I never got around to it, exactly."

"Oh."

There was silence again until Vanny spoke up again. "I can't think of a better first Christmas to have than one shared with you, anyway."

Ava glanced over, her green eyes bright. "You mean that?"

"Of course I do."

With a rosy-cheeked grin, Ava closed the distance between them immediately. She rested her forehead against her girlfriend's and let out a pleased sigh. "That's a relief. I was really nervous, actually."

Vanny huffed out a breathy laugh. "I could tell."

"I hate that you always know when I'm anxious."

"You wear your emotions on your sleeve, Blondie. It's something I love about you."

"Yeah, well..." Flustered, Ava nuzzled her forehead against Vanny's. "Anyway. I wanted your first Christmas to be good."

"As long as it's with you, it will be."

Ava huffed out a flustered laugh. "Then it's going to be great, because I'm not going anywhere." She planted a peck on Vanny's forehead and pulled back to return to her cleaning. A few moments passed before she changed subjects slightly. "I'm a little nervous about the Kid's Christmas, too, it being the first one without his parents and all. I'm not ... pushing things, am I?"

Vanny frowned softly. "No, I don't think so. He's come a long way since he first moved in. And you've been really careful to not push the more family-oriented traditions. He... He seems like he's doing okay."

"Christmas will be the real test." The words were spoken so resolutely it almost sounded like she was preparing to go to war.

"Christmas will be the real test," Vanny repeated with a nod, though her tone was gentler. "But no matter what, it'll be okay. You handled the nightmares and the panic attacks, then him starting school... You can handle whatever comes next." She paused. "And I'll be here. Even if he doesn't want my help, I'll do what I can."

Ava shook her head. "I know you think he doesn’t like you, but-"

Suddenly, the sound of a door opening echoed from the other side of the house. Following it came footsteps and Gregory's voice. The women paused and turned as he approached.

"Yeah, hold on, I'll prove it! I did all of them; why would I leave out Roxy?" He made his way in, holding his phone up as he facetimed with someone. He didn’t acknowledge the other two as he beelined to cookies and turned the camera of his phone toward them. “See?” He pointed towards the wolf-shaped sugar cookie. “Roxy.”

A young feminine voice spoke out through the speaker. “You got the design on her top wrong, but it looks good other than that!”

The boy rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t a nut about Roxy like you,” he argued.

“Hey! I said it looked good otherwise!”

“Thanks, I guess.” He puffed.

“Is she still getting fixed? Roxy, I mean?”

“My friend said she is, so she is. Hold your horses, alright? Doing stuff right takes time.”

“I was just asking.” Before Gregory could respond, the girl spoke up again. “Oh, shoot. My dad’s calling. Sorry, Gregory.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’ll text you! See you.”

“See you.”

Gregory poked at his phone screen, then continued to poke around at apps for a few more seconds before a curious Ava spoke up.

“Who was that?”

Gregory looked up. Ava and Vanny were watching him with interest, but Ava was the one who was leaning forward, resting her chin in her hands with wide eyes.

He looked back at his phone. “A friend from when I was living in the pizzaplex,” he answered mildly.

Ava buzzed with excitement. “Awe, a little friend!”

On the other hand, Vanny’s eyes narrowed. She crossed her arms. “Like, one you met in real life? Not just one you only know from your VR games?”

“My online friends are real friends.”

Vanny sighed and evened out her tone. “I didn’t say they weren’t. I very specifically said, ‘one you met in real life.’ Like, in person.”

Gregory relaxed a little. “Yeah. We hung out at the pizzaplex a lot before- … before everything happened. We go to different schools now, but she plays some of the same online games as me.”

There was another question Vanny was itching to ask, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it in front of Ava. There were some things she didn’t know if Ava knew. Things that weren’t entirely hers to tell. Maybe she could get that question answered in a more roundabout way. “She must’ve been at the pizzaplex pretty often if you guys spent that much time together. She wasn’t one of those kids obsessed with going to the arcade every day, was she?”

Gregory cast a knowing look her way. He shook his head. “No. Her dad worked there is all.”

Vanny let out a quiet sigh of relief. If Gregory was spending time with the other apprentices again – if they were even still alive – that could be a problem. There was always the chance that William’s influence wasn’t entirely gone, wasn’t there? Even after everything they’d done, after everything they were still doing, the possibility was there. If there was even a single person out there that had been influenced by William, there was a risk that he could claw his way back to power. That was her fear, at least.

Ava, it seemed, did not have the same concerns weighing her down. In fact, the revelation about Gregory’s friend had brought out her golden retriever energy in full force. She practically had stars in her eyes as she asked eagerly, “Does she live nearby? Why don’t you invite her over? What’s her name?”

Used to her overzealous behavior by now, Gregory waited patiently for the deluge of questions to come to an end. Once it had, he answered in order, “She lives maybe twenty minutes from here. I haven’t invited her because I live with a bunch of weirdos. Her name’s Cassie.”

“Cassie!” Ava crooned. “Well, if she lives so close, you have to invite Cassie to meet the weirdos you live with. I can go pick her up and everything! Or I could drive you over there to hang out. Unless her dad is bad news, I mean. Is her dad bad news?”

“Blondie.” Vanny nudged her girlfriend gently. “Your savior complex is showing.” Though a charmed smile tugged at her lips, she couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit overwhelmed on Gregory’s behalf.

If Gregory was overwhelmed by the blonde’s overbearing exuberance, it didn’t show. “Her dad is super cool, actually. He just has to work all the time, and with the pizzaplex closed down, she gets left home alone a lot.”

“Well,” Ava was definitely trying to reign in her enthusiasm but failing, “there’s no need for her to be alone all the time. We have plenty of company over here, even if we’re a little weird. Oh! Maybe even for Christmas! That would be fun, don’t you think, Van?”

Vanny huffed out a breathy laugh. Noticing the boy’s thoughtful expression, she asked softly, “What do you think about that, Gregory?”