I made a bunch of spelling and syntax errors in the last section. These were mistakes. Eventually this will be tidied up and put on ao3 and probably more people will see it there though so I guess I shouldn't stress too much

Also Blue surprised me in this chunk by being a pretty cool dude. Nice personality you got there, Blue. Also this is a Christmas episode I never meant to write?????

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The blank page stares up at Freddy, accusing and impassive. If he could put the thing back in his notebook, he would, but the frayed edges from where it was pried from the binding won't have it. He has to use it or waste it, or pretend that if he leaves it be today there's a snowball's chance in hell that he'll ever get back to it.

The pen he's borrowing off Blue is mostly out of ink, he couldn't say much if he wanted to. When it hits the paper and he starts sketching out the over-familiar letters of his parents' address he's surprised at how smoothly he can hold the thing. He hasn't really written anything in weeks.

He's missed the last post that could have gotten anything to California in time for Christmas, but he still starts out with a hesitant wish that the two of them didn't hate the holiday season. The family home, dressed in pine branches dragged down from upstate, not a drop of snow in sight but all the carols still sing themselves like the climate has an obligation towards freezing at this time of year. His grandparents will probably be there, minus Pop on his dad's side who bit the dust when Freddy was very small. Maybe an aunt or an uncle, a cousin or too.

Just not him. A hole where he used to be. Too much Christmas dinner on the table because he's not there to eat half his bodyweight in turkey, no fighting over which channel to flip too when everyone collapses in a food coma when they're done, because dad will pick and no one will challenge him. Presents under the tree, unopened, or not there at all.

The pen skips and Freddy's breath catches as he considers, for the first time, that they might miss him, or that Christmas might be too painful to look full in the face without him there. Curled up on the sofa in Brown's apartment, at three in the afternoon on a Monday, and they have a scraggly little pot plant from Pink's room out with some string draped over it and a picture cut fresh from the back of a porn rag stuck to the top in place of an angel. It's happening here, whether it's happening anywhere else or not.

"Where are you going for the holidays, kid?" Blue asks when he bustles in later that evening to start stirring tomatoes and herbs together into pasta sauce. The mostly blank piece of paper is tucked between the pages of the Fantastic Four comic Freddy's been reading for the past ten minutes and there it's likely to stay.

Freddy shrugs. "Ain't got anywhere else to be."

"Here?" Blue shakes his head, pity practically dripping into his dinner. "That's not right kid. This is a miserable place to stay for the holidays."

"Pink and Brown'll be here."

"Pink will hold out till Christmas eve then drag his ass up to the Bronx to see his mother like she wants him to. Brown'll get drunk enough to pass out first thing and then you're on you're own."

It's just another day in the year, it doesn't mean shit. Freddy can stay at home and do nothing. Or get his ass at least a little bit in gear and try to scrounge up something to cook. It would probably suck, but it's not like his mom ever managed much with food beyond cooking a whole fucking bunch with it.

He doesn't look up at Blue, painfully ware he's being watched. "What are you doing?"

"Friend of mine has a bunch of us old guys over together each year. Guys who don't really got other places to be, you know?" Blue leans towards Freddy. "That kinda sounds like you."

"I could head back to California." Freddy counters, like that's a real fucking possibility.

"So go back to California." Blue huffs. "Or come with me. Sling me twenty dollars and I'll make sure you show up with a nice bottle of whiskey in hand. You should always bring a gift when you visit someone, but especially on Christmas."

"My Grammy says the same exact shit." Freddy smiles ever so slightly. Still not looking at Blue, but no opposed to changing that attitude sometime soon.

"Smart lady." Blue grins.


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A nudey pen for Brown, who think's it's hysterical, and a book on free market economics for Pink, bought as a joke but received with enthusiastic thanks. Freddy gets a quarter ounce of marijuana and a Stealers Wheel record from the two of them respectively and worries that he didn't spend enough on them.

Blue insisted he didn't want shit from Freddy and that he probably wouldn't give anything in return and that more or less seems true. By the time he and Freddy are gearing up to leave, Brown is half way through a bottle of bourbon and Pink is rushing to the Bronx as fast as his legs will carry him.

Freddy bought himself a thick woolly jumper at the start of advent and combined with his leather jacket he'll have a job getting cold. His breath forms neat little puffs in front of his face as he steps out, like he's been smoking and the dirty snow crunches under the heel of his boots. The girls that are out, on today of all days, are allowed to throw a coat and a santa hat on over their usual ensembles but they still must be freezing. They pass a gaggle as they turn off down twelfth avenue and they don't even have the energy to proposition the Johns walking past. They huddle, like penguins in those pictures of the antarctic, trying to keep their eggs from freezing.

Blue shakes his head. "It's no time of year to be a hooker."

"Not sure it's ever a good time of year to be a hooker."

"Eh, when you look at the way some of the restaurants and the offices treat their girls, I ain't so sure. At least if you're a hooker, the guys trying to fuck you are kinda the point, and it pays properly. If you get a good pimp it can be a pretty decent life."

"That's a pretty big if." Freddy hunches down into his jacket, feeling the weight of the bottle of whiskey he has tucked up inside settling and swaying in his hand as he walks.

Blue's buddy lives about ten blocks down and two floors up, in a place that its notably nicer than Brown's. It's been so long since Freddy saw a clean carpet he's half scared to step over it as he gets ushered into the room by a red faced Polish man named Ruddy.

"Good to see you, my friend." Ruddy drags Blue into an bear hug. "And you have brought us new meat? Ah, he is so young, when I saw him on the doorstep I thought he was a woman."

"Nice to meet you, sir." Freddy unzips his coat and passes over the whiskey.

Ruddy claps him on the shoulder and bellows out a laugh. "I think it was a good idea for you to come. You are called Orange, right?"

"Freddy's fine." Freddy cocks an eyebrow in Blue's direction.

Blue shrugs. "Eh, I ain't ever called you Freddy. Probably ain't gonna start tonight."

The house is thick with cigarette smoke worse than Brown's but the smell of something in the oven cuts through that in a heartbeat. Freddy is led through to the sitting room where four other old guys are sitting. Save for Ruddy, who has a shock of dark hair and mustache, everyone is some flavour of grey. Freddy's already been advised that for one reason or another, no one in the room has a wife and he would be wise to not imply there's anything unseemly in that.

"This is Gerry." Ruddy points to a tiny old man with a few whisps of hair and oversized glasses. "Tomasz, or Tommy." A tall, stern looking fellow with an overhanging brow. "Eli." Straight backed and pot bellied. "Alex." Also small, but without the glasses. "And Larry."

Freddy's grinning as soon as he catches sight of the cab driver, decked out in a white button down with the sleeves rolled up. He reaches for Larry's hand. "Long time, no see."

"You can say that again." Larry leaps up, his eyes crinkling as he smiles. "Jeez, Freddy! How ya been?"

"You two know each other?" Blue asks.

"Sure. Freddy ran our switchboard down on fifty seventh street for a while when Jeannie had that little accident." Larry says and everyone nods somewhat somberly.

Blue levels a very careful look at Larry which is resolutely ignored.

"C'mon." Larry nods for Freddy to join him on the sofa. "Tell me what's going on with you."

"Uh, I'm working in a comic book shop." Freddy says, stupidly, like the guy's going to care.

But Larry does care, leaning in and letting his arm fall casual over the back of the sofa. "Yeah? How's the work? They pay you properly?"

"Pay's better than with the cab company but fewer hours. I'm living right above the shop though, so I ain't gotta walk all over town."

"That's good." Larry frowns ever so slightly. "Wait, you're living with Blue and Brown and that lot."

"And Pink, yeah."

"Fucking Pink..."

"You know 'em?" Freddy clears his throat. "I mean, most people call 'em by their real names."

Larry rolls his eyes. "Those stupid fucking colours. I shouldn't use 'em but I do. Sue me. I was in that house for five minutes about three years ago, before I pulled my shit together and straightened myself out. Hey, I got a colour and everything."

"No shit!" Freddy laughs. "Which one are you."

"White." Larry holds out his hand like he's introducing himself all over again. "You."

"Orange." Freddy shakes. He skims Larry's face and can see the slur of his lips, the slight waver in his posture. He's had a few to drink, a long way off blackout but still. No wonder he's so happy to see Freddy.

He's warm though. Warm and friendly and that's nice. Freddy leans back up against the arm on the back of the couch and just knows that if he were sober, Larry would take that as his cue to rearrange himself. Their conversation pitters out pretty fast, having little to say for itself beyond running through the checklist of all the ways that their lives have diverged, which are monumental and tiny in the same breath.

But Larry sticks to him like a limpet for the rest of the dday. Freddy thinks of the group of cab drivers crowded together at the back of a Mexican restaurant and how no one really wanted to eat their except Larry. And the dude doesn't have a wife, and works a job that eats up almost every waking hour carting strangers from place to place. Then going home to an empty apartment.

It sounds like an awful lonely way to live. At the church he was so often dragged along to back in Bakersfield, there were these ads that went up around Christmas encouraging people to sign up to spend the say with lonely old folk. If Larry weren't here, maybe he'd be on a list somewhere, waiting for a stranger to show up and convince him not to be sad.

Not that Larry's old. The grey isn't even that pronounced in amongst the mahogany, but it's hard not to feel like a kid in company like this.

"You old enough to drink?" Eli asks, moving to open up the bottle Freddy brought with him.

He's never had whiskey, only bourbon. He hated it, but it was kinda fun. Freddy grins sheepishly, inviting leniency.

"He ain't. But if you don't tell, I won't." Blue clarifies.

"That's the motto! That's the fuckin' motto!" Larry bellows. He ushers the small splash that Eli grants Freddy into his mouth and gives him a hefty slap on the back. "You drink to that, kid, and you'll never set a foot wrong in your life."

It's the weirdest Christmas Freddy has ever been involved in, not least because Ruddy and Tommy are Orthodox and don't really celebrate Christmas till the New Year and Larry, Eli and Alex are Jewish. The thing in the oven is a Polish fish roast that is eaten with the potatoes unroasted and the cabbage leaves stuffed.

"I didn't know you were a Jew." Freddy says, watching Larry pass over the cabbage leaves after establishing that they're packed with pork.

"Yeah, the city's lousy with us." Larry snorts. "But hey, I get the day off anyway and Chanukkah's already wrapped up. Being here's more fun than sitting at home alone."

There's no TV, dinner happens when it happens, no one suggests charades. Freddy hears stories from the war and complaints about customers and no one even dares suggest that there might be a mass somewhere in the city that they should make an appearance at. Gerry, who speaks in a borderline unintelligible squeak, gently ribs and Blue and Freddy for wasting the say with them.

"No place better to be, right?" Freddy raises an eyebrow at Blue.

Blue laughs, takes a sip of whiskey and starts up another story.