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Christmas should be quiet and peaceful, Tommy thinks. The ground should be blanketed in fresh, powdery snow, making the night less dark, the trees less daunting, and the shadows less eerie. Tommy is experiencing none of that.
December twenty-fourth, and the snow is ugly and dark, littered with dirt and Tommy’s own footprints along the beach. It’s half-melted and slushy, awful to look at and even more awful to trudge through. It’s not even snowing anymore. Somehow, the beach is too warm for that, and buckets of rain pour on Tommy’s head. His hands do absolutely nothing to block it. At best, his eyes are clear, but water seeps between the cracks in his clammy fingers anyways and drips down onto his cheeks and nose.
He sneezes, and nearly trips over his own two feet on the slush and the sand and fuck, he really wishes he were anywhere but here right now. The wind whips in his face, quick and biting. Wind chill. Right. As if the temperature weren’t already fucking miserable without it.
Tommy grumbles to himself, finally breaking past the sand and onto the grassy hill where his tent sits. It’s a crude, pathetic thing, patched together from cow and sheep hide, poorly sewn, and he has to hammer the posts back into the ground at least twice a night with this sort of weather, but it’s shelter. As he approaches, he can see the tent’s opening flapping in the storm, and he swears loudly, dropping his hands from his eyes and scrambling the last several feet, so at the very least, he’s body-blocking the entrance.
He surveys the damage. There’s a puddle of water on the side where his feet would usually go, but the rest of it looks fine. He steps inside, quickly securing the door so no more rain falls in, and takes a breath. It’s not any warmer in here than it is outside, and the standing water really isn’t going to help with that.
Out of his inventory, he pulls a blanket. Calling it a blanket is generous, actually – it’s pieces of wool held together by what string he could pick off of spiders earlier that evening, before the storm had whipped up and when mobs were still coming out one by one rather than in packs. He’s never had a blanket before out here, even when it was snowing, so he feels pretty proud of what he’s made. The thought of using it to soak up the puddle only crosses his mind before he pushes it away – no, if he has a blanket, he’s using it to stay warm, thank you very much.
His shoes and socks get tossed into the corner, where hopefully they’ll dry overnight. Tommy settles into the corner of his tent, first sitting up, then carefully arranging his blanket so that when he lays underneath it, he’s as far from the puddle as he can be. His knees are drawn to his chest, and he feels a little bit like a shrimp, all curled up like this. It’s uncomfortable and cramped, and he seriously doubts his ability to fall asleep like this until he squirms a bit more into a different position. Yeah, this’ll work. Probably. Maybe.
Tommy closes his eyes and listens to the rain battering against his tent. The storm outside is noisy, and for the first couple of times it poured this hard out here in Logstedshire, it drove him insane. He tossed and turned, sleep evading him for many hours until pure exhaustion finally caught up with him. Now, though, it functions a bit more like white noise. The trees rustle in the wind, and in the distance, he can hear the waves crashing against the shore with a sound like muted claps of thunder.
When he’s almost fallen asleep, a noise from outside of his tent catches his attention – the crunch of footprints on snow. Surely, there’s no wild animal that would come this close to his tent at night, and the area’s plenty lit, so mobs are out of the question. And come to think of it, those footprints sound more human than anything else – so really, there’s only one answer.
“Dream?” Tommy calls out. He sits up. “Dream, is that you?”
The sound stops.
“Who else would it be?” comes a muffled laugh from the outside of the tent. “Well, since you’re awake, come on out here.”
“What?!” Tommy exclaims, pulling his blanket closer to his chest. “But it’s – it’s fucking pouring, man! I was – it’s the middle of the night!”
“So?” Dream says. “I didn’t get to see you today. Come on, get out here.”
Tommy hesitates. He leans forward over the puddle, lifting the flap so he can peek out into the storm, and gives his biggest glare upwards, at the pristine white mask he can see perfectly clear, even when Dream’s face is cast in shadow by the light of the partly-clouded moon.
“Do I have to?” Tommy says, a little bit of a whine edging into his tone. He doesn’t mean for it to sound so childish, but he’s tired and he’s cold, and his hair is still wet, and he just wants to get some sleep.
Dream’s chin drops a little, and Tommy can feel the eyeroll, even though he can’t see it through the mask. “Yes, Tommy, come on,” he says. “You can even bring that – is that a blanket? Bring it with you.”
“Wh- but it’ll get wet!” Tommy protests. “I’ll just leave it in here.”
“Bring it with you,” Dream repeats, light and simple, as if it’s a matter of fact that Tommy will do as he says. Despite the casual delivery, Tommy knows the dangers, knows that Dream doesn’t like being made to repeat himself. Fuckin’ prick. But what can Tommy do, huh?
Tommy weighs the options in his mind before he decides that he hates the idea of pissing Dream off more than he hates the idea of putting his wet socks back on and dragging his blanket out into the storm. It’s a whole ordeal, tugging the soaked fabric back on his feet (because he’s not going to go outside in the snow and the mud barefoot) before he finally stands up, pulling the blanket around his shoulders and opening the tent flap.
Dream is already halfway across the grass, and Tommy quickly follows. The rain soaks through the blanket in no time. Of course. Tommy’s not really a prayer guy anymore, but when he looks up at the sky, he definitely makes a wish for Dream to never have dry socks again.
“What’s in your inventory?” Dream asks, casually as ever. When Tommy looks back over at Dream, he spies the glint of enchantment on the shovel in his hand, already digging away at the ground. Fucking figures. He doesn’t get a single break, does he?
“Uhh, carrots,” he mumbles. “Shield. Armor. Lapis. Sword. Rotten flesh. Are you really going to make me toss my rotten flesh into the hole, Dream? Are you that fuckin’ petty? You know, actually, no, I’m not going to toss my rotten flesh in there even if you say I have to, because you’re such a bi-HIHI-HITCH-!”
Tommy scrambles to more solid ground just as Dream digs into the dirt underneath him, trying to take away his footing.
“You did that on purpose!”
“Put your armor in the hole, Tommy,” Dream says. “Ehh, and the rotten flesh, too.”
“Fuck you,” Tommy spits, chucking his helmet into the hole. The rest of the items follow. It’s not like he needed the rotten flesh, anyways.
Dream pulls out a piece of TNT and a flint and steel. “Oh, wait, one more thing,” he says. “Toss that blanket thing in there.”
Tommy balks. His blanket? He made that with his own two hands! Sure, it’s kind of shitty, and it doesn’t do much to keep him warm, but it’s the only one he has! And when the temperature out here hovers around the freezing point, it’s sorely needed.
“But – but I – that’s not armor! Or weapons, or tools, or-”
“You tossed the rotten flesh, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but that was a joke! A fucking joke, Dream, don’t you understand what those are?”
“Toss it, Tommy.”
Tommy fumes. It’s not fair. This isn’t fucking fair. He ought to give Dream a piece of his mind. He ought to scream, he ought to shout, he ought to call him way worse than just a bitch every five minutes, he ought to tell Dream to toss his shit in the hole, see how he likes it – but what comes out instead, is “But it’s Christmas.”
“Christmas isn’t until tomorrow,” Dream says. “Blanket. Hole. Now.”
Tommy goes silent. He stares at the hole. His hands squeeze tighter at the hem of his blanket. “I’m going to freeze,” he mutters.
“Tommy,” Dream warns. The flint and steel in his hand switches to an axe. Tommy takes in a very sharp breath, and immediately pulls the blanket from his shoulders.
Into the hole it goes.
“See? Was that so hard?” Dream asks. He places the TNT and lights it with the flint and steel. Not even the rain stops it.
“Fuck you,” Tommy says for the second time, as he listens to the explosion and flinches. He turns around, not even waiting for Dream to patch up the hole before he’s marching off back to his tent.
He tears the flap open and shut as quickly as he can, tossing off his shoes and his socks and – one of them lands in the puddle. He angrily kicks it to the corner of the tent. Now blanketless, he curls up in the opposite corner of the tent once more – cold, angry, and wired. Even if he thought he could get to sleep without the blanket, he’s too frustrated to do anything more than roll over, time after time again.
Merry fucking Christmas.
…He wonders, idly, what’ll happen tomorrow. He has a tree, decorated with ornaments. But he’s not a child anymore. He’s not so foolish to believe that when he wakes up, there’s going to be presents under the tree, or stockings by his campfire. Or wherever they would go when there’s no chimney.
Presents haven’t been on his mind at all. He certainly hasn’t gotten anyone anything this year – if he had, there’s no doubt they would have met the same fate as his blanket. God forbid Tommy ever have anything sentimental, or valuable. At least the armor and the weapons made sense, in some… twisted fashion. Didn’t want Tommy to go beating Dream up and breaking out of his exile, would he? Like that could ever happen, anyhow.
But gifts and blankets – what, does Dream just want to see him suffer? Likely, his brain tells him. And even if he didn’t destroy whatever Tommy would have made, he doesn’t think there’s any way he could get a gift back to L’Manberg. Maybe… maybe he could have asked Ghostbur to deliver something, but knowing the ghost’s poor memory, the chances of that actually working were slim.
So no gifts. And Tommy wasn’t going to expect anything in return, either. Frankly, if no one had made the effort to visit so far, then Tommy wasn’t going to hold out for Christmas.
“Tommy?” comes Dream’s voice from outside his tent.
Tommy jolts into a sitting position. “What the fuck do you want now?” he asks, staring forward as the tent flap rustles, and Dream pokes his head in. “Do you mind?!?”
“It’s raining out there,” Dream says. He steps inside, boot landing straight in the puddle. Some of it splashes onto Tommy’s leg. Dream looks down at where he stepped.
“And this is my tent!” Tommy says, shrill and loud. “Get the fuck out!”
Dream, of course, doesn’t listen. He steps further in, with his muddy fucking boots, and then closes the tent flap. “You left before we were done,” he says.
“I – what, do you want to blow up my carrots now, too? Merry Christmas, Tommy! You’re going to freeze and starve today!”
“I don’t want your carrots,” Dream says with a scoff. He pulls something out of his inventory – a cloth – and he starts to… soak up the water puddle, of all things.
Oh. Well, that’s fine, Tommy guesses. Still not a great trade-off for the mud in his tent, but it could be worse. He eyes Dream for a moment as he wipes the cloth across the bottom of the tent, then, when he’s finished, stows it away in his inventory again.
“…What do you want?” Tommy asks again.
“I have something for you,” Dream says, lowering himself to the floor of the tent and taking off his boots. He sets them neatly in the corner over by Tommy’s shoes, then returns to sitting cross-legged on the floor. “Close your eyes.”
“What?”
“Close them.”
Tommy stares at Dream for a moment, and then, defeated, his eyes fall shut. There’s a bit of rustling, and then Tommy feels something soft in his lap. Startled, he opens his eyes.
It’s a blanket. A proper blanket, something thick and warm and soft. It’s checkered, green and red, with bits of embroidery around the hem in the shape of holly leaves. Tommy’s eyes widen, and he must look like an idiot, gaping at the blanket in disbelief. He grabs the hem and holds it up. He turns it around, once, twice. He lets go and it drops back to his lap. His hands stay hovering, unsure.
“I… what?” Tommy exclaims. “What’s this for?”
“Uh, you. Duh,” Dream says. “What else?”
“I – but why?”
“It’s Christmas. Come on, you get presents from your friends on Christmas, don’t you?”
“But – but it’s only Christmas Eve, like you said.”
Dream lifts a hand and wobbles it. “It’s half past midnight. So technically, it’s Christmas.”
Tommy looks down at the blanket again, then slowly, warily wraps it around his shoulders. It’s warm, much warmer than the one he’d made himself, and doesn’t scratch at his jaw or feel weirdly thin in any areas. It’s nice.
“So? Got anything to say?” Dream asks.
“…Thank you,” Tommy mutters. “Did you plan this? When you wanted me to – to throw my other one out?”
“You think I wouldn’t?” Dream says. “Come on, I’m not gonna let you freeze. I just saw your other one, and – let’s be real, it was kind of pathetic – I knew you weren’t going to be using it anymore, so I thought I’d just get rid of it. Besides, it was a good test.”
“A test?” Tommy asks, bewildered. “A test of what?”
“To see if you’d trust me,” Dream answers. “You trust your friends, right?”
Tommy thinks for a moment about his friends. He thinks about L’Manberg. He thinks about Tubbo. He thinks about the day he was exiled. He thinks about the way Tubbo looked at him. He thinks about being left behind.
No, he doesn’t trust his friends, Tommy decides. But apparently, he trusts Dream…? He’s not entirely sure what that means. He doesn’t know if he wants to find out.
“Merry Christmas, Tommy,” Dream says after a moment of silence, lifting a hand to give him a pat on the shoulder. He rises to his feet, slipping his boots back on with ease before opening the tent flap. “Sleep well.”
In the next moment, the tent flap is closed, and Dream is gone.
Tommy curls up under his new blanket, and for the first time since coming to Logstedshire, he has a warm, peaceful slumber.