Work Text:
On the first night of the last week in November, Sam woke up alone in bed.
It was hard to tell what time it was; the North Pole was always dark at this time of year. He thought it was probably around four in the morning. This close to Christmas, waking up early was par for the course. Calling himself the busiest man in the world right now was no exaggeration.
That yawning emptiness on the other side of the bed worried him. Sam leaned up on his elbows and looked around. Not that he thought Steve was hiding in the bedroom, but stranger things had happened. One time Steve dreamed he was an Olympic swimmer, and Sam found him on his stomach on the floor beside the bed, swimming his leg of a relay. But he wasn't there now, or anywhere in the bedroom. Sam grudgingly got out of bed and went into the sitting room/office area. The desk lamp was on, which he took as a good sign that Steve wasn't out sleepwalking. The small circle of illumination the lamp cast fell on a pink sticky note in the middle of the desk. Sam scratched his belly absently as he walked over and picked it up.
Couldn't sleep. In the archive if you need me. Otherwise see you at breakfast. Love you. Then a little smiley face wearing a Santa hat. Because why not.
Sam's communicator was sitting beside the note. Tony had given the thing a lot of upgrades so it didn't itch as much, but Sam still disliked wearing it for extended periods, and he often took it off and flung it across the room in his sleep. Steve always managed to find it—often by stepping on it when he got out of bed. Sam picked it up and saw that he was right; it was just past 4 am.
Sam debated. The bed was still warm, and he had an hour before his alarm went off. Sleep was a rare commodity around here in the weeks leading up to Christmas; he should grab those precious minutes while they were available to him. On the other hand, it has been a long time since Steve's insomnia got so bad that he had to leave the room—leave the building . No way could Sam get get back to sleep while his—partner? boyfriend? The North Pole didn't have legal marriage, which left his relationship status in an annoyingly nebulous state. And he'd rather not—okay, fine. No way could Sam get back to sleep while the Spousal Claus tried to fight sleeplessness with boring books. Or, at least, Sam assumed that was the strategy.
("There's no legal marriage," Steve had said once, "but you're the Spousal Claus?"
"Well, not until you ask—"
"Steve."
"Yeah. I'm the Spousal Claus."
"You understand that that's weird, right?"
"You calling my culture weird, Wilson?"
"No. I guess not." Not because he wasn't calling elf culture weird, because it totally was, but because there was literally no point in trying to convince Steve of that.)
Sam went back into the bedroom, pulled on enough clothes to be presentable and enough outerwear to stay warm (questions about why the Workshop complex, at least, didn't have tunnels or skyways had been met with blank-faced silence or confused questions as to why they would want that. Elves, man), and made his way out of the building (after a detour to the kitchen to fill his Thermos with hot chocolate and start a new pot). No one was around, which at this time of year meant that everyone had recently staggered to bed after a long shift in the Workshop.
The archivist side-eyed Sam's Thermos, so he turned it upside down to show that it was sealed tight. She didn't look convinced, but she didn't confiscate it, either. Perks of being Santa, he supposed. Still, he clutched it tighter and scuttled past before she could change her mind.
He had to wander for a few minutes before he found Steve at a table along the side wall of the largest room. The archive never closed, but the overhead lights were on their lowest setting, and Steve had the table lamp on and pointed toward the book in front of him. The gold tones of the light made his hair and skin glow softly, and Sam paused in the aisle between two towering bookshelves to admire him.
"You going to come say hi, or are you going to stare?" Steve asked quietly.
Sam snorted and crossed the space, footsteps silent on the Archive's thick brown carpeting. He slid his hand across the nape of Steve's neck and half sat against the table so they faced each other. "Hey," Sam said quietly. He pushed Steve's shaggy hair off his forehead, tucking it behind his ear and letting his fingers curl there. "What's got your bells in a jingle?"
Numerous elves had taken it upon themselves to warn Sam that the happy-go-lucky, easy-going folks he knew from January through October would vanish come November. He'd seen a bit of it last year, when he was the interim Claus, but now that the job was his for real, he was seeing it more, in the dark circles under everyone's eyes, in the way coffee had started appearing in large quantities in the Workshop kitchen beside the usual cocoa pots, in the short tempers and loud arguments. In Steve sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to distract himself with books as large as the tables he set them on.
Steve groaned as Sam traced a finger around the pointed shell of his ear. "Pokemon," Steve said tersely.
Sam's fingers stilled. "Babe, that's—that's a phone app."
"I know that," Steve snapped. Sam didn't respond, just moved his fingers again and waited. "Do you know how many kids want a Pikachu for Christmas, Sam? Not a stuffed animal or a toy. An actual Pikachu. Do you?"
Sam did, indeed. He'd read the letters. Every last one of them.
No one told him before he took the job, but being Santa Claus came with a couple cool power upgrades. The ability to consume obscene quantities of milk and cookies without feeling full or sick seemed to be one of them. Speed-reading was another.
Being a good partner was, unfortunately, still as much trial and error as ever. "I'm sorry, Steve," he said softly. "I know how much you hate not being able to give them what they ask for."
Steve stared dejectedly at the book in front of him. "Even the impossible things."
"Especially the impossible things. You'll figure something out. I know you will." Sam let his hand drift to the pages of the book. "So what's the play? Bore your anxiety into submission?"
Steve snorted a small laugh. "Something like that."
"With the… what's this?"
"The Book of Santas. Every Santa we've had since the beginning has an entry in here."
"Are you serious?" Sam demanded. "Show me!" He pulled over the chair from the next desk and dropped into it, leaning into Steve's space to look at the book.
There was a lot of text around the edges—dates of service, noteworthy accomplishments, heads of departments. But the page was dominated by a daguerreotype of a large group of people in early Edwardian winter wear. He studied the picture for a second, and his heart plummeted. "Is that—"
Steve swallowed and looked down. "Peggy. Yeah."
"Oh," Sam said quietly. "Oh, Steve." He carefully didn't comment on the picture itself. Steve looking so young and carefree, standing so close to Santa Peggy that no one could doubt how he felt about her. Steve had never explicitly stated the nature of their relationship, and Sam wouldn't pry. But the picture made it obvious that he adored her, as if Sam hadn't guessed from the way Steve still seemed so gutted by whatever had happened to her.
"I'm okay," Steve insisted. His expression when he turned his face toward Sam was achingly earnest. "I promise."
"Man, what even happened to her?" Sam asked gently. "No one ever says."
Steve blew out a shaky breath. He looked away from Sam but grabbed his hand, holding on so tightly Sam heard bones creak. "After she retired, her memories of being Santa started to degrade. No one understood it. The best they could come up with was that she went back to England and surrounded herself with pragmatic people who didn't have a lot of patience for 'nonsense' like magic, so she lost her ability to remember and believe in it." He smiled weakly. "She was happy. She lived a perfectly good life and had a wonderful partner named Angie. She just couldn't remember… us."
Sam scooted closer and put an arm around Steve's shoulders. Steve sighed and slumped into his hold. After a minute, Steve reached out and turned a page of the book—to the previous page, going backward chronologically. His smile widened. "Here's Gabe," he said. "Trip's grandfather."
"Oh, wow," Sam breathed, leaning closer. This daguerreotype looked very old, with stiffly posed, heavy Victorian clothes on everyone. He saw fewer smiles than in Peggy's picture—not like the elves were unhappy, but like they took having their picture taken very seriously. Even so, there was no mistaking the twinkle in Santa Gabe's eyes. The twinkle was one of those magical special features that came with being Santa.
Sam didn't know anyone else in the picture, which made sense. Elves were long-lived but not immortal, and even if some of the older elves he knew were alive when Gabe was Santa, they would've been too young to be on the workshop staff. Still he let his eyes wander across the picture, soaking up details, and—
"What the fuck?" he yelped, way too loud for the archive, and he didn't care. His finger stabbed toward the picture, and Steve grabbed his hand away. "That is my Great-Grandpa Elmer."
Sam waited for Steve to be shocked, dismayed, or at least confused, but he just leaned forward and squinted at the picture. "Oh! Is that the elf you're related to? I wonder if we can find any old-timers who knew him. Maybe hear some stories."
"Steve!" Sam tossed his free hand in the air. "It's my great-grandfather. In a picture of North Pole elves! How the holly berry are you so nonchalant about this?"
Steve rolled his eyes. "Sam, I've been telling you since the day we met that you have elf ancestry. Did you think I made that up?"
For a second, Sam wished fiercely that he could say yes. That he could say he'd been living in blissful ignorance for the past year and three-quarters, acting like the things Steve had told him—hell, that everyone had told him—about his elf ancestry were untrue. But he couldn't say that, because some things were hard to ignore. While becoming Santa Claus had brought out interesting changes in him, elven DNA had surprises of its own that he was still working through. Preternatural cold tolerance (but not, unfortunately, an increased enjoyment of the cold). Improved hearing. Gingerbread-flavored jizz.
He sighed. "No. I knew you weren't."
"I showed you the genealogical records."
Sam scolwed. "He went by a different name here than in the human world. It wasn't convincing." He shook his head and stared at the picture. "This is way harder to refute." He scrubbed his hands over his face. "Like, impossible. It is impossible to refute," he said into his hands.
Steve's shoulder knocked his, and there was only a hint of mockery in Steve's voice as he said, "Irrefutable." But there was some mockery. Because Steve was secretly a bit of an asshole, and it was not-so-secretly one of Sam's favorite things about him.
Sam snorted and dropped his hands. "Yes. Irrefutible."
Steve grinned and leaned against Sam. Sam put his an around Steve's shoulders and gently encouraged Steve's head onto his shoulder. For a moment they sat in companionable silence, considering the picture in front of them. Gabe Jones had cut a dashing figure as Santa Claus, and the elves around him looked fiercely proud to work alongside him. It was a wonderful image—Sam was just struggling with seeing his great-grandfather among the crowd.
"I don't understand why no one told me," he said quietly after a long moment.
Steve let out a small sigh and dropped his hand to Sam's leg, squeezing gently. "I think your father was supposed to tell you. I think that was the gist of what Nick was ranting about after he found out you didn't know."
"Dad must've died before he could tell me." Paul Wilson had been an avid proponent of honesty, but Sam could see him quietly keeping this family secret until he thought Sam was ready. A lump of tears and loss formed in Sam's throat, and he tried to breathe through it until dissipated. Grief was like that. Most days, his father's death was a heavy but bearable weight. But sometimes something would happen to bring it roaring back, as heavy and crushing as the day it happened. "But what about after he died? Why in sleigh bells didn't Uncle Nick say something?"
Steve gave a low huff, almost a laugh. "Again, this is just what I could pick up from a very angry Santa. But mostly it was... how would he check? I think he suspected that your father hadn't had a chance to tell you, but how do you casually ask someone if they know they're part North Pole Elf and connected to a line of humans who become Santa Claus?"
Sam could admit that Steve was right, but it stung. "He could've had Aunt Mel get me drunk and pry it out of me." Aunt Mel was exceptionally talented at getting Sam drunk and prying things out of him.
Steve laughed louder. He shushed himself immediately, glancing over his shoulder to make sure an irate archivist wasn't about to descend on them.
"How did he meet my great-grandmother?"
"Oh," Steve said, startled. "I think… hang on." He leaned forward and read some of the tiny text spidering the page. "So it looks like he did Mack's job. In pre-internet days, that involved actually going among humans and tracking what they were buying. I bet he met her on one of those trips."
Sam wasn't sure about that. Gabe Jones' run as Santa began, the book said, in 1865. The war just over, the ink barely dry on the Emancipation Proclamation, and a lot of the country very hostile to people who looked like Great-Grandpa Elmer and Great-Grandma Sally. Sam couldn't imagine his great-grandmother out shopping for much of anything beyond basic life essentials. But it was too late, and Sam was too tired, to give Steve a run-down of Black history for the past 150 years. He'd bring it up again after they'd had more sleep.
They sat for a few more minutes, not speaking. Sam liked the archive. Not as much as Steve did—he'd said more than once that if he had to leave the Workshop, he'd try for a job here—but it was a good place to sit in the quiet and just be.
After a minute, Sam's eyelids started to droop, and he jerked himself awake a few too many times to feel comfortable holding Steve up. "I should go back to bed," he murmured. He hadn't been here that long; if he left now he might be able to squeeze in a half hour of sleep before he had to get up and face the chaos of the Workshop.
To his surprise, Steve stood, painstakingly closed the Book of Santas, and flipped the switch that would alert the archivist that he was done. Sam had tried to reshelve a book himself once, soon after he moved to the North Pole permanently. The scolding he'd received had rivaled any he'd gotten from sour-faced Mrs. Karolinka in the library at P.S. 129. Sam knew the system now. Sam respected the system. "Interested in company?" Steve asked, sounding almost shy.
"If it's you, always," Sam said. Steve smiled softly as they left the room together, their fingers brushing with each swing of their arms until Sam huffed and grabbed Steve's hand, lacing their fingers together. "Gonna try to get some sleep?"
Steve snorted and bobbed his head to the archivist as they passed her station. "Not a chance. But if I'm going to be awake no matter what, I'd rather do it where there's a bed—and you."
Sam grinned and leaned into him as they walked out of the archive and into the world of glittering cold and unbroken snow. "Mr. Claus, you are one smart elf."
Steve bumped his hip gently. "Mr. Claus," he said, "so are you."