[ D. Gray-man ] Relations TWENTY-THREE of TWENTY-FIVE for 24xmas
+ Title: Relations
+ Prompt: Santa
+ Fandom: D. Gray-man
+ Characters: The Noah Family
+ Rating: E
+ Word Count: 580
Tiki Mick had never believed in Santa Clause before becoming a member of the Noah Family. There was no other reasonable explanation for the immense number of packages and things that appeared beneath the tree on Christmas morning, since the Earl was always about the house when the family was in and there was no place to hide it all without someone finding it. Despite Tiki’s initial belief that there had to be some sort of cellar or magical wardrobe somewhere in the vicinity of the household, determined searching and investigation had turned up nothing, leaving the man to ponder the possibilities of a fat cousin of the Earl dressed in red squeezing down the chimney off an interdimensional sleigh. He didn’t even know if it was possible for the Earl to have cousins, since it was a relatively dubious theory that Earl even had a mother, but when he tried to inquire about the matter the Earl simply gave him a frightening smile and asked him why he wanted to know. Tiki had been instilled with the sudden desire to go jump off the roof to avoid whatever wrath he’d receive as a result of his answer, and thus decided to digress all the way up the stairs to his bedroom.
Rhode thought it was quite funny that Tiki thought the Earl and Santa might be related. Even though she had wondered about that kind of thing on her own time, it was embarrassing, and she just poked at Tiki affectionately about believing in Santa Clause at his age. His reasoning was almost foolproof, though, which sent her off on a quest to prove that there was some place in the house to hide the presents that seemed to appear from nowhere. A day long search with several close calls of being caught digging around produced nothing, however, and Rhode came back to Tiki’s room with a confused expression and strange thoughts whirling about her mind. There was no possibility that Santa could be related to the Earl- or was there? That would technically make her the adopted niece of the singular most famous man in the universe, but it would also explain why she always got more presents than any of her classmates at school. Here she’d been thinking she was just especially loved when in actuality she was on the inner circle of the Saint himself!
The pair decided that this required some research. Getting all the Christmas books they could from the Earl’s library, they started drawing up their comparisons. Santa was a jolly man, and the Earl was always happy. Santa gave presents to people one day a year, and the Earl gave people back their dead relatives and friends year round. Santa was very… large, and the Earl was built in a similar manner. The list grew and grew until at last they had exhausted their resources, fifteen pages of Rhode’s handwriting organized into two columns. The two Noah looked at each other with thoughtful expressions before nodding, smiles creeping across their faces as they closed the last books. There was no other explanation, they declared, shoving the books off the mattress and tumbling around like a pair of wrestling kittens. The Earl and Santa Clause were related in some way, shape or form, but most definitely by blood. He needed to come to the family dinners more often, though. The distribution of gifts more than once a year was only reasonable between family.