Ryden Oneshots

My Christmas

kid!fic
Gabe/Bill/Travis, Brendon/Ryan, Pete/Patrick, Nate/Alex, Spencer/Jon

"And then, after we've opened all our presents, we go to my nanny's for even more presents!" Brendon excitedly told his classmates, brown eyes even larger than normal and smile consuming his face. He held a piece of paper out in front of him bearing the seven-year-old's drawing of his family, a Christmas tree, presents, their dog, their cat, Santa, and snow (inside the house) for everyone to see.

"One at my nanny's-" The entire class groaned because Brendon had been talking for the past fifteen minutes, and everyone's heads had long since hit their desks. The only kids that still held any remote interest in the boy's extravagant and detailed story of what he does on Christmas were Ryan, Brendon's best friend, and William, the shy, quiet student. "I go feed her gold fish, Sir blubs-a-lot," Brendon giggled, "Who I named, and then I wish him a Merry-"

"It sounds like you have a wonderful Christmas," Mrs. Reff, their teacher, cut him off as she too was beginning to fall asleep. "Thank you for sharing with us, Brendon."

"But I'm not done..." Brendon frowned, arms dropping in front of him. 

"There are other kids who want to share their stories too, right?" she asked, sitting up straight in her chair off to the side.

"I s'pose..." Brendon mumbled, head dropping sadly with disappointment.

"Why don't you go take a seat and if we have time later, you can tell us the rest, okay?" Brendon nodded, barely lifting his feet as he sulked back to his desk, falling into the brightly colored plastic chair with a heavy thud. He laid the paper down in front of him then let his forehead fall on top of it, pouting into his paper.

"I liked it," Ryan said, leaning over to hug Brendon since the two sat beside each other. Brendon let himself be hugged, unmoving, secretly smiling because Ryan liked it, and that's all that really mattered. 

"Who's next?" Mrs. Reff asked, no one making eye contact with her. "No volunteers?" She looked from desk to desk, all of her students looking in other directions or busying themselves with whatever was on their desk. "How about...Gabe; why don't you share." 

"Do I have to?" the boy whined from the back of the class, looking up from the paper that he and his best friend, Travis, had been bent over; both lost in a grueling game of hang-man. They were the class troublemakers.

"Yes, you have to," Mrs. Reff answered with a stern look. Gabe groaned, rolling his eyes, and got out of his seat, grabbing a paper he quickly scribbled something on, and walked down the aisle to the front. "What do you do for Christmas, Gabe?"

"I'm Jewish," Gabe said, displaying his paper with one hand. "We don't celebrate Christmas. We celebrate Chanukah."

"Why don't you tell us about Chanukah," his teacher said. Gabe sighed, eyes rolling again. He hated actually doing work. "Not too many of your classmates know what it's like to be Jewish and celebrate different holidays."

"It's not that exciting." Gabe shrugged. "We go to church and wear little white hats and light candles." He paused, slowly grinning to himself, letting the paper fall to the floor. "My nana says that when she was little though, there was this war called the 'Hollow-Cost' where all the Jewish people were forced into jail-camps and had to do all kinds of hard labor and then were mostly kil-" Mrs. Reff clamped her hand over his mouth.

"Thank you," she said, smiling nervously at the wide-eyed class before her. They were only in second grade; the lessons of WWII were still a few years away. 

"But," Gabe pushed his teacher's hand away, "I was just getting to the good part!" he whined. It wasn't that Gabe thought the Holocaust was great or anything, there was still a lot he didn't know about it, naturally, but rather more that he was an eight-year-old boy so war and death and destruction just appealed to his interest.