[Lolllllllllll don’t expect too much from this fic, since I pooped it out in a single day… it was a spur-of-the-moment thing and I didn’t want to spend too much time on it. It’s probably the last thing I’ll write for a while — and definitely the last for 2015 — so I’d just like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy new year! See you in 2016 for more Baekyeoly goodness! Enjoy xx]

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“Well, you’re a little lankier and, uh… younger than what we’re used to...” the manager said when Chanyeol came in for the interview — he’d looked the boy up and down, peering at him through his glasses like something weird growing in a petri dish, nodding and frowning at alternate intervals. “But it’s nothing a fake beard and a fat-suit can’t fix, I suppose. Anyway, we’re a bit short-staffed for Santas at the moment, so I guess you’ll have to do.”

So it wasn’t the warmest welcome by any stretch, but Chanyeol had been too over the moon at the time to care; as a broke university student already working two casual jobs, the promise of a bit of extra cash over the silly season was nothing to sniff at. Besides, for a gig where he would essentially just sit on his bum for several hours and tell lies to kids, it paid surprisingly well... if anything, it appeared that the hardest part about being a department store Santa Claus was getting dressed for the occasion — Chanyeol had seen the outfit he would be required to wear, and although the process of getting into the bloody thing had seemed a bit daunting at first, he was more than ready to face the challenge.

As it turned out, the outfit was just one of many hurdles in the new obstacle course that Chanyeol had signed himself up for: it consisted of a heavy, uncomfortable padded suit worn underneath a pair of elasticated red pants and a matching fur-trimmed jacket, and there was an itchy white wig, an even itchier fake beard, and a red Santa hat to top it all off — which was too big for him, and had to be pinned down to keep it from sliding off his head. He even had to wear fake white eyebrows glued on over his real ones, and pink blush on his cheeks and nose to make them look ‘rosy’, but which only made him look sunburnt, or otherwise a bit drunk. Now that he was a little more practiced at it, the whole ensemble took only about twenty minutes to get into at the beginning of a shift, and slightly less to get out of at the end. He usually arrived half an hour early, just to be safe.

Now it was already eight days until Christmas, and Chanyeol had surprisingly come to enjoy the job, even more so than he thought he would; it was trying at times, but he liked the kids for the most part, and at least it was never boring. The main perk of the job, however, was not the kids, or even the pay. It was the photographer.

Chanyeol’s heart still wasn’t used to Byun Baekhyun; it would leap like a suicidal goldfish from its bowl whenever he saw him first thing on the morning of a shift. Chanyeol had secretly harboured a huge, embarrassing crush on Baekhyun ever since they met, during his very first day; this was no big surprise, since Baekhyun was a really nice guy, and was also unusually beautiful — so beautiful, in fact, that the very first time Chanyeol laid eyes on him, he’d had to quickly turn the other way and bite his own fist to keep from screaming. The worst part of it all was that Baekhyun was a shameless flirt, and had a perfect (and dirty) sense of humour that Chanyeol couldn’t help falling head-over-arse for. But Chanyeol could never tell if the flirtation was directed at him, or if Baekhyun was just like that with everyone, all the time… it was both exciting and extremely frustrating.

“Morning, Sandy Claws,” Baekhyun said cheerily as he popped his head through the door of the booth, where Chanyeol was now seated on his red velvet-covered chair, wearing his silly padded suit and waiting to get started. The photographer nodded at the hessian bag full of fake presents on the floor, spilling its contents in front of the plastic Christmas tree. “Goodness me, that’s a very full sack you’ve got there, Santa..”

Baekhyun said this at the beginning of every shift they shared together, and like clockwork, Chanyeol’s response was always the following:

“Well, what do you expect from someone who only comes once a year..?”

Baekhyun laughed at the joke, as he always did, and then he said, “alright, I’m just gonna go and elf myself real quick, and then we’ll call the hordes in, shall we?”

“Yeah, go on,” Chanyeol said. “Let’s get this party started. Loving today’s sweater, by the way.”

Chanyeol didn’t really love Baekhyun’s sweater at all, but it was good fodder for small talk — and also for getting a sneaky little compliment in there, which always seemed to make Baekhyun visibly glow with pleasure afterwards. Baekhyun had a strange penchant for sweaters with childish things knitted into them — bunnies and ponies and little race-cars and the like — and today the sweater du jour had a pattern of fish in an assortment of bright colours on a dark blue background. On any other person it would have looked terrible, but since Baekhyun was always unfailingly glamorous in every other aspect of his appearance, he somehow managed to make the damned thing look like a high-fashion item — it was a God-given gift, Chanyeol thought, the way the guy could look so ing good in an ugly sweater. He wouldn’t have been caught dead in one of them himself.

“Thanks — merry Fish-mas,” Baekhyun said, winking at Chanyeol, and then he popped out to the staff bathrooms to change. He returned a few minutes later, all ready to go in his stupid little elf uniform with the green t-shirt and shorts and the red candy-striped tights underneath, the little brass bells on his shoes and his hat jingling with the slightest movement. As soon as he’d set up his camera, he opened the door and started calling the kids in. The first of many that day was a little girl called Hana, who walked inside the booth like she was going to her death, clutching her mother’s hand as though her life depended on it. She stood there in the middle of the room staring up at Chanyeol with wide, expressionless eyes, shaking her pigtailed head every time her mother begged her to go and sit on his knee.

“Go on, Hana,” Baekhyun said gently, when the girl’s anxious-looking mother turned to him in desperation. “You go sit on Santa’s knee and tell him all about what a good girl you've been this year. If you do, I’m sure he’ll get you something very nice for Christmas.”

“I’m all ears,” Chanyeol said as the girl finally walked over to him, and he helped her up onto his knee. “No embellishments, though… Santa can always tell when someone’s fibbing.”

The child looked up at Chanyeol with her large eyes slowly narrowing, and then she poked out her bottom lip. “If you're the real Santa, then how come you’re not fat and old..?”

Over in the corner, her mother sighed and shook her head. “Hana, darling, you can't just ask people why they're not fat and old..”

Chanyeol laughed nervously. “It’s alright, I get that a lot these days… Santa lost a bit of weight, that’s all, and it’s made him look a bit younger,” he said to Hana, and then he added in a hushed voice, “Mrs Claus made me go on a diet — it’s all lettuce and carrots and yucky stuff like that. Soon she’ll be calling me ‘Rudolph’ and making me sleep in the yard.”

Hana looked unconvinced, but she told Chanyeol what she wanted for Christmas anyway. She rattled off a list of items as long as his arm, beginning with a singing Elsa doll, and ending at last with a pink bicycle with rainbow streamers on the handlebars and a white basket with a sunflower stuck to the front of it — everything in between Chanyeol forgot within about five seconds, as he usually did. After official business was taken care of, Baekhyun snapped a few photos, Hana’s mother chose the prints she wanted, and they were finally on their way.

One down, a zillion to go.

“Have a very merry Christmas,” Chanyeol called out after them, “and remember to be a good girl, Hana, or you’ll get nothing but a pile of reindeer poo courtesy of Comet and Cupid — excellent stuff for the garden, but not much fun to play with.”

“You’re not even supposed to say that anymore, technically,” Baekhyun said, when Hana and her mother had left the room.

“Not supposed to say what..?” Chanyeol asked.

Baekhyun bent down to pull up his tights where they were bunching up around his ankles. “‘Merry Christmas’… it’s not secular enough. The PC police are always trying to pare it down to ‘Season’s Greetings’ or something similarly awful..”

“Yeah? Well, the PC police can kiss my padded arse,” Chanyeol said flatly. He rubbed his hands together and patted his knees. “Right. So who’s next, then?”

Baekhyun chuckled to himself, and Chanyeol thought he heard him muttering “bad Santa…” under his breath before he walked off to let the next kid in.

+ + +

Three days before Christmas, the crowd of kids waiting to see Santa had well and truly exploded. Chanyeol arrived that morning to find about thirty of them already lined up with their parents and elder siblings, waiting to see him with fists full of scribbled lists and spidery drawings of, well… no matter which way he turned the page, Chanyeol could never quite work out what the hell they’d drawn. Even so, he always made sure to thank the artist. 

Chanyeol eyed each child nervously on his way past, hoping they wouldn’t recognise him once he was in his Santa suit. If there was one thing these kids didn’t need — besides more toys they would only play with once or twice — it was another reason to cry. And the crying ones were the worst, for sure. Chanyeol’s estimate was that roughly 1 in 5 kids who came to see him ended up blubbering in his lap — probably because they were scared, or tired of being dragged through a department store for hours, or both — and once the waterworks were on, shutting them