>> ”I told you Santa is coming tonight.”

“Oh,” Chase hummed, his eyebrows stitching. Still going on about Santa. Chase had cluelessly believed that maybe there was going to be some teacher Christmas party or something, except outside. Chase rubbed his head in confusion. He was too literal, too realistic. Santa hadn’t been the most practical answer within his mind.

>> ”Face looks good though… Notice it yet? It’s snowing more now right?”

Chase looked upwards. Oh yeah, it was snowing more, wasn’t it?

“Looks like it,” Chase agreed.

>> ”See the thing about snowmen, you can’t just build one or two otherwise they will be lonely you got to make a lot of them so they can get his attention. He likes snowmen, Santa does.”

The man drew closer, fixing Chase with his one-eyed stare as he spoke of snowmen and Santa. Chase rolled his lips together contemplatively. Though Sam was trying hard not to breathe towards him, Chase could still smell the alcohol. He knew the smell from when his old mom and dad would come home from parties with that same scent upon their breath.

Sam stood again, lifting his hand as he did. At his bidding, another snowman arose on its own.

“Whoa!” Chase shouted, clearly both alarmed and impressed.

>> ”A shame you don’t believe in the big boss there Chase, I won’t tell him though, see I work part time for him. Ever hear of Jack Frost?”

Chase stared at Sam with an unreadable look in his eyes. His rational mind screamed that this was no more than the act of a mutation, but something about Christmas made Chase second-guess himself. It made him dare to hope, let him get led-on by someone who was his senior.

“Yeah,” Chase confessed. Even though Chase didn’t believe in Santa, he’d watched those holiday specials that his parents had watched with Russell and Abby. So Chase knew the basics, at the very least. He knew Jack Frost.

The snow around them continued to fall and Sam had felt the need to sober up a bit to keep talking to this kid the last thing he needed was another staff member to hear about this little instance when he was overly intoxicated. He’d probably get yelled at, he has been yelled at before.

Looking up into the sky Sam pretended he didn’t notice a few other snowmen leaping out of the ground in a simple design some had hats others were bald there was even a snow woman in the mix with her hand up in the air like she was waving. Sam could have been a lot more detailed but he didn’t bother this late at night and with no other purpose than to impress a kid.

”One of the few details of my job is I make sure the boss knows who is naughty or nice, he can’t be around everywhere so he has a few of us all over the place keeping an eye out for exceptionally good kids, one of the few reasons I’m here.” Sam waved his hand to the mansion as more snow fell to the ground, ”A lot of good people here, but there is another place I like to frequent around here, and orphanage and seeing as it is… “

Sam pulled out his phone and then made an overly dramatic gasp, ”Oh… I hope I didn’t miss him…” Sam looked down at the kid and put his phone in his pocket. ”Want to meet him if we didn’t miss him?” there was no Santa but Sam was a good actor. All he wanted to do was make sure that the kid would see all the gifts at the orphanage if that doesn’t build your faith in Santa Sam didn’t know what would.