#for snowy places you get a polaris but like. a polaris is basically still a golf cart sorry 🤷‍♂️

[shrimp-apocalypse-now]

my transportation solution: trains for long distances, electric golf carts for everything else. golf carts are smaller and lighter weight than cars, reducing wear and tear on roads. they have lower top speeds, which means collisions are less fatal. AND they are open-air and lower to the ground, meaning you are forced to smile and wave at everyone you pass, fostering community. they have lower max distances, so cities will have to be less sprawly. there are many benefits and no downsides

[queenslasharchive]

Believe

A gift for @chaoskirin, never stop believing. 

“I believe in Santa Claus

Like I believe in love

I believe in Santa Claus

And everything he does

There’s no question in my mind

That he does exist

Just like love I know he’s there

Waiting to be missed…”

A long long time ago, in the land of ice and snow, there was once an ivory-haired foundling left on the steps of a winsome little cottage in the center of an ever-wintery forest. 

Why ever-wintery you may ask? 

Well, it was a place where snowflakes never stopped falling, where rivers never broke apart into grue. A place where it could be Christmas Day all year round, everything imbued with a certain sort of magic. 

That little cottage in the wood, made of strong sturdy arctic firs and draped with gossamer strings of icicles, the sort that almost looked like the trailing strings of fairy-lights and tinsel, to grace the pine boughs of a Christmas tree decades later… belonged to a family of tiny elves by the name of Kringle, toymakers by trade and a burgeoning family by choice. 

They called their new baby boy, Nicholas. 

The world would come to know him as Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus, and Kris Kringle. 

But three wan boys with big dreams and empty pockets, would come to know him as John Richard Deacon, their Deaky. 

-X-

Strangely enough THE Santa Claus, was rarely, if ever, at the North Pole (which on a map, was actually called Polaris).  

He could usually be found fixing something in the apartment he shared with his bandmates, a wrench held between his teeth as he tinkered away. He had been building and inventing toys since he was in the cradle, so the process of creation was nothing new to him. Yet he would still be at a loss for words when Roger would trot over, as John was laying flat on his back, fixing their shitty fridge once again, and plopped down, straddling his stomach. (Which was not round and jiggly like a ‘bowl full of jelly’, thank you very much, modern culture. He was sort of chubby yeah, not gonna deny that. But dear lord, every caricature depicted him as some obese old man. It was almost enough to give him a body complex. Almost).

“Hey Deaky?”

Rog started with that annoyingly inquisitive tone of his and John merely grunted at the knee in his ribs. 

“How did you learn to fix stuff like this?”

Because I was raised by toy-making Keebler elves in a magical winter-wonderland forest. 

“Practice.”

Roger asked a lot of questions like that. 

Most people liked to write him off as the dumb blonde of the band, (obviously there to do little more than pose and look pretty, while playing on his kit or laying on an album cover), but in practice, Rog was anything but. 

“Hey Deaky?” 

John hummed as Roger’s hand stilled from where it had been carving through his long pale ponytail, bushy as ever in the confines of it’s scrunchie. 

“I’ve been meaning to ask, why is your hair all white? Are you albino?” Ever the biology major.

Magic, Roger. 

“I dunno, I was born with it.”

Which wasn’t to say that Brian and Freddie didn’t ask difficult questions as well, but they were rarer events. Most of his quirks he could easily explain away to them. Like Fred when he shoved eight cookies into his mouth at once. The impatient boy was just lucky they were still soft out of the oven, or he probably would’ve choked to death and they’d be out a lead singer for the band. 

As it stood, Freddie flopped over the arm of their couch’s nasty love-seat, hands folded over his mouth, making several guttural sounds better suited to a porno than a reaction to baked goods. 

“Good, huh? Or are those just the sounds of despair?”

Freddie made a noise that sounded a bit like how Cookie Monster must have in the throes of passion. 

“Funny, the way you go on, I’d always thought you could fit more in your mouth.”

He caught a faceful of moist towelettes for his insolence, but it was so worth it. 

“How in the world did you learn to cook ambrosia, darling?” Freddie asked, once he could finally breathe again. John shook his head and tucked in his chin to hide the smile. 

“Tante taught me.” Tante Kringle, his elf mother. 

Fred’s brow had crinkled and his lips pursed in confusion. “Tante?” 

Deaky did the washing up with a smile on his face. “Yes, it means Aunt in German. She and my uncles raised me.” Brushing a stray clump of snowy hair out of his eyes, just because it was white didn’t mean he could see through it. Freddie came up behind him to wrap his arms around his waist, pressing his curved seashell ear onto John’s back to hear him breathe.

“What happened, Deaky?”

Fred sounded so sad, but John merely tossed his hair aside (Freddie insisted that it stay long for their glam look) and pressed a little kiss to the crown of their singer’s head. 

“My parents abandoned me on their doorstep as a baby.” 

“They did what?!” Freddie sounded so bloody broken up about it that John had no idea what to say. It wasn’t a big deal anymore. He was raised by the most unbelievably loving elf family. (Part of him wished that the boys could meet them, you know, without freaking out). 

“It’s alright, Fred. I never knew them and my family loves me very much.”

Freddie pouted, arms wrapped around John’s tummy. “Still.” 

****

Roger snorted as he watched one of the many TV movies leading up to Christmas, “Hey, did you lot know that Santa’s got a pilot license?”

Freddie had laughed into his cornflakes, sitting cross-legged on the living room rug in his underwear. Brian didn’t look up from his textbook, or the leaning Tower of Pisa he’d constructed out of notes from each of his dozen classes, frantically studying for his next final. John nodded, of course he knew, it was his license. Thank you, American Assistant Secretary of Commerce. 

“So Bri…” Roger trilled, rolling over until his blonde head was all up in Brian’s face, covering his frantically written notes, in a way that reeked of suicide. The fire in Bri’s eyes could have deforested the Congo. 

“Do you believe in Santa Claus?”

“No. He doesn’t exist, he’s a social construct. It’s impossible. No one can go deliver gifts around the world in one night or go down a flue over and over, especially not a man that size. Suffice to say, reindeers can’t fly and could never carry that many presents. Now kindly bugger off, so I can study.”

Thank you, Mr. Analytical. 

…Whatever happened to magic?

Sometimes he really wanted to pull A Year Without A Santa Claus and see what went down without him.

But then he’d remember his family, waiting up in the snowy hilltops for him and just how hard they worked for the joy of children each holiday season and he could never pull shit like that. Not when they relied on him so much. 

Tante would pull him into her lap as a little thing and smooth out his hair with her dainty glass hands.

“Our boy, our Kris, our little Saint Nicholas.”

-X-

“I believe in Santa Claus

But there was a time

I thought I had grown to old

For such a childish rhyme

He became a dream to me

‘Til one Christmas night

Someone stood beside my bed

With a beard of white…”

-X-

As usual, Christmas Eve came far too soon and he was frantically packing up in the dead of night to get the show on the road. 

Making sure his boys were safely tucked into dream-land before creeping out into the living room, dressed in a pair of obnoxiously red flannel pajamas, snow boots and a white parka the same shade as his hair (the suit would be waiting for him in the sleigh, along with the toys and everything else sent along by his ever-vigilant family). His cheeks were round-peach rosy even in the cold and tugged on a pair of fleece mittens with a practiced hand. He was just walking around the couch to grab his discarded polka-dotted scarf, when his foot connected with something worryingly plush and startling human. 

Roger groaned as he sat up like Frankenstein’s monster, holding his stomach where John had inadvertently kicked him. “Hey Deaky, what’s the big idea?!” 

John was at a loss. “I just saw you… you were asleep in bed…” He waved his hands around as if that would remedy the problem. 

Rog just rolled his eyes, “Nah, that’s Fern. The girl I brought home last night.”

“…and you’re not asleep with her?”

Roger cringed as though John had suggested he drop Freddie’s hairdryer in the bathtub, while he was in it. “Well, you know Johnny Boy, when a man loves a woman, or a man loves a man, or a woman loves a woman, (let’s be inclusive here)… sometimes if they’re too close together they…” Cue several vulgar hand gestures. “I wasn’t sure if you lot wanted to hear that.”

“Yeah well, I didn’t. But now I can see it. Thanks for that.”

Roger grinned like a greedy kid on Christmas morning. 

“No problem, Deaks!” Then his eyes narrowed in on John’s outfit and the small clutch of luggage in his keeping. “Where are you going?’

The young bassist blanched. “Oh, you know.” A vague hand gesture. “My family needs me to rush home for… reasons.” I have to go fly around in a red suit handing out presents to children. “I’ll be back soon, okay?”

He tried to grab everything he needed and make a beeline waddle for the door, but Roger was far too fast for him and basically galloped over, to wrap those skinny noodle arms tight around his waist, stopping him in his tracks. Fuck. 

Instead of doing the sensible thing and asking him why he had to go, or if there was anything he could do to help, Roger screamed for Brian and Freddie at the top of his lungs. Yelling about how there was a Christmas emergency and John was trying to flee the country. 

Thanks Rog, thanks a whole fucking lot. 

Freddie hurled himself out of the bedroom, tinsel wrapped around his neck and candy-cane pasties on his nipples. It complimented the tight yellow star boxers down below that left nothing to the imagination, leftovers from their wild Christmas party the night before. “Wha’s going on? Deaky’s going on the lam? Who did we kill?”

John’s will to live. 

“The last of my sanity.” Brian groaned, scrubbing a hand through his half-flattened curls. “What is going on?”

Roger instantly let go and pointed the finger at John, like they were still in primary school and he’d stolen Rog’s Hello Kitty eraser. “Deaky’s trying to run off and join the circus!”

“No, I’m not!” He was about to rip out chunks of his own hair though. “I just have to go home for a few days…” Nope, I’ve got to go be Santa. 

Freddie was aghast. “But Deaky, you’ll miss Christmas! I thought we were going to celebrate together.” He looked so sad about it. Dramatic Queens, the lot of them.

John pinched the bridge of his nose. About to launch a long winded apology and partial explanation. Until he got distracted by Roger, who was running about and gathering up all his shit like some sort of small opinionated human tornado. 

“Rog, what are you doing?”

“Packing!” The drummer squeaked, squishing himself between the love-seat and the pull-out couch to dig up his other sock. “We’re coming with you!”

Roggie, you can’t just…

The familiar symphony of hooves touching down on the roof, dislodging more than a fair bit of snow, sounded high above their heads and John contemplated using his wintery magic to knock the boys unconscious. Alas, Bri just crinkled his nose. 

“What on earth was that?”

John grimaced. “My ride.” 

-X-

When he got up to the roof, Donner was all up in his face with that wet nose of hers, the others not far behind her. His loyal reindeer queen. His fuzzy baby girls that he’d raised from the very moment that they’d tumbled out into his arms. They knew his scent, the funny choked-off laugh mimicked by all around the world, they loved him. (Yes, his sleigh ran on fierce girl power. Male reindeer didn’t have antlers this deep in the wintertime).

He trudged through the surprisingly thick snow to be able to reach out to all of them at once. 

The boys were openly staring behind him. Keeping a wide berth, but ah hell, what did John have to lose? Might as well give regal disaster Freddie the time of his life. John took the shy singer by the hand and led the scrawny boy towards the rarely skittish creatures. 

“Hold your hand out palm up, so they can sniff you.”

Freddie was adorably incredulous, whispering over and over under his breath. “I’m being sniffed by a caribou. I’m being sniffed by a caribou. This is the best day of my life. I’m being sniffed by a caribou.”

Brian cleared his throat, eyes unblinking as he worried at his bottom lip absently. “John. Why are there caribou on our roof?”

“They’re uh… reindeer… That’s the term they prefer.”

Bri nodded, waiting a suitable amount of time before. “Right. John. Why are there reindeer on our roof?”

“They’re my ride.” He sounded sheepish as could be, drawing a hand through his ever-mussed ivory hair, pretty sure that Brian was inches away from pulling a Santa Clause and shoving him off the roof to die. 

“Your ride home is… in a sleigh drawn by reindeer? Were the red-eye all booked up?” Disbelief written across his soft features, plain as day. 

“Uh no. You um… caught me red-handed. I actually have to make some deliveries first.” 

The toy bag was resting in the back. It was magic, you see, the correct toys wouldn’t appear in his sack until he had reached the intended home. The children sleeping softly in their beds, eager for what the next day would bring. 

“You have to make deliveries in a sleigh drawn by reindeer on Christmas Eve?” Brian rolled his eyes skyward, those bony arms crossed to hide the way they trembled. “I think I know this story. Isn’t that Santa Claus’ job?”

John shifted side to side, clearly uneasily. “Well, yeah. Though can you really count it as a job when I’ve never gotten paid?”

Bri looked more frozen than the ice freezing on the edges of his curls. “Excuse me, what?”

“You heard me, Bri.” 

“Um, no. I didn’t hear you, because Santa Claus doesn’t exist.” And this was the man who thought he was so much better than those who called Galileo crazy, for suggesting that the world didn’t revolve around the earth? Wow. Irony. 

John rolled his eyes, because this was going nowhere and he didn’t have any time to lose. 

“Look, believe whatever you want. But I don’t have time for this. Take Freddie and Rog and go back inside. I’ll be home in a few hours.” 

He moved to climb into the sleigh and change clothes. But not before seeing an eager Roger sitting in the front seat, beaming from ear-to-ear and practically bouncing where he sat. “Oh fuck that, come on boys! Let’s go save Christmas!” The drummer crowed, arms spread as wide as could be. 

“Rog, Christmas isn’t in danger.”

“It will be if you don’t get a move on, Santa Baby.” A finger reached out to poke at his soft middle and John blushed all the way up to his ears, as Roger began to hum the opening lines of the song.

“Fuck you.” Honestly, he didn’t mind and could give a shit. (At least it wasn’t Little Drummer Boy, for the thousandth time).

“Aw, don’t be shy, Johnny! It’s cute!” Roger squirreled his arms around John again, who rolled his eyes before hugging back, loathly.

“Rog, you are so on the naughty list, for life.” Enjoy coal, bitch. (Okay, so maybe he cared a just little bit). 

“Let’s save Christmas!” The naughty blonde simply crowed, throwing out his arms like he was preparing for some sort of grand entrance at a ball (as the princess). 

John pouted as he moved to check all the rigging, he wasn’t taking them with him. He wasn’t. 

Spoiler alert: He took them with him. 

-X-

‘“So you’re too old for Santa Claus”?

He said with a smile

“Then you’re too old for all the things

That make a life worthwhile…

For what is happiness, but dreams

And do they all come true

Look at me and tell me, son

What is real to you?”’

-X-

He cracked the reins to get them soaring into the air, even though the girls knew exactly what they were doing.

His boys seemed the opposite, a complete motley of emotions. Brian was scowling like a sullen little boy, and holding onto the edges of his seat for dear life. Roger was still bouncing around like a little kid on a sugar high, so no change there. And Freddie was trying to avoid looking down. 

“Fred, you okay?”

Soft swallow, “I’m not much of a heights fan, dear.”

“HA! Deer!” Yes, Roger was most certainly still drunk from drinking his body weight in spiked eggnog earlier. Or maybe that was just Roger. John unceremoniously reached over and dropped the reins in Freddie’s hands.

“Drive the sleigh for a minute, yeah? I’ve got to get dressed.” He ordered absently, as he climbed into the back to change into the proper attire. The response from the boys was immediate, Roger froze and stared over at Freddie with unspeakable horror. Freddie himself clutched onto the reins with trembling hands and Brian was flabbergasted, as usual. 

“Freddie can’t even drive a car, Deaky!”

“Oh we’re gonna die… we’re gonna die!” Roger moaned from the back and Freddie whipped around with a venomous scowl on his face.

“Thank you so much, darlings, for the vote of confidence!”

John tucked his discarded parka around Freddie’s narrow shoulders. “It has to be him. Nobody else has the song power needed to keep this thing up.”

Roger snorted into his hand. “Fred’s good at keeping stuff up.” Fear momentarily forgotten. 

Brian eyes were practically suspicious slits, “Song power? Is that a thing?”

Freddie looked like a mix between nervous and intrigued. “Do we have to sing Christmas carols to stay in the air?” 

Nope. 

“Definitely.”

He dressed in the back as quickly as he could, fortunate enough that his warm suit was tucked safely amongst the floorboards. He hastily handed off pieces of his clothing to whoever looked the coldest, as he was serenaded by the worst Christmas carolers he had ever heard in his life. If the sleigh really did run on song power, oh they would have been dead long ago. 

Roger wolf-whistled as he climbed into the front in full-regalia. “Looking good, Deaky!”

John flushed all the way up to his ears and Freddie frantically passed the reins back. A few of the reindeer tossed their heads and gave him scathing looks for being under-siege by such an unexperienced driver. 

“You aren’t singing.” Brian deadpanned. 

“I don’t have to, I’m Santa.”

-X-

Once they’d hit all the bloody homes in Britain, Brian was sitting there blinking in shock. “How in the world…? It’s been minutes!” (What could he say? He’d had a slow start). Bri’s stubbly jaw was half-hanging open like a shutter door somebody had forgotten to close. 

“Stand up, Bri.” 

They were flying through the air faster than the speed of light, the ocean swirling, curling and sloshing beneath them. Brian looked at him like he’d just suggested jumping into it. 

“Stand up!”

Brian rolled his eyes and did as requested, so John dropped the reins into Freddie’s hands again, as he pulled Bri over to the edge of the sleigh. They were flying at a height that turned the clouds into cotton-candy and brought the stars ever closer. He tightened his arm around Bri’s tiny waist to support him, watching as those dark eyes filled with wonder once more. A wide, childlike wonder. Mirroring the face of a little boy who had once believed in magic. 

Brian May, Hampton. He’d asked for space-related paraphernalia every year for Christmas during his childhood. The one year he’d asked for a bike instead, John had personally attached planetary stickers and streamers to the handlebars. 

Bri, when did you stop believing? 

His hands reached out to touch the stars. 

“Hey, Bri, do you know what they see when they look up at us?”

Those doe eyes were enormous as he shook his curly head. When did you stop seeing the magic in the stars?

“What?” A little smile playing in the corners of his mouth. 

“A shooting star… Make a wish.”

That lovely smile took full center-stage again, a man who believed again, in something more. 

Merry Christmas, Brimi. 

-X-

“Just believe in Santa Claus

Like you believe in love

Just believe in Santa Claus

And everything he does…

Wipe that question from your mind

Yes, he does exist!”

-X-

They flew around the world in a matter of hours. 

Even when Freddie begged to be left in Japan (they’d had to bodily put him back into the sleigh, “Just leave me here to enjoy my life!” Fighting for freedom with all his might). Roger was groaning with a sore distended belly from eating all the bloody Christmas cookies that John had shoved in his direction. (“What the hell? Why did you eat them all?!” Roger pulled his big pouty face. “You said they would be upset if you didn’t!” John rolled his eyes skyward before ordering that if Rog had to puke, he more certainly wasn’t doing it in the sleigh. Magic could only go so far.)

And Brian was looking around like he was seeing the world with new eyes. 

John made sure he dragged each of them down the chimney at least once, to give them the full-experience of laying down the presents and experiencing the whole shebang. 

Their only issue occurred in America. Where they hadn’t noticed a little girl in a fuzzy green nightie asleep on the couch overlooking the tree. She had sat up with a stuffed snake cradled in her lap. 

“Santa?”

All four of them had frozen. (Why he’d thought it was smart to bring all of them at the same time was another matter entirely). John had turned though, with a practiced smile on his face, it wasn’t the first time he’d been caught by a pair of curious little eyes. 

“Hello, love. You should be asleep.” 

She had rubbed at her eyes with a tired little smile. 

“Sorry, Santa.” 

“It’s alright, little one. I’m sorry we woke you up, my friends are helping me deliver gifts tonight,” He looked around with mock-furtiveness and spoke in a stage-whisper. “They’re a little new at this.”

John gently tucked her in on the couch. “Merry Christmas, Aeryn.” She smiled that child’s gummy grin and pressed her stuffed snake ever closer. 

“Merry Christmas, Santa.”

But nothing was better than looking in the backseat of his sleigh, the one that had seen many lonely Christmases in his time, and seeing all his rough-and-tumble boys curled up together instead of empty space.

Brian’s head pillowed on Freddie’s shoulder. Rog curled up across both their laps. Freddie flopped over like a deflated bouncy castle. 

For a moment he wondered if being Santa meant giving himself the best Christmas present as well, for when he looked at the boys he’d miraculously accrued… perhaps he already had. 

The sleigh touched down in the center of the small elfin village that he’d helped to build so long ago, all of the icy grandeur patterned around that tiny cottage in the ever-wintery wood. The house that had served as his school, his workshop and his home beyond all else.

He hurled himself out of his uncomfortable wooden seat (they really needed to invest in better padding) to careen over to that same little cottage and the old elfin queen who waited for him there. Tante Kringle opened up her arms and he bent in two to hold her close, even as his knees grew damp and icy cold from the snow beneath them. He couldn’t help the sob that escaped his chapped lips.

“Oh how I’ve missed you my little Saint Nicholas.”

“I’ve missed you too, Tante.”

She pressed a familiar kiss against his forehead, tracing the path of a snowflake. “Did you have a lovely Christmas?”

“The best I’ve had in a very long time.” 

Her hands crested on her rounded hips and she tsked in his direction. “And have you called your mother yet young man? You know she’s been waiting to speak to you for millennia.” 

John groaned and rolled his eyes skyward. “Let her, I do have eternity, you know. And she abandoned me! She can wait.” He flashed her his token impish grin, only this one came with a forked snake tongue and slitted red eyes. His birth-mother’s calling cards. 

Oh you didn’t know Krampus had birthed Santa Claus?

Well, that dears, is a story for another time.

-X-

John carried his limp sleepy boys inside, one by one, and gently tucked them in on their messy couch. Brushing his chapped lips across every forehead within reach. “Happy Christmas.” He whispered to each and every single one of them. 

The boys who had ‘saved’ Christmas. 

But he lingered a moment afterward, saying a little Christmas wish of his very own. 

It doesn’t matter if you lot don’t believe in Santa Claus. That’s not something I would ever force anyone to do. But promise me, that you’ll believe in something. Anything. Even when everything is dark and there isn’t a Christmas light in sight? Believe. Believe in hope, believe in the future, believe in yourselves. That is all I want for each of you. That’s what I’m designed to teach. A belief in something incorporeal. Something beyond the limits of the possible. 

Yet when they woke up hours later and fervently asked about how things had gone, had everything gotten delivered in time, oh god was John really Santa Claus? He had merely raised an eyebrow, sipping at his hot cocoa. 

“Wow, you three certainly got plastered at that Christmas party last night. I wonder what was in that eggnog…” Smiling to himself with a knowing sort of look. 

Already getting ready for next year. 

-X-

“Just like love you knows he’s there

Waiting to be missed

Just like love I know he’s there

Waiting to be be missed…”

-X-

(MERRY CHRISTMAS! 

Features the song: “I Believe in Santa Claus” from the Rankin/Bass Christmas special. :D)