Welcome to Gaia! ::

Mason was buzzing with excitement. Literally he kept humming Auld Lang Syne under his breath, blowing it out little buzzes and hums. Madeline kept looking at him funny out of the corner of her eye as they hung up New Year’s decorations and got food ready. He was just excited - this was the first New Year’s celebration that wasn’t just him and his sister. It had to be perfect.

The doorbell rang and Mason darted over to the door, opening it with a big flourish. He was wearing 2026 glasses, a 2026 hat, and held a noisemaker in one hand and a piece of salami wrapped around cream cheese in the other, because he’d been halfway through putting together a charcuterie board when the bell rang.

“Hi!” Mason greeted Halia. “Happy New Year’s Eve! C’mon in!”



“You’re right on time,” he reassured her as he tugged her inside. They hadn’t talked about The Thing since the day she’d finally confessed to him, but that was okay. Mason had taken the time he needed to sort himself out - as much as an 18-year-old who was also a superhero and also a college student could be sorted out, anyway.

Mads had helped. She’d helped a lot. Most of this had been her idea, actually, and he gave her a grin as he brought Halia into the family room, where Mads had finished decorating and was now flicking through the channels to find something suitably New Years-ish that wasn’t just people screaming in Time Square.

“Hey,” Mads said, giving Halia a smile over her shoulder. “I hope you’re hungry, ‘cause there’s like, a lot of food.” Had she gone overboard? Yes. Did Madeline know any other way to be? She did not. She was just glad that there was another person around to keep herself and Mason from eating literally all of it.

She had gone back and forth about whether or not she wanted to actually be present for this little idea of hers. On the one hand, she and Mason had celebrated every New Year’s together since they’d been born, and she felt possessive of it, as she did with everything related to her brother. On the other hand, it was a really good plan. On the third hand, she was waffling back and forth about whether her own friendship with Halia would survive in this new world, because she simply refused to third wheel with her stupid brother and the girl who was literally obsessed with him. So she’d decided that she’d play it by ear, and if the vibes were weird or bad or Halia ignored her in favor of Mason or anything else, she’d leave. Either go to her room or the basement or leave the house entirely, if she had to.

(Where she would go in that instance, she had no idea, but that was a problem for future Madeline.)

“She’s right, there really is so much food,” Mason echoed, darting into the kitchen to finish assembling the snackboard. “Hey, have you ever played Jenga?” Mason asked. It’s possible that he had already downed two cups of soda, which meant he was running at a much higher sugar level than usual, which quite possibly was making him even more fast-paced and fluttery than usual. He was just a little nervous, but he was also excited, and that created a sort of frenetic energy in him, which he couldn’t help, so he had decided to lean into it instead.

“We have other board games,” Madeline added, noticeably calmer than her brother. “We usually play them through the evening, watch the ball drop, and then head to bed.” Madeline paused, and glanced above her, to where the second floor peered down over the family room. A stuffed animal with a fully-blown-up balloon attached was taped to the edge of the railing. “Well, okay. And we drop our own ‘ball’ somewhere in there too. I got to pick this year, because–”
“Well, we take turns, but also because last year I broke the thing,” Mason admitted, pouting playfully. “I did not put enough balloons on the thing and I decapitated Santa.”

“More like shattered him,” Madeline said with a sage nod. “But Santa forgives all sins.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s Jesus,” Mason said quizzically, tilting his head slightly.
“They share a nice and naughty list,” Madeline said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Aaanyway. Do you have any New Year’s traditions, Halia?”



“New Year’s is sort of a strange holiday,” Madeline agreed. “Well, not the celebration itself - the old year giving way to the next is traditional going as far back as there have been calendars. From the druids to the Romans–”

“Maaaaaads,” Blarney whined. “We’re on break from learniiiiing.”
Madeline shot him a withering glare. “We are never on break from learning, Mason Larch. We are on break from school, but that’s not the same thing.” Mason pouted mightily under her sharp gaze, but when she turned to look at Halia, she was all smiles. “I never asked - did you go to school, Halia? Beyond high school, I mean.”

Mason, having finished the food platter, carried it and any other snacks he could carry into the family room, and set them on the low coffee table. Not for the first time, he was glad they didn’t have a dog, because that dog would one hundred percent eat everything in sight.

Distantly, he was vaguely aware that Madeline was testing Halia. He wanted to open his mouth and say so, to give Halia a fighting chance, but - he trusted his sister not to go too far, and he didn’t think she would intentionally mess anything up. He hoped. Besides, hadn’t she earned the right to a little bit of light grilling? She hadn’t said anything mean or sarcastic to Halia since she walked in, which might have been a record, time-wise. He flopped down on the couch and began piling a paper plate (‘HAPPY NEW YEAR’ the plate read, with a big confetti canon in the middle) with snacks.

“I resent being called a murderer,” he mumbled half-heartedly. “It was manslaughter at best.”



Madeline’s face softened in sympathy, and she shook her head. “By all rights, Mase and I shouldn’t have been able to go to college either,” she admitted. “Fortunately, I know how to forge our parent’s signatures and we’ve had access to their information since we were ten years old. Between that and my applying for every scholarship under the sun…” Madeline trailed off, shrugging lightly, as if it were normal–or at least not a big deal–that a couple of kids should have to figure out the college experience all on their own.

“Aaaaaaanyway,” Mason said from the couch, “are we gonna play some board games or what?”

One very stressful game of Jenga, two rounds of Scrabble (“Youma is totally a word! We use it all the time!”), an aborted attempt at Monopoly and several rounds of Cards Against Humanity later, midnight was fast approaching. After laughing themselves silly over the card game, they’d turned the TV volume back on and had done crazy dancing to the performances, leaving them flushed and happy.

“I think I’ll do our little ball drop early,” Madeline said, with what was perhaps a slightly over-dramatic yawn. Without waiting for an answer, she darted upstairs and reappeared a few moments later near where the stuffed animal was rigged. “I don’t think this is gonna take ten seconds to fall,” she said, then grinned down at them. “Happy McCaffrey New Year!”

She undid the tape and they all cheered as the stuffed animal floated gingerly down onto the couch below. Mason blew Mads a kiss and then undid the balloon and tossed her stuffed animal back up to her. She caught it, deftly, and gave another big yawn.

“Well, I think that’s it for me,” she said, doing a biiiiig stretch. “Have a good night, and happy new year!” And then Mads flounced into her room and made a big show of shutting her door, tight, and turning on some music, loud. Just in case she wasn’t being subtle enough.

Mason turned to look at Halia and gave her a sheepish smile. “The ball’s about to drop,” he said, nodding to the TV. He caught her hand, lightly, hesitantly, and moved a little closer to her, keeping half an eye on the TV and half an eye on her, not wanting to spook her.

“You know what happens when the ball drops at New Year’s, right?”



Mason grinned. “You do seem to be pretty new to the whole celebrating the new year thing,” he said, a gentle, teasing lilt to his voice. “But I think for this one it might be easier if I showed you?” It came out like a question, because it was; they had maybe thirty seconds before the 10-second countdown started, but even under those circumstances, even knowing that she liked him, he refused to do anything she wasn’t 100% on board with.

“Would that be okay?”



10…9….8…

Mason hesitated for just a moment before he reached up to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, and let his hand linger on her cheek, his thumb brushing across her thumb. “You really are beautiful,” he said, because it was true - friends or something else, that was just a fact.

3…2…1! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

As the TV blared and people cheered and people all around the world (or at least the East Coast) celebrated, Mason leaned in and kissed Halia, gently and feather-light, Auld Lang Syne playing behind them, over the noise of the crowds.

There was a doofy smile on his face when he pulled back, in spite of himself, and when he spoke, it came out as a whisper.

“Happy New Year.”