Let’s get this holiday season started with stories I never finished last year. My November is dedicated to finishing some of the hundred or so stories half-finished in my folders! Here’s about 1400 words of holiday fluff.
Written for Klaine Advent 2018 prompt: ribbon
Costarring Rachel Berry
(This is sort of an AU, since the timeline got all confusing for me. Suffice it to say, this happens either in an actual Christmas set in season 5, or perhaps one set the next Christmas after they all return to NYC [and for some reason, are still in the loft? And Dani still exists? And Rachel isn’t in Funny Girl? Whatever]. And some version of the events of Previously Unaired Christmas happened [probably not the robbery]. Oh, and as in that AU, Bergdorf’s is still open and has live window displays.)
“I for one think that getting the exposure that Bergdorf’s windows provides will just be a plus for our future endeavors,” Rachel stated.
“That’s what you said last year about being Santa’s elves, and look how that turned out,” Kurt said. They were sitting huddled under blankets on the couch in the loft, waiting—again—for the heat to return. And he suspected that a chunk of ice had lodged itself in his heart in the frigid room. He wanted to just disappear under a mountain of blankets in his bed with Blaine’s furnace-like warmth. Not listen to Rachel’s absurd holiday plans.
Blaine came over to the couch, balancing a tray with hot cocoa and his latest attempt at rugelach, still warm from the oven. He slid under a corner of the blanket. “Still, you were so cute in your elf costume, Kurt.”
“What?” Kurt asked, a cookie halfway to his mouth.
“Did you think there weren’t any pictures? Santana’s Finsta was full of them. Guess she sent them to Britt to comfort her over the end of the world or something. She showed them to—well, to me, and Sam, of course, and to Finn.”
They both looked at Rachel, but she smiled in memory. “Finn told me on more than one occasion how—I believe the word he used was ‘sweet’—I looked in my costume. I would have preferred ‘sexy,’ but, you know, he was what he was.” She squeezed Kurt’s hand under the blanket.
“Well, I for one agree with Finn. You all were sweet—and sexy,” Blaine said. “Seriously, Kurt. I want to see your hair in a swoop like that again.”
“I’m sorry that you’re going to have to be disappointed. All I remember is that I had a bald patch for a week where a kid stuffed a lollipop under my elf hat.”
“And our shoes got covered in vomit. Remember that kid, Kurt?” Rachel shivered.
“And yet you want me to go through with another of your schemes?” Kurt rolled his eyes at her.
“It looks like it could be a great opportunity to be seen. AND to show off our versatility. They’re going to do ALL the songs from one of the seminal Christmas specials…”
“NOT Rudolph. I still have flashbacks from the Island of Misfit Toys rehearsals.”
“Well, actually—”
“OMG, how are we supposed to wear couture while singing We Are Santa’s Elves?”
She sighed, pulling up the details her contact had sent. “No couture this year. I think each window will be used to display a different department—like Silver and Gold for jewelry and Fame and Fortune for leather goods—you know, like hand bags and…”
“Just tell me what color shoes with turned-up toes you are planning on squeezing me into this year, Rachel, so I can refuse and get on with my life.”
But Blaine was intrigued. Of course he was. “How would we sing different songs, though?”
“That’s why I need you—and San, or maybe even Artie or Sam. Or—do you think Elliott would do it? Because we would work as a team, and my friend says we have a better chance if we APPLY as a team—rotating through the windows somehow.”
“With different vocal ranges, I would assume?” Blaine had pulled up a playlist with the Rudolph soundtrack.
“Blaine. Why are you encouraging her in this?”
“Because—because it’s Christmas in New York, Kurt! And—” he turned to Rachel. “I want to do it—IF we can avoid elf costumes. I had enough of them at Kings’ Island to last me—”
The windows were a little crowded for four people; the other guys would never have fit. Santana had rolled her eyes and said no, but then offered to give them the number of an old friend who was hard up for cash. Rachel, Dani, and Blaine’s small size had been a selling point for the window dresser, and Kurt’s range for the musical director. And no, he wasn’t even a tiny bit smug about that, no matter what Blaine whispered to him late that night in their bed.
There WAS couture—and jewelry—to wear if you ended up in the Silver and Gold window, but their team mostly was given the windows that required them to dress as extras from a Hallmark Christmas movie. The theme seemed to be Christmas at some house far from New York City, one with extensive gardens. So they got to pose among greenery, tying bows on wreaths and pretending to prune potted plants. Rachel and Blaine shared lead on Holly Jolly Christmas there, acting out manic delight in the season. And then an hour later, they reassembled in the paper goods window, as Dani traded lines with the boys on We Are Santa’s Elves as she, Kurt, and Rachel acted out the parts of Martha Stewart-obsessed gift-givers, tying ribbons around brightly wrapped packages with custom-made gift tags as Blaine sat at a writing desk, composing his Christmas list on quality stationery.
Kurt grumbled at Rachel about that song, but at least he didn’t look too ridiculous in his suburban dad Christmas sweater. Blaine swore it was exactly the best cut to bring out his slim figure. Besides, surviving that song meant he was that much closer to his moment.
The thing about being engaged is that you automatically had a co-conspirator. At least that’s how it worked for Kurt. Before they had agreed to tape their audition piece, Blaine cornered Rachel in the kitchen. “You know the only way I’m going to be able to get Kurt to agree to do this is if HE gets the lead on There’s Always Tomorrow.”
“But, Blaine—” Kurt could hear the wheedling tone in her voice from where he stood, ostensibly brushing his teeth, in the bathroom doorway. “It’s a song so well suited to my voice, and—”
“And it’s a song you’ll be singing alone. Well, I can’t speak for Dani, but you’ll be without me and Kurt. Because—marriage vows. If he goes, I go.”
Kurt almost swallowed his toothbrush at that as Rachel sputtered, “That’s—that’s not how marriage vows work, Blaine. And besides, you’re not—”
It was then he played his trump card. “Well, maybe we could work out a compromise.”
Kurt had leaned so far out the bathroom doorway that he almost tumbled over. He cursed silently at the telltale creak of the door as he caught himself on the doorknob. Thankfully, Rachel had turned to fill the kettle, and the noisy tap drowned him out. Her voice was high and tense. “I’m not sure what you’re offering as a compromise, but…”
“Look, wouldn’t it be fun to do a little gender-bending? I don’t mean dressing in drag, but—why does it have to be a WOMAN tucking her kids in? I was thinking of an homage to one Rachel Berry’s childhood.”
Rachel turned from the stove, and Blaine pressed his advantage. “I mean, imagine: You and Dani could model pretty sleepwear, put your hair up in ribbons and pigtails or whatever. And Daddy Kurt, in a beautiful bathrobe/dressing gown, sings a lullaby to you. And then, one of the little girls—that’s you—jumps in to reprise the verse about ‘We all pretend the rainbow has an end’ while Dad tucks the baby—ME—in. Or whatever.”
“So, what? I still get my solo?”
“And I get mine,” Kurt said, coming into the kitchen right on cue. “And I’ll try not to blow you out of the water, Midnight Madness style.”
It was a long 3 weeks, all the same. And once Dani took to dealing with the drama of singing with the diva residents of the loft by smoking the stinkiest weed in all of Brooklyn on her breaks, the enclosed spaces were less than pleasant. But never say Kurt Hummel didn’t live for applause just as much as Rachel or Blaine, and that he didn’t notice his solos drew the largest crowds—even if those fans were on the other side of 3” thick plate glass.
I'm, uh, back? Got back into reading this year after 6 years of a PhD program killed the habit. I don't really know how tumblr works after all this time, bear with me.
I coach newly competitive swimmers and there was a boy who started this spring who was honestly not very athletic and clearly had some issues with sensory processing and hated swim meets. But he improved a lot this summer, in attitude and technique, and he won his first medal at a swim meet this summer and I was incredibly proud of him and let him know it.
We’re on a break in between swim seasons right now, but he and his mom just showed up at my house and gave me a bag with some gifts in it as a thank you, and I was just stunned and so happy while they were at the door and didn’t look to closely in the bag, but I checked just now and at the bottom was his medal that he won! He gifted me the medal that he earned!
I always put a blanket on my lap before I let my cat sit on me, and I just love that now she waits patiently by the chair while I retrieve and arrange my blanket.
