Day After Day

Christmas at Home

AN: (Christmas 2028) I have plans for a Christmas chapter of EWYG, but that won't be out for two months or so and Christmas will be long over by then. So I wanted to write this to actually publish during the holiday season.

The first few years all three of them live in New York together they decide to not go home for the major holidays. It's not financially feasible for all of them to take time off. But once they're a little more stable they alternate between going home in September (usually, sometimes it's October) to celebrate Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with Noah's family, and December for Christmas with Richelle and Jacquie's families. Usually that means they sacrifice going home later in October for Thanksgiving though (down the road, every five years-ish they go home for Thanksgiving instead, but they've generally agreed that it's a less important holiday to be home for).

This year they went back to Toronto for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. At least Noah and Jacquie did, Richelle finally has a good, stable job that's working with her on accommodations and she couldn't take that much time off, especially with the upcoming Nutcracker auditions. She went up with them and then came home early (and it was kind of nice having the apartment to herself for a week). Richelle and Jacquie will call their families on either Christmas or Boxing Day, but there's something special about celebrating holidays, just the three of them at home in New York.

With Hanukkah having just ended they're going to decorate their tree once they're all home. In years that Hanukkah ends before Christmas they decorate the tree the day after Hanukkah ends, and in the years it doesn't they usually decorate the day before it starts. With the studio Jacquie teaches at on Winter break she's been home all day, locating the last of the boxes with their ornaments. Richelle knows they're going to be decorating late though because Noah likely won't be home until almost midnight.

"Hey Riche. Do you remember where we put the stockings last year? Did we put them on the end of the island like we did at the last place or did we finally decide that was a ridiculous idea?" Jacquie starts talking almost as soon as Richelle closes the front door. This is only their second year in their new apartment, they weren't allowed to renew their lease on their old apartment, their first apartment together, but at least this one has a bigger bathroom, and enough space in the bedroom for a vanity when they all need to get ready at the same time.

Richelle leans down to kiss her girlfriend, "Hello to you too. We didn't put them up last year, we went home, remember? You don't have to put them on the island though if you find a better spot. When I lived with Natalie we just put our stockings on our door knobs. Even though by the time I moved in with her I didn't believe anymore and I told her I didn't need a stocking." Her voice catches a little at the end, even though she's spent a lot of Christmases without her sister it hasn't gotten a lot easier.

"I guess the island's fine," Jacquie grumbles a little bit, but carefully attaches the command hooks anyway. They don't do a lot of decorations, mostly because they don't have a lot, but they have a string of lights they put up around the edge of the kitchen island, and their stockings.

After she puts her stuff away Richelle finds her Christmas music playlist (it's mostly new-ish songs that aren't covers of the classics she listens to all day at work) and as Lindsey Stirling's cover of "I Saw Three Ships" starts coming from the TV speakers she scoops Baryshnikov from his spot on her chair and starts dancing with him in the living area. He gets fed up with her pretty quickly though so she dumps him onto the couch and grabs Jacquie to dance with her through the end of the song.

"I love you, you dork," Jacquie says as Richelle drops her head to Jacquie's shoulder when the song ends and transitions to a slower song.

"Love you too." There were times, when they were first dating, that Richelle would've hesitated, or not said it back at all. But she's come a long way from being terrified to let them in, in the past twelve years, "Wanna watch a Christmas movie?"