Even When You're Gone

Nine

AN: Sorry for the late update again, I wrote most of this last night but had to do some research for one last scene that I wrote this morning, life's been super hectic recently. Less "Christmas fluff" and more "Winter Break fluff" but they're still cute. Not necessary but reading "Five Times..." and "Christmas at Home" from Day After Day if you haven't might be helpful.

Even with all the DanceMania preparations going on the studio still closes for two weeks for the winter holidays. When she was younger Richelle always dreaded the studio closures, they always coincided with the school closures and all of the structure she had was suddenly gone. It's better now, Nat helps her make their own schedule. But with Christmas starting the break this year she first has to sit through mass on Christmas Eve. After she made A-Troupe her parents didn't make Natalie take her to church every week, only once a month, but Palm Sunday, Easter, and Christmas, among others, were non-negotiable.

Christmas Eve mass is part of the reason they started their Christmas morning Polar Express tradition. Richelle would still wake up ridiculously early and when Natalie was still living at home would get up with her and they would watch it together waiting for their parents to get up. And even the first few years after Nat moved out she would go to mass with them, one of the few times Richelle remembers her going with them, and wake up early with her and they would get some extra time together. Now though it's just tradition, and even though Nat won't wake up extra early to watch the whole thing with her, she'll join Richelle and watch whatever's left.

They spend the morning together before going over to their parents' so their parents can pretend they're still a big happy family and can post pictures on Facebook. Even though most of their "friends" have probably noticed that neither of them have been around much since Richelle moved in with Natalie.

She gets some pretty cool things from both Natalie and her parents, but her favorite is the trip to the zoo Natalie's planned while she has some time off work. She hasn't been to the zoo in a few years and she's excited to see the pandas probably for the last time before they're transferred to Calgary. Plus both the snow leopards and the clouded leopards have cubs and then there's the cheetahs and lynxes that also have cubs and Richelle doesn't think there's a better time to go to the zoo.

"Nat, Nat, Nat! Look, they're playing in the snow." The seven month old snow leopard cubs look right at home with all the recent snow that's accumulated in their habitat. Richelle spends most of their trip dragging her sister around to see all the cubs and even though it's outdoors she returns to the snow leopards multiple times.

After the zoo trip the rest of the first week goes by relatively quickly. Natalie has a small collection of board games and near the end of the week she invites Jacquie and Noah over for a game day. A not insignificant amount of swearing occurs when both Richelle and Jacquie get their accusations wrong in Clue. Especially since Richelle teased Jacquie for getting it wrong and then confidently stated her own wrong answer two turns later and Jacquie got her revenge.

The next week passes significantly slower. She goes over to Noah's one day, but two of his brothers are home and they can't hide out in his room without his brothers teasing them. She's not sure if it would be better or worse if they weren't teasing them about things that were actually happening behind closed doors. Richelle doesn't think they actually know, they're just dumb jokes about childhood friends, but it's enough that Richelle doesn't want to go back later during the week.

Finally the last Saturday before the break is over (for Richelle and Jacquie at least, Noah still has another two weeks) Nat is home during the day and Noah and Jacquie are both allowed to come over. Similar to their sleepover after prom they pile onto the floor in front of the couch and they all curl into each other almost reflexively.

Less than 30 minutes into the first movie (Thor, Jacquie's pick) they've all stopped paying attention. Over the past six months they've all gotten pretty good at hiding wandering hands from parents and siblings, not that they ever wander too far.

"I'm pretending I don't know what's going on out there, but the title screen has been looping for the past five minutes," Natalie calls from her room after the second movie (Noah's pick of Starstruck—and he makes fun of her for liking Descendants).

Richelle laughs before yelling back, "Sorry Nat." And she reluctantly gets up to switch the disk in their DVD player. When they first organized this she'd wanted to watch Ballet Shoes for her pick, but now she doesn't really care, she just grabs the first movie she recognizes as hers, not even paying attention to the title, and puts it on. Before crawling back into the pile on the floor.

AN: No second chapter this week as I barely got this one done on schedule. I did not grow up religious, but like writing Noah as Jewish I'm doing my best to write Richelle as Catholic, although reluctantly and she literally only goes to mass because her parents make her, she's not actually practicing.