Archive of Our Own

New York at Christmas. There was really nothing in the world like it.

Kurt strolled up Fifth Avenue and took it all in: the damp, chilly gray air that took his breath and hung it in front of him like a veil, the throngs of last-minute holiday shoppers, the glittering decor in all the storefront windows and trees wrapped in lights. Even the wadded up gum stuck to the top of trash cans and trampled styrofoam cups that hadn't made it into said trash cans held a certain charm this time of year.

Ah, New York. Ah, Christmas. Ah, his first completely solo holiday ever.

It wasn't the first time he was single, but it was perhaps the first Christmas he'd had in several where he wasn't preoccupied in some way with Blaine. It was definitely the first year since meeting they hadn't done a Christmas duet together. Blaine had actually asked him if he wanted to, for old times' sake, but Kurt had declined the offer, tempting as it was. It was best to move on, finally, and not keep their relationship languishing in a vegetative state with an engagement ring as life support.

It was his first Christmas without Blaine in years – and his family's first Christmas without Finn. And the first Christmas he'd be spending without his dad.

Rachel was spending her well-earned holiday embarking on another Rosie O'Donnell cruise with her dads, sure to come back with a healthy suntanned glow. She needed that sunshine and time off. Santana had been invited to go skiing with Brittany's family in Colorado and had leapt at the chance to see her busy bestie away from MIT. She had gone out the door claiming that, no, they would not be hooking up, but that had just convinced her roommates that they were definitely going to. Kurt and Rachel both knew the allure and how easy it was to fall back into old feelings, old habits.

For him, it was a year to shed old habits, Kurt had decided. A year off. Nothing wrong with not Andy Williams-ing it up for once. He loved Christmas as much as anyone, but he was growing up, too. Ever since his dad's cancer scare, he'd realized holidays couldn't always be treated with the simple certainty of those golden days of yore, and was surprised he'd ever forgotten that lesson from when his mom had passed away. He'd certainly re-learned it over and over since.

In a way, Kurt felt mature to have decided to be on his own. At last, he was finished with finals. He had the loft to himself. He wasn't pulling long hours at an internship during the very craziest part of the year, working retail, or putting up with a verbally abusive mall Santa whilst decked in questionable used tights. He could simply stay in, warm and cozy, lounge in his pajamas, not worry about leaving hot water for others, and marathon Designing Women without anyone complaining about his tendency to recite Julia's best speeches along with her. Maybe he'd give himself a facial and break out his reliable boyfriend pillow. And what better way to get his own personal party started than a cup of coffee from his favorite vendor and an invigorating stroll around the city?

With nearly everyone in his social circle out of town for the week, he wasn't expecting to see anyone he knew out and about, but it just so happened that there was a very familiar-looking blond head in line at the very coffee cart he frequented.

"Sam Evans?" he called out curiously.

Sure enough, the tall figure several places ahead of him shifted, called to attention, and craned to peer over his shoulder, brows raised in a blank way. Brows rising right back, Kurt waved.

"Oh! Hey!" The big smile that spread wide was even more familiar. "Kurt!"

"I thought it was you!" said Kurt, rather amazed that it really was him and that he'd recognized Sam from his short ponytail alone. It was his ears, too, he reasoned, as Sam abandoned his place in line to come wrap him in one of his big, bracing hugs. And his shoulders. Kurt was familiar with those; he gave one a few cordial pats. He didn't see Sam as often as any of his fellow NYADA students, but it was sort of impossible for him to feel like a stranger. His aura was too like a golden retriever who was always happy to see anyone.

"You here for coffee?" Sam asked brightly, releasing him from the warm hug but clamping a hand on his shoulder for some further friendliness.

"Yup! You?"

"Yeah! Hey, since you're here and I'm here, let me buy you a cup."

"Oh! That's okay. You sacrificed your place in line to say hello, you've already paid your social due," said Kurt. The line of impatient people clad in knit caps and scarves had eagerly surged forward, closing the gap where Sam had been standing.

"It's cool. I'll just wait with you," said Sam, finally letting him go.

"Ah. Cool. Great," said Kurt. He didn't know if he could hold out hope that Sam wouldn't immediately start talking about Blaine; it was only natural, since they were roommates. Of course, Blaine and Kurt had been through so much together, their pledge that they would always remain friends wasn't a lie to ease the pain, but Kurt still needed some emotional freedom from thinking about him. Especially if he was going to spend Christmas all by himself. One too many egg nogs and he might find himself drunk-dialing Blaine and losing the healthy sense of independence he'd gained.

"So how ya been?" Sam wanted to know, not letting too big of an awkward pause go by.

"Busy. You know, school – finals," responded Kurt simply. He ping-ponged the subject back to Sam. "How about you? Book any interesting jobs lately?"

"Yeah, I actually did a video shoot last week!"

"You did? That's great! I thought you were just picking up runway here and there!"

"Yeah, I usually just get runway," Sam admitted, stepping alongside Kurt as the line moved forward. "And I don't really have any fitness photos in my portfolio. But they must've liked my underwear shots 'cause they hired me to wear a pair of super-tight spandex shorts and sit on a bench and lift a bunch of fake weights. I'm not even sure what kind of product they're advertising, but I'm pretty sure it'll be some weight loss scam. I even did one of those before-and-after things where I slouched and stuck my gut out and then they switched lighting and spread some fake tan on me and all this oil and had me flexing so I'd look, like, crazy diesel."

"Whoa," said Kurt, chuckling. He was well aware of the power of before-and-after photos, even obviously faked ones. "Well, it sounds like they got the right guy for the job. All the women will want you and all the guys will want to be you. Slam dunk."

"They'll probably Photoshop extra abs on me, or like, take my abs and put them on someone else," said Sam modestly.

"Ooh, I volunteer to be on the receiving end – abs-wise," said Kurt. "Where do I send my pic? Oh, we're up! Hi, hi. Can I get a medium nonfat mocha, please?" he asked the man behind the cart, reaching for his wallet.

Sam stopped him with one firm hand grasping at his elbow. He was already opening up his wallet. He fished a couple of bills out between his long fingers and handed them to the vendor.

"Oh, you really are treating me?"

"Totally. It's not like I see you every day," said Sam.

"Well!" said Kurt, who wasn't sure what that had to do with it. "Thanks! How nice."

"You are welcome," replied Sam with some genteel aplomb, receiving some paltry change and stuffing it into his jeans pocket while simultaneously cramming his wallet into his back pocket, an act which apparently required some dedicated concentration on his part.

Perhaps it was his particular eye for fashion, Kurt couldn't help noticing that Sam now wore jeans that cost more than fifteen dollars. They were slightly distressed on purpose, in all the right ways, rather than just plain worn and coming apart. They fit him well. And he'd traded in the old slip-on Chuck Taylors he'd once lived in for boots that cuffed at the ankle, their leather supple and also worn to look vintage. The ankles of his jeans slouched into his boots in exactly the right way. He almost looked liked he'd been styled, or made a real attempt at dressing nicely. Maybe he was picking up a semblance of fashion sense, modeling. Or maybe it was just that the clothes suited him very well, helping him achieve a put-together look effortlessly (which was always the greatest fashion statement one could make, in Kurt's opinion). He remembered Sam saying that the woman from the House of Bichette had told him that runway models were sometimes paid in clothes – the same kinds of one-size samples that Vogue.com had received all the time from various designers to feature in photo shoots. He wondered if Sam was wearing jeans that hadn't hit the marketplace yet or boots he'd strutted down a catwalk in. Très intéressant.

Kurt accepted his hot coffee from the vendor and thanked him, then stepped aside quickly for the next customer. Even at a coffee cart, New Yorkers were always in a real hurry.

"Hey," he said, noticing Sam's empty hands stuffing themselves into pockets on his gray wool peacoat. "Weren't you going to get something?"

"Ah, I was, but – I really shouldn't be drinking coffee and stuff," said Sam, shrugging. "You saved me, actually! Um, so, hey, when are you heading home? Tonight?"

Coming along automatically as Sam took a step down the wet sidewalk, Kurt said, "Oh, no. I'm not heading home this year."

"What? Why not?"

"Well, I just had my last final yesterday, and my parents are heading out on Christmas morning to visit some of Carole's family. They said I could come along, but it just seemed like the least fun thing ever, to be traveling on Christmas, headed for the boonies. So I opted out."

"So you're not going home at all? You don't have anyone else to visit?" asked Sam, sounding disappointed for some reason.

Kurt lowered his scalding coffee from his mouth quickly; it needed another minute of patience to cool to a sippable temperature. Smacking his heat-stung lips, he asked, "Erm, like who?"

"Like the glee kids! I saw on Facebook they're having a Christmas Eve concert tomorrow night at the homeless shelter," said Sam, ambling along beside him and gesturing even with his hands in his pockets, elbows working. "You could go to that – give 'em your support, feed the needy. I bet they'd even let you sing, big NYADA star that you are."

"Oh, sure. I know they just love it when kids who graduated two years ago come steal their spotlight," Kurt kidded.

"You're seriously not gonna see your family?" Sam persisted. "On Christmas?"

"There's nothing wrong with skipping Christmas," began Kurt, but this was not the right thing to say; he fell silent as Sam adamantly went on in his dismayed tone.

"You're just skipping it?? Dude, is this really the year? After everything? Your family suffered this huge blow – it's not just some ordinary Christmas. I know they want to have you around, and you should be with the people you love. Everybody should be with their family on Christmas. Don't you think your parents want to see you? And don't you wanna see them?"

"It's not that I don't want to see them," said Kurt. Annoyingly, Sam had keyed in on the guilt he felt about not wanting to go to Michigan to meet Finn's relatives and go through another difficult week of grief with them, existing in a space where Finn's absence would be gaping and painful once again. "I would just hardly see them before they left, and then I'd be alone in boring Lima instead of alone in glamorous New York. Why fly home for that?"

"I'd go if I were you," returned Sam. It was a reproachful statement, but he tacked one of his nice, sweet smiles onto it. Kurt still felt vaguely chastised and defensive.

"What are you doing still in New York, then?" he challenged. "Pulling a sexy Santa grift?"

"... What?"

"I mean, are you working, or something? You're not exactly on your way home, are you?"

"Oh – nah. I mean, I'm cater-waitering at some ad agency's office party tonight, but if I could, I'd go home. I just can't afford it."

"Flights are expensive," admitted Kurt. Further guilt.

"So is living in New York. Sure, you're in Bushwick, but I still don't know how you guys can afford to go home as much as you do. But I mean, it's cool," said Sam lightly. "I'm used to going for long periods of time without seeing my family and missing out on stuff. We talk on the phone all the time, so it's fine. I'm just lucky Blaine and Tina let me stay with them in the city, even though I don't go to a fancy performing arts college and can't pay as much for rent."

"Well, Blaine loves having you around," said Kurt with a small, pained smile. "Um... I guess he's with his family in L.A.?"

"Yup."

"Watch him pop up next to his brother in a Free Credit Rating Today Dot Com Slash Savings commercial."

"Watch him get on The Voice," agreed Sam.

The two exchanged knowing chuckles. They were slightly awkward on Kurt's part. Why had he even asked about Blaine? He didn't want to know. They lapsed into silence for a minute, finally stopping at the corner of 58th. Tiffany and Co. loomed ahead, waiting for Kurt to come sip his coffee in front of it and stare at its art deco glory. Their windows were decked out in their signature blue lights.

"So, um, if you're here for the holidays and all, we should get together or something," proposed Sam. "Watch, like, Miracle on 34th Street. Like old times."

"Sure," said Kurt with a nod. He and Sam had never exactly hung out together one-on-one, but it didn't sound too bad, actually. It made a swell of nostalgia rise in him, even.

He and Sam didn't have much in common other than both having been in glee – therefore sharing a bunch of friends and experiences like booty camp and competitions and trips to Nationals – but due to the time Sam had lived with Kurt and Finn's family, Kurt had discovered that they did have a mutual love of Christmas movies. Prior to that, he'd been unaware that Sam was a total sap with a super-high schmaltz tolerance level, who appreciated a good romance and a happy ending.

Finn, who often fell asleep if he tried to watch anything made before 1978, had loved Christmas movies, too. He got so into Christmas, and it was the one time of year he actually wanted Kurt to decorate and go all-out doing so. Only a couple of times had they ever gotten to trim a tree together. But before Sam had gone back to Kentucky to spend Christmas with his family, the whole Hudson-Hummel-Evans household had classic holiday movie nights where they watched White Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, and It's A Wonderful Life while eating stuff like flavored popcorn out of those gigantic tin buckets, sugar cookies, and peppermint bark.

Those holiday movie nights were happy memories. They'd been so gosh-darned cozy. His family felt full, practically Brady-esque (he was, of course, the Marcia, and Finn the Greg; Sam had first been Cousin Oliver, but soon gotten upgraded to Bobby), and while the future may have been uncertain, the present had at least been glowing and comfortable. That feeling felt so far-away, so unattainable. There were so many memories he had of the two years he'd had a brother that now seemed like not just one lifetime ago, but two or three. Life was just so different now...

"Or something happier," said Sam in a keen, gentle voice, alerting Kurt to the fact that he'd become misty-eyed, and likely sad-looking.

"We never did watch Meet Me In St. Louis," said Kurt, voice pushing past an unwelcome lump in his throat.

"I've never heard of it. Is it a Christmas movie?"

"Technically, no, but it's a Judy Garland classic and it's where 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas' came from. It's one of my faves. You'll love it."

Sam nodded thoughtfully, then proposed, "Pizza, St. Louis, Love Actually, South Park movie."

Squinting, Kurt said, "That is not a Christmas movie."

"Neither is this Judy Garland one."

"Stop trying to get me to watch the South Park movie. You didn't get me to in high school, you're not going to get me to now."

"All right," Sam said. "I mean, it's a good musical and I think you'd like it! But all right."

"No and no. But yes to the pizza and actually good movies. How's tomorrow night for you? Do you have any Christmas Eve cater-waiting?"

"Nope, tomorrow night's great," said Sam, then grinned. "Hey, I'm glad I ran into you, dude. Now you can't say you're skipping Christmas!"

"I guess not," Kurt responded agreeably.

"Cool. I'll see you tomorrow!" said Sam, and gave Kurt another hug. This time it was one-armed, but it was no less Sam-esque. He was patted, and patted Sam back cooperatively.

"Yeah! See you tomorrow," echoed Kurt, receiving one last bright smile and another grip to the shoulder before Sam turned away, rounding the corner and heading down the street.

It turned out not to be the last smile, as Sam peered back his way and gave him another, along with a hectic wave goodbye, long arm slicing through the air.

"Okay," said Kurt to his mocha, then lifted it and took a sip of sweet, perfectly hot coffee, watching Sam disappear into the foot traffic making its way toward the next corner. "So I'm not totally skipping Christmas."

*

"Hey, Sam – I'm sorry to do this, but I have to cancel our plans," said Kurt that night, his iPhone just barely tucked between his jaw and shoulder as he folded up a sweater.

"Really?" asked Sam. Kurt could hear his surprised disappointment, as well as hear someone drive past him, honking in the loud and exaggerated way people tended to in Manhattan. He quickly put the phone on speaker so he could set it down on his mattress. Sam's voice filled the empty loft. "Um, okay – yeah. That's cool. Uh, are you busy, like, on the twenty-fifth? I know it's not as fun to watch Christmas movies on actual Christmas, but. We could do it then. It'd still probably be fun."

"Nope! Sorry, I can't. I'll be in Lima," Kurt announced.

"Hey!" responded Sam, his voice lifting. "You changed your mind!"

"Yes, and I have you to thank," said Kurt.

"I knew you wanted to go home," said Sam genially.

Tucking his neatly folded sweater into his suitcase, Kurt countered, "Truthfully, no, I didn't. I scheduled the monologue I had to do for a final on the last possible day, at the last possible time, because I really didn't want to go back home. I've hardly been back since Finn's memorial. And this time of year... all the warm and fuzzy feelings you're supposed to have... Finn being gone makes it hard to be merry and bright. Everything really just reminds me of him. You remember how Finn got about Christmas."

"Yeah," said Sam, "I remember. He made it seem like a big deal. Like something great was just around the corner."

"It was his favorite time of year."

"But that's why you need to be with family, Kurt. Finn would want you all to be together and to have a good time. He'd be so bummed if you skipped Christmas."

"You're right," Kurt informed him. His eye had wandered to the graduation portraits of him and his stepbrother he kept in a frame by his bedside, propping it up in the open only when Rachel wasn't around. Even though Rachel could probably see it without breaking down in tears and excusing herself to draw her bedroom curtain now, he still kept it in his drawer most of the time. "It was selfish of me to want to avoid it. Obviously, I can't, and I shouldn't. And I really want to see my dad and Carole before they go off to Armada. I want to see my dad on Christmas Eve and I want to hug Carole and remind her that I'm always going to be her son, too. So I scooped a last-minute ticket and I'm flying home tomorrow morning."

"That's awesome," Sam told him, and sounded like he meant it. "You won't regret it."

"I'm sorry to bail on the holiday hangout," said Kurt, returning to his suitcase-packing.

"No, it's totally cool. I'm glad you bailed. You're gonna be happy you did."

"I'm not leaving you in the lurch?"

"Nah! Don't worry about it. I'll just, like, find a soup kitchen that needs an extra hand."

At that, Kurt smiled. "That's noble, as always. But do you think you could feed the homeless in Lima instead? Because I booked you a ticket, too."

After a confused beat, Sam said, "Me? Why? That's – totally nice and all, but I can't afford a plane ticket. I thought I said..."

"You don't have to pay me back for it. Consider it a Christmas present," said Kurt.

"Wow. I – it's so nice of you to do that," Sam said awkwardly. "But it's probably really expensive. A lot more expensive than a coffee. Maybe you should save your money."

"Look, between Jet Blue vouchers and my dad saving all his frequent flier miles from his many trips to the capitol and selling Finn's truck and not having him to help support anymore, my family can afford it. It's in our budget. And you know, in a way, you're like an adopted member of the family, so I can't just jet off to Lima and leave you here all alone on Christmas when you should be with family. You said so yourself. I know Carole would be happy to see you, and my dad, too. You'd be more than welcome, Sam. If it's too awkward to stay with us, then I'm sure Puck or somebody would put you up for the night –"

"No way, it's not awkward – I love you guys," blurted Sam, making Kurt grin. "You sure I won't be totally intruding?"

"Don't be silly," Kurt told him flatly. "You still have a key to our house, if I remember correctly."

"Yeah," Sam said.

"You couldn't intrude if you tried. So? Can you meet me at the station at eight-thirty? Our flight's at ten-thirty, so that'll give us time to get there and check in and all that."

"Wow! We're really doing this?"

"We're really doing this! Are you in?"

"Wow," Sam repeated. "I mean... are you sure you want me to come?"

"Well, I didn't book the ticket for the hipster downstairs, so you better come," teased Kurt.

"Oh my God! Hey – thanks! This is, like, the best present I ever got!"

"You are welcome," Kurt told him, echoing the particular way Sam had said the same thing at the coffee cart. He felt a lot more merry-and-bright already, but giving a generous gift to someone and knowing it was appreciated sealed it; Christmas was back on. "Are you ready to surprise my dad and Carole?"

"I'm totally excited! We're flying on Christmas Eve? How crazy is that? Do you think we'll see Santa out the plane window?"

"Who knows?" said Kurt, amused. He really couldn't help but think of his disastrous hook-up from last year. With some vindictive cheer, he added, "We could mow him right over."

"His sleigh's way too fast," said Sam in a factual way.

"Well, I'll forward you our flight itinerary. When you get off work, pack your bags, then meet me by eight-thirty," Kurt said. "At this time tomorrow, we'll be in Ohio, roasting chestnuts on an open fire and catching the special holiday edition of Sue's Corner."

*

Ponytail or no, it was difficult not to think of so many scenes from the Home Alone movies when Sam arrived fifteen minutes late to the station, booking it towards Kurt and darting between people with his backpack on his shoulders, a red McKinley Titans duffel bouncing at his side, and his old acoustic guitar case with its Bikini Kill sticker in one hand. He was the very picture of a McCallister. He just needed a frantic John Williams score backing him up.

"Sorry – sorry," he gasped. "So late! Unacceptable!"

"No, no! We still have time," Kurt had assured him, with Sam panting about traffic and how unprofessional it was to be this late and how, in the modeling world, being "on time" really meant being ready to go, hair and makeup done, with ten or fifteen minutes to spare. Kurt had tugged him onto the train, telling him, "It's cool, Sam. We're not heading to a photo shoot!"

But getting to the airport had taken what felt like extra long time, and even though they hadn't checked any baggage, it had taken them a while to get through lines and through security to their gate. Kurt had kept nervously checking the time on his phone. They'd barely made it, the both of them running along the terminal to their gate while Kurt mentally copy-pasted "Run Rudolph Run" in over the final boarding call announcement, and after Sam gate-checked his guitar, were the very last to get on the plane, which was surprisingly packed for a Christmas Eve flight to Toledo.

Kurt had quickly located his seat and hauled his wheeled suitcase up into the overhead storage. Now he was collapsing, relieved, next to a severe-looking middle-aged woman with a pair of heavy Chanel sunglasses on, and Sam was discovering that he was in the very back row next to an overweight guy that already looked miserable at where he was crammed, and the plane hadn't even taken off yet.

"Hi, I'm Kurt," Kurt said to the woman with a smile, making sure his messenger bag wasn't getting too friendly with her knees.

She gave him only half a look and a brusque, "Hello."

"So are you heading home, too?" he asked.

"Hardly," she said. Then she re-focused on a puzzle on her iPad.

Accepting that in-flight chit-chat with this lady was off the table, Kurt turned to peer over the back of his seat for Sam, just to make sure he was getting settled and that he hadn't actually somehow picked up a Sam doppelgänger at some point, in true Home Alone fashion.

Sam had taken off his gray coat and was trying to squeeze it into the overhead storage, but his seatmate's luggage was also oversized and taking up most of the room in the locker, and Kurt could tell he wasn't going to be able to fit both it and his duffel bag in there. Still, as he tried to find some room, his lifted arms took his plaid shirt up with it, giving the whole plane a glimpse of his toned, unseasonally tan waist and the snug black rim of the elastic band of his underwear.

Although Kurt caught himself staring at the inch or two of his friend's bare skin, he didn't feel as weird or guilty about his gaze as he would have in high school. For one thing, it was a paltry and benign amount of skin to catch sight of. Rachel had put copies of some of Sam's initial portfolio pictures taken by her Funny Girl photographer friend up on their fridge, so the sight of Sam flexing in nothing but a pair of skin-tight boxer-briefs had greeted him every day for weeks in the spring. It hadn't really been weird; Kurt had been greeted with the sight of a hell of a lot more by that gross Brody wandering around in the buck. Plus, Sam was a professional model. The point of the pictures was that he was nice to look at. All over.

For another thing, Kurt wasn't as relatively inexperienced and starved for hot boys as he'd been when he was in high school, living with not one, but two, off-limits jocks. Even though he'd been messing around with Blaine, back then he did things like crush on the new Spanish teacher and enjoy attention from a guy who wasn't even his type just because he still had so many repressed feelings, and Lima was so conservative and sheltered. Living in New York had shocked him out of some of his more prim sensibilities.

Getting a look at a sliver of the pit of Sam's back still elicited his interest, though. It was futile interest, as always, but it was kinda nice to be reminded, even tangentially, that the possibility existed for him to eventually have a sex life again. One outside of Blaine. He felt... ready.

"If only my sixteen-year-old self could see me now," breathed Kurt, craned in his seat as he thought of how elated he would have been to learn he'd someday be on a flight with the cute quarterback, taking him home from New York, where he lived in a loft and had pictures of the cute boy in his skivvies pinned to his fridge, no big deal.

The woman next to him gave him the stink-eye.

"Hot guy, 42-B," Kurt told her blatantly, not caring if he offended her since she clearly didn't care if she offended him. To his surprise, she turned her head automatically, as if unable to ignore the cue, and lifted her shades.

In row 42, Sam was experimenting with folding his coat to put under the seat in front of him along with his backpack. Kurt didn't know if he'd be able to wrangle that, either. The woman watched him bend over and try to jam the coat for a few moments. They had an excellent view.

"Hot, but not very smart," she said, turning back to her iPad.

While it was an assessment that wasn't necessarily the most incorrect thing Kurt had ever heard, he rose and said coolly, "Pardonnez-moi. Some kind shepherd needs to help that poor lost lamb."

With a weary sigh, the woman lifted her tablet and allowed him to slide past her.

Clutching his messenger bag to keep it from bumping any elbows, Kurt made his way past several rows to Sam, who looked up from his crouch by the seat and said, "Can't fit my jacket anywhere. Guess I'm gonna have to just wear it."

"Let me take it," Kurt suggested. "There's plenty of room where I'm sitting, next to a wannabe Anna Wintour. If she gets any frostier, I'm gonna need it."

"Don't suppose she'd trade me places," said Sam, blocking a flight attendant's way as he stood again.

"Please take your seats, sirs," the attendant urged them in a no-nonsense, barely-patient kind of voice.

"Maybe this guy would trade me seats," said Kurt suddenly, looking at the heavy guy Sam was to be sitting with the whole four-hour flight. "Pardon me, sir. Would you be willing to trade seats with me?"

"Me?" asked the guy.

"Yes, you. What do you say? I'm up in roomy 36-D. It's a window seat."

"Hell yeah, kid, I'll take it, if you're offering."

With the flight attendant waiting at their side, Kurt and Sam shuffled back, squeezing into the small space in front of the restroom so Sam's seatmate could pry himself out of the seat and lumber into the aisle, dragging a laptop bag with him. Kurt felt Sam clap him on the back enthusiastically.

"Cool. We've never sat on a plane together," he said, as if it was about time.

"We've never really done anything together," Kurt pointed out.

"What?" Sam looked confused. "I did stuff with you all the time junior year."

"I'm gonna leave my bag where it is," said the portly man. "Don't mess with it. It's got my ma's angel in it. She collects Christmas angels. You don't wanna break my ma's angel."

"I wouldn't dream of messing with your angel," said Kurt.

"Sirs, please," repeated the flight attendant, gesturing towards the empty set of seats. The pudgy man from 42-A was slowly limping down the aisle towards the woman in glasses, who was probably not going to be happy with her new plane buddy and was going to wish she'd been friendlier towards the witty and fascinating conversationalist she hadn't known she'd been sitting next to. Kurt slid into the row and plopped himself into the man's abandoned seat, with Sam quickly following suit next to him, allowing the flight attendant to make her way past them, following the large man.

Without a word, Kurt took the somewhat abused bundle of Sam's coat from under his arm and eased it under the seat in front of him.

"Thanks," Sam said. "You didn't have to do all that. These aren't really the best seats in the house."

"Please," responded Kurt easily, settling himself in by tucking his messenger bag next to Sam's coat. Unlike Sam's stuffed backpack, it fit just fine. "I'd have invited you up to 36-C, but I do believe the White Witch would've turned the both of us into stone."

"Now she can chill with Comic Book Guy," said Sam with a grin, gesturing with one large upturned palm.

"A romance for the ages," said Kurt, fastening his seat belt.

"It's basically reverse Twilight," agreed Sam, making Kurt laugh. He added, in an exaggerated, impatiently pinched voice Kurt had never heard before, "Worst love interest ever."

He was interrupted as the announcement system chimed and a chipper male voice began a practiced recitation.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard American Airlines flight 307, bound for Toledo, Ohio with continued service to Chicago O'Hare, and a merry Christmas Eve to those of you celebrating. All carry-on items should now be stored, either in the overhead or under the seat in front of you..."

*

During take-off, Kurt stared out the window, watching the runway go by faster and faster beneath them, till it sort of looked like running water, and felt the plane dip as they rose into the air and the wheels were pulled up from the cement. The rattling of the wheel mechanisms was loud where they were sitting. Next to him, Sam gripped at the armrest dividing their seats, then relaxed again with a sigh, drawing Kurt's attention away from the gray scenery shrinking gradually underneath them.

"Nervous?" he asked, a little surprised. All the safety instructions about oxygen masks and flotation devices were something he mostly ignored now, as exciting as they'd been his first flight to New York ever, but he supposed it all could be a little alarming.

"Nah, not at all," Sam said quickly. "Just can't believe I'm really here. I didn't even know this would be happening twelve hours ago."

Not totally convinced, Kurt gave him a pat on the arm. "Did you bring a book or something you can read till we can turn our phones back on?"

Sam shook his head. "I can never read on planes. Not even magazines. I just get totally distracted. The fact that I'm hurtling through the Earth's atmosphere in a metal cylinder is so awesome and exciting, I can't stop thinking about it."

"I know what you mean," said Kurt, settling back in his seat. The plane was still tilted up as it mounted higher and higher. "It just feels too different to ignore. I can feel the pressure of moving through the air. I can feel the earth falling away, and more and more space between us and the ground."

Their ears popped, the plane evened out, and they were soaring with clouds before too long, and Kurt again stared out the window at the wide world, with its tangle of highways and patches of buildings. He thought of his dad and Carole, who would be in a plane tomorrow, flying on Christmas Day. Their plane seemed to hold all kinds of people, but he wondered who would fly on Christmas. He imagined a lot of single businessmen with no one to go home to. Definitely not families with small kids. Probably John Travolta and Kanye West, in private jets...

By the time he looked back at Sam, he found his companion had his eyes closed, both hands still firm on the armrests and his head against the back of his seat, tilted towards Kurt. It took him a moment to realize Sam had actually dozed off – never mind that flying was too stimulating for him to concentrate on anything! His curvy mouth was barely open, and the small breaths he was taking in and letting out through the small space between his lips nearly inaudible over the hum of the plane in flight.

It occurred to Kurt that Sam had waited a party last night, and those could run into the early hours. He probably hadn't had time to sleep much, between packing and getting up in time to get himself to the station. The guy must have been pretty tired to fall asleep so easily.

Sleeping was a good idea, Kurt thought. The flight was long, there weren't any crying babies that he could see or hear, and just the act of traveling, having to hustle from place to place with one eye on the clock, was tiring.

He closed his eyes, too, and drifted, with a feeling of cool calm.

This had been the correct decision, going home. It just felt right. He couldn't believe he had intended to spend Christmas with nobody but Julia Sugarbaker. It had seemed mature yesterday, but now it seemed stupid.

He wasn't aware that he'd actually fallen asleep, too, until he was waking up, inhaling recycled air from the pressurized cabin that felt almost fake in his lungs, with the cool calm having become a cold calm. The plane was grumbling a little over a patch of turbulence, but it passed even as Kurt processed what it was. Kurt wondered if he'd just closed his eyes for ten or fifteen minutes or if it had been more like an hour.

Sam, too, had woken up. His knees were pressed into the plastic tray table that was still fastened to the back of the seat in front of him, his body having slid into a boneless slouch. The old couple next to them were clutching their plastic cups of 7-Up, although the turbulence hadn't been so bad the pilot felt the need to announce his reassurances. Blinking, Sam tugged himself up straighter, picking up his lolling head.

"It's cold," Kurt murmured as he realized it, and looked up blearily at the red vent dial overhead. It wasn't open; he guessed the chill that had settled on him was because it was December and he was sitting next to the window – which, while thick, was still revealing to him white winter sky. Or perhaps he really was on the plane with the Snow Queen.

"Want my coat?" Sam offered. Before Kurt could really respond, Sam had shifted in his seat, leaning over Kurt's lap and rooting around for his jacket next to Kurt's feet.

"Oh," said Kurt, "okay."

He watched Sam push it out of the fold Kurt had tucked it into, imagining slipping his arms into it and thinking for a second about how big Finn's letterman jacket had been on him. Would Sam's jacket be big, too? Then he chuckled in sleepy confusion under his breath. Sam was draping it over him blanket-style, like he was a kid or something. He accepted the odd gesture automatically, cuddling under the cover.

Actually, the lining of the coat was just as chilly as the plane window, with the coat having been ignored on the floor for an hour or whatever, but to Kurt's pleasure, the thick quality of the wool meant it was going to become cozy very soon, and he could smell one of his favorite scents embedded in the fabric: cute boy. It was the smell of sport deodorant mingled with healthy sweat, with a pinch of cologne and an underlying sweetness of shampoo at the collar.

"Thanks," he said, surreptitiously pulling it up just so he could gather the smell closer to his nose. Not in a weird, perverted way – Sam was sitting right next to him, after all, so he didn't want to actually push his nose into it and sniff. It just smelled nice and comforting and personal, and he was surprised to realize that he recognized the way Sam smelled. Of course he did. He'd been around Sam often enough. Smelling something so familiar and appealing was a more than welcome change to the scent of filtered air and a lot of people packed into a small space together. He added, "This is a nice jacket, by the way."

"Yeah? You like it?" Sam asked, surprised.

"Uh-huh. It suits you."

"Thanks! I thought it made me look kinda sophisticated and New York. But I don't really know about this stuff. I mean, I didn't work for Vogue."

"Oh, well, if you want this to receive the One-Time Vogue.com Intern Stamp of Approval, I'm gonna have to see you work it on the runway," Kurt teased, and hid his smile in the wide wool collar.

"Put me on the 10 Best Dressed page," returned Sam.

"Hang on... Do you read Vogue.com? Or was that just a totally lucky guess?"

"Of course I read Vogue.com," said Sam. "I'm trying to make it in the cutthroat world of modeling. If all I get is runway, then I have to find out everything I can about runway. I look at all the Fashion Week videos and stuff."

"Sixteen-year-old self, are you hearing this?" Kurt asked himself out loud.

Sam blinked, then glanced over his shoulder. "Are you talking to me, or...?"

"Tell me more! Do you have a favorite designer?" Kurt wondered eagerly.

"Not really," said Sam, shrugging his wide shoulders, oblivious to the slightly creepy stare Kurt was currently engaged in, peering out from the collar of Sam's jacket and hiding his dazed smile behind it. "I don't really get the clothes so much. They're kinda crazy, especially for chicks. Sorry – women. I just like watching how people walk, and I try to do impressions of them."

"Impressions?"

"Yeah. Of their walks. I walk up and down the hallway and Tina and Blaine critique me."

"Oh. That's pretty smart."

"I saw one show where the guys were wearing these long skirts," Sam commented off-handedly.

"They were everywhere in 2011," said Kurt. "Including on yours truly."

"Really?"

"Yeah! Comme des Garçons, Givenchy, Jean Paul Gaultier... lots of designers have put men in skirts on the runway. It's practically de rigeur. They're very high fashion. Marc Jacobs wears them all the time. Diddy and Kanye have both worn them."

"Whoa," said Sam. "I wore all kinds of weird stuff for glee, but never a skirt. Unless loin cloths count. But I don't think so. It was more like flappy underwear."

"Would you wear a skirt? On the runway, I mean?"

"Sure, if they put me in one. That's the job. You think they'd make me shave my legs?" wondered Sam, who clearly had no idea of the effect he was having on Kurt, who was now pink in the face and overly warm under Sam's peacoat, excited by the topic at hand but even more by who he was on the topic with.

Sure, he'd talked the art of sequining over with Starchild – but Starchild wore guyliner of his own volition and simply lived for dark, theatrical ensembles you could find on Johnny Depp in any Tim Burton movie. He'd very happily dressed up like a steampunk circus ringmaster for one of Pamela Lansbury's shows. This was Sam! Wearing shoes with laces was on the fancier side for him. It was like seeing Finn in a red plastic shower curtain with huge puffy sleeves all over again.

The rest of the flight drained by rapidly, just sand through the hourglass, as Kurt pelted Sam with question after question on what he would and wouldn't wear on the runway (Sam had not been rocked by the notion of corsets, though he had become more thoughtful about full-on lingerie) and what he had already worn, and if he'd liked it, and if he'd wear it on the street.

With his own sorta-clueless terminology, Sam described how interesting it was when patterns and colors clashed, yet didn't look completely random. He said it made him think. He preferred ready-to-wear, but it was fun to wear the weirdest thing in the show, too, and get everyone in the room buzzing, because people watching fashion shows responded more to outrageous stuff than they did to safe stuff. For one design student's show, he'd worn a neon yellow bodysuit with leather shoulder patches, and felt kind of like a dystopian superhero. He just wished it had a cape.

Mostly, he said, he liked the response people gave him. He liked causing a stir. Trying to make stuff like neon yellow bodysuits with leather shoulder patches look cool was a fun challenge, but mostly, he felt like a rock star in front of a captive audience. Runway was his favorite thing to do, even though it usually paid nothing, because it was fun to have all eyes on him. He would do pretty much any runway work that came his way, even rinky catalogue stuff other models sniffed at, just for the experience. After all the show choir competitions he'd done, he wasn't nervous being in front of a crowd or scared of looking stupid. He was much more nervous on go-sees, where he had to talk to people on the spot.

He told Kurt about the process of go-sees and booking jobs, which Kurt had thought he was familiar with after twenty cycles of America's Next Top Model, but which sounded like a lot more work on the part of the models than anyone else in the industry. He was startled to learn that Sam took jobs from up to three different agencies, not being in an exclusive contract with any of them, and that much of his day consisted of taking calls, clearing things with his mother agency, and rushing around the city, switching between several different portfolios, just to be seen for two minutes. He'd gotten lost countless times, brought the wrong portfolio, had dozens of people casually tell him they'd, of course, be cutting off all his hair. It hadn't happened yet.

At the end of every go-see, they said, "We'll let you know," but didn't actually bother ninety-five percent of the time. The other five percent of the time, the jobs were for the very next day, so there was little to no time to prepare. Sam had to be on the ball, ready to work, all the time.

It was exciting to do all kinds of different stuff, but grueling to attain the opportunities in the first place. Sometimes he had good luck. Then he wouldn't land a single job for a couple of weeks, despite being on his go-see grind every day, and he'd start getting worried that it had all been a fluke and the last person who had hired him had just mistaken him for somebody else and he was wasting his time.

"We all feel that kind of pressure," Kurt assured him. "Going out for parts in the real world is nothing like auditioning for the school play, where they have to find a place for you. And in New York, we're all small fish in a big pond. Plankton. Microscopic protozoa."

"That's the life, I guess," Sam lamented.

They were being asked to put their seats in an upright, locked position and raise their tray-tables too soon. Kurt had never even turned his phone back on. He was kind of astonished. Four hours couldn't possibly have already passed. He was on the edge of assuming he'd accidentally booked them on a flight with a layover instead of a non-stop, but the flight attendant making the landing speech said that it was his pleasure to welcome them to Toledo, mentioned it was overcast and thirty-five degrees, and wished them all happy holidays from their friends at American Airlines.

After they had safely landed, Kurt and Sam waited for the portly man to come gather his bag with its angelic cargo before trying to make their way off the plane. Kurt was helping Sam back into his peacoat, Sam saying, "Sure you won't get chilly out there?" when the man limped up.

"Hey, junior," he said, "thanks for switching seats with me. Been on stand-by since last night, just tryin' to get in before tonight. Back's been real sore. Swear to God, these back seats are smaller, and none of 'em can handle a person of my stature – know what I'm sayin'?"

"No problem," said Kurt. "I got to sit with my buddy, here."

He got a characteristic warm shoulder squeeze from Sam.

"Thinking about being stuck at the ass-end of the plane for four hours makes me wanna go postal," said the guy, struggling with the overhead compartment. Sam reached up to help the man edge his bulging, beaten-looking cargo from where he'd squeezed it. Together they lowered it to the carpeted plane floor. "Thanks, Fabio. Here, you two. Have a Merry Christmas, okay?"

He reached into his jacket and pulled out two classic red and white striped peppermint candy canes, which Kurt and Sam took with some reluctance, thanking him.

Although wrapped, it was kinda gross knowing it had been on his person for God knows how long, and personally, Kurt wondered if he had a whole box in his pocket for a truly Merry Christmas-esque reason or or if this was more of a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Child Catcher situation. He glanced at Sam with his nose wrinkled, trying not to laugh, and Sam must have seen his effort, because he just up and poked Kurt right in the side with his candy cane, trying to get him to crack.

"I don't think we should eat these," Kurt said, as soon as the man was out of earshot. He stuffed the candy cane into his messenger bag.

"I'm starving, though!" said Sam, gathering his bags. "I didn't have time to eat."

"We could grab something in the airport," Kurt suggested. "Or, if you think you can wait till we get home, I'll make you something that falls within your crazy Mentos and flavored water diet."

"I can have all the ice I want," Sam joked cheerily.

Once Sam had retrieved his guitar, which seemed to be in all right condition, they headed through the Toledo Express Airport towards the baggage claim, where they could catch a shuttle that would take them to Lima. The airport was crisply cold, not crowded at all, and all dolled up for Christmas, with gigantic wreaths bedecked in gold cellophane bows and silver baubles.

"Wanna know something weird?" Sam asked him.

"Of course."

"I love airports."

"That's not weird," said Kurt. "They're exciting. Everyone's coming and going from all over the place. Everyone's trip has a purpose and an array of untold possibilities."

"We're passing all these people," observed Sam, looking around at people waiting in terminal chairs and standing in line at counters, "and odds are, we'll never see any of them again. We're just all here for this blip in time."

That didn't sound too different than living in New York to Kurt. He said, "I think it'd be even more exciting if people still dressed up for flights like big events, they way they did during the Golden Age of Aviation."

"You dressed up," Sam pointed out.

Actually, Kurt had toned his flight ensemble down. At first, he'd worn actual suits on all his flights. Then he'd incorporated other fashions as little nods to the art of aviation – silver stewardess wings and military-style caps, Amelia Earhart-inspired knotted silk kerchiefs, bomber jackets. By comparison, his gray Topman shirt with its white detailing and the navy blue velvet dinner jacket he'd paired it with (to which he'd pinned his vintage airplane brooch) were as casual as a set of pajamas.

"When don't I? I'm talking everyone in their Sunday best, though. Hats, gloves. It was glamorous."

"We should dress up for our flight back," replied Sam, for the third time coaxing an entirely unintended bloom of interest open in Kurt's chest.

"Don't tease me," he advised.

"I'm not," said Sam in a slightly affronted voice. "It'll be fun! I mean, I don't have real nice clothes with me, but I bet you have a hat I can borrow. We can do old-fashioned accents, too – see, doll? We'll flim-flam 'em. Make 'em think we're real hot stuff."

"Hey, you're a regular Billy Flynn," Kurt said.

"I mean, I prefer 'Fabio,' but okay," said Sam, tossing a grin Kurt's way.

*

On the shuttle, Kurt and Sam were two of four passengers, and the others were stopping in Findlay and Bluffton, making them the last to disembark.

Outside, it was silvery gray and sleeting gently, as pure as winter could be without actual snowfall. The shuttle had the heater cranked way up and a station playing Christmas music at a volume low enough for people to chat over. Kurt and Sam fit themselves into a two-seater row, which wasn't nearly as snug as the airplane but which still managed to cram their shoulders together.

It was enough of a drive from Toledo to Lima that once they were out of the city and had passed by Perrysberg and Bowling Green, Sam once again wound up nodding off in his seat.

Knowing it would pass the time for him and that, despite his good attitude, he was low on energy, Kurt just let him snooze.

He took out his phone to check his messages, unable to believe that he and Sam had been traveling for nearly seven hours already. It was early afternoon in Ohio. The day seemed simultaneously long and like it had gone by in a flash so far.

Having slept some of the flight had definitely helped, but also, Sam was proving to be a decent traveling companion, which made a huge difference to Kurt. He made no demands, registered no complaints, and had only done one impression so far – well, maybe one and a half. The modeling stuff he'd talked about was fascinating, and he'd let Kurt borrow his coat.

It really had been a good decision to bring him.

The scenery began to look familiar just outside of Lima, where brown farmland dotted by one or two lone cows turned into actual civilization again. The city was wet and coated with slush, but everything in Kurt responded with achy, patient, nostalgic familiarity. Lima was just the same as always. The Lima Credit Union had the same "tree" made of green lights strung in a cone shape to a pole in their parking lot that they'd had ever since he could remember. The mall had greenery on its parking garage and digital snowflakes cascading across its sign.

Kurt had to swallow a rising feeling of weird sadness mixed with excitement as the shuttle passed the bowling alley, Breadstix, and the hospital, which always had a nativity scene outlined in Christmas lights by its emergency room entrance. He couldn't help but think of Finn over and over. He couldn't help but think of how familiar these things would all be to Finn, too, and miss him, stung anew by the injustice of his absence and at life going on without him. But also, he couldn't wait to see his dad.

When the shuttle pulled up at the Lima Red Rooster Express – the very hotel where he, Rachel, and Blaine had thrown their terribly unsuccessful anti-prom party, which they'd all ditched in favor of actually going to prom after all – he tapped Sam's knee to wake him up.

From the Red Rooster Express, he and Sam walked with their luggage a couple of blocks to a covered bus stop, where they took refuge against the brisk wind and precipitation.

"I know it's not literally freezing, since this sleet doesn't have the decency to be snow," said Kurt, shivering, "but boy, it feels like it's about two degrees."

"We're almost home, now," Sam said reassuringly, and put a protective coating of lip balm on. He then offered the tube to Kurt.

"Oh... do you mind?" Kurt asked, although it was clear Sam didn't mind.

"Not at all," said Sam.

Gratefully, Kurt took the tube. He had an EOS balm somewhere in his messenger bag, but this was readily available, and warm from being inside Sam's coat. It was mildly cocoa butter-scented and went on smooth, fresh from Sam's mouth to his. Pressing his slickened lips together, Kurt re-capped the tube and returned it to Sam, who tucked it away again. The entire exchange was strangely comfortable.

"I'm glad you're here," he said out of nowhere.

"Yeah, I always have lip chap," Sam replied. "It comes in handy."

"Very handy," said Kurt lightly, face uselessly growing warm against the stinging cold. He hadn't been commenting on Sam's dependability in regards to moisturization. But that was all right.

*

From the bus stop near the Red Rooster, Kurt and Sam rode to the stop nearest Kurt's neighborhood.

Now Kurt was growing a little fatigued, too, from pulling his suitcase along behind him as they made their way into his neighborhood. And a dinner jacket was not a substitute for a regular jacket or coat. He'd brought a scarf, luckily, but the cold was beginning to cut through him. The backs of his arms were tingly. He wasn't sure that was good.

However, he had a vision: They would ring the doorbell and surprise his dad and Carole, who would yell happily and clutch Kurt into hugs in the cozy foyer, and would probably have enthusiasm to spare for Sam. They'd be bustled inside and Carole would heat them up something warm and filling, like soup and toasted sandwiches. He allowed himself to embellish the mental picture with holiday decor he knew Carole most likely wouldn't have up, since she didn't have his "simple opulence" outlook on decorations, so tinsel dripped from grand garlands and down the stylish tree covered in red balls, gold ribbon, and white glitter-encrusted snowflakes. He mentally lit scented candles and started a fire.

But Carole's electronic Santa that danced to "Jingle Bell Rock" and her modest Spode collection made its way into his vision too, and they were welcome. Even the ornaments Finn had made in first grade, which were just lumps of Sculpey that might be Rudolph if you took a shot, spun around, and squinted, were welcomed into his vision.

"People already have their lights on!" Sam said, heaving his guitar from one hand to the other.

"It gets dark so early these days," said Kurt.

"You like white or multicolored lights?" Sam asked him.

"White, always," answered Kurt instantly.

"Rainbow!" refuted Sam.

"Eh. White and red can look nice."

"Yeah. Or purple."

"Purple? That is not a Christmas color."

"Who cares? They should just make you happy."

Sam was probably one of those people who loved those giant, over-the-top tacky light displays some people covered their house with, programmed to flash along with techno remixes of Christmas songs, Kurt thought. He said, "I concede, there. Point, Evans."

"Hot chocolate or hot apple cider?"

"Hot chocolate," they said in unison.

"With marshmallows and whipped cream," added Kurt.

"No, you gotta have it plain," said Sam.

"Plain? Really?"

"Both whipped cream and marshmallows? Think about all those extra calories!"

"They're worth it," argued Kurt. "You're already drinking chocolate, so why not? It might as well be worth the indulgence!"

"I guess the little marshmallows are good," Sam relented with an air of reluctance, but Kurt saw that he was grinning, even though he was also exhaustedly panting visible puffs of breath and his cheeks and nose were red with the cold. Kurt knew his were redder than a kid in a Puffs Plus commercial's, too. But they were almost to his street. So close, now. His dad's hugs would warm him right up.

Again, Sam transferred his guitar from one hand to the other, swinging the hard case in front of him clumsily.

"I bet your arm's getting tired!"

"Nah," wheezed Sam. "This is great exercise."

"Just one more block," Kurt said encouragingly.

"Yeah. I remember your neighborhood."

"Oh, yes. I guess you should. It was your neighborhood for a while, too."

The moment the Hummel house came into sight, white and tidy and too big for their diminished family, Kurt and Sam fell into an eager silence, walking faster. Kurt knew it was all about the journey and not the destination and all that crap, but he'd never been so glad to be home. His body temperature was fast plummeting.

Their Christmas lights weren't on yet, but Carole's hay wreath, with its kitschy plaid ribbon, was hanging on the front door, bright against the black paint. The driveway was empty, but that probably meant Carole's Lumina was in the garage and his dad was out in the Tahoe.

"It doesn't look like anyone's here," Sam spoke up, following Kurt up the front walk.

"Maybe they're out to dinner. Is it that time yet?"

"I mean... it's old people dinner hour, but maybe they wanted to go before it's dark," replied Sam. "Or maybe they went to a movie. The new Hobbit's out."

"I'll ring the doorbell anyway, just in case," said Kurt, reaching out a nearly-numb finger to do so. Indoors, the familiar two-note chime rang. He stepped aside, then, making room for Sam to join him on the porch. Sam rested the butt of his guitar case on the welcome mat and shifted, glancing his way.

Sleet fell around them, audible as rain, and a chilly wind rustled through the bushes, but there were no footsteps coming to the door. Kurt's heart was slowly sinking.

"No one's home," he finally said.

"That's okay," said Sam, noticing Kurt deflating. "We'll still surprise 'em when they get home. They won't be expecting us then, either, so it's still good! They'll walk in, and boom."

"Yeah. You're right, this is fine," agreed Kurt, sniffling quickly and reaching into his messenger bag for his keys, which he then fit into the lock. "Let's get you in out of the cold, huh?"

"Me? You're not even wearing a real coat," said Sam. "That skinny little scarf isn't keeping you warm, is it?"

"Sure it is," lied Kurt, pushing the front door open.

Inside, lights in the den and living room were on, but it was very still and chilly. It was much warmer inside than out, and much drier. But it felt like the heat had been left off. Kurt abandoned his suitcase in the foyer, especially since it was wet, and headed right for the thermostat by the stairs.

"Still smells the same," he heard Sam comment behind him.

"Close that front door before any more cold air comes in. I've got the heat on, now, and I'm going to make us some soup," replied Kurt, passing the den for the dark kitchen. "That'll get us warm."

"Soup!" said Sam appreciatively.

He heard the thumps of Sam setting his things down, too, and with a singular focus, went to open up the pantry and see what Carole kept on hand.

The flashing light on the answering machine sitting on the counter top caught his eye. There were six messages. That seemed like a lot for one afternoon. But maybe people were calling to check in on Carole at this time of year, or confirm her travel plans.

For a moment, Kurt felt strange. The house was so quiet, he could hear the clock ticking two rooms away.

Well, he'd been walking in the near-freezing cold for a good thirty minutes; it was strange to not have wind whistling in his ears or be in constant motion, whether on foot or on a vehicle, or to hear people talking over elevator arrangements of Christmas music. Plus, this was the suburbs, not Bushwick. Of course there weren't car horns constantly blaring or endless waves of traffic or pipes moaning.

Ignoring the nagging feeling that something was off, he found a can of condensed Healthy Request savory vegetable soup and cracked it open in a rush, his hands cold enough to feel clumsy, and hurried it into the microwave.

Sam appeared in the kitchen doorway, shedding his peacoat.

"Your Christmas tree's not up."

"The nutcrackers I painted silver and bedazzled aren't in the foyer, either," said Kurt.

"Sure, the Spice Force Five," said Sam with a knowing nod.

"There's no Spode out," Kurt continued. "No red tablecloth, no kooky dancing Santa. The stockings aren't hung by the chimney with care. There's nothing. It looks like the Grinch has been here and taken everything but that wreath on the front door."

"Someone got out the tree," countered Sam. "It's in the den, still in the box, and the ornaments are in a big bin behind the couch. You think your step mom might have..."

"Gotten the tree out, but not been able to decorate it," Kurt said with a nod, putting an awkward hand on one hip and leaning the other against a counter top.

Sam's mouth pressed into a firm, sympathetic line.

In the ensuing silence, Kurt listened to the faint tick of the clock and just admitted it to himself: None of this felt right. He hadn't actually been expecting his fantasies of tinsel or a designer tree. He knew it was bound to be strange and sad to not have Finn with them on Christmas Eve, so he wasn't even expecting anything holly-jolly. But he hadn't imagined that the house would be this empty and cold. He didn't feel like he was home – just standing in a kitchen instead of in line at an airport, uprooted.

What if Carole was a mess? Would they be able to cheer her up? Or would they only remind her that her real son was gone? Had bringing Sam here really been the right thing to do? He'd been so sure till just now.

"Do you want a sandwich with your soup?" Kurt finally asked. "I know you don't like to carb up, but I also know you're famished."

Sam put his coat over the back of a dining chair. "A sandwich'd be awesome, thanks."

"Give me a few minutes to go through the fridge. I'm not sure what we have."

*

By the time Kurt had assembled and sliced hugely overloaded sandwiches with the last of several packages of shaved deli meats, poured the steaming soup into the biggest mugs they had, and put it all on a tray, he'd taken a terrible mental trip right back to the difficult week of Finn's funeral.

He had tried not to think about it for a minute, but then let himself remember those blurry days reluctantly, because the thoughts clearly weren't going to go away until he indulged them and got them over with.

People had brought them food so they wouldn't have to worry about that, but Kurt hadn't been able to eat any of it – just hadn't been able to fathom putting any of it in his mouth. However, his own attempts at making his standby favorites had proved flavorless, as if they weren't real. He guessed his faculties had been totally taken up, taste rendered meaningless. It had all been nothing more than styrofoam and made him feel sick. But he'd made sure his family ate, even if it was the neighbor's tuna noodle crumble-mush, or whatever.

He'd bucked himself up again thinking of his dad's good health and how Finn liked his sandwiches cut into triangles, and did so for his and Sam's sandwiches.

He carried the tray into the den, where he found Sam standing by the artificial Christmas tree that had joined his family along with Carole and Finn, fitting its top half into place. He'd moved the table and lamp that stood in front of the main window, exactly where they usually put the tree, and erected it all by himself, although it was tall.

"You put it up," said Kurt, trying to sound casual and not abruptly emotional.

"Yeah. Is that okay?" asked Sam. "Just thought, since it was right there in the box..."

Kurt nodded.

"I'll take it down again if – it's too much, or whatever," said Sam, moving away from it.

"No. It should be up," said Kurt, putting the tray down on one of the end tables. "Did you plug in the lights?"

"Oh!" said Sam, and ducked behind the tree. After a moment of scraping, he fit the plug in the socket and the set of white lights that had come on it came to life. "How's that?"

"Good," Kurt reported thickly.

Pushing himself up off the floor again, Sam dusted his hands off. "You sure?"

"It looks good."

"I mean, I can put it away again. You look kinda... sad."

"No, no. I mean. A little. But it's better with the tree up. Even if real ones are much prettier."

"I like real ones better, too," Sam admitted.

"You do?"

"Not really eco-friendly, I know."

Kurt smiled. "Come eat."

They sat themselves on the couch like they were the tree's audience, Sam tucking into his food eagerly.

Staring at the empty tree, a blank slate upon which nothing but lights sat, Kurt remained distracted, stirring his soup endlessly. It really was better with the tree up, somehow. Maybe he should get out the stockings, too. Or maybe that would make everyone sad. What about Finn's stocking? Did he skip it? Hang it up anyway?

It didn't take a mentalist to see where Carole had started and stopped again, faced with too many decisions and memories. These things were not like Finn's clothes, which they could not use and needy families could, or Finn's Xbox. These decorations were family things that held years upon years of memories. Finn's stocking was not something to throw away or donate or sell. That seemed wrong.

Kurt had only taken a couple of bites of his sandwich before he was getting up again.

"What're you doing?" Sam asked, his cheek full of food.

"I want to put up our stockings," he said.

He didn't have to go digging. The stockings were draped right on top of the rest of the stuff in the big green plastic storage bin.

They were all totally mismatched. Kurt had a ridiculous silver velveteen one with white fur trim from his monochromatic phase, whereas his dad's was a pretty hunter green crushed velvet lined in plaid. Kurt had picked it out for him. Carole and Finn's were handmade by her. She'd dressed hers up like Santa, and it had googly eyes that his dad and Finn both liked, tasteless guys that they were. Finn's was baby blue, with what Kurt guessed was meant to be a polar bear in a stocking cap on the front of it. Its cuff was cheesy red and white gingham. He'd had it since he was a toddler, and it was the smallest stocking by far, but he had staunchly refused to upgrade. It was that kind of sentimentality that lurked in his stepbrother that Kurt had loved and Sam had commented upon. He really had made Christmas feel important.

Underneath them, there was a slightly wrinkled red stocking that Kurt had completely forgotten about. Carole had made it two years ago. It was just felt, decorated with red and green and white buttons of various sizes, but it had Sam's name stitched on the white cuff. None of the Hummel-Hudsons' stockings had their names, since they were all so different and easy to tell apart, but Sam's did. Carole had wanted Sam to have a stocking, too, when he'd lived with them, even though he'd spent Christmas break at home with his family in Kentucky and hadn't been there on Christmas morning. It had only hung at the fireplace that one December. Kurt remembered putting a mini bottle of Sun-In in it.

"Sam," he said, picking it up so Sam could see it.

"Hey! My stocking! You guys still have that?"

"Since it's in my hand right now, I believe we do still have it," said Kurt, shaking it out a little.

"Just wonder why," Sam said.

Shoveling soup into his mouth, Sam watched him put up each of the five stockings on the white mantel, all in a row. Finn's hung right in the middle. If Sam thought there was anything depressing about it, he didn't say so.

"Hey, since we're putting those up, let's decorate the tree," he suggested instead.

"You want to?" Kurt asked, perking.

Around his soup spoon, Sam said, "Abfolutely."

Snapping his fingers, Kurt announced, "I know what we need."

*

It was quickly falling dark by the time Kurt glanced out the window and saw flurries.

"It's snowing," he sang in falsetto over Bing Crosby, who was singing "Deck the Halls" from his timeless, record-breaking Merry Christmas album, currently spinning on his dad's turntable. It had once been his mom's record, but Kurt and his dad had listened to it often in the years after the pain of her death had receded a little. It made the holidays a little more holiday-ish for them. Hearing it now, it seemed like a promise that one day, what to do with Finn's stocking would make itself clear, and his absence would simply become part of the typical landscape of the season.

"Maybe it'll be a white Christmas," said Sam, moving aside one curtain to peer out.

A box of vintage china angel ornaments in his arm, Kurt joined him, looking out at the dusting the front yard was getting. He was glad they weren't out there walking in temperatures that were now clearly below freezing, but the snow was much prettier than the mushy sleet they'd trudged here in, and he couldn't help wishing they'd seen a little of it on the way home.

Still, they were finally warm. Now it was his dad and Carole out in that weather.

Turning away again, Kurt slid his phone from his pocket.

"I think I'm going to go ahead and check in with my dad. But I won't ruin the surprise!"

"Good call," Sam said, returning his attention to the tree and brushing it with his arm, rattling some of the ornaments. One plastic candy cane fell right off. "Oops."

Kurt stifled a laugh, which Sam noticed. He scooped the candy cane off the floor and poked Kurt with it the same way he had with the real one earlier. Raising his phone to his ear, Kurt tried to steal the candy cane from Sam, but Sam evaded the grasp and gave him another playful jab. For a moment, Kurt nearly got involved in a festive game of keep-away.

"Hey, Kurt!" his dad said loudly when he picked up, sounding happy to hear from him.

"Hey, Dad!"

"Carole says hey, too!"

"Hey, Carole! Merry Christmas Eve! Where are you two right now? Out on the town?"

"At Carole's cousin's, just outside of Darbyville. We miss you, bud, but you'd hate this place," his dad said. "It's out in the country. Nearest town has a grand total of one traffic light."

"How rustic and charming," said Kurt dryly.

"Couldn't be more different than where you are now, huh?"

"I thought you weren't leaving till tomorrow," said Kurt.

"We're flying outta Columbus tomorrow," said his dad.

"So you're not going home?"

"Nope."

"I didn't realize you wouldn't be home for Christmas Eve," said Kurt.

"Haven't been home for three days! I told you we're seeing a lot of Carole's family this year."

"I know, but you didn't say when you were going – except for the flight."

"You bummed? I thought you wanted to stay in New York."

"No, no, I – just wanted to hear your voice, and all. Since it's Christmas Eve and I don't get to see you."

"Hey, don't worry," his dad said bracingly. "We'll still do our gift exchange. We're not canceling Christmas."

"Of course not," said Kurt. "Well. I miss you, Dad. Tell Carole I miss her, too."

"Will do, bub. You bake some delicious cookies, or whatever it is you're doing with yourself. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"Okay. 'Bye."

Reluctantly, Kurt ended the call.

"They're not around, huh?" Sam asked with a regretful tweak of his mouth, hanging a pearlescent reindeer.

Kurt just shook his head, gaze falling on the stockings and then to the floor.

Real and sharp disappointment was lapping at him. He'd let down the internal wall he'd put up against coming home and being utterly surrounded by the inevitable sense of loss, and now not only was Finn not there, but there was no reason for him to be there, either. All that effort, for nothing. Those plane tickets, pointless. He wondered what he'd been thinking, trying to spring a last-second surprise and crossing states to do it, dragging Sam along with him; what were they even doing now, decorating a tree for no one to enjoy?

"I feel like such an idiot," he said. "I just assumed they'd be here."

For a second, Sam seemed at a loss for words. Then he said, "You didn't know."

"I didn't even let you sleep! Just had you pack your bags and hop on a plane, and for what?"

"Christmas?" replied Sam uncertainly.

"And what a wonderful Christmas it is!" Kurt retorted. Then he sighed, instantly feeling guilty, since Sam was standing there at the window, snow falling behind him, hanging ornaments on the Hummels' tree – which he'd put up. It was like he was singlehandedly creating any semblance of Christmas the Hummel household was seeing this year. "Sorry. It's not you. You're great. I'm Ebenezer Scrooge."

"Hey, y'know, you don't have to pretend to be happy for my sake. I know you didn't wanna be here," said Sam, arm awkwardly full of ornaments. He'd really loaded himself up while Kurt had been on the phone. "Sorry I made such a big deal out of you going home. I know it's hard this year. And weird. Being here, I really miss Finn, too. Wish he was decking the halls with us."

Body heavy, Kurt flopped onto the couch.

"I knew Finn wouldn't be here, though. I'd kind of prepared myself for that. I just wanted to see my dad. We had this tradition of exchanging one present every Christmas Eve. This is the first year we haven't done it."

"That sucks." Sam hung what Kurt saw was one of Finn's impressionist Sculpey ornaments. It looked like it was possibly a snowman. "But you were gonna stay in New York anyway, right? You were gonna miss out on that there."

"Yeah. It just sounded so cool to surprise him. I just let myself get my hopes up, I guess. I do that. Then I get all upset when reality doesn't live up to the hype."

"We can still have a fun Christmas Eve," said Sam. "We can do up this tree and watch that movie about St. Louis. Anything else you wanna do? Anything you want. You name it. You wanna... make ginger bread houses? Go caroling?"

"You're dangerously close to channeling Buddy the elf right now," Kurt said.

Sam erupted with, "Smiling's my favorite!"

Despite himself, Kurt laughed.

"We can do Meet Me In St. Louis," he finally said, watching Sam squint at a mysterious knot of pipe cleaners that Kurt was pretty sure was supposed to be a snowflake, just due to the fact that they were white. "But it's not like it's my birthday, or something. We should do something you like, too. So, is there anything you want to do while we're here in good ol' Lima? Egg Coach Sylvester's car? Throw stuff in the river?"

"Uh. How about the glee club's concert?" asked Sam, clumsily piling the ornament onto a branch. "Unless you don't wanna get out in the cold again."

"Sure," agreed Kurt. "I'll be sensible and put on a real coat this time. We can take Carole's car, too, so we won't have to wait at a bus stop. Do you know when it starts?"

"Check Facebook. Marley posted about it. Hey. What is this supposed to be?"

Sam was holding up a brown Sculpey lump dangling from a piece of red yarn, a frown marring his forehead.

"I'd guess... a reindeer? Since it's brown."

"Oh. It looks like Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo," said Sam. At Kurt's raised brow, he added, "From South Park?"

Snorting, Kurt huffed, "You boys."

*

In the garage, Sam and Kurt discovered an old blue truck, but not Carole's Lumina.

"Isn't that Finn's?" asked Sam, who was insistently bringing his guitar along on their outing, hoping someone in New Directions would want to join him in an unrehearsed acoustic jam.

"Yeah... I thought my dad sold it," said Kurt. He hadn't seen it in a while, and his dad had definitely mentioned putting it up for sale, so Kurt had assumed it had sold, along with Finn's video games and laptop.

"Maybe he just hasn't been able to," Sam suggested. "It's still tough going out there."

"Maybe," Kurt said quietly. He could imagine that there were any number of high school boys just like Finn who would be happy to score this, the unflashiest of rides, just as Finn had been smug and pleased as hell when Kurt's dad had helped him find and settle a payment plan for this thing. Finn and his dad had worked on it together, removing rust and replacing a busted tail light and adding a large lock box in the back for Finn's football equipment and stuff. There was some bare metal visible on the roof of the cab and a scrape in the sky blue paint on one side. Somehow it suited the part of Finn who liked to wear North Face vests, like he was prepared to go camping or do some logging at any minute.

"Well, I guess Carole's car must be at the tire shop. I don't know why he wouldn't keep the truck there," said Kurt, more to himself than to his company, who reached out a hand and patted the side of the cab like it was something he was fond of.

"We could call Jake or Ryder," he said. "Hitch a ride."

"That's okay. We can take the truck. Finn would probably insist."

"Can't picture you driving a big old pickup," Sam commented, surprising Kurt by stepping right up onto the bumper and into the bed of the truck with ease, guitar in hand and everything. He looked like he'd scaled his fair share of vehicles. Kurt guessed he had; after all, he'd played Kenickie in Grease – with relish, as Rizzo would have said.

"'Cause they're for hillbillies and other people who regularly need to transport lawn equipment. ... No offense."

Sam just laughed at him.

They climbed into the cab to find winter had beaten them in and settled in its seats, which felt like icebergs beneath them. The steering wheel was frigid. Kurt was glad he'd found an old pair of gloves in the front closet in addition to piling on a warmer sweater and an old toggled coat. The darker it got outside, the colder.

As such, six-thirty in the evening managed to feel more like midnight as Kurt and Sam headed out into the snowy streets of Lima, leaving the Christmas tree twinkling in the front window of the house.

Kurt could tell his dad had cleaned out the truck, because the 2012 tassel from Finn's graduation cap wasn't hanging from the rear-view, his beat-up old Adidas weren't sitting around in the foot well, and the old tape deck wasn't spitting out a cassette labeled "cool tunes." It didn't have that reliable Finn smell, even though being in it still brought back memories of Finn taking up more than his fair share of room in the McKinley parking lot and parading both Quinn and Rachel around in it.

Out the passenger side window, Sam peered at neighborhood light displays, pointing out ones that he thought especially good.

"Do you ever miss living in Lima?" Kurt wondered. "Or do you miss your family and Kentucky more?"

"Both," said Sam. "But once you get used to the big city life, it's hard to imagine going back."

"Totally," Kurt agreed.

The downtown shelter was, unfortunately, busy.

Kurt parked them a couple of blocks away, sighing, "We'll have to do some more walking. Are you sure you want to lug that guitar around some more?"

"Remember how they just have the one old piano that's not even well-tuned?" asked Sam pointedly, pulling it out of the cab again.

"I wonder if Brad will be there!" said Kurt.

"Brad, yeah! You ever wonder if he owes Mr. Schue a life debt or something?"

"I've wondered many things about Brad," said Kurt.

Once they were there, they were directed to get in a line that stretched down the sidewalk, which gave Kurt an unpleasant start.

"No, ah – we're just here to accompany New Directions," Sam spoke up, holding up his guitar case. It was some fast thinking for Sam, thought Kurt, as he nodded along.

"New Directions? What?" asked the guy managing the influx. He was wearing a limp Santa hat.

"Um, the group giving a concert here tonight?"

"Oh, that, yeah. Okay, go on in. You're late, the rest of your buddies got here an hour ago," said the man, letting them past the doorway and into the frankly depressing building.

"I hear singing," said Sam immediately.

"I hear Unique!" said Kurt.

With its round tables, the shelter reminded Kurt of a cafeteria inside, although he was aware that was an almost rosy viewpoint aided by the paper decorations up on the walls and somewhat lackluster greenery bundled here and there. He and Sam edged into the crowded dining area, where people were lined up with trays, being served.

New Directions was gathered around the piano in the corner, ooh-ing and ahh-ing as Unique sang a very gospel-tinged version of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." Long-suffering Brad was, indeed, slumped behind the beaten-up piano, clad in his usual mournful black. The last of the old guard, the original members, were nowhere to be seen, rendering the group almost unrecognizable to Kurt. Along with Unique, he saw Kitty, Marley, Jake, and Ryder, but there were several new faces, too, including two Cheerios with their high-ponies as strict and tight as ever, ironically unenthused for cheerleaders.

And, Kurt noticed, there were less than twelve members. There were only eight. It wasn't rare for Mr. Schuester to need to find warm bodies willing to fill out the numbers and sway behind the major players, but hadn't they already had their Sectionals? Maybe the other members were just out of town for Christmas, or something. Kurt had long since left New Directions in the hands of others, but his inner show choir nerd was worried for them nevertheless. They all just looked so young; were they competition-worthy, even with Unique as the de-facto "New Rachel?" (Or was it now the "New Blaine?")

Mostly, the group was being ignored by the populace, but a few raggedy-looking children sat cross-legged right by the piano, watching them as eagerly as a television set. Unique, Marley, and Kitty were engaged in some spine-tingling harmony, but Kurt was willing to bet that anything other than cold and hunger was a source of delight to be soaked up by these little sponges.

Kurt's gaze wandered to Sam, who carefully balanced his guitar case at his side, flashing Kurt one of his reassuring smiles when he realized Kurt was looking his way.

Sam's hair was longer and his jeans didn't come from a Walmart sale rack, but Kurt could still very clearly see the guy who had walked out on glee's public television Christmas spectacular, not buying the "well-appointed" look Artie had been going for and more eager to ring a bell out in the cold in case someone felt like giving poor people their pennies.

He knew what it was like for these kids, Kurt thought. The Evans family hadn't been forced to sleep in a homeless shelter, but Kurt had seen the motel room where they'd scraped by, and when he looked at those children riveted to the concert, he saw Sam's little brother and sister as they'd been when he'd taken Sam some clothes. It had been a dire situation, and the closest he'd come to being personally affected by poverty.

Sam only had his guitar with him right then because the glee club had bought it back from the pawn shop for him. He'd had no choice but to take their charity before moving out of state; he'd only ever quit his stripper gig and returned to McKinley because Finn had offered to let him stay in their house. Sam might be working at Dairy Queen in Kentucky full time if Finn hadn't made the decision to go get Sam and bring him back to Ohio.

"Something wrong?" Sam asked, as Kurt's intent gaze was probably unsettling.

Kurt shook his head.

"I'm glad you suggested this," he murmured. For the second time that day, he said, "I'm glad you're here."

Unexpectedly, Sam threw an arm around his shoulder. The boy was a hugger; what could Kurt do? Nothing but accept the embrace and stay warm under the weight of Sam's arm, on the receiving end of several encouraging rubs and pats on the back.

*

The New Directions were glad they were there, too – or, at least, the older crew were happy to see Sam so unexpectedly, and Unique thrilled to see Kurt. They gathered around and enthused over how cool it was of them to come all the way from New York. The guys traded all kinds of dude-bro handshakes, and Sam hugged a shining Marley so well he lifted her off her feet and nearly knocked off her white knit newsboy cap.

Of the rest of the group, only Kitty marginally knew Kurt, and she'd just barbed him repeatedly every time she'd seen him. She didn't waste the opportunity this time, either.

"You and bargain basement Taylor Hanson circa 1999 aren't going to start fondling each other's tonsils with your tongues, are you?" she asked. "People are trying to eat, here, and they need this food to sober up for Jesus' birthday."

"What are you even saying?" Kurt responded flatly.

"All this cuddling under the mistletoe," she said, tilting her head and looking at him with a critical eye. "Aren't you engaged to Blaine?"

"No, Kitty," said Kurt simply, glancing up to find that there was, indeed, mistletoe tied up in a red bow and pinned to the wall above the nearby doorway. He and Sam weren't under it, exactly, but they were very close by. He stepped aside casually, ignoring her smirk. Mistletoe? Seriously? Like the homeless didn't have enough to worry about.

"It's cool," she said. "I'm not judging. Only God can do that. Go ahead and feed that tanorexic man-candy a little somethin'-somethin'. He looks hungry, and not for Coach Sylvester's patented holiday gruel."

"Sam and I are just friends," Kurt said, just in time for Sam to give him a clap on the back. His cheeks pinkened all on their own, but Sam didn't seem to have heard.

"Hey, Kitty! Good to see you!"

"Yeah, right!" she said, but she sounded enthusiastic and returned his hug.

"Hey – I brought my guitar," he told her with a wide, oblivious grin.

"Oh, no," she said, her face souring.

"C'mon!" urged Sam. "You know you wanna jam out with me!"

"I really don't," said Kitty, trying to turn away but running into Marley and Ryder, who had the effect of forming tall brunet wall.

"I'm always up for an encore," said Unique, popping a lozenge into her mouth. "Count me in."

Kurt hung in the background as Sam managed to form an impromptu subgroup with the four, christen them "The Baby Jesus Experience," then invite the Cheerios Kurt didn't know to join in as backup singers. They declined with epic bitchfaces. Jake Puckerman passed, too. Undeterred, Sam's sudden band took off for the piano to catch poor Brad, who was trying to gather his sheet music and likely wasn't going to escape in time.

That was when Kurt heard a familiar voice say his name, and turned to find Mr. Schuester, his hair as tremendous as ever and his vest a pretty jolly dark red one that Kurt was sure the former Miss Pillsbury had picked out for him.

"Mr. Schue!" he said, and was wrapped in a hug.

"Great to see you! But what are you doing here?" his former teacher asked, chuckling delightedly.

"Just catching the show of the year!" Kurt joked, thumbing at the piano. One foot up on the piano bench, Sam had his guitar strap slung over his shoulder and was quickly tuning his guitar while Marley rifled through sheet music and Brad contemplated dark thoughts. "Wait till Page Six finds out there was a mini New Directions reunion."

Mr. Schue said, "Why don't you join in?"

"Me, join the Baby Jesus Experience?" asked Kurt; it sounded ridiculous to him. "I think I'll just watch in awe and wonder."

"Or you could come serve food with me and Sue," suggested Mr. Schue.

"Oh, now that's an offer I can't refuse."

*

After a very rousing set of hymns mixed with standards, Sam's Christian jam band was told to shut up already, and they disappeared for some time, leaving Kurt dishing macaroni alongside Mr. Schue, Coach Sylvester, and a very large woman he learned was Marley's mom. She was jovial, smiled perpetually, and had a sneaky, giggling sense of humor that Kurt hoped Marley would someday show signs of.

Eventually, Sam resurfaced from the crowd again, curious face lighting up when he saw the plastic gloves on Kurt's hands and the apron he'd donned.

"Oh my gosh! You're the guy from the Baby Jesus Experience!" Kurt teased.

"I get that all the time, but nah, I just look like him," Sam replied, faux-modest. He jerked his chin coaxingly. "Hey, come over here."

"What is it?" asked Kurt.

"Just come see," urged Sam, heading without him over to the corner where the piano had been firmly shut and rolled away.

Turning the large serving spoon in his hand over to a cooperative Millie Rose, Kurt rounded the line of tables and joined Sam, who was digging into his coat pocket, pink-faced. He pulled out a wad of cash.

"Sam Evans, you did not strip at a homeless shelter!" Kurt blurted.

"What? No! No, dude, c'mon, I'm retired. Baby Jesus Experience just played down on the corner for the last forty-five minutes, and someone threw a –" he lowered his eager jabber to a whisper, "– someone threw a freaking hundred-dollar bill into my guitar case!"

"Oh my freaking God, you have got to be kidding me," breathed Kurt, as Sam flashed him the corner of one of the bills.

"Along with a bunch of ones, a five, and a lot of quarters and nickels. I'm rich."

"Are you sure it's real? Like, it doesn't have Santa or Obama on it? It doesn't say 'Monopoly'?"

"Looks real," said Sam. "I held it up to a street light and saw the security thread."

"Jeez. You guys must have played someone's favorite song," said Kurt. "Either that or you were really, really pitiful-sounding."

"Take it!" Sam told him, holding out the entire fold of bills. "It's the only thing I can do to pay you back for bringing me with you."

"No – no, that's okay. Sam. I'm lucky you came with me, so last-minute and all," said Kurt, physically pushing Sam's cold hand back. "Keep it. You earned it."

"No," responded Sam, in a patient and stubborn voice. "It's really not mine. Just take it, please, Kurt. It isn't meant for me."

"Of course it is. Save it! Save it for a time when you really need it."

Sam frowned at him, his lips actually tucking down. "I know I'm supposed to give this to you. After all your family's given me, I know this is the universe giving me a small way to say thanks."

"You're not Brad the piano player – you don't owe me a life debt," Kurt said. "But look, it's the holidays, so if you don't want it, let's –"

Although he was about to simply say they should donate it to the shelter, Kurt abruptly stopped mid-thought, and Sam chimed in.

"Buy a present for Carole!"

About to boil over with excitement and Sam's earnest thoughtfulness that really did remind Kurt of Buddy the elf, Kurt grasped Sam's arm tightly in his plastic-gloved hand and said, his voice taut and quivering, "Let's buy gas and drive to Kentucky. Tonight. Right now. Your family's just a few hours from here, right? Just across the state line? We could have you home with your parents and your brother and sister just in time for Christmas."

Too stunned to reply, Sam just stared at him without blinking. The straight eye contact was almost unnerving; of all things, it reminded Kurt of when he'd told Blaine he wanted to go to his house so they could fool around for the first time.

"Let's go to Kentucky," Kurt repeated. "That's what the universe is giving us."

Finally, Sam said, "It's a long drive. It's four hours."

"Four hours?" scoffed Kurt. "That's nothing!"

"With snow and stuff, it could be even longer."

"What's a little snow?"

"... You're really serious."

"I'm completely serious," said Kurt, who felt physically filled with an intense excitement that he hadn't even felt when purchasing his plane ticket, about to burst at the seams. "Why should we stay in Lima? We've said hi to the glee club. Kitty's insulted us both. Without my dad and Carole, there's no real holiday for me here. Let's take this money, go home, pack just the stuff we need, and bundle up. I'll make us a thermos of coffee and some snacks for the road. Then we'll fill the tank and hit the highway. But before we do any of that, you call your parents and make sure they're actually home!"

*

They were literally at least twenty minutes out from Lima with Kurt behind the wheel of Finn's truck, taking it steady in the gentle snowfall, when Sam seemed to fully accept that this road trip was really happening and said, "Wow. Thanks, Kurt. This is nuts, but it's awesome of you."

He was holding the thermos of coffee between his knees, since Finn's truck didn't have cup holders, and since he didn't have a pair of his own, he was wearing a pair of Kurt's dad's gloves, as well as an old white turtleneck scarf of Kurt's that he somehow rocked.

"I should've just bought you a ticket straight to Kentucky!" replied Kurt.

He'd sort of found a sense of schadenfreude over his whole situation, if schadenfreude about oneself was a thing, and finally, finally, it really seemed like Christmas. The lights and decorations and songs finally reflected how he felt inside. He was excited – like a kid squirming to open a present, or like he'd been the first time he'd scored an amazing Marc Jacobs jacket off eBay for an insanely low price tag. Maybe feeding the homeless had helped his perspective; maybe it was making his top priority all about someone else that had made him feel like he'd kicked off some kind of holiday ball and chain. He didn't know. But the more he abandoned himself to the situation, the more he appreciated that it was the polar opposite of his typical Christmas Eve and the more he felt like laughing.

"That wouldn't've been as fun," said Sam.

"Fun, huh? I'm glad one of us is having a good time," Kurt joked.

"It was fun being on a plane together," Sam claimed. At the disbelieving guffaw that earned from Kurt, he added, "It's fun to travel with someone. It's like being on a team. You get to know them in a way you wouldn't ever, otherwise."

"Well, this has been an amazing race so far," said Kurt, giving himself another hearty chuckle. "Tell me more about wearing a skirt."

"Jeez, you are caffeinated," lamented Sam.

"Hey, Sa-am," he sang, "do you want to play with the radio?"

"Me? I'll just put on country."

"I'm aware of the ramifications of my offer. As long as it's not Toby Keith, go nuts."

"I'm gonna find the all Toby Keith station," kidded Sam, poking at the ancient tape deck.

Kurt giggled. That just sounded weirdly perfect. There he was, in Finn's old pickup, on a deserted highway at nearly ten o'clock on Christmas Eve, driving through snow to get to the boonies, Sam Evans and his long legs and silly-cute ponytail in tow. All his past selves, including his safe-in-New-York self from yesterday, would have deemed this situation some kind of bad dream.

Surreal as it was, Lady Luck finally smiled upon Kurt. Although he tried his best, Sam couldn't find a country station. He went from the bottom of the dial to the top gradually, the radio picking out fuzzy signals and delivering strains of various stations through a bunch of static. They passed blips of classical music, commercials, news, some kind of thumpy club joint, some angry-sounding rock, and landed miraculously on something with soaring, harmonizing flutes.

"Stop, stop!" Kurt demanded, waving one hand at Sam's and smacking at them mildly.

"Oh my gosh," said Sam, sitting back.

"I was so afraid, Fernando," Kurt sang along. "We were young and full of life – come on, Sam, you know this song, don't you?"

"I've never heard it in my whole entire life," said Sam stoically.

Shrugging, Kurt sang, "... roar of guns and cannons almost made me cryyy."

Of course, Sam cracked – inevitably, but still royally and gloriously.

"THERE WAS SOMETHING IN THE AIR THAT NIGHT," he boomed over Kurt's enthusiastic laughter, "THE STARS WERE BRIGHT, FER-NAN-DOOO!"

Kurt swung down to the lower harmony. "They were shining there for you and me –"

"FOR LIB-ER-TY –"

"Fer-nan-dooo!"

At the top of their lungs, they practically drowned out ABBA for the entire song, Sam both whistling and pretending to play the flute here and there. The expression on Sam's face was the best part; he looked as intensely connected to the emotional mythos of "Fernando" as Rachel had ever looked about anything Barbra Streisand had ever sung. His brows drew together and he grasped his chest, really committing.

The song faded out as they sang in harmony, "If I had to do the same again, I would, my friend, Fernandooo."

"We've found a good station! Keep it here!" said Kurt, over the opening piano chords of Barry Manilow's "Mandy."

"Oh my gosh," said Sam again, his eyes shut as if in pain. "This is the best station. We've found it. The goldmine."

"Do you know this song?? Sing along!" Kurt cried. "I know you want to!"

*

Singing along with some of the worst soft rock and disco-tainted pop hits Kurt had ever heard outside some of Mr. Schuester's Regionals set list ideas came to a slow end after about an hour and a half, the truck's radio finally losing the station's increasingly weak signal. They murmured in disappointment as static filled the cab, but Kurt suspected Sam was as totally satisfied as he was. Kurt's vocal cords felt stretched and satiny, and oh God, did he love ABBA.

"Maybe I can find another good station," said Sam intently.

"Coffee, please," requested Kurt.

Thoughtfully, Sam cracked the top of the thermos open for him and handed it over. "Still good driving? It kinda looks snowier than it did an hour ago."

"Mm," said Kurt, busy sipping coffee and watching the road simultaneously. Their headlights momentarily spotlit snowflakes, and instead of looking pitchy-black out, it almost looked like a slate blue. They had passed precious few other vehicles, all big-rigs. "It'd be nice if I could use cruise control, but my dad always told me not to in weather."

"He's right. Let me know if you get tired. I can drive."

"Here in a bit, maybe?" Kurt offered, returning the thermos to Sam.

"Sure," said Sam, taking a little swig from the same spigot.

"Lip balm?" Kurt asked him.

Tucking the coffee between his legs once more, Sam dug into his coat pocket and produced the same tube of cocoa butter-scented balm he'd shared with Kurt hours and hours ago.

"You're so handy," commented Kurt, somewhat teasing, and gave his lips a light coating.

Sam merely smiled, taking the balm back when Kurt was done and slicking it over his own lips. It was a bigger job to cover all that flushed surface area, Kurt thought dimly, but Sam did a good job. His lips were well-tended and showed no signs of being even vaguely chapped.

Coughing to clear his thoughts more than his throat, Kurt said, "How 'bout finding us some more good music?"

*

Only twenty or so minutes later, Kurt pulled over into a rest stop just past the "Welcome to Kentucky" sign. It looked like it had been abandoned in the face of nuclear winter. It was absolutely empty, save for the coating of snow that stood a few inches tall, at least, on the rims of its trash cans, and most of the light was only from the reflection of moonlight from the snow and the truck's headlights.

Sliding out into the frigid night, Kurt left the driver's side door open and the engine running. He was letting out the warmth they'd built up along with the heater, but he didn't want to turn the truck off entirely, since there wasn't any kind of street lamp that he could see and there were no cars passing by with headlights lit, either. The tinny, distant strains of "Holly Jolly Christmas" coming from the station Sam had finally found seemed a little eerie out here in the emptiness. Other than the truck, the only noise was more just a lack of noise, as though the snow was muffling everything.

"Oof, my legs," Kurt said, peering around and stomping on fresh snow. Flakes were coming down at a dizzying rate.

"It's Christmas," was Sam's reply.

"Is it official now?"

"Midnight!" confirmed Sam, letting out a sigh that puffed from his mouth visibly as he walked around the front of the truck. Snowflakes were landing on his shoulders and atop his blond head, well-lit in the headlights.

Kurt suddenly remembered being at the skating rink in Bryant Park, with Blaine pointing out the clanging of bells and making a rather grand declaration that they would always be there for each other no matter what. A lot had happened since.

"Well. Merry Christmas," said Kurt, and accepted the happy hug he'd totally seen coming. It was an extra tight, squeezy one. Pillowing his chin briefly on Sam's shoulder, Kurt patted his back with a gloved hand, a warm flush of fondness sneaking up on him. Impossibly, he could feel Sam's body heat through both of their coats. Even though they were standing in a dark, cold, silent world, they were lit by the headlights and in a bubble of shared space.

After a few seconds, he was lifted bodily by Sam's enthusiasm, just like Marley had been.

"Whoa," he squeaked, laughing as his toes nearly left the blacktop of the parking lot. His patting became a clutch.

"Man, you're light!" Sam commented, and heaved him up even further, turning in a dizzy circle. Kurt's legs swung out.

"Sam," he yelped, weirdly tickled. In his dance classes at NYADA, he was the lifter, not the liftee, but he knew what to do, and bent his legs automatically, kicking his feet up behind him and entrusting his weight to Sam all at once; the spin became marginally faster. He heard Sam laughing. For those brief few seconds, he flew, but Sam set him down again in a new place, in snow unblemished by footprints, grinning with Kurt's arm still tight around his neck.

For a moment, gravity reasserted its pull on Kurt's heart along with everything else. But instead of succumbing and normalizing to a familiar beat, his heart kicked up a fight, leaping high in his chest, till it was pounding against Sam's, an embarrassing tell. Again, he was locked in one of those unnerving stares, and was somehow paralyzed on the spot.

No – this stare was going to break awkwardly, his head was saying, along with the tight embrace. Everything else in him somehow wasn't sure. His body seemed to feel very much like just staying close to Sam. Some part of him was trying to figure it out: Why was Sam still holding on to him – looking at him like that? Was this just a friendly look? Should he crack a joke?

Then Sam's head inched closer, and Kurt's heart stopped – until Sam's head tilted back again. Then it just about exploded, confused.

"God, I thought you were about to kiss me," said Kurt, a laugh shaking his words awkwardly.

"I was," admitted Sam in a low voice, shocking him. Kurt would just as soon have assumed he'd read too much into the moment, friendly as Sam tended to be; Sam could have taken the out and let him go by now, and they could be back on the highway, this hug nothing but unrelentingly wistful on Kurt's part.

"Why'd you stop?" he managed to ask.

For a moment, Sam was just as still as the surroundings, eyes looking into Kurt's with uncertainty. But with the slightest flexing of Kurt's arm against his shoulder, he was leaning in again and finding Kurt's mouth with his.

Eyelids dropping shut, Kurt heard the both of them breathing in the vacuum of silence, Sam exhaling and him inhaling, and it was almost too weird to be real. He was kissing Sam? Those notoriously plump lips were on his? They were completely soft, but managed to feel shocking and alien, too. Surely Sam had only ever kissed girls with this mouth of his and this wasn't really happening.

But it was really happening. Right then. Kurt squeezed at the collar of Sam's gray coat; snowflakes were landing on his cheeks and neck, wisping by. He was surprised enough to let out a tiny noise when Sam surged in, deepening the kiss exponentially. He tasted the faintest hint of cocoa butter under the sharper, deeper taste of coffee as Sam's lips fit against his more insistently, pressing them in and parting them and taking his breath.

His eyelashes were fluttering when Sam pulled his lips away again, the end of the kiss louder than Burl Ives singing somewhere in the distance. Sam's gulp was equally audible.

Questions hung over their heads – or, at least, they bubbled up in Kurt's. What were they doing? Was this... something? Something good? Something bad?

But around them was only quiet snowfall. Kurt knew Sam wasn't looking right at him, and he couldn't look right at Sam, either.

"Maybe we should hit the road," he whispered, without meaning to whisper. It sounded really intimate, like they were sharing a secret.

"'Kay," Sam whispered back.

They let each other go slowly, with Kurt stepping back toward the truck on autopilot. He nearly just headed right back to the nearby driver's seat, unthinking, but seeing the open door, he remembered that the whole reason he'd pulled over in the first place was that it was Sam's turn at the wheel.

"Still want to drive?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Sam. He was fisting at one of the buttons on the front of his coat a little awkwardly.

The exchange sounded normal. Like they hadn't just totally kissed and weren't going crazy, or something, from being in each other's company for too long, and Kurt wasn't exhilarated and hot-faced.

Soldiering on through the flurries, Kurt continued around the back of the truck, truly confused by where all that had even come from. He wasn't exactly against it. But he didn't know about Sam. He distractedly wondered if doing that had quelled some kind of curiosity on Sam's part, or if it had just been another letdown after a rush of excitement, part of the emotional roller coaster of the whole day.

They could probably talk it out, he decided, opening up the passenger door and climbing up into the cab alongside Sam. They shut their doors in a stagger, Kurt gazing out at where they'd just been standing, kissing, in a snowfall that was increasingly torrential.

Maybe Sam was thinking along the same lines, because he reached up and turned off the radio, removing their only real buffer.

"So, in general, was that kiss a yes or a no, 'cause – I'm feeling these vibes, but I know this is a weird time," he said.

"Uh –" Kurt couldn't even form a sentence there for a second. The blunt, honest statement was almost even more of a surprise than that kiss had been. "It... was a yes?"

"It was a yes," Sam echoed seriously.

"Yes," Kurt repeated. "Weird. But yes."

A smile tweaked at Sam's lips. Kurt eyed them, heart still beating entirely too hard for comfort. Those lips had just been on his. He wondered if Sam was going to kiss him again, and if so, were they going to make out in Finn's pickup truck??

Instead, Sam reached for his seat belt, taking a few seconds to secure it, then cranked the gear shift into drive.

So... no, Kurt realized, and hastily pulled at his own seat belt as Sam guided them out of the rest stop parking lot and back onto the deserted highway.

They were due at Sam's house, he reminded himself. If they got very sidetracked, his parents would probably start to worry that something had happened to them out on the road. He was disappointed somehow, his hopes having skyrocketed in an instant. But the disappointment wasn't enough to cancel out the tingle of excitement. Kurt didn't even want to turn the radio back on, lest the music somehow jostle or overwrite the whole exchange, so they were quiet for many miles as Sam navigated the feel of the truck and its tires on the wet highway.

"Yes," said Sam eventually, out of nowhere.

"Yes," Kurt said again, since it sounded like Sam needed to hear it again. He sort of did, too. "You?"

After a moment, Sam replied, "Yeah. Like you said. Weird, but – yeah. Yes."

"Then, yes," said Kurt, schooling himself and grasping for a sense of patience. He'd say it at every mile marker if Sam wanted him to.

*

It was nearly two in the morning when Sam pulled up to the curb beside a small house on the skirts of Nicholasville. He'd said mostly nothing the entire state of Kentucky, and Kurt hadn't tried to make him say anything more. The silence had been both confusing and reassuring. Kurt felt like maybe Sam was holding onto his thoughts, too.

"So, this is the place," Sam spoke up.

There was a chain fence with a gate and a mailbox on a post. It was small, yellow or maybe beige, and the yard was flat with clean snow. A porch light shone by a little white front door on a small porch. It wasn't the nicest neighborhood in the world, but it didn't look like it was comprised of crack houses, either; a few houses had simple Christmas lights up. It was just a little random house. This was where Sam had moved to; this was where he came home to after shifts making banana sundaes and/or wearing a banana hammock under tear-away pants, or whatever.

"We made it, safe and sound," said Kurt. He unbuckled his seat belt, but Sam just sat still with his hands on his thighs. After a moment, Kurt prompted, "You ready to see your mom and dad?"

"Oh. Yeah, we should go in," said Sam, reaching for the headlights and switching them off.

"Excited?" Kurt asked.

"Yeah," Sam repeated, with a lightness to his voice that Kurt could tell was held up by a string.

"Hey, um – I won't do or say anything about what happened to your family, if you're worried. I would never."

That may well have been it, because Sam looked at him, and had just started to smile and maybe say something when someone came out on the porch. It was a blonde woman – obviously Sam's mom – wrapped in a white robe, her arms clutched to her in the cold. She looked kind of like a Sears model.

"Let's go, so she doesn't have to stand out in the cold waiting for us," said Kurt, spurring Sam into motion.

Hurrying with his over-packed messenger bag and empty thermos, Kurt followed Sam past the gate and up the front walk. Sam's mother was reaching out for him before he was even at the stairs.

"I'm so glad to see you, honey! I was getting worried you might have gotten stuck out there in the snow..."

"Merry Christmas," Sam said, hugging her.

"Merry Christmas, Sammy," she murmured, almost rocking him in her arms. "I'm so happy you're here." After a moment, she smiled at Kurt over Sam's shoulder. "So this is your friend?"

"This is Kurt," Sam said with a nod, beckoning Kurt forward with one of his long arms.

"Hi, Kurt – Merry Christmas."

"Oh, yes, Merry Christmas," said Kurt, and accepted a light but completely Sam-esque and friendly hug from her.

"Welcome. Come in, you two! You'll have to be very quiet. A certain couple of kiddies are camping out by the tree and had a very hard time falling asleep!"

Inside, Kurt just followed Sam through a living room – a tree stood lit by the front window, and unlike the Hummels' tree, this one was real and had wrapped packages sitting underneath it, not to mention two kids in sleeping bags – and down a dim hallway to a little bedroom that Kurt discovered had bunk beds in it. After his tired eyes adjusted to his surroundings, he deduced on his own that Stevie and Stacey shared this room. The bunk beds had matching blue comforters and there was a small array of toys, plus a desk that had been piled with little backpacks. It smelled kind of like sticky fingers, but maybe that was just Kurt's imagination.

"Mom, we're here and we're fine and the bathroom's, like, right there, so it's not like Kurt won't be able to find it – so get some sleep," Sam urged. "You're gonna be exhausted tomorrow!"

"Oh, I always am on Christmas," she said, giving Sam another hug.

"I know," Sam said fondly.

"Kurt," she said with a smile, ignoring her son, "the bathroom is right next door, on the left. Are you hungry? I can make you a snack."

"Oh, I'm totally fine, but thank you," he assured her.

After just a tad more motherly fussing and another hug, she bid them what was clearly a reluctant good night, closing their door and leaving Kurt chuckling softly.

A sheepish Sam scratched his head, then started shedding his coat, asking, "Top or bottom?"

"Oh – I – no, uh, no preference. I like both," Kurt answered with a deep flush.

"Oh. Um... I meant for the beds," clarified Sam.

"Oh! God. Sorry. Um. Which should I take? I've never slept in bunk beds."

"Then you should take the top bunk. Pop that cherry."

Kurt choked, "Sure. Okay."

"Make yourself at home," Sam added, looking blissfully ignorant.

"I'm not going to fall and break my neck, am I?"

"Nah, you won't fall." Sam was unbuttoning his plaid shirt. "Unless you fall out of normal beds. Stacey sleeps up there all the time and she's never fallen out."

"All right, then. Top bunk," commented Kurt, digging into his bag for the sweats and henley he'd brought to sleep in. "How exciting. Pardon me while I slip into something more comfortable."

Thanks to all the help, Kurt found the bathroom with ease and ran his toothbrush under the faucet. The sight of himself in the mirror over the sink was a bit of a shock, since he looked so weary and yet wide-eyed. He wasn't going to sleep, was he? Not between the coffee, his adrenaline running high and his thoughts whizzing like snowflakes in a whirring flurry, and sleeping on an elevated surface from which he could fall and really score some nifty, festive holiday bone fractures.

Trying not to make a sound, Kurt padded back to the bedroom.

Sam was in his boxers.

No big deal! But Kurt stopped short at the sight anyway, then immediately looked at the floor as he eased the door shut behind him, despite the fact he'd seen Sam in boxer-briefs not unlike the ones he was standing around in right then many times on his fridge. Actually, he'd seen Sam more undressed than MILFs who gave him money to strip in front of them, but now he did feel kind of guilty looking at all that exposed skin, because something between them had taken a shift since they'd left Lima.

He stood there with his jeans, sweater, jacket, and Topman shirt all draped over his arm as Sam dug through his backpack. Sam's clothes were tossed over the desk chair, so Kurt just wordlessly added his to the pile while Sam stepped into a pair of blue thermal pajama bottoms that cuffed at his ankle and showed off his pert ass and long legs.

Casually, still snapping the waistband into place, Sam headed off to the bathroom.

"Oh, jeez, I'm trying not to read into this top bunk thing," Kurt whispered to himself, looking up at his destination, then scaled up the ladder in his socks and crawled onto My Little Pony sheets. It wasn't really too high up.

He was settled under the comforter when Sam returned, still gloriously shirtless, gazing at him with that shameless eye contact from before, his hair free from its ponytail. After a somewhat intense moment, he gave Kurt a smile and flipped off the light, leaving Kurt to wonder if it had actually been intense or if it was just him. Kurt could practically feel his pupils struggle to keep up with the sudden darkness.

"You gonna be okay up there?" Sam asked, making his way in the dark to the bed under Kurt's.

"Sure, sure. If you hear a girlish scream, it's just me careening off the bed in a Thelma and Louise-like blaze of glory."

Sam snickered. "Okay. Well. Wake me up if you decide you wanna trade. I don't mind."

"You'll probably pass out as soon as your head hits the pillow," Kurt told him, rolling onto his stomach and gathering the pillow under his cheek. It had colorful ponies on it. At least it was soft.

"Well, obviously I want Santa to come. He waits till you're asleep."

"Mm-hm," said Kurt sardonically, rather than full-on suggesting Santa might get impatient and hogtie those who weren't cooperative.

He heard Sam exhale deeply, rustling under his covers, and felt a fruitless strain of excitement in the pit of his stomach that he tried to squash, push away, dampen. But Sam was so close. Closer than ever. Just within reach.

That was probably what most kids felt like on Christmas.

*

When Sam's dad woke them, they were not ready to be awake at all. Kurt had zero memory of even closing his eyes to go to sleep in the first place. It took him a good thirty seconds, blinking at some smiling pony on his pillow, to even remember where he was, how he'd gotten there, and all the rest. Remembering that he and Sam had kissed – and that Sam had wanted to know if there was a green light ahead of them – woke him pretty effectively. But his body was obviously not fully recharged. He eased himself down the ladder from the top bunk, finding Sam sitting on the bottom bunk, looking up at him, blond hair mussed.

"Morning," said Kurt.

Sam gave him a curling smile. It was not quite the sweet, reassuring kind.

"Hey."

The morning was white. The snow in Nicholasville hadn't fallen as thick as it had near the Ohio state line, but it was still enough to be charming.

Christmas in a house with young kids – a family that wasn't his – was certainly different than what Kurt was accustomed to. There was a lot of loud cheer and some actual screeches when Sam walked into the room. Stevie and Stacey hadn't been told Sam was on his way home and Stacey, in particular, was taken completely by surprise. Sam grabbed her and they bear-hugged for so long that it had to set some kind of state record, at least.

Odd as he felt encroaching on their Christmas morning, Kurt was ushered along and given a seat on the couch, right in the middle of the action, so he tried to rub some bleariness from his eyes and be awake and fully present and attentive for the festivities. Mrs. Evans gave Kurt a little plate with a cinnamon roll still warm from the oven and poured him a cup of coffee, and gave Sam a bowl of deliciously fragrant orange and apple slices.

They made Stevie and Stacey, who had already eaten and fully demolished their stockings when they'd gotten up at least two hours ago, wait till Kurt and Sam had finished their breakfasts to open presents. Kurt ate as fast as he could for them, but next to him, Sam took it teasingly slow and seemed to enjoy doing so. Kurt took the time to look around the room, taking the sort of country-ish decor, and gaze at the Evans' Christmas tree, which was imperfect, crooked, and droopy only in ways real evergreens could be. There was an honest-to-God popcorn garland on it. He wondered if any of the ornaments Sam had made growing up were on the tree, or if his family had lost that stuff when they'd lost their house in Ohio a couple of years ago.

When Sam finally swallowed his last bite, there brewed a small storm of tearing open presents, leaving wrapping paper carnage everywhere, and completely shocked exclamations that were pretty adorable, Kurt had to admit. Stacey got a doll that looked just like her. Stevie got a scooter Jake Puckerman would have approved of. They got a red plastic disc-shaped sled, new pajamas, a couple of books, and many other small toys.

God, it brought back so many memories Kurt had totally discarded since Christmas had become more about clothes and cash and Apple products for him. His dad had gotten him a tea service set one year, which he'd asked for, but his dad had also gotten him some cute little plastic desserts to put on the tray. He'd helped Kurt learn to make hot tea so he could throw tea parties. It was a skill Kurt still regularly employed to this day.

The whole event was centered around Stevie and Stacey. Sam and his parents had trinket-y gifts from Stevie and Stacey, but that was it – till Mr. Evans produced packages out of nowhere and handed them to both Sam and Kurt, both of whom were startled. Kurt's name was on the tag of his package and everything, although it claimed to be from Santa.

"I thought the phone upgrade I got in October was my present!" Sam protested.

"It was! But everyone gets a little something to open," said Mr. Evans with a smile.

"Everyone!" said Mrs. Evans.

"Thank you so much," said Kurt, truly touched. He quickly realized that Sam's parents hadn't even known they were coming until it was well past dark last night, so they must have done some last-second shopping. They absolutely needn't have, but it lit Kurt's spirits right up.

Thinking of Sam's stocking at his house, Kurt neatly opened his package at one end, while Sam tore off paper in a grand rip, just like his kid siblings.

"Oh, awesome!" Sam said appreciatively. He was already stuffing his hand into a pair of black winter gloves that were going to do him a lot of good in New York City.

Kurt's gift was in a regular white shirt box, wrapped in snowflake-printed tissue paper. He glimpsed red buffalo plaid – classic – and guessed exactly what it was before he even pulled it out. It was a totally quintessential trapper hat, thick faux fur in its ear-flaps and on its brim. Kurt had quite a few off-the-beaten-path trapper hats, but this one was completely Kentucky.

"I love it!" he exclaimed.

"Sam said you like furry things," said Mrs. Evans.

"I do," said Kurt, elbowing Sam big-time. Since when had Sam paid any attention to what he liked and wore? "I love a good hat and I love a good fur accessory. And this is the perfect combination of the two!"

Sam was shrugging, but he looked pleased.

"This is so nice," added Kurt sincerely. "Thank you!"

"Thanks for bringing our son to us," said Mr. Evans. "Best gift in the room, hands-down."

Sam was the one elbowing Kurt now.

*

The rest of Christmas day was spent eating more, watching Stevie and Stacey get into their toys, then changing out of their pajamas so they could take Stevie and Stacey out on the sled. Mostly, Sam pulled them around in the yard and the street by a peppermint-striped rope handle, sliding them over snow that wasn't exactly ideal for sledding on but clearly offered some good times anyway. His winter gloves provided some good padding. Kurt's ears were kept warm under his butch new trapper hat, which Sam reached out and patted at one point. It felt playful, yet not.

His phone battery desperately needed charging, but Kurt called his dad anyway to say Merry Christmas and asked if he remembered that old tea set.

"What old tea set? The one on display in the china cabinet? The one you installed a light over so everyone could see it?" kidded his dad.

"I was just thinking about it today. It made me really happy, remembering finding that under the tree on Christmas morning. Thank you, Dad," said Kurt.

"Aw, there you go getting all sentimental on me," said his dad.

"Who, me? I'm just complimenting your taste in porcelain," said Kurt.

"Hey, you picked it. I was just the middleman."

During the afternoon, it quieted down some, and Kurt was lured by the familiar noises of basketball on TV back to the couch, where he fell asleep sitting up, listening to sneakers squeak on the court and announcers drone and horns go off.

When he woke up, he found someone had put a fleece throw over him. Sam was next to him on the couch. He was just sitting there with his leg crossed and his phone in hand, watching the game, probably – but a flare of heat went off in Kurt's gut anyway.

Sam noticed him shifting, glancing over and elbowing him again. It seemed to Kurt like a silent way of checking in, but he didn't know that for sure. To him, it fell in some mysterious gray area between friendly and flirting.

It went totally without saying that whatever was going on with them was on hold, not to be revisited until they were completely alone again. Nothing more was going to happen until then. Just limbo. So frustrating... agonizing, even... to not know... and to have to wait to find out...

He let himself look at Sam's handsome profile for a moment, then closed his eyes and fell back asleep, waiting.

*

That night Kurt found himself back in the top bunk, messing with a cheap tag poking out of the end of the pillowcase restlessly. He was wondering if they were going to be safe to drive back to Lima tomorrow, or if there was more snow due. Over Christmas night, some of the highways had frozen, and there was no way he was going to drive on icy bridges.

But unless it thawed in the afternoon, they'd be here another night.

That was good for Sam. Sam deserved to spend all the time he could with his family, being doted on by his mom and clapped on the back by his dad and mobbed by his worshipful younger siblings. But it really taxed Kurt's patience. While Christmas day had gone by in a sleepy blur, just a blip in comparison to their endless Christmas Eve journey, now that it was over, all he wanted was to be alone with Sam. Really alone, and not in Stevie and Stacey's bunk beds.

Finally, Kurt pushed his hand away from the pillow, not wanting to worry the tag right off. His fingers slipped over the edge of the bed, reminding him of how high up he was. He just let his arm dangle, the crook of his elbow tucking over the side of the mattress.

When warmth touched the backs of his fingers, Kurt was actually drifting off to sleep. He only woke up a little, knowing it was just Sam reaching up from the bottom bunk, probably to give his hand a playful smack. They'd been elbowing each other all day. He grasped unthinkingly, and Sam's fingers immediately twined into his in a clumsy, uneven grip.

For a few seconds, it felt wildly dangerous to be even somewhat, slightly, playfully holding hands. Even alone, in the dark, in separate beds, it was physical contact. And it lingered, their fingers re-folding steadily.

Breaths softly huffing against his pillow, Kurt rubbed his thumb over Sam's knuckles and got a similar response, Sam's long, boyish fingers caressing his. The pad of his thumb slid all the way along the back of Kurt's. The grip was soon warm and sweaty, and still, Sam didn't let go.

*

To Kurt's everlasting shock, Sam was the one concentrating on the weather report the next morning, waiting for the latest projections on whether the temperature was going to rise. He drummed his hands on his thighs awkwardly when Kurt passed him by, eyebrow arched.

In the kitchen, Sam caught Kurt by the elbow mid tea-pour.

"The roads only get bad towards Ohio," he said.

"So I guess we're staying another day?" asked Kurt.

Mouth scooting to one side, Sam said, "We could go. Just, y'know, not all the way home."

"Sounds intriguing," said Kurt lightly, putting down the kettle.

"Motel," murmured Sam, a soft, brief offering that sort of socked Kurt in the gut.

After peering at Sam and determining that he was really being serious, Kurt whispered, "You know my answer's 'yes.'"

He saw Sam's eyes brighten.

*

Never in his life had Kurt stayed at a motel that didn't at least have a recognizable chain name, but when Sam pulled into the lot of a dingy brown place called "The Long Buck," Kurt found the name to be rather auspicious. He also found the way Sam glanced over at him with a slightly nervous smile very promising.

While Sam headed into the office and got them a room, Kurt pulled down what passed for a sun visor in this old truck in search of a mirror. Even if it was ridiculous and vain, he was sort of concerned about his hair, since it had been smushed under his trapper hat for a while.

There wasn't a mirror, so he sat back, pulled off his gloves and hat, and tried to adjust his hair purely by feel alone, looking at the string of rooms in the dim afternoon. Their paneling was painted dark brown, while the roof was red. There were only a couple of other cars in the lot, and many piles of shoveled snow. One of the cars had snow piled on its roof, so it looked like it hadn't gone anywhere in the last couple of days. Someone was spending Christmas in this place. Kurt guessed that didn't necessarily have to be as depressing as it sounded. Maybe it was another couple of horny college boys, desperate for some place to hook up.

God, he and Sam were really about to hook up in this redneck pit stop, weren't they? The Kurt Hummel of yesteryear was already germophobically washing his hands. But this year's special holiday edition was ready, and didn't even bother to Yelp the place.

"Room seven," said Sam when he returned, sliding back into the driver's seat.

"Ah, my lucky number," said Kurt flirtatiously.

"Must be mine, too," said Sam, raising Kurt's brows. First Sam had secretly held his hand, then had gotten them out the door of the Evans household with far more ease and less long group hugs than Kurt would have expected, and now he was... flirting back?

He handed Kurt the key to the room before taking the wheel again. It had a wooden oval key chain attached, a very majestic-stanced stag burned into the grain.

As Kurt might have guessed from the key ring and all the siding on the outside of the rooms, the inside of the room was entirely wood-paneled. He nearly winced when Sam turned on the light. Whatever ambitious soul had decorated this place had obviously been going for a rustic cabin kind of theme, but it must have been done in the 80s or early 90s. Light almost shone off the cheap bedspread, which had long vertical hunter green and gold stripes running over red printed branches and leaves. There was a generic painting of a lake hanging over the headboard of the bed, and brass lamps stood on cheap tables on either side of it. The carpet was dark green, sort of worn. The wall facing the outside had a big window and had fake logs lining it to further the delusion that the room could remotely resemble a log cabin.

"Huge bed," Sam muttered from behind him.

The fact that there was only one bed hadn't even occurred to Kurt in light of the heinous decor. Attention to anything else dwindling, Kurt scooted in, setting his messenger bag down by a small circular wooden table that had two mismatching wood dining chairs pulled up to it. He put the key on the table, then leaned against it, pretending he rented motel rooms with boys all the time and couldn't have been more relaxed. Aware his chest was working to pull in big breaths that were derailing his attempt to look cool, Kurt watched Sam shut the door behind them and drop his backpack aside, too.

They just stood there for a few moments in the frankly freezing motel room, regarding each other, till Kurt broke the silence.

"I feel like Eva Gabor in Green Acres," he joked.

"Dunno who or what that is, but, uh... I hope it's good," said Sam, trying to push his hands into the pockets of his jeans even though he was wearing his rather thick new gloves and he could barely get his fingertips in.

"Are you nervous now that you've got me where you want me?" Kurt asked teasingly.

"Little bit," said Sam, copping to it readily enough, but he stepped towards Kurt anyway, who straightened. He was beginning to really appreciate the fact that Sam wasn't trying to run game with him.

"Don't be," he said in a friendly voice, reaching out for Sam's hand. "It's just me."

He got a soft breathy laugh and a smile as he squeezed Sam's hand through the protective layer of his glove. "That's kinda why I'm nervous, though. 'Cause it's you, and – I dunno. You're different."

"I can't deny that," admitted Kurt, plucking at the cuff of the glove till he got a good grip and was able to slide it off Sam's hand. "You've never messed around with a guy, right?"

Shaking his head, Sam folded his lips anxiously and let Kurt tug his other glove off.

"It's easy. Odds are, whatever you like is something I'll like," Kurt told him throatily, meeting his gaze.

Just a moment of that connective eye contact had Sam bending in to kiss him.

A big hand, warm from wearing gloves, tucked under his jaw, newly firm. Kurt inhaled deeply, smelling the remains of Sam's last cocoa butter lip balm application, whatever thread of patience he'd managed to grasp in the last couple of days unwinding and snapping right there.

Scattershot memories of how it had felt to kiss Blaine, Adam, and that terrible shirtless Santa all rippled in Kurt's mind, but this was somehow different. All the guys he'd ever kissed were actually gay, or at least bi enough to swing his way long enough to rob him, but this was a boy friend, not a boyfriend. Even if it was a bi-curious experiment, this hook-up, it wasn't anonymous or with someone Kurt had only known for a few hours. Sam was Sam; he was somehow a part of Kurt's life. And he could remember so many of the times he'd seen Sam pine after and kiss girls from glee, he felt amazingly aware that Sam's lips on his was extraordinary.

Aching with some emotion he couldn't really identify, Kurt twined an arm around Sam's neck, fingers brushing over the silky curl of Sam's ponytail, encouraging him as he had at the rest stop.

Their mouths met increasingly tightly, like for a minute they were caught up in confirming and reconfirming their interest, until it boiled over and Sam was just kissing him hard. It was amazing. Easily amazing. To be crushed into a kiss against lips like Sam's and feel the force of so much eager attention. And it was so easy to let his hand go from touching Sam's hair in a guiding way to pulling the thick rubber band out of it, freeing it from its ponytail. Kurt dug his fingers, awkwardly clutching the band into his palm, into thick blond locks.

Then Kurt groaned, because Sam was opening up their mouths and slipping his tongue in against Kurt's. He hugged Sam to him, giving him a welcoming, velvety-soft lick, getting washed over by a new swell of shared heat.

At some point, Kurt pushed Sam's coat off his shoulders and it hit the floor behind them. One of his shirts, some ugly plaid number that was hanging open over a long-sleeved t-shirt, was next, and Sam just rolled his shoulders eagerly, helping Kurt get it down his arms. Then came his t-shirt. Then Sam was bare-chested. One brush of his fingers across it told Kurt just how smooth he was, shaven quite clean. He gasped against Sam's mouth. He'd not really been anticipating how sinfully sexy that could feel.

They parted, panting openly, and Sam dropped his hands to open his belt. Kurt attacked his own coat, unfastening toggles quickly, then whispered, "Bed."

The big king-sized mattress, covered in that ugly polyester bedspread, gave a squeak as Sam dropped himself onto one side.

It squeaked again when Kurt climbed onto it, straddling Sam's lap and dropping his coat onto the floor beside Sam's.

Getting with the program, Sam grabbed and tugged Kurt's soft maroon sweater off him, staring up at him intently. Static electricity snapped in Kurt's hair, and he swore he could feel it crawl over his skin as Sam's gaze dropped from his face to his chest.

Laughing under his breath for no other reason than Sam was silky-smooth and managed to have a tan even in this winter weather, and he, Kurt, was about as pale as snow and red-tinged and not nearly as sculpted in comparison, Kurt unfastened his own belt, evening the playing field.

"Can we get naked?" Sam asked him lowly.

"Yeah," breathed Kurt, too heated to stand a burn any slower. "I wanna see you."

"Wanna see you too," Sam whispered, putting an intensity into Kurt's muscles as he grasped Sam's shoulders and pushed him down by them, hands then flying to undo Sam's fly.

They were down to their underwear as quickly as they could manage it, kicking their shoes and jeans off. Surprised, pleased relief welled as Kurt saw that Sam was every bit as aroused as he was. It had seemed like a vague possibility that Kurt might have to coax that kind of response out of him in a more direct and manual fashion, if Sam wasn't quite on the same page as him, or something.

"Mm, but you're not nervous at all," Kurt drawled approvingly, biting on his lower lip and reaching right for the arc of dick in Sam's boxers.

"Oh, gosh," huffed Sam. If anything, he grew under Kurt's palm, cock twitching.

"Oh, gosh, indeed," Kurt echoed teasingly, sitting himself warmly on Sam's lap with the feeling that he was welcome.

With a dizzy expression on his face, Sam panted there on his back and tried to catch his breath, adjusting to the sudden friction and attention. Before too long, he seemed to pull together some focus. His loud pulls for air were cut for a couple of seconds as he swallowed and eased his fingers in a tentative cup against Kurt's junk, returning the touch.

"Yeah," escaped Kurt's lips in a heated breath. That was all that was needed for Sam to grow bolder, squeezing him through the cotton blend of his briefs.

Kurt could pretty much tell when it clicked for Sam that he wasn't feeling something completely new – that this was something familiar to him in the way his own body was. An ease and eagerness flooded in, and soon Sam was assertively tugging at Kurt's waistband, working the briefs down around Kurt's bottom of his own curious volition.

It was Kurt's turn to gasp, "Oh, god, oh my god. Sam," as Sam wrapped a hand around his dick and pumped it, knowledgeable and unafraid. Sam's hand was much bigger than any he was used to.

The sight of all that smooth muscle and loose blond hair and oversized mouth pinching in tense, aroused concentration was almost too much to take in. It really didn't make sense, clashing with both reality and expectation. But it was so familiar, Kurt felt like he was burning up. He felt like he'd been waiting much more than a couple of days to be with Sam like this. And now that he was, finally (finally), Sam stroking him jarred with any and all mental pictures he'd allowed himself to secretly half-imagine up in the top bunk in Stevie and Stacey's room.

He was shamefully close to coming when he leaned over, one hand to the mattress and one kneading restlessly at Sam through his underwear, and kissed Sam with all the intensity in him. Distracted, Sam paused, groaning softly and opening his mouth for Kurt's tongue. Then he reached around Kurt's back, pushing Kurt's briefs down even more with one hand and grabbing at his bare ass with the other, pulling him down onto his tight washboard abs.

"Mmf," Kurt let out, impressed. He shivered as Sam's hand went wandering from his waistband up his spine, sweeping across his skin gently and stirring the air around them enough for Kurt to realize how cold the room actually was. It really didn't matter, since Sam was so hot underneath him, but it raised gooseflesh in his skin anyway.

Sweeping his tongue over and past Sam's lower lip, Kurt wasted no time in getting his hand down into Sam's underwear to return the favor.

He felt Sam's hips pump automatically as his fingers slid around his stiff shaft – felt his chest rise over a deep breath and heard the slight growl as he let air out again through a tense throat.

Kurt was sure Brittany had probably been pretty good at hand jobs, but Kurt knew that by virtue of both default and repeated practice, he was better, and Sam was soon gasping through their kiss. His hands restlessly roved up Kurt's waist, touching his shoulder blades, and down again, melting those goosebumps away.

"Kurt," he managed chokingly. "'M gonna come –"

"Oh? Maybe you should move your underwear," panted Kurt, eying the sweet impassionated dent between his drawn brows.

His hands clenched at Kurt's ass tightly for a second, then one scrabbled between them and jerked his waistband down, letting Kurt jack him without the stretchy material hampering him for a couple of seconds. Then he was coming, hot jizz gently but maniacally splattering his ribs and abs and Kurt's side, and Kurt breathed in the sharp new scent, piecing it into the familiar immediately: how Sam's come smelled.

After giving Sam a courtesy half-minute or so to be in a daze, Kurt shifted off Sam's lap and snagged his underwear to pull it down and off his legs, fully revealing him from head to toe. He looked as amazing as he did in pictures. No – even better, not airbrushed or oiled up or posing. Just real, with puddles and droplets of white come sitting on his abs and dark gold hair trimmed close to the skin around his softening cock. Because he could, Kurt feasted his eyes.

"Come back here," Sam said lowly. Kurt could feel his spine tingle.

"What, here?" he asked, slipping his knee back over Sam's lap.

He got pulled down onto Sam again, inhaling sharply as his dick smeared in the come still warm on his belly. His face wound up in front of Sam's, and their eyes met again, although Sam's were heavy-lidded and their faces were so close it was unnatural. It brought Kurt back to where they were – a cheap, ugly motel outside of Lexington, and again, it made no sense when Sam's hand lifted and touched his hair lightly. He wanted to purr anyway. Mouth pulling in a small smile just for Sam, Kurt let his gaze slide away, enjoying the touch privately.

He grunted in surprise when Sam rolled them both onto their sides, then hummed as Sam palmed his chest. His upper body was much more narrow than Sam's, and Sam's hand was so big, it seemed easy for him to touch a lot of Kurt at once. He supposed he was only used to his own hands – and still, somehow, Blaine's. More than anything, Sam's hand was curious as it traveled up and down, investigating his abs and belly button and almost non-existent pecs, but Kurt still felt like it was a good touch. Friendly. Learning. He simply let it roam, stretching his arm up around Sam's shoulder and earning himself a kiss.

He only broke from Sam's mouth to whisper, "God, Sam, touch it," when Sam's hand skimmed over his erection.

Sam's fingers wrapped around him, but slid wetly – his shaft was slick with Sam's come, making every slide of Sam's grip fast and effective. Moaning in his throat, Kurt swiveled his hips, but Sam kept up with him eagerly, wrenching yet more come out over his fingers as Kurt shot off in his hand. A belated sense of his old prim nature hit him when he realized Sam was looking down, watching his dick blurt every wet wad out, the heat singing in him delirious and shocked. Again, his heart was thumping against Sam's chest. Again, he was in Sam's arms.

"Sam," he breathed senselessly.

"Yeah, Kurt," Sam whispered back.

They relaxed together, lips meeting again. For some reason it still felt as improbable as it had back at the rest stop; Sam's beautiful mouth on his, interested and soft. They had long since kissed any trace of lip balm away.

*

Darkness fell before what Sam had called "old people dinner hour." Kurt and Sam were under the green striped blanket by then, too. Kurt had declined Sam's offer to turn on the heater, since it was much more pleasant to depend on each other for warmth. Worked like a charm. They drifted in and out of companionable silences.

"Glad you said yes," said Sam. "I mean. Yes at the rest stop. But yes to here, too. A cheap motel... I didn't know if I'd just offend you, suggesting it. And this place? I know it's not the nicest. There's not exactly any amenities. No cable. No wi-fi. No coffee-maker or mini-fridge. Before Christmas Eve, I always thought you were kinda... high-maintenance."

Lifting his head from Sam's chest, Kurt gave him a questioning stare, brow furrowed.

"Not that that's a bad thing!" Sam said quickly. "I live with two totally high-maintenance people, and I flatter myself that I am super good at dealing with them. Maybe I had the wrong idea. Or maybe you just changed a little, living in New York. I know I have. I'm, like, way more city."

Satisfied, Kurt snuggled back down, and Sam squeezed his shoulder.

For a minute, Sam fell quiet.

Then he said, "I like traveling with you. If I had, like, a checklist for an ideal travel buddy, you would tick off almost every box. Cool, spontaneous, funny... you make everything interesting and smooth. You're really good at packing..."

As Kurt looked up at him, flattered and warm-cheeked, Sam smiled one of his sweet smiles.

"Are we really going to dress up and do old-timey accents on the flight home?" he asked Kurt eagerly.

With a waggle of his eyebrows, Kurt nodded. He'd forgotten about that, but the fact that Sam hadn't and actually wanted to do it warmed him further.

"I'm totally stoked for that," said Sam. "I had such a good Christmas. ... Did you?"

"Mm-hm," Kurt hummed, the upwards tilt of his face finally inviting Sam to kiss his mouth.

Making out quieted and contented Sam for a few minutes. Heat was building up under the blanket. Kurt rubbing the smooth skin of Sam's chest was slowly stoking a fire in him, and he knew it was going to last all night.

"We never did watch Meet Me In St. Louis," Sam murmured.

Kurt smiled dreamily.

"Next year."