“Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen … Hey, baby!”

“Hey.”

Oh no. Blaine frowns with worry when he hears Kurt’s reply. His husband, who had been a vibrating thread of excitement earlier that morning - singing Christmas carols, and bouncing from room to room, quadruple checking that everything looked parfait - has gone monotone.

Blaine hangs up his coat and heads down the hall to the living room. It’s not a long walk through the pine green walkway, covered from end to end on both sides with framed family photographs, but with the massive amount of holiday decorations they’d put up this year, Kurt is a little difficult to see at first glance. But as he approaches the doorway, Blaine finds his husband slouching on the sofa, still dressed in his brand new Alexander McQueen suit. He’d loosened his tie, unbuttoned a few buttons, and kicked his shoes across the room. There they lay, overturned in front of the fireplace, too close to the heat to be good for the leather.

If Kurt is letting the finish on his shoes get ruined and one of his favorite suits wrinkle, his day can’t have been good.

“Uh … how was the photoshoot?”

“I need a drink,” Kurt grumbles, waving his fingers at his husband, signaling Blaine to get him one.

“It’s only two in the afternoon!” Blaine kicks off his own shoes and takes a seat on the floor beside his husband’s left leg so he can rub his foot.

“And?”

“And you don’t drink!”

“It’s never too late to start.”

Blaine focuses his knuckles on Kurt’s arch, knowing that’s the spot to hit when Kurt’s in a sour mood. “That bad, huh?”

“That bad?” Kurt laughs dryly. “You might say that. Look at the tree.”

Blaine gazes at their Christmas tree, overflowing with an eclectic collection of expensive heirloom ornaments and handmade creations by their daughter, and sighs. “It’s a beautiful tree.”

“It is, isn’t it? But did you know it’s uneven?”

“I did not.” Blaine tilts his head from side to side, trying to see it. He can’t. It must be one of those miniscule things that only photographers notice, like the fact that Kurt’s right ear is supposedly longer than his left.

“Well, not the tree so much” - Kurt scoots closer to his husband - “but the presents underneath it. Apparently it was bereft of presents.”

“But we have presents.”

“Not enough presents …” Kurt moans when Blaine hits just the right spot with his talented fingers. “Apparently, in order for me to be convincing in my role as Executive Fashion Editor at Vogue and earn my right to be featured in the center spread for Christmas, our tree needed more presents. Extravagance is the key. Excess.”

Blaine does a double-take of their tree, at the stacks of presents that weren’t there when he’d left gathered anew around the base. “I was wondering where the avalanche of gifts came from. I thought maybe you’d gotten motivated.”

“They’re not ours. They’re empty boxes,” Kurt mutters, sinking into the couch cushions. “They’re there to make our tree look fuller.”

“I feel sorry for the poor prop guy who got stuck wrapping all those.” Blaine snickers … until he feels his husband’s knee knock him in the ear. He looks up at Kurt glaring back at him, and his final snicker shrivels into nothingness. “Oh no! You wrapped them?”

“A-ha.”

“How many?”

“Roughly five dozen.”

“Oh, sweetie! Why!? Don’t they pay some schlub good money to do that kind of stuff?”

“Yeah, well, supposedly his wife went into labor,” Kurt groans, his head falling back as he pinches his eyes shut, “so he had to leave early … the jerk.”

“That bastard.” Blaine coughs to hide the resulting laugh because really, Kurt? He can’t blame the man for rushing off to be with his wife when she gives birth to their baby! But Blaine still sympathizes. There had to be someone else they could call in to do the grunt work. Isn’t that what interns are for? Speaking of … “Nice to see they left you to clean up the mess.” Blaine sighs, looking at the number of boxes underneath their tree. “We’re going to have to deal with these before the peanut comes home. We don’t want her getting the wrong impression about the size of her haul.”

“You know, all I’ve wanted to do since the crew left is set one of those little motherfuckers on fire with my mind.” Kurt squints hard at the box closest, checking one more time that he can’t. “Could you imagine how satisfying it would be to hear the paper crackle … see the sparks fly as it burns …?”

Blaine considers that. Even though he himself has never wanted to throw a wrapped present into a fireplace, other things come to mind: Calculus textbooks, the various cumbersome costumes he’d had to wear at Six Flags during his summer gig back in high school, a childhood neighbor’s obnoxious Chihuahua. He understands wanting the satisfaction of watching something you loathe devoured, consumed out of existence. A pop from the fireplace draws his attention there, to the fire Kurt had lit for ambiance, its single log still burning, breaking down in its cradle. He knows that burning a present in their fireplace probably isn’t the smartest thing to do, especially wrapped in metallic paper, but if it makes Kurt feel better, then where’s the harm in disposing of one?

He gets up from the floor. Kurt whimpers as he leaves, raising his foot to remind Blaine what he was doing and that it was important. But when Kurt opens his eyes, he sees Blaine by the tree, juggling one of the smaller fake presents in his hands. “Why don’t you chuck one in the fireplace then?”

Kurt sputters a laugh, but his brow draws together when Blaine stays put, tossing the package up in the air and catching it.

“Are you … are you serious?”

“Why not? I mean, it’s not going to be as fun as lighting it Firestarter style, but you’ll still get to see it burn.”

Kurt rises from the sofa. Without fixing his suit, he walks towards his husband.

“Come on.” Blaine hands the present over. “It’ll be great for stress relief.”

“What about sex?”

“We can do that afterward.” Blaine winks. “But, for now, let’s set some presents on fire!”

“I … I can’t,” Kurt says, but takes the present out of Blaine’s hands with a quickness that makes him giggle. “It’s just … it’s crazy!”

“It’s crazy that you had to wrap them in the first place! And for your own Life and Style shoot, too. Anna should be ashamed!”

“Shhh!” Kurt slaps a hand over his husband’s mouth. “She has eyes and ears everywhere! I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these presents is bugged!”

“All the more reason to burn them then, in my opinion.”

Blaine watches Kurt contemplate the gift in his hands, taking longer than he’d anticipated – long enough to start re-thinking himself. So he comes up with a solution to move this party along. “Well, if you’re not going to” – He reaches for the box – “then I’m going to …”

With an angry flash of Kurt’s blue eyes, Kurt tosses the empty box over the safety grate and into the fireplace. Blaine and Kurt watch as the fire engulfs the package, immediately eating away at the wrapping paper. Black holes form, their edges curling back, the entire thing throwing off a sprinkle of gold and silver. They watch the box burn until the paper is gone, the remaining cardboard innards collapsing into ashes.

“God!” Kurt moans so deeply it sounds sexual. “That felt better than I thought it would!”

“See? I told you this was a good idea.”

Kurt reaches past Blaine and grabs a handful of presents, shaking them to make sure they’re empty, and then tossing them into the fire. For a moment, the boxes overwhelm the flames, and Blaine thinks that Kurt may have snuffed them out – the power of the presents and their sparkly wrapping too strong. But with an impressive whoosh! the stack lights on fire. Even before those boxes are properly singed, Kurt grabs more.

“We can’t burn all of them!” Blaine laughs. “Our fireplace isn’t big enough! Plus, I’m pretty sure the smoke is going to be toxic!”

“That’s okay,” Kurt says, chucking one more in for good measure. “I’ll hide them behind the real presents. Then every time Tracy misbehaves, I’ll pick one up and toss it in as a warning!”

“That’s mean!” Blaine laughs.

“I’m just kidding! I’d never do that! In fact, we should probably stop now. Tracy’s going to be home any min---”

“Daddy! Papa, I’m … aaahhhh!”

Kurt and Blaine, huddled close together and laughing into one another’s shoulders, stop with a choke as the bloodcurdling scream of their only daughter fills the room. They turn and stare at the little girl, both mentally preparing with breakneck speed to field the questions and accusations that Tracy is sure to lob at them.

“Honey …” Blaine starts first, seeing as – in his pressed dress shirt and slacks - he’s the parent who doesn’t look like a desperate madman, as opposed to Kurt, who looks like he spent the afternoon sleeping on the sidewalk in a $2,000 designer suit.

“Wha---wha---?” Tracy pants, her eyes darting from Kurt, standing beside the fireplace with two presents in his hands; to Blaine, in the process of handing over one more; to the fireplace, flames climbing higher as the charred skeletons of other gifts burn to a crisp.

“Tracy” - Kurt puts the empty boxes carefully back on the pile and raises his hands in surrender - “it’s not what you think.”

“Daddy? Papa? I … ah!” And with that, Tracy faints, positioning herself in front of a nearby recliner first, then dropping into it with a hand thrown over her forehead. Kurt and Blaine look at their little girl, probably honestly devastated over the loss of what she thinks is a genuine present … but so obviously faking.

Blaine looks at Kurt.

Kurt looks at Blaine.

They open their mouths at the same time.

“That’s your daughter.”