Boston Legal Christmas Fic!
Well, a day late and...not so much a dollar short, I present Alan/Tara Christmas fluff! (Heh, I kept looking for a point in the thing. Clearly Alan and I share a problem.)
It wasn’t snowing, not by a long shot, and although Alan hadn’t been dreaming of a white Christmas or even anticipating one with any sort of enthusiasm…it would have been nice. Instead, Christmas was gray. Empty gray streets, edges sharpened in the chill air. Gray suits of businessmen milling in the hotel lobby, hovering feet from the bar as though an arm’s span of distance could camouflage their intent. Every television station seemed to have made the decision to play It’s a Wonderful Life; he flipped through the channels to one frozen gray moment after another before giving up on the device altogether.
He’d have liked to wear a red and green striped sweater, preferably one he could claim had been hand-knit by some fictitious relative because the sleeves were unraveling. He settled for a red and green striped tie.
On the way to Tara’s, driving in silence, he couldn’t stop glancing at the radio. That slight tweak of the dial, the second spent fighting to acclimatize oneself to whatever familiar lyric emerged from the speakers, seemed like too much trouble when the temperature was nearing zero and his gloved hands were locked to the steering wheel. He parallel parked outside Tara’s building, between two empty spots. He needed something intricate to do, something that didn’t involve bows or paper smeared with reindeer. He needed to stop thinking about the gift tucked into his coat pocket, a box he hesitated to touch in the same way he hesitated to read over his own letters. Easy enough to purchase a gift for someone he loved-he’d had years of practice, despite what he liked to flatter himself was popular opinion. Purchasing a gift for someone who loved him, however, had proven nearly as difficult as imagining a scenario that might require him to do so.
He rapped on her door, because Christmas seemed to call for that, and was pleased when Tara answered almost immediately. “Alan,” she greeted and just as her tone dipped toward mild admonishment he realized this was the first time they’d forgone that instant of rueful happiness when she opened the door and contemplated whether or not she should even allow him in. He didn’t miss it. Not yet. “You’re late.”
“I had the tree to consider.” Attempting to conceal a four-foot tall, flame-retardant, non-allergenic, but extremely lifelike artificial Christmas tree behind his back with one hand while holding a bottle of wine in the other was one of the most difficult tasks he’d undertaken all week. Perhaps because he’d spent the better part of his time at the office addressing Christmas cards. Shifting rather unsteadily, he set the tree down between them, where it tottered unnervingly.
“I have a tree,” Tara said, eying the artificial evergreen as it finally ceased to wobble. “A considerably larger tree.”
“It’s not about the size, Tara.” Alan was on tiptoe, eyebrows raised, too, as though that would somehow aid him in peering over Tara’s shoulder at the interior of her apartment. “It’s the accommodation of gifts that concerns me. I feared you might not have enough tree for the-no doubt numerous-presents I’m to receive.”
She smirked and eased the bottle of wine out of his grasp, fingertips pressing lightly on the sleeve of his coat. “This gains you admittance. You’re lucky.”
He picked the tree up by its unfortunate rendition of a star-cheap plastic, no blinking or sound effects to speak of--and followed her inside. He’d been counting himself lucky for some time now.
“What’s Christmas like in England?” All the presents fit nicely under one tree; his had been relegated to the position of tabletop decoration and possibly emergency doorstop. He and Tara fit nicely on her couch as well, posture lazy enough to hint at sprawling to come. He tilted his head to one side, ostensibly to better absorb the room’s dim lighting, the glimmers of colored light that specked the tree. What it actually did was bring his head a hairsbreadth away from resting on Tara’s shoulder.
She sipped her eggnog, the drink of the hour, and shifted just close enough for him to abandon any pretense of interest in the lights. “We drank tea, ate figgy pudding, and lamented the decline of imperialism.”
He closed his eyes, breathed in her scent mingled with that of pine needles, and murmured, “You’re mocking me. That’s not permitted on Christmas.”
“Really.” His eyes fluttered open a fraction of a second too late for the eyebrow lift, and instead he witnessed her returning her glass to the table, straightening the coaster with feigned disinterest. “However do you cope?”
“I usually make an effort to sleep through it.” A sip of eggnog accompanied that thought, calm, measured, and entirely for show. He suspected she knew how much he disliked the beverage and was gaining some secret enjoyment from watching him drink insincerely.
“With whom?”
He laughed and plunked his glass down next to hers with a resounding clink. “Anyone naughty enough to qualify. Let’s open presents.”
Alan noted with some interest-jealousy wasn’t a word he intended to add to his emotional vocabulary, not ever-the assortment of packages, bags, tissue paper, and ribbons arrayed beneath the tree. He took one at random, tracing the Tara scrawled across the card in arching, fluid strokes. “Who’s this from?”
She smiled at him with unabashed bemusement. “My aunt. I want to open your present, Alan.” The syllables of his name lingered, heavy as the box in his hands. He set it aside, among snowmen and angels and trees and Santas, and drew his own gift out from the pile cascading around the tree.
The paper was red, nothing more, the inscription simple: “To Tara, Love, Alan.” He’d agonized over the wording for the better part of Christmas Eve, the better part of the day prior as well if time spent fantasizing through a deposition counted. Decision made, he’d reconsidered at the last minute, pen poised over the newly wrapped package. In the end, he’d written it, and the drink he’d poured himself after doing so had been purely incidental.
The smile she graced him with upon reading it made him abruptly suspicious that she’d witnessed the entire ordeal. “The clerk at the store insisted on writing that. His name’s Alan, too. We bonded,” he said.
She unfurled a corner of the paper, sliding a finger under the tape binding the wrapping together. “I trust you’ll give him my thanks.” She unwrapped meticulously, methodically, removing every strip of tape, smoothing every crease before setting the box on the table and lifting the lid.
“You’re free to pawn it once you’re through with me,” he said quickly, shifting to one knee for a better vantage point. Alan usually enjoyed giving gifts-unwanted gifts in particular-because they provoked a reaction. His words could be dismissed, his actions ignored, but a tacky present had to be acknowledged for at least as long as it took the recipient to find the nearest trash can.
She held the necklace up to the light, and for that, for not being obliged to scour her expression for some hint of what she was thinking, he silently thanked her. He watched the necklace, looped over her fingers, instead; the dull gleam of silver in the dim light.
“Alan.” She coughed-he detected some faint undertone of amusement lurking in the sound.
“Tara.” He shifted his gaze to meet hers, immediately regretting the long span of seconds he’d spent ignoring this smile, her eyes, her lips.
“It’s beautiful. Why are you still seated under the tree?”
He glanced over his shoulder as though to ascertain that the tree was indeed there, and nearly received a branch to the eye for his trouble. “I’m not sure.” He frowned at the tree disapprovingly before abandoning it for the less dangerous couch, sinking into the cushions beside her.
“Shall I put it on?”
Alan shook his head, caught her-surprisingly warm-hands in his own, and was reminded how over half a year ago they’d sat on the very same couch and, for the sake of a kiss, he’d administered the inexplicably potent combination of vodka and a fabricated anecdote.
He could see them, six months later, on this same couch, but that was probably because their fingers were locked and whenever he looked at Tara things had a way of slowing, of extending to infinity. He shook his head again. “I tend to unwrap with great vigor. Things are torn.”
All things turned out badly in the end; he’d believed it when he said it to her that night and he believed it now. But if they didn’t end…
He didn’t conclude the thought. Maybe he was learning.
And recs! (These are from yuletide, and, well, there were only two BL stories and I'm reccing them both, because they're both pretty phenomenal.)
Three Dreams, Five Women--This one was written for me (so you have me to thank for it!), and it has wonderful Alan-Denny interaction and glimpses into Alan's subconscious...good stuff.
"I dreamed about Lori and Brad having sex in a Volvo," he said, because he'd had enough of picturing Tara in his own post-mortem period and he wasn't in any mood to plan Denny's funeral.
"I've never had sex in a Volvo," Denny said.
"Maybe tonight I'll dream about the burial," Alan said, "and someone will have sex in a Pinto."
Manful--(Link goes to text only because the other doesn't work). Alan/Brad, the pairing that will never cease to make me snicker. Some great lines in here, and the author actually writes both men very well. Why anyone would even bother to write Brad well...I mean... Nah, it's pretty damn funny. And there's no actual sex, so don't be scared. Not too scared, anyway.
"No," Alan says, "stop doing that."
"What?" Brad asks. The man's got to be a mind reader.
"That thing you people do, to explain other people you don't quite understand -- or, excuse me, don't want to understand. I'm not making small-talk, I don't really want to be buddies -- I don't have buddies and, I know this may seem odd to you, but I'm quite content not having buddies, actually -- I simply have an honest question, which you have answered, and now you're psychoanalyzing me. Like, I might add, every woman I have ever dated since nineteen eighty seven."
"I am not," Brad begins.
"Yes yes, of course," Alan acquiesces, "you're the Ken in this relationship."
It wasn’t snowing, not by a long shot, and although Alan hadn’t been dreaming of a white Christmas or even anticipating one with any sort of enthusiasm…it would have been nice. Instead, Christmas was gray. Empty gray streets, edges sharpened in the chill air. Gray suits of businessmen milling in the hotel lobby, hovering feet from the bar as though an arm’s span of distance could camouflage their intent. Every television station seemed to have made the decision to play It’s a Wonderful Life; he flipped through the channels to one frozen gray moment after another before giving up on the device altogether.
He’d have liked to wear a red and green striped sweater, preferably one he could claim had been hand-knit by some fictitious relative because the sleeves were unraveling. He settled for a red and green striped tie.
On the way to Tara’s, driving in silence, he couldn’t stop glancing at the radio. That slight tweak of the dial, the second spent fighting to acclimatize oneself to whatever familiar lyric emerged from the speakers, seemed like too much trouble when the temperature was nearing zero and his gloved hands were locked to the steering wheel. He parallel parked outside Tara’s building, between two empty spots. He needed something intricate to do, something that didn’t involve bows or paper smeared with reindeer. He needed to stop thinking about the gift tucked into his coat pocket, a box he hesitated to touch in the same way he hesitated to read over his own letters. Easy enough to purchase a gift for someone he loved-he’d had years of practice, despite what he liked to flatter himself was popular opinion. Purchasing a gift for someone who loved him, however, had proven nearly as difficult as imagining a scenario that might require him to do so.
He rapped on her door, because Christmas seemed to call for that, and was pleased when Tara answered almost immediately. “Alan,” she greeted and just as her tone dipped toward mild admonishment he realized this was the first time they’d forgone that instant of rueful happiness when she opened the door and contemplated whether or not she should even allow him in. He didn’t miss it. Not yet. “You’re late.”
“I had the tree to consider.” Attempting to conceal a four-foot tall, flame-retardant, non-allergenic, but extremely lifelike artificial Christmas tree behind his back with one hand while holding a bottle of wine in the other was one of the most difficult tasks he’d undertaken all week. Perhaps because he’d spent the better part of his time at the office addressing Christmas cards. Shifting rather unsteadily, he set the tree down between them, where it tottered unnervingly.
“I have a tree,” Tara said, eying the artificial evergreen as it finally ceased to wobble. “A considerably larger tree.”
“It’s not about the size, Tara.” Alan was on tiptoe, eyebrows raised, too, as though that would somehow aid him in peering over Tara’s shoulder at the interior of her apartment. “It’s the accommodation of gifts that concerns me. I feared you might not have enough tree for the-no doubt numerous-presents I’m to receive.”
She smirked and eased the bottle of wine out of his grasp, fingertips pressing lightly on the sleeve of his coat. “This gains you admittance. You’re lucky.”
He picked the tree up by its unfortunate rendition of a star-cheap plastic, no blinking or sound effects to speak of--and followed her inside. He’d been counting himself lucky for some time now.
“What’s Christmas like in England?” All the presents fit nicely under one tree; his had been relegated to the position of tabletop decoration and possibly emergency doorstop. He and Tara fit nicely on her couch as well, posture lazy enough to hint at sprawling to come. He tilted his head to one side, ostensibly to better absorb the room’s dim lighting, the glimmers of colored light that specked the tree. What it actually did was bring his head a hairsbreadth away from resting on Tara’s shoulder.
She sipped her eggnog, the drink of the hour, and shifted just close enough for him to abandon any pretense of interest in the lights. “We drank tea, ate figgy pudding, and lamented the decline of imperialism.”
He closed his eyes, breathed in her scent mingled with that of pine needles, and murmured, “You’re mocking me. That’s not permitted on Christmas.”
“Really.” His eyes fluttered open a fraction of a second too late for the eyebrow lift, and instead he witnessed her returning her glass to the table, straightening the coaster with feigned disinterest. “However do you cope?”
“I usually make an effort to sleep through it.” A sip of eggnog accompanied that thought, calm, measured, and entirely for show. He suspected she knew how much he disliked the beverage and was gaining some secret enjoyment from watching him drink insincerely.
“With whom?”
He laughed and plunked his glass down next to hers with a resounding clink. “Anyone naughty enough to qualify. Let’s open presents.”
Alan noted with some interest-jealousy wasn’t a word he intended to add to his emotional vocabulary, not ever-the assortment of packages, bags, tissue paper, and ribbons arrayed beneath the tree. He took one at random, tracing the Tara scrawled across the card in arching, fluid strokes. “Who’s this from?”
She smiled at him with unabashed bemusement. “My aunt. I want to open your present, Alan.” The syllables of his name lingered, heavy as the box in his hands. He set it aside, among snowmen and angels and trees and Santas, and drew his own gift out from the pile cascading around the tree.
The paper was red, nothing more, the inscription simple: “To Tara, Love, Alan.” He’d agonized over the wording for the better part of Christmas Eve, the better part of the day prior as well if time spent fantasizing through a deposition counted. Decision made, he’d reconsidered at the last minute, pen poised over the newly wrapped package. In the end, he’d written it, and the drink he’d poured himself after doing so had been purely incidental.
The smile she graced him with upon reading it made him abruptly suspicious that she’d witnessed the entire ordeal. “The clerk at the store insisted on writing that. His name’s Alan, too. We bonded,” he said.
She unfurled a corner of the paper, sliding a finger under the tape binding the wrapping together. “I trust you’ll give him my thanks.” She unwrapped meticulously, methodically, removing every strip of tape, smoothing every crease before setting the box on the table and lifting the lid.
“You’re free to pawn it once you’re through with me,” he said quickly, shifting to one knee for a better vantage point. Alan usually enjoyed giving gifts-unwanted gifts in particular-because they provoked a reaction. His words could be dismissed, his actions ignored, but a tacky present had to be acknowledged for at least as long as it took the recipient to find the nearest trash can.
She held the necklace up to the light, and for that, for not being obliged to scour her expression for some hint of what she was thinking, he silently thanked her. He watched the necklace, looped over her fingers, instead; the dull gleam of silver in the dim light.
“Alan.” She coughed-he detected some faint undertone of amusement lurking in the sound.
“Tara.” He shifted his gaze to meet hers, immediately regretting the long span of seconds he’d spent ignoring this smile, her eyes, her lips.
“It’s beautiful. Why are you still seated under the tree?”
He glanced over his shoulder as though to ascertain that the tree was indeed there, and nearly received a branch to the eye for his trouble. “I’m not sure.” He frowned at the tree disapprovingly before abandoning it for the less dangerous couch, sinking into the cushions beside her.
“Shall I put it on?”
Alan shook his head, caught her-surprisingly warm-hands in his own, and was reminded how over half a year ago they’d sat on the very same couch and, for the sake of a kiss, he’d administered the inexplicably potent combination of vodka and a fabricated anecdote.
He could see them, six months later, on this same couch, but that was probably because their fingers were locked and whenever he looked at Tara things had a way of slowing, of extending to infinity. He shook his head again. “I tend to unwrap with great vigor. Things are torn.”
All things turned out badly in the end; he’d believed it when he said it to her that night and he believed it now. But if they didn’t end…
He didn’t conclude the thought. Maybe he was learning.
And recs! (These are from yuletide, and, well, there were only two BL stories and I'm reccing them both, because they're both pretty phenomenal.)
Three Dreams, Five Women--This one was written for me (so you have me to thank for it!), and it has wonderful Alan-Denny interaction and glimpses into Alan's subconscious...good stuff.
"I dreamed about Lori and Brad having sex in a Volvo," he said, because he'd had enough of picturing Tara in his own post-mortem period and he wasn't in any mood to plan Denny's funeral.
"I've never had sex in a Volvo," Denny said.
"Maybe tonight I'll dream about the burial," Alan said, "and someone will have sex in a Pinto."
Manful--(Link goes to text only because the other doesn't work). Alan/Brad, the pairing that will never cease to make me snicker. Some great lines in here, and the author actually writes both men very well. Why anyone would even bother to write Brad well...I mean... Nah, it's pretty damn funny. And there's no actual sex, so don't be scared. Not too scared, anyway.
"No," Alan says, "stop doing that."
"What?" Brad asks. The man's got to be a mind reader.
"That thing you people do, to explain other people you don't quite understand -- or, excuse me, don't want to understand. I'm not making small-talk, I don't really want to be buddies -- I don't have buddies and, I know this may seem odd to you, but I'm quite content not having buddies, actually -- I simply have an honest question, which you have answered, and now you're psychoanalyzing me. Like, I might add, every woman I have ever dated since nineteen eighty seven."
"I am not," Brad begins.
"Yes yes, of course," Alan acquiesces, "you're the Ken in this relationship."