Work Text:
"You missed a spot."
Token glares through the plastic tree branches of the giant fake Christmas tree he is currently wedged behind. "Are you going to help or just sit there and tell me everything I'm doing wrong?"
Lounging back on the plush, violet-colored sofa, Jason smirks, holding his steaming mug of hot chocolate with both hands. "I think we both know the answer to that question."
"'You're such an ass," Token huffs with a roll of his eyes.
"Maybe." Jason shrugs, blowing carefully on the liquid inside of the bowl-sized mug. "But doesn't that mean you love me even more?" He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. "Aren't you all about the booty?"
"...That's it," Token mutters after a moment of speechlessness. "I'm breaking up with you."
"No, you're not," Jason replies calmly, completely unconcerned by the threat. He takes a big gulp of hot chocolate, licking his lips and savoring every last drop.
Struggling to untangle himself from the string of Christmas lights he's holding in his arms, Token snarks back, "Yup. As soon as I get these lights up, I'm gonna do it."
"Nah." Jason sets his hot chocolate down and picks up his phone, lazily scrolling through his excessive amount of social media apps, checking for updates.
"Uh, yeah."
"Never gonna happen."
"Oh, it's gonna happen," Token assures his current boyfriend. "Twice, if I have to."
Jason looks up from the Instagram feed displayed on his screen, challenge gleaming in his eyes. "Nuh-uh, cause I know your weakness."
"Excuse you?" Token scoffs, carefully stepping out from behind the tree, holding the lights over his head as he tries to evenly place them in the branches. "I don't have any weaknesses."
"Right," Jason drawls, very obviously checking out a specific part of Token's anatomy as he leans around the Christmas tree. "Except for when I–"
"Okay." Craig holds up his hand from where he is sitting on the floor, next to Tweek. The two of them are working together to put hooks in all of the ornaments in Token's box of decorations to get them ready for hanging on the tree. "That's about all of that I can take for one night." He hands Tweek a hook, making sure he doesn't accidentally scratch him with it. "Here, babe, you can do that green one, it matches your eyes."
Tweek takes the hook from Craig with a smile. "Aww, thanks, Craigamuffin," he says, pulling out a rarely-used pet name just for this special occasion. "You're so sweet." He leans over and kisses Craig on the cheek, eliciting a blush from the noirette and a chorus of gagging sounds from the other side of the room.
"I think I'm going to throw up." Jason pretends to wipe some nonexistent vomit off of his face. "How come you guys get to be all sugary and disgusting but we can't flirt with each other?"
Craig shoots a middle finger over his shoulder. "Oh, fuck you, we're fuckin' adorable."
As if summoned by some kind of Christmas magic, Clyde wanders over, a frosted snowflake-shaped sugar cookie in each hand and a big, goofy grin on his face. "Did someone say my name?"
"No," Craig mutters under his breath, jabbing the end of a hook through the top of a Santa Claus ornament.
Exasperated, and clearly at least twenty percent regretting hosting their long-running Christmas Eve tradition of tree-decorating and hanging out, Token uncoils another section of the string of Christmas lights in his arms and snaps, "Clyde, could you quit eating all the cookies and actually help like you promised? You said you'd put the tinsel on!"
Clyde shoves an entire cookie into his mouth, spraying crumbs all over Craig and Tweek as he starts to chew. "Yeah, but - oh, sorry, guys!" He takes a step back from his friends and holds up a finger as he swallows. "I can't do the tinsel till you get the lights on, and, well…" He eyes the tree, giving Token a shrug. "It kinda looks like it's gonna take you a while."
"Well, if I didn't have to do it all by myself," Token says, shooting Jason another pointed glare, "it probably could've been done by now."
"Oh come on, T," Jason protests. "You're like eight feet taller than me. How much help could I really be?"
"...you know that would make me fourteen feet tall, right?" Token looks up at the ceiling, practically pleading with whatever entity exists up there to grant him an extension on his patience limit before he goes insane.
Grinning mischievously, Jason cocks his head with a smirk. "And you know what they say about tall guys–"
Clyde waves his arm in the air, nearly chucking his second sugar cookie across the room in his excitement to answer, "Ooh! That they make the best dancers!"
"What?" Token is the first to break the awkward silence. "That doesn't even make any sense."
"I don't know," Tweek says, carefully setting an ornament down onto the floor and nodding towards Craig. "There might be something to it. Craig's a great dancer."
"See?!" Clyde crams the other snowflake cookie into his mouth and points at Tweek triumphantly, appreciation for the support he'd just offered shining in the brunette's eyes. But instead of being convinced, Token and Jason just burst out laughing, while Craig pulls his hat down to cover his eyes, blushing bright red.
Barely able to get the words out through laughter, Jason chokes out, "Since when do you dance, Tucker?"
Determinedly keeping his face angled at the floor, Craig mutters, "Since fuck off, that's when."
Token scoots around behind the tree again as he continues placing the lights, his hands shaking he's laughing so hard. "Do we get to see a demonstration?"
"Yeah!" Jason wipes tears of joy from his eyes with the hem of his t-shirt and leans back on the sofa, still chuckling. "I could use a Christmas miracle."
Craig pushes his hat out of his eyes just enough so that he can glare down at the box of ornaments, wishing for the first time in a long time that he could activate his laser vision at will, and not just during times of crisis.
Tweek grabs his hand and squeezes it gently, giving him a little smile. "What do you say?" he asks quietly.
"Tweek…" Craig whines, shifting his gaze to their intertwined fingers. If Tweek asks him to, he'll do anything, even if that means making a complete ass of himself – and they both know it. "Do I have to?"
"No." Thankfully, Tweek very, very rarely abuses that power. "But wouldn't you love to prove me right and shut them up?"
Craig lets out a heavy, world-weary sigh of, "I'll think about it," which is as good as an agreement. "Just please don't make me wear something stupid."
"Ooh!" Clyde reaches into the huge cardboard box of Christmas decorations in the middle of the floor, grabs a handful of shiny silver and pink tinsel from within, and wraps strips of it around his body. "You guys should totally have a Christmas themed dance-off! Couple versus couple! Winners get ultimate bragging rights!" He strikes a dramatic, tinsel-covered pose, with his hands clasped together above his head and his hip jutting out so far it's a wonder he doesn't lose his balance and tip over onto the floor. Clyde takes his self-assigned position as Friend Group Cheerleader very seriously, but nobody would ever mistake him for a graceful person.
Even just the thought of what Clyde is suggesting makes Craig cringe. "I don't need to win a stupid dance-off to have bragging rights, Clyde," he says with a roll of his eyes.
"Wow, what are you saying?" Jason sits up straighter, holding a hand to his heart, looking wounded. "You think you're a better couple than we are?" He turns to Token. "T, did you hear that?"
Token sighs, far more focused on the lights than any of the typical ridiculousness happening in his living room. "Yeah, I heard, but–" He inches around the back of the tree, carefully pulling on the string of bulbs, letting out a huff of frustration when they get caught on a particularly annoying branch. "I'm a little tied up here–"
"Not yet," Jason mumbles, reaching for his mug again.
"What?" Token looks up, having genuinely missed that statement.
Innocently sipping on his hot chocolate, Jason says, "Nothing, I just think you're going to love your Christmas gift. What were you saying?"
Token hesitates, and a shadow of suspicion crosses his face, but he shrugs it off, figuring it's probably best to just move on. "I was saying that I'm a little too busy to be defending our honor right now. Why don't you do it?"
Jason flashes him a sweet smile, the expression almost unnatural on his usually sassy face. "Because you do it so much better than I do, babycakes."
From the floor, Craig groans loudly, untangling his hand from Tweek's to cover his mouth. "Oh, God, now I'm going to puke."
Tweek immediately passes him one of the two bottles of imported Fiji water that are sitting on the floor beside them, which Craig gratefully accepts.
"Thanks, honey," he says, twisting off the cap and bringing the bottle to his lips.
Jason rolls his eyes and mimes sticking his finger down his throat while Craig takes a sip of water to settle his stomach.
"I don't know why you guys are even bothering, honestly," Craig says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and replacing the lid on the bottle. "You know Clyde's about two seconds away from making a whole fuckin' PowerPoint presentation about this."
"Hey!" Clyde protests, crossing his arms. "I am not!"
Craig looks up, fixing his best friend with the most skeptical of skeptical expressions. "Right. Just like you didn't eat all of the cookies that Tweek made me for Christmas."
Defensive, Clyde discreetly brushes crumbs off the parts of his clothing that are still visible beneath the tinsel wrapped around himself. "They were just sitting on the table! How was I supposed to know they weren't communal cookies?"
"They had my name on them!"
Tweek reaches out, gently placing his hand back on Craig's again. "Craig, it's fine," he says. "I can make you more." He slides his hand up Craig's arm, scooting a bit closer to pull him into a hug, leaning his head on his boyfriend's shoulder. "It's Christmas Eve, we shouldn't be fighting."
Craig sighs, pulling Tweek as close as possible, and reluctantly agreeing, "I know, you're right, I just–" Quietly, he confesses, "I really wanted those cookies."
Tweek lifts his head up, his lips just barely brushing against Craig's ear when he whispers, "I have something better than cookies for you later, if you can be patient."
Craig shivers, blushing like crazy, a million possibilities of what Tweek could have in store for him running through his mind. Before he can pull himself together enough to make a similar promise back, Token claps his hands loudly and triumphantly steps back from the tree.
"Aha!" he exclaims, gesturing to his handiwork with an extremely self-satisfied smile. "Finally!" Over his shoulder, he says to Jason, "Go ahead, I know you're just dying to tell me it's uneven."
Jason hops off of the couch and joins Token in front of the tree, taking his hand and offering his boyfriend a big, genuine smile. "Nah," he says. "It's perfect. Just like you."
Token clears his throat, slightly flustered by the complete lack of sass. "Maybe wait to say that until we see if they actually turn on."
He bends down, missing the appreciative once-over Jason gives him when he does. Grabbing the cord with his free hand, Token plugs it into the wall, letting out a relieved sigh of, "Oh, thank God," when it becomes apparent that his efforts have not been in vain. The lights on the tree sparkle to life, lit up in all the colors of the rainbow, glowing brightly amid the faux branches.
Tweek hugs Craig tighter, staring at the tree, his emerald-green eyes shining just as brightly as the lights themselves. "Aww, it looks so good!"
"Not as good as you," Craig murmurs softly. Tweek's face turns pink, but he just smiles, nuzzling his face into the crook of Craig's neck.
Clyde looks from the couple on his left to the couple on his right with an almost imperceptible frown; he lets out a soft, sad-sounding sigh as he starts attempting to unwind the tinsel from around himself. After a moment, it becomes clear that that isn't happening, and Clyde feels a little flutter of worry in his chest.
"Uh…could I get a little help here?"
"...Clyde, are you stuck in the tinsel?" Tweek is looking up at him, a flicker of amusement in his eyes.
Clyde shifts uncomfortably. "...if I say no, will you believe me?"
"Nope." Craig's voice is as monotone as ever, but even he has the ghost of a smile on his face as he observes Clyde's misfortune.
Clyde shakes a silver and pink tinsel-covered arm, whining pathetically, "Come on, can you just help me?"
Token reluctantly drops Jason's hand to go play the hero; frowning down at his friend, he half-heartedly tugs on the end of a strip of tinsel, to no avail. "Jesus Christ, Clyde, you just took this out of the box two minutes ago! How did you get it so tangled already?!"
"I don't know! I was just messing around!"
With a shrug, Token takes a step backwards, narrowly avoiding crushing a pair of angel ornaments underneath his feet. "Well, I can't get it off. You're just gonna have to wear it for the rest of the night."
"What?!" Clyde's eyes widen and he frantically claws at the tinsel. "No! Can't you just cut it off of me?"
Trying his best to hide a smile, Token says, "Are you kidding? That's imported tinsel from, uh…France. It's three hundred dollars a strip." He glances over to Jason, who immediately takes his cue and runs with it.
"Yeah, Clyde," he says seriously, "I was with him when he ordered it. It's got like diamonds in it or some shit."
Clyde looks like he's on the verge of tears. "Well, what am I supposed to do!? I can't look like this when I go on my–" He clamps his mouth shut, hoping that his slip-up will go unnoticed, but it's too late; everyone else in the room is now looking at him with interest. Everyone except Craig, that is, who has gone back to putting hooks into ornaments; at least, he's trying to, but it's a slow process considering he's only got one hand free, his other arm still wrapped around Tweek.
"On your what?" Token raises his eyebrows.
"Nothing!"
"Oooh," Jason laughs, not buying the lie for one second. "You got a date, Donovan?"
His face turning more crimson by the second, Clyde blurts out his next sentence in a scattered, disjointed mess of an excuse for the English language. "No! It's not a– It's just– It's just a thing okay?"
"What's her name?" Tweek asks, teasingly. Craig gives a tiny snort of laughter from beside him, but doesn't look up.
Jason rocks back and forth on his heels and adds, "Yeah, do we know her?"
"No!"
Token heaves an unbelievably melodramatic sigh, shaking his head in mock disappointment. "I can't believe you're going to ditch our Christmas Eve tradition to go on a date and you weren't even going to tell me. I thought we were friends, Clyde."
Clyde sniffles. "I'm sorry, okay? It's just, this is really new, and I didn't want to jinx it. You know, in case it doesn't go well." Nervously fiddling with a piece of tinsel that's wrapped around his wrist, he continues, "And now I look like an idiot and– I'm never going to get a second date!"
"Man." Token actually seems to be genuinely taken aback by Clyde's reaction. "Whoever this girl is, you must really like her. I've never seen you like this."
"I do, dude," Clyde mumbles, wiping his teary eyes. "Like…I really do."
Jason shrugs, like the solution to all of this is simple. "Why don't you just tell her to come here? Maybe she can fix the lights on the tree."
Token whips his head around. "What– You said they looked perfect!"
Jason just gives him an innocent smile and looks back to Clyde. "So? Just call her and tell her to come chill with us!"
Clyde opens and closes his mouth for a few seconds, looking somehow both like a very startled fish and a deer in headlights at the same time.
Without raising his head, Craig speaks up from the floor, his tone a mix of disinterest and irritation with just a hint of snark. "Oh, just give him a fuckin' break, would you?" To Clyde, he says, "Just go, explain the tinsel shit is because you were being a dumbass, and if your date can't handle that then they don't deserve you."
Everyone, Clyde included, stares at Craig in absolute shock as he calmly continues with his ornament task. Feeling everyone's eyes on him, he finally looks up, shrugging when he makes eye contact with Jason.
"There's your Christmas miracle."
Clyde shuffles down the street, both of his hands shoved in his sweatshirt pockets. His eyes are on the ground; he's too self-conscious to look up. He's still covered in the tinsel, because even though he knows Token had been lying through his teeth about it being worth too much to just destroy, Craig had raised a good point about using it as a way to gauge whether or not this potential relationship he's hoping for could really work out.
A few people who are also out doing some last-minute Christmas shopping give him funny looks, but Clyde doesn't notice them. He's too busy running through every possible way he could screw this up and hoping with everything he has that he doesn't.
When he reaches his destination, he takes a deep breath, nervously adjusts his clothes and runs a hand through his hair, and then pulls the door open.
"Hi there, welcome to Applebee's!" The hostess's cheerful smile falters when she notices the tinsel, but she stays professional as she grabs a menu from underneath her hostess stand. "Just for one?"
Clyde hugs himself with both arms and nervously glances around the restaurant. Applebee's is surprisingly crowded for seven o'clock on Christmas Eve, which is both a great and terrible thing; the extra background noise will be nice to have so any awkward silences won't feel so painful, but it means there are far more people here seeing Clyde looking like a half-decorated Christmas tree than he would have liked.
"Oh, uh, I'm–" He gulps when he spies Kenny waving at him from a booth in the back of the dining room. "No, I'm meeting someone."
The hostess waves for him to go ahead and Clyde stumbles forward, his heart beating louder in his ears with every step he takes. He watches, with a slight shiver, as Kenny's eyes travel up and down his body, and he braces himself for the teasing he's sure is coming. Because all anyone has ever done is tease him, for being stupid in class or stupid at life or just being stupid in general. Why would Kenny be any different just because this is technically a date?
But Kenny doesn't make fun of him. When Clyde reaches the booth, he's not even able to sit down, much less take his hands out of his pockets, before Kenny is already hopping up and going to work untangling the tinsel like a professional.
"Okay," Kenny says as he works on a particularly nasty knot, "I have to ask - did you do this or did you piss off a wild Tucker?"
Clyde blushes as Kenny's fingers lightly graze his wrist. "Uh, no, this was just me."
Pausing what he's doing to shoot Clyde a playful smile, Kenny teases, "You know you didn't have to get dressed up just for me, right?"
It doesn't seem like Kenny thinks he's an actual moron for showing up covered in tinsel, and so Clyde lets himself relax a tiny bit, at least enough to joke back, "You think this is dressed up? You should have seen me with the lights on."
Kenny glances up at the restaurant's fluorescent lights, and then back to Clyde, a mischievous glint in his bright blue eyes. "I don't know," he says, just the tiniest bit suggestively, "I kinda like the lights off better."
His throat all of a sudden incredibly, ridiculously dry, Clyde stands there frozen, not sure what to say; and then he feels the tightness around his arm loosen as Kenny successfully manages to untangle a strip of tinsel, throwing it around his own neck like a boa.
"There," the blonde says, adjusting the decoration around his neck, "Now I don't feel so underdressed." He holds up the end of the strip of tinsel to examine it more closely. "This is way better than dollar store tinsel. Token went all out, huh?"
"Oh, um," Clyde swallows, wincing a little bit. "Yeah, I guess."
"Well, you can tell him that I really appreciate his wardrobe enhancements. I feel like a million bucks with this on!" Kenny twirls around in a circle, his arms outstretched, just barely missing a waitress walking by with a tray of drinks.
Looking down at the floor, Clyde mumbles, "Uh, yeah, about that…they don't know."
Kenny grabs the edge of the booth's table with one hand to stop himself mid-spin. He looks at Clyde with a slightly confused frown. "You didn't tell them you were going on a date?"
Biting his lip, Clyde slowly shakes his head. "No, I did, but they…" He sighs. "They all think it's with, um, a girl." He pauses, scrunching up his face thoughtfully as he recalls his earlier interactions with his friends. "Except maybe Craig."
Kenny's shoulders slump and the cheery expression falls from his face. "Oh. So you just didn't tell them it was a date with me?" He begins fiddling with the zipper of his orange hoodie, his voice quiet and sad when he adds, "Okay."
Feeling terrible, and kicking himself for already managing to mess everything up, Clyde tries desperately to backtrack. "Wait, no, not like that–"
"It's fine, Clyde." Kenny holds both of his hands palms-up, shrugging. "I mean, I get it, you know? I'm not exactly the poster boy for the perfect boyfriend." He sighs, gesturing around the restaurant. "Like, fuck, I took you to Applebee's for our first date, how romantic is that?"
"I like Applebee's," Clyde says in protest. When Kenny doesn't say anything, he continues, his heart beating rapidly, "And I–" He swallows hard. "I like you, too. A lot. Like…" Clyde trails off, trying to think of the best way to say what he wants to say. "If I had to pick between you and, um...tacos? I'd pick you."
Kenny looks up, taken completely off guard by this bold declaration. He and Clyde just look at each other for a second, and then a small smile tugs at Kenny's lips.
"Even the Colossal Taco from Taco Bell?"
Clyde nods. "Yeah."
"And the Leaning Tower of Taco from Freeman's?"
"Uh-huh."
Kenny tilts his head curiously. "What about the world's biggest taco in Mexico?"
Clyde goes to answer, stops himself to think for a minute, and then gives Kenny a sheepish smile, lifting his hands up to rake them through his thick brown hair. "...can I have both?"
"Wow. I see how it is," Kenny does his best to hide the smile threatening to blossom across his face, but he can't keep it out of his voice. "And here I thought I was something special."
Earnestly, Clyde insists, "You are. It's just…" His face heats up and he breaks eye contact, tapping his fingers anxiously against the table. "I just want to be able to have something that's...just mine, for a while."
Unbeknownst to the brunette, Kenny is staring at Clyde like he's absolutely the most adorable thing he's ever seen. "Oh, trust me, you definitely have that."
A moment of awkward silence follows, the busy sounds of the restaurant around them hardly even registering in their minds; and then Clyde clears his throat, pulling his right hand out of his pocket.
"Oh! Um, I almost forgot. It's Christmas Eve, and so I, um, grabbed some of this from Token's on my way out, just in case…" He holds a handful of something green up above his head and gives Kenny a nervous half-smile.
Kenny leans forward to inspect what Clyde is holding, sniffs the air a couple of times, and then laughs, unable to stop himself. Clyde looks at him with uncertainty, a flash of hurt in his eyes, but Kenny shakes his head, trying to silently convey the message that he's not making fun of him.
When he gets his composure back, Kenny says, gesturing up at Clyde's hand, "Clyde, I know what you were going for, and I think you're adorable, but...that's thyme."
Clyde wrinkles his nose in confusion. "What? I don't know, just after seven?"
"No." Kenny gestures more insistently. "In your hand. It's thyme."
"Time for what?"
Kenny just shakes his head, figuring that at this point, it's just going to be easier to show rather than tell. He moves a couple of steps closer and places his hands gently on Clyde's shoulders, the brunette looking hopelessly confused the entire time. "Time for this," he says, before leaning in and capturing Clyde's lips with his. He feels the handful of thyme land on his head as Clyde drops it in surprise, but then Clyde kisses Kenny back, and it's so soft and so sweet and it feels so fucking right that the blonde forgets that the thyme had even existed in the first place.
A chorus of "Ooooooooh," breaks out around them as nearby diners catch sight of the public display of affection. Clyde and Kenny break apart, both of them as bright red as the fruit in the Applebee's logo. Clyde bites his lip again, racking his brain for what he should say, but Kenny just smiles and raises his hand for a fist-bump.
"Merry Christmas, Clydester."
Clyde knocks his fist against Kenny's, so happy he could cry – and knowing him, he probably will before the evening is over. "Merry Christmas, Ken-chilada."