Chapter Text
Inspired by the infamous Folgers "Coming Home" commercial which for some reason has become the 'Home for the Holidays' Folgers ad if you're looking through AO3 tags (I would pay so much money to have been in the Saatchi & Saatchi office when this all went down).
The kitchen was a disaster, but Thanksgiving’s side dishes and baked goods were well underway, and Lucy had a solid hour where the oven needed to sit undisturbed.
She knew the next 24 hours would be a chaotic mix of cooking, cleaning, entertaining her father’s guests, and then cleaning once they left. Now was a perfect opportunity to get a quick nap. She was home alone, her father in meetings, her brother at work, and Lucy, in between substitute assignments and certainly not scheduled for any acting gigs, was left to prepare for the holiday.
She sank into the plush couch with a groan, set a backup alarm on her phone, and shut her eyelids.
Naturally, that was when her phone buzzed, and her best friend’s photo appeared on the screen. Lucy plucked the device off the coffee table and swiped to answer it.
“LUCY JEAN MACLEAN, YOU ABSOLUTE BITCH.”
“That's not my middle name,” Lucy sighed, staring at her ceiling. “Hello to you too, Stephanie.”
“Anne, Marie, Elizabeth, Jane, whatever your parents picked, it’s beside the fact. What matters is that you’re an absolute bitch for not telling me.”
“Telling you what?” Lucy huffed, closing her eyes again. “I tell you everything! You’re my manager!” Well, almost everything. Lucy had long since learned what to share and what to keep out of Stephanie’s knowledge base.
“You definitely didn’t tell me you filmed an incest-y Christmas commercial.”
Lucy had to laugh nervously, mind instantly jumping back to one particular day in the summer. “You must be confusing me with another young brunette white actress trying to get her break in Hollywood. There are a couple of us.”
“And how many of them jumped in like a perfect little nepo actress angel baby when their dad directed a Christmas coffee commercial and the actress no-showed?” Stephanie sounded only slightly out of breath. She was probably on the treadmill, that physically fit bitch.
Lucy’s eyes popped open. “It wasn’t incest-y.”
Stephanie’s voice took on a higher-pitch, and she cooed a line that still haunted Lucy months later. “You’re my present this year, Uncle Jim.”
Lucy sat up. “That was adlibbed,” she whispered in horror. The original line had been way too wordy.
“Yeah well great work, because the take where you looked like you wanted to fuck your uncle made the final cut.”
“Oh god.”
“And the internet noticed, too.”
“HOLY MOLY, WHAT?”
“Babe - no, not you Chet -”
“Hi, cuz,” she said feebly. Her best friend relayed her greeting.
Chet’s voice was distant, but she could hear the excitement. “Does Lucy know?”
There’s beeping - Steph was on the treadmill - and then Steph sighed. “I was just in the middle of telling her.”
Lucy swiveled and put her feet on the floor, tapping the phone on speaker. “Yes, please let her tell me, Chet! What version of the internet should I be looking at here? What app?”
Steph laughed. “Any of them. All of them. Hang on, I’ll send you a link.”
“Dad didn’t tell me even tell me it was going to air yet,” she moaned. “I told him to tell me! I wanted to let people know to look for it.”
“Well, they found it,” her agent sing-songed. “And as of tomorrow, it’s apparently premiering on TV during the Macy’s Parade. Big bucks behind this!”
Her phone chimed with the incoming message and she tapped it open as quickly as she could, hitting play on YouTube and rotating the phone for full screen.
Sentimental, Christmas-y music stirs as the screen fades in on a snow-covered, Colonial-style home tastefully decorated for the season and a vehicle pulling away. A dark haired, middle-aged man, tan with scruffy beard, clad in well-worn layers in various shades of tan, stands on a porch. Except for the garish blue and yellow scarf around his neck, he looks like he’d be more at home on a safari or in a jungle. The weathered rucksack on his shoulder has a patch with the word ‘volunteer’ and a caduceus on it.
The front door swings open, revealing a young, dark haired woman in baggy pajamas, clearly wearing someone else’s well-worn shirt, her hair up in a ponytail. She seems to vibrate with excitement, looking over the man before her.
He appears comically confused, and looks around at the entryway. “Oh this ain’t right,” he says, grinning, bright white teeth gleaming. “I thought my little niece might be awake this early on Christmas morning, but I must have the wrong-”
She laughs and shakes her head. “-It’s me! Welcome home, Uncle Jim. I missed you so much!”
They embrace tightly, the man wrapping his arms around her and closing his eyes. “Thank you darlin’.”
“They’re still asleep, they waited up all night for you - we all waited up for you,” the young woman says over her shoulder as they enter a sunlit kitchen, bodies still close.
“Long way from West Africa,” he reminds her, before dipping down to inhale deeply in front of a percolating coffee maker. “Mmm, Slocum’s Joe,” he says and pauses for a beat. “And with unbeatable deals at Super-Duper Mart, I know I’ll be able to stock up on plenty now that I’m home.”
For a brief second, the camera shows a middle aged couple in bed waking up and inhaling deeply. “He’s here!” the man says.
Back in the kitchen, the young woman hoists herself up and onto the counter at her uncle’s shoulder, and he hands her a gift wrapped in Super-Duper Mart’s brand colors and topped in a big metallic bow.
“Got you something, from far away.” There’s something almost intimate about Jim’s voice as he hands it to her.
The young woman looks thoughtfully at the gift for a moment, and then at her uncle as he sips his coffee. She bites her lip, fiddling with the box before quickly pulling the bow off and placing it on her uncle’s sweater.
His eyes dart up from the cup of coffee he’s clearly enjoying.
“What are you doing?” he asks her quietly with a small laugh of confusion, looking from the bow to the young woman sitting on the counter beside him.
She smiles shyly. “You’re my present this year, Uncle Jim.” She looks over at him earnestly.
The camera angle changes to a close shot of the man’s face, his eyebrows twitching for a brief second as he seems to search her face before his smile widens, and she beams back.
A wider angle now, almost jarringly, as the second man and woman, both swaddled in robes, come around the corner into the kitchen suddenly.
“Brother!” the man cries, approaching Jim with a hug, and the niece leans back slightly as they all seem to greet one another.
The Slowcum’s Joe jingle starts, and the family reunion is out of focus, a steaming cup of coffee is now in the foreground beside a can of the coffee and greenery.
Just before the camera pans out, it focuses once more on the assembled family. The uncle’s arm is around his niece and he and his brother laugh about something. The niece giggles and leans her head against Jim’s shoulder, her glance lingering on him as the camera fades to black.
Oh it was worse than she’d thought. She knew her father had also been involved in editing - and since she knew him, she realized there was no way he was even remotely aware of how most people were going to interpret the ad.
Lucy felt queasy. “Steph, do I even want to look at the comments?”
“I mean, some people are pretty funny, but most of them are just looking to see if anyone else thinks the uncle and niece are going to bang before Christmas is over and a bunch of people agreeing with them.”
The actress dropped her head into her hands. “This is so bad,” she groaned.
Steph hummed. “No publicity is bad publicity, Lu-lu. Your IMDB page is getting hits! I’m expecting a call from Ryan Reynolds any second, you’re the next Peloton girl, I just know it.”
That was a surreal thought. Honestly, she was currently worried about her Dad, and what this could mean for his career. He’d thought this would be his big chance. Oh dinner was going to be bad.
Oh god, she’d probably never get a substitute teaching hire for years after this.
She couldn’t help herself. She had to look.
Stephanie had also sent her the link on X, and true to form for that platform, the comments were absolutely vile. Lucy scrolled through them, horrified.
“You’re looking, aren’t you?”
“I had to!” she yelped, swiping away the app. “Steph, what do I do?”
“Nothing. You do nothing. We wait to see if the company’s take it down. If it already got approved for tomorrow, I don’t think they will, which means Slowcum’s and Super-Duper Mart are led by a whole bunch of boomers who don’t know how to access online porn. In the meantime, we go about our day, I’m sure you’ve got a load of food to cook -”
“-and you don’t?”
“-that’s Chet’s job,” her friend said dismissively. “But I know you enjoy all of this, so go relax, go stress bake, you sweet little overachiever, and don’t think about any of this until we talk tomorrow, okay?.”
She did still have at least 40 minutes on her nap timer. Maybe she could start some homemade rolls.
“Right. You’re right Steph,” she said with confidence, more than she felt. “You’re right, maybe this will work out well and I’ll get some calls from all of this. Maybe I’m being overly sensitive about it -”
Stephanie could make a snort sound elegant. “-not likely, and the next time we’re together, you are telling me what the fuck was up between you and that DILF.”
Lucy rushed to end the call. “You two enjoy your Thanksgiving if I don’t talk to you, loveyoubye!”
She threw herself into preparing the meal, but the problem was that the work was fairly brainless, and it gave her far too much leeway to think back to filming.
Her father’s frantic call came early one morning, and Lucy drove as quickly as she could, making it to the studio in record time. Security had actually been updated and her name was on their list, and in short order, she was parked, checked in, and whisked to the backlots in a golf cart by a very anxious PA who announced she was flying in.
Her only previous visit to this part of the studio was a tour, and she found herself craning her neck to take in all of the street sets they were passing. From a quaint downtown she recognized from a handful of shows and movies, to a hectic city street, to a couple older sets, mostly kept for historical value, these sets all felt like magic to her.
The golf cart made its sedate pace to a perfectly normal looking cul-de-sac of homes, all a variety of time periods and styles. Their set for the day was obvious, since it was the only one that had a cluster of crew members around it. That, at the wintry yard in the middle of a hot, summer day.
The PA let her out by a boom crane - this was a big shoot - and Lucy took a moment to admire the picturesque, snow covered home.
“Lucy!”
She turned around to find her father waving from the video village, pausing a conversation with a man facing him. They were in a tent with sides to block the light, there was an array of screens on tables. It was against the side of the first of a series of very expensive looking trailers. Lucy had to smile, seeing her father in his element. Today was clearly a small taste of what a larger budget project looked like.
“There’s our girl! Lucy, come meet your costar,” her father called out, an almost manic grin on his face. The man before him wasn't very tall, but she could see the way the tan shirt was taut over his back and shoulders, arms crossed, lean hips cocked as he rested his weight against the edge of the trailer. His dark hair was combed back but still a little wild. Even from behind, he seemed to have a sort of presence. “Cooper, this is my daughter, here to save her old man.”
The man unfolded and casually turned to greet her.
Lucy stopped short.
As a kid, there was one VHS she'd played so much it had worn out. It was her dad's tape, initially containing shaky vacation footage on a handheld camera. There was about a solid minute of a ski slope and her father's heavy breathing before a blip and the beginning of a made for TV Western movie he'd managed to capture from a commercial break preceding its start.
Her father's obsession with old westerns had passed on to her, so she'd grown up watching plenty. The taped special was two hours of a low budget movie following the son of the sheriff, the father having been the star of one of their favorite series. It was awful, it was schlocky, but there was something about the actor playing the son, now a sheriff himself, that had Lucy enamored. He was absolutely her first crush, and once she got older, she'd watched anything she could - even scant seconds of appearances in crime procedurals - with him in it.
She knew her dad was a fan too, and somehow, he'd managed to land him for the commercial.
“Our hero has come,” Cooper Howard declared, and put out a hand to shake hers. It was big and warm and made hers feel tiny throughout their introductions.
She was ushered off to the costume department, who seemed absolutely miffed when a woman in her mid twenties showed up and they had a rack of clothing clearly meant for a child. It was the first sign things were slightly off. Plaid pajama pants from the “mom” rack, and a big college sweatshirt from the “uncle” selection were thrown at her.
The makeup and hair people flat out refused to place her hair in the pigtails apparently mentioned in the script, instead pulling it into a messy ponytail. They actually chose not to cover a small blemish on her chin.
Once the script was actually in her hands, her suspicions were confirmed. The part had called for a child.
When she was released back out onto the fake neighborhood street, she cornered her father and asked if there were any rewrites given the age change.
“Lucy, do we really even need them?” he asked. “You're a niece, happy to see her uncle back from his medical mission work overseas. It's a sweet little family reunion! I just have to position the camera a little higher for your shots, that's all.”
Despite all his years in the business, he still retained a Midwest, corn-fed innocence. Lucy flashed a grimacing smile. While the decade in LA had scraped away her naivete, it hadn’t chipped her loyalty.
“Okey dokey,” she chirped, trying to sound enthusiastic.
The snow machine had done its job, blanketing the front yard, and the device to cause gently falling ‘snow’ was at the ready. A crew member gestured for Lucy to come meet them inside the house, but as she passed Cooper, he tapped her on the arm with his rolled up script. Despite the warm weather, he was wearing several layers of clothing that could have come from a tomb raiding movie and a comically bright blue and yellow scarf over it.
“Please don't take this the wrong way, but I'm going to take out the line ‘my pretty little niece got so big’,” he said quietly. “I've been trying to find a way to say it that isn't going to make me sound like a creep and got nothing.”
She nodded, maybe too eagerly. “Thank you. I might do something similar.”
He flashed her an appreciative smile. “Thanks. Already get typecast enough, don’t need to get even more pigeonholed. I’ve already done SVU like four times and they stop inviting you back after that.”
Her eyebrows shot upward. “Really?”
“Oh yeah, I mean after a certain point, when you keep showing up in episodes, even a guy in a coma is going to be able to guess you’re the perp.”
Lucy laughed, and excused herself when she heard them call for ‘Daughter!’.
They started with the external shots, camera focused on Lucy, before swapping to a camera in the home’s foyer just over her shoulder. No one said anything about the small changes the pair were making to the script, so they made small tweaks as they went along.
As crew members scurried around, the pair were told to stay on their marks and Lucy and Cooper made small talk while they waited. The other two actors were chatting in the other room, enjoying snacks from crafty. Cooper called out that they needed to save them some of the good cookies.
“There’s cookies?” Lucy asked with feigned indignation.
“There was,” her scene partner affirmed. “That’s what you get for showing up late to set.”
Without even thinking about it, she gave him a playful smack on the arm, and almost instantly there were calls for them to both stay still.
“Sorry!” he called out, hands up in surrender, all the while giving her a conspiratorial grin that had laughter bubbling in her chest. A makeup artist swept in and blotted his face, which had started to get a little dewy from heat and fake snow. The house wasn’t air conditioned, but at least Lucy had shade and only one layer of clothing on.
She winced sympathetically. “You look hot.”
Cooper’s face split into a devilish grin. “Why thank you, darlin’.”
Okay, maybe she did need a fan. Her face felt like it was burning. “That’s not, I didn’t mean -” she sputtered, and the man winked.
A crew member came thudding down the hallway towards them, cutting the conversation short as they got back to shooting.
Everything was going fine, moving along to the kitchen scenes, until the pivotal lines about the present. Lucy plucked the bow off the gift, and pressed it firmly to Cooper's sweater, noting he was pretty firm under it.
He looked up from the cup of coffee, her cue to say the sweet lines that would clinch the heartwarming tone of the commercial.
“I don't even need you to give me a present this year, Uncle Jim,” she declared, earnestly, and then oh shit he tilted his head, just a little. This must be what it was like when someone picked a lock and got the tumblers all in the right places, the click or whatever it was signaling success. She was physically seated on the counter but was falling into hazel eyes, into gold flecks and the most gorgeous browns and greens. Lucy leaned forward a little, deeper into the smell of his cologne, her gaze drawn to his lips. They were right there.
“I'm yours,” Cooper whispered, voice low, almost prompting. She could just feel his breath stir over her lips, still slightly wet from biting them a moment before.
Lucy stared, unblinking, as her brain turned to mush.
Okay he was prompting her.
“Y-you're mine,” she mumbled, feeling her face burn as she blinked and shifted a little on the counter with a deep breath, trying to break whatever freaky spell he had her under.
“Sorry! Sorry, can we try that again?” she asked the crew cheerfully. “Got distracted by that, that great coffee smell.”
It was worse acting than what she'd just flubbed.
Resetting wasn't hard, since the actors and camera were all stationary. Cooper handed the bow back over, and she snatched it without making eye contact.
“It's okay to be nervous,” he said quietly as crew darted forward to check their hair and makeup. The fact that there was crew for this was just another sign of how large a production it was. She had to get herself together, for her father's sake.
Four more takes tried the patience of everyone present. The lines were too long, leaving Lucy feeling mealy mouthed, and twice Cooper jumped on her lines as she had given a little bit of a pause where it felt right. Maybe if the lines were being said by a child, they'd come across as more genuine, but an adult woman saying them? It was off.
Her father was starting to get nervous. She could see the shine on his forehead in the living room.
“Hey, can we try it a little differently this time?” she asked her costar after the next call of “Cut."
“Darlin, you're reading my mind,” he laughed. “Not that I mind my present company in the slightest, but I know they want to get this moving along. I’ll follow your lead.”
This time, when it came time to answer his quizzical expression, Lucy flashed him a nervous, private smile.
“You're my present this year, Uncle Jim.” she said quietly, simply.
Lucy had uncles, biological and honorary. Some were probably the same age as Cooper Howard. She knew she didn't look at them like she was looking at him. In all of her years of small, dumb parts, from a scared extra running in terror as aliens invaded a city and superheroes saved the day, to an office worker applauding their big city coworker declaring their love for a flannel wearing small town lumberjack type in the middle of an office space decorated for Christmas, to an active woman apparently starting her menstrual cycle, carefree and wearing white, Lucy knew she was a half-decent actor. This was close to impossible. Even as she tried to picture one of those uncles beside her, she knew she was failing.
Unfortunately, there weren't any other private little moments for them to share. They sailed through the rest of the production from there. Her dad called wrap and before she knew it, Lucy was climbing back out of the costume trailer with her own haphazard gremlin clothing from the morning. Cooper had been standing beside her in the trailer for the entire process of checking in her costume pieces, his mere presence a physical feeling, and she'd spent that time summoning the courage for what she'd say once they stepped back out of the crowded space.
She'd be cool, casual, just the right amount of interested. She'd ask if he wanted to celebrate with a drink, or levelly agree to give him her number if he asked. She'd rehearsed a couple different scenarios in the time it took the very stern costume person to meticulously document her returns.
But as soon as she stepped down onto pavement her father was waiting to scoop her up into a hug.
“That was perfect, sugar bomb!” he crowed. “What would I ever do without you? C'mon, I'm headed back to the parking lot and I have to tell you what the Slocum’s Joe guys just discussed with me, you're never going to believe it!”
And with that, Lucy was whisked away in a golf cart. She twisted around to see Cooper standing behind them, a quickly shrinking figure as they navigated the studio's backlots.
Lucy knew she could have looked him up, could have had her brother help track him down on social media, but the fact that he never did the same stopped her from pursuing it.
She thought about him, thought about him a lot, but every time she thought about the day, she was lanced with a hot stab of shame when she recalled how flustered she’d been, the line she’d flubbed. Part of her hoped she never ran into him, for fear he’d remember her as the silly little girl from one dumb ad, clearly crushing on him.
Lucy threw herself into preparing for Thanksgiving. Her brother showed up, making a comment about the commercial, and she knew then it would only get worse over the next day. By the time her father came home, buoyant and boyish, she'd cycled through several rounds of panic, anger, and denial. She'd eyed the wine chilling in the fridge, tempted to pour herself a glass, maybe even just a little of the white she was cooking with, but stood strong.
"There's my star!" he cried as he came into the kitchen, dropping a kiss on the top of her head where it sat cradled in her hands. "You ready for tomorrow?"
"Dad, we really need to talk about that," she started, but her father gave her shoulders a teasing shake before stepping away to poke at some of the food.
"Listen, I'm sorry I didn't tell you ahead of time like I promised, but my clients are so damn happy with how it turned out, they wanted us to get it out there. Their social team thinks it's going to go viral. Can you believe it? Your old man's big ad is going to go viral!"
Lucy lunged for the white wine and chugged directly from the bottle.
You can read the Oral History of the Folgers ad on GQ and another article on Vanity Fair.