Hunter and Fitz attend the same American college. Hunter got there on a football (they call it soccer) scholarship after a few years playing for English clubs. Fitz's scholarship for his Masters of Engineering is purely academic and allows him the vocational turn he promised himself he'd take after pursuing his passion at the Royal College of Music in London. The rest of the East Coast university is filled with mostly well-heeled there-on-Daddy's-money types that shun the pair of them.
Hunter also happens to be the drummer in a indie folk-pop band called The Aesthetics. Their enigmatic lead singer is suddenly desperate to throw a Christmas concert gathering for ambiguous and unstated reasons of her own. Hunter will do anything to get in her good graces (in the hope that that she'll agree to put in a good word for him with her Amazonian housemate) so when he drops by Fitz's dorm room and sees his collection of obscure Scottish folk instruments, he knows he's onto a winner. A quick hipster make-over ensues before he takes Fitz to meet Jemma Simmons and the rest of the motley crew of musicians at her converted-warehouse home.
Inspired by the music of the Oh Hellos, the movie "Frank", Marcus Mumford,this amazing bit of fan art by renisanz which obviously got itself lodged in my head and every hipster Christmas photo anyone ever pinned on Pinterest.
Fitz had to stop. No amount of staring from his bank balance to the December flight prices and back again could make the two figures correlate. He was going to have to resign himself to an anaemic East Coast American Christmas.
Alone.
In his dorm room.
Great.
At least, any minute now, Hunter would show up with the beers he'd promised him for getting him through his finals and Fitz could start the process of drowning his sorrows.
He pulled his clàrsach onto his lap and started to play. Nothing like a bit of The Chanter's Song to get a man in the right frame of mind to look out at the pathetic December drizzle and get pissed. He was already homesick as anything. Might as well embrace the melancholy.
The vibrations of the strings resonated with his body, opened up his heart. By the time he heard a knock on the door, he had to brush away a highland tear or two with his sleeve.
"Sorry, mate," Hunter was already apologising. "I forgot you said your room looked over the quad."
Fitz shrugged.
Hunter responded by holding out the pledged six-pack.
Fitz's eyes widened. "Dark Island Reserve!"
"Alright?"
"Perfect." He glanced back at the hovering footballer. It might be nice to have some company, even if it was the company of a blithering idiot. "Want to come in and drink one with me?"
Hunter's face broke into a grin. "Mate. I thought you'd never ask."
Fitz opened the door wider to let the footballer in.
He'd only taken a single step into the room when he stopped still. "Blimey!" Hunter cried.
Fitz looked around his room confused. "What?"
"Can you play all these?" Hunter asked incredulously, glancing from the clàrsach on his desk to the bagpipes hanging on the wall to the various sizes of fiddle cases arranged on top of his bookshelf.
"Yeah," said Fitz warily, half-expecting Hunter to turn on him. After years as a classical musician, he'd never been able to bring himself to fully trust sporty types.
Hunter clapped him on the shoulder. "Mate," he declared. "All my Christmases have come at once."
…
There was some elaborate story about a girl and her house-mate and a Christmas concert but the sheer force of Hunter's enthusiasm somehow had Fitz loading the instruments into his rust-infested Mini before either of them had finished more than half of their beers. It was probably for the best given that there was now driving involved.
"You, my friend, are my ticket to Christmas cheer," Hunter enthused. "And who knows. There might even be a little bit of Christmas cheer for you along the way, eh mate?"
Fitz sighed as Hunter clambered into the passenger seat. He slid into the driver's seat through the open window.
"Door doesn't open any more," he explained in response to Hunter's quizzical expression.
After the requisite thump to the wheel column, wrenching the gear stick from neutral to reverse and back again three times and a vigorous pumping of the clutch, Fitz stuck the key in precisely half way and prayed the car would start. About five attempts later, God answered.
"This car is a boon, mate," Hunter said as they chugged down the freeway. "But you might need to do up the top button of your shirt. And have you got a beanie? Or a scarf? Not both, though."
Fitz gave him a look.
"Mate, you and I know it's a post-hipster world, but these guys are sort of… nostalgic."
Fitz's eyebrows grew further furrowed as the one functional windscreen wiper scraped valiantly against the drizzle.
"I don't even know what 'hipster' means."
"That is the best news I've ever heard, mate. It gives you authenticity."
"Authenticity?"
"They're a bit of an eccentric bunch."
"Great."
"But with your repertoire, Jemma is going to love you."
"Who's Jemma?"
"The girl in charge. She's the one who's suddenly become so bloody determined to put on this Christmas gathering." He slid a muted sepia photograph with white hand-lettering across the dashboard. "You don't happen to own any fairy-lights do you, mate?"
"No."
"And how strongly, on a scale of one to ten, would you object to wearing these glasses?"
Fitz took them out of Hunter's hand and slid them on, yanking the rear-view mirror down so he could see himself. "I look like Buddy Holly."
"That, mate, is absolutely the idea."
"Why is it so important that I look like Buddy Holly? And wear a beanie OR a scarf but not both at once? And the top button thing – what the hell is that?"
"We'll drop by my flat. I have the perfect leather jacket you can throw over that plaid shirt. It's distressed enough to cause no concern to the vegans. Good choice on the plaid by the way."
"Why would an un-distressed jacket distress the vegans?"
"Nice one, mate. But don't make that joke in front of any of these guys, alright? Especially not Jemma. She's nuts."
…
Jemma looked at herself in the mirror and wondered how it had gone quite this far. She'd been a scientist, she'd been on track for greatness, she was going to change the world. But now here she was in her thrift-store kilt and scarlet beanie trying with all she was worth to attain to the heights of the mystical quality they called authenticity. She had never felt less authentic in her life. But she needed these guys, this motley bunch of misfit musicians she'd acquired along her travels if she were ever to find it, and she needed them now more than ever.
What was so unique about her after all? Wasn't she just another disillusioned preacher's offspring stealing the gravitas of her rich liturgical upbringing to charge her daily battle with guilt with some sort of cosmic significance? She vaguely wondered how Marcus Mumford, her considerably more successful counterpart, was getting on with his folks these days. Was it strained over Christmas dinner? Could he go to church and fake it just like the next guy? At least she didn't have to worry about faking it over Christmas dinner. Her folks were gone. She'd be sitting down to eat alone.
Maybe they watched over her in disapproval but she never seemed to get that vibe from all of those sermons and biblestudies. Joy to the World and all that…
She wandered over to the window of her loft apartment in the abandoned warehouse she, Bobbi and Daisy had converted. Through the dispiriting American drizzle, a pale blue Mini wended its way down the pot-holey drive. The Mini spoke to her of home. It strengthened her resolve. One more fortnight of rehearsals, one more night, one more show, and then she'd be done. She stroked the black-and-white photograph that sat atop her stack of vintage suitcases. She hoped it would somehow make them happy, wherever they were.
…
Hunter pointed Fitz to a covered parking spot near the old loading bay. Fitz expertly slid feet first out of the car window and, once he'd found his footing in the puddles, stepped from under the tin roofing to gaze up at the aging structure.
All around the external walls, colourful graffitied artworks shone beneath the constant wall of water seeping down from the roof. A long-legged deer with extravagant antlers, from which old cameo brooches seemed to dangle; a black silhouette of a grazing cow with its skeleton marked out in white, a couple of storm troopers and Darth Vader wearing narrow-legged suits with skinny neon ties under their iconic helmets, a pop-art image of a blonde woman shedding a single tear, a bored looking owl wearing Buddy Holly specs like the ones Fitz had recently donned and, inexplicably, a giant yellow pineapple.
Hunter was still in the car. Fitz stuck his head back through the window to find his friend had yanked the tiny rear-view mirror back in his direction and was carefully combing his beard.
"You're an odd fish, you know that, Hunter?"
"Me?" Hunter laughed. "Just wait, mate. Just you wait."
…
They traipsed in under the dilapidated roller door of the loading bay, Hunter with the bagpipes and the clàrsach, lovingly tucked into their cases, Fitz balancing the various sizes of fiddles.
A dark-haired beauty in a floor length floral dress and Doc Martens was standing on a step-ladder pulling down a string of oversized bunting that spelled "P-i-s-s-O-f-f" across chintzy floral triangles. On the floor beneath her, almost reaching to the same height as the brunette without the assistance of a ladder, stood a statuesque blonde in skinny jeans and a busy woollen sweater that must have somehow survived even the most excessive bits of the 80s. She clutched a copious armful of fairy lights to her chest.
"Bobbi," Hunter practically sighed, as they drew near.
She turned at the sound of their clumpy boots on the unpolished wooden floorboards and looked them over with patent disinterest.
The other girl jumped off the step ladder with a warm smile, her arms full of chintz. "Hi, Hunter. Who's your friend?"
The tall one turned her back on them to start stringing the lights.
"This is Fitz. Fitz, Daisy." He pointed as if it weren't obvious. "Jemma here?"
"Hi Fitz, nice to meet you." Daisy looked back to Hunter. "Jemma's upstairs somewhere."
Fitz nodded politely in the direction of the two women, who seemed a bit too beautiful to be real, as Hunter grabbed his arm and tugged him towards a rickety looking spiral staircase, the banister of which was bedecked with real-live-growing ivy.
"This place is sort of bizarre," Fitz observed as he gingerly followed Hunter up the steps, trying not to be too put off by the loud creaking underfoot.
"You don't know the half of it," Hunter muttered. "These girls are all bonkers."
The two of them emerged on an utterly unfurnished landing. From above them, against the stark exposed brick work, hundreds of bare globes dangled at slightly different heights from stark black electrical cords.
Jemma?" Hunter called. "You up here somewhere?"
"In here, Hunter."
Fitz found himself immeasurably cheered by the sound of her accent. She wasn't from home precisely, but thereabouts.
They wandered into an enormous room that was decorated to look like some sort of forest grotto. An expansive table made from an untreated cross section of what must have once been an enormous tree was scattered all over with the same sepia photographs Hunter had left on Fitz's dashboard. He picked one up for a closer look. The image was of a wrought-iron gate, invitingly open. It guided the eye towards a set of stone steps under the cover of trees, leading evocatively upwards to an unknown destination.
The small white text, which he could tell from up close was printed rather than hand-lettered, simply said:
.
O, Come Let Us Adore
The Aesthetics Yuletide Gathering
By the word of thy mouth, by the card in thy hand
Bring with thee thy own and whatever thou thinkest might best contribute to the general cheer
.
Fitz would have rolled his eyes at the try-hard-ness of it all but he sensed the entrance of another human. More pressing than that, he found his ankles being palpitated by the little paws of a scraggly black pooch.
"Hop off him, Maxie," the woman said and delicate hands, the wrists of which were bedecked with papier-mâché bangles, suddenly loomed into his line of sight as they gathered up the pup.
He righted himself to find the little dog, Maxie, trying to lick him across the void from the arms of an oddly-dressed girl with chestnut hair and honey-coloured eyes.
She held out a hand to him. "I'm Jemma. And you are?"
"This is my mate, Fitz," said Hunter before he could answer. "I think you're going to like him."
…
He hadn't known what to expect so it wasn't exactly surprising that Fitz found himself performing before a crowd of fibreglass flamingos, interspersed here and there with a bunch of reclining twenty-somethings sporting moleskins and suspenders, mohair cardigans and fishnets, twirly moustaches and man-buns, floral skirts and an over-abundance of crochet.
They were an eclectic group and yet sort of all the same. And it was with a great unity of enthusiasm that they cheered uproariously at the end of his every piece, clamouring for more. Oddly enough, the bagpipes brought the house down.
Jemma, the obvious leader of the mob, sat on the floor almost at his feet, gazing up at him in awe, mixed with something he couldn't quite identify. For Fitz, whose music had usually found the warmest reception when he took his fiddle to the local nursing home, the whole experience was highly surprising. He had never before found himself the recipient of such rapturous applause. He was buoyant, effervescent, as if he had downed that whole six-pack of Dark Island Reserve all alone and then put on some dub step for laughs.
All the men with their man-buns and twirly moustaches came up to shake his hand afterwards. The dark-haired girl in the floral dress kissed him on the cheek. And Jemma just kept gazing up at him from where she sat by his feet on the floor. It was getting a little unnerving. The only time he'd ever been this much of a smash hit was when the rare Australians on campus got him to learn the bagpipe solo from some rock anthem of theirs called You're The Voice. A lot of those men had gazed lovingly at him, but they had been highly intoxicated. So far as he could tell, Jemma Simmons had no such excuse.
So, I post this first bit of a wintery Christmas fic from the SWELTERING HEAT of my Australian home and confess that there is not even a smidge more of it written. On the weird cold December day we had the other week it seemed so much more possible than it seems right now! And then Pi went and made me that glorious manip! Oh dear. I had the best of intentions…
Nonetheless, I post what there is so far in the hope that a) you'll enjoy it for what it is and b) the posting of it might prompt me to actually write the rest!? We'll see, eh?