Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 37th cycle. Now cycle 38!

PRE-CHRISTMAS NON-CHRISTMAS: It's already my third holiday season of Gleekathon, woo! So happy about that :D Anyhoo, just to explain what I'm doing for it this year: How it goes is I always have a set of stories with Christmas-y titles but non-Christmas-y plots, so to give an air of the season but not too much ;) First year was '12 Days of Christmas', last year was 'Reindeer'. This year's theme is "Christmas Movies" :) It'll run from December 8th to 19th, after which I have a slightly bigger undertaking to take us to Christmas Eve (stay tuned and find out, ha! ;)). So here we go!

"Miracle on 34th Street"
Kurt & Rachel

They could have stayed on that stage for hours, but they were not looking forward to the guard coming around and asking them to leave for real this time. They much preferred making the decision themselves to leave this place, this… magical place… So eventually Kurt had looked to her, Rachel had looked to him, and… it was time. Arms hooked together they stepped off the stage they had taken over, for the time of a song, and they ascended the aisle up to the doors. They both stopped at the door, looking back.

"We stood there…" Rachel breathed.

"We'll be back," Kurt promised her.

"Yes, we will," she turned to him, promising right back.

Still there was a moment when they walked back out on to the street and felt the breeze of open air on them where they just felt a deep sadness that they weren't inside the theater anymore.

"They're never going to believe us, you know?" Rachel shook her head as they started down the street. "I knew I should have brought my camera," she scolded herself.

"I say we don't tell them," Kurt spoke then.

"But…" she looked over her shoulder at the retreating marquee.

"Like you said, they won't believe us. But even then, I like thinking about what happened in there as being just ours. You and me," he nodded. She beamed.

"Sounds good to me."

"Although I know one or two who would just die with jealousy… Does that make me spiteful?"

"No judgment here," she shook her head and he smiled. "Oh, but just think about it…" she breathed. "That was just a taste, a teaser… I want so much more."

"So do I," he nodded.

"I mean I knew it was going to be big, and impressive, but I had no idea. Didn't you just feel more alive?"

"I thought I was going to pass out… or be sick," he admitted. "Try and explain that to the poor unsuspecting guards who let in a couple of dreamers…" She made a face, then laughed.

"Good thing that didn't happen then." She stopped all of a sudden, jerking Kurt to a stop in the process.

"What happened?" he looked at her, finding a look on her face he usually saw when she had 'a great idea.'

"Juilliard," she breathed, and he swore all the hairs rose on his arms.

"Juilliard," he had to say it, and now she was the one getting the chills.

"We can do it, right?" she asked, her determination unable to shake off concern completely.

"Like they could ever turn us down," Kurt nudged some confidence her way.

"I know," she told him, laughing. "I already have a list of songs to audition with. Need to trim it."

"I can think of a few," he bowed his head.

"You could do Barbra," she declared, and he looked at her.

"Yeah?"

"One of very few people I'd trust on this… besides me… and her," she nodded at each. "You'd kill it," she gave him a pointed smirk.

"Are you giving me your blessing?" he guessed, matching her expression.

"I guess you can put it that way," she gave his arm a squeeze.

"I'll keep that in mind," he told her and she smiled. "In the meantime, I think we probably need to get back to the hotel before Mr. Schuester notices we've 'flown the nest.'

"Thank you, again, for bringing me there," she told him as they kept walking.

"Anytime… Well, anytime we're in New York," he replied.

"Next time we're here, who knows, maybe it'll be… for good," she told him, then laughed again when she caught herself naming the song they'd just performed together. "Okay, but we need to have a plan. We can't just take this lightly. If we're really determined we have to be ready."

"First thing this fall we should go see Miss Pillsbury," he suggested and she nodded.

"I wish we had more time to look around while we're here, but we can do research when we're back home…" Even talking about leaving this place was bumming her out.

"Well first things first, we need to actually manage to write our songs and then perform at Nationals."

"I honestly have no idea how that's going to go," she confided.

"Neither do I," he shook his head.

"Guess we brought this on ourselves for waiting so long… and for deciding to do original songs again."

"What did we expect to happen once we got here? Drop a dozen kids from Lima in this city for the first time, how are we supposed to be productive?" he shrugged, and she laughed.

"Yeah, that…" she agreed. "It's been pretty amazing so far," she thought back to everything she'd done since they'd arrived. There had been some setbacks, like the tickets to Cats… She should have known, did know, but then she got excited, and distracted, and… But then things had turned around, especially this morning with Kurt, and last night with… "And you'll never guess who I ran into last night…"

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!