Summary: Kurt may have gotten the better of Sebastian with his Elf on a Shelf practical joke ... that doesn't mean Sebastian will let the matter lie ...

Notes: This was actually inspired by my beautiful eldest daughter xD

"Uh ... Sebastian?" Kurt sighs, a step short of entering the garage where he knows his husband is pulling down boxes of Thomas's hidden presents so they can start the arduous task of wrapping things and then re-hiding them before their son gets home, lest they spend the entirety of Christmas eve cutting and taping until they go bleary eyed, only to have their sweet boy rush in seconds later to tear their work to shreds. "Sebastian, I need to ask you a question." Kurt sighs again because he doesn't want to talk to Sebastian about this. It's been a touchy subject in their home over the past week. But he knows Sebastian has something to do with this particular item's disappearance.

Best to swallow his pride and get it over with.

"Yes?" comes Sebastian's unconcerned reply.

Kurt takes a deep breath and opens the door, wondering if there's a chance Sebastian might actually be angry with him. It's been over a week since the elf invasion, as Sebastian calls it. Ever since then, he's been chilly. Not completely. He still jumps Kurt every chance he gets. But he's planning something. Kurt can feel it in his bones. Sebastian came to bed late last night and woke up early. He showered by himself without offering Kurt the opportunity to join him.

Kurt walks down the steps, slowly approaching the man casually rummaging through the contents of a far shelf. He originally thought Sebastian had spent the evening wrapping presents, but if he had, he wouldn't be doing it now.

"Sebastian …?"

"What is it, Kurt? I'm a rather busy and important person."

Kurt groans internally. Of course his husband isn't going to make this easy, but did Kurt really think he would?

"Well …" Kurt clears his throat "… Thomas is going to be home in a few hours. So I went to move … you know … move his …"

"Elf?" Sebastian finishes, taking down three more boxes without looking his husband in the eyes.

"Yes," Kurt admits. "The elf. But I went to the place I last left him, and he seems to have disappeared."

"And that worries you?" Sebastian chuckles darkly. Kurt's eyes roll all the way back to his neck. "Kind of off putting, isn't it? To have something move on you when you least expect it, almost as if by magic?"

Kurt throws up his hands. "Oh for heaven's sake! I already apologized! It was a dumb practical joke! And it was a good one! You said so yourself!"

Sebastian pauses thoughtfully, but mostly for dramatic effect. "Be that as it may, it was a prank that was pulled on me, and that I cannot have."

"Oh my God! I can't believe you're behaving like this!"

"Behaving like what?" Sebastian asks, going back to the boxes. "Scorned? Humiliated? Betrayed?"

"Nine!?"

"Regardless of my childish behavior, your army of crimson heathens can't be with us anymore."

Kurt, in the process of crossing his arms over his chest, stops.

"Wha-? Why?" he asks, slightly alarmed by his husband's choice of words. He would normally say screw it and pull out one of his reserve elves, but that's another thing. It's not just that he can't find Thomas's elf. He can't find any of them. Not the ones he'd put out for his prank, not even the extras he'd stored on the top shelf of his closet. "What do you mean they can't be with us anymore?"

"I mean, your elves are no more for this world."

Kurt gasps. "Are you saying you threw them out?" Even after years of marriage, he can't get over the sometimes extreme and flagrant ways Sebastian wastes money, even though, admittedly, they have more of it than they may ever be able to spend in their lifetime. But the middle class kid in him can't abide by throwing away hundreds of dollars … though it could be argued that Kurt blew that money himself by buying a hundred elves in the first place, clearance or not.

Which is one of the reasons he doesn't run to Target and buy another one.

"Oh no, my dearest Kurt. The trash can was simply too good for your engendré par Satan."

"Sebastian … honey …" Kurt starts, struggling to keep his cool "… Thomas's bus is going to arrive at our front door in roughly three hours, and he's expecting to see an Elf on a Shelf. Any elf. I don't have the time to help wrap presents and launch a full scale search, so for our child's sake, can we please skip to the end where you show me what you did with them? Because I don't want to search high and low for something you've probably burned in a pile in the backyard."

Sebastian sighs, obviously annoyed that Kurt isn't playing into his hands the way he'd envisioned. Determined to regain control of the situation, Sebastian raises a hand and presses the garage door remote - the suburban equivalent, Kurt assumes, of walking away from an explosion without turning around to watch it. When the door finally reaches the top, Sebastian swings an arm around, gesturing outside. "After you."

Kurt walks past him, hugging his torso, the chill winter air seeping through his designer ugly Christmas sweater and into his skin. He heads to the front yard where their garbage cans line the street, waiting for the morning's pick up, but Sebastian grabs his shoulder and turns him. He leads Kurt around the far side of the house, where construction on their new pool will begin at the beginning of the year. It's been roped off with caution tape since fall when the rains came hard and fast, keeping the crew they'd hired from digging. Nothing out of the ordinary there. But the closer they come to it, Kurt sees what his husband has turned the spot into – a tiny graveyard, a hundred little graves perfectly aligned, and in the center, Thomas's elf, leaning against a tiny shovel, it's painted face looking unnaturally pleased with itself.

"I stumbled upon this this morning," Sebastian says in a disturbingly reverent whisper, "entirely by accident. As you can see, Kurt, it wasn't me at all. It seems that I'm not the only one who despised your vicious practical joke at my expense. Apparently, Thomas's elf didn't like the competition."

"Dear God," Kurt mutters, eyes scanning the cemetery that will someday be their pool. How is he not going to think about this every time he does his morning laps? "So … is this what you were up all night doing?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny those allegations."

Kurt looks at the tiny graves, each adorned with its own individual headstone, some with miniature green wreaths, and shakes his head - something he's done so often in the past few days, his neck has begun to throb.

"Sebastian Smythe, you are a man with far too much time on your hands."