[fic] jingle bells, batman smells, robin laid an egg
The week before Christmas the circus is outside of Cedar Falls in Iowa, and it snows.
Like, really snows. It starts around ten o'clock at night and doesn't stop until after midnight the next day, and Joe spends the whole day telling everyone who'll listen that the sky is projectile vomiting snow. The flakes are tiny and dry and they pile in big, soft drifts against the sides of the caravans until the wheels are totally covered.
Nick wakes up in the morning to an icy faceful of snow and Joe's gleeful face. He chases Joe out of the trailer, losing only the time it takes him to pull on his boots, and finally catches him with a flying leap outside of Selena's van, sitting on his legs until they sink into the snow. He takes his time burying Joe in the snow, piling it up over him like you bury someone in sand at the beach, ignoring Joe's high-pitched screams and threats of castration.
Disney's Greatest Show on Earth gets snowed in for the first time in decades. They have to cancel their shows in Minnesota. Walt stands on the steps of his trailer, red in the face and wrapped in so many layers that he's blown up to cartoonish size, and thunders to the road crew that he hasn't canceled a show since Reagan left office, and that should have been a national day of mourning anyways. Ryan, Garbo and Jack just stare at him, leaning against their shovels as Walt shouts about snow chains and the Goodyear winter tire guarantee. But once the snow hits two feet, there just isn't anything to be done, and Walt retreats back into his office to smoke and sulk.
Nick hasn't seen hide nor hair of Kevin since the snow started, but the lights are on in his and Zac's trailer and he's heard some giggling when he's walked past a couple times, so he figures he doesn't have to worry that Kevin is buried in some snow drift somewhere.
Joe disappears into Walt's Airstream for an hour and when he comes back out he's got a huge grin plastered across his face and suddenly they're doing a Christmas Eve Extravaganza show. Nick, Joe, Demi, David and Selena trek in to town (David carrying Selena halfway on his back when the snow soaks through her boots) and plaster the posters Miley managed to run off the press in just a couple hours over every available surface they can find.
Nick secretly thinks they won't possibly get a decent crowd on Christmas Eve, but when show night comes he's glad he didn't voice that particular concern, because if he had Joe would be gloating in his face right now. They aren't full, but at least two-thirds of the seating is packed with people, mostly big families that flood in together, kids on their parents shoulders, moms and dads and grandparents and aunts and uncles all laughing together and smiling.
Joe and Demi do their entire act dressed as Santa and Mrs. Claus. It's freaking impressive as hell, not to mention hilarious to watch Joe with his big fat padded stomach and full on beard powder up his hands and set swinging across the tent. He totally falls at the end of the act, but it's perfect, it's even better than if he hadn't. He plummets towards the net, a big blur of red and white, his "Ho ho hooooooooo" echoing through the tent as he falls. The whole big top loses it. Demi jumps down after him and they roll around comically, trying to get to the edge of the net and swing down to the floor.
Chelsea puts a Rudolph nose on the very end of Mina's trunk, which Mina takes great offense to and repeatedly shoots it into the crowd during their act, an audience member returning it to Chelsea each time. Jake puts tights and an elf hat on and wobbles around the ring on his stilts in between acts, crowning himself "Santa's Tallest Little Helper". Miley refuses to put her dogs in the red and white fur-trimmed sweaters Chelsea and Selena made, but she wears a red dress and at the last minute, lets Nick drop a Santa hat onto her head along with a kiss to her cheek. It's pretty much a huge success.
After the show is over and the crowd has trickled out, the animals fed and bedded down with extra hay to guard against the snow, the tent swept and cleaned, Demi launches a hard-packed snowball at David's head with a surprisingly accurate arm and starts an all out war. Nick and Joe end up on opposite sides, and for awhile Nick is able to organize his team into a semblance of regimentation, setting Miley and Nicole to making a cache of snowballs and standing at the front of the defensive wall he made with Sterling and Corbin, firing shot after shot at Joe's side. Kevin and Zac even emerge from their cave to join in, contributing two good arms and some solid shots to the team, although they keep stopping to kiss. But things devolve quickly when Joe's team turns against their own and starts throwing all their snowballs at the Sprouse twins. Nick tries to keep his team focused, but everyone floods over the wall and across the field, jumping on each other and cartwheeling, making snow angels and rolling around, screams and shouts echoing across the snow-silent field.
Nick stuffs two snowballs in his coat pockets and throws the rest at the thick trunk of a cedar tree at the edge of the woods, trying to hit dead center with each throw. He trudges across the field, snow trickling down the side of his right boot and soaking into his wool sock. The circle of campers behind the big top looks like something out of a storybook in the snow, even more than it did to Nick when he and his brothers first arrived here.
Nick is suddenly tackled from behind, a body slamming into his back full throttle, arms wrapping around his waist and yanking.
''ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN!" Joe yells as he throws all his weight onto Nick's back. Nick stumbles two steps to the side and loses his balance, flopping into the soft powder, Joe sprawled half atop him.
Nick peers up at him over his shoulder. Joe is soaking wet, dark strands of hair plastered to his forehead and the sides of his face, his nose and cheeks flushed bright red.
''You don't look like the abominable snowman," Nick says, pushing at Joe's forehead. "You look like a drowned rat."
''The Abominable Joe-Man takes offense to that," Joe pronounces theatrically. Nick pulls the two snowballs out of his pockets and smushes them into the sides of Joe's head. Joe's eyes cross and he shakes the snow off like a dog. "Ugh. And to think I came in peace," he moans.
Nick is hot and cold, half buried in snow with the icy wet soaking through his clothes and the heat of Joe's body soaking into his skin.
''Let's go in," he says, nudging Joe's foot with his boot. Joe hums agreeably.
They shed their clothes in a soggy pile by the door of the trailer. Joe curls up into the corner of the couch in socks and underwear, pulling a scratchy afghan over his legs and shivering. Nick turns the hotplate on under the teakettle and sits at the kitchen table, fiddling with an ornament on the little aluminum tabletop tree. The first Christmas Nick, Joe and Kevin spent with the circus, Kevin had bought it and weighed it down with so many ornaments it unbalanced and tipped over more than once. Nick called it Charlie Brown's Sad Christmas Tree, but they've kept it ever since.
Nick moves a reindeer bauble from one branch to another and chews on his lip, looking at Joe out of the corner of his eye. There's a tension in the caravan, a thickness to the air that Nick has become all too familiar with in the past weeks. This thing between him and Joe, this thing they're doing is new and uncharted. The boundaries still undelineated, the lines of yes and no, right and wrong still being redrawn. Nick doesn't yet know what he's allowed to do, where and when he can touch Joe, and they can't seem to talk about it. He can feel Joe's eyes on him.
''C'mere," Joe says and Nick does, because that has always been right, always been good, folding himself into the couch and tangling their feet together under the blanket.
"It's snowing, Nick," Joe whispers.
''I know," Nick whispers back, an inch away from Joe's mouth, thumb at his pulse point. "I know."
Joe's lips are still cold from the snow and the wet and the frigid December Midwest air, but the inside of his mouth is warmer than anything when Nick kisses him, tilts his head and touches his tongue to the slick inside of Joe's lip, swallows the soft sound Joe makes against his mouth.
On Christmas, the circus is still outside of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and it snows.