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“Klee wants to talk to Santa!”
The voice is familiar, and the name even more so. Kaeya turns—regretting the movement when his fake beard scratches at his jawline and his wig falls once more into his face—and confirms that yes, that is definitely Jean Gunnhildr from work and her ward Klee, and yes, he is definitely going to have to face them dressed as the world’s least convincing mall Santa.
Not for the first time today, he curses Dainsleif for calling in that favour.
“That’s not how we ask for things,” Jean says, in the same even voice she uses when a contractor is being particularly difficult.
“May Klee please go talk to Santa?” Klee amends.
“Yes, you may,” Jean says, shifting a heavy bag of Christmas shopping from one hand to the other. “Go on, and remember to say thank you when you’re done.”
Klee gives a little skip of glee and runs up to the Santa pedestal in all its gaudy tinsel-clad glory.
It’s the last Saturday before Christmas, which means tired parents and over-scheduled executives alike are rushing through the stores to check off items on their shopping list. The whole mall had resembled nothing more than a circus earlier this evening—complete with a never-ending line of credulous children for Santa to make empty promises to—but it seems to be calming down now.
Still, for a moment, Kaeya holds out hope that Jean will be too frazzled by the crowds to recognize him. But she makes eye contact and her eyes go wide, and he knows the jig is up. He has no idea how he’s going to face her on Monday.
He turns his attention to where Klee is bobbing up and down in front of him like a small red buoy. “Ho ho ho,” he tries, feeling eminently foolish. “And what would you like for Christmas, my little friend?”
Klee frowns and glances back at Jean, who looks torn between laughter and alarm. “It’s a secret,” she says, positioning herself to his right and tugging on the sleeve of his robe. “You have to let me whisper it to you.”
Kaeya leans over obligingly and she cups her hands around his ear.
And then, in the very loud stage whisper of a six-year-old who has not quite learned what an inside voice sounds like, she declares, “I want Auntie Jean to go on one good date.”
Kaeya is staring straight ahead when she says this, which gives him a perfect and unobstructed view of Jean’s face. He pinpoints the exact moment she registers Klee’s words because her expression goes very blank very fast. Her mouth goes tense and her eyes widen almost imperceptibly, and the hand on her shopping bag tightens until her knuckles are as white as her face. She looks a little bit like she did on the day Varka announced that he was taking a sabbatical and leaving the Ordo in her hands—and she had to pretend that that wasn’t the first time she’d heard of it.
Klee is still whispering, he realizes.
“… been going on all these dates,” she’s saying earnestly as he tunes back in, “but none of them have been good—and it’s all just been quite disappointing.”
Jean’s face has been going slowly from white to pink to a genuinely impressive shade of scarlet. She makes a choked noise and jerks forward as if to wrench Klee away from Santa, but stops short before she can take a single step. A variety of emotions war for control of her face.
Klee leans back and stares at Santa expectantly, and Kaeya remembers what he’s actually supposed to be focusing on here. “Uh,” he starts, unconvincingly. “That doesn’t sound like your Christmas wish, little Klee. Isn’t there anything else that Santa can get for you?”
The girl shakes her head so vehemently that her jaunty red hat almost falls off. “Klee just wants this. It’s very, very important.” She leans in conspiratorially and whispers, “All Klee wants is to see Auntie Jean happy.”
Jean is staring fixedly at the ceiling when he looks over. He really has no idea how he’s going to face her on Monday.
“I’m sure Auntie Jean is quite happy already,” Kaeya whispers back—a little uncertainly, because he and Jean have never talked about love, let alone about happiness, and he generally pretends not to notice the romance novels she slots spine-in on her office shelves.
Klee’s nose scrunches up. “I guess,” she says dubiously. “But… I think it would be nice.”
“Klee,” Jean finally manages to choke out, and Klee whips around as if caught stealing matches from the supply closet again. “We should let Mr. Santa move on to the next kid.”
Klee casts a slow look about her, sees no children in line, and opens her mouth to protest.
“Didn’t you want to get hot chocolate with Auntie Lisa earlier?” Jean interrupts desperately.
Kaeya recognizes the question for the bribe it is, and, by the looks of it, so does Klee. She wavers, torn, and finally takes two steps back towards Jean.
Then she pauses and looks imploringly up at him. “Please,” she whispers.
And Kaeya, fool that he is, finally cracks. “I’ll see what I can do,” he says.
Klee’s face lights up. She runs back and throws her arms around him, squeezing with all the force she can muster. “Thank you!” she crows, and is running back towards Jean before he can react.
“Can I get whipped cream on my hot chocolate?” she asks, slipping her hand into Jean’s, apparently oblivious to the latter’s mortification.
“We’ll see,” Jean says. She casts an apologetic look over her shoulder at Kaeya, who manages to lift a hand in farewell before they’re swallowed by the crowd.
Dainsleif pokes his head into the men’s washroom. “How’d it go?”
Kaeya picks the beard up from the counter and flings it at his face. It hits the doorframe instead—damn his terrible depth perception—and Dainsleif catches it before it can flop to the ground. “My boss came by, you dipshit.”
Dainsleif lets out a gravelly laugh that he quickly turns into a cough. “Oh? Which boss is this, again? The one who ditched you all, or–”
“Not that one.” Kaeya takes a moment to wonder whether it would have been more or less horrific to have Varka stumble across him in a mall Santa costume three sizes too big, and quickly puts the thought out of his mind before it can cause him irreparable psychic damage.
“The pretty one, then,” Dainsleif says, and has the audacity to look knowing.
To say Jean Gunnhildr isn’t pretty would be to make a liar of himself, but Kaeya can’t very well speak that way about his own boss, so he settles for grunting and scowling into the mirror as he sets his hair in order.
“Too bad,” Dainsleif says. “Guess any romantic aspirations you had are well and truly dead now.”
The wig, when Kaeya throws it, does manage to catch Dain in the face. (Kaeya is more than a little proud of that.) “I have no romantic aspirations towards Jean Gunnhildr.”
“Right,” Dainsleif agrees easily. “Because they’re dead, because she saw you in a mall Santa costume.”
“I have never,” Kaeya says evenly, “had romantic aspirations towards Jean Gunnhildr.” Which, admittedly, is just on this side of truth, but truth has always been a malleable concept in Kaeya’s hands anyway, so he doesn’t feel too bad about smudging the line a little.
The look Dainsleif levels at him is nothing short of pitying, which frankly pisses Kaeya off more than the absurd accusation that he’s been harbouring feelings for his boss. “If you’re trying to tell me that you’re not even a little bit interested in her—after all the times you’ve talked my ear off about how smart and cool she is—then I feel compelled to inform you that I don’t believe you.”
And okay, look.
Jean is smart and cool—not to mention beautiful and kind beyond measure. And Kaeya is only human. Of course he’s a little bit interested.
But he’s never had romantic aspirations because—despite his swagger and bravado—he knows his limits. There are some things, and some people, that men like him should keep their grimy hands away from.
He realizes he’s been silent for too long and tries to play it off by scoffing. “I don’t take comments on my love life from someone whose five-year situationship won’t even call him back,” he says primly, and Dain rolls his eyes. “Whether you believe me or not, I have no interest in seeing Jean Gunnhildr outside of work.”
Dainsleif’s eyebrows shoot up. “Should I tell her to go home, then?” he says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.
Kaeya blinks. “What?”
“She’s at a cafe across from here,” Dainsleif says. “She asked after you. I thought you knew.”
Kaeya is shoving past him before he even finishes his sentence. “If I knew,” he bites out, “I wouldn’t be in here talking to you, now would I?”
Dainsleif’s laugh carries down the corridor. “Merry Christmas, dumbass.”
Kaeya rolls his eyes and doesn’t look back.
Jean is, in fact, nursing a coffee at the cafe across from the washrooms. Kaeya slows on approach, realizing that he may have jumped the gun a little bit and wondering how best to broach the conversation, but then she looks up and startles upon seeing him and the moment for strategizing is gone.
He slides into the chair opposite from her. “Hi,” he says.
“I am so sorry,” says Jean.
He grins despite himself. “Pretty sure that’s my line.”
She shakes her head. “No, I– I’m so sorry for putting you in that position. I had no idea– She never said– And I swear we didn’t know you were gonna be–”
“It’s fine, really,” Kaeya says.
“It’s not,” Jean insists. “If I’d known you were gonna be there, I never would have– I know nobody wants to bump into their boss outside of work–”
“It’s really fine,” Kaeya says.
“And then Klee,” Jean says. “I mean, I know she just wanted to help, but– I can’t tell you how mortified– I’m so embarrassed– Especially because you–”
“Jean,” Kaeya says. “It’s fine.”
A beat of silence, as her face contorts with the effort of keeping the words inside.
And then, because he has never quite managed to internalize that proverb about curiosity and the cat, he adds: “So the dates have been that bad, huh?”
Jean lets out a little whimper and drops her head into her hands.
“I’m sorry!” he starts, alarmed. “You don’t have to tell me, I was just curio–”
A bright blue eye peeks out from behind Jean’s fingers. “They’ve been atrocious,” she grumbles, and Kaeya finally lets himself crack up.
She joins him in his laughter, and the dense atmosphere of embarrassment seems to dissipate. “They’ve been so, so bad,” she gasps out finally, wiping tears from her eyes. “Gods, I haven’t been on any dates in forever, and now I’m thinking I should just resign myself to being a spinster for the rest of my life.”
He takes in a few wheezing breaths and manages to get himself under control. “They can’t have been that bad, surely?”
“One guy told me that he’s a whale hunter in his spare time,” she says. “Except that he’s just hunting one specific whale he saw when he was a kid. Like that guy from Moby Dick.”
“You’re joking.”
“I wish I was,” she says. “The worst part is, he was actually lovely apart from that. A real family man. I would have gone on another date with him except that he got arrested.” Whatever emotion is currently written on Kaeya’s face makes her add, “No, I don’t know what for.”
“But the other dates were better, right?”
She shakes her head and laughs mournfully. “Would you believe me if I said that was the best one?”
He groans. “I now understand why Klee was adamant you go on one singular good date.”
The mention of Klee brings fresh colour to Jean’s cheeks. “Gods, I don’t know how I’m supposed to fulfill her wish.”
“You could just lie,” Kaeya suggests. The fact that it’s the first suggestion which comes to mind probably indicates something about his character, but he can unpack that later.
“I’m not good at lying,” Jean says, which is true.
“You could stage a date and pay an actor.”
“I think that still falls under lying.”
“You could… line up some dates for the next week and pray very hard that one of them is good?”
“I put the dating misadventures on hiatus for the holidays.” She cradles her mug and laughs a little ruefully. “Who’d take me out this close to Christmas, anyway?”
“I would,” Kaeya says.
There is a long, frozen moment in which his certainty that Jean is going to drop her mug in shock is rivalled only by his certainty that he has finally lost his last marble.
Kaeya Alberich doesn’t date, and he definitely doesn’t date women who are as far out of his league as Jean is, and he definitely doesn’t date women whom he just swore up and down he had no interest in seeing outside of work.
But… he did promise Klee that he would try to fulfill her wish.
And Jean had just looked so forlorn at her miserable dating prospects.
And it’s not vanity to say that he can help her have one good date, at the very least.
Still, none of this is going to matter much once she graciously declines his offer and they laugh it off and go back to being friendly coworkers and he swallows all the weird and unwarranted feeling in his throat. He exhales and braces for the rejection.
“Would you really?” says Jean.
Kaeya blinks and refocuses on her face. Her fingers are worrying at the handle of the surprisingly un-dropped mug. She gnaws at her lower lip as if in concentration, watching him with a mixture of embarrassment and something that, were he a more delusional man, he might dare to call hope.
“Uh,” he says, intelligently. “If you wanted me to?”
“I wouldn’t require it of you,” she adds quickly. “I– I know we work together and I wouldn’t want to make it weird. I just thought since– since you offered– I wouldn’t want to be a burden–”
“You could never be a burden,” Kaeya interjects, hurrying to reassure her. “I’d be happy– I just never thought you–” Gods, look at him tripping over himself like a teenager with a crush. What is it about this woman that unearths the most deeply buried parts of him and puts them on full display?
Jean laughs helplessly and holds up a hand, stopping them both in their tracks. “Quite the pair we are,” she says.
Kaeya grimaces and scrambles for the shreds of his usual charming self, pulling them around him like a ragged coat of chainmail. “Jean Gunnhildr,” he says dramatically, proffering his hand palm-up with a flourish, “would you do me the honour of going on a super not-weird, very platonic friend date with me?”
Jean giggles and puts her hand in his. “It would be my genuine pleasure.”
He dips to brush a kiss to her knuckles before she can manage to pull away, coming back up to wink at her—although given the eyepatch it probably just looks like a blink—as her nose crinkles with laughter.
“You are an incorrigible flirt,” she chastises, with no real heat behind her words.
“Can this incorrigible flirt pick you up at 2 tomorrow?” Kaeya asks.
Jean rolls her eyes, mouth pressed into a thin line to hide her smile. “I’ll have to find childcare for Klee. But… yes, I would like that.”
Dainsleif is absolutely going to dunk on him when he hears about this, and the worst part is that Kaeya fully deserves it.
Still.
Despite the threat of imminent bullying, Kaeya can’t quite help the grin that spreads across his face as he walks away.