Neighbour au + holiday fic, Luke/Julie/Reggie
Julie has just moved to the NYC from LA for her first real job with a recording studio. She’s so excited about this job and her big break into the music industry, but she’s never lived this far away from her family and it’s pretty daunting. Luckily, it’s the Christmas season and decorating her new apartment makes her feel closer to her family. It was her mother’s favorite holiday, after all, and ever since she passed away, it was something they’d done to honor her memory. So you can’t really blame Julie if she goes a little overboard, but honestly the lights really brighten up the hallway! Then her neighbor from two doors down hangs up his own lights in the hallway that are twice as colorful as hers - and, look Julie’s a little competitive, ok? No one is gonna show up her decorations. It’s on.
Reggie loves Christmas. His parents had never bothered to celebrate, so the first thing he did after fleeing to the other side of the country to get away from them as soon as he turned 18 was to buy out half of the nearest Christmas display and turn his tiny shoebox apartment into the loudest, most ridiculous display of holiday joy anyone has ever seen. Maybe it spills out into the hallway a little bit. But his neighbor from two doors down is also decorating the hallway, so it can’t bother people too much! He’s just happy to have someone who loves Christmas as much as he does, so he keeps adding more.
Luke is losing his fucking mind. He hates Christmas. He hates the whole stupid season and everything about it. He ran away from home on Christmas Eve three years ago, caught a cross-country bus to NYC and never looked back. So how has it come to this, that his two new neighbors on either side of him have so much Christmas spirit that it is taking over the whole hallway? And it seems to grow with every passing day? When will he ever know peace from this red-and-green glitter-filled nightmare?
It all comes to a head when Reggie starts playing Christmas carols on his guitar and Julie, hearing him through the paper thin walls, takes that as a challenge and busts out her keyboard to play some right back at him. And while Luke can’t take the Christmas of it all, he knows good music when he hears it. So he joins in.
