Notes: This is the first part in a Christmas series written for the LiveJournal aiw_advent 2010.

Each chapter of this story has been rated individually. This chapter is rated K+ for for K-I-S-S-I-N-G!... and Alice in a nightgown. (^_~)

Summary: Well, it's not exactly mistletoe... that must be why it seems to work so much better!

"Alice... Alice..."

It wasn't the sound of the whisper that woke her, but the gentle caresses through her hair. A few strands caught and pulled and she opened her eyes with an affronted gasp.

She rolled over in bed, casting her gaze about for the offender who had snagged her hair and woken her, but the guilty party had already left her bedside. The soft creak of a floorboard near her door had her looking up and across the room.

A mauvishly colored sash fluttered around the edge of the doorjamb and a shadow moved in the hall beyond.

Without a thought or a care for the fact that Winter had arrived weeks ago and the floor was cold and her feet were bare, Alice threw back the covers and charged after the person who had been in her room.

A man, she decided, tripping quietly down the stairs after him. She leaned forward, hurried her steps, but he was always just a little too far ahead, a little too deep in shadow for her to see him properly. She wanted to shout, demand to know why this man had broken into her mother's house! Especially with it being the Christmas season now and the holiday itself less than two weeks away!

But she did not shout. She hurried after him.

At the end of the hall, his shadow slipped through the front door. Alice grabbed the first coat she found and a pair of gardening boots and clamored outside. Interestingly enough, he hadn't gone far.

"Alice," he said and she looked into his bright green eyes, his happy smile with its perfectly tea-treated teeth.

"I know you," she replied, cautiously making her way down the icy front steps. "I know you..."

"Yes," he lisped softly. "You do."

There was something about him that drew her closer... closer... until she was nearly in his arms, which hung at his sides. She studied his selection of jacket and vest and ascot, each clashing delightfully with the other. She lifted her gaze to his hat, lowered her gaze along the sash that had fluttered through the open doorway of her bedroom.

"Why are you here?" she heard herself say.

"Because I missed you," he replied with such innocence and honesty, that she couldn't stop herself from closing the distance between them. He held perfectly still as she lifted a hand to his bright, gravity-defying hair and gently brushed her fingers through it. After a moment, his own hand lifted in response and Alice sighed at the sight of two of her long hairs caught up in a blue thimble on his middle finger.

"Why did you bring me out here? It's December!"

"Do you feel chilled?" His brows twitched together in an acute case of Concern.

Alice paused and considered that. "Actually... no." She looked down at the ice-encrusted snow beneath her too-large boots. Frowning, she met his gaze again and demanded, "Why don't I feel cold?"

"Because this is a dream," he replied.

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I am dreaming you." He looked inexplicably proud of this accomplishment.

She giggled, grinned, and guessed, "Then we both must be asleep right now."

"I should think so."

"What is your name?" she wondered aloud. Her gaze darted to his top hat. Hat! "Hatter," she whispered. "What is your name?"

"Tarrant," he replied, his expression softening. "Tarrant Hightopp." And then, smiling, he remarked, "As proper introductions go, I'm afraid that wasn't one. It was far, far too late in coming."

"But it did come, so no harm done."

"I'm glad."

"Mr. Hightopp—"

"Tarrant, Alice. Please, call me Tarrant."

"Tarrant..." She liked the sound of his name. She especially liked saying it. And, even more than that, she liked saying it to him, for the smile he gave her was beyond compare. "Why did you dream me?"

"Because I have something to tell you, Alice."

"Yes?"

He gathered her hands in his own and placed something small and uncomfortably pointy in her cupped hands. "Holly is a wonderfully romantic sort of bush," he murmured. "It quite likes the ledges above doorways. The view from so high is quite unique, I'm told."

Alice laughed. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the kiss I never gave you, Alice. Holly. Doorways. A high view."

And then he stepped back and released her hands. Unable to resist investigating, Alice dropped her gaze to the prickly object in her palms and—

Alice opens her eyes to the bright light of morning.

Morning.

It shouldn't be morning. It should be night, still. And she should be standing outside in the snow talking to—

With a gasp, Alice flies out of bed. She nearly crashes head-first down the stairs. Her mother shouts at her – honestly, a newly-promoted company associate should not be tumbling through the house! – but Alice is too busy wrestling herself into the first coat she grabs. She jams her feet into a pair of gardening boots – mens by the enormous size of them and most likely the butler's – and barrels outside.

She doesn't care that people are on the street and that she is still in her nightdress and it's cold and icy and her mother is shouting (this time in alarm)...

Alice slips and slides down the steps and kneels beside the stairs. There, in the narrow flower bed which hosts daffodils in the spring, growing up from the snow, is a sprout of what looks like... a tiny holly bush.

"Hello..." Alice whispers, smiling. "I believe we've already met." She reaches out and gently cups the thing in her bare hands. "Would you like to come inside? I have a nice doorway with a high view..."

If there had been a breeze, what happens next could have been easily explained. But there is no breeze. There is nothing to explain the fact that suddenly, the tiny bush shivers and then leans into Alice's hand, falls into her palm, and lies there peacefully, trustingly, expectantly.

Alice gathers it up from the hard snow and takes it inside. She clomps through the house, managing a mumble to placate her mother even though she doesn't bother to take off her boots or replace the coat in the foyer closet.

She heads upstairs, to her room and then to the doorway that it shares with her personal office. Once it had been a playroom, but Alice is not a little girl anymore... although perhaps she does still play. The trading business is awfully adventurous, she has heard, and despite the legal tedium, there is play to be had. So, turning this room into an office had not really been that big of a change... more an adaptation.

Alice pulls out her desk chair and a bit of string (for packages) and a tack, and then fixes the little sprig of holly squarely above the door in the office. She climbs down and surveys the room.

"Yes, those are the very best windows in the house. I'm sure you'd agree if I gave you the full tour."

"That's very kind of you to offer."

Alice pivots back around, her breath tangling in her throat, and gapes at the man standing under the holly in her office doorway.

"Hatter?" she gasps. "Tarrant?"

His grin widens. "Alice! You look precisely the same now as when I last saw you!"

"In your dream, you mean!" she accuses, smiling.

"That," he says, "is an excellent rhyme."

"What are you doing here? How did you get here?" She leans around him to check that her bedroom door is closed – which it thankfully is! – and sighs with relief. When she leans back and looks at him expectantly, he replies.

"The holly, of course. As I explained earlier."

"Did you?" But she doesn't press the point. He obviously feels his explanation had been more than sufficient. And it must have been because here he is. "And why have you come to visit me, then?"

"I believe I also explained that quite thoroughly," he answers softly, shifting toward her without leaving the threshold. "I missed you."

"And I've missed you." Yes, he had been so afraid she would forget him... but she hadn't. Some days she thinks would be much easier if she had forgotten him. In fact, now that she thinks about it, why hadn't she recognized him immediately in her dream? Perhaps because he had dreamed her and he hadn't expected her to remember?

Tarrant clears his throat.

"I am not sure how long the holly will oblige us – permit us to share doorways..." he says warningly.

"Oh, are you standing in your doorway now, too?"

"Of course! Where else would I host the holly?"

"I don't know. That place is usually reserved for mistletoe."

"Does it work?"

"Only for kissing passers-by," she admits.

"I am not a passer-by," he declares. And then he kisses her.

Alice leans into him, grasps his arms and holds him in her reality as his lips gently brush against hers. It is too brief, of course, and when he leans away, she licks her lips and stares brazenly at his.

"You gave me the kiss you mentioned," she observes. "If that was the one you mentioned."

"It was," he admits. "However... I am faced with a conundrum now."

"And what would that be?"

"I found that one to my liking so much that I would very much like another..."

This time, Alice links her fingers together at the back of his neck and presses her lips to his. He sighs happily and his hands settle on her waist and she doesn't care that she's wearing a coat over her nightdress and too-large boots on her bare feet. She kisses him back and he pulls her closer and their mouths open and breaths jumble together and she has never felt like this before! Like she is made of something light and sparkle-y and has the ability to soar through the air!

Is this what it feels like to fly?

"Alice," he whispers between kisses. "I miss you, please... Come back to Underland."

"I will," she promises. "I told you I would."

His mouth slants over hers once more and her groan tumbles out of her throat and across the bridge that his tongue makes between them. Slowly, reluctantly, he pulls back. His arms loosen from where they had banded around her.

"But not yet," he sighs, reading her expression.

"Not yet," she agrees. And then she looks up to the happy plant above his head and grins. "But I think I have a companion for my trip this spring."

Alice gives her full attention to Tarrant Hightopp, who beams happily. "Holly," he tells her, "adore all manner of traveling."

Green eyes glittering with happiness, he leans down and presses his lips to hers briefly, softly. It is not a kiss Good-bye. It is a kiss that is a Good-bye For Now.

"When will I see you again like this?" she asks, pressing her face to his shoulder and inhaling deeply. "Under the holly, I mean," she clarifies before he can point out that she is not seeing much of him at the moment, only his jacket and collar.

"Whenever we both pass this way again," he assures her.

She considers that. "Were you waiting long for me?"

"Yes," he answers, and she realizes he is not talking about waiting on a threshold, under a clipping of holly. Well, he is not only talking about waiting on a threshold, under a clipping of holly.

"It won't be much longer." She thinks of the trip to China... She does not expect that she will love another land or its people like she loves Underland, like she loves this man... but she would still like to go, to see, to do...

"Take as long as you need," he tells her, brushing her tangled hair back over her shoulder. "Now that I know you remember..." He presses a gentle kiss to her forehead... and then, with eyes that are bright with promise and happiness, he moves away. "Until we meet again, Alice."

She watches as he steps back, out of the threshold... and disappears.

"Until then," she agrees, still smiling.

And then she looks up.

"You," she tells the holly, "are the guest of honor on the maiden voyage of The Wonder."

And it is not her imagination, she decides, that the little plant gleams and twitches with energy before subsiding.

Nor had it been her imagination that Tarrant had pulled her into his dream, had told her how to open a doorway to Underland, had stood here on the threshold to her office, had kissed her, had held her, had promised to wait for her...

No, the tingling in her blood, the taste of him on her lips, and the two red hairs caught in her grasp attest to the truth.