by R. Cooper
“Uncle Alex is grouchy.” He actually heard a child say those words, but when he looked over, no one was looking at him.
“You’ll be grouchy this early on Christmas morning someday too,” his mother told him. Alex appreciated calm Rachel so much better than her annoying sister. It’s why he got her nicer presents. He almost couldn’t wait for Molly to open her gifts and make the inevitable comparisons. He wouldn’t have much longer to wait.
He wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or not for the reprieve as it only gave him more time to think about what he’d done last night. He’d done all this, avoided Everett for a year and proved to himself that he was strong enough and sane enough now to be good for Everett, so he could finally have Everett if Everett still wanted him, and now he felt frozen. Though perhaps petrified was a better word, turned to stone with fear. A cranky, sick-to-his-stomach stone.
Everett wouldn’t hurt him for the world, but there was love of family and there was burning passion, and though what he felt for Everett was a melding of the two, it did not mean the same was true for Everett anymore.
He rubbed his face, which was rough with the need to shave. He wasn’t the only one, just as everyone but Molly, somehow, looked in need of a hot shower. Robert was sipping water and coffee in turns. Ty looked positively ill. Alex found that more pleasing than he should.
“You don’t look like you have any Christmas spirit.” A child’s voice brought his attention back to Rachel’s oldest, Beth, staring at him.
“Bah! Humbug,” he grunted like he imagined Scrooge would have, and then slurped at his coffee. George came in just then and gave him a look, but didn’t comment. He had another camera. Alex shut his eyes.
“Is everyone here? Is it time for presents?” George called out, once again making questions into orders. Those hiding in the kitchen almost immediately began streaming into the living room and curling up wherever there was room. They brought with them the scent of fresh cinnamon rolls.
Alex opened his eyes. He’d claimed the chair by the fire, and he wasn’t moving, not even for rolls. It didn’t matter anyway. When he looked up, Everett was there with napkins and hot cinnamon rolls that dripped with too much icing for everyone. He got halfway across the room, glancing purposefully over in Alex’s direction with a plain one in his hand, before Molly swung him around and pulled him and all his baked treats onto the couch with her. She made Ty make room.
Alex hoped she got only socks.
It wasn’t much of a curse. The Faradays weren’t rich, and there was a houseful of people to shop for. Gifts tended to be simple, cheap, or homemade—used books, knitted scarves, jars of spicy pickles, picture frames. Those with money tended to buy things that were needed. Alex wasn’t wealthy either, was still working out some debt issues, but he had enough to get George and Ally tickets to a show in the city, which meant they’d have to come see him.
And hopefully Everett, his mind added, but when he looked at Everett, Everett was focused on opening the current present being handed to him by the child forced to play Santa.
Alex dutifully opened his presents too. An expensive bottle of cognac from Robert. Interesting junk from street vendors and thrift sales and convenience stores that they knew would amuse him from the others, including a truly awful-looking movie from Everett.
He raised his head again to thank him and saw Everett stretching to kiss his mother’s cheek to thank her for whatever she’d gotten him. Alex turned to see what, and then stopped to study the familiar bags of caramels and hard candy and think about Everett having more of his favorite treat to hoard.
“I didn’t plan to buy them for you, but I was looking for something interesting for Alex, and I saw those and thought of you. You always loved them when you were growing up, and I couldn’t find a last little something for you,” Ally was explaining merrily and then must have caught some kind of question on Ty’s face because she went on. “I know they aren’t much, but Everett always loved those, especially the butterscotch. That was always his favorite of all of them.”
Ty said something Alex couldn’t hear, but he supposed it didn’t matter because then Ty turned to look at him, revelations all over his face. George turned, too, squinting across the room at Alex like he’d also just figured something out.
They could be wrong, but Alex didn’t think so. It wasn’t as though he’d been especially subtle. He hadn’t seen the point at the time. Those poems had been borne out of those first post-suicide-attempt letters to Everett, created from the words he couldn’t say out loud. Subtlety hadn’t even occurred to him.
If (when) I live to be old / will I confuse dreams? / one sweet circle of butterscotch / a lifetime of the bruised bliss of your mouth. That was the rest of the line Ty hadn’t been able to remember, though the poem itself went on from there.
But Alex ignored them, poems he’d hated the moment they were out for the world to read, and all the other people in the room, and looked at Everett. He found Everett staring at him, white-faced and hungover and frowning. Furious, as he only ever got when Alex refused to take his medication, or when Alex took too much on purpose and called him to say, “I’m sorry, Everett, I’m so sorry,” before hanging up and locking his door.
Alex rose to his feet and went to the kitchen. He stopped only because George grabbed his arm. The man paused, looking around, then lowered his voice.
“Only a few minutes, son. You’ve got gifts waiting.” Everett’s father was as startlingly kind as he had always been under the strong words and gruff bluster as he let Alex go and then stepped back to resume taking pictures.
Alex nodded, but only because he couldn’t speak. Then he got the hell out of there.
If that meant freezing his ass off again, then so be it.
That, of course, was a bold declaration made in the heat of the moment. The moment after was considerably colder and uncomfortable. He’d put on some flannel pajama pants to come downstairs but not shoes or even slippers. He wasn’t certain he even owned a pair of slippers, though he’d once sent Rachel four pairs of stuffed bunny slippers he’d found in some little shop. “For the children you’re going to have someday” was what he believed he’d written in the note he’d sent with them. She’d been in school and not seeing anyone then, but it had made sense to him at the time.
It was a joke between them now. She’d say, “I’m two bunnies down,” or “I’m working on that other bunny,” whenever she’d see him.
Nonetheless, he could not be still, and walked, barefoot and cursing himself, out to the tree and the bench, and sat down to get frostbite while he awaited his fate.
The world was very quiet Christmas morning, the noise contained inside thousands of houses for a while until all that childish glee would burst out and life would go on. The colored lights were still on around the windows and gutters, bright but subdued in the morning light, as if aware that their time was nearly over.
Alex’s stomach growled, wrecking his attempt to fall into the familiar embrace of his melancholy. It was Christmas, and the tension in him was rising so high he almost felt giddy. Everything in him but his stomach was strung out like a bowstring, humming in the wind, waiting to snap. He was trembling uncontrollably. He had come this far and could go no further, at least not without shoes or a snack.
As if on cue, Everett came out the kitchen door, the delay in his arrival explained by his slippers and coat. He had what looked like another pair of slippers in his pocket and a mug in his hand. He did not have the plain cinnamon roll, but even Everett couldn’t be perfect, it seemed.
Alex accepted the slippers eagerly and the mug cautiously. He sniffed it and then looked up.
“Santa’s Little Helper? This early?” His voice came out strained in the quiet of the world around them. Everett narrowed his eyes, but answered with a brief, sideways smile.
“It’s good for nerves.”
Alex took a drink. He was a man in need of a little courage, whatever the variety. Just the same, he lo
oked up again. “Everett, need I remind you that you’re talking to someone who’s been arrested on more than one occasion? Someone who has won more than his share of fights with the vicious thugs that passed for our high school football team?”
“Someone who climbed up through my window more than once shaking and bleeding from those fights, which were, by the way, usually with boys who’d said something about obviously faggy me?” Everett countered immediately as though he’d been storing that answer for just this moment, perhaps for years. “Someone who’s called me from heights I can’t imagine to describe every single thing he saw that day and how it made him think of me, and who then admitted in a rush that he was worried I would leave him?”
Alex dropped his gaze to the ground, but Everett didn’t stop there.
“Alex, you… I’ve gone to see you at your worst depths and had you tell me….” Everett finally stopped, but only for a moment when his voice cracked. Alex swung his eyes up. Everett was clenching and unclenching his hands. “You told me I ought to leave because you were too horrible for someone like me to be around. You told me to leave you,” he repeated, the words, everything about him like the truth, harsh and raw. “You said I’d be better off without you. I don’t think I will ever really forgive you for that.”
Alex closed his hands around the mug. Someone must have reheated the cocoa since the cup was hot. Alex was shivering anyway. “You’re a surprisingly hard man at times, Everett.”
Everett exhaled and took a moment to focus. “I don’t know why it’s taken you so long to realize how strong I am. My job isn’t exactly a walk in the park.”
If those boys were anything at all like Alex had been at their age, then Alex agreed, that job would be difficult and demanding and a nightmare most of the time. And yet, if they were anything like him, in no time at all they’d be eating out of Everett’s hand.
“But you do it.”
“And we both know why.” Everett was so definite that Alex looked up again.
“I didn’t.” It was not the brutal truth he was known for. “Or I didn’t want to hope. I couldn’t handle it then, I think. I am not strong.”
Everett snorted. The sound was bitter, though he ought to know how awful hope could be as much as Alex did. Alex scowled at him. “I’m the one with the reputation for cruel honesty, in case you’ve forgotten,” he started to say, but abandoned his defense halfway through.
He sighed instead, and Everett sat down heavily on the bench next to him. “But I always hoped anyway, even before I consciously knew what it was I wanted.” Alex looked away again, but to remember this time, and to explain. Everett was hungover, they were both needlessly freezing, and now there were too many words to hold back.
“The damn candy.” He wiped at his face and took another drink. “I had run to you, again.” He’d run to Everett too many times to count. He wasn’t sure when he’d first started climbing that tree, but Everett’s window had always been unlocked for him, something he supposed no one would dare do in a child’s room now, but the world had seemed different then. Or maybe Everett’s parents hadn’t known and that had been all Everett.
“It was the middle of the night, but of course my father wasn’t sleeping. He was decorating, but he’d spent every cent of his paycheck on presents for me so he was cutting up paper for snowflakes and chains to decorate the house for Christmas. He wasn’t sleeping and so neither was I, and it had been fun during the afternoon, but then we were out of paper and still it wasn’t enough. He suddenly had a vision of what it should be and the look in his eyes…. He wasn’t there anymore. I’m sure you’re familiar with it.”
Alex gestured at himself. Everett didn’t nod, but he didn’t need to. So Alex cleared his throat. “I had to get away. I climbed your tree, and even though we had just entered junior high and I knew, I thought, we were too old for that sort of thing, you looked at me and pulled me close and held me in a way boys aren’t supposed to at that age.” His mouth was dry, but he didn’t take another drink. “And after a while, you took out your last two pieces of that damn candy. You’d been saving them since Halloween, you loved them so much. You could have just bought more, I think, but you were careful even then, and you’d hid them away for special occasions, and they were your last two, and you gave them to me.”
He rolled his shoulders and glanced over again. “It was nothing more and nothing less than you’d always done, but I knew then, for the first time.” It had been pain and happiness and then feeling so weary he’d fallen asleep with Everett still holding him. “Though I didn’t really admit it to myself until high school, but I already knew it couldn’t happen.”
“Not then,” Everett corrected him, so very sure. Alex met his gaze.
Fear, like cold, also made him shake. But he put the mug down, and when Everett leaned in, he reached over to cup his face and kiss the curve of his lips. Everett’s hands came up, touching the freezing skin of his arms, and Everett exhaled, just his name.
It wasn’t long, not with the cold and Alex needing more than that from him, but even when Everett pressed to make the kiss deeper, he would not stop touching him. His palms smoothed down Alex’s chilled arms and then along his stomach and back, and then Alex kissed him again, less with bated breath and carefully parted lips and more with hot intent. Everett’s hands skated over his shoulders and ribs and then grew bolder, as if Everett were not already bold enough.
He abruptly groaned and pushed forward to close the distance, and Alex realized this was not Everett being brave or Everett wanting to comfort him. Everett needed to touch him. His fingertips pressed into Alex’s skin hard enough to bruise, and then he twined Alex’s fingers with his and pulled his hand to his chest as though he needed Alex to know how fast his heart was beating.
Alex pressed against his chest, into the old wound of that broken heart, and slid his mouth down to Everett’s rough jawline at the gratified noise Everett made. He nodded, shakily, to show that he understood, and pushed his other hand down over flannel to feel Everett’s cock pound against his hand. It made him dizzy and sent a fire crackling through his skin, like touching lightening.
He shut his eyes tight and let himself feel Everett, Everett breathing hard into his ear, trembling and pushing up into his hand, and whispering feverish little declarations as Alex pulled at the ties at his waist and discovered the warm, firm skin of his lower stomach.
“Alex, please.” Everett’s hands were along his back, pulling him closer, his breath halting noisily when Alex’s mouth tasted his throat, the skin beneath his ear, his shoulder, and his hand slipped down beneath his pajama pants to cup him through his underwear. His fingertips were sticky. He wanted to put them in his mouth, but couldn’t stop sucking kisses into Everett’s skin or stroking, slowly, over Everett’s erection.
He was hard, too, but he couldn’t stop this, tormenting Everett as though they were teenagers, and he wanted Everett to come in his pants.
“Alex, please,” Everett begged him, stopping when Alex opened his eyes and moved back to lick his mouth open. He twitched forward, and Everett moved, like he wanted to open his legs and couldn’t. He panted against Everett when he pulled back, and Everett moaned. “Alex, it’s… a year, Alex. It’s been a year. Please.”
For a moment Alex couldn’t follow, and then he felt his heart stop.
“Everett.” It was all Alex could manage. Then he pushed off the bench, knocking the mug into the snow. He took Everett’s mouth and his neck and his ear and then tipped his head back to have his mouth again, swallowing his gasping pleas for more, overwhelmed with the need for Everett, to hear him, see him, come in his hands.
“You didn’t have to wait with me,” he wanted to say, but Everett saw through him, or read it in him when he couldn’t say it aloud, and kissed him back, until their mouths were bruised and wet, and his palm was damp and hot against Everett’s briefs.
All these years and this was his. Not stolen, not borrowed, but his. The planes of Everett’s
back, the slope of his shoulder, the hard length of him tempting Alex’s fingertips into sliding down over and over again.
“Wait?” Everett wasn’t laughing. “Waiting.” His stubble burned. His mouth was sweet. “Since you were twelve, Alex? My whole life.” He was weak for a moment, shuddering, and then he moved forward when Alex’s fingers slid through his hair, one by one until he was cupping the back of his head. Alex knew the air was freezing, but he was hot, they were hot. His thoughts were racing, spinning around and around one thing—he had Everett. He thought Everett had a similar problem. Everett had him, and for that Alex had to kiss him again.
“My whole life,” Everett panted at him in the second their mouths were apart. “I wanted you in high school, and I wanted to take care of you at the same time, and that wasn’t anything compared to how confused I was when I was away from you in school. I got it then.” He gulped and then his mouth was wet against Alex’s as he spoke. “I thought you didn’t, but then I just wanted you to be okay, to be alive, and I didn’t care about the rest. I didn’t want to hope.”
“I’m alive, Everett.” Alex opened his eyes and stopped. He had a hand at the back of Everett’s neck and Everett breathing harshly against his cheek, and he was very much alive and very grateful to be so. “I’m alive.” His blood was rushing through him, heavy in his lap, but when Everett gasped against his chin, he felt calm. His thoughts, for one moment, paused for quiet, clear reflection. “I’m alive, and I’m here.”
Everett’s hands tightened on him, and then he bent his head and spoke into Alex’s shoulder.
“A mystery, but mine?” It was enough to leave Alex’s mouth open. Everett tossed his head in disbelief.
“How could you know what I felt?” His voice rasped. “I’ve never really had you, Alex, but you were always mine. We were always special. Then you never showed me the poems. I had to buy the book, and I still could not stop reading them, touching the pages, every line. That’s us, isn’t it, Alex?”