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| Title: O Tannenbaum Author: phobosgirl Written: 12/24/05 O Tannenbaum He's been gone all day after being mysterious this morning over coffee and you're about to really start getting pissed off, which is just a prelude to being scared and in denial about it, when you hear a car in the driveway. You debate with yourself for longer than you should, considering how fucking evolved you've become, over whether you should meet him at the door with an angry demand to know where he's been in such shitty, snowy weather, or whether to blow it off and pretend that you hardly noticed he was gone. The debate is pointless, though, because before you make up your mind, you're out the door without a coat and peering anxiously towards the driveway into the beginnings of a blizzard. Mikey's station wagon idles noisily in front of the garage doors, an old Woody he probably spent too much for and does too little maintenance on, and resting on the top you spy a green bundle that makes your stomach clench even as your heart thumps a little harder in confusing anticipation. Mikey, Justin, Ben and Hunter are struggling to untie the monstrosity and you know the next step is for them to drag it into your front hallway and dump it in a heap on the floor. You'd very much like to roar at them to get it the fuck away from your house, that you refuse to have a dead fire-hazard sitting in your living room for 3 weeks, but your relief that Justin is safe and back home overrides your irritation and you find yourself holding the door wide open for them as they march the pine through it. Justin is grunting instructions to the others, ("Back up a bit, it'll never make it around that corner," and "Ok, I want it in here. No, over here, by the fire. Not too close, though, I don't want it to dry out too quickly.") and all four greet you with wide smiles, red cheeks and laughter. Justin has been making sure that you can't catch his eye but when you finally do, you see mischief and delight there, and although you scowl you both know it's just for show. You would never deny anything to Justin that makes him look that happy, and part of you loves how it's always the little things that make him grin the widest. You decide that since it's your house it's also your tree and therefore your show. You gripe and direct and snark until the tree stands exactly where you want it, and is absolutely straight, and through it all Justin has had the good sense to hide his amused smirk. When it's up and you've stopped pointing and barking orders, everyone stands back and just gazes at the beauty of the 13 foot tall blue spruce that somehow seems to compliment the space perfectly. Justin slips his arm around your waist and presses his warming cheek to your shoulder as his eyes follow the clumpy branches from the floor almost to the ceiling, nodding in satisfaction. Always leave it to an artist to chose the right Christmas tree- you know his aesthetic is flawless and that he probably had a tree exactly like this in mind since the first day he laid eyes on this room. With a startle, standing there looking at your first Christmas tree with Justin, in the first home you've ever shared with anyone you've actually loved, you glimpse the future. You can see a tree much like this one standing in the same spot for so many Christmases to come that you feel a little dizzy, like you're looking into a mirror that's reflected in another mirror into infinity. You know that every year Justin will putter around it for hours, placing and replacing ornaments, tinsel, garland. That his hair will gray and his eyesight might dim but the glow that shines from him never will, if you work hard to keep it alive in him. That you will soften and stretch to accommodate his optimism and be changed by it forever. That you will shatter heaven and hell to keep him here with you, here or somewhere else you'll both call home, until the day death comes to take one of you from the other. Your heart clenches in fear as your breath quickens and you wrap your arm around Justin's shoulders, pull him closer, and try to remind yourself that it's only a fucking tree. He senses the change in your mood, but from long experience he won't embarrass you by making an issue of it and instead, just tilts his head up for a simple kiss. Although you dearly want Justin all to yourself tonight you find yourself insisting that the Novotny-Bruckner clan spend the night in your spare bedrooms, rather than hazard the drive back to Pennsylvania in the steadily worsening conditions outside. They seem eager to do so, and when Justin offers to make hot chocolate for everyone, you roll your eyes and decline, knowing the damage it will do to your abs if you indulge. You don't even mention, because you know that they all know, the damage it would do to your reputation if it ever got out that you'd been drinking hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire while your lover and make-shift family decorated your Christmas tree. You'd never be able to show your face, or your dick, in the backroom of Babylon, again. You can't help but admit to yourself however, as you watch Hunter and Justin drag bags and boxes of ornaments out from a closet in which he'd hidden them, that you're having fun, more fun than you ever would have expected from an over-sold holiday you, yourself, helped to hype and advertise to fucking death. It doesn't take long before Justin seems to be wearing as many white twinkling lights as the tree but his laughter is so contagious that you can't help but join in. There is talk of putting the tree topper on Justin's head rather than the tree but you nix that idea, and help Justin unravel himself from the tangle of lights, stringing them on the higher branches, yourself. Several hours later when the tree decorating is nearly complete and more than six inches of fresh snow lay on the ground outside, Justin finds you standing in the open door that leads from the kitchen into the back yard. You've been watching the snow and listening with amazement to the way it sounds when it lands on the trees, on the stables, on itself as it lays on the ground; you're captivated by the way it muffles all other sounds and by the deference the darkness itself seems to show its quiet majesty. Snow in the city never sounded like this, and you haven't been able to pull yourself away from just watching it and listening. Justin's hands are warm when they slide under your sweater; his grip is firm as it wraps around your waist from behind. You'd like nothing more than to drag him to the floor and fuck him right here, to find out if the blankets of white outside would show deference to his quiet majesty, but just two rooms away, Mikey and Ben and Hunter are laughing. You turn in Justin's arms and press yourself against him, and for a moment you don't care that you're not alone. You're suddenly hard, needy, and you spend minutes kissing him breathless, his taut body becoming limp and pliant with desire. You press him up against the door frame, rock into him until he's whimpering into your mouth, and the hush of the snow coming down like a curtain of white fades as the music he makes becomes more important than anything else. You break the kiss only so you can watch his face, the way it flushes and goes slack when you bring your hand to the front of his jeans and press rhythmically until he grinds into you, your name barely escaping his lips on a panted breath. When he's close and his face wrinkles in concentration, you yank his zipper down and take hold of his cock with your long, cold fingers. He gasps at the shock of the chill on his skin but he's too far gone to stop now, and you lean in to whisper the words you know will make him spill all over your hand. He cries out sharply, just once, and convulses against you, one of his hands knotted tightly in your sweater, the other clutching with white knuckles the door frame over his head. And suddenly, as in the living room, you see your future with him, see yourself and him never growing tired of this moment and countless others like it. You laugh at yourself for having been so afraid of it for so long, and he opens his eyes, asks in a low, satisfied moan what's so funny. You shake your head, smiling, and kiss his face, his cheeks and lips and eyelids, the tip of his nose. "Thanks for the tree, Sunshine." His answering smile is timeless. fin |