Chapter Text
The steam pools out of the bathroom as he steps back into their bedroom. Chloe woke up before either of them, as evidence by the note written on the fogged up mirror that said two more days until Christmas! . It’s gone now, wiped away from Gavin’s hand when he went to brush his teeth. Time is moving too slow and too fast. Christmas already. The end of another year. But still how many more days before the next year starts? He’s itching for January just to help mark the start of something new.
He leans against the doorway, towel wrapped around his waist, messing with his Spotify to close out before an ad starts playing.
“Hot,” Connor says.
He smiles as he looks up, but it fades when he catches Connor’s expression.
“You’re teasing me.”
“Always am.”
“You know you could have a piece of this if you wanted,” he says.
“You think I’m not aware?” Connor laughs. “Get dressed. Tina came by while you were in the shower. We’re supposed to go ice skating today.”
“Fuck,” he mumbles. “You’re going to look like such a damn fool.”
Connor shrugs. He’s as aware as Gavin is that regardless of how similar ice skating and ballet might look on the surface, they require an entirely different set of skills.
He still hasn’t seen him dance, though. Connor likes his privacy with it. He always disappears early in the morning when Gavin is staying at his place. Comes back damp with sweat and pulls Gavin out of bed to shower with him. He’s caught glimpses, sure, maybe even spied for longer than he should’ve, but he knows dancing is something Connor likes to keep to himself after it was exploited of him for so long.
And it isn’t as though Connor dances all the time, either. There are times he doesn’t. Long stretches where Connor doesn’t dance at all. But he wonders if he’s itching to do it now. There’s space, but the only room on the first floor is Gavin’s mom’s and while he doubts she would wake up to the noise, Connor isn’t the type of person to risk it.
“You should talk to Elijah before we go,” Connor says.
“Right. I forgot about that.”
Connor shakes his head. “Don’t believe that in the slightest.”
Maybe not. Maybe Gavin spent his entire time in the shower wishing that the lodge would collectively erase it from their memories. And when that seemed like it wasn’t going to happen, he tried to rehearse words. Some way to apologize while also demanding an apology in return, too. He leans his head back. Fuck. He did forget that he promised Tina he’d talk to Ellie and Topher, though.
“I’ll meet you downstairs in a little bit, okay?”
“Okay,” Connor says. He stands up, moving over to Gavin. Hand on his side, kissing him lightly. “I love you.”
“You just like me for my body.”
Connor laughs. “Yes, well, your upper body strength does come in handy quite often.”
He knocks lightly on the bedroom door, assuming that the early morning, the plans for their day, and the hospital trip last night would mean Elijah isn’t in the office, typing away at emails and files.
“Who’s there?”
“Vinny,” he says, opting for his nickname in hopes it makes things a little bit lighter. Nobody calls him Vinny but his family. Nobody calls him Gav but Connor. His parents are the only ones that still call Elijah “Ellie” after Tina named her daughter after him and the nickname stuck on her instead.
But--
He’s pretty sure the only person that calls Elijah “El” is Chris, though.
“The fuck do you want?”
“To talk.”
There’s footsteps on the other side. The door opens, Elijah on the other side. His hair down, a burgundy robe tied around his waist. He looks horrible. Half his face is a bruise. It’s a lot worse than it looked last night.
“Come to say sorry?” Elijah asks.
“Yeah.”
“Connor make you do that?”
Gavin shrugs. “It’s the right thing to do.”
“That wasn’t an answer,” Eli says. “But I guess that means I should apologize, too.”
He shrugs again. They stand in silence for a long moment before Eli finally motions for him to come inside. The door closes. They sit opposite of each other on the messy bed. Comforter all tangled up between them. Pillows missing their pillowcases. Eli is still a restless sleeper, then.
He didn’t used to be. When they were growing up, Eli and Gav were both such heavy sleepers they missed class more often than not. It didn’t affect Eli’s grades, but it affected Gavin’s. Maybe the beginning of a catalyst for teacher-student study sessions.
Either way--
Last time he was here, he remembers listening to Tina asking Eli if he brought his meds. Things that would help him sleep. Dull his dreams so that there weren’t anymore nightmares.
He remembers Tina asking him if it had gotten any better, after all this time. He never found out what caused them. Something that happened when he was taking his three year nap.
“Look, last night I was drunk,” Elijah says finally. “I know that doesn’t excuse it, but… It’s why I was acting like that. I get… stupid when I’m drunk.”
“I know, I’m not stupid,” he replies. “But neither were you. You weren’t being stupid. You were being an asshole.”
“Yeah,” he whispers. “I’m—It’s… difficult. When you went into your coma, nobody thought you would wake up. You know mom had to deal with all this shit from parents at school? She’d still go to PTA meetings for Tina and other parents would tell her to unplug you. That she was being selfish for keeping you alive. I would get messages online that I should try and sue mom and dad to do it. Let you go finally. Not to dwell on it.”
“What does this have to do with last night?”
“You know full well what it has to do with last night.”
Gavin looks away from him, stares at the whorls in the wooden panels on the wall. “You said you didn’t want me to wake up.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t mean it,” Eli says. “All I ever wanted was for you to wake up. All this shit would happen and I’d want to talk to you. I got in a fight with Tina and I would save these drafts in my phone of messages to send you, even though I knew you would take her side.”
“Why the fuck would you say that shit then?” he asks. “Why would you tell me that you wanted me dead?”
“I didn’t mean it about you, Gav. I meant it about me.”
“I don’t follow.”
Elijah shakes his head, hides his face in his hands. “Four years ago I took a bunch of pills, okay? It wasn’t enough to kill me. I went to the hospital. I was fine. They put me on suicide watch. I went to therapy.”
No. No, no, no--
Even with the lack of details, it still hits Gavin hard. Square in the chest, like a hand pushing him back further to the edge of a cliff.
“You tried to kill yourself.”
“Yeah,” he says with a shrug, like it’s nothing. “I fell asleep. It was nice and foggy and scary how nice and foggy it was. And I woke up with a tube in my throat. They pumped my stomach. I was barely holding on. But I was fine.”
“You never told me.”
“The only person that knows is Chris,” he says. “I left him a voicemail and he came over to see if I was okay.”
“Eli—”
“I’m better now, Gav, I promise, and I’m not telling you this to make you worry about me, I just want you to know why I said what I said.”
He’s better now, but last night he told him he wished he never woke up. Two incongruent statements. He isn’t better. He’s lying. And he wants to ask Eli why. Why he would do something like that. Why he would leave them like that. Topher and Ellie love Elijah. He’s the successful one of the family. He’s the son that his parents both always wanted. Chris and Tina adore him. He has a stable job and he’s intelligent. He has everything in the world right at his feet.
But it doesn’t work like that. Gavin knows that. He just can’t reconcile that Elijah with his brother. Maybe that’s the problem, though. The Elijah that Gavin has in his head is an Elijah from when they were sixteen. Never aged, never changing.
“I’m not supposed to drink,” Eli says. “I’m not an addict but I’m supposed to avoid it. It’s just last night I forgot about…”
“About what?”
“Nothing,” he says and clears his throat. “Anyway, I forgive you, especially since I deserved it. That was a hell of a punch. Kind of impressive.”
“Thanks,” he says, deadpan. “But I shouldn’t have hit you, regardless of how much you deserved it.”
“Damn, Connor is rubbing off on you, isn’t he?” Elijah asks. “He’s good. He’s a good guy. I haven’t talked to him much, but he seems like he really loves you.”
“He does,” Gavin says. It’s the first time he’s managed to say that out loud. To admit that he knows Connor loves him without any caveats. “Chris seems like he loves you.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I was going to talk to you last night. I overheard you and Chris. I spoke to him about it.”
“You did what?”
“He loves you,” Gavin says quietly. “It’s really weird for me to say. I never thought you and him… I never thought you—”
“Think you have all the claim on the gay territory in this family?”
Gavin laughs, “No, but… I didn’t know. That’s all.”
Not all. He wants to tell Eli he wishes that they were close enough that Elijah could’ve told him this, but there’s already too much vulnerability right now. Any more heartfelt words between them and Gavin just might snap.
So they sit in the quiet for another minute. Elijah picks at the edge of the blanket in front of him. Picks up a pillow and fixes the case back onto it.
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want anyone to know. I didn’t want it to be a big thing. Coming out is… it’s so much.”
“Yeah.”
“That why you never did it, either?” Elijah asks. “Just joined the GSA at school and brought Connor home twenty years later?”
“Easier pretending things are that simple.”
Elijah nods. “What did Chris say? About us?”
“He doesn’t want to lose you.”
“Does anybody want to lose the person they love?”
“No,” Gavin says, smiling softly. “But sometimes the fear of that is enough to make you stay away from ever getting it.”
“Don’t blame him,” Eli says. “I’m not really worth the risk, am I?”
Gavin stands up, moving over to the door. “Fuck no. Chris deserves way better than your dumb ass.”
He moves quickly, blocking the pillow thrown at him with the door, listening to Eli laugh as he walks away.
“…and so you should never hit anyone. Ever.”
“Then why’d you hit uncle Eli?”
Gavin looks up to Tina. She shrugs and gestures back to the kids.
“It… it doesn’t matter,” he says, looking from Tina to Ellie. “Hitting people is wrong.”
“But why—”
“I think that’s enough questions,” Tina says. “Get dressed. We’re leaving in twenty minutes.”
“Is Uncle Vinny going?” Ellie asks. “Because he should be grounded. If he was grounded, he wouldn’t be allowed to go.”
“It’s part of the Christmas spirit,” Gavin says. “No grounding this close to Christmas.”
“Don’t tell them that,” Tina whispers under her breath.
Too late now.
He gets up and leaves, running away before he can tell whether or not Topher and Ellie even really understand anything he said. Of course they’re old enough, but Ellie is also too old to be asking the kind of questions she had, too. She might be energetic and childish, but she knows without Gavin having to give her a lecture that hitting people is wrong.
“There you are,” his mother says from the bottom of the stairs. “Come down here.”
She’s holding something in her hand. Bright green. Knitted. His eyebrows draw together like he’s fourteen again being sent to highschool with handmade mittens. High school kids barely even wore coats to school in the dead of winter. It was part of what made them cool. No backpacks, no coats, and certainly no mittens.
“What is that?” he asks.
She hides it behind her back. “Nothing for you. Come down, now.”
He scans the room as he descends the steps. Nobody else around. No Connor, no Chloe, no Chris.
No witnesses and no way to get out of this.
“You’ve barely talked to me since I got here,” she says. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m busy, ma. There’s a lot of people here.”
“Mhm,” she says, narrowing her eyes at him. “You were a mama’s boy when you were a kid, do you remember that? You used to love sitting in the room with me no matter what. What happened to that?”
“Middle school.”
She’s quiet for a moment, “Okay. Look, I was going to give this to you but you acted like a twelve year-old last night so I want you to give it to that friend of yours.”
“Chloe?” he asks as she holds out the little green thing. It’s a hat. Knitted to look like a frog.
“Connor.”
Right. His friend Connor.
“He’ll love it,” Gavin says. And he knows Connor will. A lot more than Gavin would, though he’s grown out of the teenage mindset of being unable to like handmade things from his parents.
“Good. Now,” she says, taking a breath. “You and your gaggle of friends have made it so we can’t take just one car to the rink. How many people does your car seat?”
“Five, maybe—”
“Then you get to bring the dog.”
“The fuck does Peanut need to go ice skating for?” he asks.
“He has emotional attachment issues. He doesn’t like to be alone for long periods of time. It’s easier to bring him with than it is to clean up whatever mess he leaves behind.” His mother presses a leash into his other hand. “Go on. Oh, and take your father with you, too. You haven’t spent enough time with him, either.”
“It’s going to be hell,” Gavin says quietly, pulling the frog hat over Connor’s head. “But it’s better than my mom.”
“Did you tell her thanks?” Connor asks. “For the hat?”
“What? No,” he says. “But you do look cute in it.”
He smiles lightly and pulls Gavin’s hands away from where they tug on the braids that hang down from the sides. “She made you something.”
“And gave it away. To you. My friend.”
“It’s not that big of a deal,” Connor whispers. “It’s a lot better than how my parents would refer to you.”
“That’s not the point, Con. It’s not about whether she could be worse. It’s the fact she could be better.”
“You should tell her thank you, still.” Connor holds his face. Brushes his fingers across Gavin’s cheeks. “I love you.”
Gavin rolls his eyes. “I hate you. Trying to be such a good fucking influence all the time. ‘Say your sorry!’ ‘Tell her thank you!’ You’re the worst.”
Connor laughs, silenced only by Gavin kissing the corner of his mouth and pulling away. He hears the distant sound of voices and looks up the slippery slope to the lodge. The rest of the group has made their way down finally. It’s a slow walk when everyone is chatting together. It’s easy to speed along when Gavin wanted to get Connor alone for a minute or two.
As it turns out, Gavin was right. It was a special kind of hell to travel with his father, but different (and yes, arguably better) than his mother. His mother is the type to chastise him. Ask him everything about his life and expect honest and brief answers while simultaneously arguing with him for not being more open. When he left five years ago, part of it was the overbearing nature of his mother. The way she needled him and constantly hovered. Her opinion on every part of her life is necessary in her eyes. His father was never like that. Always kept to himself unless he was watching football and wanted Gavin to comment on the bad calls made by the referee. In the car, though, his father decides to tell old war stories, but they’re all plots from movies made in the sixties that he pretends he lived. Gavin doesn’t even know if he actually served, and he doesn’t ask. When his dad runs out of stories, he starts going in depth of what it’s like making miniatures. He’s working on a civil war battle, and it’s unclear to Gavin if the concept comes from wanting the battle to end in a different way or if it’s just because his father treats war like fiction. His assistant—a boy named Daniel that he keeps calling Danny-boy—does almost all of the work.
“I’ve got no dexterity for that anymore,” he says with a laugh.
And while it may be true, Gavin’s father is not that old, but he acts like it. Comes with the territory of being a grandpa. Suddenly he’s eighty-nine instead of sixty-seven. And somehow his father is perfectly fine playing with his little miniatures but incapable of putting them back into place, like a child that doesn’t want to put their toys away but leaves them stranded across bedroom floors.
He falls asleep somewhere after he starts to detail the parts of his train set. Connor, Gavin, and Peanut are left in an awkward silence that Gavin is too afraid to fill with anything but the cheesy Christmas music on the station his father demanded they turn the radio to.
But Connor holds out his hand on the console and Gavin takes it, holding onto it for the little comfort he can manage in the last ten minutes of their drive to the ice rink.
“Have you ever skated before?” Gavin asks.
“No,” he says. “Well—technically yes. When I was ten. It was the only time I went on a school field trip.”
“Were you any good?”
“I have remarkable balance with ballet.”
“And ice skating?”
“Not so much,” he says with a laugh. “What about you?”
“Always been absolute shit at it,” Gavin says, then glances over his shoulder. Safely out of earshot of the little kids, who have swarmed around their grandparents with the dog. Tina is occupied with helping Chloe make her way to the rink. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Do you think you’ll stay working at Sumo’s with me and Hank?”
“For a little while. Why?”
“You had all these big dreams when you were younger. Opera singer, professional dancer, pianist—”
“Those were my parents dreams,” Connor says. “Not mine.”
“But you still sing. You still dance. You still play.”
Connor shrugs, tying his laces a little tighter. “I still enjoy it but it isn’t what I want to do.”
“And soap-making is?”
“No,” he says quietly. “I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet. I’m still trying to find that out.”
“Any ideas yet?”
“I don’t know,” Connor says, sitting back up. “Maybe I will work at Sumo’s until the day I die. Maybe I’ll never find out. I’m not in a rush. Are you?”
“No—”
“And what do you want to do with your life?” Connor asks. “Become a dad? Stay at home and raise your kids?”
“I don’t know. I like working at Sumo’s.”
“So do I.”
“But what happens when you decide you don’t want to work there anymore? When you get a different job? Where are you going to live?”
Connor laughs, bewildered, “I don’t know. It depends on what I settle on. If it’s something in the city, I’ll probably live close by. I don’t plan on buying a house until I’m settling down, and I don’t know if I’ll ever settle down. I still don’t know if I’m going to have kids.”
“You’re fucking terrible at answering my questions.”
“Well, your questions are too big to be answered.”
Neither of them are good at skating. Tina and Chris are both incredible at it. They could’ve gone professional, if they really cared. Tina tows Chloe along behind her, and Chris tows Ellie and Topher in a line behind him. Eli is by himself, skating in circles with his gaze on the ground until Connor invites him into their little group, and despite Gavin’s want to have some of these memories of Christmas without his family, at least Eli helps them enough to actually move quicker than a snail’s pace around the rink.
Honestly, though, Gavin does feel a little sorry for him. Eli keeps looking at Chris on the other side of the rink the same way Gavin used to look at Connor before they got together.
It’s really sad.
Like, pathetically so.
Honestly, they really should just get it over with already. It’ll either work out or it won’t. And maybe Gavin is projecting a little bit here, but he knows that kind of love. It doesn’t go away. Dating other people isn’t going to make either of them move on. It’s just going to make them fuck over other people.
Eli eventually leaves them alone after his sadness seems to grow too big to be ignored, because he zooms around the rink at top speed, passing everyone up and earning a few yells from concerned parents.
“Is he alright?” Connor asks. “I thought you apologized to him.”
“Of course I fucking apologized to him. Why do you think he was coming anywhere near me?”
“Well, I assume he likes me more than he hates you,” he replies.
Connor is probably right about that, but Connor is a very likable person, even at his worst. It’s the only reason why he endured a painful three days with Connor’s family last year. If it was anyone else, he would’ve disappeared the first night. Yes, he would’ve felt guilty about it, but he still would’ve left.
“If I tell you something, you’ve got to keep your trap shut, yeah?”
Connor bumps his shoulder lightly, “You can trust me.”
“Him and Chris are… in love, I guess,” he says.
“They’re together?”
“No. Just in love. Very separate.”
Connor looks over at the two of them. “Oh. They seem… cute.”
“Don’t call my brother cute.”
“He looks enough like you that you should permit it as a compliment.”
“Well, I don’t,” Gavin says. “And even if they would be good together, it doesn’t matter. Chris is—”
“Chris is what?”
“Chris is his best friend,” he says, his voice straining with the words. He was Chris’ best friend once. It was him, Chris, and Tina. That was the trio. They were the ones that got along, the ones that laughed together and had inside jokes that made their stomachs hurt even two years later when they were brought up again.
A lot of things changed during his coma.
Elijah replacing him in his friend group was one of them. Before, he just minded his business and studied constantly. Always had his nose in a fucking book. He was even three years ahead of Gavin in school even though they’re a year apart. Tina told him that Eli spent every break from college classes he could to hang out with them.
Made him feel closer to Gavin.
Funny how Eli trying to feel closer to him pushed all of his other friends away. Funny how when Gavin woke up, he didn’t do anything to repair that damage.
It’s not like the ten years after he woke up were horrible. He still went on Christmas vacation with them. He ricocheted between his parents houses when he was recovering. But it wasn’t the same. They moved on, Gavin didn’t. It’s just that he gave up on trying five years ago, if he had ever even began to try at all.
It was different growing close to Ellie and Topher. They’re kids. He was there when they were born and went to almost all of their birthday parties in some capacity. The last five years it just happened to be video chats and phone calls. But there wasn’t any changing what happened when he was asleep. Tina had a husband that didn’t like Gavin hanging around. Elijah had his work. Chris was…
A boy that held grudges and had a family of his own. He only started spending Christmas with them after his father passed away and his mother moved to France to live with her sister. He just kind of fell into their family.
And Gavin isolated himself from his family until he could convince himself it was for the best that he never came back again.
“Gavin?”
“What?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he says quietly, and squeezes Connor’s hand. “Chloe seems to be getting along with Tina well.”
“Chloe gets along with anyone.”
“Yeah, but Tina…” he shrugs. “She’s protective of her kids. Anybody that gets close to her eventually gets close to Ellie and Topher.”
“Do you know why she and her husband got divorced?” Connor asks. “I know it’s not my business but—”
“She never told me.”
“Okay,” Connor says, dropping the topic fast. “Do you want to go get hot chocolate?”
“I’d love to.”
They have spoons made of peppermint and hot chocolate flavored with caramel. The two of them sit side by side in a little cafe beside the rink on the second floor, expertly avoiding Gavin’s parents already seated by the windows with Elijah and Topher.
Connor does like his parents, though. They’re comforting in some small way, albeit annoying in others. Yes, of course it bothers him that Gavin’s mom won’t call Connor a boyfriend, but rather a friend. And it is tedious listening to Gavin’s dad talk about war scenes like they’re all fun and games rather than a bloody reality. But they are so much better than Connor’s own parents that it’s hard to hold these things against them.
Gavin complains about them, poking at his food when a server comes by ten minutes later with grilled cheese sandwiches. There’s more to the story, maybe, but Gavin doesn’t add to it. He just lets it go.
It’s infuriating, the way he’s been acting. Terrifying, too. Kids and work and houses. If Gavin asks Connor to marry him, he can’t say yes. It’s too soon. He desperately doesn’t want Gavin to ask him that. He doesn’t know if Gavin is the type of person that can hear the word no and still stay by his side.
And he doesn’t want to lose him.
He’d really like to keep Gavin until he can say yes to a proposal.
It gets dark fast out here. The lights flicker on around the cafe and the rink just as they leave. They climb back into their cars, Peanut safely in the backseat by Gavin’s dad who falls asleep before they even back out of their parking space and head back onto the road.
They don’t go home yet. There’s still more of their day to be spent away from the lodge, and nobody wants to make the two hour drive out to the city again. So they drive to the opposite side of the city, stopping at an overly crowded street filled with booths, winter-themed carnival games, and far too many people. They pay their tickets, making their way into the Festival of Lights. Gavin is right at Connor’s side, leaning close to him and whispering quietly.
“This is just gonna be you and me, okay? Nobody else.”
“Okay,” he replies with a smile.
They dart off from the group immediately, leaving Gavin’s dad with the dog when they spot Tina’s van pull into the parking lot a few spaces away. They race through the festival until they get enough distance away that they can slow down and peruse the stalls set up.
There are people selling apple cider and eggnog and hot chocolate. Peppermint candies poured into Christmas and winter themed shapes. Little kits of cardboard to make gingerbread houses, hand-crafted needle felt charms shaped like bears and squirrels and deer. Gavin disappears from his side when Connor is looking at journals all displayed out for people to pick from.
Gavin got him one last year. He filled it up within a month, writing constantly because he had so much to get out of his head. He still writes. Gavin still buys him one whenever he sees that Connor’s getting towards the end of his. It shows up on his station at Sumo’s, wrapped with little Christmas wrapping paper regardless of the time of year.
“Hey,” Gavin says, jumping up behind him again. He has a box he’s tucking into a pocket inside his coat. “Are you getting one of these?”
“I thought about it.”
“Do you want to think about those for a second?” Gavin asks, nodding towards a stall selling elephant ears. “Just for a second?”
Connor rolls his eyes, then points to a journal that’s black and gold. “I like this one the best.”
“Got it.” He gives Connor a kiss on the cheek before he leaves him to his not-so-secret shopping.
They meet back up, sitting on benches outside a tent, breaking off pieces of their elephant ears. Connor doesn’t know what he’s going to get Gavin at all. He has something sitting inside his suitcase back at the lodge, but he wanted to get him something else, too. Something like this. Hand-made and special. Something that would make Gavin remember Connor when he thought about skipping Christmas next year. If he does. Maybe he won’t. Connor isn’t sure.
He doesn’t get much of a chance to look at anything on his own, though. Gavin is always right beside him, narrowing his eyes at everything on display like he’s putting it under a microscope. When they finish eating, they get in line to be let into the second half of the festival.
The whole place is set up for a charity event for the homeless shelter and families in need. One half of the festival is games and shops, the other are three different large tents set up for people to bid on. The first one displays gingerbread houses, each unique and beautiful. There are mansions and cabins and carefully assembled little men outside with shovels or snowmen made of marshmallows. They can place bids on the houses if they want to try and win them, but only Gavin does. A hefty three-hundred dollars placed on one resembling a small cottage along a river.
Connor stops at one of a house that reminds him of his own parents while Gavin is putting his official bid in. There’s a Santa gingerbread man on the roof with a little sleigh and reindeer. Rudolph has a small red crystal bead for the nose. It’s coat in glitter, shining off the Christmas lights looped through the tent poles above them.
Hank used to make gingerbread houses out of soap. He’d take pictures of them and put them on the website and auction them off. His proceeds would go to charity, too, but he stopped doing it once Connor and Gavin were hired. Neither of them know how to do it. Connor only even knew about it because he liked to read up on soap forums to figure out more about Sumo’s business. There’s quite a fanatical crowd.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Connor says quietly. But he’s looking at the house, trying to figure out why it’s making him feel this way. Sad in a way he doesn’t know how to place. It isn’t because Hank stopped making his. It isn’t because he never made them when he was a child. It’s—
It’s because, he thinks, it’s the first time he’s seen something in a while that he knows Niles would’ve loved. He used to draw pictures of buildings. Not modern office buildings, not sharp lines of hotel buildings, but fantastical things like this. Things that would exist in fairy tales or cartoons.
Niles would love gingerbread houses. Maybe he wouldn’t be good at building them, but he would love them still, wouldn’t he?
“I’ll meet back up with you in a little bit, okay?” Connor says.
“You’re ditching me?”
“I’ll meet you by the trees,” he says, and kisses Gavin lightly on the forehead. “I promise.”
He starts to move away before he’s stopped by Gavin’s hand on his arm, his eyebrows raised with expectation. “You’re supposed to tell me you love me before you leave me all by myself in a strange place.”
“Right. Well,” Connor shrugs. “I guess I love you, then.”
Gavin laughs, “Fine. I’ll accept that.”
He walks quickly back through the stalls again. Passes by the place selling cardboard kits for children, past the charms shop, past the journals. He saw some things he wanted to get. He hesitated before, but not now. Not anymore.
“There you are,” Tina says, plopping down on the bench beside Gavin. “I’ve barely seen you all day.”
“I’ve been with Connor.”
“Of course you have,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You don’t go anywhere without him.”
“That’s not true,” he says. “Where are your children?”
“With their grandparents and Peanut.”
“And what have you been up to?”
“Looking for you!” she says, hitting him lightly. “I needed your help with presents for Chloe and Connor. I think I’ve got something for Chlo, but Connor?”
Chlo?
Nicknames now?
“Connor likes bookmarks,” Gavin says. “Doesn’t ever use them, but he likes collecting them. Markus got him a box to keep them in so they stop winding up all over his house.”
“Who’s Markus?”
“Roommate.”
“Ex?” Tina says, mischief in her eyes.
“God, no,” Gavin says. “Which reminds me… you never told me why you got divorced.”
Tina’s amusement falters and falls away. She sits up a little straighter, “You never asked.”
“I am now.”
“Are you?” she says, buying time. “Didn’t sound like a question.”
“Fine. Why did you get divorced?”
“Me and Ed didn’t fit.”
“No?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“Tina…” he says quietly. “You know you can tell me, right? I know it has to be more than just you two not fitting. He doesn’t come around to see his kids.”
“Well, I’d blame him for that, but I’m sort of the bitch that started it all, aren’t I?” she says, shaking her head. Her eyes are on her hands, inspecting her nails like this is nothing important. “Stopped giving him what he wanted and he found someone else. Knocked up another girl. Married her less than a week after our divorce was finalized.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be,” she says. “It really is my fault.”
“It’s—”
“You don’t have to comfort me and tell me it’s not,” she says, looking up. “It is.”
“Fine,” he replies. “It’s your fault.”
“You’re not going to ask me how?”
“No. If you wanna tell me, go ahead,” he says, shrugging. “The fuck am I going to do? Beat it out of you?”
She nudges his shoulder. “When you were a teenager, you had yourself all figured out. I hated you for that. You and Chris just… fucking knew. And you never made a deal about it. I mean, Chris did. I still remember when he came out to me.”
“Tina?”
“But I didn’t know until I was sending Ellie off to preschool and I met her teacher. Which is stupid, but it was the first time I’d ever felt that. You know… how people are supposed to feel about their husbands? I just always thought… that it was like a deal. That I was just supposed to meet someone who would want the same things as me and it was like a contract.”
“Did you sleep with the preschool teacher?” he asks, because he really doesn’t know what else to say.
“Are you kidding me?” Tina says. “No. She was Ellie’s teacher. I thought I’d gone insane. And then I told Ed and he… didn’t take it well.”
“So you got divorced.”
“Yeah. And listen, I wouldn’t have minded him and his wife coming around for birthday parties or holidays. I would love it if Ellie and Topher could have their dad in their life. I wouldn’t even care if they had a stepmother that they loved to spend time with. But he called me a bad mother. He tried to take them away from me.”
“Tina—”
“It’s fine. He didn’t get them. His wife didn’t want them anyway. I think that’s the only reason he let it go,” she says. “But listen, Gav, I have a problem.”
“With… what?” he asks, suddenly apprehensive. He is scared to learn anything more about his family.
“I really like Chloe.”
“Oh,” he says quietly.
“Yeah,” she says. “Do you know if she’s—”
“She’s a widow,” he says suddenly, the words spilling out of him. It’s different from how he thought when Eli was going to make a move on Chloe. He thought about telling him just to keep him away. Not like Eli would stay away because Chloe was damaged goods or something, but that he would at least have the decency to let Chloe heal first.
But with Tina—
It’s like a warning. Not to keep her away, but not to get her hopes up.
“Oh.”
“It—It happened a few years ago. He was Connor’s brother,” Gavin says quietly. “That’s how I know her. And I don’t know if she likes girls but I know that she’s still grieving.”
“Okay,” she says. “That’s okay.”
Gavin nods.
Okay.
They go through a small section of the festival that has decorated Christmas trees. The rest of the group meets up with them throughout it. They don’t stay for the auctioning of the trees and instead hitch a ride on a little truck-drawn carriage through a winding path of trees interspersed with light displays.
Penguins throwing snowballs. Elves climbing up trees to place ornaments. A Grinch with a beating heart. A Santa drinking milk. Topher and Ellie love it. So does Connor. Gavin watches the way his eyes light up like a kid’s when he sees the more elaborate displays.
He watches Chris and Eli exchange glances as they make their way along the path. He watches Chris place his hand over Eli’s and neither of them acknowledge it. He watches Tina stare at Chloe. He watches his parents laugh and point at funny displays. His father raises Topher up on his lap to see the reindeer running along a rooftop. Elijah makes a joke that one of the elves is taller than Gavin. Chloe points out at a nutcracker that looks like Connor.
It really is something, isn’t it?
Love, that is.
All existing in its dozens of forms in this tiny little cart.