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Hubert bumps and jostles his way into a single empty seat in the middle of a row in the Unitarian Universalist church’s balcony ten minutes after the service has started. He ignores the sharp glares from the other parishioners, not returning them only because he's trying to be in the spirit of the season, whatever the fuck that means. At the altar, some priest or bishop or whatever the Unitarians call their overlord is delivering some bland nonsense about kindness and warmth and some kind of cosmic light or whatever; Hubert pays it no mind as he wrenches off his scarf and gloves and earmuffs and tries to shrug out of his overcoat in the narrow seat.
This is all such a dreadful mistake. This is perhaps not the last way he wants to be spending his Christmas Eve, but it is certainly high on the list. He stares blankly at the service program in his hands. He has no business here, and as the pastor drones on about forgiveness and embracing flaws, it is all too easy for Hubert's high-octane brain to extrapolate that sentiment. He has no business being with Ferdinand. He has no business being with anyone.
The minister winds down her lecture and Hubert crumples the program in one fist. It would save them both so much heartbreak in the end if he were just to leave right now. A slight disappointment to spare months, possibly years of disappointment. Yes, Ferdinand might despise him forever, but it would eventually slip into mere resentment and vaguely unpleasant memories once he found someone more worthy of his love.
The lights dim and there is the trample of dozens of feet as the choir shuffles on stage.
The spotlight focuses on a single woman, who Hubert dimly recognizes as Annette from their school days, and she holds a long note as the pianist begins to play. She carries them into the first verse of “O Holy Night,” which Hubert thinks is rather against the spirit of what is supposed to be a secular celebration.
Then another spotlight turns on.
Bright strawberry blonde hair, loose and wavy, is bathed in a saintly glow. Ferdinand raises his head, beatific, and opens his plush mouth—and Hubert finds himself holding his breath.
Hubert couldn’t begin to say what holiday song he sings; he only knows the way it sounds in Ferdinand's voice: warm and fragrant and so full of heart that it is like a fist within his chest, squeezing, and never letting him go.
The crumpled program falls from Hubert's hands, as do his gloves; he is helpless to do anything but stare at this man awash in heavenly light before him and his angelic voice, and when those amber eyes find his own, Hubert leans forward, hooked as if on a string of tinsel, so hopelessly in love that he's willing to forgive just about anything—including himself.
He finds Ferdinand in the reception hall, smiling and laughing with Annette and a few other choristers Hubert does not recognize. He doesn't want to intrude. But then Ferdinand is waving him over, instantly slipping an arm into his as Ferdinand's friends look at him with raised eyebrows.
“So this is the mystery boyfriend you’ve told us so much about?” one of them asks, and Hubert's shoulders draw up under the scrutiny of their gaze.
“This is Hubert,” Ferdinand says proudly, the forcefulness of his tone enough to make Hubert flinch. “He is the personal assistant to Edelgard von Hresvelg, don't you know.”
The infamously cutthroat consultant-slash-shadowy political operative’s name only serves to raise their eyebrows higher.
“Well!” Annette says. “I imagine that raises some interesting conversations around Senator Aegir’s holiday dinner table.”
“If we were invited, it might,” Ferdinand says, smile not budging. “However, we are spending the holidays on our own this year.” He turns to Hubert and cradles his cheek with long, dexterous fingers. “Are you ready, darling?”
Hubert realizes then that he is staring slack-jawed at him, so he quickly closes his mouth. “I am always happy to serve.”
They spend the next hour delivering fresh holiday meals to some of the District's many tent cities tucked away beneath bridges and overpasses, Ferdinand and his choirmates laughing and chatting away while Hubert smiles blandly. Once the last tray of roasted chicken and steaming stuffing is handed out, Hubert summons a car service to shuffle them to his penthouse condominium overlooking the District Wharf.
It’s only a studio—Hubert hardly needs more space than that for himself—but since he’s begun dating Ferdinand, the cold glass and metal and stained concrete, with furnishings of black leather and chrome have suddenly felt constricting, cold. That, and the way Ferdinand always seems to take up a disproportionate amount of space. Bustling all over Hubert’s kitchen, stretching out on his sectional to read, sprawling across the queen-size bed with a vengeance, as if he were Hubert’s personal space heater and weighted blanket all at the same time. And on the evenings when Ferdinand’s rough collie, Wellington, joins them—forget it. There isn’t an inch to breathe, and everything is instantly coated in hairs that Hubert has to spend the better part of the next day vacuuming up.
You are always welcome to come to my place instead, Ferdinand teases him regularly, usually with arms wrapped tight around his waist or neck.
But it feels like too much, to insert himself in Ferdinand’s life that way. He feels like an intruder—a stranger. The thing that is not like the others in the otherwise picturesque life Ferdinand leads. Tomorrow, he will have to join Ferdinand and Wellington and a handful of Aegir sisters at Ferdinand’s townhome on Capitol Hill and smile and endure their scrutiny and Wellington’s probing snout. Tonight, at least, he is back in his dimly lit cocoon.
“Well?” Ferdinand asks, as Hubert heads to the open kitchen in one corner of the room and checks on the beef tenderloin and trifle marinating and chilling in his refrigerator for the next day. “What did you think of the service?”
Hubert pulls out the pot of mulled wine he’d prepared earlier and sets it on the range to bring it back to a low simmer. “It was . . . a church service.”
Ferdinand smirks. “A non-denominational—”
“But you—” Hubert steps toward him, and clasps Ferdinand’s face in his cold hands. Ferdinand sighs, shivering maybe from the touch, but doesn’t pull away; merely smiles that mysterious smile of his. “You were divine.”
“Divine,” he echoes, smile deepening.
“Like an angel.”
“You don’t believe in angels,” Ferdinand counters.
Hubert blinks, and drinks in the sight of him: his goofy reindeer sweater somehow endearing and sexy, his hair impossibly soft, and his face rosy-cheeked from the cold. He is backed by the dark, steady flow of the Potomac Channel and the twinkling marina and the rush of headlights on the I-395 Bridge and the planes gently swooping in and out of Reagan National beyond. It’s not starlight, but it’s close enough, and Ferdinand’s face is gilded in the feature lighting; his smile is the same one that first began to thaw Hubert’s heart all those months ago.
“I believe in one angel,” Hubert amends.
Ferdinand reaches out and boops him on the nose. “Now you’re just mocking me.”
“No. Never.” He draws a somber face. “I—I love you, Ferdinand.”
He says it rarely enough that he hopes Ferdinand will understand how much he means it. But then he wonders why he says it so little—when Ferdinand deserves to hear it all the time.
Ferdinand wraps his arms around Hubert’s neck and pulls him closer. “I love you too.”
And he never tires of kissing him, the way Ferdinand kisses with his whole body, everything bending toward Hubert like he can’t ever be close enough. Hubert could stay in that warmth forever, in that velvet mouth and those tender sighs.
Only when the bright scent of cinnamon and cloves heating becomes too strong does he force himself to stop, and even then, he can’t resist a kiss to Ferdinand’s forehead. “I love you,” he murmurs again—and what did it cost him to say it more? Nothing. He gains another sweet murmur in reply.
“Now, go. Sit. I’ll bring you your wine.” Hubert shoos him in the direction of the sofa, and the abstract metal branches of a “Christmas tree” Ferdinand had set up for him earlier in the month. “You may open one present tonight.”
Ferdinand laughs, and plants a quick kiss on his cheek before bounding off. “Does that mean I get more than one present?”
“Only if you’re good.”
While Hubert ladles out mugs of mulled wine for them—a Remington-style polo mug for Ferdinand, and the “World’s Greatest Grandpa” mug Edelgard gave him one year for himself—Ferdinand fiddles with the sound system to pipe in some subdued holiday jazz music. Hubert rolls his eyes, but he can’t argue that it suits the whole tableau. “Did you pick out a gift?”
“Oh, I get to pick?” Ferdinand drops down in front of the tree and hunts through the boxes wrapped in metallic patterned papers. “Hubert, there must be half a dozen gifts here—”
“Well. At least one is technically for Wellington.”
Ferdinand rolls his eyes at him, smiling. “I told you you have a soft spot for him. He doesn’t end up with all those table scraps all on his own. Hmm . . . let’s go with this big one,” Ferdinand declares, and wrestles the giant box into his lap on the sofa.
Hubert settles in beside him, leaving enough space for Ferdinand to wrestle with the box, and relaxes into the warmth of his mulled wine. “Be my guest.”
Ferdinand spends all of two seconds trying to carefully unfold the paper before giving up and tearing straight through it. “Boots? Wait—Hubert, how did you—”
“You were so devastated when you’d worn out your favorite riding boots, and found out they’d been discontinued,” Hubert explains. “So I had a custom pair made.”
“But I threw the old ones out. These look identical! How did you . . .”
Hubert coughs. “Well, I might have fished one out of the bin. For the cobbler, and all.”
“Dumpster diving. I’m sure that comes in handy for Hresvelg Consulting.” Ferdinand grabs a fistful of Hubert’s black turtleneck and wrenches him in close. “Thank you. I—I can’t thank you enough.”
“Of course.” Hubert closes his eyes as Ferdinand feathers him with soft kisses. Ferdinand releases him, and reluctantly, Hubert leans back on the couch once more.
“Well.” Ferdinand bites his lower lip, now slightly darkened from the wine. Hubert licks his own mouth to taste the chase of it from Ferdinand. “I don’t know if it can compare, but . . . here you are, Hubert.”
Ferdinand pulls a flat, slender box from his back pocket—the familiar robin’s egg blue of Tiffany & Co. Hubert takes it, eyebrows furrowed. It’s certainly not a ring-shaped box, and he can’t imagine Ferdinand getting him much in the way of jewelry. He loosens the brown ribbon and raises the box lid.
“Oh. It’s a . . . keychain?” He stares at the sterling silver heart nestled in velvet cushioning, adorned with two gemstones: black onyx and topaz in its engraved design. “Thank you. It’s lovely. I . . .”
He picks up the keychain, and his heart stills at the sight of the freshly cut key already fixed to it.
The keychain clinks as his hand trembles. “Ferdie, I . . .”
Ferdinand looks down at his own hands, laced in his lap. “I thought for a long time that maybe you didn’t like going to my house because you weren’t—I don’t know. Not that serious about us, maybe.”
“It’s nothing of the sort, Ferdie—”
“But then I noticed that even when you were there, you never seemed at ease. You’d sit on the very edge of chairs if you sat at all. Cling to your belongings. Take up as little space as possible.” Ferdinand looks up at him. “Finally I realized that—you simply felt as if you didn’t belong.”
Hubert opens his mouth to deny it, but he can’t. “You—Ferdie, the thing is—” He sighs. “You’ve fought so hard to make this warm, beautiful, earnest life for yourself, free of your father’s influence, while I’m still very much a part of the political machine—You deserve someone as kind and outgoing and generous and free as you—”
“Stop. Hubert.” Ferdinand lifts his head. “A person doesn’t deserve another person. But I want who and what I want, I love who I love. I broke away from my dad, I gave up politics precisely that reason. And who I love—”
He reaches out, fingers curling softly around Hubert’s neck.
“I love you.”
The fingers are a comforting warmth against his skin—a scaffolding to hold him in place. Hubert sighs, leaning into them.
“I want you to have that key so you’ll always know you’ll belong.” Ferdinand’s bright eyes search his own. “That you are always welcome.”
Hubert covers his mouth with one hand as his other tightens around the keychain. “Thank you,” he whispers, not trusting his voice. “I love you, too.”
Their foreheads press together, and somehow just being near to him like this, breathing in sync, feels more intimate than anything else possibly could.
The music rolls over into a slow shiver of drums, and then a solitary saxophone meanders along the melody of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Ferdinand laughs and straightens up, then holds out one hand. “Dance with me?”
Hubert gladly takes his hand, setting the keychain on top of his coffee table as Ferdinand pulls him up to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the channel, the East Potomac island, and the main trunk of the river beyond. Ferdinand smells of cloves and orange peels as they duck their heads together in a slow dance, lit only by the white lights of the tree. He smells like holidays and warmth.
And while Hubert has never been one to celebrate much of anything, he will celebrate this—a love warm enough to feel like home.