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Lorenz is climbing the steps to his townhouse when his phone rings suddenly in his pocket. Only a swift grab for the wrought-iron railing prevents him from stepping wrong on a patch of ice and tumbling to the ground. Undignified at best, dangerous at worst, although he can think of worse excuses for missing Christmas dinner at his great-aunt’s country home in Vermont.
He takes a moment or two to catch his balance and his breath, which puffs whitely in the chill December air, before pulling his phone out and glancing at the screen. His heart leaps in his chest, against his will.
“Hello, Hilda,” he answers as he leans his shoulder against the front door and fishes for his keys. His winter gloves make fine motor control difficult, and he paws at the ring uselessly for a moment as he tries to decipher the chatter on the other end of the phone. “Hilda, are you there?”
When no clear response is forthcoming, he sighs and hangs up. A misdial, most likely—there’s no reason Hilda would want to call him, of all people, let alone a few days before Christmas. She must have a thousand better things to do, like shopping and partying and doting on her new fiancee. He’d only found out about that because of Instagram, which he’d only opened because he’d been desperate enough for gift ideas that he’d been reduced to scrolling his feed in hopes of a well-timed advertisement.
Holly jolly capitalism, he thinks sardonically to himself, and jams the key in the lock without finesse. It gets the job done, and he practically falls into the dark entryway, barely warmer than the outside against his numb cheeks.
He flicks on the lights and punches the thermostat up a few degrees as he moves about, stripping off gloves and scarf and coat. The house feels unbearably dark and chill after coming in off the street, where it seemed half of New York had turned out to admire everyone’s Christmas light displays. Everyone’s but his.
It’s not that he’s a Scrooge, per se. It’s just that he’s been so terribly busy, and he was traveling half of November for work, and the holidays snuck up on him as they were wont to do, and he’d failed to respond adequately to party invitations when they were being passed around a few weeks ago… so here he is, shivering a little in his lonely apartment, peering back through the window to watch as couples and families shuffle along the sidewalks to admire the glint and glister of lights that gleam cheerfully in the winter night, electric bastions against the dark.
Bzzt. A voicemail. Lovely. His thumb hovers over the notification, intending to swipe it away, but instead it opens and jumps to speakerphone as if of its own free will.
“Lorenz! Fuck, I’m sorry about that, I didn’t think you were gonna pick up. We weren’t ready—shut up, Leonie! Raph, can you get her off the table please, before she breaks something—”
Lorenz bites his lip, warding off a smile. Hilda’s clearly tipsy, but not so soused as to be incomprehensible; but from the echoing shrieks of laughter and disorganized chatter behind her, it’s clear that not everyone is so well off.
“Okay, okay, okay, circle up, idiots. Lorenz!” Hilda shouts, and her voice is suddenly very loud and immediate, as if she’d gotten closer to the speaker. “Dear old grinch, we’re calling to wish you a merry Christmas! One, two, three!”
Discordant, haphazard, the sound of a very merry, very drunk group of people singing We Wish You a Merry Christmas comes through full force. Despite the off-key notes and general chaos, Lorenz can’t help smiling. If he really works at it, he can pick out individual voices: Hilda’s candy-coated alto, Raphael’s booming baritone, Lysithea’s decent attempts at harmonizing—decent considering the rest of them put together sound like a pack of hyenas.
At the end of it there’s a great deal of cheering, and the sound of glass shattering, and then Hilda’s voice rising again above the chorus: “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal! Kiss kiss!”
And silence.
Lorenz takes a breath in the quiet and realizes his chest is strangely tight. He recalls, vaguely, an extravagant glitter-bedecked bit of cardstock arriving in the mail a month ago, as he was on his way out the door for a conference in Austin. It had slipped through the cracks, like so many other things in his life. He rubs his eyes, which are hot and prickly, and sloughs through the house on quiet sock feet, aiming for the kitchen.
He could be there right now, at Hilda’s ritsy Long Island apartment, getting cosy with the rest of their friends. If he’d planned ahead, postponed a call, if he’d looked for two seconds at somewhere other than his work email. He has no reason to be upset at missing out. It’s not as if they hadn’t invited him. And yet.
He fires off a quick text, knowing a call will probably get lost in the noise—Merry Christmas, all. Take care of yourselves.—and sets his phone down to raid the liquor cabinet. At least getting drunk is something he can do on his own, and hopefully knock himself out quickly enough that he doesn’t have to keep feeling this awful hollow space beneath his ribs where he thinks his holiday cheer should be.
His phone buzzes while he’s in the midst of making himself a very boozy hot cocoa. Once. Twice. Thrice. When he finally turns it over he’s surprised to find not drunken texts from Hilda, as he expected, but a couple of messages from Claude.
Are you home? Like, in NYC?
You should come over, everyone’s still going strong.
We miss you.
Lorenz pinches his eyes shut tight. Not fair.
Just got in, he replies, typing one-handed while he cradles his hot mug of cocoa with the other. It would take too long to get there, but thank you for the invitation.
He isn’t expecting a response—Claude types admirably well when he’s drunk, but the lot of them are clearly well into their cups by now, and he’s certainly not enough of a distraction to keep Claude from joining in the festivities. But to his surprise, Claude continues a meandering, infrequent conversation over the next half-hour as Lorenz sips his cocoa in front of some garbage Hallmark special. It’s not a particularly scintillating discussion, just anecdotes from the party and politely interested questions about his business trip, but it keeps his spirits up and Lorenz appreciates it.
It warms that hollow place inside him, against his will. Just seeing Claude’s name pop up on his phone feels like stepping into a hot bath, and he can’t help the little thrill that sparks between his ribs at each new message. He feels like a schoolboy again, awkward, all elbows and knees, heart leaping each time Claude would look his way.
He knows it’s foolish, to still be so enamored after all this time. And yet a part of him, a small, sneaking part that refuses to be stamped out, enjoys the spark. The thrill. The attention. Claude doesn’t even live in the same country most of the year, only traveling back periodically for the holidays his family doesn’t celebrate, and yet Lorenz’s boyish affections rise up every time without fail, as if they only lie dormant most of the year and resurrect themselves at the slightest provocation.
On the television, a pretty dark-haired girl in a red dress is being courted by what appears to be a… literal knight in shining armor. Lorenz shakes his head, full of enough chocolate and bourbon cream that his maudlin mood has passed, making way for gooey passivity. It’s not his ideal night before night before Christmas, but it could be worse.
He glances at his phone, curling a lip at himself. It’s been ten minutes since Claude’s last text and Lorenz’s subsequent reply. Not a long time by any stretch, but he finds himself on tenterhooks anyway, waiting—hoping—for a response.
Finally he makes himself put the phone down. Might as well make himself more cocoa while he waits. Give his idle hands something to do besides scrolling back and forth through their utterly normal conversation, looking for the place where he went wrong and derailed things.
He’s just finished topping off the mug with a little extra bourbon cream when his doorbell chimes softly. Odd. It’s a bit late for carolers. Even so, he hears the faint, clumsy beginnings of Here We Come A-Wassailing start to drift through his door and down the hall, so he sighs, puts down his cup, and goes to bundle into his coat to give them a proper audience.
He opens the door and his hand flies to his mouth unbidden. There, on his steps, stand the Golden Deer in all their drunken splendor: petite Lysithea nearly unrecognizable beneath layers of scarves and hats, Ignatz rumbling a shockingly good baritone from behind fogged-up glasses, Raphael singing cheerfully off-key with Leonie leaning red-faced against him, Hilda and Marianne standing arm in arm in adorable matching pink and powder-blue peacoats…
And Claude. Of course. Dear Claude, who is smirking even as he sings, a lumpy red scarf around his neck that looks like Lysithea’s handiwork, and holding his phone in front of him to film the evidence as tears fill Lorenz’s eyes and he has to hide his face to save himself the embarrassment.
“Love and joy come to you, and to you a wassail too…”
Claude breaks formation as the carol comes to a close and grabs Lorenz bodily around the waist, lifting him off the ground as the rest of them devolve into cheers and raucous laughter. Lorenz puts up a half-hearted struggle, but throws his arms around Claude’s neck anyway. He can feel the steady thud of Claude’s heart against his own sternum, smell cinnamon on his breath. A few inches to the left and he could practically kiss him.
He has definitely had too much bourbon tonight.
“Merry Christmas,” Claude says, tucking it into his hair like a secret. He lowers him back down to the ground, eyes sparkling. “And this is the part where I insist you invite us in—I promised them booze, it was the only way to get them out in the cold to come here.”
“Of course, yes, obviously—come in, please, let me take your coats…”
He misses Claude’s solid warmth as soon as they part, and he finds himself playing host mostly on autopilot. First he must hug everyone as they tramp in through the front door, then he must hang their coats one by one, then move to the kitchen and throw on all the lights and pretend he wasn’t just having a sad, lonely evening by himself in front of the TV.
“You don’t even have a tree! Lorenz Hellman Gloucester!” Hilda shrieks. “Impossible! We must rectify this at once.”
“What about lights?” Lysithea pipes up, hands on hips. “Don’t you have any lights anywhere?”
“Erm… in the attic, perhaps, I…”
He trails off, unsure how to explain the long years that the house stood empty before he inherited it, the dusty corners harboring old ghosts that he does his best to avoid. But the girls have hatched a plan in the empty space of his hesitation, and Hilda, Raph, and Lysithea disappear upstairs to clatter around in the cramped crawlspace in search of festive decor. Marianne quietly moves to help pour drinks, and Ignatz takes Leonie into the living room to sit down and sober up a bit, and suddenly Lorenz is left standing at the edge of the room with Claude, who is holding a hot cocoa and smirking.
“Surprise,” he says, and toasts him, although Lorenz’s own hands are empty.
“That’s mine,” Lorenz says instinctively. Then, when his manners catch up to him, “I mean, you are welcome to it, of course, I—”
Claude takes a long sip and his eyebrows lift in surprise. When he lowers the mug again his upper lip is white with whipped cream. Lorenz wants to kiss it off him. “Damn, Lorenz, this is strong stuff. How many of these have you had?”
“Just the one,” Lorenz mumbles. He flushes and looks away. He’s still in his coat, he realizes, and he quickly sheds it and hangs it haphazardly over the back of a bar stool. “I should probably, ah, slow down, actually…”
“Nonsense. We’re just getting started.”
From overhead there’s a shriek of victory, and then Raphael’s rumbling laugh, traveling through the house from the top down like a warm sip of liquor. Claude lifts his eyebrows and licks the cream off his lip, real slow. “See?”
“I’d better go make sure they’re not breaking anything,” Lorenz wheezes, and makes his escape.
Somehow, Hilda has procured a tree from his very own attic: a huge stuffy fake one, already put together, and currently being jammed down the narrow front stairs by Raphael. It’s shedding plastic needles and bits of tinsel as he goes, and Lorenz has to leap out of the way to avoid being skewered by the sharp-edged star affixed to the top.
“We couldn’t find ornaments,” Lysithea says breathlessly, slip-sliding down the stairs in her sock feet, arms overflowing with a tangle of dusty Christmas lights. “But there’s lights, and we can string popcorn!”
“I… might have some popcorn, in the pantry…”
“Don’t worry, Lorenz!” Hilda crows, descending the rest of the way wrapped in a shimmery white tree skirt like the ghost of Christmas Past in her elegant train. “We’re saving Christmas!”
The Hallmark channel has been replaced by a looping video of a crackling hearth when Lorenz finds his way back to the living room, moving more drunkenly than he feels. The house has never had this many people in it, at least not since he took possession after his father’s passing, and he feels both ousted and taken in, a stranger in his own abode and yet the center of everyone’s attention. It’s… overwhelming.
“Lorenz,” Ignatz says suddenly in his ear, popping up out of nowhere. His hair is disheveled and sprinkled with fake pine needles, yet another casualty of The Tree. “Can you do me a favor and watch Le for a second?”
“Of course.” Lorenz breathes an inward sigh of relief at being given a task—something, anything to prevent him feeling like a lost cog in a well-oiled machine. “Leave it to me.”
Leonie is sobering up a little, sipping water at the end of the couch, and she slings an arm around his shoulders as soon as he sits beside her. “Lorenz! Aren’t you glad we came to rescue you?”
“Very glad,” he says honestly, tipping her glass up to avoid spilling. “How are you feeling, my dear?”
“I’m good.” She hesitates, and reaches out a finger to pet a strand of hair back from his forehead. “You’ve grown it out a lot.”
“I have.”
“Still got that side shave?”
Lorenz grins. “Of course.” He tips his head the other way and lets her rubs her hands all through it, crowing with delight. The first time he’d shaved the side of his head had been in college, at the mercy of Leonie’s ancient electric clipper set as she painstakingly shaved away a whole chunk of his hair. When he’d combed it over you couldn’t tell, but he knew it was there. It had grown out again briefly during grad school, but nowadays he keeps it neat and tidy with the help of his barber, an elegant middle-aged gay man with a high shave and an impressive handlebar mustache that Lorenz secretly envies.
“It’s lovely,” Leonie sighs, tipping her head against her shoulder. “You’ve always had the prettiest hair, Lorenz.”
“Well. Not always,” he mutters. Laughter draws his eyes—across the room, Claude has been roped into helping string popcorn, wearing a spray of tinsel in his hair like a lopsided crown. “But thank you for saying so.”
“Would you like some water, Lorenz?” Leonie asks sweetly, apropos of nothing. “You’re looking thirsty.”
Lorenz jerks his eyes away from Claude’s silver laurels to glare at her. “I have no idea what you mean.”
“Don’t you?” She smirks and tips the rest of her water back like she’s taking a shot. “It’s all right, I won’t tell.”
“I should certainly hope not, after what you told me last year…”
“Shut up, Gloucester, or I will eviscerate you where you stand.”
“Okay, okay, easy there Leonie.” Ignatz drifts back into view, holding another cup of water. “No threatening our host with bodily harm, especially when we invited ourselves over.”
“No bodily harm necessary.” Lorenz puts a hand to his breast and half-bows as best he can, even seated on the couch. He watches the pink bloom of anger in Leonie’s face fade to sweetness as her glittering eyes follow Lysithea’s inelegant march around the living room. Her string of lights is a mantle around her shoulders, now, glowing multicolored in her pale hair when Claude plugs the other end into the wall. “I would never betray your trust, Leonie.”
“I know,” she says, more gently this time. She holds out her pinky and he meets her in the middle, hooking his own around it. “Same here.”
Ignatz regards them with wide eyes and a faint, polite-company sort of smile. “Should I leave you two alone to trade secrets?”
“Secrets?” Hilda demands, head swinging over to them like a bloodhound scenting its prey. “What secrets, I want to know them!”
“There are no secrets, Hil, I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Lorenz says smoothly. He stands up from the couch, intensely aware of all the eyes on him. He hasn’t even changed out of his work clothes, for goodness sake; in boring black slacks and a nondescript white shirt, he feels like a stick in the mud next to everyone’s festive cheer. “Is anyone hungry? I don’t have much in the house but I can order in—”
The diversion works like a charm. He’s suddenly swarmed by people offering their opinions on what to get, and he retreats to the kitchen a few minutes later to place a call.
When he hangs up, he turns to find he’s not alone. Claude has escaped the tumult of tree decorating and is standing on the other side of the bar with his elbows on the polished granite, still bedecked with tinsel and a bit pink in the cheeks from alcohol. He is rosy and merry and unfairly incandescent, and Lorenz suddenly finds himself struggling to breathe.
“Hey, you,” Claude says, voice soft and velvety. “You’ve been avoiding me all night.”
Lorenz swallows. “H-have I?” He slips his phone back into his pocket and turns to the drinks cabinet. “It’s not intentional, I assure you, I simply want to make sure everyone’s having a good time. Can I get you a refill on anything?”
“Lorenz…”
“What were you drinking? Hot chocolate and bourbon? Or would you rather have something a little less sweet—”
“Lorenz.”
He stills, hand around the neck of a bottle of apple pie moonshine. "Yes, Claude?"
Claude comes around the counter and takes the bottle from him, brow rumpled sweetly with concern. "You're not upset with me, are you? For staging this?"
"Upset? Of course not! It's a delight to have you all," Lorenz insists, baffled but earnest.
"And you know you don't have to play the perfect host, right? It's just us, we don't need anything fancy." From the other room comes a clatter and a percussive trill of laughter. Lorenz decides he doesn't want to know. "We're a bit rowdy," Claude adds, "sorry about that."
"You can stop apologizing," Lorenz tells him. "You've done nothing wrong. I was just lying on the couch watching some terrible Christmas special and feeling sorry for myself. This is infinitely better company."
"Oh, Lorenz. Why didn't you come over?"
"I got in late, and I… in all honesty I forgot, and I was afraid it would take too long and I would get there just as the party was winding down…"
"You know you don't have to be perfect all the time," Claude says gently, and Lorenz sags in place like a china doll removed from its pedestal. "And even though we are a nuisance—no, don't be polite and deny it—I won't apologize for springing on you like this, because it means I get to see you in person before I leave."
The old familiar sting blooms hot in his chest, but for some reason the dagger strikes deeper this year. "You're leaving again? So soon? I thought you’d be leaving after the New Year."
“I usually do, but I’ve got some stuff I need to take care of at home.” Claude’s face is carefully bland like he’s waiting for Lorenz to react before he betrays any emotion, reflecting back whatever he sees like a slightly warped mirror. Lorenz doesn’t know if he can bear that. “I’m taking a branch of my father’s company overseas, so. Lots to do.”
Lorenz’s face feels brittle as it cracks into a parody of a congratulatory smile. “How lovely for you,” he says. His voice is all wrong. Even Claude can tell—his face falls a little, and Lorenz feels like an utter cad. Some friend you are, pushing him away at every turn and then throwing good news in his face, all because you’re too proud to admit you feel more than friendship for him—
“I thought you’d be a little happier,” Claude remarks coolly.
“I—I am. That’s tremendous news, Claude, how—how soon do you take over?”
“Late January I’ll be back to oversee the transfer—”
Lorenz feels his stomach drop unkindly. “Sorry, be back? What transfer?”
Claude stares at him a moment, and a tiny smile starts to manifest itself in the corners of his mouth. “I said overseas, didn’t I? Riegan LTD is expanding, we’re opening an office in Brooklyn in the new year. Pops asked me to take charge of it, since I’ve spent so much time in America and New York in particular.”
“You’re staying, then.” Lorenz hears himself speaking as though from the end of a very long tunnel. All he can see is Claude’s face, his little smirking smile, the way his eyelashes have dried into dark points from the condensation of coming in from the outdoors. His eyes are very, very green. “For how long?”
“For a very long time. Forever, if I can manage it. I mean, I’ll need to fly back home a couple times a year for business and family stuff, but—oomph!”
Claude’s rambling is cut off as Lorenz throws his arms around him and hugs him as tight as he can. Laughter squeezes out of him as Claude returns the favor, broad hands at his back and rough, untrimmed stubble against his throat.
“Hey there,” Claude laughs. Every flex of his ribs is so near and intimate that Lorenz wants to sink to the ground and bury his face in his stomach. “I guess you’re happy about it, then?”
“Happy, of course I’m happy—I’m delighted, I’m—” Lorenz bites his lip as he draws away, studying Claude’s face for a warning sign. Something that tells him to stop now, while he’s ahead.
“You’re what?” Claude asks, nudging him gently. His hands are still resting lightly on Lorenz’s hips, very nearly possessive. Lorenz sighs, and succumbs.
“Your work has always been elsewhere, and I respect it, but… I always miss you when you’re away. And when you’re here it’s not nearly for long enough, and I—well.” He swallows back the confession swimming to his lips, eager to escape in the rush of emotion. “Maybe this isn’t the best time to…”
“It’s Christmas,” Claude says. The silver tinsel twinkles in his hair like starlight as he cocks his head, a curious bird waiting to see what treasure Lorenz might reveal if given enough encouragement. “I think it’s the perfect time.”
“You don’t even celebrate Christmas, Claude.”
“What do you call this?” Claude asks, spreading his arms. “I’m here, aren’t I? Tinsel in my hair like a goddamn idiot, caroling and putting up trees…” He trails off with a sly little smile, looking up at Lorenz as though he’s about to share a particularly juicy secret. “Kissing handsome men under the mistletoe.”
Lorenz looks up. He blushes immediately to have assumed, but his instincts were right: someone, at some point in the last half-hour, has taped a sprig of green plastic to the door frame that could, conceivably, be mistletoe. “When did that get there?”
“I bribed Ignatz, earlier. Can you believe he’s taller than me, now? What an absolute prick.” As he speaks, Claude slides a broad hand across Lorenz’s hip to the small of his back, drawing him close. “Hey. Look at me.”
Lorenz does, helplessly.
“Can I kiss you?”
“I’ll be very put out with you if you don’t, after all that.”
Claude cups his cheek in his free hand and kisses him. His lips are damp and taste of chocolate and bourbon cream. Lorenz tilts his head and licks into his mouth, tongue against tongue, chasing that hot, sweet flavor. Claude rumbles against him, deep in his chest, and his fingers curl against his jaw, into the smooth fabric of his shirt until it’s free of his trousers. Then his hand is warm and calloused against his skin, his spine, and Lorenz moans softly into the pluck of teeth against his lower lip.
“Whew.” Claude pecks the tip of his nose and sinks back down to his heels. Lorenz, unable to part from him for long, cranes down to rest his cheek on Claude’s temple. “That was even better than I hoped.”
“That’s the bourbon cream talking,” Lorenz mumbles.
“Yeah, maybe.” A broad thumb teases the point of his chin, coaxing him over into another soft, shallow kiss. “Or maybe it’s just you.”
Lorenz hums and kisses him back, running his hands through Claude’s hair. His fingers catch on the tinsel and he drags it around in loops and whorls until it’s all threaded through, a delicate net of starlight in his raven curls. Out in the other room he can hear laughter and tipsy conversation, the fake crackle of a Yule log, the faint strain of some tasteful Christmas music that someone, probably Marianne, has put on their phone. Through some stroke of good luck, they stay where they are, content to amuse themselves while their host and one of their own number is mysteriously absent.
In a little while the doorbell will ring, signaling the arrival of food, and Lorenz will busy himself with plates and cups and forks, and Claude will drift to the other side of the room again, far in distance but not in spirit. But for now he’s all his, hands and lips and hearts entwined, years of longing coalesced into a single point of brilliant silver light.
Lorenz intends to make the most of it.