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Snowed in in Edmonton, Matthew’s text to Tarryn reads.
Oh shit! She responds. Be careful out there.
Will do. Very treacherous.
Matthew tosses his phone over to the couch, stretches his arms above his head. Yawns, adjusts his blanket pile. The view from Leon’s floor-to-ceiling windows doesn’t do justice to just how cold it is outside. It stopped snowing overnight, and now a clear blue sky turns the snowdrifts up to megawatt brightness. Patches of syrupy, golden afternoon light drip across the hardwood floor. Bowie snores from one of them.
Yeah. He’ll really try to be careful.
Starting to wake up, like, for real now, from the very treacherous nap they’d taken, Matthew grabs his laptop off the coffee table. He settles it on his lap, and when he opens it, the screen is still open on his favorite YouTube video of all time.
“Babe,” Matthew calls, “you’re so mean.”
Leon, face appearing in the window to the kitchen, looks perturbed.
“How can I be mean?” he asks. “I’m making you cocoa.”
And, well. It’s pretty hard to argue with that. Leon is pretty much the picture of the Hallmark Christmas Boyfriend today, with a bag of mini marshmallows in one hand and a snowman mug in the other, both barely peeking out under the sleeves of his white cable-knit sweater. His big blue eyes are wide under his bedhead, and as always, so ready to fall into the trap of Matthew’s teasing.
Or, maybe not. Maybe not even Matthew can tease today. He’s a little shit, but he’s not a monster.
“Not to me,” he says quickly. “I just meant to reporters. And it was a compliment, baby, chill.”
Leon comes around from the kitchen into the living room, setting their mugs on the coffee table before frowning at Matthew. He looks so earnest--and yeah, fuck it, Matthew can definitely still tease.
“A compliment? I don’t know about that.” Matthew isn’t looking so far from picture-perfect himself in his Cardinals crewneck, hair still mussed from their nap. But he’s also Matthew, which means that every time he looks this cute, he’s hiding something. “Where did that come from? About me being mean?”
“Nowhere,” Matthew says, too quickly.
“What are you watching?”
“Nothing.”
Leon’s eyes narrow.
“If I come over there,” Leon says, “are you going to be watching the interview?”
“No,” Matthew says truthfully. But then he breaks, face splitting into a grin. “It’s better.”
When he turns the laptop around, Leon’s own face greets him--it’s a video compilation entitled Best of Pissy Leon.
Leon groans. Why has he decided to spend his life with someone who tortures him? Is he in hell? On purpose? Actively choosing to be tortured?
“Did you make that?”
“No, somebody else did!” Matthew turns the screen around again, searching for the user. “I think I’m going to cut them a check--”
“Give me that,” Leon says, taking the laptop and chucking it on the couch. “All I do is try to be nice to you, make you hot chocolate, cuddle you, give you a perfect day--”
“This is a perfect day!” Matthew protests. “Watching you be mean to others is my idea of a perfect day!”
“Mean? What’s mean about it? They all get to tell me how to do my job, but I can’t tell them how to do theirs?”
“Exactly.” Matthew puts out his arms like a little kid. “Now will you stop being pissy about it and get over here? The hot chocolate is gonna get cold.”
“I don’t know--” Leon crosses his arms--and there it is, the bitchy look from the video. “Apparently I’m mean.”
“Yes, and?”
“Mean people don’t cuddle. Mean people don’t get their boyfriends cocoa.”
“Debatable,” Matthew says. “You’ve done both.” Still, Leon doesn’t move. “Oh, come on! Look, maybe I like watching you be shitty to others while you’re doing nice things for me. Is that so bad? It's like the duality of man. The duality of Leon.”
“First,” Leon says, “I regret ever trying to watch a serious movie with you--”
“What you should really regret is showing me that YouTube video about what the movie means--,” Matthew cuts in, which Leon ignores.
“Second, do you like seeing different sides of me or do you just like being the only one I’m nice to?”
Matthew grins.
“Well, I wouldn’t say the only one.”
“But close?”
“But close.”
Leon sighs, exasperated, and this is clearly going nowhere so fast, so Matthew pivots. He stretches again so his shirt rides up and exposes his stomach; scratches his fingers through his hair in that way he knows Leon likes; smiles cockily in the way Leon loves to hate.
“Or maybe,” he says, “I’m just nostalgic for when you weren’t nice to me.”
It takes a minute, but Matthew knows what buttons to push, or none of this would work in the first place, and, true to form, Leon eventually wanders over. He puts his hands on the back of the loveseat, leans forward until their noses are just inches apart.
“Yeah?” he says, feigning disinterest. “You wanna go back? Be enemies again?”
“I don’t know,” Matthew licks his lips, “Fighting you was the hardest I’ve ever been in my jock.”
“Hotter than a playoff hat trick?” Leon tucks a curl behind Matthew’s ear, face in that icily neutral position that Matthew knows now means he’s hot; that a few inches lower he’s swallowing hard; that he’s hungry underneath that blank facade.
“ Way hotter than a playoff hat trick.” Leon’s face dips closer, breath ghosting over his ear, but Matthew can’t help himself. “Doesn’t matter though. You couldn’t be mean to me now if you tried.”
Leon rears back, indignant.
“I can be mean to you!”
“Sure you can,” Matthew giggles. He’s infuriating. Superior bastard. If someone--anyone--was going to be mean to Matthew, this would be the exact moment.
The moment stretches.
And stretches.
“I hate you,” Leon mutters.
“That’s what I thought.” Matthew looks smug at first, but after one last laugh, he melts into something softer. A snowflake on the tongue, a marshmallow dropped into hot cocoa. “Hey. It’s okay, babe. I like how you’re different with me than with other people. Like, really. I’m not even being shitty.”
“You mean it?” Leon raises an eyebrow.
“I do,” Matthew says. His voice goes soft, earnest, his eyes darting around as he searches Leon’s face. “You’re scary and soft. You’re the sexiest person I’ve ever seen, and you smell like fresh laundry.” He kisses him. “I like being the exception to your rules. I like seeing you be passionate and I like that you don’t bullshit around like I do and you don’t take crap off of anybody, even when you’re supposed to. I like that with you, I can have it all.” Another kiss, this time longer, filling in the gaps of what he can’t say. When they part, their eyes meet in something like understanding. “Is that so bad?”
“No,” Leon says finally, “I suppose not.” He rests his forehead against Matthew’s, and, when he’s finally sure he’s not going to get chirped again, nudges his head against Matthew’s neck. “Now move over.”
Matthew goes happily, scooting aside so Leon can get at the other side of the loveseat. Leon arranges himself as the big spoon, back against the arm of the chair, one leg on either side of Matthew. He wraps his arms around Matthew’s middle, feeling all the softness under those prickles, his sweater, his belly. How even after being a little shit himself, he’s still so trusting of Leon, leaning back into his touch, going liquid with it. He buries his face in his hair. He lets his hands wander and squeeze. He enjoys having a soft, snuggly boyfriend by the lapful--or, as he tells his family, “ Matthew is a handful. ”
After he’s satisfied and settled, Leon reaches to the coffee table to hand Matthew his mug. Matthew drinks, then makes a little choking noise.
“ Babe, ” he whines, “you were so mad at me that you let our cocoa get cold.” He turns to him, grinning wickedly. “You are so mean to me.”
And this time Leon grins back, doesn’t even bother rolling his eyes or pretending to be offended, but takes the teasing and leans right into it, pinching Matthew’s sides and tickling and teasing right back.
“So mean,” Leon murmurs into his neck as Matthew squirms, then grins into it, nuzzling further down as Matthew’s giggle turns into a laugh, “so so mean, you’re right, I’m the worst, so terrible to you--”
Sometimes, you can have it all.