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“Wow, that really is ugly.”
And it is. With shaggy fur and a fanged scowl and curving horns.
“Good craftsmanship,” König responds as he pulls shaggy boots on his feet and tries to zip them without ripping too much of the glued-on synthetic. Normally, Hong-jin was told, stilts would also be a part of the ordeal for this particular parade. Here, they would be simply an overkill. “Krampus is supposed to be ugly.”
Hong-jin just hums, watching König battle the costume. The parade was tomorrow, but if there were any issues with the getup now was the time to find and fix them.
The whole thing is bulky and shaggy, padded at the shoulders to give an already-imposing man a more imposing figure still. The suit underneath is crudely sewn together, almost like a crude leather armor, adorned with some ragged fabrics and held together with a belt with a heavy ornate clasp. The pants are furry from knee down, and boots heavy, with sculptures made to look like hooves on the tips. Coupled with the mask in a nasty grimace crowned with six massive, curved horns and a heavy furry cape, it makes for a striking image.
König’s grandmother made it, Hong-jin has been told, back when she was still alive. She loved Krampusnacht and he performed in it for her, and it became a whole huge them thing. The people around the performance were also very happy to have König back after the few years he skipped since her funeral and the family schism that came out of it that Hong-jin had no details on; and so the pressure was on, somewhat.
“Hong-jin,” König says, getting his attention back. “Help me zip up this thing.”
Hong-jin does, careful to not rip any fur off. It fits well. As far as he’s aware, König has been doing this in his hometown whenever he was able to be back for Christmas from deployment.
“Here,” he says. “Any issues with your fursuit?”
König wheezes out a laugh. “Katze, do not call it that.”
Hong-jin only grins, even if König can’t see it between the medical mask he wears and the Krampus headpiece the other has on. “It looks good. Appropriately… Krampus-y.”
“Nothing coming off?” König asks as he takes the mask back off and sets it down carefully so he can examine the rest of the outfit. “Seems alright. It’s been years so I was worried.”
“The outfit’s fine, König—”
“Mathias,” König—Mathias says and looks at Hong-jin. “We’re not at work, there’s no need for the callsigns. Ja?”
Hong-jin smiles. “Alright, Mathias. The outfit’s fine. It was dusty but nothing’s falling off. If anything, it looks better shaggy.”
“Good, yes. I was worried. It’s good it fits, too, it’s been a few years.”
“Oh yeah, you said you didn’t come here for bigger celebrations in a while,” Hong-jin muses. “I suppose this one is my fault. Since I was bitching about being sad and alone.”
Mathias chuckles, the split lip making a smirk curl his lips just a little wrong. “Silly cat, if I didn’t want to be here I wouldn’t. We could have gone anywhere. No. I want to be here. Back home.”
“Big boy able to handle his issues and all?”
“Something like that. Now help me out of this thing and we can go get you some hot chocolate.”
Hong-jin’s eyes light up. “From Toffee-Haus?”
Mathias chuckles. “Yes. It’s Christmas, we can indulge your newest addiction.”
It’s already dark when they sit in the café, half-bundled up still and each nursing a hot drink. It’s actually snowing outside, but given the time it didn’t catch then unawares. Hong-jin is playing with the marshmallows in his hot chocolate and Mathias is absent-mindedly chewing on a gingerbread cookie as he looks out of the window.
“Sooo… How do you feel about meeting your sister tomorrow?”
Mathias makes a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat that Hong-jin knows betrays anxiety. He reaches out and puts his hand on Mathias’s. Mathias squeezes his fingers and says nothing.
Mathias never spoke much about his family unprompted, and Hong-jin never really asked. It was a sore spot for him too so they just… Didn’t talk about it.
What Hong-jin did know, however, was this; Mathias had one younger sister, and was closest with his grandmother, and often in conflict with his overly traditional, overbearing parents; mother who tried to coddle him due to his anxiety despite his army career and father who tried to beat it out of him, until Mathias beat the idea out of his father in turn shortly before joining the army at seventeen.
He also knew that there was a schism in the family after the grandmother passed away, centered around the funeral and inheritance. All Hong-jin knew about that one was that it caused Mathias to skip the last few years of coming back at all until his sister kicked up a horrible fuss forcing his parents to apologize.
So, Mathias was giving them a tentative chance, with a shock factor of bringing Hong-jin with him as a partner; not a woman, not a Christian, and not even an European.
Part of Hong-jin wondered if Mathias was simply looking for an excuse to just cut his parents out of his life for good. There was no way they’d react well to Hong-jin.
“You’re overthinking, Katze,” Mathias says, bringing Hong-jin out of his thoughts. “I’m the one supposed to be fretting.”
“I don’t know, it just feels like you’re looking for excuses to never see your parents again.”
Mathias scoffs. “That obvious?”
“I know you. I spent too much time with my life in your hands out at the field to not know exactly how you tick.”
Mathias grins, obscured by his scarf. “And I know you well enough to know you will absolutely relish in the chaos that will descend, Katze.”
Hong-jin grins under his facemask. His shades are off, folded by his chocolate mug, so there’s nothing hiding the crinkling of his eyes. “I hope you don’t mind me being overly affectionate with you during the dinner.”
Mathias snorts. “I was counting just on that.”
“Oh right!” Hong-jin claps his hands. “Do I pretend to not speak German around them?”
“Coud be funny. Will be awkward, my parents don’t really speak any other languages.”
“Great. Ich kann nicht Deutsch sprechen in that case.”
Mathias laughs. His earlier frown has eased too, and Hong-jin feels accomplished.
Time is a tricky thing. It’s easy for Hong-jin to forget that he’s thirty-two, that the dumb mistakes he made were really when he was just a dumb kid barely in his twenties. It’s easy to forget Mathias is thirty-eight, and the implication that his younger sister therefore can be anything from a year younger than that just fly over Hong-jin’s head.
That is until he’s face-to-face with a scowling teenage nephew of Mathias, a fifteen-year-old boy in his ‘I fucking hate the world and all the people’ phase. Hong-jin can relate, honestly. He misses the immaturity and naivete of that time when he knew jack about shit and everything seemed like a world-ending tragedy that he somehow braved through every single time. Not to mention the scowl is near-identical to the one Mathias frequently directs at badly-filled reports. Usually Krueger’s.
The boy has the same messy red hair, too, and he’s already taller than Hong-jin.
Ah, the familiarity.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you cloned yourself,” he tells Mathias, who snorts out a laugh. The boy only scowls harder as another Mathias-clone pops out from the hallway, a tall red-headed woman.
“Mathias!” she cheers and runs to him for a hug.
“Ingrid!” Mathias laughs as he picks her up and spins her around in the decidedly too-narrow entryway and Hong-jin has to evade a stray limb twice. They greet each other in German, chittering about the weather, and the snow, and how Killian has gotten so tall when Mathias was away and to be careful mother oversalted the soup again though Ingrid warned her.
Hong-jin, he thinks, feigns cluelessness to the language pretty well while following the conversation. An useful skill as he smiles awkwardly as Ingrid gushes at how Mathias has finally brought a friend, he’s never done that before!
He delights in the way she’s shocked only for a moment when Mathias corrects her that no, Hong-jin is no friend, that’s his bessere Hälfte and then tells Mathias that she’s happy for him but it might just give their father a conniption. Which, to be fair, is the point.
Hong-jin just smiles, face hidden by his mask and glasses, perfect image of cluelessness but inside he wants to skip around and squee so badly. He gets like that every time Mathias says something cheesy like that; not a boyfriend, Mathias hasn’t called him that in a while, but partner. Significant Other. Better Half.
It’s so awfully romantic of him. Hong-jin might be swooning a little.
Killian glances at the two suspiciously at that, but says nothing.
Mathias’ parents, when they finally come greet them are… Honestly quite unremarkable, in the way sixty-something old folk typically are. Tall but regular, a little hunched, greying. Hong-jin briefly considers how come they made that behemoth of a man before he mentally shrugs it off—genetics are weird. He himself is almost a head taller than his own father.
(He misses home. But he made too many mistakes and he can’t go back there, and it’s kind of Mathias to share his, really.)
(Even if Mathias Senior makes a face when he sees Hong-jin. At least the mom doesn’t wear her thoughts so openly on her sleeve, but she’s not pleased either.)
They make polite introductions, and Mathias’ father cringes when they’re introduced. He makes an underhanded comment, something about how he’s worried Hong-jin won’t be able to eat with them because they only have normal cutlery but he can get him some sticks outside (wow, what a bitch) but Mathias’ glare shuts him up. Hong-jin pretends he understands nothing, instead choosing to converse with Ingrid and Killian in English. They’re better company anyway.
He almost misses it as he talks, but he’s also much too attuned to Mathias to truly do that. It saved his life more than once and it helped in more encounters than he’d care to admit, to know instinctively when Mathias senses danger.
“We hoped you’d bring a girlfriend at least, you know,” Mathias’ mother pouts. He narrows his eyes.
“What do you mean?” Mathias asks, feigning ignorance, and Hong-jin feels his spine tighten as if preparing to jump from cover at a quick bark of ‘grenade!’. “I brought Hong-jin.”
Mathias’ mother sighs and shakes her head. “No, I mean—a partner. A loved one.”
Mathias folds his hands on his chest. “Yes. And I did. I told you, I brought Hong-jin.”
Hong-jin counts the seconds it takes to sink. Four for the mother, seven and a half for the father.
And then, pandemonium.
Mathias’ father starts yelling, his mother starts sobbing; Killian decides on a tactical retreat behind Hong-jin, smart kid, and Ingrid puts herself between them further. It speaks of a kind of practice that Hong-jin learned to hate.
And, well, it certainly does look like their father is about ready to lunge at Mathias as the mother screams her lungs out at how this joke is not funny, at how she’s disappointed in him, and when Mathias says this is not a joke, she starts wailing and the father starts yelling.
It’s not bad enough that Mathias brought home a man; he brought home an Asian. The horror.
Hong-jin would wish for popcorn, if not for the discomfort he sees in his partner. Yes, they planned for it but the real thing? It still hurts and he can see it.
Then, Mathias slams his fist on the wooden table, the wood creaking ominously but the solid, good-quality slab holds. But it rings, loud and true, and everybody shuts up and looks at him for once.
“I gave you a chance,” he says quietly. “I was willing to forgive the shitshow that was grandma’s funeral, how you disregarded her every single wish. I was willing to overlook the years and years of pointed comments that tore my self-esteem to shreds over and over again, year after year. I was, I really was, because Ingrid called and asked and I wanted to believe. But you people never change. Staunch and rotten to the core and blind to the truth before you. And the truth is, I’ve always been like this. And you will not insult Hong-jin. Not to his face, not to my face, not behind our backs.”
“Mathias—”
“I’m not done—” he snaps and stops. “Well, no. I am, actually. Done. With you. For good. And I want you to know that you are the ones who pushed your son away. I ran, when I was a child, from you. And you wasted your last chance tonight.”
Mathias turns around and grabs his jacket.
“I told you,” Ingrid tells her parents and then motions at Mathias to pass her her own coat. “I tried to fix this. And I’m done. You’re on your own now. We always have been.”
While he’s at it, Mathias throws coats at Hong-jin and Killian too, and then before they know it, they’re out of the house, Mathias trying to stay calm and Ingrid positively spitting fire.
“Who the fuck do they think they are!” she yowls. “They’ve always been like this! How can you divorce Leon, how will you raise Killian alone! Ignore the fact the fuck was an useless drunk that started leaving me with bruises! Divorcing his sorry ass was better than ripping his head off, that was at least legal! Arrrgh!”
Mathias just pats her back, letting her let out the steam. People turn to look, but turn away just as quickly; Ingrid’s icy glares ensure so effectively.
“Is it true?” Killian asks from where he manifested next to Hong-jin. He hates that he has to crane his neck a little to look at the kid, he’s already so tall. Hong-jin himself is not at all short.
“Is what true?” Hong-jin asks, a little confused as Mathias tries to calm his furious sister down, with little luck.
“That you two are… You know.”
“Together?”
“Yeah.”
“We are. It’s not a stunt.”
“How’d you meet?”
Hong-jin grins. It’s invisible under his mask and scarf, but his voice is amused. “He shot the guy that was trying to stab me. He’s probably the only reason I’m still alive from back then.”
“And you like him?”
“Curious brat,” Hong-jin huffs. “Yes. I do. Go wheedle your uncle if you want more answers.”
“Ugh, piss off. He’s busy talking with mom.”
Hong-jin just shrugs. “Hey, you may have better luck calming your mom down. Then you can harass him about what you want to know.”
Killian looks at Hong-jin, considering, and back to his mother and uncle, and then rushes forward, between them, yelling something about old people bitching and that he wants pizza. Ingrid startles, and Mathias laughs. They’ll find themselves in a pizzeria soon enough, Hong-jin knows, arguing over an order and then Mathias will regale his nephew with bloody bullet-filled stories of the army much to Ingrid’s horror.
It's nice, this Christmas. Hong-jin could use to it.
“Mathias… You good?”
“Ja.”
“It’s just that you’ve been looking at the Krampus mask.”
“I know, Katze. It’s ironic.”
“What is?”
“That I’m playing the Krampus. He punishes bad children. This Christmas, I punished my bad parents.”
“Ah. You know what? Yeah, it does fit.”
“Mhm. Now—Help me get this on. I need to be out there in twenty minutes and I’m still pissed, and it’s not helping my anxiety, and—”
“Yes, yes, big guy.”
“Don’t laugh.”
“Nah I think I will. Now come here, let me try to zip you up without ripping any fur off.”
They go to the Krampus parade, the four of them alone. Hong-jin thinks he can glimpse Mathias’ parents in the crowd, but ignores them. If Ingrid sees them, she says nothing.
They’re all much more interested on the spectacle the dressed-up people put on. It’s almost a proper play, a reenactment of a legend Hong-jin doesn’t know.
He’ll ask Mathias about it later, when they’re back in their hotel. Ingrid asks them to come visit her at her house, promises a guest room. They consider. It’s cheaper, and Hong-jin would like to get to know at least some of Mathias’ family.
But that’s all in due time. They have a whole month off, still, and they deserve a lazy morning for today.