tidings of comfort and joy
Title: tidings of comfort and joy
Author: mywholecry
Recipient: onigaminanashi
Prompt: domestic Christmas/holiday shenanigans, established relationships, family hijinks (mostly in being cool brothers) AUs
Word count: 4000
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: vague angst, grand romantic gestures, domestic holiday fluff
Summary: In which Kevin is a sad little elf, and Mike panics and buys way the fuck too much tinsel.
Notes: Happy holidays! I hope this is kind of what you wanted. Also, I accidentally lost Michael Guy somewhere in here, but I snuck in a Jon Walker, so. :D
Since the first time Kevin met Mike's band, after they'd been dating for a few weeks in that way that's mostly holding hands and pretending to be cooler than they are, he's known that they think he's kind of strange and don’t really know what to do with him. He knows this because two hours after he met William at one of the college art festivals that TAI was playing, William said, "You're very strange, Kevin Jonas, and none of us know what to do with you."
It got better, though, after they got off the kick that he was trying to steal Mike away to the side of the light and stopped calling him Yoko, but he still feels out of place when they all get together. And maybe it’s partly because he misses his brothers and his family and hasn’t really gotten the hang of Chicago yet, but he’s having a hard time getting used to calling another place home, even when he’s falling asleep to Mike every night.
(Sometimes, especially with Christmas coming up in a few weeks, Kevin even seriously considers running back to New Jersey and apologizing and pretending to be everything they want him to be. Sometimes, he pulls out a suitcase and calls his mother's cell phone and forgets how to talk.)
***
Kevin first met Mike in a statistics class when he was a freshman and Mike was a sophomore, and they got partnered up on a project. Four awkward study sessions later, they've bonded over music and a mutual hatred of math, and Mike kisses him outside a Starbucks at two in the morning while Jon Walker locks up behind them and helpfully whistles My Heart Will Go On.
At some point, Kevin ended up accidentally leaving all of his things in Mike's tiny, shitty apartment, and Mike suggested that he "just fucking move in already, god, Jonas," and cleaned out more closet space for him.
And that, as they say, was that. They become the resident gay married couple, and they've started staying in on Saturday nights and watching PBS and going to bed around the same time most people are going out. Kevin's totally bought some woolen slippers, and he's got another pair hidden away to give to Mike for Christmas. He's really starting to get into this whole domesticity thing.
***
A few weeks after he left for college, Kevin got a package from Joe full of old photo albums with a note that said: "So you don't forget what our awesome faces look like," a string of crooked hearts underneath. When he finishes moving out of the dorms, he leaves them out on the coffee table and finds Mike looking through them.
"Tell me a story, yeah?" Mike had said, and they'd told each about their families already, but Kevin crawled onto the sofa next to him, under his arm, and he ran his hand over the page and told him everything he could think of. He told him about the time Joe was ten and tried to jump both of their parents' cars with his skateboard and a makeshift ramp and broke his leg in three places, how Nick had cried in the emergency room because he thought Joe was dying. He told him about his dad singing while he cooked breakfast in the mornings, about the stories his mom used to tell them to help them fall asleep.
And, finally, he got to the pictures from his graduation, loose and tucked into the back of the book, and he told Mike about kissing Zac Efron in the basement of the Baptist Church after their graduation party and the big family crises that followed after everyone found out.
"And, that," he had said, eyes trained to the floor, "is why I'm sitting here right now, in Chicago, with you. Thanks to. . .fundamentalism and Zac Efron."
"Well." Mike kissed his temple, breathed into his hair for a minute before he said: "Thank god for that," and Kevin huffed out a laugh.
***
The last two weeks before Christmas are taken up with final exams, regular panic attacks, and William singing increasingly wistful carols and begging Jon Walker to give him enough shots of expresso to tranquilize him. Kevin claims permanent residence at one of the tables in the back of Starbucks, surrounded by piles of books and all of his notes. Occasionally, he'll push aside everything to find that Siska's fallen asleep on the other side of the table, folded on top of his history books, or that Mike is drafting suicide notes to send to his economics professor.
"At least," William says, when they're all hiding in Mike's (and mine, Kevin mentally repeats) apartment the night before exams start, waving a Red Bull lazily in the air, "if we survive this, there will be holiday revelries to follow. Eggnog. Merriment."
"I have bad feelings about your eggnog," Kevin says, and William favors him with a sweet smile.
"I won't take advantage of you, little elf," he says, leaning over Siska and Mike on the sofa to clasp Kevin's knee, "but only because I know that Mike would shank me if I tried."
"Damn right." Mike says.
Kevin nudges him with his elbow, and then starts to cast longing glances at his books, sitting in a pile across the room. He's been banned by everyone from studying anymore, even though he's pretty certain that he's actually forgotten everything he's ever learned, and he's going to have some kind of episode anytime now if he doesn't start looking over his notes again.
Mike turns his head to him, whispers: "Leave it alone," into his ear.
"I don't think I remember how to spell my name." Kevin whimpers.
"You'll be fine."
"Does Kevin have one v or two?"
"Fine," Mike repeats, firmly, and Kevin sighs and leans farther back into the sofa and tries to figure out the right angle to pass out from exhaustion on Mike's shoulder.
***
Kevin gets through all of his exams, and he doesn't cry even once, and they go out to celebrate on the last night of the semester and get spectacularly drunk. Kevin ends up sitting up close to William for half the night, listening to him talk about how much he loves his girlfriend, about his girlfriend's pretty, pretty hair, about how his girlfriend could probably take him down if it should ever come to fisticuffs, and Kevin's such a good listener. He excels at listening.
But then William is saying, "I digress, I digress, tell me about your soul, Kevin Jonas," and, "Sometimes you get sad eyes, like a lost puppy dog, did you know that?"
Kevin didn't know that.
He maybe shows William the pictures of his brothers that he has on his cellphone, but later he thinks it's just because all the mixed alcohol made him sort of maudlin. It's not like he's dwelling on the whole Christmas away from home thing. He's already spent one Christmas away, but he didn't actually celebrate it, just stayed in the dorms over vacation and didn't turn on the television or the radio or open his curtains for the snow.
Sometime after three in the morning, William gives him a tight hug and deposits him in Mike's arms, and they take a slow, unsteady walk back to the apartment. It takes a few minutes for either of them to manage the locks on the door, but eventually they make it to their bed, jackets and shoes left on the floor of the living room. They make out lazily, fully clothed, and Kevin makes a half-hearted attempt at unbuttoning Mike's shirt before giving up and collapsing on top of him.
"Ow," Mike says, but he doesn't seem to mean it.
***
It's four days before Christmas Eve when Kevin turns off the TV once he can't anything that doesn't involve a holiday to watch and leaves the room when the rest of TAI shows up to carol at their door and demand figgy pudding.
It's three days before Christmas Eve when Mike takes him by the arm and says, "I need you to go to the supermarket and get me sugar and milk and whatever will keep you out of this apartment for the next. . .I don't know, couple of hours," and Kevin stares at him for a long, long moment. Mike looks either frantic or mad, and Kevin's really not in the mood for dealing with anything right now, so he grabs his coat and leaves without saying anything. If Mike doesn't want to be around him right now, he can't really blame him.
Kevin doesn't really want to be around himself right now.
***
When he gets back to the apartment after wandering the streets and spending three hours subtly rearranging things in the grocery store, Mike is trapped in a knot of Christmas lights, and there's a tree taking up most of the living room. Most of the flat surfaces are covered in silver tinsel. Kevin stops with his hand curled around the door, eyes wide when Mike finally frees himself and looks up at him, smiles, slow and cautious.
"How did you do this?" Kevin asks, softly, a little shaky because this looks like his tree, the same tree that his family puts up together every year.
"The photo albums?" Mike says. "I mean. . .we usually just drink too much and pass out on the quad for Christmas, but you're used to glitter and, like, the power of Jesus, and Bill keeps giving you these looks and telling me that you're a sad little elf, so. . ."
Kevin's hugging him before he can get another word out, breath catching in his chest for a few moments when Mike winds arms around his back, pulls him as close as he can. Kevin looks over his shoulder to see the lights blinking on the tree, and he shuts his eyes, buries his face in Mike's neck.
"There's no macaroni art." he says. "I'm a little bit disappointed."
Mike runs fingers through the length of Kevin's hair a few times, messing up the curls.
"It's really the thought that counts," he says.
***
On Christmas Eve, Kevin gets Mike to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas with him, because it doesn't seem so bad anymore. Mike's sprawled across the length of the sofa, his legs over Kevin's lap, and Kevin's fingers slide over his ankle, aimlessly. He's reciting the lines to himself when there's a knock on the door, and Mike stretches, prods at his thigh with one foot.
"Pizza," he says, and Kevin rolls his eyes and pushes him off to go for the door. When he opens it and sees his brothers standing outside, arms full of wrapped gifts, he freezes for a few seconds. Joe's wearing a Santa hat and grinning crookedly, and something in the moment breaks, and Kevin makes an embarrassing excited noise before he's stumbling forward to throw his arms around their necks and knock all the boxes to the floor. He hugs them until Nick starts making noises about "my ribs, man, seriously," and he lets go, turning around to see Mike watching them, hands shoved sheepishly into the pockets of his jeans.
"You did this." Kevin says, softly. "The tree and now this. I don't know what to. . ."
"Siska drove them from the airport. . ." Mike says, voice caught somewhere around the edge of anxious, "and I wanted to do this, you don't need to get me anything, or whatever. . ." and Kevin steps up to him and touches his arm, his jaw, and rocks up on his toes to kiss him once. He's a little nervous when he pulls away and glances back, because he's still not sure where his brothers stand on this whole boy touching thing, but Joe just breezes past them, saying, "I wanted to be mailed here in, like, a giant box, but Nick said I would suffocate. . ."
Nick's on the floor, trying to gather up the gifts, when he says, "Yeah, I'm no fun," and glances up at Mike with a small smile when he lets go of Kevin to help him.
***
They're still talking when midnight passes by, and Mike gets to his feet and leans down to kiss Kevin on the forehead.
"I've got to go. . .you know, get rested for Santa and shit." he says, scrubbing a hand over Kevin's hair before backing away, waving a little. "I'll see you guys in the morning." Kevin watches him go until the door of the bedroom is shut behind him.
"Wow," Nick says, softly, "he really loves you."
And Kevin blushes, because he doesn't know what to say to that, and he's stumbling over an answer when Joe says, around a laugh, "No, seriously, dude, he called us up and said we had to come and make you smile again."
"Oh," Kevin says, and, really quietly: ". . .I love him, too. A lot."
"It's sort of obvious." Nick says.
"I hope so." Kevin smiles at his knees for a second before he looks back at them, curiously. "I never asked, how did you get Mom to let you come? You're going to miss Christmas dinner." There's a long silence after he asks, and Kevin continues, slowly, ". . .they didn't want you to come."
"Fuck them." Joe says, suddenly, kicking gently at Kevin's ankle. "We wanted to be here with you."
"Half of those gifts are from Mom, though," Nick adds, and Kevin's caught on the image of Bibles with specifically highlighted passages, headshots of all her friend's pretty daughters, when Nick slides arms around him in a super rare Nick Hug. Joe jumps on top of them, and Kevin has an elbow in his stomach and someone's hand tugging at his hair. And he feels better, like his heart is growing a couple of sizes, because he knows that he'll have them forever, no matter what, and he thinks he might have the best boyfriend in the entire world.
***
At three in the morning, Joe wakes up and crows, "It's Christmas!" and Nick hits him over the head with a throw pillow until he curls back against the arm of the sofa and goes to sleep again. Kevin gets up and yawns widely while Nick takes advantage of the free space to stretch out further.
"I'll make sure he doesn't wake you up until the sun's up," Nick murmurs, "but I can't promise more."
"Thanks." Kevin takes careful, quiet steps into the bedroom. Mike is asleep on his side of the bed, an arm splayed out across the other side, and Kevin steps out of his jeans and crawls in next to him.
"Mmm." Mike says, waking up enough to move his arm around Kevin, so they're lying side by side. His voice is rough, still mostly asleep. "Hi. Is it Christmas?"
"Yeah." Kevin whispers. "Go back to sleep."
***
They wake up to Joe yelling, "Christmas! Are you decent?" outside of their door. In the living room, he has all of the gifts in a pile on the coffee table, and he makes Kevin open up the present from Nick and him first. When the first thing he sees inside the bag is a handful of condoms, he flushes and passes the bag to Mike while Joe cracks up.
"Flavored condoms and. . ." Mike digs under them then dissolves into something like giggles, tossing the back in Kevin's direction again.
"A DVD of Brokeback Mountain," Kevin says, shaking his head, "and a how-to guide on gay sex. I don't know what to say."
"Thank you?" Joe suggests. "Or, maybe, 'thank you, my favorite brothers, who I love and cherish'?"
"I like Frankie more than you." Kevin says, but he crawls forward to hug them both again while Mike flips through the book, humming interestedly.
Nick pushes the other presents forward, and Kevin feels his heart speed up a little, stomach dipping. He checks the tags with his mother’s handwriting to see that & Mike has been added underneath her for Kevin in Nick’s careful cursive. Mike moves closer to him as he tears the wrapping paper carefully. Inside the half a dozen boxes are pots and pans and silverware, dish towels with the Martha Stewart tags still attached, old cookbooks with her additions in the margins. Inside one of the pots, there's a greeting card with a generic holiday message inside, but it has both of his parent's signatures underneath it.
"We told them that you were living with Mike now," Nick says, "that you were happy."
"So we think whatever Mom felt about this before kind of got overriden by the fear of you starving to death." Joe says, and Kevin murmurs, "Oh," and Mike says, "That's good news. Right?"
Kevin leans back into him.
"I think so." he says, and he can feel them all staring at them, so he stands up and goes to find the slippers he bought for Mike. Mike's face lights up, and Kevin makes him wear them for the rest of the morning.
***
Mike's band storms the apartment late on Christmas Day with alcohol and Doritos and a Menorrah (William had proclaimed, grandly, "Chrismukkah, my friends, Chrismukkah!" and, "Adam Brody has never steered me wrong before!" Kevin thinks Bill has already been drinking, but, really, William has almost always already been drinking). At some point during the night, Joe falls in platonic man love with the Butcher. He teaches Joe how to make dirty origami Christmas ornaments, and Joe, after three beers and two shots of whiskey, sits between Siska and him and patiently folds newspaper dick after newspaper dick.
In the corner, William has lured Nick into sitting in a single armchair with him, and he's petting his hair and talking in a low voice while Nick looks caught between bemusement and horror.
"I don't think he'll molest him," Mike says, "but just to be safe, he's not twelve, right?"
"He's legal. I mean, not very." Kevin squeezes the hand laced in his and pulls slightly, getting Mike to press in closer, slide a socked foot over his. They moved to the opposite side of the room after they almost lit Siska's hair on fire trying to make S'mores over the Menorrah and because it was just dark enough outside the window that the street lamps were on, and Kevin thought it looked like the snow falling was made of tiny lights.
Kevin watches Mike's face in the glow, angled towards the window, until Mike meets his eyes and nudges him with his shoulder.
"Want to go to bed?" he asks, and Kevin laughs, loud and happy, a few large steps past tipsy.
"Well, it is 11:00."
"Hey, Mike! Mike!" Siska yells. "Do you still know all the words to Feliz Navidad?"
The Butcher has pulled out a harmonica, and Joe is keeping a beat on his knees. And even though Kevin is pretty thrilled at the idea of Mike ever knowing all the words to Feliz Navidad, and even though he thinks he should maybe make sure William doesn't kidnap Nick and lock him in his closet or something, he doesn't fight it when Mike says, fervently, "Bed," and pulls him away.
They lock the door to the bedroom behind them and shuck out of their clothes in the dark, sliding under the cold sheets. Mike's skin is still warm when Kevin scoots closer and presses a soft kiss underneath his jaw.
"Did I ever say thank you?" he asks.
"You may have." Mike murmurs.
"Mmm," Kevin says, "thank you. Again."
Mike's mouth opens to his when he kisses him, and they stay like that for awhile, moving slowly while the carols start up full force outside. Kevin thinks he can hear Nick harmonizing with William, somewhere in the background, and he laughs into a kiss, moving his face away to press his cheek to Mike's.
"I think," he says, slowly, "that Joe won't want to go home, now that he's been introduced to sin and debauchery and college. My mother will hate you."
"I have a feeling," Mike replies, "that your mother already kind of hates me." He's sliding fingers over Kevin's spine, making small patterns that Kevin can't help but push back against, a small noise breaking from his throat. He ducks his head to bite softly at Mike's collarbone, to whisper, "Love you," and he thinks: you're worth everything, even the hangover I'm going to have tomorrow morning. And it feels nice, this warmth spreading inside of his chest. It feels like he's found the right place.
***
Kevin wakes up with Mike's arm slung over his waist, and he yawns close by his ear, poking him gingerly in the side. He doesn't want to open his eyes yet, because he can already see the sunlight, and there's a dull headache sneaking up on him.
Mike pulls him closer and makes a low, dead noise.
"Wake up," Kevin whispers, "wake up, wake up."
"Don't think so." Mike swipes aimlessly at Kevin's face without moving his head from the pillow.
"You need to see if my brothers are still alive." Kevin says.
Mike groans and turns to wrap both his arms around Kevin and tug him forward, pulling him out of the bed again. Kevin yawns again and steadies himself with fingers digging into Mike's arms, feeling the world dislocate and spin in place for a few seconds. With mutual effort, they get on enough clothing to be decent and stumble out of the bedroom with their fingers tangled together.
Nobody's awake yet; Joe is spooned up against the sofa, behind the Butcher, and Siska is sprawled out on his stomach on the floor below them. Kevin bites back a laugh when he sees Nick lying half in Bill's lap, still in the armchair, snoring softly into his neck. Mike pulls him away, and they shuffle quietly into the kitchen, barefoot on the cold floor.
Kevin watches while Mike makes coffee, leaning into the counter. Outside the window over the sink, the snow is so white that it makes his head hurt even more, and Joe is singing in his sleep, softly, and Mike slides cold fingers under his shirt before palming a mug into his hands. And Kevin thinks about family, and he thinks about silly things like the way Mike is looking at him now, all squinting dark eyes and honest smile, and how the card that his parents both signed is still propped up on the coffee table.
"Good Christmas?" Mike asks, a little hesitantly, and Kevin smiles into the rim of his coffee mug.
"Arguably the best."
***
After Kevin sees that his brother get on the flight back, he leaves Mike in the lobby of the airport and goes to stand in the hallway outside the bathrooms. He dials his mom's number on his cellphone with unsteady fingers and listens to it ring three time before she picks up, says, "Hello?"
Kevin breathes out softly, and she says, ". . .Kevin? Honey?"
"Yeah." he says. "Yeah, Mom, hi."
And, this time, he doesn't forget how to speak.
Author: mywholecry
Recipient: onigaminanashi
Prompt: domestic Christmas/holiday shenanigans, established relationships, family hijinks (mostly in being cool brothers) AUs
Word count: 4000
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: vague angst, grand romantic gestures, domestic holiday fluff
Summary: In which Kevin is a sad little elf, and Mike panics and buys way the fuck too much tinsel.
Notes: Happy holidays! I hope this is kind of what you wanted. Also, I accidentally lost Michael Guy somewhere in here, but I snuck in a Jon Walker, so. :D
Since the first time Kevin met Mike's band, after they'd been dating for a few weeks in that way that's mostly holding hands and pretending to be cooler than they are, he's known that they think he's kind of strange and don’t really know what to do with him. He knows this because two hours after he met William at one of the college art festivals that TAI was playing, William said, "You're very strange, Kevin Jonas, and none of us know what to do with you."
It got better, though, after they got off the kick that he was trying to steal Mike away to the side of the light and stopped calling him Yoko, but he still feels out of place when they all get together. And maybe it’s partly because he misses his brothers and his family and hasn’t really gotten the hang of Chicago yet, but he’s having a hard time getting used to calling another place home, even when he’s falling asleep to Mike every night.
(Sometimes, especially with Christmas coming up in a few weeks, Kevin even seriously considers running back to New Jersey and apologizing and pretending to be everything they want him to be. Sometimes, he pulls out a suitcase and calls his mother's cell phone and forgets how to talk.)
***
Kevin first met Mike in a statistics class when he was a freshman and Mike was a sophomore, and they got partnered up on a project. Four awkward study sessions later, they've bonded over music and a mutual hatred of math, and Mike kisses him outside a Starbucks at two in the morning while Jon Walker locks up behind them and helpfully whistles My Heart Will Go On.
At some point, Kevin ended up accidentally leaving all of his things in Mike's tiny, shitty apartment, and Mike suggested that he "just fucking move in already, god, Jonas," and cleaned out more closet space for him.
And that, as they say, was that. They become the resident gay married couple, and they've started staying in on Saturday nights and watching PBS and going to bed around the same time most people are going out. Kevin's totally bought some woolen slippers, and he's got another pair hidden away to give to Mike for Christmas. He's really starting to get into this whole domesticity thing.
***
A few weeks after he left for college, Kevin got a package from Joe full of old photo albums with a note that said: "So you don't forget what our awesome faces look like," a string of crooked hearts underneath. When he finishes moving out of the dorms, he leaves them out on the coffee table and finds Mike looking through them.
"Tell me a story, yeah?" Mike had said, and they'd told each about their families already, but Kevin crawled onto the sofa next to him, under his arm, and he ran his hand over the page and told him everything he could think of. He told him about the time Joe was ten and tried to jump both of their parents' cars with his skateboard and a makeshift ramp and broke his leg in three places, how Nick had cried in the emergency room because he thought Joe was dying. He told him about his dad singing while he cooked breakfast in the mornings, about the stories his mom used to tell them to help them fall asleep.
And, finally, he got to the pictures from his graduation, loose and tucked into the back of the book, and he told Mike about kissing Zac Efron in the basement of the Baptist Church after their graduation party and the big family crises that followed after everyone found out.
"And, that," he had said, eyes trained to the floor, "is why I'm sitting here right now, in Chicago, with you. Thanks to. . .fundamentalism and Zac Efron."
"Well." Mike kissed his temple, breathed into his hair for a minute before he said: "Thank god for that," and Kevin huffed out a laugh.
***
The last two weeks before Christmas are taken up with final exams, regular panic attacks, and William singing increasingly wistful carols and begging Jon Walker to give him enough shots of expresso to tranquilize him. Kevin claims permanent residence at one of the tables in the back of Starbucks, surrounded by piles of books and all of his notes. Occasionally, he'll push aside everything to find that Siska's fallen asleep on the other side of the table, folded on top of his history books, or that Mike is drafting suicide notes to send to his economics professor.
"At least," William says, when they're all hiding in Mike's (and mine, Kevin mentally repeats) apartment the night before exams start, waving a Red Bull lazily in the air, "if we survive this, there will be holiday revelries to follow. Eggnog. Merriment."
"I have bad feelings about your eggnog," Kevin says, and William favors him with a sweet smile.
"I won't take advantage of you, little elf," he says, leaning over Siska and Mike on the sofa to clasp Kevin's knee, "but only because I know that Mike would shank me if I tried."
"Damn right." Mike says.
Kevin nudges him with his elbow, and then starts to cast longing glances at his books, sitting in a pile across the room. He's been banned by everyone from studying anymore, even though he's pretty certain that he's actually forgotten everything he's ever learned, and he's going to have some kind of episode anytime now if he doesn't start looking over his notes again.
Mike turns his head to him, whispers: "Leave it alone," into his ear.
"I don't think I remember how to spell my name." Kevin whimpers.
"You'll be fine."
"Does Kevin have one v or two?"
"Fine," Mike repeats, firmly, and Kevin sighs and leans farther back into the sofa and tries to figure out the right angle to pass out from exhaustion on Mike's shoulder.
***
Kevin gets through all of his exams, and he doesn't cry even once, and they go out to celebrate on the last night of the semester and get spectacularly drunk. Kevin ends up sitting up close to William for half the night, listening to him talk about how much he loves his girlfriend, about his girlfriend's pretty, pretty hair, about how his girlfriend could probably take him down if it should ever come to fisticuffs, and Kevin's such a good listener. He excels at listening.
But then William is saying, "I digress, I digress, tell me about your soul, Kevin Jonas," and, "Sometimes you get sad eyes, like a lost puppy dog, did you know that?"
Kevin didn't know that.
He maybe shows William the pictures of his brothers that he has on his cellphone, but later he thinks it's just because all the mixed alcohol made him sort of maudlin. It's not like he's dwelling on the whole Christmas away from home thing. He's already spent one Christmas away, but he didn't actually celebrate it, just stayed in the dorms over vacation and didn't turn on the television or the radio or open his curtains for the snow.
Sometime after three in the morning, William gives him a tight hug and deposits him in Mike's arms, and they take a slow, unsteady walk back to the apartment. It takes a few minutes for either of them to manage the locks on the door, but eventually they make it to their bed, jackets and shoes left on the floor of the living room. They make out lazily, fully clothed, and Kevin makes a half-hearted attempt at unbuttoning Mike's shirt before giving up and collapsing on top of him.
"Ow," Mike says, but he doesn't seem to mean it.
***
It's four days before Christmas Eve when Kevin turns off the TV once he can't anything that doesn't involve a holiday to watch and leaves the room when the rest of TAI shows up to carol at their door and demand figgy pudding.
It's three days before Christmas Eve when Mike takes him by the arm and says, "I need you to go to the supermarket and get me sugar and milk and whatever will keep you out of this apartment for the next. . .I don't know, couple of hours," and Kevin stares at him for a long, long moment. Mike looks either frantic or mad, and Kevin's really not in the mood for dealing with anything right now, so he grabs his coat and leaves without saying anything. If Mike doesn't want to be around him right now, he can't really blame him.
Kevin doesn't really want to be around himself right now.
***
When he gets back to the apartment after wandering the streets and spending three hours subtly rearranging things in the grocery store, Mike is trapped in a knot of Christmas lights, and there's a tree taking up most of the living room. Most of the flat surfaces are covered in silver tinsel. Kevin stops with his hand curled around the door, eyes wide when Mike finally frees himself and looks up at him, smiles, slow and cautious.
"How did you do this?" Kevin asks, softly, a little shaky because this looks like his tree, the same tree that his family puts up together every year.
"The photo albums?" Mike says. "I mean. . .we usually just drink too much and pass out on the quad for Christmas, but you're used to glitter and, like, the power of Jesus, and Bill keeps giving you these looks and telling me that you're a sad little elf, so. . ."
Kevin's hugging him before he can get another word out, breath catching in his chest for a few moments when Mike winds arms around his back, pulls him as close as he can. Kevin looks over his shoulder to see the lights blinking on the tree, and he shuts his eyes, buries his face in Mike's neck.
"There's no macaroni art." he says. "I'm a little bit disappointed."
Mike runs fingers through the length of Kevin's hair a few times, messing up the curls.
"It's really the thought that counts," he says.
***
On Christmas Eve, Kevin gets Mike to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas with him, because it doesn't seem so bad anymore. Mike's sprawled across the length of the sofa, his legs over Kevin's lap, and Kevin's fingers slide over his ankle, aimlessly. He's reciting the lines to himself when there's a knock on the door, and Mike stretches, prods at his thigh with one foot.
"Pizza," he says, and Kevin rolls his eyes and pushes him off to go for the door. When he opens it and sees his brothers standing outside, arms full of wrapped gifts, he freezes for a few seconds. Joe's wearing a Santa hat and grinning crookedly, and something in the moment breaks, and Kevin makes an embarrassing excited noise before he's stumbling forward to throw his arms around their necks and knock all the boxes to the floor. He hugs them until Nick starts making noises about "my ribs, man, seriously," and he lets go, turning around to see Mike watching them, hands shoved sheepishly into the pockets of his jeans.
"You did this." Kevin says, softly. "The tree and now this. I don't know what to. . ."
"Siska drove them from the airport. . ." Mike says, voice caught somewhere around the edge of anxious, "and I wanted to do this, you don't need to get me anything, or whatever. . ." and Kevin steps up to him and touches his arm, his jaw, and rocks up on his toes to kiss him once. He's a little nervous when he pulls away and glances back, because he's still not sure where his brothers stand on this whole boy touching thing, but Joe just breezes past them, saying, "I wanted to be mailed here in, like, a giant box, but Nick said I would suffocate. . ."
Nick's on the floor, trying to gather up the gifts, when he says, "Yeah, I'm no fun," and glances up at Mike with a small smile when he lets go of Kevin to help him.
***
They're still talking when midnight passes by, and Mike gets to his feet and leans down to kiss Kevin on the forehead.
"I've got to go. . .you know, get rested for Santa and shit." he says, scrubbing a hand over Kevin's hair before backing away, waving a little. "I'll see you guys in the morning." Kevin watches him go until the door of the bedroom is shut behind him.
"Wow," Nick says, softly, "he really loves you."
And Kevin blushes, because he doesn't know what to say to that, and he's stumbling over an answer when Joe says, around a laugh, "No, seriously, dude, he called us up and said we had to come and make you smile again."
"Oh," Kevin says, and, really quietly: ". . .I love him, too. A lot."
"It's sort of obvious." Nick says.
"I hope so." Kevin smiles at his knees for a second before he looks back at them, curiously. "I never asked, how did you get Mom to let you come? You're going to miss Christmas dinner." There's a long silence after he asks, and Kevin continues, slowly, ". . .they didn't want you to come."
"Fuck them." Joe says, suddenly, kicking gently at Kevin's ankle. "We wanted to be here with you."
"Half of those gifts are from Mom, though," Nick adds, and Kevin's caught on the image of Bibles with specifically highlighted passages, headshots of all her friend's pretty daughters, when Nick slides arms around him in a super rare Nick Hug. Joe jumps on top of them, and Kevin has an elbow in his stomach and someone's hand tugging at his hair. And he feels better, like his heart is growing a couple of sizes, because he knows that he'll have them forever, no matter what, and he thinks he might have the best boyfriend in the entire world.
***
At three in the morning, Joe wakes up and crows, "It's Christmas!" and Nick hits him over the head with a throw pillow until he curls back against the arm of the sofa and goes to sleep again. Kevin gets up and yawns widely while Nick takes advantage of the free space to stretch out further.
"I'll make sure he doesn't wake you up until the sun's up," Nick murmurs, "but I can't promise more."
"Thanks." Kevin takes careful, quiet steps into the bedroom. Mike is asleep on his side of the bed, an arm splayed out across the other side, and Kevin steps out of his jeans and crawls in next to him.
"Mmm." Mike says, waking up enough to move his arm around Kevin, so they're lying side by side. His voice is rough, still mostly asleep. "Hi. Is it Christmas?"
"Yeah." Kevin whispers. "Go back to sleep."
***
They wake up to Joe yelling, "Christmas! Are you decent?" outside of their door. In the living room, he has all of the gifts in a pile on the coffee table, and he makes Kevin open up the present from Nick and him first. When the first thing he sees inside the bag is a handful of condoms, he flushes and passes the bag to Mike while Joe cracks up.
"Flavored condoms and. . ." Mike digs under them then dissolves into something like giggles, tossing the back in Kevin's direction again.
"A DVD of Brokeback Mountain," Kevin says, shaking his head, "and a how-to guide on gay sex. I don't know what to say."
"Thank you?" Joe suggests. "Or, maybe, 'thank you, my favorite brothers, who I love and cherish'?"
"I like Frankie more than you." Kevin says, but he crawls forward to hug them both again while Mike flips through the book, humming interestedly.
Nick pushes the other presents forward, and Kevin feels his heart speed up a little, stomach dipping. He checks the tags with his mother’s handwriting to see that & Mike has been added underneath her for Kevin in Nick’s careful cursive. Mike moves closer to him as he tears the wrapping paper carefully. Inside the half a dozen boxes are pots and pans and silverware, dish towels with the Martha Stewart tags still attached, old cookbooks with her additions in the margins. Inside one of the pots, there's a greeting card with a generic holiday message inside, but it has both of his parent's signatures underneath it.
"We told them that you were living with Mike now," Nick says, "that you were happy."
"So we think whatever Mom felt about this before kind of got overriden by the fear of you starving to death." Joe says, and Kevin murmurs, "Oh," and Mike says, "That's good news. Right?"
Kevin leans back into him.
"I think so." he says, and he can feel them all staring at them, so he stands up and goes to find the slippers he bought for Mike. Mike's face lights up, and Kevin makes him wear them for the rest of the morning.
***
Mike's band storms the apartment late on Christmas Day with alcohol and Doritos and a Menorrah (William had proclaimed, grandly, "Chrismukkah, my friends, Chrismukkah!" and, "Adam Brody has never steered me wrong before!" Kevin thinks Bill has already been drinking, but, really, William has almost always already been drinking). At some point during the night, Joe falls in platonic man love with the Butcher. He teaches Joe how to make dirty origami Christmas ornaments, and Joe, after three beers and two shots of whiskey, sits between Siska and him and patiently folds newspaper dick after newspaper dick.
In the corner, William has lured Nick into sitting in a single armchair with him, and he's petting his hair and talking in a low voice while Nick looks caught between bemusement and horror.
"I don't think he'll molest him," Mike says, "but just to be safe, he's not twelve, right?"
"He's legal. I mean, not very." Kevin squeezes the hand laced in his and pulls slightly, getting Mike to press in closer, slide a socked foot over his. They moved to the opposite side of the room after they almost lit Siska's hair on fire trying to make S'mores over the Menorrah and because it was just dark enough outside the window that the street lamps were on, and Kevin thought it looked like the snow falling was made of tiny lights.
Kevin watches Mike's face in the glow, angled towards the window, until Mike meets his eyes and nudges him with his shoulder.
"Want to go to bed?" he asks, and Kevin laughs, loud and happy, a few large steps past tipsy.
"Well, it is 11:00."
"Hey, Mike! Mike!" Siska yells. "Do you still know all the words to Feliz Navidad?"
The Butcher has pulled out a harmonica, and Joe is keeping a beat on his knees. And even though Kevin is pretty thrilled at the idea of Mike ever knowing all the words to Feliz Navidad, and even though he thinks he should maybe make sure William doesn't kidnap Nick and lock him in his closet or something, he doesn't fight it when Mike says, fervently, "Bed," and pulls him away.
They lock the door to the bedroom behind them and shuck out of their clothes in the dark, sliding under the cold sheets. Mike's skin is still warm when Kevin scoots closer and presses a soft kiss underneath his jaw.
"Did I ever say thank you?" he asks.
"You may have." Mike murmurs.
"Mmm," Kevin says, "thank you. Again."
Mike's mouth opens to his when he kisses him, and they stay like that for awhile, moving slowly while the carols start up full force outside. Kevin thinks he can hear Nick harmonizing with William, somewhere in the background, and he laughs into a kiss, moving his face away to press his cheek to Mike's.
"I think," he says, slowly, "that Joe won't want to go home, now that he's been introduced to sin and debauchery and college. My mother will hate you."
"I have a feeling," Mike replies, "that your mother already kind of hates me." He's sliding fingers over Kevin's spine, making small patterns that Kevin can't help but push back against, a small noise breaking from his throat. He ducks his head to bite softly at Mike's collarbone, to whisper, "Love you," and he thinks: you're worth everything, even the hangover I'm going to have tomorrow morning. And it feels nice, this warmth spreading inside of his chest. It feels like he's found the right place.
***
Kevin wakes up with Mike's arm slung over his waist, and he yawns close by his ear, poking him gingerly in the side. He doesn't want to open his eyes yet, because he can already see the sunlight, and there's a dull headache sneaking up on him.
Mike pulls him closer and makes a low, dead noise.
"Wake up," Kevin whispers, "wake up, wake up."
"Don't think so." Mike swipes aimlessly at Kevin's face without moving his head from the pillow.
"You need to see if my brothers are still alive." Kevin says.
Mike groans and turns to wrap both his arms around Kevin and tug him forward, pulling him out of the bed again. Kevin yawns again and steadies himself with fingers digging into Mike's arms, feeling the world dislocate and spin in place for a few seconds. With mutual effort, they get on enough clothing to be decent and stumble out of the bedroom with their fingers tangled together.
Nobody's awake yet; Joe is spooned up against the sofa, behind the Butcher, and Siska is sprawled out on his stomach on the floor below them. Kevin bites back a laugh when he sees Nick lying half in Bill's lap, still in the armchair, snoring softly into his neck. Mike pulls him away, and they shuffle quietly into the kitchen, barefoot on the cold floor.
Kevin watches while Mike makes coffee, leaning into the counter. Outside the window over the sink, the snow is so white that it makes his head hurt even more, and Joe is singing in his sleep, softly, and Mike slides cold fingers under his shirt before palming a mug into his hands. And Kevin thinks about family, and he thinks about silly things like the way Mike is looking at him now, all squinting dark eyes and honest smile, and how the card that his parents both signed is still propped up on the coffee table.
"Good Christmas?" Mike asks, a little hesitantly, and Kevin smiles into the rim of his coffee mug.
"Arguably the best."
***
After Kevin sees that his brother get on the flight back, he leaves Mike in the lobby of the airport and goes to stand in the hallway outside the bathrooms. He dials his mom's number on his cellphone with unsteady fingers and listens to it ring three time before she picks up, says, "Hello?"
Kevin breathes out softly, and she says, ". . .Kevin? Honey?"
"Yeah." he says. "Yeah, Mom, hi."
And, this time, he doesn't forget how to speak.