Tutus and Tinsel

by Rhys Ford

  Panting, Lang rubbed himself against Deacon, his cock limp and nearly too sensitive to bear, but the sour-stinging sensation laced around the contented languidness of his muscles. Sleep tugged at the base of Lang’s mind and crept in with a relaxed numbness that stole across his legs and chest. He barely felt Deacon withdraw and only hissed slightly at the cold touch of a baby wipe across his still-tender cock and then over his belly.

  “Could have left that,” he mumbled as he rolled over to his side so Deacon could spoon up against his back. The lavender scent of the wipes was as good as crooking his finger to have sleep take him under, but Lang fought the fatigue that tugged at his eyelids. He wanted to linger in the hushed silence of the deepening night, cradled against the man who’d just taken him over the edge and stolen his heart. “Don’t mind.”

  “You’d wake up stuck to yourself and complain because you’d have to rip the sheets off your legs,” Deacon reminded him as he spread his hands across Lang’s belly. Kissing Lang’s ear, Deacon murmured, “Besides, I like taking care of you afterward. It’s nice.”

  “You’re nice,” Lang slurred, and he wished his tongue would behave. “Even if you think you’re not, you are. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Deacon Reid. And I love you. But I swear to God, if those fingers of yours wake up my dick, I’m going to kill you.”

  Seven

  “SHE STILL throwing up?” Lang called out from behind the kitchen peninsula when he heard Deacon coming down the back staircase. He spotted the audibly sloshing bucket Deacon held by the rim, and he grimaced. “Okay. Keep that over there. I can’t—”

  Deacon took no pleasure from the fact that Lang couldn’t even look at vomit without losing his stomach. Okay, some pleasure, Deacon thought as he emptied the contents of Zig’s bucket into the laundry room sink. He assumed Lang made it to the downstairs bathroom in time if he actually had to throw up. There’d been times when he almost hadn’t, most notably the moment Lang’s belly churned up his burrito lunch when he stepped on one of the cats’ hairballs.

  It was childish of him, but there was something perverse left over from when Deacon was an older brother, until the guilt overwhelmed him and he spent the next half hour making sure Lang was okay.

  “Are you okay?” Deacon called out. He left the bucket rinsed out and upside down in the laundry room sink and walked back into the kitchen.

  “Sometimes I think you do that on purpose,” Lang accused as he wiped his face with what looked like a wet dishtowel. He was a little pale but not as green around the edges as he was before. “You know I cannot handle puke.”

  “Yeah, sometimes I do. I’m not proud of it. I promise I’m not going to do it again.” He jerked his thumb toward the laundry room. “That was just water and Pine-Sol. The bucket was getting kind of smelly, so I swapped it out for a new one. I knew that, even if there wasn’t anything in it, the odor on the plastic would get you sick.”

  “Is she doing better, though?” Lang leaned on the kitchen peninsula.

  “She’s pissed off about not being able to do her presentation.” Deacon grimaced. “She’s also kind of mad that she’s the only one sick, but I think it’s more disappointment because she worked hard on it.”

  “I talked to the teacher, and she said Zig can turn in her notes and her final presentation for the grade.” Lang shook out the towel and left it to hang over the edge of the sink. “But I know her. She wanted to do the whole thing—stand up in front of the class and present her findings.”

  “I don’t know where she gets it from, because that’s literally my nightmare. I can think of at least five things that have to do with immense bodily harm I would rather have done to me than stand up in front of a class and give a speech.” Deacon pressed the back of his hand against Lang’s neck to see if he was too warm. Lang pushed him away with a gentle shove. “There’s not much she can do. That class is tomorrow, and the doctor said to keep her home for at least two days. After that, vacation starts.”

  “So she’s feeling well enough to be grumpy about being sick?” Lang’s expression grew thoughtful.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that maybe we have a way for her to do her presentation,” Lang replied. “It’s just a matter of if she feels up to it and if she’s okay if we’re her audience.”

  “IS THE lighting okay?” Zig looked up from her paper organizing and blinked at the sudden flare from a lamp Deacon had just turned on. “It can’t be too bright or you won’t see the presentation behind me.”

  From what Deacon could see, the flat-screen television behind Zig was operating just fine, and the title slide of her presentation was clear as day despite the flood of light he’d aimed at her flushed face. He hadn’t been fully on board with Lang’s idea of recording Zig doing her presentation, but he couldn’t tell if her cheeks were rosy from her illness or the excitement of completing her assignment.

  He’d been serious about not knowing where Zig got her love of school from. Back when he was her age, the last place he wanted to be was stuck in a classroom, going over the same piece of information a million times. Admittedly her education was vastly different from the one he got from an underfunded California public school system. Where he grew up, teachers were paid to maintain order and try to do as much educating as was possible amid the chaos of undernourished and underprivileged kids. Moving to Half Moon Bay meant not only a better life for Zig but also a brighter future. She was going to go places he couldn’t even imagine reaching at eleven, much less twenty-five. He didn’t care what she did with her life, as long as she was happy, but he would give her every opportunity to reach whatever dream she might have.

  “You look fine,” Lang reassured her as he fussed with something on the camera. They’d lowered the tripod as much as they could and still keep the television and Zig within the screen. A high bar stool brought her level with the TV so she wouldn’t have to stand while she spoke, and Lang had adjusted it three or four times already, pulling her close enough to the camera while keeping the presentation in focus. “Deacon, you’re good with the remote control? Zig, remember you’re going to have to nod when you want your dad to advance the slide. Okay?”

  “Got it.” Zig wiggled a bit on the chair. “Can we start already? Fafhrd wants to go back to bed.”

  Safely curled up in a wing chair a few feet away, Fafhrd yawned, blinked slowly at Deacon, turned his head, and tucked it back under his paw. He looked quite comfortable, but Zig often used the feline as a sock puppet, projecting a wide range of emotions and desires onto a cat that had little interest in anything other than sleeping and food.

  Her therapist said it was normal, and Deacon reluctantly accepted it, glad his daughter was at least communicating in some way, although it was a struggle at times, a minefield of unknown traumas and sometimes unexpected delights. Even sick, Zig was a joy to behold, enthusiastic, vibrant, and such a far cry from the child he’d picked up years before.

  “I’m ready with the remote.” Deacon held up the long gray rectangle. “Anytime you’re ready, sunshine.”

  He stayed behind Lang, mostly so he could watch Zig through the screen of the camera. She’d dressed carefully from the hips up, wearing a lacy top she’d fallen in love with at a thrift store a month earlier, but below lay a riot of tulle layers, a rainbow of colors mish-mashed around her waist and down her legs. A pair of black Converse completed her outfit, and speckles of paint from either her crafting or the spray booth marbled their sides.

  Perched behind the orange cat on the wing chair was a small ratty blue stuffed animal they got from Disneyland. It was a totem of sorts, an assurance that no matter how weird she decided to be—or couldn’t help being—she would always have a family and be loved.

  “Okay, we’re rolling.” Lang nodded at her. “We can edit out what we need to, so if you make a mistake or need to stop, just let me know and we’ll go back a few seconds.”

  “All right. I’m going to start.”
Zig wiggled again and straightened her shoulders. “Okay, take one.”

  She looked straight into the camera, an odd mixture of Reid features and a beauty Deacon never saw in his family’s bloodline. Her eyes were so much like his no one ever doubted she was his daughter. But her confidence was her own—a fearless attitude she wore to fend off any of her insecurities. She was still afraid of many things, mostly of someone from CPS knocking on the door one day to tell them there was a mistake and she really didn’t belong to her fathers. It was irrational, because she’d been at court with them when her adoption papers were filed and the judge told her she was theirs, but if there was one thing Deacon understood, it was irrational fear.

  There were still times when he wondered what Lang saw in him, even though he knew in his gut that neither of them could live without the other.

  “Thank you for letting me do my presentation. I appreciate the opportunity, and I wanted to share what I’ve learned about Christmas, traditions, and family.” Zig nodded at Deacon to forward the presentation. He clicked the remote to advance the slide and found himself staring at a photograph that Angel had taken of them at the beach a few months before. None of them were looking into the camera. Instead, they were concentrating on building a sand castle that the ocean would eventually claim. It had been a massive undertaking, lined with high walls and turrets, its walkways and sides decorated by bits and pieces of shell and the glass they’d found. Triangles cut out of paper towels and mounted on barbecue skewers served as flags, with a skull and crossbones scribbled on each piece with a blue ballpoint pen that Zig borrowed from a woman who was sunning herself a few feet away.

  The light fractured around them as the sun turned golden and threw out bokeh from its angle on the horizon. He liked that photo, liked it enough to have it blown up and hung over the fireplace in the great room. He would carry the memory of that day in his heart like a warm spot of sunlight. It was precious because that was the moment Zig whispered to both of them that she was happy they were her fathers.

  “This is my family now. They didn’t always used to be my family. Well, the man on the left was my uncle, and now he’s my father. He didn’t know about me, but I knew about him because my mom would talk about him sometimes. She was his younger sister, but they didn’t grow up together a lot. Deacon—my uncle-dad—moved away before my mom got older, but she always knew he was there.” Zig blinked, her eyes shiny and moist. “So I kind of knew he was there.

  “My mom was sick—not the kind of sick you can cure. She wouldn’t stop taking drugs, and that’s something that nobody can change for you. You’ve got to cure yourself. And my mom really didn’t want to get better, so that made it kind of hard.” She cleared her throat and nodded at Deacon. The next slide was a photo of Deanna holding Zig, who looked to be about two or three. It was one of the few photos Deacon had gotten from the social worker, a snapshot taken by someone else and saved on Deanna’s phone. “This was my mom. And one day she was killed, probably by the guy who was my father or maybe somebody he knew, but they killed her. So the social worker who was in charge of me called my uncle Deacon, and he came over from the East Coast to become my dad.

  “He wasn’t always going to be my dad, not at the beginning, because he was my uncle then, but he fell in love with Lang, and then we became a family,” Zig declared as she turned her page and nodded once more. It was another shot of the three of them, this one more formal and taken at West’s house during an afternoon barbecue. “So now I have two dads, but we didn’t have any traditions. Not like people who’ve always had a family, going back to grandparents and great-grandparents. My dad Lang had some because his grandmother used to have him and his twin brother over for Christmas, but me and Deacon didn’t. So, when we got this assignment, I was really upset because I didn’t have anything to share. Then our teacher said I could talk about finding our traditions, and that’s what this presentation is about.”

  Deacon held his breath when the next slide on the screen turned and there was a picture of his family alongside West, Angel, and Roman. It had obviously been taken on the day of the Great Sugar and Gingerbread House Wars, because they all wore royal icing battle scars on some parts of their faces and their bare arms.

  “This year we joined in a tradition started by my uncle Angel. They get together and build gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, and they decorate them with candies. Mine won for best use of cinnamon Red Hots, because I made a chimney stack and fireplace thing outside. Everyone won something. And this is a tradition we’re probably going to continue because it was a lot of fun, and it was nice having family to do it with,” Zig continued, nodding to change the slide. “These are some salt-dough ornaments that we made. I don’t know if we’re going to do this every year, but it was a good thing to do. The problem is, there’s only so many ornaments you can make for your trees. You’re going to run out of tree before you run out of ornament making. But this was something I did with my dads in our kitchen, and it gave me something to keep.”

  She went through every single thing they had tried, describing each event in a few sentences. Then a screen came up with a variety of shots that showed all of the Christmas trees they had scattered through the house.

  “This is the tradition that my dad got from his grandmother. Every year she would put trees up in different rooms of the house because she really loved Christmas. So each year he would have a small tree in his room when he came to visit. Of all the traditions that we kind of have, I have two favorites, and this is one of them. The unicorn tree there is my tree this year, and it makes me feel like I belong, because my dad had a tree in his room when he was younger, and now I have mine. Some of the ornaments on my tree are the ones he used, and I could put them up on my tree instead of on the big family tree in the great room.” Zig nodded toward Deacon.

  The next picture was of the three of them on a bike ride. Zig’s sidecar was hooked up to Deacon’s Harley, and Lang’s motorcycle was parked a few feet away. Tiny white Christmas lights were wrapped around the body of the sidecar, illuminated by a battery pack and sparkling in the fading sunlight. They were on a bluff above the beach, with the ocean behind them and the wind whipping their hair around their smiling faces. Zig had something on her face—chocolate from an ice cream cone if Deacon remembered right—and he had one hand on Zig’s shoulder, his arm looped around Lang’s waist, and his other hand on Lang’s hip.

  “This is also my favorite tradition. I couldn’t choose just one, because the trees are from my dad Lang, and the motorcycle ride we take every Christmas Day before dinner is from my dad Deacon.” Zig’s eyes filled with tears once more, and this time one trickled down her cheek. She let it fall and lifted her chin with a strength Deacon didn’t know she had in her. “I always ride in the sidecar, hooked up to one of their bikes, but that’s where I sit. That’s where I always sit. I like riding in the sidecar, because it’s what I rode when it was just me and Deacon. The first time we came to the house I live in now, I was in the sidecar. When we visited the mechanic shop dad bought and the first time I saw the bookstore my other dad owns, I was in the sidecar.

  “It’s a thing I’ve done only with my dads. I’ve never done this with anyone else. And I don’t want to do that with anybody else, because when I’m on the road with them like that, we’re always on an adventure, but I know that the sidecar is also always going to bring me home.” Zig cleared her throat and nodded to Deacon again. The slide returned them to their home and showed the picture of the three of them in front of last year’s tree. “If I had to pick any tradition to keep, it would be these two because, for me, they gave me something that I never had before—they gave me family and someplace I can call home. The holidays don’t have to cost a lot of money, but they do have to have one thing, and that’s the family you can eat jalapeno grilled-cheese sandwiches with and people to fight with over the end piece of spam. Thank you for letting me give my presentation, and I hope everyone has a good holiday no matter what th
ey celebrate.”

  It was a long time before Lang and Deacon stopped hugging their daughter, Zig.

  CHRISTMAS CAME with an explosion of food and gifts. Lang and Deacon were worn out from the rush at work and grateful for a few days of relaxation, and Zig spent most of her time down at the motorcycle bay, working on the bike she’d gotten for pennies, or at the bookstore earning a few dollars shelving books. At some point she’d learned to crochet little hearts that she stuffed with batting and catnip for the two felines in the house. Fafhrd eagerly batted one about as they opened presents, but Gray sniffed at his and then promptly sat on it as if to hatch it.

  A few hours after their annual bike ride down to the beach, their house was filled with people. West, Angel, and Rome arrived first, and Rome was practically bursting with excitement over the game he’d gotten that morning. He and Zig disappeared into the family room to set up the game system so they could play against each other. While a couple of prime ribs and a small turkey slowly roasted in the double ovens, Deacon stole Lang away, and they slipped off into the back gardens to stand beneath the canopy that held back the rain.

  “Merry Christmas, Mr. Reid-Harris,” Deacon murmured while kissing the length of Lang’s elegant throat. “Did I ever thank you for marrying me?”

  “A couple of times—mostly in bed, which I’m good with.” Lang laughed. “But I’m also open to more gratitude whenever you want to show it. And I’m happy to reciprocate, because you do make me crazy.”

  “This will never get old.” Deacon held Lang closer, simply breathing in the sweetness of the rain and the unique scent of the man he loved so much. “It’s hard to believe that she’ll be off to college in a few years. I don’t think I’m ready for that.”