by Amy Lane
Afterward he sat in the front room and drank white hot chocolate with Kahlúa, watching as Cory and the other students—and Jacky and Katy as well—exclaimed over the tree and decorated it with blown-glass ornaments and tiny snowflakes hand cut from translucent white paper and strung on red thread.
Cory came into the kitchen to lean into Green and thank him. “It’s wonderful, beloved. I’ve never decorated one this big!”
Green smiled indulgently at her and rubbed noses. “You humans keep saying size doesn’t matter!”
Cory laughed softly. “You’re right—especially in Christmas trees, where it’s all symmetry.”
Bracken came up then and looped his arms over her shoulders as she leaned into Green. “Last year’s was bigger,” he said critically, and Green nodded.
“That one was too big for the house this year. This way we get to be acquainted with this one for a few years. He’ll be happy when we put him back, you think?”
Teague blinked, trying to put their conversation together. “Why didn’t you decorate last year’s?” he asked Cory, and she shrugged.
“It was sort of a surprise for me—he had it all decorated when we got home from the city. Green wanted to do Christmas up really huge.” Her smile was all for her beloved. “Not that size matters or anything.”
Teague turned his attention to his own lovers, who were engaged in a snowflake fight. Jack was winning, and Katy was wearing a glittering rain of translucent rainbow snowflakes in her black hair, on her cheeks, and in her eyelashes. Jack bent to take one of them out of her eyelashes, and as she stood there waiting for him to finish, he snuck in a kiss that she responded to with a smile—and an open mouth. They would have a “last year’s tree” in their history. They would remember this snowflake fight and try to recreate it. They were already building good memories, memories of each other, to become a family—a true family—like Cory and Green and Bracken and Nicky.
Jack and Katy surfaced from their kiss and caught him staring at them with shining eyes. They exchanged wicked glances, and Teague had the foresight to put down his cocoa before being chased around the myriad halls of the hill, being showered with translucent snowflakes and avoiding the mistletoe dripping from every doorway.
Eventually he allowed himself to be caught, to be kissed, and to be seduced and lured into their bedroom, but in the meantime he whooped laughter like a child, and another little piece of his heart was patched together and sealed with the rest of it. The damned thing was getting more and more sound, more and more capable of sustaining his life and that of his lovers, by the day.
That didn’t mean that Teague wasn’t still a taciturn, defensive, grumpy fucker on occasion—it just meant the payoff was bigger when he let down his guard.
One night after he’d been out patrolling with the vampires, engaging in mock fights and making sure the neighbors from the surrounding hills didn’t venture too close to Green’s territory, he crawled into bed with Jacky, hoping for once to fall asleep. Except….
“Where’s Katy?” he asked irritably.
“In her room, planning Christmas.”
“This late?” Teague blinked, threatening to sit up, but Jack wrapped a long arm around his chest and pushed.
“She’s wrapping presents, Teague. Let her be. She’s really psyched about this whole thing, okay? Now tell me about the job.”
“Job was boring. The vampires ate, Nicky cracked bad jokes, and nobody grabbed my ass. Are we happy now? I’m ready for bed!” There was more to it than that. Fighting with the vampires was no joke, and Teague would have some bruises the next morning, werewolf healing or not. But just because Jacky had accepted who Teague was didn’t mean he was okay with Teague being hurt.
“I was just wondering if we were going to go shopping for Christmas.”
Teague grimaced in the darkness. “I need to see if we can leave the place unescorted, Jacky. Last night was the full moon. We’d better wait another day before we go alone, you think?”
“That’s cutting it close, Teague!” Jack sounded really anxious, and Teague grinned. It was cute. Just was.
“Well, then, maybe we can get someone to take us. Cory, Brack, and Nicky are going tomorrow. Cory asked if we wanted to go.” Teague had said he’d check with Jacky—and he’d planned to. In the morning!
“Fun. Wonderful.” Jack turned over in bed and sulked, and Teague sighed. Just a little bit of goddamned sleep, was it too much to ask?
He grunted and sighed and rolled over, missing Jack’s body but not wanting to give in to the sulk. “You know, there’s always the internet,” he said dryly.
“Yeah, great. I was looking today, and I saw a great pair of men’s underwear for you. They were pink and had ‘Batter Up’ on the crotch!”
“Only if your pair has a catcher’s mitt on the ass!”
“Teague, this is serious!”
Teague growled. “You know, Princess, unless Santa’s gonna slide down the fucking chimney early this year, I’m pretty sure this could have waited until morning!”
“Unless your dick is Santa, I’m not counting on it,” Jack snapped back. Jack propped himself on one elbow, and Teague tucked his hands under his armpits and glared up at him. No touchy-feely sweetness tonight. All Teague wanted was bed.
“I was just wondering what you wanted for Christmas,” Jack was saying sulkily.
“I liked the model car display,” Teague replied, at a loss. “You know… something like that?”
“We weren’t sleeping together last year, Teague!” Jack said, using his hands to talk, which was dangerous in the dark, even for a werewolf. Teague barely ducked a grand gesture, and he sat up in bed so Jack could sort of see him with his werewolf vision.
“Do you have any idea how tired I am?”
“Not really, asshole, since you just patently lied to me about the job!” Apparently Teague hadn’t been as sly about hiding the bruises as he’d thought. “I was just wondering what we’re going to do for Christmas, since we’re fucking each other instead of, well, whatever we were doing last year.”
“We’re not ‘fucking each other,’” Teague grunted, not liking the phrase in this context in the least.
Jack’s hand found his cheek in the dark, and although their words had been the sharp, tangy sort of banter they had perfected during the whole of their relationship, the hand on his cheek was everything they’d been in the past month.
“Not right now,” Jack said with some humor.
Teague sighed and kissed his palm, adding a graze of teeth. “I’m really honestly tired, Jacky. If I promise to have people take us out tomorrow, can we go to sleep now?”
Jack took his hand back and used it to turn Teague around and spoon up behind him. “Will you tell me about the job?” he asked softly.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow if you promise not to get me anything… you know….”
“Gay?” Jack supplied cheekily.
“I was gonna say ‘sappy,’ smartass. And you haven’t told me what you want for Christmas.”
“I thought Santa was gonna bring me a big ol’ dick up my—”
“Shut up.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jack kissed his shoulder in the dark, and Teague relaxed against him, but he still didn’t know what he was going to get Jack or Katy for Christmas. Now that the students were out of school and the excitement of Christmas—or Yule, since the fey were mostly pagans—was starting to permeate the hill like the sound of a distant waterfall, it seemed incumbent on him to make some sort of big romantic gesture or something.
He was pretty sure he was going to fall short.
“YOU WANT my help?” Cory looked at him oddly, and Bracken eyed the two of them with amusement.
“Well, we’re all here together, aren’t we?” Teague grunted. The shopping trip had been okayed—which, considering the fact that the full moon was so damned recent, was a minor miracle—but Teague took it at face value. Maybe Green had faith, right?
Not
too much faith—Green was with Jack and Katy on the other side of the wood-and-glass three-story structure that was built into a hill in one of Auburn’s oldest downtown streets. It was where Grace’s yarn store and Katy’s bakery sat, and the majority of the stores were little handcraft boutiques. It was close to Green’s hill, and many of the businesses were Green’s, with Green’s people inside. If somebody turned furry, there were plenty of folks who would help cover.
“I just think you’d be better off asking a girl,” Cory was saying doubtfully. Then she ducked as Bracken tried flicking the back of her head.
“I’m asking a friend!” Teague said with some desperation. “I’ve managed three gifts my entire life—real bookshelves for Jacky last Christmas, and gift certificates to Amazon for his birthdays. I’m sort of thinking they need me to do better than that!”
“That’s not bad!” Cory protested, but Bracken put both hands squarely on her shoulders, gave her a shove toward Teague, and then took off. She glared at his retreating back and then looked sourly at Teague. “He thinks we’ll talk better without him,” she explained unnecessarily.
“He could be right,” Teague told her. “He’s scary as hell.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You think? I don’t see it.”
Teague just rolled his eyes. The guy could rip out someone’s viscera from a hundred yards away—Teague would hate to know what she found scary. “Whatever. Christmas presents. What do you do for them?”
Cory sighed. “I knit. It’s weird. I don’t know if other husbands do this, but mine get all gooey when I knit something for them—which is funny, because knitting makes me happy, so it’s really like being a selfish bitch and getting praised for it.” She shrugged. “What’s to do?”
“So last Christmas…?” Teague asked with what he felt to be exaggerated patience.
“Last Christmas I made Green and Bracken scarves while I was in recovery,” she said thoughtfully. “I barely had time to make Nicky a hat. Green and I got Bracken a chess set, because that was Adrian’s gift to Bracken every year, and we got Nicky a motorcycle and made Brack pick out the helmet.”
“Recovery?”
“Bad shit stories, remember, Teague? I was sick for a long time.” Her voice was sober, as it hadn’t been when she’d talked about Bracken’s chess set.
“What did Green get you?”
And now the sadness was palpable. “The granite bench with Adrian’s likeness, the one in the garden.”
Teague grimaced. “How do you top that?” he asked, almost to himself, and Cory grinned. She looked just like what she was—a plain college student. And queen of the northern California fey and undead.
“You don’t, sweetie. You’re right. The first year’s the hardest. This year I think I’m getting clothes in three sizes—at least that’s what he’s been threatening to get me for the last month.”
Teague blinked and looked at her. Her jeans were falling off her hips, and her chin and cheeks looked sharper than they had when he’d arrived over a month ago, when he’d been sitting disconsolate in the living room waiting to hear if Jack would live or die.
“Why three sizes?”
She sighed, then took his arm and started pulling him with her. The building was designed with lots of glass looking out into the dark, and even though it was fairly crowded, there was a curious sense of isolation as they walked the white-tiled halls.
“One to fit me now, one to fit me when I gain a little weight, and one to fit me when I’m where he thinks I should be.”
“If you don’t have scales on the hill, where is that exactly?” Teague asked. He was starting to get on the concern bandwagon—she was easy to care about, the little queen of the hill.
She sighed and shrugged. “I think he’ll be happy when I start my period. I haven’t had one in a year and a half. It’s sort of freaking everybody out.” She gave him another grin. “And isn’t that information you wish you didn’t have.”
Teague looked at her carefully, thought of calming Jack down about the bruises from his workouts, thought of Katy’s constant pampering and the way she always brought him something to eat every night if he didn’t eat in the common room, and came to a realization.
“People will always worry about us, won’t they?” The thought was boggling. It was as though he’d been working this entire time with no idea what he was working toward.
Cory grinned at him. “Yeah. It’ll drive you crazy sometimes, but you’ll never want to change it.” She tugged on his arm, and they walked into a glassblower’s shop. The shelves were stocked with some of the most frighteningly lovely, exquisite things Teague had ever seen.
“This place scares the hell out of me!” he whispered. He was afraid if he spoke normally, his voice would splinter the store’s wares to powder.
“Yeah,” she said, looking at him carefully. “Scares me too. Shit this fragile—doesn’t feel like people like us should be anywhere near it, you think?”
Teague blinked. She was speaking in metaphors, and he followed her. “But it’s so pretty,” he said after a moment. “Maybe the risk is worth seeing what’s in here?”
“Yeah.” And with that, she turned to the slightly built young man behind the counter and, to Teague’s surprise, bowed. “Master Splinter—good to see you tonight.”
Teague watched the guy startle up from the book of color theory he was reading and bow low at the waist. Then he realized that in spite of the longish hair cut trendily about his shoulders and the understated height, the guy had pointy ears and a faintly fuchsia cast to his skin. He was one of Green’s.
“My lady! How can I help you tonight?”
Cory smiled, looking self-conscious, and dragged Teague up to the front counter. “Actually, we’re here for Teague. He wants something beautiful to give his mates for Christmas. Do you have time to do something custom?”
She needn’t have worried. From the way the guy was fawning over her, he probably would have gone without sleep for a week just to be who she needed. It took them a while, but Cory helped. She had a surprisingly poetic soul, and when she was done outlining what she had in mind, Teague looked at her with a little bit of awe.
“What?” she asked him irritably as they left the store, leaving Splinter in their wake making illustrations and graphics for all he was worth.
“You’re just… every now and then I see why we’d follow you to hell and back,” he said at last, feeling stupid.
“Shut the fuck up.” She punctuated this with a slug on his arm. She put her shoulder behind it, and it might have bruised a mortal—barely—but it only served to emphasize how mortal and fragile she was.
He’d die to defend her. He’d die to defend Green too, but Green wouldn’t survive without Cory. Teague would throw himself in front of anything life or death dealt out.
As he caught up to Jacky and Katy, he bumped Jack’s shoulder with his own and took Katy’s hand in his, rubbing her wrist softly with his thumb. She smiled up at him, and Jack slung an arm over his shoulder, and he realized he really could love both his mates and his leaders. He never would have thought his heart was big enough. Of all things, this surprised him the most.
CHRISTMAS REALLY was everything the hill had cracked it up to be. Nobody was allowed to open presents in their rooms. It was the one rule. It meant people were constantly wandering into the living room under the tree to open presents or watch their particular friends open gifts, but that was part of the excitement. Someone was always receiving something. Someone was always giving something. From around five in the morning until dinnertime, someone was always exclaiming with “Thank you” and “You’re welcome.” And after the Christmas banquet, it was the vampires’ turn. It was the one time of the year that everybody came into the front room and greeted the world. In a place the size of Green’s hill, it was sometimes the only time of the year people actually saw each other—and they were always happy for the honor.
But it wasn’t easy on the lord and lady of the house
.
It took a while for Teague to notice that what was joyful for everybody else was a joyful responsibility for Cory and Green. He’d opened his own presents—a quilt and bedding for him and Jack from Katy, who had commissioned one of the elves who worked in Grace’s store to do one custom with three wolves appliquéd in the center. The whole hill had seen them as wolves—one of the animals was golden, one was dark-haired, and one had bright gold hair over black fur underneath. The colors were cleverly done with different fabrics, and the effect was breathtaking. Teague and Jack had been impressed, both with the final product and with the symbolism.
Jack had gotten Katy a little privacy screen for their room—although she was still keeping her own exclusively female sanctuary down the hall—and had gotten Teague ceramic figurines of wolves to paint. Jack had been embarrassed about his gift.
“I know it’s dumb,” he said, red-faced. “But you love models, and this was close to a model, and I wanted it to be, you know, important. I’ll take it back. You hate it. I’m so bad at this—you’d think I could manage giving a damned gift, but….”
Teague had laughed. It was exactly how he’d felt when they’d started shopping. “It’s not pink underwear, Jacky. I think you did fine.”
Jack flipped his hair back and gave Teague a private and positively evil smile. “That’s in the next box.”
Teague blushed. “As long as you’re wearing the pair that says ‘catcher,’ that’s fine too.”
And that’s when Jack and Katy finally made it through the sixty-zillion layers of tissue and gold wrapping paper that had kept Teague’s gift to them safe from gravity and Teague’s own shaking hands. Underwear and the lack thereof were forgotten as the two of them knelt breathlessly over the colored glass sculpture that Teague—with a lot of help from Cory—had designed.
They were speechless.
