The Boys' Own Christmas
The string of lights is tangled and it won't light up but he can't figure out which bulb is broken and when he tosses the useless knot, it just thumps against the baseboard and doesn't break or anything and he's had enough.
Fucking holidays are designed to drive you batshit. They're worthy of the Senior Partners, actually.
"That's it, man." Gunn sits back on his heels. "I don't know what the hell I'm doing."
Oz slides off the armchair and joins him on the floor, his garland of popcorn trailing after him. "That an admission of temporary defeat, or real surrender?"
"Ha," Gunn says flatly and pulls Oz against him. Nosing around in the damp riot of Oz's hair usually helps him chill, but not today. "Just stating the facts as I see 'em."
"And what aren't you getting?" Oz asks, picking up his needle and another piece of popcorn and squinting.
"Whole damn thing," Gunn says, arm around Oz's back, hand on his stomach, idly plucking at the popcorn string until Oz slaps him. "Ow. Man."
"Needlework --" Oz says, puncturing the kernel at last and tugging through the thread, "-- is not. My. Special-ty."
"Could've fooled me, Martha Stewart." Gunn yanks gently on the garland again. Oz elbows him, hissing, so Gunn grabs the needle in retaliation and plays a little keepaway; Oz twists and wriggles and reaches for it, and the jostling rapidly becomes full-scale wrestling. Gunn's got the weight and the strength in his favor, but -- "Jesus, baby, you're too fucking quick --"
Breathing hard and laughing, Oz rolls out of reach and tucks himself between the battered bookcase and the rickety tree-stand. He grins at Gunn and pumps his fist in victory. With popcorn smashed and ground into his red thermal undershirt and his blue- black hair sticking out every which way, he looks like Santa's naughtiest, littlest elf. Gunn's sides ache from laughing, and the scar on his belly twists up in pain/pleasure.
Oz rights himself and pulls his knees up to his chest, planting his chin on his folded arms. "Sorry. You were saying?"
"That you're a brat?"
"Nah. Before that." Oz's smirking grin dips down into something gentler as he keeps Gunn's gaze. "About not knowing."
"Yeah." Gunn sweeps his arm around to indicate the whole room, knocking his hand against the leg of his desk. This place is too small. Their apartment barely qualifies for that name. Gunn would call it a room, but there's a token wall between the living-dining- kitchen space, where they are now, and the bedroom. Now the bedroom, that deserves its name. Since he's moved in and finally convinced Oz that mattresses, complete with boxsprings, really are vastly superior to crap-ass third-hand futons, the room actually is more like a shell of four walls around the double-sized mattress. "Don't get it. Don't know how to --. Just don't know how."
"What, Christmas?"
Gunn shakes his head. Oz would have made a damn good lawyer. Patient, and sweet-faced, makes you want to talk him, but he can also be focused like nobody's business. "Yeah. Whatever."
He doesn't want to talk about it. About holidays and how you do them and what's right. He'd rather wrestle; hell, he'd rather sew popcorn than talk about it.
Things go hinky in an apocalypse, that's the truth. The aftermath's even weirder. Sure, you think post-apocalyptic, you see zombie gangs roaming the countryside, mutants breeding without restraint, fires burning endlessly, that kind of thing. You don't necessarily expect -- at least, Gunn sure didn't -- about ending up here in Crackerville, Vermont, just south of East Honky and near Caucasian Township, going to damn college (you can take the LL.B. away from the man, even the cognitive upgrade, but the brainpower, that was always his own), and falling hard and fast for the skinny quiet boy who shelves books at the college library.
It's all hinky. It's snowy here and he's keeping house with a werewolf and pulling straight As and sucking cock fit to beat the band, and he can handle all that. He loves all that.
But.
"Fucking holidays, though," Gunn mutters and rubs his face like that'll wipe away the thoughts. Oz is standing over him, handing him a mug full of -- something. "This best not be eggnog. Or mulled fucking wine. Anything festive."
"Just RC," Oz says, dropping down into the lotus position next to Gunn as easily as most people wiggle their toes. "Couldn't find a clean glass."
"Oh. Thanks." After taking a long sip, Gunn sets the mug up on the corner of the desk.
Oz is staring at him, head a little cocked, bits of popcorn still clinging to his shirt and sprinkled through his hair. Gunn wants to look away, but he can't.
"Thinking of cancelling Christmas," Oz says. It's been almost a year, but Gunn still doesn't how Oz does that -- like Oz can sense his thoughts, pick up on them the way crazy old Cremins, their landlord, dowses for water, letting the forked stick in his hands quiver in anticipation.
"Nah, man, don't --" Gunn says.
Oz just nods. "Not like I know how to do it, either, you know. Mom had some seriously hippie ideas going on. The tree, that's pagan, fertility through the long winter darkness, so we did that. And mistletoe, and holly, and ivy, ugly vines and poisonous things because they were living, too, and have a million meanings --"
Oz hardly ever reminds Gunn of anyone; that's the beauty of him. He's all new, unknown, like snow in the woods that no one's ever seen. (Gunn takes walks, sure; he always did, and now the only difference is he sees trees instead of bodegas. And there are a lot less people.) No history around Oz, just potential.
But sometimes -- sometimes, like right now, hints of Wes seem to gather around Oz. Certain angles of light on him as he reads, or the way he'll draw out his explanations of random things, just out of sheer love for facts and details. That's Wes, Gunn's old Wes, before things got bad, when it was all geeky grins and skinny concave chests and Wes.
"So let's just do the loot," Oz concludes.
Gunn can't help the smile he feels spreading over his face, the flush that's warming him from the inside out. He ought to turn down the offer, be a good person, insist on ceremony. But Oz doesn't make offers lightly. "Yeah? You sure?"
Oz gets up on his knees and shuffles closer; Gunn opens his legs, hooking them around Oz, and draws him in, hands on sharp bony hips, fingers pushing under Oz's loose waistband.
"Yeah," Oz says softly, his hand curving around Gunn's cheek, thumb rubbing his chin. "Yeah, I'm sure."
When Oz kisses him, it's so gentle it almost hurts, like warm air on frostbitten ears, like soup in a starving belly. Gunn tilts his head, opening his mouth, and Oz returns the kiss, stronger, deeper, as Gunn cups Oz's ass and squeezes hard and Oz clutches at Gunn's shoulder, pushing him onto his back.
"You think this is all you're getting me," Gunn says when the kiss breaks into gasping breaths and Oz straightens up to pull his shirt off, "you're sorely mistaken."
Clucking his tongue and shaking his head, Oz shivers a little, goosebumps springing out under Gunn's palms as he pulls Oz in and down by the hips and thrusts up. Oz's eyes are very bright, green and sharp, as he bends over Gunn, working his shirt slowly up his chest.
"Don't worry. Got you your Playstation Portable," he says and before Gunn can react, demand to see it or even hoot in pleasure, Oz dips his head and kisses a wide, slow track down Gunn's belly. He takes in the scar and Gunn clings to those narrow shoulders, heat welling up under his skin as his eyes close and his head falls back and he's grinning like a fool right now and he doesn't care.