🎁🌲 christmas special 🌲🎁

okay, so, this is set a year into the future, ish, but it's completely canonically inaccurate (esp with Helen, Milo's mom) for what's going to happen with the rest of part two. so this is like an alternate timeline. the same events are actually going to happen in a year with them but there's going to be more characters. I'll see if I want to redo it with them later.

so.

merry christmas. also if you don't celebrate christmas you can still enjoy all this domestic fluff I've written. I didn't realize that i've got like a very diverse audience on here until I was deep in that christmas mood. uh.

basically this is just misplaced one shots.

anyway

[edit christmas morning: i forgot the š on one of the endings to miloš]

-rabid.

***

HÅKON

"I am not going to midnight mass on Christmas eve, even if it is only at ten." I cross my arms at Rocket, all dressed up in a sweater and a collared shirt. "Please don't make me go."

"My mom is getting here in five minutes. You're coming."

I have the urge to whine about this. "Please don't make me go to church. I'm a free gay man, a legal adult."

"And I'm a free bisexual man, but we're going to church."

I frown. "No."

"We can have passionate gay sex by the fireplace when we get back to completely undo any godliness we may have obtained from an hour of church."

I think on that for a moment. "Let me go put on a collared shirt."

Ten minutes later I'm figuring out my tie in the living room when Helen Stojanovič pops through the door, all dressed up for mass.

Rocket, off on some tirade, is nowhere to be found, she addresses me first. "How's my favorite future son in law?"

I whip my head up at her. "What?"

"I didn't think you'd go."

"Your kid is convincing." I nod toward the staircase where Milo comes thundering down, now with his hair back.

"HÃ¥kon, how did you last this long without a boyfriend? Your tie is a mess." He makes a beeline for me and swats my hands away before I can mess it up further. To be honest, I can totally tie one of these. Always have been able to. I just like it when he fusses over me so I started acting like I couldn't do it without a lot of time to figure it out and make it perfect. That way he fixes it for me. You know, all cute.

"What division are you guys?" I look between them. "Like, what should I be expecting logistically for this?"

Rocket's biting his tongue and working with my tie, it's Helen who answers: "Roman catholic."

My eyebrows go up. "Nice, technically I'm in the Church of Sweden but it's Lutheran so that's-"

"There's a church of Sweden?" Milo's head snaps up. "What?"

"Yeah," I lean forward and put a little kiss on the crease of his eyebrows, that's about where they land in relation to my head if we're standing like this. "Everyone's made a part of it unless they cancel it or their parents don't do the paperwork when they're born, it's this whole thing."

"Weird," Milo mumbles, patting my tie and then stepping back.

"It's actually incredibly liberal as a whole, women can be ordained, they had the first openly lesbian bishop, you know, in its own little Swedish way."

Milo slips his fingers into mine. "Might have to look into that."

"Might," I respond, knowing full well that at this point I'm pretty close to atheist.

Helen looks between us, her son and her second adopted son (we all know she basically adopted Steph first, Rocket has a habit of bringing strays home).

"Alright, boys, let's go do some Jesus stuff." She points toward the door and we follow.

I haven't been to a church in Regina but Rocket goes with his mom somewhat often, random Sunday mornings and the occasional holiday. On those Sundays I make him breakfast for when he gets back. It's all very... domestic. I'm absolutely in love with it.

"Uh, I hate to ruin your mom's mojo-" I tap Rocket's hand, careful about being in public. "We should probably sit in the back."

"Why?" He looks up at me, "oh, no, I got it, nevermind. Mom!" He calls up to her, then fires off a quick sentence in Czech.

She says something quick back, then: "darn you two for being so big and polite."

I hook my pinky finger into his, giving it a quick four squeezes. He squeezes back.

The whole thing is actually really well done. It was always my favorite thing about church as a kid, the one thing that made it worthwhile was everyone singing. It's just more fun around the holidays, nobody skips out. Just a group of slightly out of tune people, no training, nothing, just singing because it's human.

Milo holds my hand under the view of the pew in the back of the church, blushing up to his ears when I lean over and tell him he's a little flat. He whispers a soft 'I hate you' in response.

I was right about making us sit in the back, though. That was another thing about moving here instead of being in Sweden, my first couple weeks I had my parents with me and they made us all go to church. That's when we realized that me, 6'6, my dad, 6'4, my mom, 5'10, and my sister, 5'11, are absolutely comically large compared to people out here and stand out like sore white-haired thumbs in crowds like this. My head is sticking up out of the back, it's awkward, I'll give you that, but it's just how that works.

The last song of the night, as it's always been in my experience, is silent night. Rocket, God, I love him, is still flat. It's okay, because Helen is just a little sharp and my voice is just too deep to do much but blend into the background.

I actually don't hate it. I've been avoiding any type of religious anything for so long because of who I am, but this was a soft little reminder that sometimes, it's not all awful.

On the way out the door, in something that didn't happen back home, the priest, a seemingly interesting guy named Lou, shakes everyone's hands and wishes them a good Christmas.

He seems to know Helen really well, and- "Oh, Miloš! It's been a while! Who's this?" He looks up at me and I stare back, slightly alarmed.

Rocket grabs my hand and squeezes twice.

"I ah," I clear my throat, hoping I don't sound too Swedish. "I'm his boyfriend, HÃ¥kon." I reach out to shake his hand.

"Well, Håkon," he butchers the fuck out of my name but that's okay, his Canadian accent is pretty strong, "you be nice to Miloš here and have a good Christmas."

I smile, I can't help it. "Will do."

The second we're out of earshot, Milo explains. "He doesn't know the first thing about hockey, I have no idea how with an accent like that, but he doesn't have any idea who I am."

"Oh, awesome." Helen steals Rocket's spot in the passenger seat of my truck, which, the only reason I'm driving is because she 'didn't want to get killed on Christmas' with Rocket.

I drop Helen back at her house with promises of letting her come over for Christmas breakfast with us. Then it's just Rocket and I.

"So, Church, how do you feel?" He looks over at me, reaching over to tuck a little hair behind my ear.

"Uh, fine," I shrug. "It wasn't bad, the last one of those I went to I was 18, it was awful, you know the deal, full four and a half hours, started at nine ended at one. I was hot off a tournament and almost fell asleep in the pew. Awful." His hand stays on the nape of my neck, playing with my hair that's a little too long.

"Want to do some stupid sappy Christmas shit when we get home?" He asks. "Before we lay each other out on the rug in front of your fire, obviously."

I smile, leaning into his hand on the corner of his jaw. "Yeah, obviously."

I follow him into the house, pulling my tie down as I do, the little brownstone welcomes us home to a crackling half-out fire and a kitchen full of things I'll get around to cleaning later. Milo picks a cookie up off the little drying rack and breaks it in half, offering one to me. There's a hockey stick leaning against the staircase upstairs and we follow each other up, getting changed quietly side by side into the pajamas I'm fully planning on peeling right back off him in an hour or so.

"Every year back home we used to have this dance, the 23rd, it was basically a big Christmas formal," I break the silence, looking over and appreciating the curve of his shoulders. "And every year I was kinda irritated with it, it just seemed like they were trying to control all of it and-"

"Are you asking me to dance?" He quirks an eyebrow at me, leading me down the staircase again. "You are, aren't you."

MILO

So I dance with him. In front of a tree that we decorated badly, the sawed-off end of a hockey stick stuck to the top instead of a star, assorted horribly placed homemade ornaments hanging on it. My favorite is the one he made as a kindergartener, his hand print on a little ball, each of his fingers made into snowmen. I like that one the most because I had him put his hand against it now, the little print on the red ball absolutely dwarfed by his adult hand. His favorite of the ones that I hauled over is something of similar sentiment, a little photo frame of me in a Christmas hat back home in Czechia.

"What do you guys do for Christmas back there?" He asks against my hair, rocking me back and forth in front of the fire like some stupid cheesy movie.

"Uh, not much, I'd tell you about the fasting for the golden pig thing but that's like, weird, uh, but Štědrý den, Christmas eve, is when we normally do all the gift stuff, I had planned to do this the Canadian American way with you, though."

"Mmhmm," he mumbles. "We do the same thing in Sweden, but I planned the same way, there is..." he pauses. "One thing, I was actually planning to do tonight."

I pull back a little, brushing my nose on his, soft music playing from the little speaker he has in his living room. "Lay me out right here on this rug? Because-"

He shakes his head. "No, not really. It's just uh," he clears his throat, eyes flitting away from mine. "Your lease ends in a month or so and I want to know, uhm, if you want to move in with me?"

My heart skips over itself. "Yes, absolutely."

"Really?"

"I was gonna ask, anyway, but, yes, of course." I stop moving, instead tightening my grip around his shoulders and giving him a firm hug. "Please."

"I mean, we're kinda inseparable between houses anyway, so I just wanted to make it sorta permanent."

"I love you." I mumble into his shoulder.

He hums softly in response, tapping my shoulder blade four times.

"Now lay me out in front of the fire in our house."

HÅKON

Falling asleep was easy at 1 in the morning on Christmas, fucked out and in love and moving in with each other and everything. It was dragging myself out of bed painfully early in Christmas that was the challenge. I had a trick up my sleeve and I wasn't going to let it fail.

Which is why I'm up at 8 am making eggs for him when he trudges down the stairs, scratching his bare chest and yawning.

"Where'd you go?" he asks, sitting down at the little island stools, looking up at me.

"Had something to do." I give him a stupid little cheeky smile.

"I hate you," he mumbles. "You're going to out-gift me at this rate."

"I made sure of it." I lean over and kiss his head. "Now, because it's rather..." alive. It's rather alive. That means it's time sensitive. "Just stay there."

He raises his eyebrows at me, hair a wreck, still bleary eyed. "Oh boy."

So, that's how I end up sitting on the floor of the laundry room trying to get the little grey and black kitten that Paxton let us adopt to come out from under the table in there.

"He's not scary, I swear." This kitten is going to know Swedish and only Swedish and I will be making sure of that. It'll be hilarious. "Okay, he's a little scary, but that's not anything to be alarmed about, he's sweet, really attractive, too. Great goalie."

It sticks one paw out at me.

"There ya go, c'mere bud."

Paxton, that absolute demon, names his pets badly. This, until we decide on another name, is Sulfur Hexafluoride.

It takes two little steps toward me and I open up my hands at him, fully knowing it fits comfortably into my palm. Paxton said that he's going to be absolutely tiny as an adult and that he's already an itty bitty tiny little kitten. I feel like that guy from that american book with the mouse, constantly.

He puts one paw carefully up onto my knee and I take my cue, scooping him up like water into my palms. I reposition, getting my hand most of the way around his little body and tucking him real close against my chest. He's mostly black with little grey paws and a grey tuft on his chest and nose.

"Alright, Milo," I work my way back to the kitchen. "Shut your eyes."

"You better not strip." He responds. "I won't know what to do with myself."

I laugh. "No, open up your hands like I'm gonna pour water into them."

"Bud, I got a really dirty mind up here, you better n-" his sentence is cut off when I set four little fuzzy feet into his hands. "You didn't."

"I did."

His eyes fly open. "Oh my god." In moments he's got tears brimming in his eyes. "It's so small oh my god I'm going to cry."

I reach over and run one single knuckle over the top of his purring head. "His name, until we decide better, is Sulfur Hexafluoride. Paxton's cat had kittens a little over two months ago, just two of them, and I asked if I could have one, he's got a fuckton of cats anyway, so he said yes. He's not gonna get too big, but we have to rename him for my personal sanity's sake."

"Sulfur what."

"Hexafluoride."

"We could just call him Sully and ignore the rest of that god awful name." He looks up at me, genuinely about to cry. "He's so fucking small oh my god."

I ruffle Milo's hair. "So, did I pull off a good first Christmas?"

He frowns. "We kissed last Christmas, you can't ignore that. But yes." He lifts up the little kitten and pats his head with just the pad of one finger. "I'm not gonna be able to go on roadie's anymore, I'm gonna miss the cat too damn much."

I lean over and kiss his head. "I love you."

ROCKET

I hate how good he is at this. Like, c'mon please buddy, I just want to be able to pull off a good Christmas and he goes out and gets us a kitten knowing full well I've been back and forth trying to convince him to get a pet for months.

My mom, however, likes the cat the most and almost immediately after walking in the door almost has a meltdown over the little one and a half pound kitten running at her.

I'll give it to HÃ¥kon, he's good at this.

And I'm like, beyond in fucking love with him.