“Hey! That’s a good idea, right?” He asks Tsuki, taking a sheet of paper from inside his desk. He writes the names of the pack on eight strips and slips them inside the red box after removing the artwork. “Leo might cry, though, so you’ll have to comfort him.”
Finn chuckles at the thought. While Leo tries, he still hasn’t warmed up to Tsuki’s brand of affection, no matter how she tries.
Tsuki huffs and precedes him down the stairs, like she’s leading the way.
The library is still in a bit of disarray from the water line bursting and ruining several books from his collection. While nothing had been expensive, some had been important to Finn. A book of poetry Gideon liked to read to him on cold winter nights, and a student’s copy ofParadise Losthe’d notated in university, plus several others.
While Gideon had ordered a replacement for the Whitman that very day, the ruined books lay in a box in the garage, waiting for the next recyclingday. They’re just things, but it still makes a dull ache in his chest whenever he thinks about it. Sighing, he skirts the drying fans and tarps from the workers who had left their final cleaning for next week.
Everyone is gathered in the family room when Finn arrives, the TV already playing his favorite Christmas movie. Tom Hanks’ character is—per usual—fretting about missing a deadline, and for once, Gideon is actually home to watch it with them.
Despite his very recent orgasms, Finn still gets a vivid flash of Luca’s bare ass—complete with that ridiculous (and ridiculously enticing) butt-plug tail—on display as he flits from lap to lap, clearly testing the limits of everyone’s self-control. It’s shameless. It’s effective. And it makes Finn’s hands itch to pull him close and see just how many noises he could make.
He hears his name, and before long, he’s sharing the idea with his mates. It still stings that Leo was disappointed about the car (a fucking car!), but Leo is resilient. If anyone can figure something out, it’s him. Besides, they’ve got two whole weeks to make something that matters. That’s plenty of time.
When Finn draws the last slip, heat creeps up his neck—because, of course, it’s the name he’d imagined when he’d had his holiday epiphany upstairs. Fate has a wicked sense of humor sometimes.
He has the perfect idea.
Leo
Leo does not have any ideas. Not one. Sure, he knew he liked to buy shit, too much shit, if he’s honest. It’s part of how he showed his mates he loves them.
That scented soap Grayson likes from Paris? Not the body wash he buys fromLush, but the hand-milled, rose-scented stuff Leo gets in from Paris, that Grayson keeps in his shower and prefers most when he’s getting close to his rut? That’s on Leo.
There’s also the Montblanc pens he buys for Finn. He puts them everywhere Finn might need to write something wise and intelligent. The last one—which he found while he was on tour in Cologne—was an antique and hand-carved teakwood.
Add to it some custom-designed picks for Luca’s guitar, Périgold black winter truffles for Gideon, and a cupboard of Loro Piana bath towels for Nix…well, no expense is too much to see the surprised—pleasedsmiles on his mates’ faces. It never takes more than the instant thought, the click of a button, and limitless resources to put them there.
Even if Jay insisted he keep it to small things, for his sanity’s sake, Christmas is the exception. Jay agreed that Leo could go all out on the big day. But now…now he has a lot of stuff to return, and to somehow figure out something for the absolute hardest person to buy for in their entire pack. That is to say, something he hasn’t already done beforeandthat he can make with his own two hands.
It’s a nightmare of epic proportions, because Leo is not at all what anyone would deemcrafty. He’s decidedly more…buy-ee,if you get his drift.
It’s not that he doesn’t understandwhythey’re having this discussion. Even if Finn hadn’t shone a spotlight on it, he remembers his conversation with Nix in his new room this past fall. Recalls his desperate feelings of inadequacy and fear that he isn’t bringing anything to the table. How Leo had cried, how Nix had comfortedhim. It’s selfish, he knows, but he’d hoped that Nix might be farther in this healing journey than he is. Maybe it has everything to do with this being his first Christmas with the pack, after so many years of loneliness and pain.
That had been part of why Leo had made big plans, which he will now put on hold until a later date.
Jay can’t hold a random New Year’s gift-extravaganza against him, right? He hopes not. It’s not just that he’s being denied his peak gift-giving period—because like he said, he understands—and for Nix, Leo can andwilldo whatever it takes to make him happy. It’s just that Leo can’t make shit. Oh, he can write music, and if he didn’t think Jay or Luca weren’t already going to do that for their gift, he’d do the same. It’d be easy to write odes to how hisgifteefucks like a god, or how Leo could look at him every day and just hope he doesn’t get caught staring (He does…both things. Sigh).
So what’s he going to do? Maybe Tsuki has an idea.
The others had scattered like mice on a sinking ship. Rowan’s questions about help and his phone in his hand meant outside assistance. That thought only solidified when, thirty minutes later, he’d popped his head to where Leo was still sitting with Tsuki on the floor in front of the dying fire.
“I’m going out. Be back after dinner. Hey, you okay?” He’s got his nose in the air to try and gauge Leo’s scent over the sweet scent of burning birch wood.
“Yeah. Just thinking. Are you taking the car?” Leo doesn’t like Rowan out in the car when it’s dark. How he’d gotten his license still confuses him,andthe last two police officers who’d issued tickets.
“Nah. Getting picked up. Wanna sleep in my room later?” Rowan asks, biting his tongue between his teeth. It’s an unnecessary assault on Leo’s libido—welcome, but unnecessary.
“Yeah. Bring me home something pretty! Good luck!” He shouts as Rowan waves,and the front door beeps closed.
“Well, Kooky-Tsuki, I have a date. Woot,” he mutters, lying down so he can lay his head on her belly. She’s only five months old but already huge, so she bears his weight easily. “Do you have ideas? Could this get any harder?”
“Leo?” Nix pops his head over the balcony above him, cheeks pink and fluffy brown hair sticking out at odd angles, as if he’d been running his hands through it.
“Nix, my love.”
“Who are you talking to?” He disappears, suddenly reappearing in the living room like he’d flown down the stairs in one leap. He probably had.
