Jay: III
Leo disappears into the kitchen. The door to the security cupboard opens and closes, and he returns with a small flat box. It’s wrapped in plain green paper with a tiny white polka-dot ribbon.
“Gideon, this is for you. I feel like an idiot after the gift you gave me, but I promise to do better next time. I just—ugh. Let me explain before you open it, yeah?”
Gideon looks surprised that he’s even holding a gift. It’s so like him to focus on the giving and forget entirely that he’s loved in return. He doesn’t look up but still offers Leo a small nod to continue.
“I’m not very good at making shit. I mean, yeah, I can write a song—but someone else was probably going to do that, and it would’ve felt more like it was for me than for you, right?” Leo doesn’t wait for an answer before he continues. “And I wanted it to be special. Because you are important to me. Fuck. I had something else picked out…and then we had a change in plans.”
Nix tenses beside him, but Leo just throws them a smile. “And this has proven to be way better. I mean, I am blown away by how the things you guys made are so meaningful. Handmade journals and a jar of dicks. It’s been the best Christmas. It was the best idea, Finn. I’m only sorry I’m not able to keep up the level of…you know…most excellent gifts.”
Gideon doesn’t wait a minute longer before he undoes the ribbon, sticking it into the pocket of his sweatpants. He tears away the paper to reveal the box. When he lifts the lid, a huff of air escapes his lips.
It’s one of the cookies from last night.
Nix and Leo had been baking and giggling. The smell of sugar and butter had permeated the entire place. There were row upon row of heart-shaped, messily iced cookies, red like a Valentine. That is, until they’d forgotten the last tray in the oven, setting off the fire alarms for the third time.
Doodle and Domino had not appreciated the repeated blaring of the high-pitched siren, and this time, it had set them off into a parkour-style frenzy, flinging red heart-shaped cookies to the floor, where Tsuki had enjoyed the unexpected windfall of treats.
Jay thought all was lost until Leo salvaged a single cookie that had slid to the very edge of the counter without falling.
“We had more…but…you know how I am in the kitchen—ha…but I got the recipe from here.” He pulls out a thick notebook bound with an elastic band from behind a couch cushion. “You said you liked the heart-shaped ones best, and I got a bit of red icing on the front. Sorry about that. I tried—”
Gideon takes the tiniest bite from the tip of the red heart and closes his eyes. He takes another and another until his mouth is full of Leo’s last cookie. In a blink, he’s on his feet and into the kitchen without a word.
Jay hopes it isn’t to throw it up.
Even poor Leo is frozen, pale, clutching Gideon’s recipes in his hand.
“Leo, go on. They were good, remember? You made them, and they were good. He’s not mad. I promise. Go on.” Nix urges him after Gideon.
“Yeah. They were okay. He’s definitely not in there puking up my gift,” Leo mutters.
While none of them go into the kitchen to gawk, they do pile onto that end of the sectional so they can eavesdrop.
Gideon is leaning on the counter with his back to them, his thunder scent swirling from sad to happy to heartbroken to joy. It’s bound to be making the sensitive beta woozy, but Leo keeps his feet.
“I’m sorry it wasn’t—” Leo starts, but he doesn’t finish because Gideon is holding him close.
“It’s perfect. I–I miss her so much this time of year, especially. I was afraid to make her special things because…what if they weren’t the same? What if I didn’t remember her the same? But they are.”
“They are? But that batch was overcooked, and my icing is a bit lumpy.”
“Exactly the same. My mother was a great cook, but she couldn’t bake for shit.” Gideon laughs. “Thank you, Leo. You gave her back to me today, and it was the best gift. Will you bake some more?”
“Really?” Leo lights up brighter than the Christmas tree, and there are happy tears on his face, and he turns so he can whisper something to Gideon that makes the taller man bark out a laugh and kiss him again and again.
Jay watches the whole thing before he kisses the side of Nix’s face, humming the melody to his gifted song.
He laughs when Grayson uses his new scarf to wrap around Rowan’s neck, too, making the other enigma growl and fuss but not pull away. He drags Grayson back to his cache of cocks so they can sort the dicks into random piles ofI’d suck thatandNot on your life.
Leo is giving Gideon pointers about how he, too, can fuck up his mother’s cookie recipe between even more kisses.
Finn moves away from the spectacle in the kitchen, pulling Luca down beside him so he can show Luca the journal pages one by one, pointing out the words from each book he’d lost and then found again.
Luca is nodding and repeating some of the words back to him, while simultaneously checking his phone so he can compare his sleepover dates with Finn’s on-call schedule. Dates already planned for March, by the sounds of it.
“Having a good Christmas?” Nix asks, turning to hug him and kiss his chin.
