FAMILY FESTIVITIES, PART TWO

Original poster: _alicesprings

Title: Family Festivities
Written By: etharei
Timeline: post-513 (future)
Rating: NC-17
Summary: “Speaking of whom, does your family know he’s coming?” She hesitated, but Tucker knew that this was one of the biggest things plaguing her all day. “They do. At least, they know that Justin is bringing his partner.”
Author's Notes: I hope the fandom enjoys this belated Christmas offering from me. Happy Holidays, everyone! *g*

Family Festivities

#

Jennifer slumped against the shut door for a moment, having never felt so relieved to hear a quiet house once more. She climbed the stairs back up to the living room, where her mother was sitting on the chair she’d been occupying since after dinner. “Mom?”

The old woman blinked and turned to face her. “Yes, dear?”

“Are you all right?” Jennifer went to perch on the Ottoman in front of the chair. “You’ve barely said a word all evening.”

“I think there was enough talking,” Frances said with a rueful smile. “And I’ve been thinking.”

“I haven’t had much time to talk to you, I’m sorry,” Jennifer said quietly. “How are things?”

“Good, considering how I’m getting on with the years.” Her mother straightened up. “You’ve changed, Jenny. The girl who’d always quietly watch over her brothers and sisters would not have done and said what you did. There was a reason we called you Jenny-lamb.”

“I’m not so sure,” Jennifer disputed with a smile. “A mother would do anything to protect the children she loves. I remember you being particularly vehement when Jean was being picked on at school, or when Tom was arguing with his ex-wife before their divorce.”

Frances smiled as well. “I guess.” She sighed. “And they should feel the same for their grandchildren, shouldn’t they? But I must confess, Jenny-lamb, that I feel the same way as Joyce. I just… after dinner, we could see them outside the window, kissing. I admire you for standing with your son, but it just feels so unnatural.”

Jennifer exhaled heavily and looked away. “At first I was like that, too.” She put her hand on top of her mother’s. “But he’s still the same person. He’s still kind and playful and mature for his age, and a brilliant artist.” Her voice dropped. “Don’t tell him this, but I think his art is better, more inspired, when he’s with Brian.”

Frances frowned. “I thought they’ve been together all these years.”

“Generally speaking, yes, but they’ve had a number of rough patches, and I know Justin told you about LA and New York.”

They heard footsteps, and Justin stepped out from the dining room. “Would you like something to drink, Grandma?”

“Just water, please.” When Justin disappeared back into the kitchen, Frances said, “I like Tucker, though. He’s obviously smitten by you.”

Jennifer smiled. “Thanks, Mom.”

As if on cue, there was the sound of voices, and Tucker and Brian climbed down the stairs from dining room and kitchen. For some reason water had started leaking out from under the sink during the evening, and Tucker had enlisted Brian’s help in looking for the leak. Molly and Justin had been put in charge of wrapping the leftovers and putting them in the fridge.

“Screw came loose,” Tucker reported, pressing a kiss to Jennifer’s temple. “Fixed it now. Thanks for the help, Brian.”

“No problem.”

“Here, Grandma,” Justin came down as well, a glass of water in his hand. When he got to about a few steps away from Frances, his hand suddenly began violently shaking. In an instant, Brian was at his side, having already taken the glass just as it slipped out of Justin’s grasp. Brian handed the water to Frances, and then with practiced movements began massaging the constricting hand.

“Are you all right, Justin?” asked his concerned grandmother

Justin’s face was bright red. “Yeah, don’t worry about it,” he waved his other hand dismissively. “It does that sometimes when I’m tired.”

“You were drawing all day, and helped Debbie to haul groceries since Emmett had a party,” Brian said in rebuking tones as he patiently coaxed the tense muscles to relax. “Your knuckles were white from gripping the fork throughout dinner, you had a smoke, and then you went and volunteered to wash the dishes when you were already stressed out from all the shit.”

“I’m sorry!”

“You know what I think about sorry. Just- don’t push it.”

“I’ll try, dear.”

Brian stuck his tongue into his cheek, half-grinning. “Do or do not,” he said in a somewhat frightening imitation of Yoda. “There is no try.”

Justin groaned. “If you’re thinking about getting any tonight, don’t do that again, ‘cause there’s no way I’m fucking Yoda.”

“You’ve got that right-“

Jennifer cleared her throat. The two men froze, and looked abashedly at Justin’s grandmother, though- Jennifer was quick to notice- not to her. “Why don’t you two go finish off in the kitchen?”

As they scampered off and Brian said something to Justin that made him snicker, Jennifer blushed and called out, “I meant your hand, and you know it!”

She turned, anticipating a scandalous expression on her mother’s face. Frances didn’t look as outraged as Jennifer had dreaded, but her lips arched down in a frown. “You really have no problem with this.”

“No,” Jennifer said firmly. “I don’t. They love each other, and my son is happy. That’s all that matters.”

Frances sniffed. “Love? If perversion of Nature can be called love, I suppose.”

“Mother.” Jennifer’s voice was steel. “You know that I love and respect you, but what I said to Joyce applies to you, too. If you can’t keep a civil tongue, then I’ll drive you to Tom’s hotel and rent you a room for the rest of your stay.”

Frances looked taken aback, and for a long moment stared at her eldest child in expression that mingled disbelief with puzzlement. Eventually she shook her head. “It was rude of me, I apologise.” She sighed. “But, Jennifer, I’m only thinking about Justin.” She paused, gesticulating with her hand as if she found it difficult to speak. “A man needs a woman, and a woman a man, to feel complete. And I’d have thought that you, of all people, would know that men, after a time, will have the tendency to… wander. Women these days find it hard enough to hold on to their men- how much more difficult would it be if they were both men! Eventually this Brian will get restless and break Justin’s heart. You said that they’ve already gone through some rough times.”

Now it was Jennifer’s turn to stare at her mother. The urge to laugh bubbled up to her throat; she repressed it with great difficulty. “You’re right, mother. They’re both men. But if men needed women to feel complete, why do I know same-sex couples who’ve been together longer than many of the marriages of my heterosexual friends?” She shook her head. “As for heart-break, well, these days it’s not Justin I worry about.” A pause, then, “I cannot explain to you why, without going into the whole story from the start, but believe me when I say that Brian loves Justin and only Justin, and he always will.”

“Is that what he said?” scoffed Frances.

“It’s exactly what he refuses to say, what he’ll probably never say.” Jennifer sighed. “You won’t understand, without knowing him. But it’s in everything he does. He’ll never love anyone else, only Justin.” Jennifer’s voice broke a little at the last, her eyes bright and steadfast as she fixed them on her mother.

Brian and Justin returned to the living room at that point, faces alight with mischief.

“You.” She pointed a finger at Brian. “Do you love my grandson?”

The smile on Brian’s face was immediately wiped off. He looked, for a moment, like a very tall, handsome buck caught in the light of approaching matronly headlights.

“Yes,” Justin said firmly. “He does.”

Frances’ eyes flitted to Justin. “How can you be so sure? And why are you the one answering?”

“Because I’m the one those words those words have meaning for.” Justin exhaled heavily. “I know this can’t be easy for you, Grandma. But it’s been really rough for us, too. Could you, at least, give it a try? Mom and Molly miss you. I miss you.”

Jennifer watched a strange sort of eye showdown between her mother and Justin, and it occurred to her that he must have gotten his single-minded determination from someone. Finally Frances nodded once, a little sharply, and Jennifer glimpsed the ghost of a smile. “Mr. Kinney,” she began. “Allow me to apologise for the behaviour of my daughter. Whatever her feelings, I would hope that I’d taught my children to at least remember their manners.”

Brian, surprisingly enough, shook his head dismissively. “Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Moore. And you aren’t answerable for your daughter’s behaviour. If Jennifer’s anything to go by, you were an exemplary mother.” Jennifer thought that her jaw must have hit the floor; but Frances’ eyes were on Justin, whose face had broken into the bright, blinding smile that had given him his nickname.

#

“Jenny-lamb, who’s this?”

Jennifer walked into the room. Frances showed her the framed photograph that had held pride of place on the room’s bookshelf. It was of Brian and Justin, wrapped in layers of expensive cotton and wool, smiling at the camera in front of a backdrop of thick snow and wooden buildings in the distance. They were sitting on a wooden bench, and between them, sitting on one leg each, was a Gus caught mid-laughter. A closer look revealed that Brian and Justin had both been tickling him when the camera flashed.

Jennifer smiled, leaning in for a closer look herself, though she obviously knew which photograph it was. “That’s Gus. He’s Brian’s son. Justin named him.”

“His son?” Frances echoed, a finger tracing over the smooth glass cover of the photograph. And Justin was there the night he was born? She looked at the date on the photograph. And the boy looked about eight to nine years old in the picture. They’ve been together longer than many married couples can claim. “Where is he now?”

“He lives in Toronto now with his mothers,” Jennifer explained, putting particular emphasis on the last word. “Brian and Justin go up there to visit him every few months, and he spends all the major holidays down here.”

“I see.” Frances contemplated the photograph for a while. Yes, she felt uneasy about the whole business; even in her youth she’d never adapted well to change. But there was no denying that the young man looked genuinely happy in the picture, beside a man twelve years his senior, just like he’d looked that night. The bright smile he’d given only his tall, beautiful partner, and a couple of times his mother, until that last one that had been aimed towards her. And the conviction with which he’d said that this man loved him, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if it was the absolute, irrefutable truth. Frances had attended many marriages in her life, more than she could count, but she’d never come across that tone, that brand of surety. “I recognise some of Justin’s things in here.”

“Yes. This was his room- still is, whenever he comes to stay, although he’s never really lived here. The longest he ever stayed was after he got out of the hospital, after the bashing at the prom.”

She met her daughter’s eyes. “I’m sorry I was not more help. I could have come here.”

“Thank you, but I don’t think I would have wanted you to be here, anyway. And considering how Justin was, it might have made things worse.”

“But he got better.”

“Yes. Thanks to Brian.” Jennifer smiled sadly. “I hated Brian at first- he was Justin’s first love, as well as being every nightmare a mother dreads. But I think it was when he stayed away after I asked him to that I realised that he did really care about Justin. I’ve never even told Justin that he was there at the hospital, every single night. Maybe Brian has. But I don’t think I need to, now.”

Frances looked out the window, silently thinking. The night was cold and dark outside, but she could still see Justin’s brilliant smile, like a strange after-image, only not on her eyes. “Do you think they would accept an invitation to lunch? Only, you must tell me the good places to eat in this town. And I’d like to see that house Brian mentioned.”

She didn’t see it, but the force of Jennifer’s smile could be felt in the air. “I’m sure they’d love that.”

Frances nodded, then cocked her head. “Wasn’t Justin’s favourite teddy bear named Gus?”

#

Brian could feel the individual hairs on Justin’s legs underneath the sweaty, hypersensitive palms of his hands, his lightly trembling shoulders. He rocked forward, and back, forward, and back, his hips snapping a little on the forward, obeying a rhythm that seemed to echo his thundering heart. Beneath him, Justin clawed at the sheets, arching his back off the thoroughly dishevelled bed. The smooth line of his glistening, pale body writhing underneath Brian’s, a rippling of muscle that could be felt by his hard, seeping cock every time he pushed into Justin’s heated, slippery passage.

His lover was beyond words by the time he came; he threw his head back and opened his mouth wide, no sound making it out. Brian was breathless at the sight- or maybe it was the muscles clamping down on his cock when it was pretty much bursting, catapulting him into hot, liquid, searing heat. Then Justin reached up and yanked his head down, kissing him with an open mouth, and somehow that seemed to extend his orgasm.

When he came down, he was definitely shaking. Justin smiled tiredly at him. “I’m sorry for making you go with me.”

“I’m not. Do you know how much skill it takes to get a simultaneous orgasm?”

Justin swatted his arm. “Brian! Be serious.”

“I am.” Brian touched Justin’s nose with his, transferring a drop of sweat. “And you didn’t make me.”

Justin rolled his eyes. “Right. Brian Kinney never does anything he doesn’t want to do.” He pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen in front of Brian’s eyes. “Thanks, anyway.”

“You, too.” It could mean anything. Years ago he wouldn’t even have let the conversation get this far, and maybe years ago Justin would have kept at him, asking for specifics and meanings and underneath that wanting a security that he’d thought only Brian could give. Now he’d found it in himself, and so Brian felt safer, too.

Justin kissed him on the lips. “Merry Christmas.”

“Happy Holidays,” replied Brian reluctantly, a rebel to the end.

Rolling his eyes in an exasperated manner, Justin moved his butt up and down Brian’s dick, still buried inside him. “I don’t know why I put up with you.”

Getting ready for round three, Brian murmured, “I do,” and set himself to showing Justin why. At least, part of the ‘why’.

But quite a big part, nonetheless.