A/N: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year all! This fills in the canon gap from when we last saw Ste and Brendan kissing under the mistletoe.
The First Christmas
The kiss was open and lingering. Fingers, cold from beer bottle condensation, dipped between collar and neck. Ste was the first to break away, light with laughter, his teeth sucking his bottom lip into his mouth as he twisted the mistletoe between his fingers.
"Come to bed?" he said, barely a question, his fingertips caressing the soft wool of Brendan's jumper.
Brendan smiled faintly and pushed his mouth against him once more, letting his parted lips nuzzle Ste's. His fingers descended to unbutton Ste's trousers and then with a gentle pull, dragged him in the direction of the bedroom, shushing Ste with a finger to his lips.
Once on the bed, Ste wriggled free from his trousers and underwear, propping back on his elbows triumphantly as his cock stood hard. Brendan binned his jumper off to the side of the bedroom and gave Ste a darkened smile which melted his insides. He approached with gradual prolonging, making Ste's heart race with anticipation, long gone were the days of instant and rushed gratification. They had all night, every night.
His skin was like warm silk, the colour of sun-beaten sand. Brendan pushed up Ste's shirt until it exposed his nipples and he thumbed firmly over the nubs before his palms slid to his sides, smoothed down his arched spine like the caress of a sculptor. He lowered to his knees, taking Ste roughly by the thighs and pulling him until he lolled at the end of the bed uncomfortably, gripping to the bed sheets for support as his legs were hoisted onto Brendan's shoulders.
There was a low grunt of arousal caught in Brendan's throat when he licked wet a strip of Ste's thigh. He pressed his nose tight against him, brushing his moustache over the sparse fair hairs there, used to the ticklish stroke, Ste stretched back on his palms and felt his feet arch in squirming pleasure. Ste's skin smelt of cheap soap and heat, unsurprisingly, considering he was flushed from the groin upwards. His eyes had darkened to the colour of midnight as he looked down on Brendan.
Brendan's kissing grew faster, skirting closer to his dick and with it came breathy shrills from Ste, whose mouth opened and widened in less than subtle signals of what he needed.
"You're…really…" Brendan said, pausing between words to nudge his opened mouth against Ste's balls, "gonna…have…to…keep…the…noise…down,"
Ste gritted a 'fuck' between his teeth and squeezed his eyes closed with the tension.
Brendan lapped at Ste's belly, making sure to tease him by ghosting his lips against his cock. With a hand on his hip and thumb spanning his tattooed wings, he said Steven's name.
His eyes fluttered open, lashes like butterfly wings. "What?" he said, a sound just above the noise of his rasping.
"I want you to watch," Brendan said. Within that moment, he had him right down to the back of his throat and up again. He broke to smile once at the dumbfounded ecstasy on Ste's face before sinking his mouth around his cock once again.
His head stung from Ste's hair-pulling and nails digging in, but the sounds he elicited – volume adjusted with difficulty – the gasping and groaning and moaning and swearing, made it all worth it. He wound his hips in a circular motion, more in a fever than in any sense of rhythm or intention. And when he cried for more, Brendan alternated between licking the head of his dick and sucking at his own finger, so that when he was red-faced and seconds away from cumming, Brendan thrust fingers inside him, thrumming him expertly and watched him tense and explode over himself.
Brendan used his cum-slicked cock to wank him off until he was beyond spent, until he was speaking jibberish and pressing his face into the bedcovers. Looking lifeless, body still trembling, Brendan lifted him back to the centre of the bed and stroked his damp fingers over the curve of Ste's arse.
"I'll sort the presents then, will I?" he said, the gruff but fondly paternal tone to his words. He pulled his shirt back on, washed his hands before kissing Ste on the shoulder, and took the bags of stocking fillers out to the living room.
x
It had only been a matter of ten minutes to fill the stockings for the kids in the living room, moonlight seeping through the net curtains and the children's dreams full of Santa's sleigh bells, but when he returned to the bedroom, he'd expected Ste to be sound asleep under the covers.
In reality, Steven was still dewy with sweat and sitting cross legged on the bed. He was naked besides hideously bedraggled tinsel worn around his neck like a scarf. In the minutes Brendan had been away he'd clearly cleaned himself up and impatiently started the groundwork on round two by playing with himself.
Brendan clicked the door shut behind him and looked Ste up and down. "What have I walked into?"
"Depends," Ste said, unfolding himself until he was on his knees. He looked up at Brendan, lip biting and toying with the ends of the tinsel. "Have you been good this year, Brendan?"
Brendan smiled, kicking off his shoes and coming closer to the bed. He watched as Ste grew transfixed as he unbelted and unzipped.
"What if I've been bad?" he said, holding Ste's wrists briefly and taking the ends of the tinsel so he was able to pull him closer.
Unlike the butter-wouldn't-melt tone, Ste revelled in the teasing and his gaze drifted south until he was brazenly touching himself. "Maybe I won't put out."
He scoffed. Ste grinned. His stroking ceased only to be taken up hungrily by Brendan.
"Yeah you will,"
"Yeah I will," he said with a beaming grin. He reached up, looping his arms around Brendan's neck and pressed his mouth against his ear. "I want you to properly fuck me,"
"Lose the Christmas tree look you've got goin' on and you got a deal." Brendan loosened the tinsel and threw it to the floor, then with a push to his chest, had Ste lying flat.
X
Christmas in all its noise and food and colour and glitter and mess spiralled between agonisingly blissful and then when the realisation of his father's reappearance came, cripplingly painful. He was the happiest he'd ever been and somehow that made the dark moments ever more gut-wrenching. He missed the boys, he missed a lifetime wasted, of Christmases he'd never see again. He dodged phonecalls from Cheryl, opting for apologetic texts and promised to pop round. His thoughts were never far from Seamus and Christmas after Christmas of torment. Associations and memories were never stronger than during festive times like this. Every song had a memory that shut him in darkness like a blackout, every tradition had its own scars.
But Steven was there through it all, blocking out, numbing and chipping away at the darkness with his love. He was everything that could be good about the season.
"I thought you said Chez would kill you," he said that night when the kids were exhausted from the day's excitement and had yawned to bed early. Ste and Brendan were curled up together under the covers, fingers entwined.
"She might still,"
Ste snuggled into him. "I won't let her. It was the best one ever cos of you,"
Brendan grunted a little, contentedly. "Yeah. Same,"
"Love you."
"Me too."
X
The day before the calendar refreshed itself and promises to start anew were made and then broken, Ste and Brendan had the flat to themselves. Mike had taken the kids the day before, for a couple of days for a New Year's party with his new and unsurprisingly, young girlfriend. Ste had wanted to pass comment, but considering he'd bribed Leah not to spill the beans about Daddy and Brendan, the topic of lovers was strictly off limits. He'd glossed over the wedding and the accident and Doug and tried to keep his bare ring finger out of sight as he packed the kids off.
Brendan had taken to shaving in the bedroom that morning, much to Ste's distaste at him leaving dark specs of hair everywhere, because Ste had fogged up the bathroom with his shower and there was only so much singing Brendan could tolerate.
He was almost finished when Ste came out of the bathroom, towel slung low across his hips. His delicately toned torso glistened with drops of water down to the pubic hair that peeped just above the line of the towel.
"Missed a bit," he teased, signalling Brendan's moustache.
"Hilarious as ever," Brendan replied, relaxing into Ste when he wrapped his arms around him from behind.
"I know," Ste said, laughing. "Let me do it," he said, "The shaving,"
Brendan gave him a quizzical look.
"Saw it in James Bond," Ste said, "It was well sexy," and then without any further cajoling he pointed at the bed, "Sit there."
"Take the towel off,"
"No."
Brendan sat on the bed.
"Go on."
Legs either side of his, Ste tilted back Brendan's chin.
"No."
Brendan placed his hands on Ste's hips, trying to edge down the towel.
"I'm holding a sharp thing 'ere, do you want me to cut you? I'm tryin'a concentrate." Ste stuck his tongue out, putting all his attention on the shaving.
"I want you to take your clothes off,"
"I'll shave it off, I will," Ste said, trying to clutch the unravelling towel. "I will,"
"Not if you wanna see in the New Year,"
"You're ruining this, you know,"
"Don't care."
Brendan gave up on the feeble efforts and snatched the towel off Ste. He eyed him up and down. "Not so shy now, are we?"
X
It was ten to midnight.
"Your phones going crazy," Ste said, glancing at the bedside cabinet where Brendan's phone flashed.
"It'll only be Mitzeee and her waste of space sister," he said, topping up his whiskey from the bottle Ste had bought him especially in the slow days after Christmas, ones where they were forced to separate so Cheryl would be appeased, somehow not noticing her brother returned and shrunk into a shell of himself. Brendan relaxed against the wall that served as a headboard, drink in hand.
"You not bothered about the club?"
"Not tonight," he said, reaching out to stroke Ste's back as he lounged on his front.
"We could've gone, you know," he said, "Or to The Dog, or into town if you're worried about bumping into your dad,"
Brendan shook his head. "There's nothing good about going out on New Year's Eve. You pay too much money to spend it with a pub full of fuckers you don't care about, drowning your sorrows and wake up the New Year with a raging hangover,"
"Yeah you are right there," Ste said, "Best New Year I had, right, cans of cider and Amy Barnes. Right here,"
"Well, thanks for that mental image," Brendan said. "That's my 2013 starting with a flaccid cock,"
Ste tutted and pulled back the covers. He straddled Brendan's lap, naked. "Upgraded, ain't I? Got whiskey now." He laughed, loud and snorting. He took Brendan's glass and sipped it, before pulling a face and handing it back. "Worr you being all jealous for? Eh?" he said poking Brendan in the ribs.
"Give it a rest,"
"Mr Sulky," Ste teased, sticking out his bottom lip. He took Brendan's cock in his grip and manhandled it against his own. "That was the best New Year's Eve. Not anymore, though,"
"Oh yeah?" Brendan said, shedding the aloofness and putting the tumbler down.
"Yeah," Ste said, nodding. He pressed his hands into Brendan's thick chest hair and rocked forward and back on his hips, grinding their bodies together. He raised himself up, dragging skin against skin, all the while hovering over Brendan with his dirtiest smile and filthiest reputation.
Brendan took clutches of his arse, making white finger marks where they dug into the cheeks. He separated them and watched Ste balance and reach behind to finger himself.
"Jesus," Brendan said, hissing out the world as Ste laughed.
"You like watching, you perve," Ste said, angling forward and trapping their cocks together in a writhe to the same speed as his finger's twisting.
"And you like putting on a show." Brendan lifted his head, tore at his lip with teeth and then entered his tongue for a kiss. He pressed his finger against Ste's. "My turn," he said, growling into his ear.
"It's almost midnight," Ste said, allowing Brendan to adjust their positions, "I want you to do me,"
If he hadn't been running his palms up and down Ste's abdomen he might have rolled his eyes. "What do you think I want? A cuddle?!"
"Maybe after," Ste said, kissing Brendan's palm tenderly when he softened with a stroke of his face.
"Okay."
"Okay."
Ste's eyes pressed shut as Brendan pushed up inside him with measured control and let Ste set the initial pace, their eyes meeting.
It was midnight.
"Let's make it last, Steven," Brendan said, holding him in his arms.