Kailor: Hola, my awesome nerds! If you're coming over from my other story, Stained Glass, hello and welcome! I try to post every day or every few days, depending on life's craziness lol.
So I was thinking, we don't have any gay Christmas movies. Like, none? So, screw that. We're making our own! Hope you enjoy and happy holidays!
Beca kicks the door shut and toes off her boots, groaning. Winter is her least favorite season. It's too cold for her favorite t-shirts, too wet for her favorite Converse, and too fucking rough on her immune system. She always gets sick when the cold rolls in—only for a few days usually, but it's still the worst. Probably should have eaten more dirt as a kid.
And then there's the Christmas music. God, she hates Christmas music. Christmas is great. It's her second favorite holiday after Thanksgiving. Presents and pretty lights and that weird sense of kindness that suddenly comes over everyone as soon as Halloween ends. But the music? She's pretty sure her own personal hell would be her, trapped alone in her old high school's detention room with no food, Mrs. Braimah writing on the board with that one piece of chalk that always screeched, and just Christmas music playing on a loop for eternity.
She bats away some of the tinsel that's come loose and hangs in her face as she makes her way to the couch. She had only halfheartedly stuck it to the ceiling with scotch tape after Stacie's fifteenth rant about decorating, but it still annoys her that it isn't staying the hell up and out of her way. Her bag thumps onto the coffee table and she collapses with a sigh and a hacking cough that feels like it tears out part of her lungs on the way up. "Fucking holiday traffic, dude," she rasps, sniffling.
"Tell me about it," Jax huffs through a mouthful of poptart. He's still wearing his school uniform even though it's well after nightfall. His dark hair is starting to curl around his ears and she makes a mental note to ask Stacie to cut it again.
She stares at the crumbs on his shirt until he notices. "Is that the last pack?"
Jax stares back, chewing slowly. He moves a throw pillow to cover the half empty pack in his lap. "...No."
"Jerk." Beca kicks his feet off the coffee table and he yelps. The poptart pack and the pillow slide to the floor with his feet.
He flumps back, staring down at the broken chocolate chunks. "Now neither of us gets it. Are you happy now?"
"Little bit."
He closes his eyes and drops his head back, looking so much like their dad for a second that she almost wants to pull out her phone and take a picture. But her phone's in her back pocket and she really doesn't want to move right now. Moving hurts. And she's not really much for that sentimental shit anyways. So she just stares at him instead, at the small crescent scar under his right eye.
"Are you doing the 'You look like Dad' stare again?" He doesn't open his eyes but his lips twitch up.
"No." She looks away. "Just feeling a little guilty that I got all the good genes and no one will ever like you."
Jax lunges forward to grab the pillow off the floor and slam it into her face. Her already aching, pressure-filled face. When she recovers, rubbing her nose, she finds him smirking. "We both know I got the good genes and the good personality."
She rolls her eyes, because he's right about that last bit. She's heard it a lot over the years, that their parents were like copy machines. Jax has Beca's dark hair and dark blue eyes, her pale skin, and even the same little triangle of freckles on his left shoulder. And she had gotten all of those things from their father, along with his dry humor and inability to wake up early. But Jax got their mother's easy smile and knack for drawing a crowd. It's sort of annoying, to have to stop with him every few feet in the grocery store so he can say hi to this person or that one that he knows. She's not even sure where he meets all of them. They just pop up and he knows their names and she usually lolls about in the background until he's taken too long and she moves on to continue shopping, forcing him to follow.
But that's Jax and she loves him. Even if he always eats the last poptart pack.
"I made you some soup, Sicko." He points to a bowl on the kitchen island that she hadn't noticed before.
"Really? Dude, thanks." With a groan that feels like it pulls all the way up from her cold toes, she gets up and moves over to the island. The bowl is empty. "Where's the soup?"
"I got hungry."
She glares at him as she moves the bowl to the sink, coughing into her elbow. "Okay, so you ate my soup and the last poptart?"
"I'm a growing boy, B." He stretches out, as if to show her. But, just like her, he barely takes up any space on the couch.
Beca sniffles. "I hate to tell you this, but look at the family photo, dude. No you're not." He throws her a glare as she moves for the hallway, rubbing her nose with her sleeve. "I'm going to bed. We've got a long drive tomorrow."
"You've got a long drive tomorrow," he corrects, voice cracking softly in the middle. "I've got a long nap tomorrow."
"Not with Stacie in the car, you don't."
"Ugh, good point." He hops up and shuts off the lights, running down the hall after her. He shoulder checks her in the side as he passes and she spins to slug him in the back. He grunts in pain, but laughs around it.
She clears her throat, feeling like her head is filled with cotton balls that are threatening to melt out of her nose. "Night, Junior."
Jax lopes back down the hall and leans in, letting her bump the side of her head against his forehead. Their mom was the hugger. "Night. Take some medicine or something. You're gross." He pretends to gag and wipes at his arms and chest dramatically, giving a full-body shiver.
She smacks him again and leaves him laughing in the dark hall, rubbing his chest.
"Wake up call for Thing One and Thing Two! Why are there poptarts on the floor?" Stacie's voice echoes down the hall and through Beca's shut door, making her throbbing head pound even harder. She groans, burrowing deeper into her blankets. It's too early. It's too bright. It's too morning. She can't breathe through her nose at all and she just wants to sleep until she's not sick anymore.
Her door knob rattles and she ignores it, working her way back toward oblivion. She vaguely registers Jax's sleepy voice and Stacie singing something that sounds country. Sleep almost has her back when the door bangs into the wall, startling her back awake, and Stacie sings, "I feel it in my fingers! I feel it in my toes!"
Beca buries her face in her pillow and screams to drown her out.
"Becs, don't be a Grinch! Come on!" Hands start beating on her back and Jax is laughing somewhere. And she hates them both. "Christmas is all around me—"
"Go away!" Beca grunts, blindly kicking toward Stacie's singing. She misses and suddenly her blanket is gone and there are hands on her ankles, dragging her down to the end of the bed. Her shirt rides up and cold air hits her back. Twisting, she yanks her shirt down and kicks Stacie's hands off.
Stacie, tall and gorgeous and already completely dressed and made up for the day, grins down at her. "Good morning, beautiful."
"Fuck you."
"Not in front of the children, Becs!" Stacie grabs Jax, slapping her hands over his ears. His hair is standing up every direction and there's still the wrinkled imprint of his pillow in his cheek, but he's grinning. "He's barely nine years old!"
"I'm fifteen!"
Beca sits up, a rattling cough dragging through her sore throat and leaving her limbs aching hollowly. "How did you get in here?" She looks at her bedroom door, which she knows she locked. She always locks it.
Jax holds up a bobby pin. "I picked the lock."
Stacie pats his hair fondly. "I raised him so well."
She thinks about arguing that, but really, Stacie did have a big hand in it for a while there. So she just shoos them both out of her room so she can get dressed. She can hear them puttering about in the kitchen as she tugs a sweater over her head and digs around for a scarf. It's a very small walk from the door to the car, but cold is cold and Beca is not having it today.
When she finally joins them in the kitchen, Jax is dressed, his hair perfectly fixed, and he's eating cereal with one of their giant cooking spoons for some reason. He slides a bowl toward her as she sits beside him.
She pointedly glances down into it. "Oh my god. There's food in it."
He rolls his eyes in a perfect imitation of her.
Stacie—who Beca assumes has probably already had breakfast, taken a run around the block, and done yoga or some shit—is moving around the house, turning off lights and grabbing any last minute essentials Beca or Jax may have forgotten to pack. "Alright, where are your stockings?" She drops a bundle of clean laundry on the counter, sorting through it.
"In my bag," Jax says. "All the Christmas stuff is."
"Okay, good. I knew your sister wouldn't think of it."
"Duh. She's an idiot."
Beca kicks him under the counter and he chokes, spitting milk everywhere.
Carefully folding the items she's selected to bring along for them, Stacie glances at her phone. "Okay, pack it in. If we hit the road quick enough, we can stop in Fernwood for hamburger steaks and still make it to Scarlet Peak before nightfall."
The thought of Fernwood's hamburger steaks has both Beca and Jax quickly slurping down the rest of their food. He cleans up the mess he's made of the counter while she pulls on her boots and Stacie jingles the keys around, humming merrily. Beca wraps her arms around her box of tissues, slouching against the door as they wait for him.
"You sound like death," Stacie says.
"You sound like a bitch."
Beca was right about the walk to the car being hell. It's freezing outside and wet-neither of which are good for her nose or aching throat. By the time she's settled into the passenger seat of Stacie's Galant, covered in extra blankets and a Walmart bag of tissue boxes, her nose feels even more stuffed than before and she turns the heater all the way up, willing it to kick in quickly.
Jax runs over to leave a spare house key with Mr. and Mrs. Leith, in case of emergency. He's halfway into the backseat, settling pretty much on top of their bags, when he stops. "Wait, Bec. Dad's candles."
She twists in her seat to squint over her thick scarf at him. "I thought I was the idiot who forgot to pack the Christmas stuff," she jokes, sniffing.
He shrugs and quietly says, "Dad always packed them."
It aches in a completely different way than the throbbing in her head and rattle in her chest does, but she swallows it down a little easier. Stacie carefully taps a knuckle on Beca's thigh and she's glad she's there for the first time that morning. "I know, Junior. Go grab 'em, quick. Bring me a coke."
"Get your own coke, dude." Like nothing had happened, he grins and slips out of the car before she can hit him. She watches him hop back through their tracks in the snow and sighs.
"This is gonna fucking suck."
Stacie taps her leg again and switches on the radio. "All I Want For Christmas" starts playing and Beca groans, sinking down into her miserable little nest of blankets and tissue boxes. They haven't even left for this trip yet and she's already regretting it.
