Night between December 24 and 25 of 3644

"Very well, I know you're all eager to start our festivities, but we should finish this first." Gregory said, smoothing out the tips of an unrolled map on the ground. The map had big marks in different colors, showing the possible routes that we could take to the small clandestine airport in Denver and the train station. "Does anyone have any questions?"

"Okay, let me see if I get it." Clyde said in his usual nasal, confused tone, sticking his index finger up his ear to remove the wax. Jesus, Clyde. Cartman let out a mocking laugh along with some insult to Clyde's intelligence, but I didn't pay him enough attention to actually hear it. "So we're not going all together?"

"That's right. We split into four groups that will go out in different times on January 1th. Some of you are going with me, others are going with Mole, another group goes with Trent and the last group goes with Nichole." He used the tip of his pen to press on the paper with a Professor attitude, even though he wasn't writing anything. "Do you all understand? But it's necessary that all of you know at least how to get at to the train station by yourselves, we don't know what might happen on the way there. The most important thing is that most of us get to the airport at 5 pm on the 1th. Our guy won't be able to wait more than that."

The plan was simple and effective: We would leave South Park to join forces with the Monarchs of New York. Gregory properly introduced Trent and Nichole with every formality that night and said that, from the next year on, we'd be part of a larger thing. I didn't understand exactly what he meant by "larger thing" at that time. Of course, moving at least forty people to the other side of the country didn't seem like a simple thing to do, especially when those faces were marked as traitors, but Gregory was telling us that, with a little bit of luck and the right friends, we could manage. He knew an airplane pilot who had a small and perfectly legalized private airport that provided services with small airplanes that couldn't take more than ten people at a time, but he was willing to perform illegal work for the right amount of cash. And he knew other pilots willing to do the job. Help doesn't always come through the spirit to fight for freedom. We would travel on the first day of the year, when the streets were completely empty and no commercial establishment was open. The iron sappers' patrol also decreased considerably and there were no human sappers working that day.

It felt like a decent plan. I couldn't fucking wait to leave South Park, although my heart always throbbed in pain at the memory of my brother and the thought of leaving him behind.

Taking a train should be a last resort, because that would take much longer and it'd be much more dangerous, but Gregory liked to think of all the things that could possibly go wrong, and he was right in doing so. At that moment, I couldn't even imagine how important that would later be.

This girl started to sob super loudly, looking like she wasn't really paying much attention to anything they were saying. Another girl was holding her tight, laying her head against her shoulder as she smoothed her hair.

"What is it, Beth?" Gregory asked with certain impatience, but keeping his professorial way. He always sounded like he was talking to children, especially in this kind of meetings.

The girl taking care of Beth – this beautiful Asian chick whose name I could never remember – smiled a little sad and answered for her. "It's alright, Gregory. She just really misses her family."

This melancholic feeling seemed to be taking over each and every one of us, that could be noticed from the moment we woke up that morning; that could be expected since it was Christmas eve. This added to the fact that most of us hadn't gone home in over a month and, most of all, the fact that we would leave our hometown in a week and had no idea when or even if we would see our families again. It was understanding that none of us was having a particularly merry Christmas.

"Gosh, poor Beth." Bebe said, stopping right next to me. "I get her so well. Sometimes I miss my mom so bad I think I won't be able to take it."

"Look, guys." Gregory said. "I understand that you want to return to the city and make your farewells during this week. And that's fine. But Standing O which are cautious, they know they can trust, didn't commit anything stupid. Each of you is s have a responsibility to this group.

"Look, guys." Gregory said. "I get it, a lot of you want to go back to the city and say your goodbyes this week. That's all well and good. But I need to ask you to be cautious, know who you can trust, don't make anything reckless or stupid. Each of you has a responsibility to this group."

His words sounded very distant to me because my attention was still on Bebe, her immense sad eyes causing this almost hypnotic effect on me. Her blond curls were dull and lifeless, falling on her shoulders.

"Don't you think about going back home?" I asked. "You're not obliged to go with us."

"Oh God. No, I could never look at myself in the mirror again if I did that." She looked down at her own feet. Bebe was wearing purple socks. "But I'd really like to know if she's okay, at least. She's not a well woman."

'Not well' would be an understatement, from what I could tell. Bebe's mother was a very sick woman, and I don't mean the diseases of the flesh. I mean those that consume one's brain until they don't know where they are or even who they are anymore. Bebe sold her own body because her mother had no condition to work. Now, without her only child, it was impossible to know how that old lady would continue to live. There has never been a father in Bebe's life. She was a daughter of the wind, her mother said. Years later, Bebe would come to discover that her poor mother had been put under the care of a neighbor newsmonger for a few of years. For reasons that would remain unknown forever, her mom got up from her bed in the middle of a summer night in 3647, took all her clothes off and entered the lake. Thus, she drowned. But for now, Bebe only hopes for the best. We didn't know any of this yet. It hadn't happened.

"I'm making eggnog tonight." She told me with a smile, refusing that ghost of guilt that seemed to anchor deep inside her a few seconds before. "I love Christmas. It's a shame that there isn't a lot of decoration, right?"

She took her hand off her brown wool poncho to caress my arm before going to the kitchen. The meeting was over.

Our small celebration did involve Christmas lights we had found in the house's attic (which, surprisingly, still worked), a wild turkey that Craig had killed with a shotgun, potato salad and too much alcohol. Kenny also found a banjo in the attic, out of tune and with two chords missing, but even so, he was especially excited to sing Christmas carols. It was easy to ignore all the shit with festive disguises. Funny how the holidays awake something strange in us, even if my family didn't celebrate Christmas, nor Hanukkah, which would be of our tradition. The whole thing had lost its religious connotation long ago, if it ever had one, but the holidays continued to be a symbolic time about union and family. And those people with whom I spent Christmas of 44 became my family.

What became impossible to ignore was the cold.

Token and Clyde spent twenty minutes trying to light the fireplace. The house's heating system didn't work and the amount of coats for this time of year was rather limited. We all walked around the house wrapped in crappy blankets, especially when we sat near the fire. It was all really fucking cozy. Stan was wrapped in a beige blanket which he opened for me to hide in there with him, saying "C'mere."

His warmth was so comfortable. He had warm blood, his skin was like a furnace. It felt so good to sleep near him in those terrible days the temperature dropped under zero. It was like we were recovering, little by little, the closeness of a lifetime that made us to spoon to sleep when we were teenagers, even when we were just friends. I don't know if we were ever "just friends" at some point. Things were getting better between the two of us. We had sex almost every afternoon in the intimacy of our bedroom, when Kenny and Cartman were occupying other parts of the house. The door had no lock and Kenny caught us a few times underneath the blankets, my face buried on the pillow and Stan's hard cock completely inside me while he hugged me from behind or beside. Fortunately, with Kenny, it wasn't so awkward. He went out almost immediately, which always made me and Stan laugh our asses off, although we didn't stop fucking. For a long time, that kind of intimacy hadn't felt so natural. Throughout the month of December, it was like the fight hadn't even existed, as if we were disconnected from the rest of the world and there was nothing but the two of us. I loved him and that was enough. It felt sufficient.

I snuggled with him under the blanket. Stan turned his face to me and smiled in his shy way, letting his hand wander through my hair. Leaning over to kiss him was instinctive, because he was already so close and this was my natural movement. He brought his hand to my face and slightly parted his lips to fit them in mine. It wasn't a French kiss, although my tongue did brush lightly on his teeth.

It didn't last long. Once the kiss was over, he smiled at me. I could see a melancholy concern growing in the dark blue of his iris.

"You okay?" He asked, as I knew he would. Many times I could guess what he was thinking even before he'd open his mouth.

"I think so. It's just a little scary. I have no idea how it's going to be out there."

"Me neither." So, diverting his gaze to Nichole, who looked so beautiful with that cream white sweater, talking to Token. She and Trent were the closest thing we had to understand how the Monarchs worked. Stan chuckled. "They don't talk much, do they? But it's gonna be fine." He assured, knowing that it probably wasn't true. This was a sublime skill Stan had. He didn't spend time and energy worrying about things he could not predict or change. This was not a common feature in many revolutionaries; we tended to be megalomaniac.

So, we began to drink. Bebe's eggnog was one of the most delicious things I had ever tasted in my whole life, but what really got to me that night was the cheapest bottle of rose wine that mostly tasted like some disgusting watery strawberry juice. Even the color was suspicious, a transparent baby pink, but it didn't matter to me because it was the first time in so long that we felt like we had reason to celebrate. In fact, we didn't. But we invented one that night. It wasn't a holiday with a festive Christmas atmosphere, but a celebration to the sadness and all the shit in life because we were tired of mourning. Only the Christmas lights were lit, creating this penumbra that transported us to another world, another dimension away from the reality of South Park, of oppression, of hungry people. That night, we weren't fighters, we weren't revolutionaries, we were nothing but a bunch of young fools, drunkards laughing of the world's doom.

I spent most of the night lying on the cushions thrown on the floor with Stan underneath the blanket, inhaling his scent, stealing his warmth, sharing the same cup with him. Near us, Kenny (very poorly) played the banjo, singing 'Jingle Bells' and 'Let it snow' several times because he couldn't remember how to play any other Christmas carol. For fuck's sake, Kenny. He made me laugh so hard. Pip also sat with us, wearing short pants that left his shins fully exposed. Worried, I offered him some warmer clothes, but he smiled and said it was all good. My chest ached a little because I recognized that tone of voice, the same one Bebe also had. It meant 'it's been like this my whole life, I'm used to the cold.'

Near the window, I saw Wendy and Bebe standing, facing each other, their silhouette forming a beautiful picture in contrast with the dark scenery of the forest outside, that could be seen through the glass. Wendy pulled away the locks of hair that over Bebe's face using both hands, then leaned forward and kissed her. I felt something warm inside me that forced me to smile. It could have been the wine. Bebe brought her light hands to Wendy's arms to hold her without untangling their bodies too much, the corners of her mouth rising in the midst of their shy kiss. I poked Stan so he'd see it too.

"Oh, my God." He spoke low to my ear, smiling even wider than I was. "That's the cutest shit."

Token also joined us, taking the banjo from Kenny, teasing him, seeming much lighter than usual. I rarely saw him making any sort of joke, even though I had known him since childhood. Token was raised to be very stern and didn't smile a lot, but when he did, it was fucking beautiful.

"Gimme that, white boy. Let me show you how it's done."

Kenny was so excited about someone actually willing to sing with him that he completely forgot to be offended. Knowing Kenny, he probably wouldn't have taken offense anyway. Token played with much more skill, but there was no fucking way to get a beautiful sound out of such an old fucked up instrument. In contrast, Token had a gorgeous voice and came up with much slower songs, most of them unknown to me. That only served to put us in a more melancholy set, which seemed to make the night exactly what it should be. We needed that. We needed to embrace the sadness. Wendy and Bebe joined us, as well as Trent with a bottle of vodka and three more people whose faces I was familiar with, but we had never exchanged a single word.

At some point, I left the warmth of our nest to go to the bathroom. The downstairs one was busy, so I went to the top floor. Going through the dark hallway, I heard a strange noise. It sounded like a squeezed weeping. There was only one room with lights on, the door ajar. I slowed down my steps to get closer to the door. It wasn't even intentional, just a body's response.

"Why are you being such a dick about this?!" I heard. It was Clyde.

Through the doorway, I could see Craig's figure standing with a dark blue flannel shirt, looking agitated as fuck, his feet restlessly. He ran both hands through his black hair, looking at who I assumed to be Clyde, but couldn't see from that angle. Craig was visibly upset.

"Because you're fucking retarded! You can't see the shit that's right there in your fucking face!"

Listening to Craig's voice sounding so out of control gave me shivers down my spine. I remembered very vaguely of Craig's voice going mad in the night that… The night I, myself, was going mad while listening to Christophe scream in the other room. That whole night was a blur in my memory, but Craig's screaming voice was still very vivid in the back of my mind, as well as Clyde's cries. All of that was still written in my flesh, the feeling still throbbed in my stomach. For a moment, I was back to that night. My stomach ached. What broke the immersion was the sound of something breaking inside the room. I found myself alone in that cold empty hallway, in complete darkness, my heart racing because of things that weren't even real, not anymore. That's what made me keep on walking. Whatever was happening in there was none of my business, as curious as it made me.

Any good observer could perceive that the discussion had something to do with the fact that Clyde looked at Bebe with eyes of a little school boy under the spell of an untouchable teacher and Craig was eaten alive by his own jealousy, but couldn't say it. Because Clyde didn't know, couldn't even dream that his best friend desired him in silence.

But like I said, it was none of my business.

After taking a piss and going back downstairs, I came across one of the most beautiful scenes I had ever seen my whole life: Kenny, with his torn voice, and Token, with his deep voice, and Wendy, with her sweet voice, all singing Silent Night together. Token was hugging the banjo, not playing it anymore, looking at the other two fellows with wet eyes. He didn't sing every part, but whispered the lyrics once in a while, closing his eyes for long seconds, lonely tears marking his cheek. He didn't bother to wipe them off.

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace

Butters' smiling face invaded my mind.

No one else said anything, everyone had stopped talking to simply watch them sing. And the circle of people seemed to have grown. The group was under a veil of nostalgia, a pinch of small sadness that would never leave each one of us ever again. Even the colors looked lighters under the Christmas lights that bathed us all. Even so, there lived a bit of hope. Bebe wept in silence, then dried the tears from her red face, but she looked peaceful. The sadness in that room was peaceful. Then I realized that we were no longer children.

I stood there for a while at the bottom of the stairs, just watching, still holding the handrail. My eyes crossed with Stan's and he smiled, looking so lazy, blinking slowly. I smiled back.

I would keep this moment with me through everything that would happen after. It was the calm before the storm, I could already feel it inside my chest. We had no idea how destructive and violent this storm would be, and it's good that we didn't, because then we had a few more days of tranquility.

Like every magical moments, it ended too quickly. Then came the supper, which we had on the floor and there wasn't plenty of food for everyone, but it was a significant gesture.

Christophe had spent the entire night hidden, but that's also how he 'd spent the entire month. I found out he was on the balcony. Gregory was there with him most of the time, but came inside by himself to eat. I saw Christophe when Gregory opened the door to enter; he was sitting on the steps of the balcony with his back to the door and a bottle of rum at his side, his face slightly turned to the side, staring at the ground with a vacant look, distant, as if he wasn't seeing what was right in front of him. And it wasn't until actually putting my eyes on him for the first time in over a week that i realized how much I fucking missed him. The longing was eating me inside. During those seconds the door was left open, I wished more than anything that he'd turn back, just so I could at least take a good look at his face once again.

I wanted to ask Gregory if Christophe wouldn't have something to eat, but I couldn't. Because since our last conversation outside, with the ax and the wood, I finally got it. I understood that leaving him alone also meant to stop trying to take care of him. At that point, I still believed it was possible to cut him out my life. What a stupid idea.

It had been a month since I'd last heard his voice. I diverted my gaze to avoid making eye contact, I didn't speak when we were in the same room, I tried to not exist around him. And by God, how it burned. I put my hand on my abdomen and I closed my eyes for a second. It was his coldness that tore me apart more than anything. And I tried to convince myself every day that it was for the best, that it was the only option, that whatever we once had had gotten completely out of hand. We hurt each other. I hurt him. And most of the time, I was okay. I was okay under daylight, I was okay around Stan, I was genuinely where I wanted to be. I was okay.

Except when I remembered him. When those calloused hands appeared in my mind. When those honey color eyes appeared in my dreams. So, for one second or a little more than that, I was not okay. But it passed. It always passed.

"Hey." Kenny called me, placing his hand on my knee. "Everything alright there?"

I smiled, but he knew I had no desire to smile. Kenny always knew.

"I'm fine." Then, lifting my glass, I said "Merry Christmas, Kenny."

He kissed me on the top of my head and my smile became genuine.

It was 02:34 pm and the whole house was asleep. Well, maybe not the whole house. There were some lights on upstairs and a few people were still talking, preparing to sleep, but downstairs, there wasn't a single living soul left other than me. Or that's what it looked like. Little by little, the house became silent. Stan had dozed off on my shoulder near one in the morning, as he usually did when he had one too many drinks, so I took him upstairs and tucked him in as if he were a little boy. It took him a while to let go of me, smiling with his eyes closed, and I smile as I remembered that while cleaning the kitchen. Gregory and Wendy had been with me until a few minutes before, but the cleaning was practically done, minus a few dirty dishes in the sink. I told them to go to sleep, which was only fair, since they did much of the cooking while I just drank eggnog. We had a good system for community work in that house, and when we left, I would miss the feeling of home we had developed during our time there.

All the lights in the living room and outside were already off. The only source of light was a small lamp standing on the kitchen counter. I enjoyed the silence; or better, I liked the sound of water running from the tap. It was horribly cold, as well as my hands, but I had already accepted that I wouldn't be able to get warm before climbing upstairs to the warm bed that expected me, then I'd steal some of Stan's warm. At the time, he should already be drooling on the pillow.

There was a noise. It was the sound of the front door opening, but combined with something else, like something heavy hitting against the wall. I frowned, turning to look over my shoulder, holding cooking pot that began to fill with water. For a few seconds, there was nothing. I turned off the tap to listen better. My ears were already so trained to the alert of any suspicious noise, and immediately, adrenaline started to build up inside me. But I didn't move. For some reason, I felt that the sounds would be very different if the military had found us. It wouldn't be so… Awkward. Someone who's going for a night attack doesn't want to be discovered. Then what the fuck was that?

I heard footsteps, but they sounded so uneven, as if someone tripped over something in the living room. I turned my torso toward the door, still holding the pot with my wet hand and the other lost in air, awake, ready for whatever would come. I just waited. The sound ceased. Maybe someone had climbed up the stairs drunk out of their minds or just passed out on the cushions thrown on the floor. As soon as I released the air from my lungs, relaxing my muscles, a silhouette appeared in the kitchen door when I was about to turn around. And despite the dim light, it was very easy to recognize that body.

Maybe I honestly would've preferred to have seen a military man at that moment instead of Christophe's piss drunk figure as he leaned against the doorway, raising an arm for support, his head hanging a little forward, mouth ajar, eyes so alive that they almost burned me. The dense shadow covering that corner of the kitchen made him look much more intimidating than he would under the light of day. And, unlike all other interactions that we'd had in the last month, he was looking directly at me. As if there were nothing else in that kitchen.

By instinct, I diverted my gaze and turned my attention back to the pot in the sink, though I couldn't even see the fucking thing anymore because my vision was blurred. I was still not completely sober. I grabbed the edge of the pot so hard because I needed to hold on something. I shut my eyes right away. Took a deep breath. Turned on the tap again. Breathed deeply one more times. Opened my eyes. Stretched my arm to get the wet sponge, already soaked with detergent, and squeezed it with my other hand, feeling the liquid and foam dripping down my fingers. Everything was moving slowly. Painfully slow.

I could still feel him behind me, could still feel his gaze burning on my back, I could feel his breath even though he was a few feet away from me. My heart was beating so hard between my ribs that I thought it could put a fucking hole on my chest. I shivered, bringing my hand from the pot to my own chest, pinching the fabric of my sweatshirt without measuring the strength of my fingers, leaving black marks of moisture on the fabric. And everything throbbed. Everything pulsed even stronger with each step I heard him take, those fucking drunk steps he took on the kitchen ice cold floor, the sound of those boots that I knew so well. I couldn't open my eyes, simply couldn't, and perhaps the loss of vision had made my other senses go impossibly more sensitive.

Even though I could predict all of this before it happened, nothing in this world could have prepared me for his breath touching my the nape of my neck, sending shivers all through my body and my nipples with just one breath of alcohol, while his fucking broad hard chest touched my back without any boundary, any regard for the stupid rules of conduct that we had set during the day, which did not seem to make any sense now that it was just the two of us in that dark kitchen. And I got immediately hard, just from that, just from the warmth of his skin that I could feel so well, even with those thick fabrics separating us, and that animal breath invading me precisely through the back of my neck, this fragile opening to the body. A low moan came out from me when his hand, so rude, so talented, so delicate, that hand made its way underneath the edge of my sweatshirt and found direct contact to the skin of my belly. And I seethed. I seethed so much.

"What are you…?" I whispered, opening my eyes, trying to break the trance. But I couldn't. My voice was weak and breathless. "What are you doing?"

I turned my face a bit to the side, a hand still inside the pot, the other one squeezing the sponge as hard as my muscles would let me. I almost grit my teeth to contain this giant thing growing inside of me, and no matter how low the temperatures outside were, no matter how cold the water was, I was covered in sweat. It was so hard to breathe, as if I was inside a fucking steam room, a completely shut place, trapped by this body behind me that felt so much bigger and so much warmer and so…

His hand went up, sliding over my skin, while his face was approaching mine and his nose and lips brushed over my cheek as he hugged me tighter from behind. I could feel it in his touch that he wasn't completely lost in it, he still knew how wrong this was. He touched me like I was something sacred, something he shouldn't be touching, which was prohibited. And it felt so good.

"Christophe." I whispered again, my eyelids weighing, my hands shaking, my control dissipating in thin air. "Please…"

"I won't do anything." He murmured very close to my cheek, the heat of his speech making love to my skin, and then he licked his lips. I wasn't looking, but could see him anyway. With every pore of my body. I could feel that primitive look that devoured me, and at the same time, there was so much pain and affection wrapped in the same mass that pulsed inside him exactly as inside me, as if our hearts were beating exactly at the same pace by divine work. "I won't do anything…" He repeated, closing his eyes, which was a relief. Startled by the proximity of our faces, I returned to look ahead, my head leaning forward, my eyes fixed on the pot that was now overflowed with water and I hadn't even realized it, because I had never turned the pat off. "I just need a little bit of this… To feel you just a little. Please, just let me... Just for a minute."

And as much as I knew he would never say these things if he were sober, there was something so sane in his low tone, something so honest, as if he was whispering to me a secret that he couldn't even admit to himself. Suddenly, all my muscles relaxed and my heart was no longer beating in distress. It felt comfortable instead, as if that hug was my home. And it couldn't be. I had my lips parted, an expression of ecstasy, almost erotic, a feeling so intense that I'd never felt before, not even having sex. I could feel his cock pressed against me, as rigid as mine, but there was no invasion. He wasn't violating me.

He lowered his head until his forehead touched the nape of my neck. Now, his face was pressed on the top of my back, the heat of his warm breath entering through the neck of my sweatshirt and his hand squeezing me with distressing strength, his arms enveloping me with such force that it was almost hard to breathe.

"I miss you so fucking much." He mumbled, and that made me drop the sponge because all the strength suddenly left my hands. My eyes burned, tears wanted to come out, and i just let them, I lacked the strength to control the damn storm that happened inside of me.

But the presence of another person in the kitchen rescued us from this other dimension where only the two of us existed. And before I knew it, before I even had the time to get startled, his heat left me and his hand no longer laid over my skin, but somehow, it felt like it was still there. I had to support my own weight by leaning on the sink so I wouldn't fall when Christophe released me abruptly, and at the same time, Craig showed up in my field of vision, approaching the fridge, not allowing our presence to interfere in whatever it was that he came to do.

Without saying a word, Christophe rubbed his own face like his head hurt and took a few steps back, leaving the kitchen as if he had never been there.

And I was frozen. Dumbfounded. My body was still seeking for the deep feeling of that hand touching my belly, the heat lingering on my skin. I started groping at marble of the sink to turn the tap off when I realized that water could overflow. I swallowed hard, taking a harsh breath, rubbing my own hot face with my cold hands while Craig opened the fridge to grab a small glass bottle containing water.

When I heard the sound of the fridge door shutting, I turned to him and realized that he was staring at me with his black eyes.

"It's not…" I scratched my own head, confused, still not fully back to reality. "It's not what it seems, Craig."

"It's none of my business. I don't give a shit." He said with honesty, shrugging with genuine disinterest. I couldn't even tell if that was a relief or not. For a second, the presence of another person at that intimate moment gave me an indescribable feeling of relief within the chest, as if now I was pushed to recognize what I just couldn't. But when I woke up the next day, I'd certainly be relieved that those seconds on our Christmas night were no more than a drunk weak moment that none of us would want to talk about. Finally, Craig said "I'm not gonna tell."

When he turned to walk toward the door, his empty eyes remained stuck in my mind. And the image of him in the room a few hours earlier, the weak tone of his voice, the lack of vitality in his face led me to ask without thinking. "Hey. Are you okay?"

He stopped a moment to look at me over his shoulder. His feet came to a stop. His expression completely blank. Craig didn't answer me, just walked out of the kitchen. And just like Christophe, I felt that he had left something behind.