The Chateau was different when it was cold. The air too still, when they were used to the shifting of summer breezes slipping from one torn-screened window to the next. Sand still skimmed the old boards of the floor, but it stuck to the bottoms of socks, picked up by curling, chilled toes rather than sifting on and off the bottoms of bare, confident feet. The windowpanes fogged around the edges by the beginnings of frost, the island world outside blurred into something a little unfamiliar.
The Chateau was meant to be a summer house, just a fishing shack on the marsh. The water drained out of its thin walls before winter, because all its heat came from the sun beating down on its splintery roof. Most of the time, that felt like more than enough.
It was built for the good times, not all the times. Until Big John had disappeared and taken the rent money with him, he and John B had an apartment in town with central heat called up from a little plastic dial on the wall. Now that the Chateau had become a year-round home for orphaned and abandoned Pogues, it felt just as cold and Dickensian as that sounded.
Then again, Kie thought, it might just feel off because there'd never been so many of them living here before. John B, since he'd ducked the latest of DCS Cheryl's attempts to find him a decent family. JJ, since he stole the Phantom for John B and his dad beat him halfway to death over it. Her, since she told her family she had not one, but two boyfriends from the Cut, and their reaction made her decide she'd rather not have a family.
Now, she hugged a beach towel tighter around her shoulders and dug through the drawer that she'd claimed for herself, trying find a single sweater that wasn't cropped so she wouldn't freeze her bellybutton clean off before January.
"Look, we got four little heaters, built right into this house." JJ's voice drifted down the hall to her, the creaking of the floor like a symphonic accompaniment to his constant pacing. "You can't tell me one good reason why we can't use 'em."
"Death," Pope's flat voice came back. "That's one pretty good reason."
"Yeah, dude." John B sounded matter-of-fact. "Why do you think people rush home when they left the stove on? It's not because it's meant to be used as a heater."
"Okay, well I'll put pots on it then." Metal clattered and Kie gave up on her search for a longer sweater and turned to the kitchen to see what was going on.
"How will that help, JJ?" Pope's voice had been getting sharper with every time the temperature dropped and it was nearly as nippy as the air at this point.
"People use stoves," JJ reasoned, his wiry shoulders hunched tight as she came up behind him. His muscles flexed as he banged another pot onto a burner and flipped it on. "If it's okay to have it on as long as you're using it, we'll just be…using it. At least until it stops being cold as balls in here."
Kie reached for him, then stumbled a little bit because the only shoes she had were flip flops and trying to wear socks was making it hard to hold on to them with her toes.
"I'm pretty sure empty pots don't decrease the fire danger," Pope argued. "Or the carbon monoxide poisoning we're all about to have."
"If it doesn't give you carbide monoxamite poisoning when you're cooking, how would it know the difference to give it to you now?" JJ spit back. "Just admit it, Pope, you don't know why we can't use the stove for heat, so we can. Done, sorted." He banged a fourth scratched pot onto the stove and cranked the last burner on high.
Kie shuffled up behind him and opened up her beach towel blanket to wrap it around him, too. The torn cotton of his hoodie was cold to the touch, and she pressed her cheek against his tight back. "Hey, hey. Don't fight, you guys."
She hated when he and Pope argued. She and JJ bickered as often as most people breathed, but he and Pope just...fit. Frictionless, nearly all the time. She'd gotten a little too used to the security of the two of them being like that, especially now that she no longer had her birth family to fall back on.
As the red line of the thermometer had dropped steadily with this last storm, she and Pope had gotten slower and slower, withdrawing to the couch and the two skimpy blankets the Chateau had left. And JJ had only started moving more, his twitchy energy filling up the whole place as he paced from room to room, trying to scrounge fixes to their latest problem out of the little they had, which was basically nothing. The bent venetian shades were snapped down over every window, sun-faded life jackets stuffed in behind them to preserve heat. Kie had to admit, they did block out a few of the draftier drafts, though they looked ridiculous.
When her lips wouldn't turn back from the bluish grey color they'd settled into last night, JJ tried to make her tea. Except they didn't have any tea, so he'd served her microwaved water spiced with pepper and old oregano. Which honestly didn't taste any more nasty than real tea, even if the oregano got stuck in her teeth. And she'd drank it to the bottom even when the pepper made her throat tickle oddly, because JJ'd made it for her. And there was something about the determined focus her blonde boyfriend got in his eyes when the Pogues were in trouble that made her heart flop as helplessly as a fresh-hooked fish.
Maybe it wasn't the pepper that'd put that tickle in her throat.
"I wouldn't have to fight if JJ weren't trying to murder us in our sleep. Carbon monoxide is the silent killer, Kie, you wouldn't even—"
"JJ's trying," she interrupted, hugging the thin towel tighter around him.
Pope hesitated, then sighed. "I know that, Kie. It's not like I don't know that, okay? But that doesn't negate science, or the toxicity of odorless chemicals."
"You're still shivering?" JJ said, as one of her tremors escaped her clamped-down muscles and traveled through him. "C'mere."
She was already koala'ed around his back, so he just dipped his knees and scooped her thighs up around him, carrying her piggy-back the way they had since they were kids and he finally got taller than her in seventh grade.
"Why are you always cuddling with her?" John B complained. "She's the coldest one here. She's useless."
"You're use-use-use—" Kie tried to snap back, but her chattering teeth betrayed her. She glared instead as JJ deposited her on the couch, then leaped onto it after her, wriggling under the layers of blankets and beach towels to curl around her.
"Cuddling with hot people makes you warmer," JJ said. "Everybody knows that."
"Ouch," John B said, unruffled. "You know, your face is nothing to write home about either, buddy."
"Notice you didn't have any complaints about my hot body." JJ puckered a kiss toward the other man. "Specially since you're the one bitching how I don't cuddle you close enough to it."
Weight hit Kie with a whoosh as John B piled on top of both her and JJ, letting in frigid drafts as he wriggled and wrestled JJ, trying to find his way under the blankets.
"No!" JJ yelped. "I already have my threesome! Go find your own girlfriend, ugly."
"You're ugly," John B said, whapping JJ with a spare pillow.
JJ flipped, getting him in a headlock so lazy it almost looked like a hug.
"You're-you-r-r-r both crap at cud—cuddling," Kie shivered.
"Dang, you really are cold," John B said, shrugging off JJ's arm. "Come here."
Both boys switched from wrestling to cooperating in a second, John B crawling in behind her and JJ warming the front, re-spreading the blankets in clean layers that crossed heaviest over her frozen feet.
"No no no!" Kie interrupted once her teeth slowed in their clacking enough to speak. "John B in front."
"That was one time," he grumbled as JJ rolled up and over her to switch spots.
"Not even one time do I want to get poked by that thing when it perks up at the wrong moment," Kie said.
"She wants to get poked by my thing instead," JJ bragged, and they both ignored him.
"Listen, I know I love Sarah, my heart knows I love Sarah, but once in a blue moon my-"
"Your dick still knows the hottest girl on the island when it sees her," JJ said smugly, nestling in against her ass and yup, they'd made the trade just in time because he was already halfway to prime poking height. For just a second, Kie wished John B had gone to the library to warm up in the free heat with Sarah, so Kie could be heating the Chateau in the way more fun way than with the stove burners.
"I'm telling Sarah you said that. You wouldn't believe how hard those skinny arms can punch," John B said.
"Why am I the only one in this house not getting cuddled?" Pope complained.
"Good question." Kie poked her head up over the frizzy drift of John B hair and waggled her eyebrows at him. "Get your tight butt over here."
He fought a smile, doing that little shifty-eyed Pope blush that she loved so much. He disappeared behind the wall of the kitchen for a second, four subtle snaps sounding one after another.
"I heard that," JJ mumbled, from where he was already half-asleep, his face burrowed into Kie's hair. It pulled a little where he was laying on it, but it made him so happy to wrap himself in it that she didn't mind.
"I'm not going to apologize for trying to keep all of us alive until New Year's." Pope came back across the room and John B immediately bear-hugged him onto the last remaining scrap of the pull-out couch. "Wait, how come I get the John B end?"
"You could all at least pretend you still love me as much as each other." John B pouted audibly. "You know, when you start dating, you're not supposed to ditch your friends. Bros before…" He hesitated, then tried, "Ho's and bros?"
Kie pinched him for calling her a ho, he arched away from the pinch and a clunk sounded as the movement dislodged Pope.
"We aren't ditching you. Demonstrably, since you just humped me right onto the floor." Pope reclaimed his spot, yanking grouchily at the very edges of all the blankets.
"We still love you best, man," JJ said easily. "We just love each other more."
"That does not even make sense, JJ," John B said.
"Nah," Kie said. "It kind of does, if you think about it." She hugged John B tighter, all his layers of Hawaiian shirt making a slick little polyester slide and zapping her with static.
"OOf," he said at the snap. "Sorry.
"Mmff," Kie mumbled, already starting to drift off.
When John B's voice woke her sometime later, her body was clammy-hot with boy-sandwich heat, her feet were still ice cold in her socks and flip-flops, her left arm was asleep where she was laying on it, and John B was hugging her right arm like it was his own personal teddy bear. Over the top of all of the blankets, Pope and JJ's hands were clasped, fingers woven tight like they didn't mind being out in the cold as long as they were with each other.
For just a second, the knot in her chest that had been there since she disowned her parents felt all the way unraveled.
"What?" she mumbled, blinking.
"We need to turn the water off," John B said. "You know the pipes are going to freeze if this shit keeps up."
"If we turn the water off, how's Kie going to pee?"
"In the woods, like the rest of you animals!" She elbowed her boyfriend, scowling. "What, like I'm too Kook to pee in the woods?"
"What about John B showering?"
This was a larger consideration that gave them all pause.
"We'll throw him in the marsh a couple times a day," JJ decided. "He'll warm back up when he's chasing us to try and get us back."
"You," John B pronounced, "are a dick. Pope's my best friend now."
"John B's right," Pope said, taking his new role as best friend seriously. "If we bust a pipe, that shit will get expensive. And wet."
"That's what she-" JJ began.
"And cold," Kie cut him off.
They all sighed.
"Fine, let's turn off the water."
The Chateau seemed a little glum once they turned off the water. No dishes—which none of them missed all that much—and no showers—which they did. It felt a little more precarious, like too much of their lives these days. So of course JJ lightened the mood by trying to warm his pipe-frozen hands on Pope's stomach, which led to his boyfriend yelping and dancing all around, until they started kissing, which made John B booo loudly and made Kie want to get in on that a little bit.
And after that JJ offered to start a campfire to keep them all warm, gamely throwing a baking pan onto the kitchen floor and grabbing an armload of wood from out back.
"Categorically no," Pope said. "What's the first thing we learn about Christmas?"
"Capitalism is king?"
"Presents are expensive?"
"Santa really does know which boys have been naughty and nice?"
This owned JJ a dirty look from Kie and a half-sad look from Pope, who prompted, "Santa comes down the…"
"Whatever, we got a chimney." JJ stepped over and flipped on the hood fan over the stove.
Which Kie considered, then shrugged in reluctant approval. Even Pope seemed to be wavering, but then John B said, "No fires inside. Do we not remember the s'mores incident of 2013?"
They did. As did the fire department. And DCS. And Linda at Great Clips, who had been stuck trying to make something of the half-singed mop of John B's hair, afterwards.
"Okay, well if we're not going to have a fire, it's too damn cold to hang around here," JJ said. "Let's decorate the Christmas tree."
"One problem…we don't have a tree."
"Or ornaments."
"That's two problems."
"I was trying to be optimistic! Glass half full and all."
"We broke the last glass last week."
"And even if we hadn't, we couldn't use it, because we don't have water to wash it."
"Hey!" JJ shouted, whirling around with his arms wide. "Listen. Are we Kooks, who need a fucking cashmere rug and an ugly painting and seventy-two goddamn degrees in every room to be happy?"
"To be completely frank, I could maybe even go for seventy-six degrees at the—" Pope muttered.
"Shut up!" JJ yelped. "Shut up shut up shut up. We're not Kooks. We don't need things. We're Pogues." He slung one arm around John B, and the other around Pope. "And each other is all we need to make a Pogue fucking Christmas."
"Well…" Kie nodded to the yard and the hammock. "We already do have a pretty great tree."
JJ beamed, his summer-colored eyes twinkling at her. "That's the damned spirit, Kie."
"But the ornaments…" Pope said weakly.
JJ took one quick-fingered hand off John B's shoulder and waggled it at Pope, grinning. "Leave that to me. How do y'all feel about a good old -fashioned heist?"
# # #
The Figure 8 turned out to be easy pickings for ornaments. People bought lots of pretty, useless shit out there, and they left a ton of it in their yards and patios, just a quick fence-hop away.
They only got chased by one dog—which was maybe the only time Kie's feet had been warm all day.
Set off two alarms—they had to hide in a bush for a while on the second, but that was okay because John B came out smelling like evergreen, thereby fixing the no-shower issue.
Got shot at by one Kook—who couldn't aim for shit, so that was fine.
Fell while climbing a balcony—Kie, but JJ caught her.
Got stuck on a fence—Pope, but JJ pulled him loose, though the pants were a loss.
Caught while stealing a patio heater—JJ, but after he gave a sob story to the old lady, she brought him in and fed him cookies.
Was mildly electrocuted while peeing on a light-up Santa—definitely John B.
By the time they made it back to the Chateau, they were all warmed up from the running and the electrocuting and sharing the crumbling cookies from JJ's cargo pockets. Shimmying up the big oak tree to hang their ill-gotten ornaments kept the glow of warmth going.
They had wicker decorative balls to hang from strings. Light up orbs fed by little solar panels to spike into the ground around the trunk. Several Santas they strapped, slung, and stapled to the big tree branches. Gauzy white curtains to wind as garland, after JJ's pocket knife cut them off a gazebo. Quite a bit of a suspicious green plant that JJ claimed was mistletoe. Pope pointed out it was actually poison oak, but not until after he'd gotten a good three or four kisses out of the mistaken identity.
When it was all done, all four Pogues stood in a line with their arms around each other's waists, enjoying the lights that spiraled out each branch of the oak tree and lit up the full collection of their ill-gotten ornaments.
"See, we don't need central heat to make a real Christmas," JJ said triumphantly. "We just need—"
The Christmas lights all went off.
"Um, John B, when was the electric due this month?"
"That would be today. Apparently."
JJ coughed, tried to pluck up to another speech, then sagged a little. "Shit."
Kie and Pope swapped a glance, their eyes already adjusting to the dark, from long practice.
"We don't need a house with actual heat to make a real Christmas," Pope began.
"Or parents," Kie added.
"Or an overpriced pine tree that Barry definitely cut down from the vacant lot on Thirty-Second Street, before selling it in another vacant lot on Forty-First," John B said, getting into the spirit of things.
"We just need JJ," Pope said, firmly.
Their boyfriend perked up, his blonde hair flopping, his blue eyes a little surprised.
"To stab our fingers trying to glue fishing hooks onto the ornaments so we can hang them," John B said.
"That was one time, you big baby, and we wouldn't be out of Band-Aids if you hadn't-"
"And get us arrested stealing ornaments."
"And get us un-arrested with some ridiculous story about raccoon rabies."
"Look, it couldn't have been that ridiculous if it worked, and you're welcome, by the way."
Kie squeezed his waist and gave him a soft little shake to shut him up—which didn't work at all—and a soft little side-eyed smile, which worked a whole lot better.
"We needed JJ," she said, "to never, never give up on us. Until we remembered how to not give up too."
"Which is the real meaning of having Christmas in the middle of winter," Pope said. "If you think about it."
John B's stomach rumbled. "Though some more of those cookies wouldn't hurt." He grinned. "If you think about it."