Page 44 of Missiletoe
But I wanted to be gentle and give Paris all of the good things in life. I wanted it so very goddamned bad. For the first time in my life, I’d met someone who wasn’t Baz who I wanted to give the world to.
And fuck if it didn’t scare me half to death.
That kind of want was foreign to me, and it probably should have pile- driven me back into sleepland, but instead, I was wide awake and hanging onto Paris’s mitten-covered hand with all the power my small body possessed.
Paris smiled down at me and asked, “Hot chocolate?”
“Fuck yes!” I chirped, but then I remembered my manners and added, “Please.”
Gareth would have been so proud of me. If he wasn’t planning my murder for running away twice in one day, I mean.
Gareth is basically the best of us. When it comes to actually managing to give a shit about others, he is miles ahead of us. He seems like he isn’t, but I’m pretty sure that’s only macho garbage.
I’m probably next in line for giving a shit. Like, I keep meaning to come up with more ideas to help people in order to counter some of the shady stuff I make. I really do! But then I get distracted by something and months will go by before I remember that I haven’t done anything on the good guy front.
That’s when I dump a ton of money on a charity like the Trevor Project. Then I get back to finding ways to help my family hurt people more effectively or get away with murder easily.
Sometimes people just need a good, hard killing. Gareth seems to think it makes a difference in the world and that it will even things out in the long run.
But me? I don’t believe there is some white-bearded sky daddy out there counting out every little thing I’ve done right or wrong. I think that after we each take our final bow, we get to be the ones to decide if we are okay with how things have gone in our lives.
What that means for the maybe-sociopaths in my family who don’t have much access to feelings, I’m not sure. It’s possible they’ll get a do-over in another life, and they can figure stuff out then.
But I digress. Out of all of us, I think Gareth feels the most things. And not just exhausted frustration. Like, I think he really actually cares about people—even the ones he doesn’t know. Isn’t that wild?
Just…maybe don’t tell him I said that. Because if I’m wrong, he’s gonna tear me a new asshole, and I really only need the one.
I don’t want to hurt people, but I also don’t think about the issue very often. It’s an object permanence thing, I think. If I can’t see something happening with my own eyes, I don’t think about it.
Someone probably should have played peekaboo with me more when I was a baby.
I don’t think Vale actively wants to go out and hurt people. He’s pretty lazy, so the idea of him going out of his way to be a successful bad guy is pretty funny. But Vale is good at hurting people, and when he does it, I can tell he enjoys it.
He’s angry, like, all the time. He acts like he isn’t, but something happened to him that made him the way he is now. You know how I know? It’s because on rare occasions, he does something nice for someone, and he looks almost surprised by himself. Then his face goes all quiet and contemplative. Nostalgic, even.
The rest of the time, he’s basically a huge bitch, but I like him anyway. Something inside me tells me Vale would never hurt me. Scratch that. He’s given me a sore asshole and achy muscles plenty of times, but I was begging for it, so that was on me.
I wasn’t interested in doing that stuff with Vale anymore. Nope. I was only thinking about Paris and if maybe he’d like to give me a sore asshole.
I bet he’d be really nice about it.
I wasn’t used to nice sex. It was usually just rough and dirty fucking, which is lovely, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes a guy wants to feel loved and cherished too, okay?
At some point during pondering over things Paris might like to do with all of my various holes, I ended up with hot chocolate in my hands, most of a huge reindeer cookie inside me, and curled up against Paris on a bench under a tall art installation in the center of town.
It was a towering bronze thing that managed to create a realistic illusion of a beautiful maple tree. It wasn’t painted or anything, just a lovely, weathered bronze, but when I looked at it, I could have sworn I was sitting under a real tree. Even the sexy little pixie perched on one of its branches appeared as though it could come to life at any moment.
Something about the piece reminded me of the triptych in my hallway, and I wondered if they were both done by the same artist. If so, the sculpture would be worth a fortune. My painting had cost enough to feed a family for two years.
It was totally worth it though. I’d fallen in love with it the moment I saw it, and I’d loved it so much that I hadn’t even let Baz steal it for me. I’d heard that the artist was odd like me, and I wanted to support a fellow weirdo.
As I sipped my hot chocolate, I noticed a couple making out on the other side of the sculpture. One guy was huge and built like a tank and the other guy was tiny and bore a striking resemblance to the pixie in the tree. They were both stupidly attractive in their Christmas-themed scarves. The little guy had a fluffy red one, and the big guy had a green one in the same material. Shit, why didn’t I get extra yarn so Paris and I could have couple scarves too?
I decided to deal with that later because Paris and I needed to follow their example. That sculpture was made for gay sexy times because there was no damn way in hell that tree pixie wasn’t as gay as the day was long. Maybe between me and Paris and the couple behind us, we could turn it into a Christmas tradition.
Queer folk from miles around could come and kiss under the sculpture for good luck. I could hang some rainbow garlands from its branches to make sure the idea caught on. Hopefully the artist wouldn’t mind my addition, but I bet he was gay too, so he probably wouldn’t. I’d hunt him down and ask first, just in case.
Every year, Paris and I could come and get naughty under the tree to make double sure the tradition would spread.
