The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there -- at least, that was the case in most households around the Greater Pittsburgh area.
Except, perhaps, in the top unit of a building on Tremont Street...
“I can’t fucking believe you volunteered us to make six-dozen cookies tonight,” Brian groused, lugging four of their eight grocery bags into the loft. The Big Q-Mart had been a zoo in the final hours of holiday preparation, and the crowds, along with an unexpected run-in with Fat Marley and her unsolicited commentary, had not improved his feelings toward the situation.
Justin shrugged, following behind with the remaining bags in his hands. “Deb already has a zillion things to do for tomorrow, and she needed some help. I love baking. I thought it would be something fun for us to do together on Christmas Eve.” He set the bags on the counter then headed back to close the door, dodging Brian, who still stood scowling between the loft’s entry and the kitchen.
“I had different ideas about something fun we could’ve done tonight,” he muttered, nodding his head toward the bedroom and rolling his eyes. “We hardly ever get to fuck here anymore.”
They hadn’t exclusively lived in the loft for nearly thirteen years, since they’d moved to New York full-time, but it made sense to maintain at least one Pittsburgh-based residence. Though he loved the idea of Britin and having his own country manor, Justin knew it made a lot more sense for Brian to unload that property, and use the profit to invest in Manhattan real estate. And, he had to admit, their penthouse apartment with city views, overlooking part of Central Park, was completely worth the sacrifice.
Keeping the loft worked out a lot better in the long run. It provided them with a more convenient place to stay during longer visits to see family, or when Brian came solo for work, and when they were home, it was available for visiting clients to use while in town for business with Kinnetik’s Pittsburgh office. Besides all of that, the loft was Brian’s baby -- his first true purchase that had established who he was in his adult life.
“Baking cookies shouldn’t take that long if we both do it,” Justin countered. “Or you can stand there all night, holding the things I need, because then we’ll both be fucked, and--”
“--not in a positive, life-affirming way,” Brian finished in a deadpan, then sighed and brought the bags to the counter. “Fine. What do I do?”
“Help me unpack the bags, and then we can sort it based on when we’ll need things,” Justin instructed, peeking in the bag closest to him.
Brian obliged, pulling out ingredients and setting them on the counter. “I thought we kept this place stocked,” he grumbled, grouping small containers of various sugar crystals and other sprinkles to one side of the island.
Justin turned from where he’d just put an alarming amount of butter in the refrigerator to stay chilled. “We keep it stocked with basic essentials -- but I don’t even keep enough baking supplies on hand to make this many cookies at home at a moment’s notice, let alone somewhere I sleep four or five times per year.”
“You come to Pittsburgh more often than that,” Brian argued, pushing two bags of all-purpose flour in Justin’s direction
“I do,” Justin agreed. “But on at least half of those trips, you insist on getting a hotel downtown, so we don’t end up staying here.”
Brian’s tongue found its way into his cheek and he bit back a smile before replying with, “I don’t hear you complaining about the opportunity for hotel sex.”
“I’m not the one complaining at all,” Justin shot back. Checkmate.
***
After an hour, they’d successfully made enough dough for the six-dozen cookies, and Justin was beginning to roll out the first batch, instructing Brian to sort through the cookie cutter assortment they’d purchased to select which ones to use.
“What even are these?” Brian asked, holding one up for Justin to see. “Who the fuck would want to make a shirt-shaped cookie?” He hesitated. “Well, except maybe Debbie.”
Justin laughed. “They’re to make ugly sweater cookies.”
Brian raised an eyebrow, but wisely said nothing and went back to rummaging through the giant plastic tub of metal shapes, eventually selecting several that, from what Justin could tell, looked suitable for their purposes.
“How many do you have?” Justin asked, squinting at the now-flattened sheet of dough to gauge its thickness.
“Six.”
Justin nodded. “How about one more, then we can make ten of each.”
Brian saluted, and went back to work as Justin began pressing the chosen cookie cutters into the dough. He looked up again when Brian crowed out a laugh, catching him off-guard.
“What the actual fuck… is this a dick?” Brian asked, holding up a questionable shape.
“What?” Justin asked, peering more closely as he realized the potential validity of Brian’s question. He took the cookie cutter out of Brian’s hand and turned it over in his, examining all possible angles, then began chuckling. “No, it’s a candle. And this is, like… holly and berries at the bottom.”
“More like twigs and berries,” Brian quipped, his eyes dancing with amusement. “I changed my mind. I like this project. We’ll make holiday sugar-cocks for everyone! Merry Fucking Christmas, eat a dick!”
Justin was laughing so hard, he had to brace the counter edge to stay upright. “Oh my god, they are not dicks. We are not doing that!”
Brian pouted. “Can’t we make a few? This is my favorite so far!”
“We can,” Justin acquiesced, “but they will be frosted to look like candles.”
It took another hour to roll out each batch of dough and carve out all of the cookies. They worked in tandem, taking turns either cutting out shapes or rotating pans in the oven and moving finished cookies to cooling racks. Surprisingly, Brian complained very little until they were just one oven batch away from being out of dough.
“Finally!” he declared with satisfaction, watching the oven door close. “By the time we wash the dishes, they’ll be done, and then we can--”
“Ice all the cookies,” Justin supplied, though there was a slight note of apology in his voice, realizing what a good sport Brian had been, despite his foiled plans for the evening.
Brian frowned. “Are you fucking serious? All the cookies? Christ, we’re going to be doing this all night.”
Justin shook his head. “It won’t be that bad. They don’t all have to be intricate. But this is my favorite part. I’ve always loved decorating cookies.”
There was definitely truth to that statement, and Brian knew it. It was far from the first year Justin had made sugar cookies for the holidays, but it was the first time Brian had to endure it from start to finish. Usually, it had been a task Justin completed while Brian was at work, or otherwise occupied. But now, when all Brian wanted was to get his husband in bed, it felt like the most tedious task in the world -- especially now that seventy-two cookies were about to get even more of Justin’s time.
Why’d I have to fall in love with a fucking artist? he thought. But it wasn’t a real question, and Brian knew it.
Instead, in an effort to hopefully make up some time, he volunteered to wash dishes so Justin could spend the next few minutes whipping up a massive batch of royal icing.
“Shit, it looks like 1998 in here,” Brian commented when he finished, looking at the expansive spread of powdered sugar all along the opposite side of the island.
Justin made a face at him, and then set about the task of dividing his icing into two batches -- one, he explained, for outlining, and one for “flooding,” to which he continued adding water until he seemed satisfied with its consistency -- then further divided all of those into additional batches, and tasked Brian with adding food coloring to create red, green, and yellow options.
After Justin moved to the table and began his more enjoyable assignment of turning the cookies into artwork, Brian found himself just watching, entranced by the expression of intense, yet somehow still relaxed concentration on his husband’s face, and felt a surge of pride as he noticed how steady Justin’s hands were as he guided the thicker icing along a tree-shaped cookie’s edges. Many years before, in that exact same space, the act of creating art had not come so easily to the younger man, and now, watching how seamlessly his creations came together, it filled Brian with more warmth than he expected.
“Do you want to do some? I have plenty of bags,” Justin offered after several cookies were finished and drying. He gestured toward several pastry bags filled with the colored icing.
“I don’t want to infiltrate your creative space,” Brian said, waving him away. “Go ahead, I’ll just watch.”
Justin shrugged. “If you want. But, it would be nice if everyone knew that a few of these came from you as well. You can just make them simple if you want. Plus, it’ll make things go faster.”
It was a convincing enough argument, so Brian agreed, stacking a few cookies on a clean cutting board, and moving back over to the island. After he retrieved some icing, he lined up the cookies he’d grabbed and examined them, having to fight back a snort when he realized that, in Justin’s attempt to confiscate a particular cookie shape, he hadn’t been as thorough as he’d thought.
Much to Brian’s slightly less-annoyed dismay, it took another hour and a half or so to finish decorating cookies, making it just after midnight when they finally finished, but he had to admit that everything looked pretty amazing -- most especially some of Justin’s creations. His attention to detail had been stunning, especially given how quickly he’d managed to complete so many of them. Brian’s, in comparison, felt lackluster, but Justin had complimented him on how good they looked. Afterall, all things considered, it wasn’t like Brian Kinney was going to settle for having his good name attached to ugly cookies.
They put everything in the airtight containers Justin had bought at the Big Q, and then blessedly, finally, made their way up to the bedroom, and almost immediately into the shower to rid themselves of stray flour, powdered sugar, and the lingering smell of overpowering sweetness.
To Justin’s surprise, Brian didn’t actually attempt any funny business in the shower, instead giving him a thorough upper body massage as he glided body wash along his skin, paying extra attention to his neck, shoulders, and hands, which Justin appreciated after a long night of standing, rolling, and painstakingly frosting so many cookies. Brian had always demonstrated an extra level of consideration when it came to anything remotely related to potential side effects from the accident he’d suffered nearly twenty years prior. It was just one of the things that consistently made Justin love him more.
After they dried off, they moved to the bedroom, not bothering to dress, given what was inevitably going to occur, and Justin crawled onto his side of the bed, waiting for Brian to join him.
“Hang on,” Brian said abruptly, turning and jogging fully naked out of the bedroom. Through the dim light in the lower portion of the loft, Justin saw him retrieve something from the kitchen, before heading back up, one hand behind his back.
“What do you have there, Mr. Kinney?” Justin asked, his voice intentionally taking on a slightly seductive note as his body started to react to the sight of his partner’s long, lean frame on display in the ambient light emanating from the headboard.
Careful not to jostle whatever was hidden in his concealed hand, Brian joined Justin on the bed, and then leaned forward, gently tracing the perimeter of his lips with the index fingers of his free hand, causing Justin’s lips to part and his mouth to open slightly as his eyes shut.
Brian placed something firm against his lower lip, and when Justin’s tongue peeked out to taste it, he realized it was a cookie, and his eyes snapped open in confusion.
“What--” he started to ask, but Brian shushed him, pulling the cookie back out, and holding it at an angle where it could catch the light. “Eat my cock,” he whispered breathily.
Justin burst out laughing. “How the fuck did you get that? I swore I took them all so you couldn’t!”
Brian had taken one of the “candle” cookies and turned it into a penis and balls, complete with impressively intricate detail, given his limited artistic abilities. “Guess you forgot one.”
“It actually looks amazing,” Justin admitted, once he stopped laughing and took the cookie to look at it more closely. “Fairly accurate too.”
“Well, it’s not drawn to scale, but it’s a reasonable facsimile,” Brian teased, gesturing down at its much more sizable counterpart.
Justin laughed again, and then gently set the cookie down on his bedside table. “I think you had more fun than you thought you would,” he said, giving Brian a knowing look.
Brian shrugged. “I think the same could be said for most things you rope me into.”
“It’s one of the things I love most about you,” Justin said, leaning in for a kiss. Brian complied, but then pulled away just as Justin had started to deepen it.
“Are you going to eat the cookie?” he asked.
Justin simply smiled. “Leave it out for Santa. I think I’d much rather have the real thing.”
Story Notes:
Written for 2019 QAF Gift Exchange using the prompt: Fic fluff/schmoop, AU, canon-compliant, humor, Brian and Justin - Brian and Justin work together. Other specifications: no BDSM, no Ethan, no Cody, if AU in canon
Thanks to my QAF soulmate, TrueIllusion for the beta!
Thanks to my QAF soulmate, TrueIllusion for the beta!
Chapter End Notes:
All I want for Christmas is... feedback! Love to hear your thoughts. Happy New Year!
The End.