Call him a fucking Scrooge if you will, but Nathan hated the holidays. Especially Christmas. Growing up, he had never really gotten to celebrate them. His mother did what she could for the first several years of his life. When he was five, she had gotten a tiny artificial tree from a neighbor who was about to throw it out since he got a bigger one. He remembers his father grabbing her arm, bruising it with his fingerprints, as she told him she hadn’t spent a cent on it and to please believe her. Despite his mother making her own money as a waitress, she had no right to her funds. All of the money she earned went to her husband. He hadn’t even fucking needed it. He had been the head of the Language Department at Hunter College. It wasn’t like he was the richest man in the world but he could manage to earn his own spending money and not steal his wife’s. He didn’t have to ban her from spending any money of her own on even a few tree ornaments or for a present for their son. And Victor Hall knew he didn’t have to. As Nathan grew a little older, he knew that his father was genuinely a psychotic and sadistic fuck and got off on shit like that.

She had made it work though. She enlisted Nathan’s help and they made their own ornaments out of printing and construction paper. He remembers her quietly singing songs in Arabic and making him learn them so he could not only be bilingual, but also connected to her Syrian heritage, a heritage that she ultimately ran away from when she fled to America at the age of nineteen. It was odd, because many of the songs they sang were not Christmas themed yet they sang them anyway as they sat there, cutting out snowflakes to tape together so they could wrap them around the tree. When he pointed that out, she told him, “Translate some then, Ibn*, if you want to sing something else. You can practice Arabic that way.” Nathan remembers her teaching him the variety of subjects she knew about. He remembers her encouraging his love of music, even though she couldn’t buy anything for him besides necessities to keep up appearances. He remembers her trying to protect him from his father, the man she had married to keep herself from being deported or homeless. The man who promised to get her into the university he taught at and pay for her education if she married him, only to entrap her and abuse her in every way possible, even though she was the mother of his child.

His mother loved Christmas. She never told him why she loved it, except for saying that it was a “pretty holiday in America.” He didn’t think it was for a religious reason because she refused to talk about any religion. Now that Nathan knows what kind of country Syria is when it comes to religious beliefs, he feels as though she must have assigned any faith she might have had to one at some point in her life. But when Nathan brought it up once, all she said was that she believed that there was something better than life on Earth. She also refused to talk about any part of her past, even any family she may have left behind. Despite never knowing anything about them, even as a young boy Nathan sensed that his mother’s family members were not good people. He sensed that she ran for a reason. Just like she had ended her life for a reason.

He had only been eight years old. His mother had only been thirty. For at least a year, she had been taking little by little out of her tips before she gave the rest to his father. Not much. Just a few dollars at most each day. She had saved up enough to have a more proper Christmas that year. Nathan knew she had always wanted what their neighbors had. Strings of lights decorating the apartment, a big Christmas tree with ornaments from fucking Bloomingdale’s or wherever. And for some reason that year, she no longer cared about her husband’s reaction to her defiance. Six days before Christmas, she had a large pine tree delivered to their apartment and put it right by the window. She had bought lights to wrap around it and beautiful decorations to put on the tree, including an angel to put on top. Nathan remembers his mother coming to pick him up from school and coming home to see how much life she had given their prison and seeing presents wrapped under the tree. He had been too excited to see the dullness and resignation in her eyes. A few hours later, she made him go to his bedroom right before his father came home and beat her with his belt until she had bled. He knocked over the tree and took the presents outside to throw them in the trash. Nathan remembered how much it hurt when he saw his mother’s completely lifeless expression as he cleaned her wounds by the bathroom sink. She had only wanted to celebrate a fucking holiday like everyone else and give her kid a decent Christmas morning. But instead of waking up to find presents under the tree and hot chocolate for breakfast, Nathan had woken up to find his mother hanging by the very belt she had been beaten with. Apparently the lingering wounds on her back weren’t worth an in-depth investigation by the police. It wasn’t until a couple of days after she died that he found the guitar she had bought for him hiding in the back corner of his closet. That guitar had been a small comfort to him as he embarked on eight more years of one long torturous nightmare.

See, Justin knew. He has known about that and what happened for years after. But Justin was always the type to bounce back on his feet. He was hopeful and, for some reason, thought that Nathan was one strong fucker to live through all that. And he looks up to Justin. He wants to make him happy and to be a man who is able to overcome all of that. In a way he has. He has been doing better than he was just a couple of years ago. Yet Nathan wants to be perfect for him. He wants to be worthy of having a partner like Justin Taylor. He wants to be normal, even though Justin never asked him to be. But when Justin had told Nathan that he would probably have fun at the Christmas dinner, like most people would, he hadn’t really believed him. For the obvious reasons, of course. But for other reasons, to a lesser extent. He wasn’t really all that close with Emmett or Drew for one thing. He supposed, outside of Molly and Jennifer, he knew them the best out of all of Justin’s friends from back home. He liked them fine. It was cool that Justin was friends with a football star and Emmett was always very welcoming. But it was hard for Nathan to connect with them because of the age difference. He felt like a child around them and in some ways he was. The twenty year age gap was sometimes very apparent when interests and life experiences made it into the conversations that he had with them.

Hell, the eight and a half year age gap between him and Justin could be noticeable sometimes when it came to maturity levels and partying. He wasn’t an alcoholic or a drug addict by any means, but he was young and liked to let loose sometimes, especially on days where he wasn’t feeling his best. That was why Nathan always enjoyed Molly’s visits. She had become a real friend to him, even though she really didn’t know anything about his family besides the fact that his parents were dead from circumstances that were undisclosed to her. She was someone he could go out with on a more regular basis than Justin was up to anymore. She felt like more of an equal. But even though he and Justin are at different points in their lives professionally and in some other ways too, he loves him so much. Justin is a mentor to him. He is a protector. He is the one person besides a few people in law enforcement that knows pretty much everything about his past. And, for some reason, Justin still loves him. Nathan didn’t scare him off with his life story. He wasn’t disgusted by it or horrified by him. He was sympathetic and heartbroken for him. He took care of him and tried to talk to him. Nathan knows it might be naïve to say it, but he honestly thinks that Justin is the love of his life because of that.

So when he found out that the man who used to be the love of Justin’s life was coming to dinner as well, he definitely knew he wouldn’t have a good time. Yes, the threat of Brian Kinney gave Nathan all the more reason to go and stake his claim, but he just instinctively knew that the night would probably end up being uncomfortable at best. He didn’t expect that Justin would partly ignore him for half the night, despite knowing what this day meant for Nathan. He didn’t expect for Brian to interrogate him on his sex life and for him to peg Nathan as the bottom. He didn’t expect them to have some sort of strange staring match when Nathan suggested that Justin invite Brian and Eric to the gallery for New Year’s Eve, but he couldn’t complain about that. He had been a bit petulant about it by bringing it up at a strange time and brought it upon himself. But out of all those things, nothing was compared to finding Justin sobbing uncontrollably in the front hallway. Fuck, it hurts to see him like this. And he wants to know why it is happening and at the same time he doesn’t because he heard Kinney’s announcement in the kitchen. As much as seeing Justin this way makes him feel like there is a knife sticking in his heart, he also knows that if he finds out that the reason has to do with his past lover truly moving on, it would be as though that knife were twisted to make his heart bleed even more. But what comes to no surprise to Nathan is that this is all happening on fucking Christmas.

“Hey, hey shhh…it’s alright. I’ve got you. It’s okay, Justin. Tell me what’s wrong? You are scaring me so much right now. Shhh, it’s gonna be okay. Whatever is going on, it’s going to be alright.”

He quietly pleads with him as he presses his cheek against his hair and wonders what fucking caused this. What caused Justin to break like this? Even though it is usually Justin providing the emotional support for him, it isn’t as though he hasn’t seen Justin cry before. He had seen him sniffle during a sad movie or two. He had cried with him a couple of times when Nathan came back to reality after a particularly bad flashback. He had taken it hard when his first roommate he had in New York, Kyle, had overdosed on heroin and subsequently died ten months ago. But even then he hadn’t cried like this. Those cries had been soft and heartbreaking but hadn’t come from a place of shock and absolute devastation since Kyle had cut Justin and most of his other friends out of his life when his addiction got bad. Nathan didn’t know where this was coming from. Kinney couldn’t cause this, could he? These primal sounds of pure confusion, as though even Justin himself doesn’t even know where this is coming from, and gut wrenching pain only muffled by Nathan’s dress shirt. Something else had to be going on. And, even if it hurt Nathan to hear it, he needed to know so he could at least try to help him.

“I-I don-I can’t let-,” Justin tries to get out, but his voice breaks on him and the cries start again.

“Come on, Justin. Please tell me what to do here.”

He is afraid that Justin might start hyperventilating since he can’t seem to get a hold of himself. But then, surprisingly, he hears Justin say, “Need to leave. Want to go home.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s go then. Come on.”

Immediately, Nathan walks Justin over to the coat rack by the door and finds his coat and scarf and gets Justin bundled up. Justin walks out the door only to sit on the front steps. It’s only then that Nathan remembers that Molly, Jennifer, and Tucker are there too. He steps outside and squats next to Justin.

“You wanna stay here while I go get Molly, your mom, and Tucker?”

Justin has settled down since he got his coat on and went outside. A stray tear falls here and there, but he is no longer having a meltdown.

“I don’t want to make them leave. They are having a good time. They should stay longer. It’s not even 9 o’clock yet.”

“I am sure they wouldn’t give a shit about staying longer if they knew that you were so upset.”

“I don’t…I don’t want to be around them. I don’t want to be around anyone right now.”

“You want me to go back inside too?”

“Like you would do that, even if I said yes. You already know that I’m upset.”

“Yeah and you haven’t told me why you are upset.”

Justin just shrugs and sniffles a little.

“I am going to go inside to tell them that you aren’t feeling well. That you have a headache or something and want to head back to the city. That alright?”

“I can’t think of anything else better to say. Just…try to get them to stick around a little longer. They can ride the PATH back with the others. Hotel Pennsylvania is close to the 33rd street stop so it isn’t like they are riding back alone.”

“I guess I can try to get them to stay. I’m pretty sure that some of them will come out to at least say goodbye to you though. Just…stay here until I get back? I don’t want you being alone right now.”

Justin just sighs and says nothing else.

Nathan goes back inside. He looks down at his shirt and sees the wetness left there from Justin’s tears. He knows Justin wants to keep his breakdown quiet so Nathan takes his coat off the rack and puts it on, then heads back to the kitchen, where the rest of the party are scattered around and helping Emmett or in conversations of their own. Brian and Eric are missing. Nathan guesses that they have taken up Drew’s offer to let Lily sleep upstairs until they decide to leave. He walks over to Molly, who is chatting with Hunter, and pulls her aside to the walk in pantry. He knows he should be more subtle than that, but his mind reeling right now.

“Hey. Justin and I are going to go. He’s not feeling well. Said has a headache. I think he had too much wine or something.”

Molly starts studying him like she is suspicious and says, “Okay, well I guess we can go too. I’ll go get Mom and Tucker so we can get our coats and say goodbye to everyone.”

“Molly, he really isn’t feeling well. I don’t think he wants you guys to see him like this. He is kind of out of it.”

“When I came up this summer and we all went out for the 4th of July, we practically had to carry him home while he belted out The Star Spangled Banner and then threw up on my shoes. There’s not much left that I haven’t seen.”

Yeah, that had been an eventful night.

“What’s going on with him?”

“He’s just…not feeling well.”

He knows Molly is thinking what he is thinking and she hadn’t even witnessed what happened in the foyer. He knows that Brian’s announcement is the most logical thing they can currently jump to if he doesn’t want to see anyone, even if the reaction seems a bit out of proportion to the situation since Brian and Eric have a kid together.

“Nathan, what’s going on with my brother? Does he need me? Or mom?”

“I think he just wants to wind down. I will probably take him back to my apartment to keep an eye on him, if he’ll let me. You have a key to his place, right? Do you feel comfortable staying there by yourself?”

“Yeah, but I may just crash on the pullout couch in the hotel room if we do stay for much longer. Trains after midnight can be a bitch when it isn’t a holiday. I’m going out to talk to him.”

“Molly-“

“I’m not going to play third wheel to you guys. I’m just going to tell him goodbye and that I’ll see him tomorrow. You let me do this and I will wait to tell Mom and Tucker that he went home until he’s already left.”

“Alright. Fine.”

Molly and Nathan leave the pantry and, fuck, he wasn’t subtle. Melanie and Gus are giving him concerned looks while occasionally glancing over by the doorway, probably to see if Justin is around. Luckily, most of the others, including Jennifer and Tucker, are too engaged talking about what they plan on doing for the next few days. Emmett and Drew seem to only have eyes for each other and are acting more lovey-dovey than he’s ever seen them, probably from the excitement of announcing the upcoming arrival of their new son. So Molly and Nathan are able to sneak out of the kitchen and back to the front of the house easily enough.

Molly ignores the coat that Nathan is holding out for her and immediately goes outside and Nathan is relieved to see that Justin had actually listened to him and stuck around. Molly goes down to sit next to her brother and puts her arm around him. He sniffles but holds it together, which Nathan is grateful for. He stands behind them and watches the exchange.

“Hey, big brother. Nathan said you weren’t feeling well. What’s going on, huh?” Molly asks him as she rubs his back.

Justin puts a hand over his eyes and shakes his head, but doesn’t say a word.

“Come on, Justin. I’m worried about you.”

“I don’t want to talk about it with you right now, alright?” Justin snaps at her, causing her to jerk her hand back. Justin takes a deep breath and Nathan can tell that he immediately feels guilty.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Molly. I need time to process. I’ll tell you tomorrow, okay? I don’t want you getting upset over this.”

Before Molly could respond, Justin puts an arm around her neck and kisses her head. He gets up and Nathan hands him his bag. Both of them walk down the steps, but Justin turns around.

“Could you-“

“I’ll just tell them what Nathan told me, except hopefully make it more convincing. And make it so they won’t get mad at you for just taking off. Call me when you get up tomorrow, alright?”

“Okay. I’ll call you.”

As Nathan walks with Justin the several blocks to the PATH Station, they don’t talk. Nathan wants to put his arm around him, hold his hand, do something to let just know that he is worried and that he wants to help. But Justin is bundled up with his hands deep into his pockets, guarded and his mind elsewhere. They get their Metrocards out and go through the turnstile, only to see that no one else is there and that they have another twenty-five minutes before a train to New York comes.

So they sit. Nothing is said for the first ten minutes. They just sit in silence. Nathan wishes that some street performer could come in and sing Christmas carols or something. The silence is getting unnerving. He doesn’t know why Justin can’t just talk-

“My dad called me tonight.”

Nathan mind goes blank as Justin’s words hit him. He hadn’t expected that. And going by what happened tonight, he is sure that Justin hadn’t expected it either.

Nathan doesn’t want to say anything. If he asks why, he might come off as pushy. If he jumps to any conclusions, it might get Justin worked up. So he stays quiet and puts his hand between the crook in his arm to slide it down and lace his fingers with the hand in Justin’s pocket. Justin pulls his hand out but, to Nathan’s relief, keeps his fingers laced with his.

“You know, I haven’t spoken to him since he had me arrested. I refused to say one word to him and he didn’t bother reaching out to me. Until tonight. Why? Why would he call me?”

“I don’t know, Justin.”

Justin suddenly releases his hand, gets up, and starts pacing back and forth. He looks at the floor and growls out a rant as though Nathan isn’t even there.

“And fuck. I am so pissed. How can he fucking call and want to fucking chat? The bastard. Goddamn sorry excuse for a father. I hate him. I HATE HIM!”

As Nathan hears Justin’s shouts echo through the tunnel, he realizes that it is good that there are no street performers on this very slow night. Witnessing his calm, rational, and sensitive boyfriend flip his shit is sort of terrifying.

“Justin.”

“Like today hasn’t been shitty enough, then he calls me and makes me worried out of my mind over him and I haven’t seen him in almost a decade. Fuck him. Fuck today.”

“What else happened today, Justin? Are you talking about Brian and Eric getting engaged? You knew that they announced that, right?”

Justin stops pacing to turn his head and look at Nathan. It’s the first time Justin has really looked at him with any concern since they got to Hoboken. But then his eyes get misty and he looks away. He shakes his head and clears his throat.

“No, that’s not it. I have no right to be upset about that.”

Nathan isn’t oblivious to the fact that having no right doesn’t mean you won’t feel it anyway.

“Justin it’s-“

“Jesus, just like I have no right to rant about my father calling me to say hello when your-” Justin starts but he breaks off and gets a guilty look on his face.

Nathan closes his eyes and breathes out.

“When my dad was a sociopathic and abusive rapist who is now dead?”

“I’m sorry, Nathan. I am really sorry. I didn’t mean to even bring anything up about it. Please don’t-”

“Justin, it’s okay. I am not going to freak out. Yeah, I think we can agree that my dad was worse than yours. But there are many degrees of shittiness and your dad kind of sucks too. There’s no denying that. Rant all you want.”

“I don’t feel like it anymore.”

Justin sits back down and reaches over to take Nathan’s hand again. He is quiet for a minute and looks like he is sorting out his words in his head now, before blurting them out. Nathan figures his next words would be calmer and more rational. He was hoping for Justin to elaborate on what had occurred in the phone call to make him so worried about his estranged father. No such luck.

“Nathan…I’m so sorry about tonight. I really am.”

And before he can stop himself, Nathan says to him in a hurt and betrayed voice, “You know what this day means to me. You know.”

Justin looks incredibly guilty and Nathan feels guilty too. He didn’t mean to say that. He wants to brush it off and say that it is okay but it really isn’t. He didn’t want to sound needy and codependent, but Justin did know. He fucking knows what happened exactly fifteen years ago. He knew that it was a big step for Nathan to go to a dinner celebrating this day and even if Brian Kinney’s presence gave his possessive side more drive to be there, he did it for Justin. He wanted to be normal and be there with his boyfriend. And Justin had basically ignored him for most of the night any time Brian walked into the room. He thought he was going to leave the party pissed off at Justin. And going by the way he just blurted out what he felt just now, he is a little pissed off at him. But fuck, seeing him break down tonight had really taken a lot of that away. Seeing him like that made him realize that it was a hard night for him as well and to just let it go, at least for tonight.

“But the party is over. Nothing else we can do about it now.”

“Are you okay? Fuck, I shouldn’t have pretended that today was going to be fine for you. I feel terrible for not being more attentive to you tonight.”

“What do you want me to do, Justin? I’m not going to cry about you not keeping me as your center of attention all night. It won’t do any good. I think I did well today, considering the other Christmases I have had in the last fifteen years.”

“It should have been better for you. I should have made it better for you. I’m so sorry, Nathan.”

“Well, there’s always next year.”

“Do you need to talk? Do you need to-“

“Justin, I promise you I will let you know if I need to talk about her. Or him. But I am not going to do it now. The train is going to be here in four minutes.”

Nathan stands up and turns his head to see Justin nodding, his face sad and resigned. Nathan sighs because this is not how he wants tonight to go. He didn’t want to end the night with an argument or with Justin feeling this bad about everything.

“Will you stay over at my place? Just for tonight? In case I do start thinking about her too much?”

Before he knows it, Justin is standing in front of him and holding both of his hands.

“Yes. God, it is the least I can do. I want to be here for you. Especially today.”

Half the time he has to plead with his workaholic boyfriend to stay over so when times like this occur and Justin seems enthusiastic about staying, it feels good to know that Justin still wants him. He is hoping that it is just because he has a studio set up in his loft and not at Nathan’s apartment. When they start searching for a place together, he is going to make sure that Justin has space for an even nicer studio and space for Nathan to have space of his own too. That way Justin won’t get sick of him because they will be able to get away from each other when they need to. He wants this to work. He wants this to work so much. For over a year, it has been good. Nathan has never been happier in his entire life. After being with Justin for several months, he finally had started to believe that Justin genuinely cared for him and loved him even and those were emotions he had never felt directed towards him since his mother was alive. He really hopes those feelings aren’t changing now that Brian was living in the same city. If he lost Justin, Nathan doesn’t know how he would deal.

Nathan stares at his boyfriend and then gently wraps his arms around him. Just as gently, Justin hugs him back and they stand there in the empty train station just holding each other.

“Merry Christmas, Justin.”

Nathan can hear Justin stifle a whimper and he feels his boyfriend’s arms wrap tighter around him. He tightens his hold as well and they stay like that until the train comes.