The Christmas Eves

Prologue: “Remember Last December”

Warnings: Sort of Death, Christmas Magic

 

December 24, 2008

Brian was coming out of Wong’s Take-Out when he ran into a person he wanted to turn and run away from. But, the surprise kept him motionless. So he stood there, hands trembling, heart beating wildly, snow falling steadily, cool on his flushing face.

“Hey, Mikey,” Brian finally managed to get out of his mouth. He hoped like hell that the quiver in his voice was only noticeable to him.

Mikey looked at him speculatively, eyeing him from head to toe before giving Brian a small smile. “Hey, um, how are you?” His words were rushed and he gasped and blushed as soon as he said them.

Brian was tired. He’d been tired for a year now. Constantly. He just wanted to go back to the loft and pretend that everything in his life was perfectly fine. Just as he’d been doing for the last year. He was only tired, that was all that was wrong in his life. Or so he told himself.

He was just starting to turn away when he felt a hand touch his arm, trying to stop him. He jerked roughly away and glared at Mikey. “Fuck off!” he spat. He really didn’t like being touched, not anymore and especially not when he was tired. Then again, he couldn’t think of a moment when he wasn’t tired.

Michael looked at him with tears springing to his dark brown eyes. “Brian, please, it’s been so long since we’ve even talked.”

Brian softened his gaze for a second before his eyes turned cold. “Go home to your family, Michael.”

“They’re your family too, Brian,” Michael pleaded as he started to walk in step beside Brian.

Brian was doing his best to block out what it was Michael was saying to him, but at the same time, a small part of him wanted someone else to accept that this day wasn’t filled with holiday cheer for everyone. It never would be for him, never again.

“I miss you, we all miss you,” Michael pleaded. “Please come and stop by the house tonight for Christmas Eve dinner.”

Brian wanted to say yes. He wanted the comfort of the family but he couldn’t allow himself to accept the invitation. He was relieved when he reached his car.

“I love you, Brian,” Michael said desperately.

Brian looked down at his old friend and pushed him away from him. Michael slid on the snowy sidewalk a bit and gave Brian a completely defeated look. He quickly got into his car, started the ignition, and pulled out before Michael could think about hopping in beside him. The Chinese food started to smell up his car and he felt his stomach start to rumble as a day’s worth of hunger hit him.

Brian tried not to think about the past and what Michael and the idea of his family represented to him. Nevertheless, images still passed through his brain. He should have known better than to think he would be spared the pain and suffering through the memories of today.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled out into the interior of his car as he missed the exit for the turn off for the loft. “Fuck!”

Brian pulled off at the next exit, intending to turn around there. However, when he pulled off and took the first right to turn around, the site that came into view on the right was the last thing he wanted to see. Brian felt something from inside of him, pulling him toward the open iron gates. He fought with his mind but somehow insanity won out and he drove his car into to the entrance of the Rose Wood Cemetery.

He drove up the snow covered road that ran in the middle of the two grassy areas of the small cemetery. He’d never been there before, but he easily found the large marble angel he’d been told the plots were under. It was nearly dark, but the angel glistened and seemed to glow from the wet snow hitting and sliding off its perfectly carved curves.

Brian sat in the Vette for a few moments. Once again he fought with his tumbling emotions, wondering if he should indeed get out of the car. He wasn’t sure he could handle it, but he couldn’t deny the feeling that something, or probably more accurately, someone had led him there.

He left the ignition running and climbed out of his car slowly. The wind hit him and chilled him to the bone as he started walking up toward the statue. He walked around gravestones that had wreathes and little Christmas trees or flowers on or around them. More guilt over-powered him because he did not have gifts of his own to offer. Of course, he never intended on going to the cemetery. But it did seem inevitable now.

He stopped in his tracks when he read the name on the middle and largest of the three headstones: Kinney. Brian noticed that there were fresh flowers laid on all three of the graves and various footprints in the snow surrounded them. He felt relieved to know that the family had probably been out there earlier that day. They hadn’t forgotten no matter how much he tried to forget they’d ever lived.

Snow had built up and covered a lot of the writing on the stones so he dropped to his knees and brushed it off the left one first. Reaghan Taylor Kinney. The middle one came next, Justin Taylor Kinney, then the one on the right, reading Zaira Taylor Kinney. Brian read over the small inscriptions and the words jumbled together: brother, son, sister, daughter, friend, father and husband. At first, the words were unrecognizable to his brain. However, his heart overpowered his mind and he couldn’t hide what the names meant to him any longer. The names etched into the tombstones were real. Real names that belonged to people that he had refused to recognize the entire last year of what was left of his life.

Brian felt himself start to shake from the inside out. He suddenly had the very real urge to scream. He wanted to scream the way he did that night he received the phone call from Debbie. But he didn’t, he couldn’t do that to this place where his children and husband were at rest.

He wanted to say something to them. He just wanted to talk to his family, something he had not done in a year’s time. Brian didn’t know if they could hear him, or even if they wanted to after the way he’d behaved. However, he needed to talk to someone and he’d always been able to talk to his husband about everything.

“I’m sorry I didn’t bring you any flowers, Justin,” he started. “I didn’t know I was coming here though. I...I never could before. I didn’t even mean to come here today but I think you were leading me here,” Brian spoke softly. He looked at Justin’s name spelled out and focused on the letters, seeing in his mind's eye all the signatures he’d seen on notes, sketches and paintings.

“Do you know how much I miss you?” he asked. “No, I guess you don’t because I don’t ever talk to you. I’ve been pretending, Justin. I’ve been pretending that you and the kids have been visiting your mom. I guess you aren’t coming back, are you? You were always the one that believed in Christmas Miracles, not me.”

Brian shifted around on the cold snowy ground and placed his nearly numb hands onto Justin’s stone. “I am so sorry. I know that you’ll never forgive me. I know that, but I am. If only I’d have listened to you and met you at Deb’s, as I should have, you… you wouldn’t be… dead. Our children would have had their chance to live. I hate myself for what I did. I hope that one day you will forgive me for that. But I don’t think I ever will.”

Brian crawled toward his son’s stone, kissed his fingertips and placed them on the ‘R’. “I love you, Reaghan. I’m sure Daddy is taking care of you but I still want you to keep an eye out on your big sister and him too. You always made me very proud and I’m so sorry that I missed your play at school. I shouldn’t have missed it.” Brian pressed his face to the freezing marble briefly before crawling over to his daughter’s stone.

“Zaira, my little princess. I miss you so much. I miss all of you every single second of each day. I’m going crazy without you around asking me to play. I’m sorry I missed your recital too. I want you to know that I will always love you. Take care of Daddy and your little brother for me.” He kissed her marble stone before going back to Justin’s.

“This won’t be the last time I come here. I promise you. You knew when I married you what a selfish asshole I really was, right? But I love you, Justin. You will always be my husband.” Brian brushed back the hair plastered to his face from the wind and snow and wiped at his eyes. “I don’t know if you have any pull up there, Sunshine, but if you and the kids came back to me I’d do anything. I’d be the husband you deserve and the father the kids deserve. I promise you. I’ll never miss a dinner with you ever again.”

Brian had never accepted that his family and children were really gone until the moment he saw their names engraved in the marble stones. This was the reason he had stayed away from them and everyone that had known them. He hadn’t wanted anyone to tell him the truth. Now, he had to deal with it.

Brian was nearly frozen to death when he finally got up to leave. He drove the Vette in the direction of the place he hadn’t been to in exactly one year, his home, or what he’d once considered his home. But now Britin was only an estate.

The snow came down hard on the windshield, making it hard for him to see and navigate the car down the unplowed road. He finally turned onto his street. As he drove past the houses, he noticed that there were Christmas lights decorating and illuminating every house on the street. Even Britin. Brian had no idea how that was possible. The whole house looked the same as the last time he’d left it. He even noticed that there were lights on inside the house. Brian could see the Christmas tree lights were on, illuminated in the living room’s windows.

He didn’t understand how it was possible! No one had been there to turn them on. Or… or had they?

Maybe it’s all been a nightmare. Maybe the last year really didn’t happen, Brian thought to himself as he parked the car. He quickly turned off the car’s ignition and walked as quickly as he could to the door to the house. His frozen hands fumbled with finding the right key and his heart pounded with happiness and hope as he opened the door to his home.

“Justin, Sonny-boy, Princess!” Brian called. He cut the alarm, closed the door and ran quickly into the living room.

All of the ornaments were on the tree! Everything looked just the same. “Hey, Daddy’s home!” he yelled going out into the hall and heading into the kitchen. The Christmas cookies Justin and the kids had made were sitting on the counter in the tupperware containers, waiting to be frosted.

He went out of the kitchen and ran up the stairs and into the hallway, almost tripping over one of Reaghan’s matchbox cars as he went. “Hello, can’t anyone hear me?” he asked, opening the door to Reaghan’s room. His eyes only found the room dark and empty of life.

Brian’s heart hammered in his chest but dropped into his stomach when he flipped on the light and noticed that dust covered everything in the room. “No,” he whispered.

He ran out of the room and went into Zaira’s room. “Zaira,” he whispered, opening the door and finding the room just as dust covered and stale as her brother’s room. “No, this isn’t right. I’ll find you!”

Brian ran up the hall to the master bedroom. “Justin,” he whispered, placing his hand onto the doorknob. He started to turn it but his body wavered, becoming so weak, and he realized he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bring himself to open the door.

“It was real,” Brian spoke in a broken sob. “They died.”

He slowly made his way downstairs, feeling the chill in his sopping wet clothes now that his excited adrenaline was leaving him. He looked closer into the living room and saw that the tree, ornaments and lights, were all covered in dust. He walked over to the outlets and pulled the plugs out.

The room went dark and he cursed himself for hoping for something so completely ridiculous. He had kept paying all the bills at the house because it had all automatically been taken out of their bank account. The lights had still gone on to the date and times he had preprogrammed. Brian wished he could still pretend it was all real because those few minutes of hope he had, made his body have real feeling, for the first time in a year.

He walked over to the mantle, flicked the overhead light on and looked at all the picture frames. He and Justin had gotten into photography after Zaira was born. They’d even built a small darkroom in Justin’s studio. His eyes fell upon the photos Justin had framed from their last photo session. The kids were natural born hams; they loved all the attention Brian and Justin gave them during the picture taking and were such good models that Justin would often paint from the pictures they would take.

He remembered the large albums, filled with their memories sitting on the bookcase near the fireplace and walked over to retrieve them. He blew the dust off them and cradled them against his chest.

He then, took a deep breath and headed upstairs. As scary as it was, he knew that he needed to go into the master bedroom to look at them. It had been the last place he’d been with his entire family. He had to be there now if he was going to relive the memories of them.

He couldn’t ignore what they meant to him any longer.
 

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