Callie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
calliope_love) wrote2010-12-26 12:13 pm
calliope_love) wrote2010-12-26 12:13 pm
Entry tags:
016: I am only a day late!
Title: MODERNVERSE: Break and Liam Go To Canada To Your Darling, From You
Rating: PG
Disclaimer:
Summary: This is NOT the ridiculously long fic I have been working on. It is, however, part of something even bigger and quite possibly more ridiculous -- my Modernverse AU, which is pretty much just what it sounds like. I've taken the characters and plopped them into our day and age. There will be a lot of writing going on in Modernverse and someday perhaps I'll post my stupidly extensive headcanon for reference, but for now, suffice it to say that Break and Liam have travelled from their apartment in Boston to spend Christmas with Liam's enormous happy Catholic family up somewhere near Montreal, as is their recent tradition.
Modernverse is my personal pet project and it's getting me through a lot of personal life angst right now. I'd have it whether I ever posted from it or not, and it's long and a bit rambly, and I hope part of the fun of reading this is picking up little tidbits of their lives that I've had established in my head for ages. Please enjoy, and happy holidays to those inclined to celebrate them. <3
Length: 5,498 words
“Xerxes Break, will you give me the damn twinkie.”
“You don’t even like twinkies.”
“No, but I’m hungry and it’s all we have. The next gas station we find —”
“I don’t like twinkies either.” The sound of a wrapper, crinkling. “How on earth did we end up with a twinkie in the first place?”
“I don’t know, blame Oz. Give me — hang on.”
“I am not going to sit here and hold this thing for however long —”
“Merging!”
Break heaved a sigh and let his head fall back against his seat. Liam was a hilariously aggressive driver; it came from learning to drive in Boston. Merging made him particularly uppity. And so Break sat there, twinkie in one hand and knitting in the other, while Liam loudly questioned the lane choices and various speeds of the other people on the road. When the younger man emitted the irritated huff that always came after someone harassed him — ahhh, Xerxes knew it well — Break held the twinkie out so Liam could lean over and eat it without taking his hands off the wheel.
He snarfed the thing in two bites.
“You’re so inappropriate in the car,” Break said mournfully, wiping the crumbs off on Liam’s pant leg.
“Says the man who recently told Rufus Barma he admired his ‘bitch boots’.”
“I am inappropriate all the time, excepting of course when I am not, and I meant it as a compliment,” Break said primly, settling back with his knitting. He managed five stitches before his phone went off. With a disgusted sigh he put his needles aside again in favor of turning to rifle around in his bag in the backseat.
“I see Sharon still hasn’t discovered you’re using ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ as her ringtone,” Liam said dryly.
“Obviously. I remain alive and concussion-free.” He caught the phone right before it went to voicemail and snapped it open. “Hello, dearling. What’s up?”
“Hello, big brother. I am merely checking in on you; we haven’t heard from you since last night. How is the drive going?”
“It’s going fine. Liam hasn’t run anyone off the road yet today.”
“That was years ago,” Liam snapped quietly. “And it was his fault.”
“How far along are you?” Sharon asked, unaware of the muttering.
“Oh, I don’t know; halfway? We’ve eaten our entire snack arsenal. Sharon, there was a twinkie in there.”
Sharon burst into laughter so loud that Liam could hear it and said, “Oh my. Oz had a box of twinkies last night, I believe, and Gilbert stole the last one when he wasn’t looking. He must have dropped it in your snack bag to get rid of it.”
“Gilbert!” yelled Break. He turned to Liam. “Gilbert was responsible for the twinkie.” Back to the phone. “I can’t believe he dared to take a treat away from Oz like that.”
“I believe he is mortally offended by twinkies these days,” Sharon said dryly.
“Cooking school has made him such a snob,” Break told her, a note of absolutely fake sadness creeping into his voice.
“A snob who feeds us regularly,” Liam noted.
“Inflicting a twinkie on us like that,” Break continued, ignoring him. “Why, poor Liam had to eat the thing, just to get it out of our car. If we’d let it go it might have come alive and killed us both in some sort of evil twinkie revenge, so Liam volunteered to slay the ferocious beast for me because you know how weak and helpless I am in the face of such things —”
“Oh, yes. You would be unutterably lost without me to dispose of your rejected snack food.”
“How very noble of dear Liam to save you like that,” Sharon said over him, amused and still blissfully unaware of the snarking going on elsewhere in the car. “Well. I am glad to hear you’ve survived your unfortunate confrontation with the twinkie. You’ll call when you arrive in Montreal?”
“Liam will call from the house phone as usual.”
“Excellent. And I suppose I can assume you’ve hidden my present somewhere in the house again.”
“As always, dearling. You’ll find the list of clues somewhere in the fridge this year.”
Sharon and Liam let out identical tolerant sighs independently of one another; Break hid a smile behind one of his coat sleeves. He said his goodbyes to Sharon, and promptly began a text message.
“Who are you talking to?” asked Liam.
“I’m telling Gilbert he’s an idiot,” Break said.
“Because of the twinkie?”
“Well, yes, but I’m not telling him that part. Just that he’s an idiot.” Break pushed the send button, ignoring both Liam’s halfhearted lecture and the answering text from Gilbert about two minutes later, finally settling in to his knitting again.
He was working on another pair of armwarmers. So what else was new?
“What did you get Sharon for Christmas this year?” Liam asked some time later, after he had yelled at more people on the road and they had found a gas station and stocked up on Cheetos and coconut snowballs and various other rabidly unhealthy things.
“I got her a DVD of a concert of one of those scary Japanese bands she likes,” Break said absently.
“One of the poppy ones or one of the —”
“One of the scary ones. With all the makeup and the hair and the strange outfits.”
“You grew up in the eighties.”
“I did, yes.”
“Last year for Halloween you dressed up as David Bowie from Labyrinth.”
“I did, yes. I do not see your point, Liam.” Break leaned over to try to wipe Cheeto dust on Liam’s pant leg. Liam almost crashed the car as a result, which effectively ended the conversation.
oOo
The dog was the first to greet them as usual, bounding out of the house and barking like a maniac as soon as they were out of the car. Break stretched as he watched Liam kneel down to greet the happy thing and made a mental note that they ought to get a dog, someday, when they had a proper house, and oh damn, that meant looking for one together and bothering to move out of their apartment on top of that, and he’d somehow have to get Liam to come up with the idea on his own and suggest it himself if he didn’t want the younger man to start accusing him of nesting again, and Liam’s mother was at the door and that meant cookies. Break went to be coddled and fed and told he was too skinny.
Sure enough, Gracie Lunettes was armed with a smile, a dishtowel over one shoulder and a plate of freshly made snickerdoodles in one hand. Break, having had years of training courtesy of the Rainsworth women, did not immediately pounce on the snickerdoodles. Instead he gave Gracie a warm hug and greeted her with a “Hiiiiii, Moooooooom,” and he was indeed rewarded for his efforts with cookies.
“Xerxes, dear, you are too skinny,” Mrs. Lunettes said firmly. Break took a moment to let his brain adjust to her strong accent, and happily munched a snickerdoodle. All was right with the world.
“Liam! Stop playing with the dog and come greet your mother,” Break called over his shoulder. Gracie ignored this entirely and shuffled Break into the house, interrogating him cheerfully about the drive up and ultimately handing him the cookie plate, holding the door open for the husky and her real son when they finally made their way up the porch. Then she gave Liam a hug and proceeded to wander off to the kitchen, her personal domain, still chatting merrily about this and that and the other thing.
“Stealing my mother already, Xerxes,” Liam huffed.
“I got here first,” Break told him. “And anyway she keeps inviting me back here every year and giving me cookies. I have to be charming.”
“They all adore you. I haven’t the foggiest idea why.”
“What a cruel thing to say,” said Break, but he allowed Liam to have a snickerdoodle before he followed Gracie. As the mother of five boys, Mrs. Lunettes had a way of inspiring one to share nicely.
In a matter of moments Gracie had deposited Xerxes at the kitchen table and the two were jabbering away — Liam spoke with his mother often, but Break really only got to chat with her during their Christmas visits. It was already late afternoon. Before long Liam’s father would be home and dinner would be on the table, and then Gracie and Break would be in the living room, knitting and completely ignoring everyone else. Liam shook his head and went to find his younger brothers to nag them into helping with the luggage. Break might monopolize his mother, but he would probably be avoiding the teenagers.
Dylan was, as it turned out, as surly as ever, and worse, now that he had turned fourteen. Break would definitely be avoiding the boy. He Did Not Get Along with surly teenagers. Liam still remembered biting his tongue when a much younger Gilbert had wondered aloud why Break felt the need to make himself so scarce on occasion. Aidan, however, actually bothered to come out of his room to greet his brother before he even knocked on the door. He looked distinctly less like a wannabe punk-rocker than Liam remembered; his hair had only one streak of unnatural coloring in it and most of the studded leather bracelet things he’d been sporting last Christmas were gone.
He still wore earrings, though. They matched Liam’s just then. Funny how the baubles Break had once teased him endlessly for had been what made him cool enough to attract the attention of one of the brothers he’d not been around to get to know, growing up.
“Don’t mind him, he’s an ass here lately,” Aidan said by way of greeting, not caring at all if the youngest of the Lunettes brothers overheard him. Dylan, for his part, remained absorbed in the video game he was playing, flatly snubbing the both of them.
“Does he have a particular reason at the moment?” Liam asked quietly as Aidan led the way back downstairs.
“No idea,” said Aidan. “There might have been a short-term girlfriend recently, we don’t know. He never tells us anything. You need help with your stuff? Oh good, you brought Xerxes.”
“Please and thank you. And how can I not bring Xerxes? I think Mom’s finally given up on me finding a girlfriend and has decided he’s her latest daughter-in-law.”
“Well, he kind of is, isn’t he?” Aidan asked as they stepped outside. He took his brother’s deliberately blank look as confirmation. “Yeah, I suspected. Don’t worry, I won’t tell.”
“It’s not that we’re deliberately keeping it a secret or anything,” Liam conceded, pushing his glasses back up on his face where they’d slipped a bit. “We won’t outright lie about it. We just don’t feel the need to go around yelling it to the world.” He paused. “That and we have incredibly nosy friends at home. Sharon would be trying to set up romantic candlelit dinners for us and the like.” He still needed to call Sharon.
“I still won’t tell,” Aidan was saying. “It’s your business.”
“That’s much appreciated, thank you.”
“Mm. You’re the first ones back. Harris and his family are visiting Sarah’s family but they’ll be back here for Christmas itself. Harris is doing Mass again this year. Nathaniel should get home tomorrow morning.”
“And how have — everything in the trunk goes up, I’ll get the big one. How have you been? You graduate this year, don’t you?”
“Oh, I never emailed you! Mom and Dad agreed to me taking a year off before college.”
“Yeah? You’ll do your music during that time?”
“The deal is that if I’m actively working on it for the whole year they don’t mind if I live here and such in the meantime, and that they’ll still pay for it if I do decide to go to school right after. What’s that bag in the backseat there?”
“What bag — oh, Xerk’s left his knitting. Thank you. Are you going to go more into performing or more into songwriting, do you think?”
“For now, writing, just because I think if I was going to perform I’d want a proper band, and I don’t want to commit to anything like that if I’m just going to go to school in the end. I’m saving up for a nicer keyboard, and — is this really all you brought? I thought you had more last year.”
“Last year I let Xerxes pack.” Liam slung Break’s knitting bag over his shoulder and eyed the suitcases; there was only the one big one, and one of the two smaller ones was full of presents. “We can get this in one trip. You should talk to Xerxes about your music, while we’re here. He loves music. He listens to just about everything.”
“I thought he didn’t like me,” Aidan said, shutting the trunk of Liam’s car.
“He doesn’t like teenagers,” Liam corrected. “You’ve probably reached his personal conception of ‘tolerable’ by now.”
“Good to know. How was the drive up?”
“I ate a twinkie.”
Aidan laughed, and Liam was struck by how similar his brother’s laugh sounded to his own, even though Aidan had really only seen him a few times a year for most of his life. He made a mental note to keep in contact with him directly more, instead of just getting all the news from their mother.
oOo
George Lunettes was just as French as his wife was Irish, and tended to spend a lot of his time sitting back and simply enjoying the presence of his large, happy family, especially since they’d all begun migrating out and they were only together over the holidays. Liam had inherited his punctuality and work ethic from him, in addition to the height and the glasses. He arrived at home at six on the dot and everyone was at the dinner table five minutes later; and afterwards George stole Xerxes and Gracie turned her attention to Liam and his brothers.
One of the few things in the world Liam did not worry about was leaving Break alone with his father. George was one of the most easygoing people he’d ever met, and he liked Xerxes for the sole reason that he spoke flawless French and called him “sir”. The two of them talked on their own about science and international politics and God knew what else until his wife decided her kitchen was clean enough and the rest of the family joined them in the living room, where even Dylan was persuaded to join the others in a few card games.
It lasted a few hours. Dylan abandoned them first, which surprised exactly no one, and Break took that as permission to excuse himself a few minutes later.
Liam noticed immediately when he slipped away, but didn’t follow — Break needed time alone to get his bearings once in a while, especially when he was surrounded by cheerful and boisterous strangers. Liam’s family had welcomed him into the fold the instant he’d been brought home the first time, but they were still Liam’s family, not Break’s, no matter how fond he was of them.
His mother was on the right track, at least. Xerxes Break was the poster child for reaching a man’s heart by way of his stomach.
As the night continued to quiet down, however, and the rest of the family began to drift off to bed, Break did not reappear, so Liam excused himself and loped up the stairs. He was expecting to find his lover curled up and knocked out from his migraine meds, or perhaps just strapped into his iPod, but he wasn’t in the bedroom at all. A quick glance around the room and he noticed Break’s boots were not where he’d carelessly dropped them some time between arrival and dinner, nor was that ridiculous purple coat he wore draped over the luggage anymore. Liam gave a little huff and slid into his own coat, grabbing scarf and other accessories as he went back downstairs. Hopefully Break was only just outside, but Liam was fully prepared to have the functional panic attack that would come with finding him asleep in a snowdrift somewhere.
Luck was with him, as it happened — he turned into the kitchen and saw the purple coat perched on the edge of the deck out back. Hat firmly around ears, hands into gloves, and Liam slipped outside to join him, careful not to slam the glass door. Break turned over his shoulder to investigate his new companion, and smiled when said companion was Liam. He was nursing a mug of tea, which was the most delightfully normal thing in the world.
“You haven’t been out here since you left, have you?” Liam asked, already shivering. It was warmer than it could have been, particularly with the wind so still, not that it meant much. Break’s coat saw him through the most awful days in Boston, but awful Boston days were standard winter fare in this part of Canada, and it was the middle of the night on top of that.
“No, not at all,” Break told him. “Only a little while, actually. I had my music on, but I wanted some tea, and it’s — I looked outside and wanted to be here, for a bit.”
“I suppose I can’t blame you.” Liam moved to sit at his side, wincing. The deck had been shoveled clear earlier in the day, but the cold of the wood bit into him through his jeans all the same. In front of them, though, nothing but white, a huge stretch of snow all the way to the distant trees. There was just enough moon to set it to glittering, and above the tree line, stars.
“The air is nice tonight,” Break noted, taking a sip of his tea. Then he turned to Liam. “Would you like some? It’s peppermint.”
Liam leaned over, closing his hand around Break’s to steady the cup rather than take it from him. He took only a small sip, well aware of the way the other man liked to take his tea. Even in an insulated mug it was barely warm anymore, and —
“You are practically drinking melted candy canes,” Liam concluded dryly.
“Tasty, innit?” Break said, cheeky grin in place. His accent was beginning to creep back into his voice, as it sometimes did when they were alone. It gave his words a musical lilt that he usually hid for the sake of avoiding the questions it would bring, and Liam adored it. It was pretty, and it meant Break’s guard was lower than usual.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“London, actually,” Break said quietly.
Liam hesitated a little at that. Even after all these years, it was still very rare for Break to willingly talk about the city he’d grown up in. He downplayed being British so actively it was easy for even Liam to forget it, sometimes. For him to bring it up so easily —
“Xerk. Are you all right?”
“Oh, I am. It was such a long day and I’m…well. You know I get nostalgic this time of year. It’s hitting me a bit harder than usual this evening.”
“You seem to be in a pleasant mood, though.”
“Of course it’s pleasant; I’ve always loved Christmas,” Break said flatly. “My past wasn’t all doom and gloom, you know.”
“Tell me about it?” Liam asked.
Break was as silent as the rest of the world for a moment, staring up at the sky, completely still but for his breath misting out in front of him. At length he shifted slightly, sipping his tea again before he said, “We had a small tree.” He fell quiet again, hesitating, then continued, “At my house, I mean, when I was a child. Little fake tree, a meter high. We didn’t have the space for a large one. It sat up on the buffet cabinet, with this ratty old tree skirt that my grandmother quilted by hand. The tree skirt was made to go with a big tree, so it would be all drapey off the edge of the cabinet. Mother would start setting out the presents as soon as the tree was up, and she said it was so the weight would keep the skirt from falling off the cabinet, but really she was just taunting us. We would just stand there and stare at them, but she always knew if we so much as touched them and it wasn’t worth the scolding.”
“I take it you never believed Santa was bringing you your presents, then,” Liam said, charmed by the idea of a little Xerxes staring up at a little tree.
“Goodness, no. My mother was rather a wicked woman.” Break smirked over his tea. “She was the one who started me on the Krampus business, actually. My brother was terrified of the very idea. I went around scaring the other children with him.”
“I am not at all surprised.”
“Mm.” Tea. Then, “Lights, everywhere, strung all over the streets. When I got older I would sneak out at night just to be in the middle of them, all by myself, a bit like — right now. But we always went as a family to — to see the tree in Trafalgar Square. There was always a lighting ceremony, and carolers everywhere.”
“Is that why you would never go to the Boston tree lightings, those first years?” Liam asked softly.
“It was too much too soon,” Break agreed quietly. “And the way things look from the bridges when it snows —”
He cut himself off more firmly then, leaning into Liam. The younger man gave him some time to collect his thoughts before he asked, “Will you ever go back?”
Break let out a short laugh and finally gave up on keeping his accent at bay, though he still didn’t slip into it completely. “Times like this, I want to, more than anything.”
“But the rest of the time?”
“I don’t know. Not alone. I shouldn’t go alone, but I don’t…”
“If you do go, someday,” Liam said, “if you decide you need to go — take me with you.”
Break tilted his head so Liam could see the wan smile that settled onto his face. “Want to see London, do you?”
“I want you to show me London. Having you there would — it’d make it a human city. I could go on my own if all I wanted to do was look at it. I want to be in it, with you.”
“I’ll show you London if you take me to meet your grandmother in Dublin.” The smile spread back into the usual grin.
“If I take you to Ireland you are not going to be allowed to drink any of your sissy fruity drinks,” Liam told him, smirking back. “You will be given Guiness, and that is the end of that.”
“Bleah, nasty man booze,” Break said, retreating into his cold and refreshing melted candy canes. “I should show you Paris, too. I had literally nothing to do while Sharon was in class but go out and find bakeries, that entire year. I bet I still remember where the best ones are.”
“We should just see all these places on the same trip, then,” Liam said. “While we’re at it, we have to go to Italy.”
“I must see Italy before I die. I have thought that for years and I still haven’t gone.”
“We’ll go to Italy, then, and we’ll time it so we hit Carnivale in Venice for you —”
“Ooh!”
“— and Rome, I want to go to Rome —”
“Spain. We can go to Barcelona, and see that church they’ve been building for ages —”
“The Sagrada Familia. And I have to see Athens —”
“Vienna. We should start saving up, and then just take a year off, the both of us. Leave the cat with Sharon and go.”
“I bet I could get Barma to help us fund it if I sent him souvenirs for his hoard everywhere we went.” Liam let out a snide laugh. “Getting away from Pandora long enough to manage this is another story.”
“You’ll simply have to stop being all perfect and efficient and indispensable, and all that nonsense,” Break told him, entirely without sympathy. “I’ll not have them calling you in a crisis as we’re enjoying a moonlit stroll across London Bridge.”
“Oh God, the mess I’d come back to,” Liam moaned.
“No.” Break swatted him. “Don’t do that. We are going to Europe. You can’t get out of it now.”
“We’re going inside, now. I am cold.”
“So are my melted candy canes,” Break noted sadly.
“Since you’re feeling homesick, I could go ahead and give you one of your presents early,” Liam suggested. There was a faint, innocent little smile on his face and a note of something almost wicked in his voice. Break stared at him, a grin tugging at his own lips — Liam’s diabolical moments were far less frequent than his, but they were just as glorious, and Break always knew when he saw one coming.
“The way you say that,” Break said. “Why, I’d almost think you were implying something naughty, Liam-my-dearest.”
“Xerxes Break,” he snapped, adjusting his glasses; the sneaky tone was gone. “I would never do that in my parents’ house.”
“Fortunately I adore your parents too much to prove you wrong on that.”
Liam huffed at him as he rose, but gave Break a hand to pull him up, and Xerxes politely refrained from using the contact as an excuse to yank Liam forward and send him flying face-first into the snow. He mentally gave himself a pat on the back for this as he followed his lover into the house and up the stairs to Liam’s childhood bedroom.
Things were quiet; most everyone was in bed by then. Liam went straight for the big suitcase as Xerxes shut the door, carefully, so that the catch didn’t click too loud, and Break turned around just in time to see him pull a rather large wrapped rectangle out from under his folded shirts without even bothering to take off his coat and shoes.
“You bothered to wrap it?” Break asked, setting his tea on Liam’s old desk so he could remove his own coat.
“I really had to, for this one,” Liam replied. He moved to sit on his bed, and Xerxes joined him, slowly becoming aware of a curious feeling that something enormous was about to happen, and that Liam had been plotting it for some time. Break couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen so much honest excitement in Liam’s eyes.
He let out a soft grunt as Liam handed it over. “A book?” he asked, feeling the hard cover through the paper. It was heavy.
“Open it,” Liam said.
Break’s first inclination with wrapping paper was always to cheerfully shred it into teeny tiny pieces, but something in the way Liam was looking at him made him pause, and he tugged gently at the tape at the top. When the paper tore, it revealed the first part of a deep red cover, and the upper half of a string of letters — Xerxes caught his breath. He tore the paper further, revealing “Le Morte”, and then “d’Arthur,” and a black and white illustration below; finally, at the bottom, —
“By Sir Thomas Malory,” he breathed. “Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley. Oh, Liam, you found it.”
“I know I found it,” Liam said, not quite smugly. “Look inside.”
Break obediently opened the book and had to clap a hand to his mouth to keep the noise inside. There was an old, tattered book plate there in the inside of the front cover, and on it, “Kevin Regnard,” in his very own chicken-scratch script.
“It’s not just a copy,” he breathed. His voice sounded very small, and he found he couldn’t quite ratchet it back up to its normal strength. “It’s the book, it’s — Liam, where did you…?”
“I found it in the used section of the Harvard Book Store,” he said. “I always check the Arthur books for you, and I’m always keeping an eye out for red ones since you told me about this one, and, well.” He scooted closer to Xerxes, so he could rest his chin on Break’s shoulder. “All I can figure is someone found the suitcase you lost when you came here, and your book has been wandering around Boston since.”
“I…” — am overwhelmed, never thought I would see this book again, love you, can’t believe this, where am I? Break let the wrapping paper fall to the floor and closed the book again, hiding his old name away and running his fingers over the letters on the front. Then he hugged the book to his chest with one arm and spun suddenly to sling the other arm around Liam’s shoulders, pulling him close as well. He might have fallen off the bed entirely, but Liam’s own arms came up to steady him, hold him tight.
“Are you alright?” Liam asked quietly. “I was a little afraid it would upset you, but I couldn’t — I couldn’t leave it there. It’s your book, after all, and I — well, I thought it ought to come home to you.”
Break drew in a breath that shuddered far more than he liked. “Liam, there was a time when nuffing meant more to me than this book.”
“Because it started your King Arthur fixation?” Liam asked, very carefully not ruining the moment by squealing out loud at how stupidly cute he found it when Break’s accent became thick enough to destroy some of his th’s.
“It didn’t start it, no, but it — it was the first — first proper King Arthur book I ever had.” Break pulled away, but only so that he could press his forehead against Liam’s. “You’ve — Liam. When the airline lost that suitcase they left me cold and homeless and lost in Boston and I was only there in the first place because everything at home was ruined, and — and all I could manage to be really angry about was the idea that I would never see this book again.”
“And you have no idea how hard it was not to throw it at you the instant you got home the night I found it,” Liam said, bringing his hands up to Break’s face. “I’ve had the thing two months.”
Break laughed, helplessly, sounding a little wet, still clutching the book so hard that his knuckles were white. He leaned forward to kiss Liam, gently, but they jumped apart at the sound of footsteps outside the door. Whoever it was, they passed by without hesitation, and after a few seconds of silence Break sidled close again. He rested his head on Liam’s shoulder, and Liam reached up to run a hand through his hair.
“Merry Christmas,” said Liam.
“Thank you,” whispered Break.
They stayed up too late that night looking at the book together, Break showing him all his favorite bits. Liam dozed off sprawled on his stomach, glasses askew across his face. Xerxes watched him like that for a while before rolling over to tuck the book into the cot Liam’s mother had set out for his use, upper half laying on his pillow and sheet pulled up over the lower. It deserved its own special place.
The quilt that was on the cot was removed and draped over the two of them so that they wouldn’t have to actually get up and get under the covers, and Break fell asleep tucked close against Liam on his tiny old twin bed. When Break awoke late the next morning, it was because Liam had woken first and noticed the book, and he was laughing. Then the dog started barking, and a car door slammed outside. Liam went down to greet the last of his younger brothers, and Break slithered into the warm spot he had left behind, stealing just a few more minutes of laziness before he spent another day socializing.
He definitely needed to take Liam to London.
Wanna know how much of a dork I am? I made sure the book existed before I gave it to Xerxes. bink
Rating: PG
Disclaimer:
Summary: This is NOT the ridiculously long fic I have been working on. It is, however, part of something even bigger and quite possibly more ridiculous -- my Modernverse AU, which is pretty much just what it sounds like. I've taken the characters and plopped them into our day and age. There will be a lot of writing going on in Modernverse and someday perhaps I'll post my stupidly extensive headcanon for reference, but for now, suffice it to say that Break and Liam have travelled from their apartment in Boston to spend Christmas with Liam's enormous happy Catholic family up somewhere near Montreal, as is their recent tradition.
Modernverse is my personal pet project and it's getting me through a lot of personal life angst right now. I'd have it whether I ever posted from it or not, and it's long and a bit rambly, and I hope part of the fun of reading this is picking up little tidbits of their lives that I've had established in my head for ages. Please enjoy, and happy holidays to those inclined to celebrate them. <3
Length: 5,498 words
“Xerxes Break, will you give me the damn twinkie.”
“You don’t even like twinkies.”
“No, but I’m hungry and it’s all we have. The next gas station we find —”
“I don’t like twinkies either.” The sound of a wrapper, crinkling. “How on earth did we end up with a twinkie in the first place?”
“I don’t know, blame Oz. Give me — hang on.”
“I am not going to sit here and hold this thing for however long —”
“Merging!”
Break heaved a sigh and let his head fall back against his seat. Liam was a hilariously aggressive driver; it came from learning to drive in Boston. Merging made him particularly uppity. And so Break sat there, twinkie in one hand and knitting in the other, while Liam loudly questioned the lane choices and various speeds of the other people on the road. When the younger man emitted the irritated huff that always came after someone harassed him — ahhh, Xerxes knew it well — Break held the twinkie out so Liam could lean over and eat it without taking his hands off the wheel.
He snarfed the thing in two bites.
“You’re so inappropriate in the car,” Break said mournfully, wiping the crumbs off on Liam’s pant leg.
“Says the man who recently told Rufus Barma he admired his ‘bitch boots’.”
“I am inappropriate all the time, excepting of course when I am not, and I meant it as a compliment,” Break said primly, settling back with his knitting. He managed five stitches before his phone went off. With a disgusted sigh he put his needles aside again in favor of turning to rifle around in his bag in the backseat.
“I see Sharon still hasn’t discovered you’re using ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ as her ringtone,” Liam said dryly.
“Obviously. I remain alive and concussion-free.” He caught the phone right before it went to voicemail and snapped it open. “Hello, dearling. What’s up?”
“Hello, big brother. I am merely checking in on you; we haven’t heard from you since last night. How is the drive going?”
“It’s going fine. Liam hasn’t run anyone off the road yet today.”
“That was years ago,” Liam snapped quietly. “And it was his fault.”
“How far along are you?” Sharon asked, unaware of the muttering.
“Oh, I don’t know; halfway? We’ve eaten our entire snack arsenal. Sharon, there was a twinkie in there.”
Sharon burst into laughter so loud that Liam could hear it and said, “Oh my. Oz had a box of twinkies last night, I believe, and Gilbert stole the last one when he wasn’t looking. He must have dropped it in your snack bag to get rid of it.”
“Gilbert!” yelled Break. He turned to Liam. “Gilbert was responsible for the twinkie.” Back to the phone. “I can’t believe he dared to take a treat away from Oz like that.”
“I believe he is mortally offended by twinkies these days,” Sharon said dryly.
“Cooking school has made him such a snob,” Break told her, a note of absolutely fake sadness creeping into his voice.
“A snob who feeds us regularly,” Liam noted.
“Inflicting a twinkie on us like that,” Break continued, ignoring him. “Why, poor Liam had to eat the thing, just to get it out of our car. If we’d let it go it might have come alive and killed us both in some sort of evil twinkie revenge, so Liam volunteered to slay the ferocious beast for me because you know how weak and helpless I am in the face of such things —”
“Oh, yes. You would be unutterably lost without me to dispose of your rejected snack food.”
“How very noble of dear Liam to save you like that,” Sharon said over him, amused and still blissfully unaware of the snarking going on elsewhere in the car. “Well. I am glad to hear you’ve survived your unfortunate confrontation with the twinkie. You’ll call when you arrive in Montreal?”
“Liam will call from the house phone as usual.”
“Excellent. And I suppose I can assume you’ve hidden my present somewhere in the house again.”
“As always, dearling. You’ll find the list of clues somewhere in the fridge this year.”
Sharon and Liam let out identical tolerant sighs independently of one another; Break hid a smile behind one of his coat sleeves. He said his goodbyes to Sharon, and promptly began a text message.
“Who are you talking to?” asked Liam.
“I’m telling Gilbert he’s an idiot,” Break said.
“Because of the twinkie?”
“Well, yes, but I’m not telling him that part. Just that he’s an idiot.” Break pushed the send button, ignoring both Liam’s halfhearted lecture and the answering text from Gilbert about two minutes later, finally settling in to his knitting again.
He was working on another pair of armwarmers. So what else was new?
“What did you get Sharon for Christmas this year?” Liam asked some time later, after he had yelled at more people on the road and they had found a gas station and stocked up on Cheetos and coconut snowballs and various other rabidly unhealthy things.
“I got her a DVD of a concert of one of those scary Japanese bands she likes,” Break said absently.
“One of the poppy ones or one of the —”
“One of the scary ones. With all the makeup and the hair and the strange outfits.”
“You grew up in the eighties.”
“I did, yes.”
“Last year for Halloween you dressed up as David Bowie from Labyrinth.”
“I did, yes. I do not see your point, Liam.” Break leaned over to try to wipe Cheeto dust on Liam’s pant leg. Liam almost crashed the car as a result, which effectively ended the conversation.
The dog was the first to greet them as usual, bounding out of the house and barking like a maniac as soon as they were out of the car. Break stretched as he watched Liam kneel down to greet the happy thing and made a mental note that they ought to get a dog, someday, when they had a proper house, and oh damn, that meant looking for one together and bothering to move out of their apartment on top of that, and he’d somehow have to get Liam to come up with the idea on his own and suggest it himself if he didn’t want the younger man to start accusing him of nesting again, and Liam’s mother was at the door and that meant cookies. Break went to be coddled and fed and told he was too skinny.
Sure enough, Gracie Lunettes was armed with a smile, a dishtowel over one shoulder and a plate of freshly made snickerdoodles in one hand. Break, having had years of training courtesy of the Rainsworth women, did not immediately pounce on the snickerdoodles. Instead he gave Gracie a warm hug and greeted her with a “Hiiiiii, Moooooooom,” and he was indeed rewarded for his efforts with cookies.
“Xerxes, dear, you are too skinny,” Mrs. Lunettes said firmly. Break took a moment to let his brain adjust to her strong accent, and happily munched a snickerdoodle. All was right with the world.
“Liam! Stop playing with the dog and come greet your mother,” Break called over his shoulder. Gracie ignored this entirely and shuffled Break into the house, interrogating him cheerfully about the drive up and ultimately handing him the cookie plate, holding the door open for the husky and her real son when they finally made their way up the porch. Then she gave Liam a hug and proceeded to wander off to the kitchen, her personal domain, still chatting merrily about this and that and the other thing.
“Stealing my mother already, Xerxes,” Liam huffed.
“I got here first,” Break told him. “And anyway she keeps inviting me back here every year and giving me cookies. I have to be charming.”
“They all adore you. I haven’t the foggiest idea why.”
“What a cruel thing to say,” said Break, but he allowed Liam to have a snickerdoodle before he followed Gracie. As the mother of five boys, Mrs. Lunettes had a way of inspiring one to share nicely.
In a matter of moments Gracie had deposited Xerxes at the kitchen table and the two were jabbering away — Liam spoke with his mother often, but Break really only got to chat with her during their Christmas visits. It was already late afternoon. Before long Liam’s father would be home and dinner would be on the table, and then Gracie and Break would be in the living room, knitting and completely ignoring everyone else. Liam shook his head and went to find his younger brothers to nag them into helping with the luggage. Break might monopolize his mother, but he would probably be avoiding the teenagers.
Dylan was, as it turned out, as surly as ever, and worse, now that he had turned fourteen. Break would definitely be avoiding the boy. He Did Not Get Along with surly teenagers. Liam still remembered biting his tongue when a much younger Gilbert had wondered aloud why Break felt the need to make himself so scarce on occasion. Aidan, however, actually bothered to come out of his room to greet his brother before he even knocked on the door. He looked distinctly less like a wannabe punk-rocker than Liam remembered; his hair had only one streak of unnatural coloring in it and most of the studded leather bracelet things he’d been sporting last Christmas were gone.
He still wore earrings, though. They matched Liam’s just then. Funny how the baubles Break had once teased him endlessly for had been what made him cool enough to attract the attention of one of the brothers he’d not been around to get to know, growing up.
“Don’t mind him, he’s an ass here lately,” Aidan said by way of greeting, not caring at all if the youngest of the Lunettes brothers overheard him. Dylan, for his part, remained absorbed in the video game he was playing, flatly snubbing the both of them.
“Does he have a particular reason at the moment?” Liam asked quietly as Aidan led the way back downstairs.
“No idea,” said Aidan. “There might have been a short-term girlfriend recently, we don’t know. He never tells us anything. You need help with your stuff? Oh good, you brought Xerxes.”
“Please and thank you. And how can I not bring Xerxes? I think Mom’s finally given up on me finding a girlfriend and has decided he’s her latest daughter-in-law.”
“Well, he kind of is, isn’t he?” Aidan asked as they stepped outside. He took his brother’s deliberately blank look as confirmation. “Yeah, I suspected. Don’t worry, I won’t tell.”
“It’s not that we’re deliberately keeping it a secret or anything,” Liam conceded, pushing his glasses back up on his face where they’d slipped a bit. “We won’t outright lie about it. We just don’t feel the need to go around yelling it to the world.” He paused. “That and we have incredibly nosy friends at home. Sharon would be trying to set up romantic candlelit dinners for us and the like.” He still needed to call Sharon.
“I still won’t tell,” Aidan was saying. “It’s your business.”
“That’s much appreciated, thank you.”
“Mm. You’re the first ones back. Harris and his family are visiting Sarah’s family but they’ll be back here for Christmas itself. Harris is doing Mass again this year. Nathaniel should get home tomorrow morning.”
“And how have — everything in the trunk goes up, I’ll get the big one. How have you been? You graduate this year, don’t you?”
“Oh, I never emailed you! Mom and Dad agreed to me taking a year off before college.”
“Yeah? You’ll do your music during that time?”
“The deal is that if I’m actively working on it for the whole year they don’t mind if I live here and such in the meantime, and that they’ll still pay for it if I do decide to go to school right after. What’s that bag in the backseat there?”
“What bag — oh, Xerk’s left his knitting. Thank you. Are you going to go more into performing or more into songwriting, do you think?”
“For now, writing, just because I think if I was going to perform I’d want a proper band, and I don’t want to commit to anything like that if I’m just going to go to school in the end. I’m saving up for a nicer keyboard, and — is this really all you brought? I thought you had more last year.”
“Last year I let Xerxes pack.” Liam slung Break’s knitting bag over his shoulder and eyed the suitcases; there was only the one big one, and one of the two smaller ones was full of presents. “We can get this in one trip. You should talk to Xerxes about your music, while we’re here. He loves music. He listens to just about everything.”
“I thought he didn’t like me,” Aidan said, shutting the trunk of Liam’s car.
“He doesn’t like teenagers,” Liam corrected. “You’ve probably reached his personal conception of ‘tolerable’ by now.”
“Good to know. How was the drive up?”
“I ate a twinkie.”
Aidan laughed, and Liam was struck by how similar his brother’s laugh sounded to his own, even though Aidan had really only seen him a few times a year for most of his life. He made a mental note to keep in contact with him directly more, instead of just getting all the news from their mother.
George Lunettes was just as French as his wife was Irish, and tended to spend a lot of his time sitting back and simply enjoying the presence of his large, happy family, especially since they’d all begun migrating out and they were only together over the holidays. Liam had inherited his punctuality and work ethic from him, in addition to the height and the glasses. He arrived at home at six on the dot and everyone was at the dinner table five minutes later; and afterwards George stole Xerxes and Gracie turned her attention to Liam and his brothers.
One of the few things in the world Liam did not worry about was leaving Break alone with his father. George was one of the most easygoing people he’d ever met, and he liked Xerxes for the sole reason that he spoke flawless French and called him “sir”. The two of them talked on their own about science and international politics and God knew what else until his wife decided her kitchen was clean enough and the rest of the family joined them in the living room, where even Dylan was persuaded to join the others in a few card games.
It lasted a few hours. Dylan abandoned them first, which surprised exactly no one, and Break took that as permission to excuse himself a few minutes later.
Liam noticed immediately when he slipped away, but didn’t follow — Break needed time alone to get his bearings once in a while, especially when he was surrounded by cheerful and boisterous strangers. Liam’s family had welcomed him into the fold the instant he’d been brought home the first time, but they were still Liam’s family, not Break’s, no matter how fond he was of them.
His mother was on the right track, at least. Xerxes Break was the poster child for reaching a man’s heart by way of his stomach.
As the night continued to quiet down, however, and the rest of the family began to drift off to bed, Break did not reappear, so Liam excused himself and loped up the stairs. He was expecting to find his lover curled up and knocked out from his migraine meds, or perhaps just strapped into his iPod, but he wasn’t in the bedroom at all. A quick glance around the room and he noticed Break’s boots were not where he’d carelessly dropped them some time between arrival and dinner, nor was that ridiculous purple coat he wore draped over the luggage anymore. Liam gave a little huff and slid into his own coat, grabbing scarf and other accessories as he went back downstairs. Hopefully Break was only just outside, but Liam was fully prepared to have the functional panic attack that would come with finding him asleep in a snowdrift somewhere.
Luck was with him, as it happened — he turned into the kitchen and saw the purple coat perched on the edge of the deck out back. Hat firmly around ears, hands into gloves, and Liam slipped outside to join him, careful not to slam the glass door. Break turned over his shoulder to investigate his new companion, and smiled when said companion was Liam. He was nursing a mug of tea, which was the most delightfully normal thing in the world.
“You haven’t been out here since you left, have you?” Liam asked, already shivering. It was warmer than it could have been, particularly with the wind so still, not that it meant much. Break’s coat saw him through the most awful days in Boston, but awful Boston days were standard winter fare in this part of Canada, and it was the middle of the night on top of that.
“No, not at all,” Break told him. “Only a little while, actually. I had my music on, but I wanted some tea, and it’s — I looked outside and wanted to be here, for a bit.”
“I suppose I can’t blame you.” Liam moved to sit at his side, wincing. The deck had been shoveled clear earlier in the day, but the cold of the wood bit into him through his jeans all the same. In front of them, though, nothing but white, a huge stretch of snow all the way to the distant trees. There was just enough moon to set it to glittering, and above the tree line, stars.
“The air is nice tonight,” Break noted, taking a sip of his tea. Then he turned to Liam. “Would you like some? It’s peppermint.”
Liam leaned over, closing his hand around Break’s to steady the cup rather than take it from him. He took only a small sip, well aware of the way the other man liked to take his tea. Even in an insulated mug it was barely warm anymore, and —
“You are practically drinking melted candy canes,” Liam concluded dryly.
“Tasty, innit?” Break said, cheeky grin in place. His accent was beginning to creep back into his voice, as it sometimes did when they were alone. It gave his words a musical lilt that he usually hid for the sake of avoiding the questions it would bring, and Liam adored it. It was pretty, and it meant Break’s guard was lower than usual.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“London, actually,” Break said quietly.
Liam hesitated a little at that. Even after all these years, it was still very rare for Break to willingly talk about the city he’d grown up in. He downplayed being British so actively it was easy for even Liam to forget it, sometimes. For him to bring it up so easily —
“Xerk. Are you all right?”
“Oh, I am. It was such a long day and I’m…well. You know I get nostalgic this time of year. It’s hitting me a bit harder than usual this evening.”
“You seem to be in a pleasant mood, though.”
“Of course it’s pleasant; I’ve always loved Christmas,” Break said flatly. “My past wasn’t all doom and gloom, you know.”
“Tell me about it?” Liam asked.
Break was as silent as the rest of the world for a moment, staring up at the sky, completely still but for his breath misting out in front of him. At length he shifted slightly, sipping his tea again before he said, “We had a small tree.” He fell quiet again, hesitating, then continued, “At my house, I mean, when I was a child. Little fake tree, a meter high. We didn’t have the space for a large one. It sat up on the buffet cabinet, with this ratty old tree skirt that my grandmother quilted by hand. The tree skirt was made to go with a big tree, so it would be all drapey off the edge of the cabinet. Mother would start setting out the presents as soon as the tree was up, and she said it was so the weight would keep the skirt from falling off the cabinet, but really she was just taunting us. We would just stand there and stare at them, but she always knew if we so much as touched them and it wasn’t worth the scolding.”
“I take it you never believed Santa was bringing you your presents, then,” Liam said, charmed by the idea of a little Xerxes staring up at a little tree.
“Goodness, no. My mother was rather a wicked woman.” Break smirked over his tea. “She was the one who started me on the Krampus business, actually. My brother was terrified of the very idea. I went around scaring the other children with him.”
“I am not at all surprised.”
“Mm.” Tea. Then, “Lights, everywhere, strung all over the streets. When I got older I would sneak out at night just to be in the middle of them, all by myself, a bit like — right now. But we always went as a family to — to see the tree in Trafalgar Square. There was always a lighting ceremony, and carolers everywhere.”
“Is that why you would never go to the Boston tree lightings, those first years?” Liam asked softly.
“It was too much too soon,” Break agreed quietly. “And the way things look from the bridges when it snows —”
He cut himself off more firmly then, leaning into Liam. The younger man gave him some time to collect his thoughts before he asked, “Will you ever go back?”
Break let out a short laugh and finally gave up on keeping his accent at bay, though he still didn’t slip into it completely. “Times like this, I want to, more than anything.”
“But the rest of the time?”
“I don’t know. Not alone. I shouldn’t go alone, but I don’t…”
“If you do go, someday,” Liam said, “if you decide you need to go — take me with you.”
Break tilted his head so Liam could see the wan smile that settled onto his face. “Want to see London, do you?”
“I want you to show me London. Having you there would — it’d make it a human city. I could go on my own if all I wanted to do was look at it. I want to be in it, with you.”
“I’ll show you London if you take me to meet your grandmother in Dublin.” The smile spread back into the usual grin.
“If I take you to Ireland you are not going to be allowed to drink any of your sissy fruity drinks,” Liam told him, smirking back. “You will be given Guiness, and that is the end of that.”
“Bleah, nasty man booze,” Break said, retreating into his cold and refreshing melted candy canes. “I should show you Paris, too. I had literally nothing to do while Sharon was in class but go out and find bakeries, that entire year. I bet I still remember where the best ones are.”
“We should just see all these places on the same trip, then,” Liam said. “While we’re at it, we have to go to Italy.”
“I must see Italy before I die. I have thought that for years and I still haven’t gone.”
“We’ll go to Italy, then, and we’ll time it so we hit Carnivale in Venice for you —”
“Ooh!”
“— and Rome, I want to go to Rome —”
“Spain. We can go to Barcelona, and see that church they’ve been building for ages —”
“The Sagrada Familia. And I have to see Athens —”
“Vienna. We should start saving up, and then just take a year off, the both of us. Leave the cat with Sharon and go.”
“I bet I could get Barma to help us fund it if I sent him souvenirs for his hoard everywhere we went.” Liam let out a snide laugh. “Getting away from Pandora long enough to manage this is another story.”
“You’ll simply have to stop being all perfect and efficient and indispensable, and all that nonsense,” Break told him, entirely without sympathy. “I’ll not have them calling you in a crisis as we’re enjoying a moonlit stroll across London Bridge.”
“Oh God, the mess I’d come back to,” Liam moaned.
“No.” Break swatted him. “Don’t do that. We are going to Europe. You can’t get out of it now.”
“We’re going inside, now. I am cold.”
“So are my melted candy canes,” Break noted sadly.
“Since you’re feeling homesick, I could go ahead and give you one of your presents early,” Liam suggested. There was a faint, innocent little smile on his face and a note of something almost wicked in his voice. Break stared at him, a grin tugging at his own lips — Liam’s diabolical moments were far less frequent than his, but they were just as glorious, and Break always knew when he saw one coming.
“The way you say that,” Break said. “Why, I’d almost think you were implying something naughty, Liam-my-dearest.”
“Xerxes Break,” he snapped, adjusting his glasses; the sneaky tone was gone. “I would never do that in my parents’ house.”
“Fortunately I adore your parents too much to prove you wrong on that.”
Liam huffed at him as he rose, but gave Break a hand to pull him up, and Xerxes politely refrained from using the contact as an excuse to yank Liam forward and send him flying face-first into the snow. He mentally gave himself a pat on the back for this as he followed his lover into the house and up the stairs to Liam’s childhood bedroom.
Things were quiet; most everyone was in bed by then. Liam went straight for the big suitcase as Xerxes shut the door, carefully, so that the catch didn’t click too loud, and Break turned around just in time to see him pull a rather large wrapped rectangle out from under his folded shirts without even bothering to take off his coat and shoes.
“You bothered to wrap it?” Break asked, setting his tea on Liam’s old desk so he could remove his own coat.
“I really had to, for this one,” Liam replied. He moved to sit on his bed, and Xerxes joined him, slowly becoming aware of a curious feeling that something enormous was about to happen, and that Liam had been plotting it for some time. Break couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen so much honest excitement in Liam’s eyes.
He let out a soft grunt as Liam handed it over. “A book?” he asked, feeling the hard cover through the paper. It was heavy.
“Open it,” Liam said.
Break’s first inclination with wrapping paper was always to cheerfully shred it into teeny tiny pieces, but something in the way Liam was looking at him made him pause, and he tugged gently at the tape at the top. When the paper tore, it revealed the first part of a deep red cover, and the upper half of a string of letters — Xerxes caught his breath. He tore the paper further, revealing “Le Morte”, and then “d’Arthur,” and a black and white illustration below; finally, at the bottom, —
“By Sir Thomas Malory,” he breathed. “Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley. Oh, Liam, you found it.”
“I know I found it,” Liam said, not quite smugly. “Look inside.”
Break obediently opened the book and had to clap a hand to his mouth to keep the noise inside. There was an old, tattered book plate there in the inside of the front cover, and on it, “Kevin Regnard,” in his very own chicken-scratch script.
“It’s not just a copy,” he breathed. His voice sounded very small, and he found he couldn’t quite ratchet it back up to its normal strength. “It’s the book, it’s — Liam, where did you…?”
“I found it in the used section of the Harvard Book Store,” he said. “I always check the Arthur books for you, and I’m always keeping an eye out for red ones since you told me about this one, and, well.” He scooted closer to Xerxes, so he could rest his chin on Break’s shoulder. “All I can figure is someone found the suitcase you lost when you came here, and your book has been wandering around Boston since.”
“I…” — am overwhelmed, never thought I would see this book again, love you, can’t believe this, where am I? Break let the wrapping paper fall to the floor and closed the book again, hiding his old name away and running his fingers over the letters on the front. Then he hugged the book to his chest with one arm and spun suddenly to sling the other arm around Liam’s shoulders, pulling him close as well. He might have fallen off the bed entirely, but Liam’s own arms came up to steady him, hold him tight.
“Are you alright?” Liam asked quietly. “I was a little afraid it would upset you, but I couldn’t — I couldn’t leave it there. It’s your book, after all, and I — well, I thought it ought to come home to you.”
Break drew in a breath that shuddered far more than he liked. “Liam, there was a time when nuffing meant more to me than this book.”
“Because it started your King Arthur fixation?” Liam asked, very carefully not ruining the moment by squealing out loud at how stupidly cute he found it when Break’s accent became thick enough to destroy some of his th’s.
“It didn’t start it, no, but it — it was the first — first proper King Arthur book I ever had.” Break pulled away, but only so that he could press his forehead against Liam’s. “You’ve — Liam. When the airline lost that suitcase they left me cold and homeless and lost in Boston and I was only there in the first place because everything at home was ruined, and — and all I could manage to be really angry about was the idea that I would never see this book again.”
“And you have no idea how hard it was not to throw it at you the instant you got home the night I found it,” Liam said, bringing his hands up to Break’s face. “I’ve had the thing two months.”
Break laughed, helplessly, sounding a little wet, still clutching the book so hard that his knuckles were white. He leaned forward to kiss Liam, gently, but they jumped apart at the sound of footsteps outside the door. Whoever it was, they passed by without hesitation, and after a few seconds of silence Break sidled close again. He rested his head on Liam’s shoulder, and Liam reached up to run a hand through his hair.
“Merry Christmas,” said Liam.
“Thank you,” whispered Break.
They stayed up too late that night looking at the book together, Break showing him all his favorite bits. Liam dozed off sprawled on his stomach, glasses askew across his face. Xerxes watched him like that for a while before rolling over to tuck the book into the cot Liam’s mother had set out for his use, upper half laying on his pillow and sheet pulled up over the lower. It deserved its own special place.
The quilt that was on the cot was removed and draped over the two of them so that they wouldn’t have to actually get up and get under the covers, and Break fell asleep tucked close against Liam on his tiny old twin bed. When Break awoke late the next morning, it was because Liam had woken first and noticed the book, and he was laughing. Then the dog started barking, and a car door slammed outside. Liam went down to greet the last of his younger brothers, and Break slithered into the warm spot he had left behind, stealing just a few more minutes of laziness before he spent another day socializing.
He definitely needed to take Liam to London.
Wanna know how much of a dork I am? I made sure the book existed before I gave it to Xerxes. bink
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...I have no idea why I got so stuck on the twinkies.
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For some reason, I'm getting flash images of Break opening his present, squealing in utter glee, tackling Liam, and smooching the hell out of him. It's a pleasant image.
MORE PLEASE. Why do I see Lily as their adopted kid? whyyyyyy.
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stalking youreading your LJ!Enjoying how similar they are at the same time that they're different from the anime/manga!
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I've been having a lot of fun working everyone out. There'll be fic for everybody in this setting, eventually.
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I do hope there's going to be more to this--I'd really like to hear about what happened to Break in this modernverse since it can't be exactly the same and all that jazz. And these versions of Break and Liam are just too cute not to love (I nearly had a fangirl attack at the thought of Break with a British accent, btw).