{Cary}

On Thursday, as Cary parked the truck in the blue light of evening, the lights along the roof of their house and wrapped around the porch railings blinked on to welcome them home. Kurt jogged upstairs, and Cary stumped to the Advent calendar posted above the kitchen table. He popped open the little door marked '10' and touched the next squares with his blunt finger, counting the days until the fifteenth. Sighing, he unwrapped the chocolate tucked behind the little paper door and put it in his mouth, sucking on it as he plugged in the lights on the tree.

Out of habit, he pulled the lock box off the top of the fridge, opened it with the key on his ring, and counted the baggies and pills to check that the total matched the number in his phone.

The box was back on top of the fridge by the time Kurt paced back into the kitchen, opening one cupboard after another.

Cary asked, "Jon here for supper?" The van was parked in the back and he assumed that meant Jon was hibernating somewhere in the house.

Kurt glanced at him, his mouth unusually flat and nodded. "He just woke up."

"There's a roast and veg in the slow cooker," Cary said.

Kurt closed the cupboards, smiling again. "Have I mentioned what a gem you are, Cary?"

"Not today," Cary said. He fiddled with a string of lights, brushing the evergreen branch to release the sharp, fresh smell of pine. "How is Jon? I haven't seen him all week."

Kurt hugged his arms around himself, lifting his shoulders. "I think he's pulling through?" His blue eyes were worried, meeting Cary's look.

"He's eating?" Cary asked. "Staying hydrated?" His eyes touched the locked box on the top of the fridge. Staying sober? He was pretty sure Kurt would know what he was looking at if Jon slipped this week. And he was probably worrying for nothing. Jon's absence from his life right now didn't have to mean anything other than he was busy with work and school and his partner.

"Yup," Kurt said. "There's that wrap and smoothie place he likes. He pretty much eats the same thing from there every day." He paused. "He missed once and kinda blacked out so I--have an alarm now. To text him to eat."

Cary shot him a smile. "Uh-huh. I been there. Last year I kept his glove compartment stocked with protein bars for emergencies." There was a pause. "You taking care of you, Visser? Sleeping, eating? You shouldn't get lost in Jon's thing."

Kurt's eyes crinkled with some humor. "You know I'm eating--you feed me every day." He lifted his shoulders, looking aside. "I guess I can go without words for a bit. There's an end date; he's not doing school and work again next year."

It looked for a second like Kurt would say something more, but the stairs creaked and he bent his head instead, thumbing through his phone to pull up a playlist.

"Hey Jon," Cary said. Jon gave him a silent wave and the smile that he put on when he didn't have another expression for his face. His clothing looked rumpled and slept in. "There's a roast for supper," Cary said. "We just need to throw together a salad."

Jon went to the fridge, then stood there staring at the contents like he was lost. "I'll just have a smoothie," he said, his voice rough with sleep.

Kurt rolled his eyes and shooed him away from the fridge. "Nuh-uh. That green sludge instead of juicy roast beef and potatoes? I can't let you do that. Look, I got those snap peas you like, and the avocados are ready. That greenhouse across town is still growing cucumbers. All the fresh and green; you'll love it." He passed Jon a bag of snap peas. "Wash these, love, and take off the strings. I'll do the rest."

Cary laughed to himself as Kurt's good-natured nagging put some energy into Jon's movements. It did him good to see Jon brush Visser's arm on the way by and make a genuine smile for Kurt.

"Care?" Jon said, glancing at him from the sink. "Could you put a coffee on for me? I'm only half-alive."

Cary washed the drywall spatter off his hands and arms and obliged. It was a short list of ways Jon knew how to ask for help; coffee he could do.

{Kurt}

When Jon's van pulled away from the house, Kurt climbed back into his clothes and re-made their bed, his anxiety buzzing so he was pretty sure he wasn't sleeping anytime soon. He went up the stairs to Cary's attic studio, dropping into the armchair and stretching his long legs in front of him. He took a puzzle toy off the windowsill to play with while he waited--sometimes Cary was too deep in his story to emerge for a couple minutes.

Kurt tinkered with the interlocked metal rings while Cary's pencil scratched softly over paper, thinking about the evening. As good as their physical relationship was, for the first time Kurt felt like Jon was keeping something from him, hiding even when he was stripped to his skin next to Kurt. It was winding him up a little, realizing how little he knew about Jon, and how reluctant the other man seemed to be to share anything other than his body with him right now.

Cary sighed, sitting back and laying his pencil in the groove at the top of the desk. He rubbed his hands over his face and beard, giving Kurt a sideways look.

"Is he always like this?" Kurt asked, without preamble. "On this week?"

"Like what," Cary said.

Kurt fiddled with the toy in his fingers, trying to get his surging feelings into comprehensible order. "Jon used to tell me all his shit. All his stories. He used to talk to me." His voice cracked in spite of himself and he set the toy aside, pushing his hands against his body. "I'm trying to tell myself he's piled under all the things this week and we're going to get through but...honestly Cary, I'm supposed to be his partner. And right now I feel like I'm nothin' more than a good lay at the end of the day."

Kurt put his elbows on his knees and dug the heels of his hands into his burning eyes, trying to laugh. "I mean, I'm not complaining. But that's not what I thought I signed up for this time."

Cary's eyebrows were low as he watched him. "You saying this to Jon? You speaking up for yourself, Visser?"

Kurt sat back, crossing his legs and brushing his hair off his face. "No," he said quietly. He swallowed, waving his hand at the stairs. "Have you seen him? I was hopin' I could ride it out 'til he's not stretched so thin."

"That's not an excuse," Cary said gruffly, "For taking something from you, even if he is your partner."

"He's not doin' that?" Kurt gave his head a shake, partly to send the Nicky-shit that was pressing on the edges back where it belonged. "He's not," he said more firmly. "I've never been so...spoiled." He laughed to himself, touching his fingers to his stomach. "Jon White's more than good to me. And um...his body is the only part that's still talkin' to me. Sayin' he loves me."

Cary met his look, his face creased with feeling. "That's not nothing."

Kurt smiled, tears slipping out of his eyes. "Nope it's not. I love Jon like breathin'. I'll get down with him any day of the week. But it's not...everything. An' I guess I'm missing the rest of him."

Folding his arms around himself, Kurt put his eyes on the tree lights reflected in the night window and sighed. "I wasn't going to ask you, Care. 'Cause I wanted Jon to tell me himself. But I'm so in the dark right now. What happened this week? Do you know?"

"I know some," Cary said slowly. He rubbed his mouth. "Put it together from Mel and their photo books. I don't know if this makes you feel any better Visser but...Jon never talks to me about this shit either."

Kurt's eyebrows lifted. "It does, kinda," he said slowly. "Although...who's he talking to if he's not talking to you or me?"

Cary met his eyes. "Good question," he said evenly. He got heavily to his feet. "You want a decaf coffee? I'm gonna make a bedtime snack."

The tree lights glowed in their living room, casting a soft silvery light over the carpet piled with throws and pillows and Kurt's guitar on her stand. Kurt went from the front door to the back door, checking that they were locked, settling himself with the familiar night ritual. Clattering the pots and pans on the stove, Cary started the water for coffee and pulled the roast back out of the fridge.

"Hot roast beef sammie?" he asked Kurt, shaving thin slices of the pinkish roast onto the board.

"Mm-hm," Kurt said, smiling. He grabbed his 'Kiss me I'm Danish' apron off its hook. "You want some onions to fry with that?"

Cary shot him a smile back. "Good thinking, Visser."

While his hands made two stacks of shaved roast beef, Cary said, "At the party Saturday, Jon's parents will tell stories of Judah alive and well. They don't talk much about this week."

Kurt peeled the papery skin off a red onion, his nose stinging.

Cary cleared his throat. "You probably figured out Judah had a round of cancer and fought through. I guess he had a year or so of remission." He set a pan on the stove-top to heat, and assembled their pour overs, his face sober and intent. "When the cancer came back I think it took him hard. He hung on 'til his birthday but...he suffered." Sighing, Cary sloshed a glug of olive oil and red wine into the pan, and Kurt silently passed him the board with the sliced red onion.

"No one could hide that from Jon," Cary said quietly. "He don't say much but I gather he was at the hospital every day this week just...watching his brother die."

Kurt dropped back against the counter, staring at him. Six months of taking his mom to chemo treatments gave him a very vivid picture of what that looked like. For all the difficulty of that season, he'd never doubted Inge Klassen was going to fight through. When her hair started to fall out, his mother had shaved her head with his father's electric razor and laughed as she tried on wigs with Kurt. But she had been an adult, and he'd had at least the perspective of 19 years for the gritty in-between moments when her treatments seemed to make her sicker and he couldn't keep ahead of her pain.

And in the end, she had lived.

Jon had been six years old, just tall enough to be eye level with his brother's body in a hospital bed, his wide hazel eyes taking in Judah's losing fight against a merciless opponent. If cancer wasn't such a bitch.

"Christ," Kurt said hoarsely. "Jon." He looked aside, wiping his eyes on the back of his wrists.

Cary slid the onions into the pan with a sizzle and the fragrance filled the kitchen. "Here's the thing, Visser," he said, frowning fiercely now. "Jon's parents are the best people I know. But I'm pretty sure they didn't...have a lot left for him at the end." Cary cleared his throat softly. "Dad never, you know, neglected him or forgot to feed him. But--in a bunch of ways Jon had to look after himself." The other man's black eyes touched his. "And them. When this week rolls around in December he still...does that. Maybe he's always doin' that for them."

Kurt exhaled shakily. He saw Jon holding Bea tight in the kitchen, his face set like he would take on the world. A bunch of shit about Jon made sense to him now, but the sense it made hurt like hell. He sniffed, making a soft noise as he tried to dry his face on his canvas apron.

Cary silently passed him the box of tissues from the top of the fridge and Kurt blew his nose noisily, but tears kept coming. Giving up, he threw his apron up over his face, folding his arms over his head to steady his breathing in the warm dark. "Just gimme a second," he said, small and muffled. "I needa cry this out or Saturday is gonna wreck me."

"Someone should," Cary said, thumping his shoulder.

After few moments, Kurt emerged, the air cool against his hot, damp face. His breath hitched and he blew it out slowly, running cold water over his fingers and laying them against his eyes. "I need Jon's super powers," he muttered.

"Nah," Cary said softly. "You're good how you are, Kurt." He crinkled his eyes at Kurt in a smile as he passed him a stacked roast beef sandwich. "Hey, these sammies turned out. You think Jon wants one for lunch tomorrow?"

Kurt laughed damply. "All you think about is food."

Cary hunched his big shoulders up, making a growling noise of frustration. "I don't know what else to do. This is the darkest week of the year for us. And there's a short list of things Jon will let me help him with. So I light the trees and make something good to eat every day. At least that makes me feel better."

Kurt plunked into the chair next to him, sighing. "It's working for me." He was quiet, savoring his sandwich. Food always tasted better to him after a good cry. He wiped up some of the juices with his finger and licked it off. "Every year, huh."

"Into the dark. Then out," Cary said. "You wanna be with Jon, you walk through the valley in December." He used his last bite to clean up his plate. "Jon's gonna pull through this, Visser. It's not pretty but he makes it out the other side every year. He'll go somewhere to sort his shit out on Judah's death day and he'll come back himself again. So just...hang in there, okay?" He touched Kurt's eyes, looking worried.

Kurt snorted. "I've hung in through worse and you know it." Just hearing where Jon was at right now eased his anxiety, even if the landscape was bleak and his partner hadn't found the words for him yet. Patting Cary's wide, tattooed arm, Kurt smiled reassuringly at him. "I'm all in on Jon White, Care, don't you worry. He's in good hands with me."

Cary's face relaxed in a smile back. "I know he is," he said gruffly. "He's lucky as hell. You got any sisters, Visser?"

Kurt laughed so hard he choked on a crumb of his sandwich, and Cary pounded his shoulder, laughing quietly with him.

{Jon}

After propping his eyes open for his night shift, Jon made it through the Friday morning staff meeting by alternating between a large coffee with cream and a series of fruit juice boxes from the kids' lunch box supplies, sucking them down one after another as his staff shared their prayer requests. His stomach was too unsettled to eat, but Cary would have been proud of how committed he was to hydrating. He was so sleep deprived the whole scene felt like a dream, like he was watching himself nod and smile and go over food safe procedures from outside of his body.

When he'd finally signed out, Jon drove numbly to the nearest pharmacy.

He sat in the silent van for a full three minutes, watching the front entrance of the building while his breath fogged in the chilly air. Normally, he sent other staff to get the kids' prescriptions, and by unspoken understanding Cary handled all their medications at home. It was just a precaution though; he was a grown up person who could fill his own prescriptions without something terrible happening.

Jon opened the glove box and slid the paper out.

It was a simple prescription for sleeping pills; he had dropped into a near-by clinic, explained his sleeplessness and suggested what he thought would help. The person who had scribbled out this form looked barely older than he was.

As Jon waited in the line in the painfully bright pharmacy, he couldn't help scanning the shelves and bags of prescriptions filled for pick up, looking for the shape of the pills that he missed like an amputated limb this week in December. He wondered how many thousands of milligrams of opiate-based painkillers they kept back there and felt his mouth watering.

Giving himself a shake, he paid for his purchase and quickly left.

Their house was empty except for sunlight coming through their south-facing windows and the lonely quiet weighed Jon down. He dropped the paper bag on his bedside table, putting off some kind of decision about those. Feeling like he was in a fog, he went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face.

Misty found him as he was reaching in the top of his closet for a balled up pair of socks in the back corner. Her inquiring 'prrt?' covered the soft rattle of pills.

"Hey cat," Jon said softly, and his voice started the throaty vibrato of her purr.

Shoulders bowed, Jon sat on the end of his bed and unfolded the socks. Rustling in the paper bag, he pulled out the bottle he'd purchased today, looking at them both in his hands.

One bottle to knock him down, one to pick him up again. One perfect weekend guaranteed.

He ran a thumb over the typewritten name 'Oxycodene' on the label of the bottle he had stashed in a ball of socks in his closet. When his migraines had peaked, weeks ago, his doctor had suggested trying these for the pain and Jon was aware he should have said no. He should have said, pretty sure that codeine is an opiate (definitely fucking positive) and the chances I will use those as recommended are slim to none.

Instead, Jon had said nothing and filled the prescription. It was just a small number of pills, he had reasoned, enough for one migraine. Or one shitty weekend in December.

Misty bumped his hand and he stuffed the painkillers back into their sock ball to scratch her furry head between her ears, lifting his eyes to the window. The thing he missed about opes like a hole this time of year was the way he could count on how he was going to feel when he was on them. A cup of coffee and four of those little pills and he was good to go, powering through the day and no one the wiser.

Until they ran out.

He glanced at Misty who had flopped onto her back beside him. "I might be in trouble, cat," he whispered, burying his fingers in her fluffy tummy.

He cracked the bottle of sleeping pills and painstakingly counted out exactly the dose he was supposed to take, then stuffed that bottle into the sock ball with the other. He did not feel safe to sleep in the same room with those both whispering at him from the closet, so he went to Kurt's room, crawled into their tent and buried himself in the blankets. The smell of his partner in their sheets wasn't enough to stop his shivering, and Jon balled up miserably to wait until the sleeping pills took hold and pulled him under.

*Uh oh. How did you feel when Jon unfolded those socks? Did you see that coming?

Thanks for your reads, votes and comments, lovelies! Stay warm today <3 *

3314 words.