On the way to Jon's parents' house, Kurt hugged a brown-paper wrapped bouquet of flowers to his chest, tucking his fingers into the pocket of Jon's jacket and finding the warm curl of his bare hand. Carols played muzzily out of the old truck speakers and Kurt hummed along, comforting himself with the sound of his voice and the feel of his breath filling his chest.

This evening felt like a mix of dangerous things; Kurt wasn't afraid to cry but crying hadn't been allowed for boys in the home where he grew up. He wasn't sure of himself with Jon's family, and especially not Jon's dad.

"Hey, um," Kurt began uncertainly. "Jon, am I gonna embarrass you if I cry at this thing?"

Jon flashed him a puzzled glance. "No. Not at all." His hand squeezed Kurt's fingers in his pocket. "Probably everybody's crying but me."

"Even your dad?" Kurt asked. "Not just the girls?"

Cary made a huffing noise. "Definitely Pete is gonna cry."

"Boys don't cry in your family?" Jon asked, his hazel eyes touching Kurt's face for a moment.

"I don't know--I cry in my family," Kurt said shortly. "What does that make me?" He regretted phrasing it that way, hearing an echo of the answers hissed in his ear.

"Boys cry in this family, Visser--you're fine." Cary's gruff voice bulldozed that line of thought into the ground. "It's just a normal human thing. No offense, Jon," he tagged on belatedly.

"None taken," Jon said drily. "I'm aware I have a malfunction."

The truck fell quiet, and Jon leaned his head against Kurt's shoulder, rubbing the polish on Kurt's fingers in his pocket. "Just be you," Jon said. "That's who I love."

Light spilled around Mel White's soft figure when she opened the door to let them in. Passing the flowers to Jon, Kurt bent to kiss her cheeks, and she reached up to hug him. "Kurt, I'm so glad you came," Mel said, pulling back to smile in his face, tears welling in her eyes.

Kurt brushed a tear off her cheek, his forehead creasing. "Cryin' already, mom? That's no good--we're not even in the door yet." The word came off his tongue so naturally he almost didn't realize what he had said; he was all up in his feelings about Jon, and this was Jon's mom, and Jon was his partner. It suddenly didn't seem weird at all to call her mom too.

Mel laughed and turned to Jon and Cary in turn to hug them too and say hello before tucking her hand into the corner of Kurt's elbow to walk with him to the dining room. There was a stack of fat photo albums on the coffee table in the living room, but no decorations anywhere for either Christmas or Jon's birthday. "I'm so happy to introduce you to Judah tonight," Mel said. "You're the only one who hasn't heard my stories."

"I'm here for all the stories," Kurt said, and Jon glanced back at him, his mouth tucked in and his eyes telegraphing gratitude.

{Jon}

Bea's face flooded with relief when Jon joined her in the kitchen. "Jonee--help," she said in a panicked whisper. "Dad got called away and I don't know what I'm doing with supper."

Jon swept a look around--a pot of water bubbled wildly on the stove top and the counter was full of ingredients not yet assembled into a meal. He flashed a glare at the stairs--Tabitha May had clearly bailed on her responsibility as the oldest sibling still at home.

"I'll set the table," Cary said, helping himself to the cupboards with the familiarity of years of living in this house.

"Is there a recipe?" Jon asked Bea.

She thrust a tattered 3x5 card at him. His mother's slanting cursive noted: 'Lemony alfredo pasta - J & J favourite!'

The ink was rusty with age. Jon touched a thumb to the edge of the card realizing this was a relic from their old house, their old life. The woman who wrote out the recipe on this card had two sons out of her own body and no grey in her hair.

He cleared his throat. "Okay, we have everything we need here, Bea. This looks pretty easy. You grate the lemon rind and I'll start the cream sauce."

Cary was arranging the bouquet of blooms Kurt had bought in the centre of the table--generous greenery, white roses and hydrangea--when Pete jogged upstairs. Jon's dad looked trim and fit in his dark jeans and what Jon still thought of as his Sunday sweater--the kind of cozy business casual V-neck over a collared shirt that his father had worn to preach in December, perfectly embodying a put-together, fatherly pastor for his congregation in the pews.

"Sorry about that," Pete said. He gave Jon a side hug. "Hey son. Happy birthday."

Jon gave him a quick smile, stirring the cream sauce constantly to keep it from scalding. "Thanks dad. Trouble at work?"

Pete rubbed the side of his beard. "An abuse allegation between a staff and client. I've briefed my second and hopefully she can take it from here. People jobs never really let you rest, do they," he said rhetorically.

"No, they don't," Jon said, a corner of his mouth tucking in. He came by his work ethic honestly; his dad rode the fine line between overwhelm and being there for his people and always had. These days, Pete had over a hundred employees and almost a thousand mouths to feed every day in soup kitchens and shelters across the city.

Pete kissed the top of his daughter's head. "This looks lovely, Bea; thank you for taking over."

Her worried expression melted into a smile. "Thanks Daddy. Jon helped."

Jon laughed to himself.

Pete worked the cork out of a bottle of wine. "Honey Bea, do you want to pop the cork on the bubbly in the fridge? We got something special for non-partakers around the table. Son, can I pour you a glass of this?"

Jon hesitated. In his present state of mind, he would have been happy to obliterate himself with the entire bottle--something he'd never done before but the monkey whispered would transport him through this evening barely conscious of its passing and lay him out cold when it was over. The memory of Kurt's shoulders heaving as his partner vomited into a wastebasket was a good hard slap of reality. "Just half a glass."

Pete glanced through the dining area into the living room, and his face opened in the first real, relaxed expression Jon had seen on his face tonight. "Look at Kurt and your mother."

As if Jon hadn't been stealing glances at them this whole time. Kurt had his feet tucked under him on the couch next to Mel, his colorful head bent so close to her grey one their hair almost mingled together. Mel was animated as she pointed out one picture after another, smiling and crying at the same time. Wiping his eyes on his scarf, Kurt laughed and cried along with her.

Eyes on his own partner, Pete handed Jon a glass of wine, 'clinking' the side of his glass against his son's. "I'd say we got pretty lucky," Pete said.

Jon made a dry noise. "I'd say more than that." The two of them leaned against the counter, drinking and watching their loved ones while the pasta boiled.

{Kurt}

As they sat down for dinner, Kurt glanced at the bowl of steaming linguine pasta and cream sauce, the salad with croutons, and the warm garlic toast and realized his partner could eat none of this meal. He touched the back of Jon's hand beside him, leaning over to ask in an undertone, "Is the pasta gluten free?"

Shaking his head once, Jon met his eyes. His full mouth was wry. "Can you take a small serving?" he asked softly. "It's not a big deal; I'll eat at home."

This birthday party only made sense if you understood how little Jon enjoyed being the centre of attention. His partner just listened, eating his salad slowly, while his family went around the table telling stories about the highs and lows of their year--the things they would have shared with Judah if he had been with them. There was more laughter than Kurt had expected; the feeling in the room was a combination he'd never experienced at a family gathering: warm and feely, close and casual.

When Kurt's plate was empty, Jon swiftly traded it for his own plate, which his mother had served generously for him. Kurt looked bemused at the fresh heap of creamy egg noodles now in front of him, and the neat pile of croutons off to the side. Fortunately, it was delicious.

He was half-way through this second mountain of pasta when the conversation fell away. Looking up, he found Pete's eyes on him expectantly. "Did I miss something?" Kurt drawled.

"It's your turn," Pete said, eyes crinkling in a smile. "We haven't heard your highs and lows."

"You want me to speak?'

"Of course," Pete said simply.

Kurt sat back to think a moment; Cary' dark eyes were watching him and Kurt thought he looked sympathetic. Well Kurt had no trouble speaking in front of people, and he guessed nothing he would say here would shake Jon's commitment to him. This family was just going to have to make up their own minds if they would take him or leave him.

"I started the year on my low point," Kurt said. "Homeless and thirsty as fuck, pardon my French, Honey Bea. When I'm getting down on myself for not being farther along I remind myself where I was a year ago."

He glanced up at the rhinestones winking in the chandelier to put the rest of his share together. "I lost my music this year, and my band. That was pretty low. I guess the high point kind of built over the summer when I started getting sober with my AA group. And then it turned out I got my shit sorted just in time, 'cause the love of my life walked back into my life and I was just ready for him."

Kurt narrowed his eyes warmly at the top of Jon's bowed head beside him. "Jon's the high point of my year, and I'll be sayin' that every year after this one, see if I don't."

There was a hush around the table, like the quiet right after playing the last chord of a song, the note hanging in the air above the crowd.

Mel broke the silence first, her eyes glowing in a smile across at him. "I can't imagine going another year without you, Kurt dear. I'm terribly sad for your lows and terribly proud of you for overcoming all that to be where you are today."

Jon's dad brushed his eye with the back of his hand and his teeth flashed in a smile in his beard. "I'm afraid our family is never going to be the same again, Kurt. And then maybe Cary will add someone new, then May someone new again, and Bea. We're going to need to put a new leaf in our table to hold everyone."

Kurt smiled back warily. He had attached himself to Jon and now this weird, feely family was the home he would come back to for special meals and holiday celebrations. He kept waiting for the placid surface to shatter and the shouting to start.

Cary was smiling back at him, Bea lit up and glowing beside him. Tabitha May looked neutral, her lips pressed like she was working hard to say nothing.

Jon leaned in and wrapped his arms around Kurt's chest in a tight side hug, a rare public display of affection. "Mine," he said, soft and fierce, into Kurt's sleeve, and Kurt chuckled, his tension unspooling a little more.

At the end of the meal, Cary looked surprised and pleased when Kurt slipped Jon's slice of cake in front of him with a wink. Kurt helped Mel tidy the photo albums, carrying an armful of the heavy books back to a study in the rear of the house. Lingering after she was gone, he studied the dates on the spines, finding the one from sixteen years ago. Flipping it open, he paused, taking in page after page of photos from Judah's last year: Judah and Jon at Disneyland, Judah and Jon at Niagara Falls, Judah and Jon blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Holding his breath, Kurt turned to the back of the album.

There was a bare handful of photos of Judah and Jon in the hospital. Judah's bald head looked too large for his wasted body, and his closed eyes were shadowed sockets above the sharp edge of his cheekbones. In contrast, Jon's hair curled over his ears and the back of his neck; his soft rosy cheeks were smattered with freckles. Jon's stocky legs were folded criss-cross on his brother's bed as he read a picture book to Judah, his stuffed beagle in his lap.

Kurt put a finger on that child's chest. There was a little wrinkle of concentration on Jon's child face--the same expression he wore to this day when he had to do hard things. Heart squeezing, Kurt shut the book and took a slow breath. Into the dark. And then out.

2195 words.