If you're looking for an adventure in the morally grey, and a crash course of the human condition, this is the story for you! What is good and evil? Where is that line drawn, and who decides that? Packed with humor, danger, feels, and awkward relati...
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After a tense two weeks, Christmas came at them like a storm. It had taken them all quite some time to calm down from the armed visit and even longer for Nathan to escape from his feeling of constant dread and terror. Several visits to Julian and more time spent with Ian than he was comfortable with eased it significantly.
Julian had promised to castrate Rick if he even looked at him sideways. More seriously, Julian had told Nathan that if he was frightened or feared for his life, to run up to his room. That was unlikely though because Ian and Donovan had promised that he would never be alone with Rick around.
No one directly wanted to talk about it because turning Rick in meant Tanner and Ian would die. Maggie was even more distant than anyone else, coming and going in silence on most days, and Tanner was never home anymore. Nathan wondered if he was spending his time with Rachel, but he'd been too nervous to ask directly.
It was early afternoon and there was snow outside today. Nathan was happy to see the layers blanketing the town and even more excited for their Christmas together. Nathan had never had a Christmas that he'd shared with so many people. Staring out through the living room window at the snow, he wished his mother was here.
After seeing the photos of that woman, his concern for her had spiked. Every free moment he had, he thought about her constantly, wondering if she missed him or hated him. With the New Year, he was going to ask Maggie about calling her. It would be easier to find out the answer to those questions over the phone. If he had to face his mother, he wouldn't be able to handle the disappointment on her face if she didn't want to see him anymore.
It was better that he focused on today, so he turned back from the window to Ian. Rolling an unlit cigarette around his lips, Ian was busy fastening some mistletoe over his head. The man snickered with a friendly smirk when Nathan noticed, and Nathan just smiled.
Everyone was here in the house for the event, well almost.
Maggie was in the kitchen getting the cookies out of the oven. That had been a feat, getting her to manage it all by herself. There had been a few practice batches which had smelled significantly less appealing than these ones did.
After everything, Rick had gone into hiding, and he'd had enough sense to sit in his room, albeit drunk as hell. Maggie hadn't bothered with him because it was Christmas, and the drunker Rick was, the quieter he was. Apparently he only got angry and hostile when the buzz started to wear off, so Maggie had given him enough booze to drink himself dead. They didn't expect him downstairs for the entire night.
Rachel was spending the night at her friend's house for Christmas.
Rachel was also on their couch, leaning on the armrest toward Tanner who was in the recliner next to her. Somehow they had managed to convince Maggie to let her sneak over for the event. It had been a pile of paperwork accompanied by restrictions as to where she could go, what she could touch, who she couldn't touch, and how long she could remain in the building. The pen allowed visitors with the right paperwork signed. It was just that no one had been sufficiently suicidal enough to attempt it before.
