Applications to Juilliard were due, at the latest, by December 1st at 11:59 p.m. Jazz submitted his at 11:53. Or rather, David did.
Jazz, despite having finished making all the required videos the week before, had spent the last day and night checking every detail, every written word on the application, every note he’d played in the videos. He’d been awake for over twenty-four hours, and David had watched him go from exhausted to wired and back several times.
When he pointed this out to Jazz, Jazz responded that it was the circle of sleeplessness, to the tune of “The Circle of Life” from The Lion King, and started giggling. He sobered immediately, shoved the computer at David, and pulled his hands away as if he might inadvertently send the admissions board a dick pic with one wrong move.
“You do it,” Jazz said. “I did all the stuff. I did it like three times. It’s not cheating to make you upload it, is it? I’m not being tested on computers. You don’t have to do computers to do music. You just—“ He waved at the laptop and then pulled his hands well clear. “Just make it work.”
“I told you you should have done this last week.”
“Only dicks say ‘I told you so’ to people who haven’t slept in two days.”
That was probably true, so David let it stand and started working his way through the online application form. He finished with six minutes to go. “Done. Feel better?”
No reply. He looked over. Jazz was asleep with his head on the table.
*
“Do you want to go home for Christmas?” David asked.
Jazz hunched further over his cereal. It was nearly ten, but he’d only made it out of bed five minutes ago. “I am home.”
“Do you want to visit your father for Christmas?” David said patiently.
“Because Thanksgiving went great.”
David poured himself more coffee and reviewed the trip in his head. “I thought it went fairly well, yes.”
“How many times did he bitch about no mashed potatoes and gravy? Or the pie? Or like, any of the food? The only stuff he was cool with was the stuff other people brought and he was just being polite.”
“It’s hard to change.”
“It’s not like he’s living off tofu and kale. I just think he could cut down on the fat without yelling at me about it every four seconds like I’m the one who gave him the heart attack.”
“Do you blame yourself for his heart attack?” David asked.
“I wasn’t even in the same state! He works too hard and he eats shit,” Jazz said, scooping out a handful of Froot Loops from the box and shoveling them into his mouth. “It’s a miracle he made it this long.”
“You miss him.”
Jazz glared as he finished chewing. “Shut up. I just can’t do Christmas with him this soon after Thanksgiving. They should put holidays further apart.”
“We can go out in January or February.”
“Maybe. Yeah. But not now.”
*
So they didn’t go to Duckler. Instead, Jazz went to work and came home and went from one room to the next, picking things up and putting them down in places they didn’t belong. David put up with it until he found his fireplace poker on top of the fridge.
He dragged Jazz out of the guest room, where he’d spent the last two hours listening to his pre-screening videos with a deep crease between his eyes, and displayed the poker situation.
“Why?”
“There was a spider up in the corner,” Jazz said. “You want spiders all over your kitchen?”
“I don’t. I also don’t want pokers on top of my fridge.”
“Then get a fly swatter or something.”
“Put it back where you found it.”
“You put it back where I found it. Did you just get me down here to yell at me about the poker? Who gives a fuck about the poker?”
David leaned back against the counter and eyed him. “I suppose you’re not like this at work or they would’ve fired you by now. Thanks for saving it all for me.”
Jazz made an inarticulate sound and thunked his head against the breakfast bar. He stayed there, face down, for a few seconds and then finally muttered an apology.
“I know you’re worried about getting in,” David said.
“I almost hope I don’t just so I’ll know faster. If I get an audition, it’ll be months. Months like this. How am I supposed to do that? Isn’t this illegal? What about cruel and unusual punishment?”
“If you were a criminal and this was your sentence, possibly. As it is, you’re doing it to yourself.”
“Ugh. Fuck. Ugh! Fuck.”
“Will you get time off work for Christmas?”
“I don’t know,” Jazz muttered.
“Well, find out.”
“What for?”
“I’m tired of you sulking, so we’re going to do something else, and I want to know if we can do it somewhere else.”
“I’m not sulking.”
David just looked at him.
Jazz stuck his hands in his pockets and stared at the floor. “Fine. I’ll ask tomorrow.”
*
The next day, Jazz returned from work with a smile that wavered between pleased and something else. “About time off,” he said.
“Yes?”
“I asked.”
David made a hurry-up gesture.
“They said I could have that whole week? Like Christmas to New Year’s. But I think it’s because they think I’m going to see my dad.”
So the something else was guilt. Hopefully it wouldn’t prove too overwhelming. “Excellent.”
“But I should tell them.” It was almost a question, just a slight upswing in tone at the end of the sentence.
“Should you?” David said.
Jazz pushed his hair back and bit at one corner of his thumbnail. “What are we going to do if I don’t tell them?”
“Go somewhere. I thought Maine, but you can pick if you’d rather.”
Jazz turned to stare out the window. His teeth clicked on his thumbnail, just audible over the sound of traffic. “Will it snow up there?”
“Probably.” It had snowed in the city two days before. Most of it had melted hours after it fell, though brown slush still clung to the edges of the streets.
“We could visit Oz.”
“We could.”
“And bring him a present. What do you get a horse for Christmas? Apples I guess.” Jazz stiffened and he turned toward David slowly, face frozen. “Shit. What do I get you for Christmas?”
“Nothing. I don’t need presents. If there’s something I want, I buy it. Just stop dragging around the house like the ghost of puberty past. That’s all I ask.”
Jazz just stared at him in apparently increasing internal panic. “What do I get my dad for Christmas? Oh my God, I forgot about Christmas. Fuck Christmas.”
“I like this better than the sulking so far, but it could get wearing. Why don’t you make a list? Leave me off it.”
“Are you getting me anything?”
“No,” David said. He wasn’t getting Jazz something. He’d already gotten it.
“Good. Okay. My dad, Laurie, Ty, Ty’s little sisters, Karen… Jesus fuck, I shouldn’t have gone home. And I’ll have to ship it all.”
“Don’t worry about the money.”
“You keep saying that like it’s even possible to not worry about the money.”
“We can buy your father’s together.”
Jazz eyed him. “Why would you do that?”
“Out of the goodness of my heart, obviously.”
“Right. Why actually?”
Traffic splashed past outside in the slush. David watched headlights cut yellow swaths across his living room wall. “He could have made things very awkward for us. He didn’t.”
“He could’ve been nicer too. He didn’t exactly welcome you with open arms or whatever.”
“It was a better welcome than I was expecting.”
Jazz looked like he had some questions about that but, thankfully, he didn’t ask them. “Okay. So we’ll find something for my dad. Are you getting anything for Angie?”
“She and Kevin get their Christmas bonuses.”
“But she’s like your best friend. You don’t get her an actual present?”
“If I did, she’d feel obligated to get me something, and as previously mentioned—“
“Yeah, no presents. Got it. I might get her something. She’s been really nice to me.”
“I’d advise against it. You get locked into a cycle of gift giving once, and it never ends.”
“Are you secretly the Grinch?”
“Am I making a secret of it? It’s up to you. But I have the most stress-free holiday season of anyone I know.”
“At the cost of being a lonely no-Christmas weirdo.”
“Alone. Not lonely.”
Jazz slouched across the room and put his hands on David’s hips. “Would you be lonely without me?”
“Let’s not find out.”
Jazz threaded his fingers through the short hair at the back of David’s neck and brought their mouths together, lips barely touching. David leaned into him and into the kiss. He slid his hands under Jazz’s shirt.
“Don’t even,” Jazz said against his mouth. He pulled back. “I gotta make a list. And check it like seventy-five times.”
Fuck Christmas, David thought.
*
By Christmas Eve morning, the only lingering sign of winter was an icy crust bordering the sidewalks. The bared grass in the parks lay slicked flat like a bad combover. Another storm was expected from the north, but not in time for a white Christmas.
“Check the weather,” David called down the stairs.
“For what? It’s winter. It’s gonna be cold. You think we’re gonna swim or something?”
“Just check it.” David continued his packing by rote, a routine memorized from many business trips. In general they had included fewer sweaters and better shoes, but it still required very little thought. Jazz’s packing appeared to require no thought. He’d thrown — literally, from across the room — various of the contents of his dresser into a borrowed duffle and headed down to the kitchen to make coffee.
David was currently resisting the recurring urge to repack for him. He did look through the duffle briefly before he took it, along with his bag and a disguised Christmas gift, down to the car and sighed internally all the way down the stairs. Jazz could always borrow his sweaters.
He closed the door behind him, shaking off the chill and following the scent of coffee toward the kitchen. “Did you check the weather?”
“Yeah, guess what?”
“What?”
“It’s winter. It’s gonna be cold.”
David stole his coffee in retaliation. “Do you even own a hat?”
“I’m fine, my ears are fine, nobody’s getting frostbite. Chill and drink my coffee. When do we leave?”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“I’m always ready.”
They left fifteen minutes later with the coffee in travel mugs and headed out of the city.
*
They were still an hour away from the house when it started to snow, fat and fluffy flakes that clung to the windshield and the wipers and the road equally. It even stuck to the street signs, driven by an increasingly bitter wind. David was glad he was the one driving.
He switched on the radio and fumbled with the dial. It was the first time in years he’d used the radio rather than a bluetooth connection to his phone and he could find nothing but static. Jazz flapped his hand away.
“What do you want? I got it.”
“Weather.”
“It’s just snow. Either there’s gonna be more or there isn’t.”
David let that statement sit for a few seconds while the wind battered at the car. He turned the wipers up and took a slow breath. “Did you actually check the weather this morning when I asked you to?”
Jazz said nothing. A sideways glance showed David he was winding a piece of hair around the tip of his finger and watching the colors it turned due to lack of circulation.
“Jazz.”
“I was making coffee! It’s just a little snow.”
“It’s just a little snow right now. Could we find out how much snow it’s going to be?”
Jazz twiddled the radio dial, found more static, and got out his phone instead. “It’ll be fine,” he said.
“Is that the forecast? Fine with a chance of sullen and reproachful?”
“Fuck you,” Jazz muttered. He scrolled. “So, uh.”
“The sullenness seems to be lifting. Is that partly worried I hear?”
“So, like. Six inches?”
“Three to six?”
“Six to eight. But look, we’ll get there way before that happens. We’re almost there now and we can just get food and stay in.”
“If you didn’t want to check the weather, you could’ve said so.”
“I did.”
“No, you dismissed it as unnecessary and then lied and said you’d done it.”
Silence. Silence, and the soft hiss of snow streamers across the road and over the windshield, molded by the wind into slim white snakes.
“Sorry,” Jazz said, still sullen, still sulky, still very much like the boy who had run away from home because his father didn’t understand him.
David had thought that would go away when he was done with his Juilliard application. Anyone might revert under so much stress, but Jazz seemed to be stuck there. It made David’s stomach tight and uncomfortable. He didn’t know what to do with the feeling or the situation. So he ignored it.
Silence and snow rode with them all the way up the dark, pine-lined backroads to the house.
*
The power was out when they arrived. David opened the door and found it barely warmer inside than out. Flicking the lightswitch by the door, unsurprisingly, accomplished nothing. “We can get a room in town,” he said.
“Whatever.”
David turned slowly toward him. “If the next thing out of your mouth doesn’t sound more like an adult than a thirteen year old, I’ll get a room in town and you can do whatever the hell you want.”
Jazz took half a step back. He gave David a jerky nod and then edged forward to peer past his shoulder into the dark. “There’s a fireplace, right?”
“Several.”
“And we cut up that whole tree and stacked it around the back.”
“Yes,” David said cautiously. “We did do that.”
“Wasn’t there even a wood stove in the living room? We could camp out in there. Yeah?”
“If you want to spend the holiday in a freezing house in the dark, yes.”
“It’ll be an adventure?” He glanced at David’s face and away. “I’ll get the wood.”
Jazz hurried off toward the back of the house and left David to unload the bags and groceries alone. He dumped them just inside the door and found a flashlight, battery powered lantern, and candles. Power outages had been a part of his childhood. They were rarer now that he had rich neighbors and the infrastructure had been overhauled, but he had never stopped preparing for them.
Jazz banged on the back door, a snow-coated ghost with an armful of firewood. David unlocked the door and turned away.
“You couldn’t even open it?” Jazz said as he pushed through.
David chose not to answer. He found the matches instead, lit the candles, and collected kindling from the basket beside the stove. The metal warmed. A sphere of heat moved out into the room. David’s jaw started to unclench, and his teeth stopped trying to chatter.
Behind him, he heard a rhythmic thumping, duh-dum, duh-dum. Presumably not the tell-tale heart, since neither of them had murdered the other yet. He turned and saw Jazz dragging a mattress down the stairs.
“What are you doing?”
“You want to sleep on the floor?”
David didn’t. He did still want to argue about dragging the mattress into the living room, but he had no ammunition and suspected that at least half of his irritation at this point was due to hunger. Jazz was trying. He should too. He got out bread for sandwiches instead.
Jazz got a pot from the kitchen, poured milk into it, and set it on the wood stove.
“What are you doing?” David asked again, annoyed at himself for asking, annoyed about his cold dinner, and annoyed about the cold house.
“Heating this up.”
“I would never have guessed. If it boils over, I won’t be the one scrubbing it off the stovetop.”
Jazz gave him a sarcastic salute and kept heating his milk. David trudged upstairs to round up sheets and blankets. When he got back, the warmth in the living room was enough that he took his coat and shoes off, although he did immediately wrap himself in two of the blankets.
Jazz came to sit on the edge of the mattress with two mugs. He handed one to David. “Here.”
“I don’t want hot milk. I can’t imagine who would.”
“It’s cocoa.”
“I don’t want cocoa either.”
“It’s special cocoa,” Jazz said.
“It can’t be that special. We don’t have any booze.”
Jazz looked up at the ceiling and mouthed something profane. “It’s sorry-I’ve-been-a-moody-dick cocoa, okay? Just drink it.”
David hesitated and then took it. “Fine.” He took a sip. The sweet froth of semi-dissolved mini-marshmallows stuck to his lip, and he licked it away.
Jazz held his own mug between his hands. The plume of steam split around his face. Fire flickered in the crack around the stove door and turned his skin ruddy and his hair gold. David brushed a strand away from his eye and tucked it behind his ear.
Jazz looked at him warily. “Does that mean the cocoa worked?”
“Enough that I’ll use you for your body heat tonight.”
Jazz scooted closer and leaned in slowly. David let him have the kiss. Some of his worry dissolved in the flavor of marshmallows and sweet, rich chocolate.
*
David woke in the middle of the night. Jazz was pressed up behind him and breathing slowly against his neck, but he wasn’t asleep.
“What?” David said.
“How’d you know I was awake?”
“I don’t know. I just knew.”
Jazz kissed him behind his ear. “I’m glad it’s just us. And sorry I didn’t check the weather. But maybe not sorry, because I like this.”
“We’re inside and I can see my breath.”
“No you can’t.”
“I could if I stood in the kitchen.”
Jazz hugged him closer. “Don’t go stand in the kitchen. Stay here.”
David stayed. He pulled the blankets up to his nose. “What time is it?”
“Almost two.”
“Merry Christmas.”
Jazz found his hand and squeezed it. “Merry Christmas.”
Jazz was warm against his back. Last year he’d gotten very expensive sushi and ate it watching movies in bed. The year before that he’d been in France, staying in the tower room of a castle-turned-hotel. Both years and all years previous that he could remember, he’d never felt like anything was missing.
Now that Jazz was here, something would be missing if he were gone. And now that Jazz was here, the other circumstances of the day seemed less important.
David thought of the gift-wrapped box in the trunk of the car. He’d planned on giving it to Jazz on Christmas morning. Now he was rethinking. He hadn’t — consciously — planned to make Jazz feel guilty about not getting him anything, but that was the effect it would have. Better, maybe, to stick to no presents and then pass it off as an impulse purchase in the post-Christmas sales.
*
Jazz stoked the stove and made coffee the next morning. He brought it to David, who did not unroll himself from the blankets until he had two cups inside him. Jazz came back to bed, and they sat shoulder to shoulder. The room warmed gradually. The sun rose higher in the sky.
Outside was a lumpy, white world, all color gone, all detail lost.
“I guess we’re not cutting down a tree,” Jazz said. “I thought that’d be cool. But if we didn’t get all the snow off it’d melt all over everything.”
“Also we don’t have a saw.”
“We’ve got an axe. I could cut a tree down with an axe.”
“Awkward when you’re swinging at ankle height.”
Jazz wrinkled his nose. “I guess, yeah. We could decorate one outside. That one in the front is Christmas tree sized.”
“Decorate it with what?”
Jazz turned to look at him. “Don’t you have anything? Not even lights?”
“Not even lights.”
“What about your aunt? Didn’t she have Christmas stuff?”
“I got rid of it. I don’t decorate.”
Jazz rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, next year we’re getting a tree and some fucking ornaments, okay, Mr. Scrooge?”
“If you want to. I don’t have any objections.”
“Then why didn’t you do it before?”
“I didn’t see the point,” David said.
“Do you see it now?”
“The point is that you want to.”
“And that’s enough, huh?”
“Yes.”
Jazz rested his forehead against David’s temple and kissed his jaw. “Okay.”
The lights flickered on, off, and on again. The furnace clicked and groaned as it came to life. For no apparent reason, the microwave started beeping.
Jazz laughed silently into David’s shoulder. “Christmas miracle.”
*
The snow was piled a foot high around the car and drifted to nearly twice that at the mouth of the driveway, but the inside of the house was warm and full of light and the smell of roasting chicken.
They had kept the mattress in front of the wood stove in case the power cut out again, which it had, though only for minutes at a time. They’d stayed there in a nest of pillows and blankets and kept feeding the stove until they were almost too warm.
They’d turned down the thermostat, but, between the oven and the potatoes boiling on the stove, the kitchen was still warm enough for David to push the sleeves of his sweater up to his elbows.
Jazz wandered into the kitchen and stood behind him, hands at his waist. “Smells good. So do you.” He bent to rest his chin on David’s shoulder and breathed in against the curve of his neck.
“It’s almost done.”
“Is this what Christmas was like when you were growing up here? Did you cook then too, or did your aunt do it all?”
“She decorated. We had a tree. I learned to do a lot of the cooking later on. She didn’t have much interest in it.”
“Who’s not interested in food?”
A vivid memory appeared in David’s mind of taking a box of crackers to his room and eating it alone on Christmas Eve as the scent of cooking ghosted up the stairs. For a moment, he could feel the crunch of them between his teeth and the weight of the blanket over his legs, the crumbs between his body and the sheets as he finally lay down to sleep.
“Maybe I was the one who wasn’t interested. It was a long time ago.”
“Glad you’re interested now,” was all Jazz said. He stayed where he was, leaning against David’s back, and only moved when David had to drain the potatoes.
*
After dinner, they laid themselves out on the mattress again. An abandoned game of Monopoly spilled onto the floor in a landslide of cash and property. Jazz picked up the top hat piece and set it on David’s forehead. “Know what that is?”
“Mildly irritating but not enough to get me to move.”
“Wrong. It’s a crown for cheaters. Cheater crown. Know why?”
“I told you I’d cheat. You still wanted to play.”
“I don’t even know how you did it.” Jazz put the race car next to the top hat. “Fast cheater crown.”
“My hotel on Baltic was a front for the mob.”
“Uh huh.” Jazz lined up the rest of the pieces on David’s chest. “You know what my favorite part of today is?”
“What?”
“You in pajamas all day. And maybe no presents? Is that weird? That’s weird.”
“I told you it’s less stressful this way.”
“But I like getting people stuff. I like making them happy. And you better not say stuff doesn’t make people happy because you’re like the crown prince of materialism.”
“Stuff makes people happy temporarily because it’s new and presumably exciting. Happiness from novelty doesn’t last.”
Jazz covered David’s nipple with the thimble. “What if the novelty doesn’t wear off?”
“The novelty always wears off. That’s why we always buy more things.”
Jazz frowned at the thimble-covered nipple. “That’s true. But I still think it’s nice while it lasts.”
“I suppose so.”
“This is novel, right?” Jazz put the dog in David’s belly button.
David raised his head to look down at it, dislodging the pieces from his forehead. “I think that’s a fair statement, yes.”
“Score.” Jazz held out his fist to be bumped.
David pulled him down for a kiss instead, but they ended up with pointy metal game pieces between their bodies, and there was a pause to clean up before they could resume.
*
Much later, they lay side by side among the blankets, the remains of a Dean & DeLuca fruitcake between them. It wasn’t bad, for fruitcake.
“You know what we’ve got,” Jazz said. “We’ve got candles. Those are decorations. Those are like the original decorations, right? You stick them on trees for solstice or something. That’s where Christmas lights came from.”
“We don’t have a tree.”
“There’s a tree outside. Where we’d be way less likely to start a fire if we covered it in candles.” Jazz jumped up and started gathering candles from around the room. “Come on. Up. We’re doing this.”
David let Jazz haul him to his feet. “We’re doing what exactly?”
“Candles. Branches. Fire, snow, magical Christmas memories, come on.”
David gave in and put on his coat. The candles were thrust into his arms. He held them while Jazz donned his own coat and found the matches.
Jazz opened the door, and the cold pushed into the house. They both took a step back. Outside, the small pine near the house stood under its frosting of snow. Moonlight found its way past the bigger trees overhead to light up the ground.
The snow had piled up against the door. They’d be wading through it halfway to their knees. David looked down at Jazz’s worn sneakers.
“Right, okay, let’s do this—“
David caught his shoulder as he was about to plunge in. “Wait.”
“For what? It’s not getting warmer.”
“Just wait here.” David pulled on his boots, which weren’t tall enough but at least offered some protection. He got the keys and forged a path to the white lump of the car. A minute or two and a lot of snow later, he returned with Jazz’s present. “Open it.”
“You said you didn’t get me anything!”
“I said I wasn’t going to get you anything. I’d already gotten it. It wasn’t technically a lie.”
“What about novelty doesn’t last and all that shit?”
David closed the door and pushed the box against his chest. “It’s not novel. Just open it.”
Jazz eyed the box. “Why’d you leave it in the car to start with?”
“Because I didn’t know if I should give it to you.”
He eyed the box harder. “Why not?”
“Because you didn’t think I was getting you anything and I didn’t want to make you feel guilty on Christmas. Will you just open it?”
“My non-novel guilt-inducing present? Sure, sounds like fun.”
David crossed his arms over his chest and glared.
Jazz ripped off the paper and opened the box. He frowned into it. “It’s just boots.”
“Your gratitude humbles me.”
“No, I mean—“ Jazz started to smile. “I mean that was a lot of drama over boots, that’s all. They look nice.” He sat down on the bench by the door and pulled them on. “Feel nice too. Cozy.”
“I was going to say I bought them after Christmas. In the sales.”
Jazz smiled up at him. “But then you didn’t want me to have cold feet.”
“Frostbite. Potentially.”
Jazz stood and kissed him. “They’re great boots, baby. Not novel at all.”
“I know you’re making fun of me.”
“I love you. And these totally boring boots. Let’s go set shit on fire. Not set shit on fire. Set candles on fire. Not anything else.”
“How are you going to attach them to the tree?”
Jazz’s face went briefly blank. “Uh,” he said.
*
Shortly before midnight and quite a while after David had lost the feeling in his fingertips, they gave up on attaching the candles to the tree branches. The methods that hadn’t worked included wire, ancient clothespins, bungee cords, and duct tape.
Now David watched as Jazz planted the candles in a circle around the tree and lit them one by one. They had left a circle of crushed snow, but everywhere else was smooth, still, and silent.
Jazz walked in his own foot prints back to David’s side and put an arm around his shoulders. David leaned into him. The orange of the flame wavered on the snow like something alive.
Jazz turned David toward him and brought their foreheads together. “Hey,” he said.
“What?”
“Thanks for the boots.”
David shook his head.
“No?”
“Thank you. For — for all of this.”
Jazz pulled him close. David put his head on Jazz’s shoulder and watched the candles burn.