Chapter Text
Everything was off since that had happened this morning.
Joel had spent the rest of the day at his base, wrapping presents to be given out, and ignoring how his thoughts played on a constant loop of Bdubs, Shut up, Joel!, and wait, which Hermit was this for again?
He didn't feel as much in the Christmas spirit as he should. He wanted to feel holly and jolly, but he couldn't seem to get that through to himself.
Instead of actually trying to better himself though, he blasted music. Headphones at full volume, he couldn't bring himself to care about tinnitus. His only goal at the moment? Rewire his brain so he could forget everything and move on with his life. Stupid kiss. Stupid fucking Mistletoe.
He knew his frustration was only growing worse. Even excluding the moment that had happened in the middle of gift-wrapping chaos— he'd sat on the floor and just screamed, voice cracking oddly and all— everything had seemed to go to hell.
Every little thing was irritating him; the bow that was undoing itself, his tape running out, even the fact his past self had apparently decided on the most stupid gift for Mumbo.
Joel whispered his mantra under his breath in between small but explosive fits of rage. Everything is fine, everything is normal!
He had to get it together. He had presents to deliver, even if everything had been flipped upside down and the rug pulled out from beneath him.
With a despairing sigh, he headed out, praying he ran into nobody; he wasn't in the mood. He checked off houses on a list as he delivered presents. In a way, it was funny—he was an offbrand Santa.
The cold air hit him harder than expected, sharp enough to steal the breath from his lungs. He welcomed it. It was something real, something actually sane.
Snow crunched beneath the wheels of the cart as he moved from house to house. Halfway down the street, one of the boxes shifted. He barely caught it before it slid off the cart.
“Get it together,” he muttered to himself, hands trembling from something he couldn't just blame on the cold.
A few houses later, at False’s, she opened the door just as he was turning away. Smiling as she realized what the box was supposed to be, she started to say something. Well, he assumed she was smiling; he had bolted the second the door cracked open.
You could have at least said hi, idiot.
He couldn’t handle this. This was stupid, truly. Nothing should have this much affect over him.
For a moment, he just stood there, hands gripping the cart, breath fogging in front of him. The voice in his head crept back in, quieter now, more insistent, digging into every sentence now instead of rudely interrupting.
Joel shut his eyes.
He didn’t know if his outing was fixing anything. He didn’t know if this delivering business would make the weight lift, or if it would still be there when he got home.
He pushed the cart forward towards the next house anyways—light as a feather now with nearly every present delivered.
Late into the night, moon cast over his cottage, Joel laid in bed still awake. He was restless, exhaustion settling deep from delivering presents but his mind running a million miles a minute. Of course, it was only about Bdubs. Bdubs, Bdubs, Bdubs.
He never got to give him his actual present.
It sat, untouched, in the secret laboratory under his house. He had almost stuffed it in his bag that evening before he remembered how bad of an idea that would be. It wasn't like last week, when everything had been okay, until he'd fucked it up.
Joel knew it was insufferable and pointless to mope over Bdubs; first off, it was selfish, and second, he felt like he was going insane the longer he sat alone in the dark, all his thoughts on the handsome man he'd driven away.
Knock, knock, knock.
The unexpected guest at the door interrupted Joel’s thoughts, making him just about jump out of his skin. In that moment, from the way his stomach flipped, he knew who it had to be.
He wrapped himself in his robe and ran down to the door, determined to resolve the situation.
Upon opening it, the cold, freezing wind blew into the warmth of his house, and despite it stinging his face, he looked straight at Bdubs. The other man stood in the falling snow, the porch light enhancing the shadows in his face. He looked exhausted; Joel was sure he did as well.
“Can I come in?” Bdubs said hesitantly, and he wanted to scream, yes, yes, yes, a million times yes.
It was a strange parallel that nearly never happened. Bdubs, open, vulnerable standing on the outside of the door; Joel stood on the inside, standing stiff and guarded.
Despite the voice that had just begged to let him in, to make things right just a moment before, a feeling of uncertainty and wrongness struck him. A part of him insisted it was something he shouldn’t allow.
“Why?” Joel replied tersely.
Bdubs looked helpless in the shadows of the night, surrounded by snow.
“Please,” he asked again, voice sounding almost shaky.
This was unlike Bdubs. He wouldn’t normally act like this. He wouldn’t plead, he’d push past Joel to get into the house, snow on his boots be damned. And Joel would yell at him about hardwood floors and water damage, and Bdubs would call him a horse-killer, and—
“I’ll let you in, if you actually stay this time,” Joel blurted before he could get lost in himself. "Don't run, don't try to be a stranger, just… just bloody come in already, alright?"
Bdubs looked at him with wide eyes. Joel didn’t know how to feel about it.
“Sure,” Bdubs answered back, after a moment of silence. He swallowed the lump in his throat before going back inside, Bdubs following him into the warmth of the house.
Once the door was closed, they stood opposite to each other, staring. Neither of them knew what to say; how to bring everything back to the way it was, how to make this better. For someone who'd thrown him out, Bdubs looked like a kicked puppy.
“You look… cold,” Joel observed quietly, breaking the awkward silence.
Bdubs was in a t-shirt and pajama pants, obviously having been unable to sleep as well. What was so important that the man walked over in pajamas in freezing cold weather? Joel couldn't help but wonder, despite the (admittedly quickly dying) part of him that insisted on not caring.
“Well, yeah. Wanna help me get warmer?" Bdubs said, voice cracking despite his attempt to shift the mood.
He forced himself to ignore the flirting, and the tone that betrayed Bdubs feelings.
“The couch has blankets,” Joel replied impassively, pointing in the direction of the furniture.
Bdubs’ expression shifted, going back to the one he had seen that morning, before he made Joel leave his house. It was blank and bitter, stony and solid. Hiding emotions that while Bdubs despised, Joel would adore any day.
Nonetheless, he nodded, making his way to the couch, looking through the blankets to select one.
Joel swallowed a lump in his throat. “I’m…going to make some coffee, I’ll be back,” he said before quickly turning on his heels towards his small kitchen, not even waiting for Bdubs’ reaction.
His stomach was churning. There was no way he could keep this facade up— of pretending to just be friends, of pretending that it was all fine, but they weren't pretending, were they? Just ignoring the elephant in the room.
Joel took a deep breath as he started the coffee. He could do this— even if he couldn't, he didn't have a choice in the matter.
While it brewed, he stared at the two empty mugs, and couldn't help but compare them to himself and Bdubs. They looked like polar opposites from each other, but when side by side, they were a matching set.
Beep.
Interrupted by the machine, he poured the steaming hot coffee, and pondered on what he would actually say. Nothing came to mind; he never was much of a wordy person, which was one of the reasons he'd been drawn to Bdubs in the first place with his big words and extravagant sentences.
Unable to procrastinate for much longer, he brought the drinks to the living room. Bdubs was sitting on the couch, bundled up in a colorful blanket.
“Might help with the cold,” Joel quietly stated, gesturing to the mug that he sat on the coffee table.
Bdubs looked at the coffee and then at the man, before asking apprehensively, “This isn’t poison, is it?”
“Okay, dude!" Joel sputtered. "I’m not that blummin' mad, no!”
“Just checking, just checking!” Bdubs retorted back, putting his arms up in defense.
They sat in an awkward silence thick enough to be cut with a knife. Joel watched as Bdubs drank, looking into space rather than at him.
Joel took a deep breath. “So… why are you here?” he asked.
Bdubs tensed. “I wanted to apologize,” he mumbled, voice barely audible.
“Apologize? You?” Joel interrupted, aware of the uncut frustration and surprise in his voice.
“Watch it,” he all but ordered before continuing, “I know I’ve been… hurtful to you. Most of it deserved, but some of it went too far.”
Joel paused for a long moment, ignoring the 'deserved' part but rather on the memory of the mistletoe. "Was us kissing was too far? I mean, it's fine if was, it's just… just be honest with me, Bdubs, okay?”
"I—” Bdubs frowned, all bite gone, a deer in headlights. "I don't know. I don't know how I feel and what was too far and not. Every single thing you do is confusing and disorienting to me. I feel stupid every time I'm near you and I don't know what it's about. It's annoying. Every time I feel like I have things figured out, you do something. I'll react in the most idiotic way, and suddenly the world's been flipped upside down.
"I don't know what I want, Joel. I hate being here now, I hate that I'm even talking about this. I'm sitting here thinking, 'hey, wouldn't it be a great idea to dart out of here? Let's do that, Bdubs, great idea!
"Ugh, it's freaking stupid! I just...whatever," Bdubs pressed his hands to his face, digging them into his forehead. "You're so maddening and yet you're all I can think of."
Joel stared at the other man, blood running to his head, unsure of what to say. To be honest, he'd lost track after the first good bit, but the message was clear.
"I, uh...I think I understand. It could have gone with a few less insults thrown in, but… I get it," Joel finally replied, looking at Bdubs who stared at him with an expression that said 'no you don't.' "Well, I mean, obviously probably not as much as you do, but like, dude, what do you think I was doing awake? Bloody hell, I was yearning over you. I was trying to figure out how to fix all this, for void's sake."
Bdubs didn't make a face, just avoiding eye contact, making Joel feel all the worse.
“I just… don’t want you to keep leaving,” Joel started again quietly, “or… kicking me out. This morning stung. Like, really bad, Bdubs.”
The other man flinched at that, looking guilty. “I know.”
“Please, just… don't, okay?” Joel asked, looking at the man with furrowed brows and hurt eyes.
“What?”
“Don’t leave.”
For once, Joel found himself seeking stability in his life. Begging for something consistent.
“I… can’t. Joel, for all you know me—”
Joel felt like he’d been shot in the heart with an arrow. His stomach gnawed at him, from inside out, threatening to eat him alive.
“I know,” Joel interrupted softly, trying to not betray how hurt he was.
“I can try though,” Bdubs answered, looking up and meeting Joel's pained expression.
There was a beat between them before Joel could respond.
“Trying is more than nothing. I can live with trying; I can't… live without you, though.”
Bdubs didn’t answer right away. He stared up at the ceiling, jaw tight, fingers worrying the edge of the blanket. Joel wondered if this was the part where Bdubs ran—stood up too fast, muttered an excuse, vanished into the snow again and pretended like nothing had ever happened the next time Joel saw him.
Instead, Bdubs shifted, sitting back up straight. He glanced at Joel, then away just as quickly.
“I don’t want to hurt you again,” he admitted. “That’s the part that scares me.”
“You already have,” he said, brutally honest; ignoring the stung look in the other man's eyes. “And I’m still here.”
"I shouldn't have though. You don't deserve that."
Joel didn't have an answer to that. The silence stretched, but it was different now; heavy, not tense or awkward, just weighing them both down with something.
"We should probably go to sleep, shouldn't we?" he finally said, letting out a breathy laugh that wasn't humorous in the slightest. "Look at us. Acting like angsting teens, aren't we?"
Bdubs raised an eyebrow. “Should I take the couch?”
“Yeah, don't get ahead of yourself. It's not hard to with that big head and all, but at least try, won't you?” he quipped, a half-assed attempt at a joke.
A corner of Bdubs’ mouth twitched, just barely and he huffed. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
Joel hesitated, then sat down on the opposite end of the couch. Bdubs glanced over, but didn't say anything. He hadn't realized how awkward standing had been for them until he filled the space. Leaning back, his heart still ached as he stared at the ceiling. Things were still messy, unresolved, terrifyingly uncertain, but…
But Bdubs was here.
For tonight, that was enough.
“Can I…” Bdubs’ voice broke through the silence, trailing off. He gestured to the space in between them, silently asking to get closer.
Joel had no energy to deny it, simply nodding. The lack of sleep was creeping up on him, exhausting him.
Bdubs’ lips twitched into a small smile, inching toward the other man till their shoulders touched.
"We should… maybe, do what we did yesterday," Bdubs murmured, voice hoarse with tiredness and looking almost shy to ask. "In the morning. Minus all the kicking out, of course."
“Who am I to turn such a lovely man down?” he teased, agreeing.
Bdubs rolled his eyes, face flushing, “Don’t push it; maybe I'll just change my mind and shack up with Grian instead.”
Joel just laughed, scooting in closer.
Maybe this could work. Even with everything that happened, the fact they were sitting here like this, was more than enough to become a lasting, good Christmas.
And just through quietest whisper as Joel close his eyes, he heard the other man mutter,
”Remind me to burn that stupid goal tomorrow.”