near the end of a long year

[tactician]

Rare was the day where the political sphere wasn't abuzz, even all the way down to the lower echelons of the profession, with secretaries and agencies worming their way into last minute flights for their significantly more powerful supervisors, but even on Ennaspie, Christmas morning was a quiet one. Rarer were still was a quiet morning where Weiler wasn't sound asleep when Locke woke to a room bathed in early light.

Instead, though Weiler had stayed in bed by Locke's side, he was sitting up against the headboard, blankets pulled up to his waist as he looked at something through a sliver of window behind the drawn curtains, a soft ivory they had settled on after (admittedly not much) consideration. He was sleepy-eyed when he noticed the shift in Locke's breathing from slumber to waking and looked down, but he didn't say anything quite yet.

He only smiled, in fact, and said nothing at all.

Comments

[tactician]

"Whatever will I do now that you know about my exceptionally interesting parents who ran accounts all their lives and only died of old age?" Weiler groaned around a smile, spinning away from Locke to bring a wrist to his forehead. His parents, had they really been watching, would have been surprised. Weiler had never really joked around so freely with them, though he had never been quite serious either.

Hand falling to his side at the thought, Weiler paused before making his way to the stone markers at the head of his parents' graves. There wasn't much to be done in terms of upkeep (the monthly fee withdrawn from his parents' legacy accounts saw to that) but he reached out and brushed some old snow and branches off the top with the side of his sleeve nonetheless - the first and probably the last of small gestures from their wayward son, who had taken a while, but finally managed to burrow a place for himself somewhere in the System.

[aphelionix]

Locke smiled as he watched him, laying a hand on his shoulder. There was a gratitude he felt towards these two people he had never known, for raising such a boy. He couldn't credit them for the man he became; not entirely, anyway. Maybe he could thank the Circle for that, but mostly Weiler himself. His self-sufficiency was rather spectacular.

"You should show me around your hometown a bit," he said.

[tactician]

Weiler raised a brow at him, face caught halfway between surprised and sheepish. Locke had always expressed a sort of curiosity about Weiler's background, and while Weiler wasn't really embarrassed of his upbringing, there was something about revealing this much a little...embarrassing. "There isn't really much to show. People don't pay to live here for the excitement.

"And what about your cake?"

[aphelionix]

"It'll keep," he answered with a shrug. "But I figure everything's closed, anyway. I did see a nice park, though."

[tactician]

Sentimental, shy, and surprisingly kind for people who had come from a profession like theirs, Locke never managed to grow predictable or do quite what he expected. Weiler smiled, slipping his hands back into Locke's roomy jacket pockets again, and stood up on his toes to reach Locke's ear.

"Are you asking me on a cheesy Christmas date, Cupid Rhys Locke?"

[aphelionix]

Locke tucked his cold face into Weiler's neck, smiling against the skin. His breath was warm, though. "Well, it's something we haven't done before."

[tactician]

Jerking a little when Locke's cold nose touched the warm side of his neck, Weiler let the transgression pass today - but only because it was Christmas, after all, and Locke had come all the way out here for him when all Weiler had bought him was socks. But only because of that.

Weiler nodded, slipping his hands into his own pockets to make walking less cumbersome, and began nudging them back down the hill. "Come on, then. I'll show you all the public facilities my parents' tax dollars paid for."

[aphelionix]

With a soft chuckle, he followed, tugging his scarf back up to cover the bottom part of his face. He spared one more glance at the headstones before they were out of sight, bidding his thanks to the late Mr. and Mrs. Haettenschweiler. He very much planned to take care of their only son.

"The very thing I was wondering," he teased, nudging Weiler with his elbow.