Tiger Winter - 9. Gift

Emmett sat on his bed, and stared at the package. It had turned out that as well as getting tickets to go back home on the right day, he’d also had enough time left to bribe the tailor he’d found online and get Jian’s Christmas present made and shipped to him in time before they left. Emmett had opened the slim oblong box and unwrapped the gift to check that all was as it should be, then wrapped it back up in new tissue paper, inked over the name and address label, and closed the box before wrapping it in the most gaudy holiday paper he could find; this one had foil reindeer in all colours of the rainbow adorning it. The problem was, he really wanted to give it to Jian before Christmas got there, for it to be something special and sort-of secret, a moment only the two of them shared. But he wondered how that would look to the boy: a present from a friend, something Emmett would have to admit he’d had made especially for him. It was a present that meant something, even if Emmett didn’t want it to.

That was another thing bugging him as he began to pack underwear and socks into his duffel. In the three days since he and Zeke had broken up, he’d spent nearly all of his time hanging out with Jian, whether sitting on the couch reading, eating, or watching hockey, or with Emmett in fur, happily rolling on the cold wooden floors or in the snow. Jian had bugged him to come to the park that first night, late enough no one would be around, and had kept watch while Emmett had rolled in the snow for the first time since coming back from Killarney. Even so, his fur was already whiter than it had been all summer.

He wanted the present to mean something. He wanted to tell Jian that he felt… something, for him. But Emmett had no idea what it was. Whenever he stopped to think about it, he was still faintly miserable, and remembering Zeke, and what’d he’d said, was painful and gloomy. It was too soon to say something to Jian, to express any emotion beyond the half-love of friendship and the gratitude for his support. Jian hadn’t asked any questions about the break up, hadn’t pushed him to talk about it: but he’d been there, with his soft eyes and his happy smiles, to share Emmett’s meals and talk to him about books

And now the boy was coming home with him. Emmett made sure there were no visible presents on the bed behind him, and dialled up his brother as he began to fold long sleeve t-shirts into a neat stack.

“Emm!” Rye appeared at his desk flush and happy looking, “it’s late for you to be calling.”

Emmett frowned.

“I don’t wanna know what you were doing, do I?”

Ryley grinned sheepishly and shook his head.

“Probably not,” which was the answer that confirmed everything, and Emmett put his hands over his eyes and growled in horror.

“I love you little brother, but there are some things it’s best we don’t share.”

Rye laughed.

“What? Like me walking in on you and Lance Fallbrook when I was in the fifth grade?”

Emmett winced. Whenever this happened, Rye always brought up the one and only time Emmett had ever forgotten to lock the door when he had a guy over. Lance had been a straight-but-curious jock on his hockey team, and Emmett had been only too happy to introduce him to the delights of being given a blowjob from another guy. Little Ryley had wandered in wearing his monster-truck patterned pyjamas and asked Emmett what he was doing on his knees. The polar bear knew he would never live it down, even if it had taken Rye nearly ten years to figure out what had been going on.

“Anyway,” Emmett grinned, “I bought my ticket home. We’ll be coming off the train late on Tuesday. I’m bringing the truck, so tell pop we’ll just meet you all at home.”

“Aww, yes!” Rye looked like he wanted to hug the monitor. “That’s only like, two days away!”

“You can quit complaining now.”

“Wait…” Rye folded his arms in front of his keyboard, “who is ‘we’? You’re bringing your boyfriend with you?”

“No… we’re not together anymore.” Emmett skirted over the issue, and Rye must have sensed his reluctance, because he didn’t question further. “I invited Jian over for the holidays. Don’t go nuts!”

But it was too late. Ryley’s grin split his face from ear to ear, and he jumped up, his flat abdomen the only thing filling the screen and he laughed out loud.

“Emm’s bringing a boy home!” he shouted, “seriously Emm, please tell me you’re not joking.”

“Rye! Calm the fuck down before pop hears you.”

“What?” Ryley sank back into his seat, “aww, Emm, he’ll be delighted: you’ll see.”

“Rye! Will you quit being so damn happy and listen to me? Jian is not my boyfriend.”

Rye froze and blinked at him several times, head cocked to one side.

“Great Spirits, bro! Why the hell not? He’s such a nice guy, and he adores you.”

“He said that?” Emmett allowed himself to forget, in that moment, his brother and his friend had talked without him as the chaperone for their conversation.

“Not transparently: but it’s so easy to tell. He wanted to know all about you and your favourite things. Did he make you hot chocolate when you got back from Killarney?”

“Yes.”

“Dude is in love with you, Emm. And he’s a shifter! It’s so awesome.”

“Rye…”

“What?” his little brother scowled at him, “he’s not good enough for you Emm? What could possible make you not like him? Is he the wrong… er… type? Of guy?”

“I have no idea,” Emmett frowned, “and I am not discussing that with you.” he sighed at Rye’s crestfallen expression, “We’ll be home soon enough little brother, don’t sweat it. I’ll have big hugs for my best guy when we get back, right?”

“Yeah… sorry Emm.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just tell pop and mom that I’m bringing a friend for Christmas. And stress the ‘friend’ bit. He’ll need his own room.”

“How am I supposed to live vicariously through you if you never do anything fun, bro?”

“Oh, big words,” Emmett mocked.

“Jerk. Love you.”

“Night Ryley.”

*

“Where does this go?” Jian stared at the hunk of metal in his hand with a perplexed expression. Emmett had managed to pull his truck right up to the front of the house so that they could spend the middle of the day packing. They wouldn’t be leaving until midnight and Emmett knew he had to get some sleep before then if they were going to survive the long drive north.

“That’s the spare jack. It goes in the tool box with the crowbar.”

“Why is there a crowbar in your truck, Xue?”

“Just in case,” Emmett shrugged: everyone back home had a crowbar, snow axe, or gun in the back of their truck. “This is a proper cold weather truck. It can do a lot more than just drive around in the sludge in town.” Emmett had spent part of his morning changing the tyres on his truck from the fairly standard and chunky ones he usually used, back to the heavy winter tyres which he kept at the garage. The roads in Moosonee were made, quite literally, out of ice, and while regular people thought that normal tyres with snow chains were satisfactory, Emmett’s truck was a big fan of being off road. For his trip home, Emmett had reinstalled the heavy duty metal tool box which was bolted to the pick-up floor, and had strapped a ten-gallon barrel of avgas into the back to be added to the fuel tank before they got on the train. As well as the spare jack and the crowbar, Emmett also kept a thick length of elastic bungee rope, jump leads, half of a roll of metal tape for patched repairs and a small box of chemical heating pads in the tool box.

“You have a lot of ‘just in case’ in your truck, don’t you?” Jian peered at him through the back windshield, “There’re blankets, socks and cookies under the rear seats.”

“There’s a spare pair of snow boots in there too, a half serrated hunting knife, my old Canada Goose gloves, a small hatchet and a pair of signal flares.”

Jian blinked.

“Dear lord, why?”

“I’ve taken this truck almost into the arctic: it pays to be prepared. You know how boring it is being stranded with a flat tyre and you can’t keep the engine running because of the fuel?” Jian nodded. “Now imagine being stuck at minus twenty in the middle of the night.”

“You win,” he chirped happily, “I’ll go get my bag.”

Emmett had packed his duffel into the space behind his seat, and on his trip to the garage had filled the centre console with candy and chips for the long drive north. The wrapped presents, along with the crate of oranges and other gifts, were stacked neatly and overwrapped with a spare blanket on the back seats. Once Emmett had placed Rye’s new hockey stick on top, the back window had become almost unusable.

Jian’s version of packing had been to shove most of his new clothes into the single small canvas bag he had arrived with, which he handed to Emmett to pack into the truck. When Emmett shook the bag it jangled gently.

“Huh?”

“Bottle tops,” Jian shrugged, as though this short sentence made perfect sense.

“Again?”

The young man put a hand into his jeans pocket and pulled out three bottle tops and a bottle opener in the shape of a shark.

“So you can keep track of how many you’ve drunk.”

“But why are they in your bag?”

“I didn’t take them out after Australia I suppose, and then I did the same in Hawaii and so on…” Jian opened up his bag and fished around in the bottom. He pulled out a string decorated with multi coloured metal discs. “You know how you like your maps? Well, this is my map.” Jian counted down the string until he got to a little inch high wedge of caps all the same metallic green. “This was when Ste, Jamie and I took a trip to Magnetic Island, and all we could get to drink was sweet Strongbow cider. This,” he flicked a black plastic lid with one finger, “was from a bottle of Midori which we drank in a bar off the Whitsunday’s, and these little red ones were from a case of stubbies we drank in Byron Bay. We had some great times there: got up early for amazing waves and slept in the afternoon so that we could drink later on, camped on the beach when the weather was good to avoid paying rent, got amazing tans.”

“You miss it?”

Jian shrugged.

“It’s winter now, and the snow is fun too,” he jabbed Emmett in the ribs with an elbow, “after all, how often go you get to go play in the snow with a polar bear, eh?” Jian nodded to the truck, “is that it now?”

“Yup, all packed up. We’d best go and get some shut-eye. It’s an eight hour drive and the train leaves at nine. They won’t wait for us if we haven’t loaded the truck on.”

“Time for dinner first?” Jian said just as Emmett’s stomach grumbled, “I left some chicken marinating in satay sauce.”

Emmett grinned.

“I’m so glad I’m taking you home: you are going to confuse Logan and my dad so much.”

“Why?” Jian toed out of his boots in the hallway.

“Because I think the most foreign food my father has ever eaten is pasta. Mom’ll have to give you a crash course in making enough food for four bears,” Emmett sank down gratefully onto the couch. He wouldn’t normally have been tired at barely one in the afternoon, but he was going to have to wake up at midnight and drive through the night, and his body was already preparing for it.

“What do I owe you for the ticket?”

“Why would you owe me anything? I invited you home remember?” Emmett sensed that the young man was going to argue, so he simply reached out and grabbed the back of Jian’s calf as he stepped past, “don’t worry about it.” His stomach growled, “Just feed the bear before he falls asleep.”

Emmett slept easily. Summertime in Moosonee had far more hours of sunlight than anyone could actually stay awake for, and whatever the time of day, Emmett could put his head down and tell his mind that his body was tired and needed some time off. He curled up with the duvet, half of it over him, the rest bundled up in his arms, and he dreamt about Jian.

Since the moment he and Zeke had broken up, the dreams had become stronger, more frequent, and Emmett had felt less guilty for having them. While Emmett had woken most times with his erection trying to burn a hole through his underwear, there had been no more embarrassing night-time emissions and stealthy changes of his sheets.

The dream was like any other. Emmett lay on his back in a bed of plush snow that was both warm and downy yet chill against his skin, the sky above was the featureless white they got back home, and ringing his vision were the stalky black silhouettes of tall pine trees. It started with kissing, soft warm lips of a person Emmett couldn’t see, feather-light touches across his abdomen, moving up his chest in a delightfully random pattern. The scent identified his lover before Emmett saw him: thick, rich, and warm like the sun, touched with salt, and a hundred shades of orange and gold. Jian smiled himself into view, straddling Emmett’s hips, his narrow hands spread across the polar bear’s huge chest to balance his meagre weight. His hair was pushed back over his skull, but fell over his face as he arched his back and bent to kiss Emmett again.

Emmett reached for his lover, like he did every time, but Jian wasn’t there. Or rather, he was there, but untouchable, waif-like, and without substance. Emmett couldn’t touch his lover, could not kiss him back, and simply lay under the onslaught of pleasure that was never complete, never enough to bring either of them to a close. It was a weird, sweet torture his inner thoughts brought him, and when Emmett woke in the dark with his cell-phone alarm reminding softly to get up and dressed in order to drive home through the night, he could not resist wrapping his fingers around his aching cock to finish off what his subconscious had started.

He tried to think of anything other than Jian. His friend was not jerk-off material: even if he was undeniably sexy in nothing but his boxer shorts. Emmett hoped his father was keeping the temperature characteristically chilly in their house so that the chances of seeing Jian next-to-naked would be kept at a minimum. Eventually his mind settled on a fuzzy half remembered image he’d once seen of a little guy in hockey uniform on his knees, against the wall, an all-star football player reaming him from behind. Emmett grunted, closed his eyes as he stroked himself in a jagged rhythm, trying to get a better handle on the picture in his head. He was close, balancing on the edge, and then there was a waft of Jian’s thick sun-bleached scent, a soft knock, and the gentle syllable of Emmett’s nickname.

“Xue?”

“Haa-!” Emmett bit his tongue to keep himself from crying out as he came over his heaving abdomen. The overwhelming fragrance of the boy filled him up as he lay panting on his mattress. “Be right there.”

“I made toast,” there was the soft noise of Jian’s socks scuffing on the hall floor, “see you downstairs.”

Emmett couldn’t shake the feeling that Jian had known… somehow. He found tissues, cleaned himself up, and hurried into his clothes. It was the middle of the night, Emmett’s body would have preferred, directly after a pleasurable if hasty orgasm, to have gone directly back to sleep, but instead he padded downstairs to find Jian standing in the entrance to the kitchen, holding a slice of toast and peanut butter with his pillow under his arm.

“Morning,” Emmett said automatically as he took the toast, “thanks.”

“Can I sleep in the truck?” Jian grinned, but blinked heavily.

“You’re not going to keep me company?”

“Hey guys,” they turned to see Huan-Yu in the living room, sitting cross-legged on the sofa in one of his many robes, “you off then?”

“Yeah…” Emmett felt suddenly guilty. They were leaving their friend alone for the holidays; even if he didn’t celebrate them

“It’ll be nice to get some peace and quiet round here,” Huan-Yu looked back over his shoulder and grinned at them, “a whole month without beer and the smell of you two… cooking. Have fun.”

“Thanks. You too.” Emmett cracked open the front door, but Jian took a step back as Huan-Yu said something to him in Chinese. Emmett wished he could understand what was being said, because from the expressions flitting across Jian’s face and a half-recognised word which he thought might have been his name, his figured the conversation involved him somehow. Instead, Emmett left the house, stepped across the smattering of fresh snow to his truck and started the engine with a dulled roar. The heating system in the Chevy was very good, it had to be, and Emmett got himself comfortable, but not too much so, in the driver’s seat, and began flicking through radio stations for something appropriate for the middle of the night.

“How long is the drive?” There was a cold blast of air as Jian let himself into the truck, “you sleep well?”

“Er, yeah,” Emmett glanced sideways at the young man as he put the Chevy into gear, “sure you got everything?”

“Yes Xue-bear.” Jian smiled at him in a manner that forced Emmett’s heart to flip over itself in an almost painful manner.

They were quiet heading out of the city. Jian took his pillow and a blanket he had stowed in the foot well, and the little not-tiger made himself snuggly and comfortable as he gazed out of the window. Emmett tried to keep his eyes on the road, and satisfied himself with glimpses of Jian’s reflection in the darkened window as the city lights reflected off his eyes. As soon as they were out and into the north, Jian twisted in his seat, and Emmett glanced in the side mirror to find that he was being watched from Jian’s little bundle of cosy warmth.

“What’s it like?”

“What?” Emmett smiled as he fixed his eyes back on the road. Smiling at Jian was too seductive, and if he wasn’t rigidly careful with himself they were going to end up in a ditch somewhere. “What’s it like living in the middle of nowhere? Or what’s it like being surrounded by snow all the time?”

“Well, those too,” Jian’s voice was full of wonder, “what’s it like at Christmas? Is it like in films?”

“You’ve never been to Christmas anywhere?” Emmett puzzled.

“Well, I was in Oz for Christmas last year, but I’d only just got there. I spent the week hanging out on the beach and getting invited to barbecues by people I didn’t know: I ate so much that week.” Jian reached a slim hand out of his bundle of fluff and adjusted the radio volume, “but I hear Australian Christmas’ aren’t what most people think of as Christmas anyway.”

“Fair enough,” Emmett grinned, “I dunno what Christmas is like anywhere else, but Christmas in Moosonee is awesome. The town is only three-thousand people, so everyone knows everyone, and people go visiting on Christmas morning: saying ‘hi’ to the neighbours and dropping in on their friends for half an hour. Once Tilda arrives at breakfast, most of her friends and clients stop round for a little drink and bite to eat. It’s good fun, but sometimes Rye and I make ourselves scarce and go play in the woods or out on the ice.

“We don’t have a turkey for Christmas, but pop roasts a whole musk-ox over the big fire in the living room and we all have to pitch in and help with side dishes. Mom, I mean, my step-mom, she orders in a big ham and marinades it for like two weeks in brandy and spices until it makes the whole house smell like pork and heaven, then roasts it with a honey glaze over the crackling. Grandma brings desserts and we stuff ourselves silly. Generally after that we have a bit of a rest, then go out and enjoy the sunlight. Dad has another nap, we play board games until Logan, Rye, or me gets too over-competitive and then we all go outside again and play tag and build snow sculptures.” He grinned, “mostly dinner is chocolate and cold cuts.”

“Sounds awesome. Do you have a tree?”

“Pop chops one down every year, we usually burn it at the beginning of January: nothing is wasted.”

Emmett smiled and told him stories of the Christmases from his childhood; and the boy sat wide eyed and listened to everything he said as they took the right hand exit through Bracebridge, and continued to drive north through the night.

The first Christmas Emmett had his fur, Logan and Tilda had gotten in a big fight over nothing, the sort of fight children had all the time. Logan had sworn at her, a hell-worthy trespass in the presence of their father, and Logan had fled the house in tears. They had been at their grandparent’s house, and Logan hadn’t looked where he was going. As Emmett had run after him, he had watched his still-human brother fall through the big hole his grandfather had cut in the ice over the creek behind the house. He had been going to teach Emmett to swim in the freezing water in his fur, but there hadn’t been any time for lessons before Emmett half stripped off and snapped into his fur as he jumped into the water after his brother. Afterwards, his grandma had said it was the quickest change she had ever seen, and Emmett had learnt that while adrenaline could do lots of things, it did not stop either of them being lain up in bed with mild hypothermia for the next week.

There were better times, the first Christmas after Ryley had been born, when Emmett had sat with the baby in his lap, fed him from his bottle and let the child prod him with sticky fingers. Rye had discovered both chocolate and seal meat that year, and Emmett had let his baby brother steal from his plate. Even better than that had been the first year Rye had got his fur, and five fuzzy white polar bears had romped through the woodland, flinging up snow flurries and treading in each other’s footprints. They had killed a harp seal out on the ice, and Emmett had dragged it home. Together the five men of the Garrick family had eaten their Christmas dinner on the frozen lawn while Tilda and his grandma watched from the window.

He told Jian about teasing Tilda when she had brought home her first boyfriend, he and Rye giggling away like little children. Tilda had boxed his ears and ruffled Rye’s hair; because he had actually been a little kid and was allowed to giggle.

There were Christmases before Rye had been born, before his stepmother’s arrival when it had only been his dad and Logan and baby Tilda. They were softer, quieter times, before any of them had their fur and would spent Christmas evening bundled up between their father and grandfather’s pelts, listening to story and legends, learning all about the The Stargazing Hare in The Moon.

“I don’t think I know that one,” Jian frowned softly, “will you tell it to me?”

“Grandma tells it better,” Emmett acknowledged.

“I’d like to hear you tell it.”

Emmett glanced over at his companion, just for a second, and Jian had smiled gently, his eyes big, round and full of an emotion that hit Emmett in the chest like a sledgehammer. At that moment he couldn’t have told the boy ‘no’ if his life depended on it.

“Back in the beginning of the world, the sun shone every day: clear and bright over the green fields, it illuminated everything. Every frond of grass and leaf and tree, every animal that crept or slithered, crawled or stalked: it burned bright overhead and each one of them bathed in its light. Every animal could see clearly in the day, each had equal chances of outrunning another, or not as it sometimes was.

“At night, the moon shone too: pure and strong, and the land and all its creatures glowed in the silvery presence of the great disc. The moon never waxed or waned, but hung motionless in the sky like a mirror and glowed all night.

“There was a hare, the strongest and largest of his litter, who crawled for the first time from his mother’s safe little burrow, out into the light of the moon. The moon shone down at him, reflecting in his new-born eyes, and the little hare felt something stirring in his tiny fast-beating heart.” Emmett blinked, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead. He’d been told the story more times than he could remember: he couldn’t remember a time before he’d known it, but now for the first time, he really understood the flutter the hare had felt. “Every night, for as long as he could keep his eyes open, the little hare sat on the hillside and watched the moon glow in the silent sky. When he could no longer stay awake, he simply lay down like a stone, and slept in the cold, vibrant light of the moon.

“Every night was the same, as the hare grew older and larger, and he loved the moon more and more each night, adoring the great white disc in the night sky. But one night, the hare was not alone on his hillside. He watched the moon, his eyes huge, and filled with her beauty: but the fox was watching the hare, and his eyes were filled with a hungry desire of another kind. The fox stalked the hare, moving as silently as his black paws could take him across the silvery grass. The hare didn’t see him, could not sense him, for all his attention was turned to the love of the moon…” Emmett let his voice trail, just like his grandmother did. “Then suddenly the fox leapt for the hare, eyes flashing, teeth glinting in the pale moonlight, all his energy focused on the sleek body of the hare. The hare saw him, and it his panic, he jumped towards the only thing he knew, pushing his strong hind feet into the ground and springing up into the air, his eyes still fixed on the glow of the moon.

“Such was his love for the moon he jumped all that way in one heroic bound, and settled his paws up in the light of the moon, looking down upon the hillside he had come from. The fox was still there, leaping into the air, snapping and snarling in impotent rage. The hare knew he could not go back, because the fox would get him and tear him into shreds for outrunning the speedy trickster. So he stayed in the moon.

“But the fox would not quit, and the hare grew scared, and so he ran away. Now every month the hare returns, his eyes opening wide as the moon grows huge and full in the sky, to see if the coast is clear. But that fox is still there, barking and snarling and gnashing his fangs, waiting for the hare to return. And so the hare runs away again, the moon travels across the sky, and grows small and thin until she vanishes altogether, taking the hare who fell in love with the moon away with her. Now, he cannot look at the moon, so instead his eyes turn towards the stars, and as he waits for the fox to go away again, he wonders why he never noticed their beauty from the ground.”

Emmett stopped speaking, but didn’t look over at his friend. After a long moment where Emmett wondered if the boy had fallen asleep, he sighed, accompanied by the sounds of stretching.

“That’s a good story.”

“I always thought it was a little bit sad,” Emmett admitted, “maybe one day you’ll have to tell me one of yours.”

“Sure, I’ll tell you the story of The Woman Who Fell in Love with the Tiger,” he yawned with a creek; “Some other time when I’m not so tired. Shouldn’t it be light by now? We’ve been on the road for ages.”

“Sunrise doesn’t hit Cochrane until after eight am, bud: it gets later and sets earlier the further north we get.”

“So even though we’re travelling north and the sun rises in the east, we’re still running away from the daylight?” Jian concluded.

“Yup, that’s pretty much it,” Emmett was pleased the not-tiger had caught on so quickly, “and for us in Moosonee, the sun rises in what is basically the south, hovers in that quadrant of the sky and sets again in the south about eight hours later: if we see it at all through the clouds that is. Afterwards, it’s properly dark again.” He glanced across at Jian, who looked slightly shocked, “and you’re wondering what you’ve let yourself in for. It’s not too late y’know, I can put you up with a nice truck driver and point you south again…”

“No!” Jian punched his arm hard enough for it to actually hurt for a few seconds. “Hey, what’s the name of the place we’re getting on the train?”

“Cochrane; why?”

“’Cause that sign said ‘Cochrane, ten miles’. We’re nearly there!”

Emmett blinked. Somehow, without him noticing, he had driven for eight hours through the night. And he wasn’t even tired.

A full half hour later, Emmett really was tired. They had checked in, had their tickets scanned, and Emmett had fuelled up his truck, emptied the avgas into the tank, and driven carefully onto the train to be chained in place for the long journey ahead. Jian had grabbed his pillow and a small knapsack containing a book and a few snacks, and Emmett had taken his own personal items along with the brightly wrapped present for his friend, hidden in the bundle of his coat.

To Emmett, the Polar Bear Express was as familiar a place as any he’d been. In rich burgundy plush the interior was warm, inviting and beckoning hard-won sleep, and hundreds of hours of memories of missing home. Emmett choose them a set of seats half way along a carriage where they would probably not be disturbed, and was surprised when Jian dropped into the seat beside him rather than sit opposite and have more room.

“Do you want the window seat?”

“No, I’m good.” Jian’s orange eyes tracked around the train before snapping back to Emmett, “thank you Xue.”

“You’re welcome.” Emmett smiled back at him. A moment later, the whistle sounded, and the huge snowploughing engine shook as the train started its northward journey. “Home…”

“You miss it?”

“Every day,” Emmett smiled, “I’m glad you’re here Jian.” Emmett cleared his throat, “I, um… I have a present for you.” He removed the box from the folds of his coat, and placed it in Jian’s lap.

“But, it’s not Christmas yet.” Jian fingered the gaudy paper as he spoke, tracing a reindeer with one slim digit.

“I know, but I want you to have it. Please Jian.”

“OK.” Jian grinned: a child on his first ever Christmas, and tore open the wrapping with about as much care as Emmett usually did: which was none.

“Oh…” Jian’s orange eyes were huge with wonder, “Xue…!”

“You like it?”

When Emmett had seen the artist and her work, he had known exactly what he wanted, and he had paid a lot to get it in time for the Christmas rush. It was, in simple terms, a hoodie made to look like a tiger, but there was nothing simple about Jian’s Christmas present. This was no ordinary fleece with cat ears attached. The body of the hoodie was lined in polar fleece, insulated and had been given a hidden water proof layer underneath the orange and black striped exterior. The pattern had been cut and sewn to look exactly like the natural stripes of a tiger, with a touch of airbrushed dyes to blend everything perfectly. The sleeves were long and had thumb holes, and pockets were deep and the fit was relaxed and happy. But the hood was spectacular: the inside of the whole hood was structured felt, lined with an incredible short pile faux-fur that was super soft and velvet-like. The ears had been hand shaped and reinforced like the hood, so the structure from the back looked so much like a real tiger that even Emmett could be convinced for a moment.

Jian wasted no time in pulling the creation on over his thin sweater and flipping up the hood.

“I’ve got ears!”

“Yup,” Emmett grinned happily, “hey there, Tiger.”

He was not prepared for the force or warmth of Jian’s full bodied hug, but he allowed himself the small luxury of pressing his cheek against the soft fleece of the tiger’s stripes.

“Xue! You’re the best!” Jian bit his lip as he giggled, “This is awesome!”

“Not tired?”

“I’m too excited to sleep!”

Ten minutes later, Jian’s tiger hood rested on Emmett’s shoulder, the slender man sound asleep wrapped in his new ‘fur’. Emmett took a last long look at the snow outside and yawned.

“Good morning Tiger,” he murmured, and then drifted into unconsciousness.