Snowfalls, Fires and Family - 5. Chapter 5

Finally, yes? Yes. Enjoy! 
Please remember, reviews feed the author and are welcomed but never demanded.
Also warning: Family Drama, cursing, and some more history as to what is going on with the siblings.

The next morning, Brian and Karla arrived while the three were sipping coffee, Tabby having stayed overnight. Brian smiled as he parked behind Anna’s Jeep and waving at the four that was standing on the porch, having heard the truck that his brother was driving. “Hey guys,” he called out as he hopped down out of his truck, Karla carefully climbing down from the passenger side seat.

Tristian smiled and waved, eyeing the clothes that Karla was wearing. She had a rather rich fiancé and had her own modelling career going that she was using to build her own brand, so dressed accordingly. A jacket that probably looked better than it kept her warm with faux fur around her neck and wrists sat over a scarf that looked fluffy and soft, a scarf wrapped around her neck while tight jeans that probably cost Tristian’s whole paycheck disappeared into slightly heeled boots.

Shaking his head, he drank some of his coffee and eyed Brian next. The man looked like every other college student going to culinary school. Neatly kept but working on very little money for clothes and shoes. He sipped at his coffee and wondered just why he had bought presents for all of them.

Well at least for Karla. Especially with the look on her face.

The three siblings, still in thick socks and warm night clothes, watched as the two unloaded Brian’s covered truck bed, bringing up their suitcases. Karla did another trip once her first two were on the porch and brought back two smaller cases. Brian just gave her an exasperated look and shook his head, putting down the hard case that carried his basic knife set and his larger suitcase.

“Hey there, Brian,” Tristian greeted, Anna giving him a hug while Tabby smiled into her coffee, and Markus swallowed his mouthful of drink.

“Hey there. Looking good. Seattle treatin’ you well?” Brian asked, smiling at his youngest brother.

“It does,” Tristian said, shaking his head. “What about you? How does Phoenix treat you?”

“Pretty good, I suppose,” he said, shrugging and hefting his case up. “I’m almost done with school and then I start my paid internship.”

Tristian smiled widely and nodded. “Awesome. Let’s head on in and you two can claim your rooms. I’m in the master, Anne is in her old room. There’s two others that are free to choose from since Aunt Tabby here stays at her own place at night for the most part but took the smallest room for her own. We’ve been setting up the Christmas decorations since yesterday. We got as far as the big decorations. The tree and the small details are left,” he said.

Brian hummed and nodded his head. “Yeah, I could help you guys finish that off,” he said, smiling as Karla gave them all a blank look.

She simply sneered softly at them before greeting them. “So, we can choose what bedroom that we want? I want the master then,” she stated.

Tristian rolled his eyes, unsurprised. “Since I own the house, I took the master. As I said. You have two other rooms to choose from,” he stated, sipping his coffee with a bare smile. “Hello, Karla, how are you? How is life treating you?” he asked, sarcastic, turning around on the ball of his foot and heading inside of the house.

He wasn’t going to deal with her attitude any time soon.

Brian, Markus, Anne, and Tabby all raised their eyebrows after him before turning to look at Karla. She was blank faced once more before she picked up two of her bags. “I’m going to go claim my room,” she said, voice flat before she stalked up the stairs. The sound of a slamming door made them wince as Tristian decided that if she broke anything she would replace it.

He wasn’t going to stand her tantrums just because of something that he had done when they had been kids. Especially when he had been in the right of doing what he had done.

Finishing off his coffee, Tristian listened to his siblings and Tabby head up the stairs with the rest of the bags, Anne soon coming down to make a fresh pot of coffee. “We might need to buy another coffee pot,” he mused.

“We just need to buy coffee pods,” Anne said, pointing to the single cup coffee maker that Tristian hadn’t even noticed. He stared at it before snorting at him.

“Alright, I’ll do that later,” he said, shaking his head as his sister dug around in the cabinets, finding a couple boxes of regular coffee pods. She rinsed and filled the water well with some water from the tap and filtered through the filter on the faucet before making herself a fresh cup of coffee.

Pulling out makings for hash browns, eggs, and frozen waffles since he felt like waffles, he set about starting breakfast. Brian joined him soon enough, taking over the cutting of the potatoes into small bits before seasoning them. He complained about the lack of spices and Tristian just shook his head as Anne sat on a counter out of the way, drinking her coffee and occasionally making a note on a pad of paper for the upcoming shopping trip.

They all decided that yes, they would make the family stuffing so would need the right stuffing mix, apple, sausage and celery along with about a half dozen other things. Luckily there was still a lot of money for food on the card that they had all pitched in for and they could buy everything and then some.

Markus came back down with a sigh and asked if they would mind picking up him a bottle of shampoo and one of conditioner.

“Why? I thought you had enough,” Anne asked, making a note and taking the money.

“They broke open. Luckily, I had them in sealed plastic bags, but they broke and are kind useless now,” he said, shrugging. He told her the kind that he had to have and said that the amount that he had given her should be enough money to cover it.

She waved him off and leant back on one hand. “So, what do you think of Karla? She’s gotten pissier over the years,” she drawled, one-foot twitching.

Tristian just sighed, lips thinning out. “She’s still pissed off at me for what I did. I don’t know how she can still blame me. I was a kid. Not even seven years old,” he muttered. Tabby strolled in, wet boots in hand and smirking.

“Because you were an easy target and she’s always denied that your mother wasn’t all that sane,” she drawled, walking to the mudroom just off the kitchen. The shoe closet in the entry hallway was stuffed now with a few other things that had to be cleaned out, so they were using the mudroom that was for the back of the house.

It worked for the moment.

Tristian shook his head. “She’ll find that I don’t give a shit about her hang-ups. I just can’t do that. Not anymore. I spent most of my teen years dealing with that kind of bullshit because you didn’t let me stew. And most of that was in therapy.”

Staring at him, Tabby smiled and nodded, making her cup of tea before turning around as Brian shook his head. “She’ll either get over it or she can fuck off,” she said, shrugging at the surprised look from Brian and Anne. She smirked. “What? I do cuss.”

“I can’t get over that thought,” Anne said finally, shaking her head. Between Tristian and Brian working on breakfast, they had the food ready to eat and dished up before they sat down at the table. Karla would come downstairs when she was done with her huffy fit or whenever she got hungry.

Over breakfast the four siblings and Tabby all discussed the food and what the plans for Christmas Eve and Day would be. Anne just sighed happily over having two double ovens instead of one single large oven, meaning she could cook her pies without having to worry too much about getting kicked out of the kitchen.

It also meant that Brian and Tristian could get the rest of the food prepped over the next day before Christmas Eve and Day. With the list in hand, Anne getting stuck with dishes since they had cooked, Tristian and Brian left for the store.

It was while they were standing in front of the boxes of stuffing that Brian said something about their past. “Hey, uh, Tristian?” he asked.

Looking up from the box of stuffing that he was reading the back of, he raised his eyebrow. “Yep?”

“Look, I’m sorry for blaming you about what happened with mom,” he said, rubbing the back of his thumbnail over his forehead in a nervous gesture.

Tristian’s eyebrows rose as he blinked several times. “Uh, yeah. Not…Not an issue,” he said.

Brian shook his head. “No, it is. I may be only a couple years older than you but even I could see something was going down back then,” he said. “I should have spoken up, but I didn’t want to seem like I was lying if nothing happened afterwards.”

Tristian hummed and put the box of stuffing into the basket. “Brian, we were kids for fuck’s sake. It’s not on you to worry about such things unless you need to. And really? At that age? You, and probably the rest of us, were confused as fuck as to what was going on and what was happening with things around us. I was six. I had been raised to answer truthfully when asked a question by an adult. I did that.”

Brian smiled and nodded. “Yeah. It seems as if Markus ain’t pissed off either.”

“He understands. As far as Aunt Tabby knows, he was in a lot of therapy for those issues,” Tristian admitted. “He was a bit uncomfortable for a while there but he’s fine now.”

They moved to a new aisle, letting silence fall between them for the moment. After buying everything that they had on the list, plus a few extra items, they headed out to Tristian’s rented truck and loaded up the back.