As ordinary as the action was, Tony couldn’t help feeling that there was something oddly intimate about Justin putting his shoes on for him. He attributed it to the past they shared and how, three years ago, there was no way either one of them would be doing this. It was on the tip of his tongue to make a Cinderella crack, but there was an inexplicable tightness in his chest and in his throat that made it too difficult to get the words out. Instead, he held his tongue and just watched, and when he started talking, he kept his silence even longer so that he could hear what he had to say.

That too got to him, wormed its way inside of him and choked him up. Justin’s family was normal, real, everything his own never had been and everything he had always wanted. Justin wasn’t just giving him the opportunity to do something on the holidays. He was giving him a family.

“Totally serious is probably an understatement,” he said after a moment spent swallowing the lump in his throat. “I don’t think that there are actually words that wouldn’t be an understatement to describe how serious about us I am.”

Reaching down, he gripped Justin’s shoulder and gave it a grateful, affectionate squeeze. “I’d love to. Let’s do it.”