Rise of the Snowmen

by Emmi Lawrence

  He took the concrete steps to the second floor and slowed before turning the corner when he heard a murmur of voices.

  “Is it the grass?”

  “No, silly. Grass is green.”

  “That grass looks brown.”

  “It’s not the grass. I spied something that’s supposed to be brown.”

  Taylor steeled himself and stepped around the corner. Mandy and Greg sat in front of his apartment, Mandy with Greg’s coat laid across her like a blanket and Greg with his head leaning back against the door, his eyes dark and ringed, his expression drawn. McDonald’s sodas and a couple of bags sat beside them.

  “Taylor! We bought you a cheesebooger.” Mandy leapt up, the coat falling as she leaned over and began to shuffle inside one of the bags.

  “Eww. Burger, Mands. It’s a burger, not boogers.”

  She crinkled her nose at him. Greg must have finger-combed her hair because it wasn’t quite the wild mess it had been. Still a mess though.

  They were all a mess. A collective mess.

  “And a coffee,” added Greg, hefting one of the grossest coffees known to man that yet smelled like literal caffeine and was already lessoning Taylor’s headache.

  Maybe slightly less of a mess.

  Greg, at least, was an attractive mess, his shirt gripping him tightly, his sweatshirt folded over his feet, his stubble at that perfect stage to stab when they kissed. Taylor swallowed hard, at both the thought of never having that kiss again and that Greg had known Taylor would need the caffeine.

  “Thanks,” he said fervently as he took the cup and drank a giant gulp of the lukewarm coffee around the lump that had formed in his throat.

  Greg didn’t stand, instead remaining where he’d been, looking up from the floor. “You could answer your phone.”

  Taylor shifted the bags he carried so he could hold his coffee with the same hand. Then scrounged in his pocket for the keys he’d rescued from his Camry. “I was busy.”

  “Sure.” Greg’s jaw had hardened though.

  They moved inside slowly, Taylor forcing the others back until he was sure no elf had sabotaged this place too. But no taste of licorice permeated the air. No peppermint. No gumdrops. No sugar residue. No ice palace or snowmen or angels that pretended to be heavenly as they crushed you.

  The kitchenette had a stack of paper plates and a coffee maker on the counter, two old mugs sitting upside down in the sink. The trash was overstuffed with takeout and folded pizza boxes, because it was easy to forget chores when one technically lived elsewhere.

  Technically.

  Taylor blanched inwardly, embarrassed that either of them had stepped foot in this shell of a home. But Mandy just leapt on the ratty loveseat Taylor had scrounged secondhand, wrapped herself up in the unwashed, plaid blanket and called out which cartoon series she wanted to watch while Greg surfed through Taylor’s account.

  Inside the bedroom, that felt dingy in comparison to Greg’s house—or what had been Greg’s house—Taylor paused. No curtains on the windows. Not even blinds. His bed, a twin, was just a mattress on the ground in the corner covered with blankets and a couple of pillows. A canvas tote, crumpled from a constant barrage of use and unsurprisingly stained from coffee spills, sat under the window, over-crammed full of bedside randomness. Because even elf-hunters needed some semblance of normal life.

  On the other side of the room he’d set up a table where he’d fill his magazines and clean his guns. A few cartons of bullets were piled up. Scattered on one side was a spread of papers he’d printed off at the library over time that mapped out likely places the elves would hit, along with maps of the county complete with back roads and abandoned fields close enough to schools or daycares that Taylor wanted to always have the locations on his radar.

  Greg came to stand behind him, then leaned against the door frame. In the background, a theme song began, Mandy humming along with it.

  “Been thinking most of the year that you should have gotten rid of this place. Ironic to think I’m thankful you kept it.”

  Taylor hoped that Greg just meant that he was glad they had a place to go that wasn’t a hotel. Though, a hotel would have been better. Cleaner. More friendly. Welcoming. Which made it far more likely Greg was saying something more, something about being glad Taylor hadn’t committed to them after the hell that Taylor’s continued presence had rained down.

  “You haven’t told her yet, have you?” Taylor asked, trying to keep the admonishment from his voice. When Greg didn’t respond but for a sudden stillness, Taylor added, “I need to borrow some money.”

  He stepped forward, let his duffel drop to the floor and then upended the grocery bag he’d filled with clothes over the bed. He sifted out a change of clothes for Greg and tossed it to the foot of the mattress. Then he began pulling free his tools from the duffel: the blowtorch was thrown on a pillow along with the empty butane; the guns to the table, pointed toward the closet that housed more elfin weaponry than anything wearable; his magazines, whether empty or not, went into a clattering pile by the bullet cartons.

  Greg picked up the pair of jeans. “This is just for me. Anything for her?”

  Taylor shook his head tightly without turning around. “It was all soaked through. Her room’s the worst in the house. I brought extra shirts.”

  The room grew quiet, the characters in Mandy’s show filling the space. Greg released a shuddering breath. “How bad was it?”

  Taylor pulled the slide off the .45 and began dismantling the rest of the gun, letting the pieces thud against the table. “There’ll be a lot of water damage. Should put a call into your insurance. A freak snowstorm somehow sneaking inside a house is an act of God, right?” He paused, looking up at the closet door, but not really seeing the peeled paint there. “About two thousand, if you can spare it.”

  “To help you leave?” There came the sound of the jeans hitting the bed. “I wasn’t sure you were even going to come back here. Going through fast food, I thought, maybe he’s already been and gone. Grabbed his things, stole a car and headed somewhere we’d never see him again.”

  With over-exaggerated care to cover his hurt at Greg’s assumption, Taylor took a long sip from his coffee. Then another. The lack of trust was warranted. How many times had he thought he should just keep driving, keep moving, leave Greg and Mandy and all this normalcy behind? Every day? Most days? That fear curdling in the pit of his stomach and spreading up to the worried chambers of his heart.

  “After last night?” he asked, setting the coffee to the table. “You thought I’d just fuck off and not say anything.”

  “I don’t know,” snapped Greg. Then he rubbed at his forehead and a whole-body shudder shook him violently, like Santa’s cold magic had run fingers down his spine.

  Taylor busied himself, scrubbing down the barrel of the gun with a cleaning rod. “I want to stay. I want to be here with you. And Mands.”

  “Good, that’s what I want—”

  With a sudden burst of movement, Taylor threw the barrel, the rod half-stuck out of it, against the table and spun, throwing his arm out. “But I can’t. Not if something like this will happen every year. And it will.”

  Greg quickly shut the bedroom door, leaning against it for a moment before looking back.

  “They despise me, Greg. I’ve killed enough of them it’s warranted. But they’ll keep coming, year after year until I make a mistake and both you and Mandy will end up dead. Or I will. And then I’d be an idiot to think they wouldn’t immediately come after you just because I’m dead.”

  “What are you saying?” Greg shook his head as he turned around, like he wanted to negate what Taylor said next, unmake it before the words were even spoken.

  So Taylor didn’t say it. He returned his attention to the gun to fiddle with its parts. “They’d been let loose after I took out their riders, the bells on their harnesses unheard by all but…heh, us three, I guess, in the whole county. Maybe even the state given how people are. Nobody believe
s anymore. Made it easier to track them down. Marginally.”

  “Track what down? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about that two grand I need from you.”

  “What?”

  Greg had gotten close. Too close. The air had grown sticky and thick, clogging Taylor’s throat.

  “I looked into a couple places around here and there’s a cheap horse stable I can use—they probably won’t even be able to tell the damn things aren’t horses—but I don’t have the cash.”

  “I’m not with you here. You’re going to have to catch me up.”

  “I’m saying that I’m doing something about all this, all right? I just need a place that will care for them for a few weeks, maybe months, let me get myself ready.”

  “You want to stable a reindeer.” He was standing at Taylor’s side now. “Why?”

  There it was again, that question, and this time Greg was near on top of Taylor. Staring condemningly. Taylor licked lips that didn’t seem to want to work. He held his breath. Then let it out. Let the words out too, let them spill before his throat could close up again and lock them away.

  “I’m taking this shit to the North Pole. I’m taking it straight to the big man, Santa himself.”

  Greg’s hand closed over Taylor’s where he fumbled with the barrel. “You can’t—”

  But Taylor abruptly turned and pressed forward, gripped Greg by the shirt and yanked him close enough to kiss. But there he stopped. The two of them standing in that drab, pitiable bedroom, the cold of Christmas Eve still echoing through their bones. They swayed, unsure about what came next. Whether a kiss was in the works, whether they needed to pull closer still or push apart.

  “I want this.” Taylor’s voice a gruff whisper, because he couldn’t trust himself. Not right now. Not after struggling with this question all year. Only gaining an answer after the world had done its best to implode. He leaned closer, fastening his gaze on Greg’s eyes despite everything in him begging to look anywhere else. “I want this. So I’m going to go kill that fucker so I can have it.”

  A flurry of emotions flashed across Greg’s face. “You think you can?”

  Taylor had no idea if he could or not. An entire palace, encrusted with frosted icicles, housing hundreds, thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of elves. A sprawling maze of conifers extending, encircling Santa’s village, filled with snow angels and snowmen of the like last night, but in twenty below weather. Mrs. Claus guarding the kitchens, ruling over the gingerbread.

  Santa himself.

  He’d be a fool if he thought he could waltz in and destroy every terror of his childhood. But he damn well wasn’t going to tell Greg that.

  “Of course I can. I have to.”

  And then, before Greg could follow up with more pointed questions, Taylor kissed him hard. Their lips were chapped. Their day-old stubble caught and jabbed. Their exhaustion drained the passion that would have been ardent on any normal morning.

  Yet, the coiled cold in Taylor’s soul began to unwind itself. Began to unfurl. To wither and hiss and pop like icicles in a fire. Dripping, dripping, attempting to put those flames out before they might have a chance to roar.

  Greg wrapped his arms about Taylor and slowly the kiss deepened, stoking the flames so the cold could not freeze them out of existence. This was worth it. Worth the pain, the fear, the suffering, the danger of pitting himself against the big man, against all the terror of his childhood. The panic in the back of his mind closed off, one wall at a time. He locked it tightly away, feeling surreal instead, his mind outside of his body, his senses spinning from too little sleep and too much of everything else.

  They peeled clothes off, a dampness clammy against their skin where the snow had permeated the worst. Damp jeans went in a pile with Taylor’s fresh ones. Cold skin pressed against cold, the meager sunlight coming through the windows alighting on red blotches, on purpling bruises, on scratches and dirt and oil.

  Greg smelled of butane, of candy canes, of gasoline. He smelled alive. Like the man Taylor would never have guessed would have been fighting alongside him against snowmen and elves a year after he’d slid himself into the passenger seat of Taylor’s car. All that furious insistence that Taylor, even then, had never been able to resist.

  The blowtorch and butane were shoved to the floor, clanging against one another with a sharp chime. Taylor’s head hit the pillow. The blankets weren’t as soft as the ones that had been on Greg’s bed. The mattress harder, stiffer under his back. The smell of it stale, unwashed and unslept in.

  He’d avoided this mattress, these blankets, this bedroom. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. Even when Greg had began to speak about futures, even those times Taylor had walked away, choking with desire and yet too much mental space insisting it wasn’t possible. That they weren’t possible. Even then, he’d avoided this bed, staying awake long into the night staring at the television or driving around the county searching for potential staging grounds.

  But it wasn’t the bed itself he’d been avoiding, he realized now that Greg stretched overtop of him. That pressing weight, those strong hands, that meaty grip that held him close. So close.

  It was the loneliness in the dark of the night. That’s what he’d both ached for and feared.

  They slipped into a kiss. A familiar one from many, many nights over the last year. A promising one that wrapped tongues together, that scrubbed stubble against stubble. When Greg moved to lift away Taylor wrapped his hand against the back of Greg’s head to keep him there, to keep the kiss going, drawing out every lick, every hard insistence that reminded him that Greg was alive. That they both were alive and not cold and stiff and white under a mound of snow and ice.

  Greg pulled back. “Taylor…”

  Taylor lifted with him, kissed those chapped lips with those of his own, cutting off whatever Greg had to say. They fell together, into a blessed rhythm, their rising, rising cocks squeezed between them. The sunlight cast a square that fell against the middle of the bed, warmth flooding into Taylor’s hands as he slid them against Greg’s back, across that patch of sun.

  “Taylor.”

  This time Greg pulled sideways, rolling so they faced one another, cheeks to pillow, their lower halves still pulled tight together. Taylor rocked forward and continued the roll, pinning Greg and arching against him. But when he leaned to reintroduce their kiss, Greg stopped him with a finger to his lips.

  “You’ve said you want this. And I’ve said I want this. But we haven’t put names to anything.”

  Taylor stiffened, and though he didn’t think it’d been obvious Greg reared up off the bed, his grip going tight around Taylor’s waist.

  “Don’t freak out on me.”

  “I’m not freaking out.” Taylor tossed his hair out of his eyes, knowing he’d probably been far too dismissive. But knowing too, that he had no where to run and nowhere else he wanted to go.

  “This isn’t some third degree, I’m not asking for you to say something you can’t ever take back. I’m…”

  Greg paused, relaxing slowly against the bed, drawing Taylor with him. Taylor let him, let those nervous words brush over his skin, let those gorgeous hazel eyes, so green in the sunlight, sear him with their intensity.

  “I guess, I just…” Greg tried again, stumbling over the words, though his hands began to massage lightly across Taylor’s backside, then up along the small of his back, easing towards his shoulders. “I wanted to, at least…”

  Hair fell into Taylor’s eyes again and he blew at it. When that didn’t work, he cocked his head, letting the hair hang such he could see Greg clearly. See all that compacted worry, even as they gently rubbed together. He bent again, this time slower, hand going under Greg’s neck, his other reaching down, down the length of their bodies.

  Greg closed his eyes, his lips going still, as if he’d given up on whatever he’d been going to say. So many times Greg had convinced Taylor to stay, no matter his fears, his worri
es, his downright certainty that things would be worse if Taylor stuck around. Greg had always been the one to see right through all of Taylor’s terrors, read them for what they were and prove that they weren’t as powerful as the two of them together.

  Maybe it was Taylor’s turn.

  “I love you.”

  Greg’s eyes snapped open and his breath hitched hard enough that Taylor felt it through his belly, a rumble that filtered up through his chest.

  “I’m not sure if that’s what you were trying to say, but if it’s not, that’s okay too,” continued Taylor, reaching between them and taking both their cocks in one hand. “I want you. I love you. I want a merry fucking Christmas without elves or snowmen or terrified children being dragged in front of a lie thousands of years old. And I want that Christmas with you.”

  He stroked them, soft and sure. Faster, their drooling cockheads slicking his palm and all the calluses there. Greg’s hands pressed on his backside, pulling in a steady rhythm that smacked them together, reminded their bodies the danger was over, that the stress hormones could be freed, could fly away on pleasure that pumped on wings made of powdered snow and cinnamon. That they could release. That they could relax. That they could explode.

  And when Greg gasped, his eyes widening slightly, a transcendent hope shining from their depths, Taylor knew—knew—all the way to his chilled bones that he would face Santa for this man. He would face all the terrors of his childhood, all the nightmares that seeped from the corners of his consciousness, not letting him forget years and years of torment.

  Whether he survived the encounter or not didn’t matter, because either way, this exhausting, draining life would be over. And he’d either be satisfied with a contented life with a man he loved, with a man who loved him, and a little girl who reminded him a little of himself.

  Or he’d be dead.

  And that would bring its own kind of satisfaction, safe from Christmas fucking cheer at last.