by David Connor
“Yeah.” That was what I got back.
“What are you making?”
“Fudge.” His stirring motion made his underpants shimmy.
“Yum.” I tried to smell the air as I hugged him.
“Yeesh! You’re soaked.”
“Sorry.” I tried to smell his breath. Did that mean I didn’t trust him? No. It meant he had an issue that may not have been completely solved. But he was distracting himself with baking instead of beer. That was good. “I’m your friend, if nothing else,” I told him. I’d worked on my opening line for over six hours. That wasn’t it either, but that was what came out. “I talked to my dad again.”
“He freakin‘ loves you, dude.”
“I explained things.”
“Made more excuses,” Aidan said.
“Cut it out.” I took his wrist. He pulled away. “My dad gave us his blessing,” I said.
“I didn’t get mine.” Aidan sounded so defeated. “Maybe I’m being stupid,” he allowed, “but you’re the one who brought it up.”
“I know.”
“And I was starting to believe there would be one—a sign.”
I couldn’t understand why there wasn’t.
“Groundwork, right? I’ve started,” Aidan said. “But it’s all stuff I could fail at. I might not even be able to get into the CIA. Who knows?”
“You will. You said you’d do whatever you had to, remember? You’re the confident one.”
“I’ll try to remember that.” He brushed my hand.
“I can stay?”
Aidan nodded. “I was a jerk.”
“We’re gonna fight. We have to learn how to make up, I guess.” I went to kiss him, but he stepped to the side. It seemed we hadn’t made up all the way.
“There’s a hundred cookies to decorate after I finish the fudge.” When Aidan moved from the stove and picked up the icing bag, my penis tingled as if I’d plugged it into a wall socket. “Get out of your wet clothes and help me?” he asked.
I had sugared around four dozen cookies and eaten almost half as many, sitting at the kitchen table in only damp undies, when I stood and stretched just about 4 a.m. Aidan poked my tummy and I giggled.
“Sorry.” He went back to work.
“You don’t have to be sorry for touching me.” I put my hand on his shoulder.
“I promised not to.” He twisted away. “It’s better if I don’t.”
“Oh.” I kissed Aidan’s cheek. No touching was his rule, not mine. “Happy Christmas Eve—you stubborn, sexy brat.”
“I’m not being bratty.”
I felt bad for the facetious remark. “I know.” I kissed the top of his head, remembering to go deep to get beyond the dreads. “Want to try for sleep again?”
“As soon as I put the meringue cookies in the oven.”
“I’ll sit up with you. How long do they bake?”
“Overnight.”
“You sure you read that right?” I hadn’t moved, and I started to pet his chest fur.
“Goof.” He chuckled. It was said with affection. “The oven is off but warm. They sit… sort of more drying than baking.”
“Oh. Come to bed then.”
“Kip…” I held out my hand. He took it. “Go warm it up. I’ll be right there.”
“You promise?”
“No. But maybe. Take a shower. Warm yourself up. Your underwear’s still wet.” He licked his lips. “You must be freezing with the AC pumping.”
“I’m not.” The goose bumps and pointy nipples belied me.
“I wanna clean up all the boxes in the living room too. Grampy always said Santa won’t stop if your house is messy.”
“I’ll help.”
“I’ll be okay.” He squeezed my hand. “Good night, Kip.”
I showered, and then I climbed in bed. I waited, reciting T’was the Night Before Christmas by rote. It was a family tradition the Kiplings would have done a few hours ago in front of the fire. T’was a season for miracles too, it seemed, and I got mine when Aidan joined me in the bed.
I wanted to say something, to ask him why, to ask him what it meant. I put my arm on the pillow before he laid his head there instead. I’d waited so long to do that again, I decided to keep my mouth shut, fearing words might scare him off. He snuggled in. “Sweet dreams.” I risked the two, which Aidan answered with a kiss in the crook of my elbow.
I could tell he was sleeping, just minutes later by the precious rumbling noise in his throat. I, on the other hand, was wide awake, with a dick as hard as pecan shells. I hadn’t put anything on after the shower, so I started to stroke—quietly I hoped—without much vigor. It wasn’t going to take long and I didn’t need to be… fancy. Aidan twisted around a bit. I thought he had awakened, but he was still softly snoring. More of him was against me, above and below the waist. It intensified the sensation running through my dick, all through my body, really. I felt Aidan’s hardness against my leg. I sidled up to it. His hand came between me and it as he rubbed himself with the flat of his palm, and by doing so, tickled my inner thigh with his four lower knuckles.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” I whispered.
“Mmm.” Was he wanking in his sleep?
He rubbed against me while pumping his huge dick. I wanted to turn on a light and watch, but I decided that I’d better leave things be. I knew his release was coming. He held his breath and turned into me, his mouth against my neck. A few puffs escaped, stuttering and staccato, moist and warm. The flood of fluid followed, hotter and wetter from his smooth, sticky dickhead. It creamed my lower side, my pubic hair, and my hard-on. I took Aidan’s hand off of himself when he finally stopped flexing it. I put it in front of my throbbing erection and teased my dome against it, in the fold of his fingers, until I fired. “Oh, man!”
“Say ‘fuck’,” Aidan said groggily.
“I’m saving that,” I told him, barely able to as shot after shot of semen escaped my hardness, buttered Aidan’s hand, and then coated me partway down my shaft. “I’m saving it for when we make love. I love you,” I said.
“I love you too.”
“You do?”
“I never claimed not to. I’ll never stop, I don’t think. Now, go to sleep, Kip. It’s almost time for Santa to come.”
“Him too, huh?”
“Eww. Ya perv.”
I wiped my hand on the sheet and cleaned off Aidan as best I could with one corner. I stood when done, and then whipped it off the bed, and threw it on the floor.
“Brr.” Aidan curled up like a little puppy. I looked at him a moment, all in a ball with his spend dick sticking out the fly of his boxers. I shook out the blanket. Then I did it again, to see if he’d know why.
Aidan laughed into the pillow. He did remember, so I waved the coverlet again.
“Arrrrghhh.” He growled, all playful and sexy. I wanted to take him for real, even though my dick still tingled from climax.
“Sorry.” I kissed his bare foot before covering him up.
“Get in bed, goof.” I did, and we slept side by side, almost until noon on Christmas Eve day.
Aidan showered first. I pondered surprising him behind the gray and white curtain, but I didn’t. He came out fully dressed, while I was in the towel I’d worn from the bathroom to the bedroom the night before. I still didn’t know where we stood.
“We got a lot to get done today.” Aidan was at the oven.
“How’d the cookies come out?”
“Taste one.”
Aidan put a meringue puff in my mouth. It was nearly as heavenly as sleeping naked beside him all night. “Mmm.”
“I gotta fly. Shopping first.”
“Shopping? On Christmas Eve?”
“Just a little bit. Stocking stuffers.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Uh-uh. Stockings are a big deal in this house. It needs to be a surprise.” Aidan slipped into his flip flops and reached for the doorknob. “Do me a favor, though. Wrap the stollen in the
pretty Christmas cellophane and tie a red bow around the top. Can you handle that?”
“It’s not rocket science. Oh. Sorry.” I feared the offhanded commented reminded Aidan of his grampy.
“No worries.” He let go of the door and reached for my hand. “I think of them every day. All three of them, Mom and Grams too. Even more often this time of year. I can’t even say the words ‘Christmas shopping’ without my heart twisting a little—and last year… Well, you know… But we had a lot of good Christmases too, and this is going to be one of them, even though… just because…” He kissed my ear. I’m not sure that was what he was going for, but that’s where it had landed. “See ya in a little bit.” Aidan yanked on my arm and pulled me down to his lips. He kissed me goodbye—on the lips this time. It was a quick kiss, but a real one. It definitely seemed as if something had changed.
“I forgot about his stocking,” I said to Dr. Wise. “I guess that’s up to me this year, huh? Help me out. Are there traditions? A toothbrush? An orange? Candy bars? What?” Apparently my inability to handle humidity in December had brought on the voices when I’d first arrived. Three days in, it seemed as if I had acclimated. “The message thing. Oh yeah.” I smacked my forehead as if I had landed in a vegetable juice commercial. “Help!” But all communication with the other realm had ceased. I turned to ask the Shelf Elf, hoping his Christmas magic might be of some assistance. He wasn’t on the counter beside the door, and I wondered if he had been when I’d finally come in from my car early that morning? “Were you?” Of course, I couldn’t recall. “Where are you now?” I opened the cupboard. The elf wasn’t there. I checked the one below the sink. He wasn’t there, either. I opened drawers, then I looked in the garbage can, the fridge, the dishwasher, the flour canister. Finally, I flipped down the desk front, and there he sat.
“How’d you get back in there?” I reached for a sheet of paper, to make a potential shopping list. A haphazard stack collapsed, and fell to the floor. “Crud!” I started picking them up, and read a couple—old bills from over a year ago, a couple of Christmas cards, and then a miracle.
Aidan’s Stocking.
“No way!” I said it to the elf. It must have been last year’s list. Maybe Dr. Wise had been working on it back in November, when he and Aidan were down for Thanksgiving. “Score!”
The first item was Axe. That made me laugh.
“Thank you.” I gave the elf a thumbs-up, and then rushed out for the mall.
I got back to the house first. After changing into dry clothes—it was still a monsoon outside—I sat on my bed and wrapped the stocking stuffers I’d picked up from Dr. Wise’s list. I hoped Aidan would be surprised. Figuring he might like to see the list itself, knowing how meaningful it would be, I put that in too. I’d found this really cool upside down chef’s hat stocking at a cooking store in the mall. I was almost glad Aidan’s had gotten lost. The new one was perfect.
I was in the kitchen wrapping the stollen when Aidan finally came through the door two hours later. He had bags hanging halfway up each arm and was soaked to his undershorts. “Dang! Anyone dreaming of a wet Christmas got their fucking wish, dude!”
“You buy out every store in south Florida?”
“Just about. I saw a few things for Alec I couldn’t resist.” Aidan dropped his load. “Christmas is for kids.” He nodded toward the row of festively adorned stollen. “Good job, brah. So pretty.”
“Thanks.” I was surprised at how nicely they’d come out.
Aidan hopped up on the island and kissed me on the lips. That surprised me too. He hopped back down and started whistling “Jingle Bells”.
“Not that I’m complaining, but you seem different.”
Aidan whipped off his damp shirt and started unpacking his bags. “I found my stocking.” He raised both brows and flashed a smile.
“You did?”
“Yup. Full. From last year.”
“Cool.”
“Even better. That’s the sign.” He stopped to kiss my hand on the way back from the fridge. “I got a ham for Christmas dinner. That good?”
“Yeah. I like ham. But… hold up. You’re burying the lead. Tell me more about the stocking. When did you find it? Where was it? What’s in it?”
“Last night… this morning, while you were in the shower, before I came to bed. It was in one of the boxes. I don’t know how I missed it.” He had to stop to take a breath. “I don’t know what’s in it. I didn’t open it, silly. It was under some stuff I didn’t put up, but still… Grampy filled it at least a week early last year, I guess. Hid it in there, maybe, to bring out Christmas morning. We don’t hang our stockings,” Aidan explained. “Santa brings them?”
“How’s he get them back after Christmas?”
Aidan made that face again, the one that said, “Kip, you’re a moron!” It was a cute face, so I didn’t mind. “I don’t know, Kip. He just does. Call it Christmas magic.”
As Aidan went back to filling the fridge, I thought of the elf. Then I thought of something else. “So this means we’re… official? A couple? We can make love?” I touched his butt as he bent over at the vegetable crisper.
“Not so fast.” My hand was down his pants again by the time he stood up. “We gotta wait and see what’s in the stocking.”
“Oh.”
“We’re halfway there, though, Kip.” His lips brushed mine. I snapped like a turtle, trying for more as he tried to move away and I had no choice but to remove my hands from the warmth of his buttocks. “I’m feeling pretty stoked, though.”
I wondered if I should tell Aidan about the list I’d found. Was Santa about to bring him two identical stockings? What would that hurt if he did? It might be a double sign, or at least a funny story, so I decided to wait and see. I hadn’t been so excited for Christmas in over a decade.
Aidan never sat once the rest of the day. He wrapped, prepped food for Christmas dinner, boxed up fudge and cookies, and around suppertime, he went to an AA meeting. I ran out for a large meat pizza when he called to say he was on his way home. I told him that was our traditional Christmas Eve dinner, and Aidan said it sounded good to him. We sat in front of the tree and flipped channels to find Christmas episodes of TV shows from before we were born. We settled on The Golden Girls, where Rose, Blanche, Dorothy, and Sophia sat in a diner as snow fell in Miami on Christmas Day. There was no snow in our Florida Christmas forecast. The weatherman was calling for possible power outages from the wind and rain. “Déjà vu,” I’d said when we’d heard it.
“From our first time.”
“We haven’t had a first time yet.”
“You know what I mean, Kipster. Shoot.” Aidan looked at the tree as he wiped his mouth after starting his fifth slice of pizza. “I never got a new bulb for Grampy’s star,” he said around it.
“It’s pretty as is.”
“Yeah.” Aidan reached for his orange soda. “You ever get to open anything on Christmas Eve?” he asked.
Was he hinting? “Pajamas,” I told him. “Right up until last year. I’m twenty-five, and still my mom is buying me pjs for Christmas Eve. I have a feeling even when I’m out of the house, I’ll be expected to come over, eat pizza, and then put on Christmas jammies in some permutation of red and green. Maybe you too. Just a warning, she always buys one size too small.”
Aidan got up.
“Where you going?”
“You told me that once.”
“I did?”
He went to his bedroom and came out with the smallest wrapped box I had ever seen. “Yup.”
“If that’s pajamas, I’m going to be cold.”
“Open it.” He handed it over.
I unwrapped, with childish, grand enthusiasm, a pair of red, silky boxers. “Nice.” There was a bell on one leg that jingled when I shook them. “Let me get one for you.”
“I don’t wear pajamas.”
“I know.” I fiddled around under the tree and grabbed the one I was pretty sure was underwear—a three-pa
ck of boxer briefs. I hated most of Aidan’s boxers. I would never tell him that. Well, I guess I had, back when he’d told me how ugly my paisley shorts were. I’d always wanted to see him in something tighter, more formfitting. His tight butt, that huge, gorgeous penis in clingy knit… forget the candy canes on the tree, I knew what I wanted to lick. “Hurry up,” I said. I couldn’t wait to see his reaction and then see him in some.
He held up all three pair. “Which ones?” he asked.
I chose a pair with burgundy and olive stripes. “Kinda Christmassy, right?”
“Yup. That’s what I was thinking.” Aidan stripped off and put them on right there in the living room. “Everything you hoped for?”
I smiled. It was. Like my mom, I’d gone a size smaller than what I knew to be true. “Only thing better might be backing up one step.”
We were still on our feet, and once again, we were dancing.
“Put yours on.”
I did, almost without letting go of him.
Aidan yawned. “Sexy.”
“You are.” We swayed. I jingled. “And you’re sleepy,” I said. I took him by the wrist and we snuggled back onto the couch. As the rain pounded against the windows and the siding, the lights kept flickering.
“What were some of your Christmas Eve traditions?” Aidan asked.
“T’was the Night before Christmas and then the story of the nativity from the bible. Taxes, no room at the inn, the donkey, the north star, and all that.”
“Did you bring your bible? We could read it.”
“I didn’t. No.”
“I’m not sure we have one here. Grampy was a science guy. That’s what he said when I was growing up. Grams, she would say a person could be both. We probably have a bible back in New York.”
“That and the Christmas pajamas, pizza, and hot chocolate before bedtime, that’s about it. How about you?”
“This is way back. A lot of Christmases, we would spend the night over at Grams and Grampy’s. Grams and mom would tell me the story of The Little Drummer Boy. She had this book, like a story book. Except, I think she sort of added to it.” Aidan paused to chuckle. “Because it said pa-rum-pa-pum pum a lot. She gave me drumsticks one year, and I would play it on the mattress when she said it.”
