by David Connor
Deke chuckled as he loaded his forearms with loot back at his Jeep. “The cold should bother you. Go put on a shirt… at least shoes.”
“I can’t believe you did all this.” Dudley’s heart was too warm to notice his feet, even with a dusting of snow Blitzen now rolled in.
“Eh. I felt kind of bad. Kind of… responsible for your downward spiral and what brought it on. Seeing you sad was… kind of awful. I guess I care. Who knew? I got your dinner too. Everything on the list. We should get it in the fridge.”
“Hey….” Dudley reached for the fleecy sleeve of Deke’s heavy jacket.
“What?”
“Thank you.” In a bold move, Dudley kissed him on the cheek. Then he got even bolder and went for Deke’s lips.
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry. Except… I’m not. I don’t… I don’t want to go out with my UPS man.”
“Randy.”
“Yeah. I know his name. I want to go out with you, Deke. I want to be with you.”
“You’re delirious. Judging by your nipples and the shrinkage of your balls, I’m guessing hypothermia.”
Dudley tried to pull the fly together where it gaped in the front of his form-hugging, waffle-weave underwear.
“Get inside.” Deke turned for more stuff.
“You’re turning me down, then?”
“What was the offer?”
“Let’s go out… tonight… back to the same restaurant, or one more private. Or come here. I’ll bake a Christmas Eve ham… if you got one.”
“You’re going caroling tonight.”
“I am?”
“And you know what I thought of late yesterday?”
“What?”
“You moved since last Christmas.”
“So?”
“So a lot of cards will be coming late, I bet.” He loaded Dudley down with bags. “People probably sent them to the old address. You wait and see. A ton will be forwarded well into January.”
“I’m going caroling?”
“My mother has a group. No rehearsal. No church affiliation. You just show up and sing. Your gramps is gonna do it.”
“You are?”
Dudley’s grandfather was back for another load after putting on proper winter attire. “I am. Sounds like fun.”
“Don’t wear yourself out.”
“I’m fine, though also a little pissed I’m doing this all by myself while you two have imaginary sex in the driveway.” He took off for his fourth trip to the house.
“Here.” Deke made that grunting sound Dudley loved as he handed over a turkey. “We’ll have leftover sandwiches for New Year’s, maybe. Now go put some clothes on.”
“You coming?”
“Pretty close. Those things don’t stay closed, you know, too much going on in there, I guess.” He nodded toward Dudley’s crotch. “You don’t feel the breeze? It’s going to freeze and fall off. Damned shame. That’s what that would be.”
Dudley yanked at the fly again. “Singing, I mean?”
“Uh. No. I’ll take a pass on that. As fa-la-la as this all feels, my heart’s not growing three sizes. My dick, maybe… though I’m already a show-er, and yours is pretty enticing.” Deke brazenly brushed it with the back of his palm.
“Deke… my gramps….”
“He knows all about sex. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. He just accused us of having it in our heads, and he’s been pimping you pretty heavy every night when I came over to screw with the lights. I… I’m sorry about that, by the way.”
“You’ve more than made up for it. At least you will have after you help me wrap all this. Unless you have plans?”
“I got nothing. And believe me, I’m racking my brain for any sort of excuse you might buy. If you’d stop flashing your big cock, I might be able to think of one.”
Dudley thought about doing it on purpose but settled on something more romantic. He led Deke to the front porch and then across the threshold, where mistletoe hung above them. “You never agreed to go out with me.”
“You, um, grow that stuff yourself?”
“It’s plastic. The real thing’s bad for pets.”
“I see. This way you can leave it up year round, too, trap every guy who comes by… mailman, meter reader, Mormons.”
Dudley laughed. “I don’t want any of them.” He closed the front door when Blitzen finally came in.
“You sure you want me, Dud?”
Dudley answered with a kiss. “And you?”
“If I’m good enough.”
Once again Dudley used his lips to respond without words.
THEY ENDED up on the living room floor among a mess of paper, bows, ribbon, and tags while Gramps made pancakes from scratch in the kitchen. Dudley didn’t bother with pants, though he did put on a plaid flannel button-down that hung beside the kitchen door for chilly mornings.
All the packages Deke wrapped came out just like him: a bit rumpled, imperfect, but totally adorable. He’d stripped down to boxers, kind of on a dare. He claimed he’d gone overboard with Christmas cheer himself and picked up a pair that said Ho, Ho, Ho across the front. “I couldn’t resist putting them on before I came over. Made me feel like Sant-y Claus.”
Dudley didn’t believe that for a second, but damn if it wasn’t true. The way Deke carelessly sat in them, if he really was a grower too, Dudley might be in for a treat before day’s end.
“So you need to tell me,” Dudley said. “When did you start hating Christmas? And why?”
Deke sighed. “Guilt, I guess. So there are six of us, right?” He stopped to concentrate on a perfect corner that would still come out a mess. “Four boys… two girls. One Christmas we were all at that age… the commercial-ingesting, JC-Penney-catalog-page-folding age of greed. I wanted Castle Grayskull. You know, He-Man? Wanted it real bad. One sister wanted that six-foot-tall Barbie Dreamhouse. Another wanted Teddy Ruxpin. My nerd brother wanted a computer, and Chet, he was dying for this big-ass train setup. We all get up Christmas morning, and there’s everything we want… except not. My sister ended up with an off-brand dollhouse. Harlan got this rinky-dink computer thing for kids. And though Chet opened a train set, it ran on batteries, like the kind that goes around the bottom of the Christmas tree. My Castle Grayskull… it was made out of cardboard. That Christmas sucked and we made sure our parents knew it. It was the worst one ever… until one by one we got a little older and figured out we were the ones who made it that way. I can still remember my mother crying in her bedroom and me not giving a shit. This is the guy you want to get with… this jerk?”
“You’re not.”
“I gave a shit when you cried.”
“You… you know I cried?”
Deke shrugged. “In the john. I heard you and I get it. Now I do. So later Mom came out with a fake, happy smile and got to cooking after her six greedy rat bastards crushed any real spirit she had. We’re all still trying to make up for it by sending her and Dad on a trip every year. They’re also forbidden from ever buying gifts for us or any of my siblings’ bratty kids.”
“Is that what your parents want?”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe the shopping channel shows on Thanksgiving are a hint. Maybe your mother misses shopping for Christmas. I would.”
“I don’t know.” Deke sighed and then changed the subject. “It’s got to be hard to be a kid.” He walked a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle—Leonardo—across the coffee table. “Like, ’cause, on the one hand, you got Charlie Brown… Linus, I guess… telling us it’s all about comfort and joy and goodwill toward men and scrawny trees, but even if you try really hard to believe that, when you go back to school in January and Joe Schmuck tells you he got an iPhone 6 and then asks excitedly, ‘What’d you get?’ and you have to say ‘A cardboard Castle Grayskull….’ I mean, even Charlie Brown’s tree got all perfect and pretty with the blanket and the lights. So it’s not about appreciating the flawed and the simple, is it? Linus was full of shit.”
Dudley chuckled. “Maybe.”
“And two months later, after learning the importance of giving and love, not one of those skank bitches gives Charlie Brown a valentine.”
“I never thought of that. I’ll send you fifty.”
“Where’s the life lesson, though?”
“I suppose it’s to find a happy medium,” Dudley said. “And people who have enough to share really should.”
“Hmm. I think my parents found one.” Deke frowned. “We just weren’t mature enough to appreciate it. And I should do more. Except… what do you know about happy medium? When Santa sees this place, he’ll probably leave a note saying, ‘Take it down a notch.’”
“Do you still hate Christmas now?” Dudley got to his knees and leaned over, close to Deke’s face, smelling like coffee and shampoo. “Like right this moment?” He took Deke’s glasses off.
“Hey. I need those to write.”
“Do you need them to kiss me?”
They put their lips together gently, and then in a way that made Dudley hope the pancakes would take a little while longer.
“Apparently I do not. And this is kind of all right. Plus, once we finish all this wrapping, I get to unwrap you, right?”
“Ooh.” Dudley cringed. “That was bad.”
“Yeah. I only got game when it comes to smack talk.”
“But… I really did ask Santa,” Dudley said with a smile. “And I’m going to write it on my to-do list, which means we have to.” He tore off a piece of wrapping paper and scribbled on the inside white part. Sex with Deke. “See?”
Deke’s bark echoed off the stone fireplace. “Well, I do have enough to share,” he said, all put-upon. “So I guess that means I got to.”
DEKE GOT his Castle Grayskull the next morning, the one he’d asked for as a kid, with all the accessories and figures that came along with it. Dudley had thought about it right away.
“What’d you do? Hit the mall again after we dropped everything off yesterday?”
“Just the attic. It was mine. I kind of regifted it.”
“No way.”
“I kept almost everything I ever played with during my childhood at Gramps’s and moved it all cross-country.”
Deke, flat out on his tummy, made grunting sounds as He-Man battled Skeletor under the tree. Or maybe they were fucking. The way Deke clapped them together, one’s front into the other’s back, it was hard to tell.
“We could have a blast someday reliving our youth. And I love my wallet.” Deke had given him one with a chain. “And my scarf.” It went down to his knees. He had it wrapped around his neck three times. “Come on. There’s another gift upstairs.”
Deke resisted when Dudley tugged at him.
“Come on.” Dudley grunted and pulled a bit harder, getting Deke to his feet, then leading him up to the bedroom. “It’s your Secret Santa present. The one you asked for,” he explained, holding out a pretty package Deke quickly tore into.
“Sweet!” Deke looked quite pleased as he twirled a set of anal beads in one hand and rifled through a variety of related accessories still in the box with the other. “So you did hit the mall.”
“Just the one store. Me and three other pervs close to midnight on Christmas Eve, but I had to get some green ones. And a couple of ‘toppers.’ Want to try ’em out?”
“Twice in less than twenty-four hours?”
“We couldn’t do much last night. I have a feeling you’re loud.”
Deke laughed—and didn’t deny it.
“Gramps is out for his morning walk with Blitzen, Allen, and his mom. They walk most mornings when I’m at work. I didn’t know. I’m glad there’s someone to keep an eye on him. I offered to pay her, a little extra to help her out, so maybe she can stay in the neighborhood and maybe Gramps can have someone around when I’m not here.”
“Serendipity.”
“For sure. So….” Dudley picked up a plug in one hand and his cell phone in the other to check the screen.
“You got the dude LoJacked?”
“Don’t say anything. Once he leaves the driveway, I can’t see him. If he forgets to take his phone, I can’t even get a read where he’s at.”
“I won’t.” Deke kissed the top of Dudley’s head after pulling him close. “I get it.”
“If Paulette agrees to be his caretaker of sorts, I can relax a bit, maybe.”
“That’d be good.”
“All is well.” Dudley set down his phone. “And oh by the way, I love a man in plaid flannel pajama pants.”
“You gave ’em to me. Red and green….”
“What else? Tradition. I got them way back… way before I knew you’d be wearing them for me. Kind of as a joke.” Dudley yanked the string at Deke’s waist, nearly pulling him over.
“And yet you can’t wait to get them off me.”
“I’d still like to see them with the elf socks.”
Once Deke was out of the pants, he picked one up and slipped it over his hard-on. “There.” He shimmied. Jingle, jingle, jingle. The bells on the stitching at the toe tinkled at the tip of his cock. “Yeah?”
“Mmm.” Dudley yanked it off. “No. I like you better naked.”
“How long do we have?” Deke undressed Dudley—the scarf, PJ pants identical to his and a plain white T-shirt.
“Thirty minutes. Down to twenty-five.”
“Less talking, more mouth?”
Dudley put his on Deke in lieu of an answer, on his dick, readying it to go inside him. He moved his hands up the hairiness there, from where he left his mark with wetness to as far as he could reach in front, and then around in back.
“You so smooth naturally?” Deke asked him. “Or you take it off?”
“Like a cherub, I’m afraid.”
“With flaxen pits and pubes. That’s enough.” Deke raised Dudley’s arm and inhaled under it, then kissed the arm from there to the wrist after. “And ass?”
Dudley jumped, pleasantly startled when Deke felt for fur. “You didn’t check back there last night?”
“Come on.” Deke threw him to the bed. “Let me get at it now.”
A gentle snow fell outside. Carols played from Dudley’s MP3 player. Deke came to “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” the full weight of his warm, naked body atop Dudley’s, all smooth, sweaty, and tingly as Deke’s hardness flexed over and over up in him.
“I kept waiting for ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful.’” They rolled away from each other, both breathing hard. “But I couldn’t hold back. Christmas rocks!” Deke shouted at the top of his lungs, his hair a mess, his glasses askew. He’d insisted they stay on the whole time. “What good is having you naked if I can’t see it?”
They’d have to have a discussion about the show, maybe try a few things out. See what worked and what didn’t. Dudley decided not to plan ahead for once.
“I do care about you… and I’d like to see where we can go,” Deke said to him. “I knew it was inevitable the day you walked in eleven months ago.”
“Aww. I knew it too… how I felt about you. It’s the best Christmas ever.”
“At least until next year. And hopefully your gramps will still be okay.”
“Yeah. I think he’ll remember this one either way. He had a blast caroling last night. It was relaxed enough to keep him from getting all stressed out. I got some awesome memories of Christmas 2016. Let’s make sure he does too. He likes you. A lot.”
“My coconspirator.”
“I still can’t believe he let you—”
“Encouraged me to.”
“—screw with my lights.”
“I still can’t believe you didn’t fix them the last time, even after your mood took an upswing. But look, Dudley Lou Who. Christmas still came.” Deke put on a Grinch voice. “It came without lights. It came with my trick. It came without cookies. It came with my dick…. Even without a perfect holiday display on Christmas Eve… it turned out okay… right?”
“Definitely.”
“You’re good? For real?”
Dudley cuddled up against Deke, still damp from perspiration and where Dudley had climaxed onto him earlier. “Yes. Because suddenly I have a different idea about what makes the perfect Christmas.”
“Me too, Dud. Me too.”
DAVID CONNOR lives in a small town in New York with his cat Molly, and the spirits of Max, Mrs. Fat Pants, and those fur-babies that have left Earth before them. His grade school English teacher, after reading one of David’s stories, suggested David write for As the World Turns someday. Books, magazine articles (including the soap mags), the stage, and even radio, he has done just about everything except write for daytime TV. He is still hopeful—as long as there are still some left. David also enjoys playing in the dirt and long hikes in nature, listening to the sounds and talking to and creating new characters and stories in his head.
David’s vivid imagination refuses to shut down even when he sleeps. His dream life is far more interesting than his real life, and is often the genesis of plot lines for his stories. If you’d like to contact him, look him up on Facebook. He will update his status after his nap.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mmromcomsinprint
Twitter: @DannyCinicic
By David Connor
Double Flip • Quadruple Flip
Herm I.T.
Men of Steel (Dreamspinner Anthology)
Orange You Glad I Said Kiss
Scrooged Over
Tidings of Comfort and Joey Down Under
Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS
www.dreamspinnerpress.com
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DREAMSPINNER PRESS
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.