Season's Greetings (6 page)

Abe rolled his eyes, and I smirked as I noticed his Big Bird pajamas under the winter coat. They hadn’t all been awake. “Well, and here’s Mr. and Mrs. Martin as well.”

Doug Martin’s eyes sparkled, his mouth stretched in a broad grin, and he grabbed my hand, shaking it vigorously. “Ben, good to see you.”

The door was pulled from my grasp, and I knew from the warmth at my back that Cris had succeeded in cleaning the living room. “Ben, baby, it’s freezing out. Why are you keeping everyone standing in the cold? Come in, Mr. Cavelli, Mona. Mom, Dad, nice to see you. Abe…Vince. No Jake and Becky?”

“They wouldn’t be here this early. Their kids will be opening gifts and doing the holiday thing.” Rolling my eyes, I stepped back into the hall and the troops filed past me into the living area. That was when I noticed Cris had apparently taken the time to change his clothes and wore neat Dockers and a seasonal sweater. I punched him in the arm as I passed to let him know what I thought of that.

“They just happened to be awake?” I hissed into Abe’s ear.

“Dude, do I look like I was awake?” He curled into a ball on my sofa and I plopped next to him. We matched, being the only two present in our pajamas. Cris came over to sit next to me, but I glared at him.

“What?” he asked innocently.

“You took the time to change?” I looked pointedly at my pajamas.

“Well, yeah. I didn’t want your parents to see me in my pajamas.”

“Duh.” Abe snickered.

“So, Cris, are you going to tell us what was so important you called at the ass crack of dawn this morning?” Vince, Cris’s older brother, spoke up.

All eyes were on us, or I’d have punched him again. Of course there was no way that his family and mine would coincidentally end up on my doorstep at exactly the same time on a holiday morning they normally spent apart without a little
deus ex machina
.

“You called them? And didn’t tell me?”

He had the grace to blush.

“You can fight later.” Abe nudged me with his toe. “I got up early. On my vacation. This better be good.”

“Well?” I tried to scowl, but my lips didn’t want to do anything but grin stupidly and, pajamas or not, I really did want to tell my parents the news.

“Last night,” Cris began, looking at his father and mine in turn. “I asked Ben to marry me.”

“And I said yes.”

Two squealing moms can drown out any number of manly congratulations, but nothing speaks louder of welcome to the family than a big wood-scented bear hug from your future father-in-law. I smiled at Cris, who stood with my father’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, and I could see he felt the same about the axle grease scented hug he’d just received.

Moms replaced Dads and brothers looked on indulgently. When the first clamor died down, I ended up on the sofa with Cris on one side and my mom on the other. Cris twined our fingers together and kissed my knuckles. I think, bells or no bells, an angel got its wings at that exact moment, because surely that warm soft feeling that washed through me signified something important had just happened. I no longer had a doubt that it was indeed a wonderful life.

The End

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & COPYRIGHT

Story Orgy would like to acknowledge the following with gratitude

Cover Art courtesy of Startled Monkeys Media, [email protected]

Editing courtesy of Jae Ashley

All rights are reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, is forbidden without express written permission of the publisher/author(s).

By Design Copyright © December 2012 Lee Brazil

For All Eternity Copyright © December 2012 Lee Brazil

Wearing His Ring Copyright © December 2012 Lee Brazil

The work contained in this document is fiction.

No resemblance to any person or location is intentional.

By Design

An M/M Romance Holiday Flash Fiction Collection

By Lee Brazil

By Design

It smelled like vanilla and sweetness, like pine, smoke, and fire. Not the bad kind of smoke tinged with fear, but the soft mellow soothing kind that meant a fire in the fireplace and smiling faces. It smelled like home, but that was impossible, because Kyle Martin Jacobs didn’t have a home anymore. Not since the fire…the bad kind that smelled like destruction and broken dreams and hate.

Now, he had a studio apartment close to the station house instead of a three bedroom stucco-covered ranch style home in a nice neighborhood. That house had been blocks from Santa’s Workshop, where Aiden designed toys for children. Kyle didn’t need any more than the studio now, because the fire had taken everything, his clothes, his furniture, his future. Aiden.

“Oh, God.” Kyle opened his eyes and jumped from the futon, clutching at the object that nearly fell from the battered thrift shop coffee table as he did. What the fuck had he left there? Some kind of dinner plate? But he hadn’t eaten any dinner, he never ate away from the station house where Chief Nick badgered him to join the other firefighters at the table for every meal. Or had he just forgotten warming a plate of leftovers? The chief frequently forced a plate into his hands when there were leftovers from the team meals.

His eyes opened wide and he stared at the plate, fingers shaking. “It can’t be!”

“It is, though, Kyle.”

And it was…a green cellophane wrapped china plate, with tiny boughs of holly bedecked with minuscule red berries at twelve and three, six and nine. A plate full of still warm, red sugar sprinkled cookies that would melt in his mouth if he took just one bite.

A plate that should have shattered in the fire, cookies he couldn’t bake, cellophane he’d never have had the patience to wrap so neatly. It was a plate of holiday cookies exactly like the ones Aiden baked to hand out to their friends every year on December first, when they had their annual holiday party and backyard barbecue.

Which they weren’t having this year, because there was no backyard left to barbecue in, and no Aiden left to bake.

“It’s a fucking dream, asshole,” he muttered. Then I don’t want to wake up. Because if in his dreams he got cookies Aiden baked instead of fiery nightmares of exploding gas grills, then he could sleep forever.

“No, it’s not.”

He stopped pretending that he couldn’t really hear the voice and searched the tiny apartment. “Who are you?”

“Oh come now, Kyle. You know me.”

“I don’t.” He shook his head, set the plate down, and peered into the gloom. There wasn’t anywhere for someone to hide. Unless…Silently, Kyle crossed to the bathroom door. He swung the door open and flicked the light switch. It responded with a dubious burst of light. A faint buzz and telling pop followed immediately, casting the room back into gloom. The illumination lasted just long enough to highlight the vast emptiness of the tiny space. A single towel slung haphazardly over the shower door, a scarcely dented tube of toothpaste, a solitary white toothbrush, and a black comb. No lurking figure of humanity had stopped at his place on its way home from work to leave him cookies.

“Quit fucking around. Come on out.” Had to be one of the guys from the station come to coax him back to the North Pole Fire Station House for the annual celebration of the season before the frantic rush of holiday madness. “I’m sorry I didn’t stay for the damn pre-Christmas party, okay? It’s just that this is hard…”

“I know it is, baby.”

Baby. He hadn’t been called baby in exactly a year. Only one man ever called him baby. “Aiden?” Kyle crumpled down on the floor, the thin worn carpet received him with an indignant burst of musty stale dust particles, and he wrapped his arms around his knees and cried.

“Shhh.” It could have been the brush of wind against the lone apartment window. It could have been the furnace shushing into action to warm the chilly little room. It couldn’t have smelled like peppermint schnapps and hot chocolate, and Aiden’s musky man scent.

But it did. Hot tears spilled down his cheeks, and he rubbed them harshly against the thick coarse fabric of his uniform pants. “God, Aiden, I miss you so much.”

A soft tentative hand rubbed between his shoulder blades, hesitated briefly then twined in the long curls that fell down his back. He hadn’t cut his hair since Aiden left, and it was longer than regulation allowed. The chief hadn’t given him any grief about cutting it, though, and so he just let it go, because Aiden had liked this, running his fingers through it, tangling the coils around his fingers, and tugging at it to get his attention. Like now.

“Fuck. Aiden?” He jerked upright and swiveled his head to see who touched him, because no doubt that was a physical touch. He could feel the fingers in his hair even now, toying with the long strands, tangling them together.

“Yes, love.”

“You left me.” He still couldn’t see anything, but vague indications of a figure out of the corner of his eye, every time he shifted as though to catch a glimpse, the figure wasn’t there, but it was real, he could feel Aiden here with him.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yes.” Unbelievably, a spark of joy lit in his cold, dark heart that hadn’t felt warm in all of the previous three hundred sixty-four days since Aiden had left him. “Kiss me?” he begged without shame, though prior to those three hundred sixty-four days of loneliness, he wouldn’t have dreamed of begging, or even asking, he’d have just taken Aiden’s kiss as something that was his right, his due.

“Close your eyes then.” Aiden’s words and a delicate touch on his lids closed his eyes. He squeezed them shut, because even if he was imagining that ominous overtone, it wasn’t worth risking any consequence to open them. What if he peeked and Aiden disappeared? What if it was all a dream and opening his eyes chased the dream away?

Soft lips brushed lightly over his, a small familiar weight settled in his lap, forcing his knees down until Aiden straddled him, crushing their groins together. Gasping, Kyle pushed up into that weight, opened his mouth to urge the deepening of that kiss.

The very familiarity of every slick plane of tooth, every surge of tongue sent waves of heat washing through him that overwhelmed his grief, burned away the agony of the last year and replaced with it a burning need, a desire for release so strong he shook with it.

His hands moved of their own accord, tracing familiar muscles, finding buttons and zippers and popping them open, sliding them down, seeking flesh that felt cool to the touch, but soothingly so as he was feverish with want. And still the kiss went on, Aiden’s tongue deftly enticing him with little nudges and slow caresses to follow into his mouth, where that heavenly mix of Aiden flavors made him drunk with love and joy and remembrance.

Almost without thought, certainly without consideration of the past year, he brought his cock to bear against the tender opening of Aiden’s body without ever raising his eyelids, without ever risking awakening.

And while his heart thundered its he’s here, he’s really here cadence, his hips churned with restless urgency, pushing up as his hands dragged Aiden down, bringing them together over and over as he drowned in bliss and sensation he’d thought lost forever.

And even as orgasm wracked his frame, and Aiden mewled into his mouth, and the scent of semen and sweat overtook the vanilla sugar smell, he kept them closed. Until his breathing steadied and the weight in his lap lightened, and a weary sigh that wasn’t his stirred the air.

“It’s time, Kyle.”

“No. You’re here. My eyes are closed. You stay.”

“I’m cheating just being here for now, Kyle.”

“No.” His heart wrenched, but he made his voice firm. In all their years together, he’d never denied Aiden anything. No gift was too expensive, no request too onerous. But this he wouldn’t do. “I can’t go back to not having you, Aiden. You have to stay.”

“You have to let me go. I have a job to do. I cheated by coming here first, but I only have a short time to do what needs to be done. You’ll have to help me.”

“Anything, Aiden. I’ll do anything for you, just don’t leave me again.”

“I have to, Kyle.”

“It’s the North Pole, Aiden! It’s magic; you can stay. There has to be a way.”

“It’s the North Pole, yes, and there is magic. But dead is dead. The only magic in that is that even though I’m gone, I get to keep working to make the world a better place.”

“You design toys in heaven?”

Soft chuckles stirred his hair, peppermint breath wafted over his lips. “No. I get to do something even better. I design lives, Kyle. It’s my new job, and I love it, just like you love saving lives.”

“I couldn’t save you.” Some firefighter he’d turned out to be. Couldn’t even save his own lover from the flames that engulfed him.

“It wasn’t meant to be. But I can make that up to you.”