Turkey in the Snow (7 page)

“Bullshit. Start over.”

“I
am
worried about hurting you.”

“Let’s have us some sex, Henry, and then you can worry.”

“Are you saying it won’t hurt if we don’t have sex?” Because as awesome as Justin’s hand felt in his own right now, that was really, really tempting. Pain was drama. Drama was overrated.

“No,” Justin said, his voice gentle. “I’m saying that if we don’t have sex, this relationship
will
hurt, because it
is
a relationship. I’ve been dreaming about your kiss for two days, Henry. Don’t let me down because your chicken heart suddenly thinks we’re going too fast. Like I said, I can’t go too fast. I’m already there.”

Oh God, so am I.
Hank thought it, but he didn’t say it. He didn’t let go of Justin’s hand until Justin needed it to steer, either.

“
H
MM
….” Justin said a half hour later as they tooled through Toys “R” Us. “I can see why you wanted to see it for real. This close it’s sort of….” They both looked at the item Hank had picked out in the catalogue and at all of the accessories that were chained to the display board too.

“Cheap,” Hank said grimly. “It’s cheap. It’s going to fall a—”

“
Ohmygah! Ohmygah ohmygah ohmygah!
” Justin had disappeared to the end of the aisle, and he was… vibrating there, his feet dancing in place and his hands flapping up and down so quickly they blurred. “No, no, no, no, no,… Come
here
, Henry! You need to
see
this!” And that last part was superfluous because of
course
Hank was going to go over there—if nothing else because it looked like he was having a seizure and Hank might be needed to hold his head or something.

“Oh.” Hank looked at it and could swear he saw a shining light from above beaming down upon it. It was just the display light, but still.

“
That
is the best damned dollhouse I have ever seen,” he said, ignoring the fact that he had never really looked at a dollhouse until this point in his life. It was immaterial. The house itself was made of wood, but it was sized to accommodate everything from Barbie dolls to Bratz, although Hank was pretty partial to the smaller, detailed wooden dolls that came with it. He looked up from his gift trance and was disoriented for a moment, because Justin had disappeared again. Before Hank could even look around for him, he came back, pushing the cart through the crowded store with all the aplomb of a Maharajah in the Imperial Bazaar.

“Here we go,” Justin said, squatting down and pulling out the first dollhouse on the shelf—and then setting it aside.

“What are you doing?” Hank asked. He loved this gift. He wanted to hold it to his chest and hiss at anybody who came to touch it. Well, maybe he’d let Justin touch it. And Josie of course. Definitely Josie. But seriously, only the three of them. That was the circle of dollhouse trust. Anyone else was not invited.

“We don’t want the first one,” Justin said logically. “It’s been picked up and looked at and fondled and rattled. We want the second or third one on the shelf—and here you are, my little beauty, come to Uncle Justin!”

Justin straightened triumphantly, and Hank had never seen a more beautiful heart than the one Justin wore out for anyone to see in his smile.

“Okay, we’ve got the house. Now the—”

“And we want this one, and this one, and this one—” Justin was already picking out the accessories; Hank had to act fast or get left in the dust!

“You want a big brother doll?” That was a little out of Josie’s detail range, wasn’t it?

“It’s an Uncle Justin doll. And see here? It’s an Uncle Hank doll. He’s even got your scowl.”

“Well, Uncle Justin has nothing near your smile,” Hank said without thinking, and his reward was that same smile, amped to the brightness scale of a solar flare, softened only by shining blue eyes.

“You like my smile?” Justin asked wistfully, and Hank nodded, suddenly tongue-tied.

“Very much,” he said, gnawing on his lower lip out of sheer shyness.

If Justin hadn’t stood on tiptoe and kissed him right then, in the middle of Toys “R” Us, Hank might have been blind for life. But that was okay. It was a very nice kiss.

T
HEY
cleaned out Toys “R” Us. Well, not exactly, there were a lot of toys, and the
boys
side of the store was definitely untouched (although Hank set his eye on a set of three Nerf air-soft pistols to give Justin, because he thought those looked like fun) but generally, after the triumph of the dollhouse, they’d gone a little nuts.

Everything.

Hank wanted to buy her
everything.

He had not forgotten his common sense, though, and he did draw the line about ten gifts before Justin would have, but Hank figured that if he was tired
shopping
for the gifts, then Josie would be tired
opening
them on Christmas day.

“But…” Justin whined as they cleared checkout. “What are we going to look for now?”

Hank grinned at him, suddenly feeling like a kid playing hooky.

“Anything we want!” he said, surprised, and Justin giggled.

And then they went shopping.

Oh, it was fun. They didn’t actually buy much, but they wandered into almost every store, picking things up and commenting and cracking random, juvenile jokes, revealing hidden things about each other just by talking. Hank learned that Justin had failed algebra twice, until his father just started feeding him answers to get him through, and that a complete helplessness with math was one of the reasons he wanted to teach the very young children instead of the older ones. He learned that Justin had one older sister still at home (which he’d known) and two older brothers who were still in the area (which he had surmised) and that his parents had set up a very nice, very adult agreement about letting him live at home.

“I’ve got enough saved to move out,” Justin said, “but I like knowing someone will worry about me when I come home. Does that make me immature?”

“No,” Hank said. “That makes you human.”

Justin dragged him kicking and screaming into a woman’s bath shop, only to spray Hank with all of the scents in their men’s line, to see which one would smell best.

“Justin,” Hank whined. “I’ve got Earth on my left wrist, Sky on my right wrist, and Ocean on my chest,” because Justin had missed, “what are you putting on me now?”

“Oak,” Justin said absently, spraying Hank’s neck and hitting his mark this time. “Now shut up. I’m trying to smell.” He closed his eyes and stood on tip-toes, and inhaled, his nose
very
close to Hank’s neck. “Mm…” he said dreamily. “
That’s
your smell.”

Hank blushed and bumbled backwards, almost running over the woman behind him, who did not look amused. “Do you have a smell?” he asked, flustered, and Justin smiled wickedly.

“I’m all about Sky, baby, cause that’s where Oak is reaching for.”

Hank’s lips quirked sideways. “Unless they’re burying their roots in Earth’s firmament,” he said, and Justin set the tester down and burst into giggles.

“Let’s get out of here, big guy, before you make any more puns and hurt yourself.”

And off they went. They bought some extra ornaments and garlands in their next stop, and then went and got Josie from Mrs. Watson’s, who was so excited she reminded Hank of Justin.

“Oh boy! Oh boy! Is Justin gonna decorate with us? Oh is he, Uncle Hank?”

After a short dinner, they jumped into the fray, letting Josie hang most of the ornaments below waist level. She ran to one or the other of them before each ornament, so they could examine it and tell her it was perfect, and then she placed it very carefully on the tree. Hank tended to prefer the Hallmark ornaments—his childhood trees had been filled with hand-me-downs and homemade—but this year, he was particularly proud to put a candy cane made of beads front and center. Josie had made it in daycare.

Justin held her up so she could put the star on the top and then string tinsel garlands all around the living room, and Hank put a nail in the front door to hang the new wreath on. When he was done with that, he disappeared into the kitchen to make cocoa and came back, setting it on the coasters on the coffee table, and looking around.

“It’s wonderful,” he pronounced, and Josie ran to give him a completely unsolicited, delighted hug.

And then to ask him if she could watch
Shrek
again after her bath, which he’d forgotten about.

But finally she was bathed and full of hot chocolate and her teeth were brushed, and Hank had read her one story and Justin had sung her a Christmas song in his sweet tenor, and she was fast, fast asleep.

Hank came out of her bedroom to find Justin in the kitchen, cleaning up.

And fell very much in love. Again.

He moved behind that compact, vital body, placed his hands on Justin’s hips and started to kiss the back of his neck. Justin gasped and put the pot he was washing down in the sink, and simply leaned back into Hank’s arms and allowed him to….

To kiss him, his neck, his back, his ears, his jaw, his shoulders....

To touch him, his chest, his face, his stomach, his arms, his throat….

To
feel
him, pressed up against Hank’s front, a willing, warm human being who was moaning breathlessly and grinding back against Hank as he breathed, touched, and pillaged the young man who had come bouncing into his life and who showed no inclination of leaving.

“You have to promise me something,” Hank whispered, and Justin moaned in return. “You have to promise me that no matter how this goes, you’ll smile at me tomorrow morning, okay? I’m starting to depend on that smile. I need to see it when we leave the house.”

“Deal.”

Hank grabbed his shoulders and turned him around and took his mouth savagely, his breath sobbing in his throat when Justin matched him for urgency. He shoved his hands down the back of Justin’s jeans and pulled up his shirt, dying to feel bare skin, and was gratified when Justin did the same thing. Justin’s hands were warm and still a little damp, but Hank didn’t care. Skin-on-skin, after so long, it was
amazing.

Justin panted and bucked his hips forward, then pulled back from the kiss and leaned his head on Hank’s shoulder. “Please tell me your door locks.”

“Yes,” Hank breathed back, reaching into Justin’s jeans and grabbing twin handfuls of taut yet squishy backside. “But we need to unlock it and get dressed when we’re done.”

“Deal.” And then they were kissing, and Hank was walking Justin backwards to the bedroom, leaving the dishes in the sink and turning off lights as they went.

The kiss didn’t stop when they got to the bedroom, but it did get interrupted as Hank pulled off Justin’s bright green sweater and the red T-shirt underneath it. Justin obviously used the gym too, but his muscles were smaller, more compact, and his chest had maybe three hairs on it.

“Does this mean,” Hank asked, kissing down Justin’s pec, “that I’m cradle robbing?”

“Yeah, Henry.” Justin tipped his head back and appeared to enjoy every one of Hank’s perfectly placed kisses down the center of his chest. “They changed the age of consent to read ‘age of chest hair’.”

Hank pulled away to snicker at him, and Justin knotted his fingers in Hank’s short hair and pushed him back to placing kisses on Justin’s nearly smooth chest. “If you suck on my nipple, I may come in my pants,” Justin promised, and Hank went for it, to see if that could really happen.

It was a near thing. Justin’s über-responsive body bucked under his mouth, and his grip tightened to the point of pain in Hank’s hair, so Hank moved to the next nipple to tease some more before shucking Justin’s pants and boxers in one go, and moving straight for ground zero.

“Henry,” Justin whined, struggling to get his pants and his shoes off at the same time so he could lie back on the bed. “Jeez, just give it a little bit of a—” His shoes finally landed with a plop, along with his jeans, and Hank pushed him back on the bed and took Justin’s entire length into his mouth with one hungry shove.

“
Ohmygah!
” Justin breathed, and Henry tightened his lips and pulled back, tasting skin, sweat, soap, and then pushing forward again as far down as he could go. Justin pounded the mattress in the sweet pain of almost instant arousal, and started to jerk hard. Hank hadn’t done this in a while—he took Justin’s cock in his fist and held tight, then clamped his mouth over the widely flared head and teased with his tongue, letting Justin thrust as hard and as fast and as wildly and—“
Ohmygah omygah omygah
…
fuck
!”

He surged forward and Hank swallowed, wanting all of it in his mouth, down his throat, the salty, the bitter, the surprisingly sweet, and Justin kept thrusting until every last bit of it was shot. When Justin made a sound of discomfort, Hank let go of his cock and pushed himself up onto the mattress, still hard and aching but content for a moment to just touch and see the first man he’d had in his bed in too long a time. He didn’t look Justin in the eyes, not yet. First he danced his fingertips across thighs—there was some fur on those, and black hair at Justin’s groin, proving that yes, in fact, Justin did have body hair. From the thighs, he stuck his tongue out and caught the edges of Justin’s oblique muscles and traced up while Justin held himself, quivering, and tried, Hank could tell, not to fall apart and giggle.

Hank moved to his side and tried to give him a hickey, and Justin lost the battle, curling up defensively and giggling like a little kid.

“Ohmygah,
Henry
! Way to kill a mood!” he said, still laughing, and Hank slid up to put his head on the pillow next to him and pulled Justin, giggles and all, into his arms. He dropped little kisses in Justin’s silky and enviably straight black hair, on his temple, on his cheek, and then, as the giggles stilled, on his mouth. Justin opened his mouth and returned the kiss and Hank made a sort of desperate sound and ground his still-aching groin.