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I hadn’t expected a nearly burnt pie crust to be what finally broke Nick, but here I was—at 12:31 am on what was now officially Christmas Eve—blocking Nick’s way out of the flat.
“Move,” Nick ordered, exhausted struggling to get his arm in his inside-out coat.
“Nick, I’m not letting you leave the house after midnight to get ingredients I can pick up in the morning.” The stress of planning a meal for our families was evident in his red eyes, tense jaw, and rounded shoulders. I knew him better than myself, and he was one key-dropping moment away from a meltdown.
“Charlie, your morning is like ten-thirty! If I go now while they’re stocking the shelves, I’ll have decent choices.”
“I’ll get up early,” I promised, trying to defuse the argument.
“I’m up right now!”
“I’ll ask Tori.” I winced as soon as I said it. I’d taken a wrong turn, as evidenced by the increasing violence against his poor coat.
“You’re not asking your sister to get unsalted butter because she’ll just get salted butter to spite me and…and–” He yanked his arm out of the coat again, shook it out, then tried to shove it in a fourth time.
I walked over to take the coat from him. He shook his head and stepped backwards, stumbling on his unlaced shoes. He landed on his arse, blinking up at me with watery eyes.
Kneeling in front of him, I ran my hands over his neck, shoulders, and down his arms, checking for any injuries. His eyes were fixed on the floor. “Nick, look at me,” I whispered.
He pressed his lips together and closed his eyes, his lashes darkening with dampness. “It’s our first time hosting and—” he hiccuped, his shoulders tightening and rising closer to his ears. “I want to remake the pies.”
We had been living together since Nick graduated in July and he had been so excited for us to host a holiday for the first time, up until a week ago when the excitement condensed into a sticky sort of dread. While I hadn’t been quite as enthusiastic, years of therapy and experience had taught me it would all be okay as long as we had each other’s backs.
I kissed his forehead, wishing I could stop the spiral. “You don’t need to remake the pies, Love. They’re still delicious even if they’re slightly browned.”
“But they’re not perfect. This needs to be perfect.”
“It doesn’t–”
“Why don’t you want everything to be perfect?” His voice was a thin line and his chest moved as if he’d just run a mile. He was moments away from a panic attack.
I eased into his lap and tucked his face into the spot between my shoulder and neck that he liked to nuzzle. My fingers ran through his hair. “It’s okay, baby. I’m right here.”
“Char, I don’t have time for this.”
“Baby,” I leaned back and lifted his chin with my thumbs. “Nothing that happens tomorrow will make me love you less. I’m not gonna leave you. It’s you and me together dealing with whatever happens. Whether that’s running out of mashed potatoes or a burnt pie.”
“Charlie!” He buried his face back in my shoulder. “I need to get more potatoes!”
“Nick, breathe with me.” I rubbed his back in big circles, trying to soothe him. He nodded and I took deep breaths, holding them for a few seconds, then releasing. Nick matched my breathing pattern.
His body relaxed a little at a time, sagging into me more with each breath. “I just can’t get out of my head,” he admitted.
“Want to talk about it?” I ran my hands through his hair and down his neck.
He shook his head. “Can you…”
“What Nick?”
“Can you make me forget about it?”
My breathing hitched. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Wear me out until I sleep. I’m so tired. I’ll be better with sleep.”
I had planned something special for Christmas, but it seemed we were both about to get our present early. “I have an idea, if you’re up for it. And only if you’re up for it. We can save it, or do something less taxing—“
He kissed me, then rubbed his nose against mine. “Tell me.”
I eased off his lap and he reluctantly let go, then accepted my offered hand. “It involves Christmas carols and edging.”
He stood and pulled me against him so we touched from our thighs to foreheads. “This sounds perfect.”
“Safe word?” I prompted as I moved my mouth down his water-warmed skin, sucking, tasting, inhaling his mint body wash scent. After a snack and a shower, he was ready to play this new game.
“Flamingo.”
I smiled against him. We usually used colors to communicate, but red and green were too common in Christmas music. Flamingo, less so. “You know the rules. Unless one of us says the safe word, no coming until you correctly sing the lyrics to the carol.”
I pressed a kiss next to his growing erection and then started the music. I took him into my mouth, one lick then two, then sucked on his beautiful tip. Nick’s fingers tangled in my hair, his head already thrown back in pleasure.
“A German song?” he asked, nearly breathless.
I pulled off and he whimpered. “Couldn’t make it too easy.” I sucked him back in, as far as I could go, relishing the way Nick’s back arched up in pleasure.
“Don’t…don’t know the words.” He sounded much less coherent. Good. I was going to make sure his brain was only a 404 pop up warning.
Releasing him again, I leaned up to kiss his mouth hard, sucking his tongue into mine and grinding our erections together. Nick groaned. “Then we keep going,” I said against his lips.
After two more songs, one in Latin, the next in Dutch, a blush burned up Nick’s chest and neck as his temperature rose. He had one hand fisted in the sheets, the other in my hair, his legs shifting as he tried to keep from thrusting hard into my mouth.
“I’m so close, sweetheart,” he admitted.
We both groaned as I pulled back, giving my own erection a few strokes to ease the throbbing.
Nick’s eyes were laser focused on my hand. “Fuck, fuck.” He flung his arm over his eyes. “Fuck!”
I ran my hands over his sculpted thighs, swallowing hard. He was so damn sexy, I was ready to give him anything. “Do you need to use the safe word?”
He lowered his arm and stared directly into my eyes. “No. Next song.”
Holding his gaze, I clicked to the next song. ‘Good King Wenceslas’ began playing.
“Good thing I’m delicious, look out,” he said, butchering the opening lyrics. “On the feast of Nicholas.”
I bit my lip, shaking my head. “The feast of Nicholas?”
He winked at me.
My body heated ten more degrees. “Well, I better keep feasting.”
“Please, Char.”
I hadn’t counted on Nick purposely getting lyrics wrong, which was an oversight on my part. Once every remnant of anxiety had subsided, he gave himself fully to the idea of O Come All Ye Gayful, as I liked to call it.
I moved from between his legs to between his cheeks after a breathy rendition of “jingle balls, jingle balls, jingle till I come” (it wasn’t good, but it did mean this ridiculous strategy was working to keep Nick out of his head). I savored him until he was completely incoherent. After rinsing my mouth, we spent another two songs kissing and grinding and gripping each other before I put a pillow beneath his hips.
The playlist continued as I pressed one finger, then two, into his perfect arse, finding that bundle of nerves that made him feel like he was being electrocuted.
“Chorus,” I ordered, sucking his cock back into my mouth as he beared down on my fingers.
“Fleece navy dads,” he groaned and then sang my name as I brought him to the edge again.
I added a third finger as sweat misted over his skin, his head moving back and forth in desperate pleasure. “What about this song?”
“A gay and a stranger, no place for some head…the club Lorde was playing, they head to the head.”
I chuckled. “That doesn’t even make sense!”
“Then I guess you–oh god, yes, there–better keep going.”
Needing to be inside of him, I coated my own erection in lube and eased into him through shouts of pleasure, both of us already breathing as if we’d run a marathon. His hands tangled in my hair, then he tugged me down and kissed me as if I were the most precious thing in the world. We shared breaths as I began to move.
“I love being with you,” he whispered.
“Same, baby,” I breathed against his mouth.
As we moved together, pleasure unfurling down my limbs and lighting up every nerve ending, Nick’s lyrics grew more unhinged.
“I came upon a midnight queer,
Your glorious rod so bold!
With angels bending rears to twerk,
And touch their lubed up holes!”
“Nick, what?” I laughed into his neck.
“You’re welcome,” he teased, kissing me again and again.
We continued.
“Joy to the arse!
Cocks fill the men!
The tops all gracious kings
The holes in clenching glory came
and made the angels sing!”
I laughed so hard at his rendition of ‘Joy to the World,’ I almost made us both finish. Pulling out of him, we took a break and kissed lazily until Nick started singing again.
“Silver balls, silver balls. It’s disco time on your titties...”
I just shook my head and paid attention to his decidedly not silver balls until the next song.
“Oh holy night, my bottom needs your—” he broke off in a gasp as I pushed inside him again.
Our hands found each others, our fingers intertwined as I set a slow but steady pace, somehow both intimate and full of joy. Every time he laughed, he clenched around me, pulling me deeper. Whenever I giggled, he groaned and swore, measuring his breathing. It was one of my favorite things in the whole world: him trying desperately not to fall apart as I did my best to make him.
“This song,” I ordered as the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ played.
He winked at me, “On the first gay of Dickmas my true love gave to me, edging me to ih-in-san-it-y!”
Our laughs broke off into moans as our hands tightened around each other. Sweat dripped down the back of my neck. I was so warm, my whole body nearly pulsing with fire. The song changed.
“I just want you in my hole,” Nick sang. “More than you could ever know! Make creampie dreams come true…”
His falsetto for ‘All I Want For Christmas is You’ forced me to stop and drink water before I went up in smoke.
On and on he went, making us laugh and moan and curse and cling to each other. A few songs later, I needed a break. I pulled out of him again and kissed down his legs, tasted the sweat on the back of his knees and at the crook of his elbow, licked his beautiful nipples, and sucked a pattern into his neck. He held me tight against him, kissing me as if his life depended on it. Nothing in the world felt like being in his arms.
I bit his bottom lip, shamelessly grinding our hips together again, my hands shaking from needing my own release.
“Need you again, Char,” Nick pleaded, his hand cradling my face. “Please.”
“Yes,” I breathed against his lips. He released me and I pushed his legs back, one at a time, trailing my fingers down each of his thighs, then added more lube to both of us. We both cried out as I pushed in one more time. It was heat and gripping and baby, baby, baby.
‘Jingle Bell Rock’ started and I moved almost all the way out then back in, then again, Nick rising to meet me, his hand pressing back against the headboard. “Know the words?”
“Jingle…” he gasped. “Bell…” He squeezed my hips, moving with me as if he was trying to take me deeper. As if we could never be close enough. “Cock.”
“Nick!” I laughed, causing him to groan.
“Can’t laugh when you’re inside me. Too close.”
“We can stop at any time,” I promised.
He slipped his hand around the back of my neck and brought us chest to chest, kissing me hard. “Not until I get the words right.” He smiled and kissed me again, making my brain go offline.
This time, though, it was different. The music faded into the background as I pressed his arms over his head and he bit and nibbled my neck. He tugged at his arms and I released him, and we both sucked in a sharp breath as his hands touched me everywhere, everywhere. I didn’t even know or care where my phone was or what song was playing. It was just him and me, gazes locked.
As my mounting climax battled against my failing defenses, I stilled and closed my eyes, cutting off the vision of Nick wrecked beneath me. I gasped for breath, counting backwards from thirty to try and take the edge off. Wetness eased out of the corners of my eyes, my arms shaking, burning from the effort of both holding myself up and trying not to finish before he did. I was reaching the end of what I could tolerate, although my stomach sank with the thought of this incredible experience being over.
“Char.” Nick brushed a sweat dampened curl off my forehead and kissed me so sweetly, the wetness in my eyes eased down my cheek. He caught it with his thumbs, then kissed me again. “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas. Only a hippopotamus will do…”
I blinked at him, my brain trying to stretch back enough to reality to understand what he was saying. “What?” I managed.
He smiled, then carded his fingers through my hair. He kissed my cheeks and then my lips again. “The song.”
Turning my head, I caught the jaunty tune buried beneath blankets. Nick repeated the lines of the chorus as it played, all the words correct.
“Nick,” I gasped as I wrapped my hand around his leaking erection and thrust deep in him, both of us moving up the bed with the force.
“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie,” Nick pleaded as I continued to move. “Please. We need this.”
“I’ve got you, baby. Let go.”
His release was a chorus, echoing around the room and seeping into my bones, taking me with him. It was a freight train, an earthquake. Waves of white heat, explosions, sunshine and snowflakes. We gripped each other as if the world shattered beneath us, and we were the only survivors.
In its wake, a love so deep I knew it would transcend every universe.
We held each other up on shaky legs in the shower, Nick humming carols and kissing me as if he couldn’t breathe without doing so. When we collapsed back into bed, I wrapped my arms around him, running my fingers over his skin and leaving goosebumps behind.
“Best Christmas Eve ever.” He yawned, kissed my chest, and closed his eyes. “Thanks, sweetheart.”
I kissed the top of his head. “You feeling better?”
“Perfect. Forget the pies. I’m going to stay in bed naked with you as long as I can.”
“That sounds like my kind of Christmas Eve.” I brushed his damp hair away from his forehead. “Ready for sleep?”
“Mmm.” His eyes were already closed. “Love you.”
“On purpose. Forever,” I responded, before we both fell into a long winter’s nap.