Christmas Gifts

“Whore!” The word sounded less like an epithet than a wolf’s howl at the moon, a long, drawn-out baying of outrage and pure emotion. “Whoooooooooore!”

“Shut up and take it like a man,” I growled. My heels banged into the base of the sofa as I lunged forward. He was trying to squirm away, the little bastard.

“Fuck you!” grunted Spencer, glaring at me. “You just think because I’ve never done this before . . . stop slamming your ass on my face, fucker!”

“You like it,” I said with a cocky grin. “Look. I’m going to do it again.”

“Whooooooore!”

On the television, my little Super Mario did another butt-slam onto Toad’s round little head, forcing him into the boiling lava in the middle of the first castle. He was out of lives. And that’s when Spencer threw down the game controller, crossed his arms, and pouted like a little boy.

It was Christmas eve. I had my family flying into town the next afternoon. After some fairly intense weeks in which we’d steeped for long hours in each other’s company, I knew that at the end of the night, when I sent him home, I wouldn’t be seeing him for an entire week.

That’s why I’d asked Spencer to spend all of Christmas eve with me. The entire day—just the two of us. No work, no classes, no talk about the week’s hiatus. Just an enjoyable, giddy day of fun, before we had to part.

Raised as I was by two parents convinced that the world was full of people trying to take advantage of them, I try hard to have an optimistic view of things. Instead of moping about the upcoming absence of each other from our lives for the last week of the year, I wanted to focus on having as much fun as possible when we were together. In a broader sense, I try not to think of this relationship’s natural end—which is inevitable, when eventually I leave behind the state and Spencer in it. I concentrate on the sweetness of it, on my enjoyment of Spencer’s beauty and of his talents both in and out of the bed. I think more about all the positives we both receive from our time together, and try to trust that in the end, when it ends, we’ll part treasuring the time we shared.

It was to this end that I’d tried to make the day as fun as possible. We’d eaten at Spencer’s favorite Indian restaurant for lunch, and returned to my house for an afternoon of watching movies on Netflix. We’d laid in bed together talking. The shyer of my cats, who ordinarily won’t tolerate anyone outside the family, has warmed to him; she curled up on his lap and napped while we reclined with our arms around each other, following her example. Then we’d roused ourselves and spent a happy hour wrapping presents for Spencer’s family, made a dash for Thai takeout, and yelled and cursed at each other while playing games on the Wii.

A happily-spent day, indeed.

“I have something for you,” he told me, after the fifteen seconds of his pretend tantrum had passed. I raised my eyebrows and turned off the console. “Hang on,” he said.

He hopped up and padded into the dining room to retrieve his coat. From deep inside a pocket he retrieved a gift bag printed with a holiday motif. “I kind of got you a present,” he said, suddenly shy.

I grinned. “Oh, we’re doing that, are we?” I asked as I walked past him into the kitchen. From the refrigerator I pulled out a large Christmas stocking. “Good thing I prepared.”

After taking into consideration comments from my readers about good Christmas gifts for the boy, I had the inspiration one desperate shopping day to give Spencer several inexpensive tokens in a holiday stocking, rather than have to search for the one perfect gift that would sum up everything I wanted to say. The inspiration gave me the freedom to include gifts both goofy and useful—a small Moleskine containing maps of Manhattan for Spencer’s trips to New York City falling into the latter category, and the former represented by an enormous and tacky Aslan bookmark (we’d seen The Voyage of the Dawn Treader together a couple of days before). I’d included several cartons of his favorite chewing gum, a couple of movie passes, and a bunch of homemade edibles. Spencer has gluten intolerances that we have to work around when we eat together, so I’d spent the entire afternoon the day before baking holiday treats for him. I’d made brownies from ground almond meal and rice flour, used the rice flour and some spelt for a batch of molasses cookies, and had made some gluten-free candies to boot.

He seemed overwhelmed by all the work I’d done. “Oh my gosh,” was all he could say, over and over, pleased. At least, I’m hoping that it was pleased. He might have been thinking, Baked goods? Jeez, what a cheapass. “Open yours,” he suggested, after trying all the treats in turn.

I obeyed. He’d given me a glass paperweight, blown with a careful series of bubbles in a spiral pattern. It was really lovely. “If the sun catches it, the bubbles light up the room,” he explained, taking it from my fingers and twirling it beneath the lamp. “You’ll see it when it happens. It reminded me of you.”

I blinked several times to keep away the tears that sprung up at this handsome compliment. “You are sweet,” I said at last, over the lump in my throat.

“And you are handsome,” he replied. He sat up then, bringing his face close to mine.

I didn’t hesitate. I reached out and kissed him, holding onto the back of his neck with one hand and pulling him to me. Our lips remained tightly closed together while we fumbled for each other’s clothing. He’d brought a pair of sweats to lounge around in, that day, and I was dressed in sweats of my own; we didn’t even have to look in order to yank down each other’s elastic waistbands. He gasped as my hand probed for his hole. It was warm beneath my fingertips, and pulsed out as I tickled the skin.

Spencer has a talent for making me so rock hard that sometimes I can’t stand it. I wasn’t up to many preliminaries that evening. His hips were grinding against my stick prick with such relentless ferocity that it wasn’t very long before I pulled my mouth away from his and spat in my palm. When I’d slicked the head and the first few inches of my meat, he lifted himself up, then sat slowly down on me. My dick disappeared into the warm, quivering depths of his hole. We both groaned with need.

We fucked on the sofa for long, loud minutes. He came long before I, squirting his load on my chest and face. I scooped off what I could and slapped it onto my dick during one of his upstrokes, so that it made his chute doubly slick. He groaned at that, reveling in the unspoken nastiness of the extra lube. Although he’d just shot, his dick was still almost fully hard as I continued to fuck him. His fingers tweaked and flicked my nipples while his hole clenched and released my meat.

When I came, it was just as loudly. My hands clutched at his narrow waist so hard I later thought I must have left marks. He held my face as I shot in him, holding it motionless so he could watch my expression as the orgasm took over. We paused, and remained still for a moment or two before moving again. Then, with mutual unspoken consent, we slid down into the cushions and held each other for a long, silent time.

“So I’ll see you in a week, I guess,” he said a few minutes later in my back hallway, as he pulled on his coat and shoes.

“It’ll fly by,” I assured him. He looked up at me and smiled, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

Like I said, I try to be an optimist. It was only a week of separation. We’d enjoy each other’s company afterward. We could even see each other during the week for lunch or something, if we wanted. My mouth automatically opened to say something reassuring, but then something happened. Oh shit, I thought to myself. This hurts. This really hurts.

It felt like an icepick through the heart, that moment. I'm not exaggerating. I could feel the chill of it, and the ache of the edges where it had pierced. I wasn’t going to see Spencer for an entire week. He was clearly unhappy. I was on the edge of desolation. And here we were, trying to make the best of it without upsetting the other any more. “Yeah,” he said, swallowing and holding the stocking I’d given him. “Just a week.”

I found I couldn’t summon any words. Anything I might say felt like a bromide, patent insincerity stretched over a falsehood. It wasn’t going to be all right. It was going to be a long, long week. The knowledge hurt.

And I realized in that moment that Christmas eve was going to be nothing compared to how awful it would feel when eventually and finally I must move away and leave him behind. Positive as I try to be, all I could see at that moment when he gave me a last look was the vast chasm between us, already wide and widening by the second.

I sat down on the hallway stairs, stunned by the enormity of my sorrow. There I remained, slumped over and shaken, for several more minutes.

It wasn’t until I was straightening up the house on Christmas morning that I remembered the paperweight. I took it upstairs to my office and put it on the desk, where the weak December sunlight spilled through the blinds and across the wood. The rays caught the bubbles in the glass globe and sent light scattering across the walls, and the ceiling, even out into the hall—little specks of sheer brilliance that shimmered on every surface they touched. They lit up the room indeed.

But in that moment, and in the long week that followed, they didn’t at all remind me of myself.