Good morning Story Orgy readers! Hope you're having a fantastic day. Got your coffee? We've got just a few announcements to share today before we get started with our Holiday stories...
First, the delightful Em Woods and I are touring with Breathless Press this week in honor of our new releases, Willow and Choices. Stop by and comment each day and you'll have a chance to win a great prize!
Here are the blog stops
See You there!
Second, Em has a new release coming up real quick on December 3rd- this is a fabulous sexy re-telling of Dicken's holiday classic,
A Christmas Carol.
You can get more holiday cheer from the Story Orgy crew in And The Prompt Is: Holiday Edition
Merry Christmas to Dianne Hartsock who gifted me with the
following prompt:
Person: firefighter; Place: Santa's Workshop; Thing: sugar
cookies
By Design
copyright Nov. 2012 by Lee Brazil
It smelled like vanilla, and sweetness, like pine,
smoke and fire. Not the bad kind of smoke that was 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 any more. Not since the fire...the bad kind that smelled like
destruction and broken dreams and hate.
Now, he had a studio apartment that was 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 was it that he'd left there?
Some kind of dinner plate? But he didn't eat any dinner, he never ate away from
the station-house where Chief Nick badgered him into 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 the starving
team left any food on the table.
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 back yard 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
followed immediately by a faint buzz and a telling pop before 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 stopped by on its way home form 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, toy with the long
strands, tangling them together.
"Yes, love."
"You left me." He still couldn't see
anything, but vague indications of a figure form 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 364 days
since Aiden had left him. "Kiss me?" He begged without shame, though
prior to those 364 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 opening his eyes, 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."
"You can make it up to me by staying."
"I can't. I’m out of time. You have to take the
cookies down to the third floor, apartment G. He won't answer the door, but
you'll know what to do when you get there."
"Why the fuck did you come if you didn't plan
to stay?"
"I had to come, even if it was cheating,
because I had to say good bye. I didn't get to say good-bye, Kyle. Now, go, he
needs you."
"But I need you..." His voice trailed off,
because it was too late.
And the weight in his lap was completely gone, and
all that lingered of his lover was the scent of peppermint and vanilla, and
cum. And then, since the dream was gone anyway, Kyle opened his eyes and stared
at his bleak little apartment with eyes accustomed to not seeing, and shuddered
in distaste. Had he really lived like this? His gaze fell on the wrapped
cookies, and he sighed. He hadn't been able to deny Aiden in life, far be it from
him to refuse the man's request in death.
A shower and fresh clothes later, he was surprised
by how much brighter everything seemed, how whole he felt. Good-bye was
important, he supposed. Maybe after he'd dropped off Aiden's cookies, he'd go
back over to the station house and tell Chief Nick that he was sorry for being
a pain in the ass the past year. If that went well enough, he might even
consider walking on to the workshop, to see the frenzy of toy-making as Aiden's
old co-workers got ready for the upcoming holiday.
Check back next week for the conclusion to By Design!
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