I Heard Him Exclaim (7 page)

He relaxed his throat and urged Steve to fuck his mouth, trying to give up control, hoping Steve would understand that being used this way was making him hotter than he’d ever been.

“This okay?” Steve’s voice was little more than a hoarse whisper when his hands clamped down on either side of Chandler’s face and he pressed that big hot dick into Chandler’s mouth.

Chandler pushed him back and choked out, “
You.
Make me do it.” Then he grabbed Steve’s hips and pulled him in tight, swallowing convulsively and trying to control his gag reflex, breathing to accommodate Steve’s rhythm. A deep thrust took him by surprise and he gagged.

Steve pulled out and leaned over to kiss him tenderly for a minute while he caught his breath. Warm hands soothed him, stroking his hair, and when he was ready, he opened his mouth again and waited. Steve pushed his cock back in, deep and hard, resisting Chandler’s efforts to pull him with his hands until it was absolutely clear that Steve was driving.

Oh,
hell yes,
that was exactly what Chandler wanted. His eyes stung and his jaw hurt but he put his hands behind his back and clasped them together, letting Steve take him, trusting him to learn how far he could push and when to pull back so he could breathe. Soon he was sucking, eyes closed, heart soaring, as Steve’s condom-covered cock thickened and warmed in his mouth and Steve vibrated with pleasure.

“Gods, yes,” he sighed after Steve pulled out. Gentle hands drew him to his feet and warm arms wrapped around him. “That was…”

Voices could be heard somewhere.

Quick as lightning Steve shoved him out the pantry door, into the harsh overhead light of the kitchen. He stood there, leaning against the wall when Kelly came in with Poppy, looking for Steve.

Poppy’s face brightened when she saw him, but his own probably glowed a deep scarlet.

Kelly’s eyebrows shot up. “Have you seen Steve?”

“Uh.” Chandler tried to get a grip. “No. I haven’t. I thought he was with you.”

Kelly never took her eyes off the pantry door. “Poppy, honey, could you go check the back rooms?”

Poppy ran down the hallway, during which there was in interminable, excruciating period of silence on his part and a wealth of speculation on Kelly’s. She had lively intelligent eyes, and they teased him like she was his sister, not Steve’s.

Poppy came running back. “He’s not here.”

“Okay, let’s head back into the yard, we’ll look for him there.” Kelly followed along after Poppy—who burst out and into the yard—but turned back when she reached the sliding glass door. “Oh, Chandler…”

“Um. Yes?”

Just act natural. Just act natural. Just act natural
.

She mimicked giving head in the most indecorous, outlandish way, using her hand and her mouth, poking her cheek out with her tongue…

Who
were
these people?

“Don’t look now, but you’ve got dick lips, sweetheart.”

By midafternoon most of the Adams clan had descended on Steve’s house, and besides festooning it with lights and every imaginable tacky holiday treasure he could apparently afford and more food than Chandler had ever seen—even when he’d worked a downtown soup kitchen at Thanksgiving—the truth came out.

Steve Adams was, in fact, a bona fide Santa.

Much to Poppy’s dismay, he admitted he wasn’t
the
Santa, only one of the helpers. The way Poppy argued with him about that, and the way Steve glowed with pride when she kept insisting he
was
the real Santa, Chandler thought Steve might be a little fuzzy on the facts as well.

He and Poppy had been introduced to Steve’s mom and dad, who told him that even as a kid, Steve had enjoyed the role of Santa, so one year they’d given him the Santa suit for his birthday in August. Twenty years and several Santa suits later, he still loved it, except this year was the exception. When Chandler asked Kelly why he chose this year to blow off Christmas, she told him to ask Steve himself.

Which was how he’d come to be sitting in a camp chair with Steve under a big bare tree while they ate their food off paper plates and watched the older kids play roller hockey in the street.

“I’ve never met anyone who has laminated schematics for their holiday lights.” Chandler glanced behind him. The house was ready to go. It hadn’t taken that much time to unbox and put all the decorations out, mostly because Steve appeared to be the most organized man on the planet.

“You haven’t?” Steve frowned. “How do they do it?”

Chandler waited for Steve to laugh. When he didn’t, he said, “Most people just…stick them up. Don’t they?”

“I don’t know.” Steve picked at a casserole of some kind with his fork. “We always have a plan, because we pretty much do the same thing every year. Putting things up in order and taking the time to put them away properly makes it a lot easier. My dad was a roadie for a while, until he finally settled down. I guess he got that from putting together shows.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, he worked for some big bands in the seventies and eighties. Kiss, Fleetwood Mac, the Pretenders. Bruce Springsteen, Santana…I don’t even remember them all. He slowed down when the family got bigger and he wanted to be home more.”

“Wow. Cool.”

“Yeah.” Steve seemed to be searching for something, then he pointed his dad out. He sat on the curb, watching the kids. “You can blame Himself for my family’s obsession with Christmas.”

“Himself, huh?” Chandler had accepted a beer from one of Steve’s brothers, who were all in Steve’s living room watching a football game. He picked it up and savored it, scanning for Poppy until he found her, getting her chin-length hair glamorized by an Adams preteen with a lot of rubber bands. He’d never figure out to whom each child belonged, but there was a group of girls and they had Poppy and two others—who were barely more than toddlers—with them. They’d been pressed into babysitting by their folks.

Chandler let out a long, contented sigh. He’d hadn’t known such peace since Poppy came to him, and even though it hadn’t been a long time, he knew enough to appreciate the gift.

“As you can imagine, he’s a gadget guy who loves Christmas. He always had to do it bigger and better than the neighbors. But my mom is kind of religious, and she hated the commercialization of a sacred holiday. So they decided they had to do something formal to delineate the boundaries between the sacred and the secular.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Well. We have this bizarre, overtly commercial Christmas and a pretty reverent Easter celebration. Mom’s a devout Catholic, and Easter—the resurrection—is the holiest day in the Christian calendar. So while you won’t see the religious trappings of Christianity at Christmas—just the excess and some of the pagan stuff, the tree, the lights, cartoon characters and Santa Claus—at Easter we don’t hunt eggs or do chocolate bunnies or anything, we go to a solemn sunrise service and eat a formal meal together. It’s just the way we do things.”

“That has to be the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Christmas is a pretty big party around here.”

“The Adam’s Family Christmas. I’m going to laugh every time I hear that. You know that, don’t you?”

“For a while, yeah. Everyone does.”

Chandler put his fork down. “This is a little overwhelming.”

“Do you need to take a break? We could take Poppy for a drive or something. My family can be a bit…large-ish.”

“I miss my brother so much. We lived close. We’d just had Thanksgiving at my parents’ place when they…” Chandler blinked.
Way to ruin a mood.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I drove separately. I had plans to meet friends in Vegas or we would have all driven together.”

“That’s—”

“The luck of the draw, huh?”

Steve covered Chandler’s hand with his.

Just then one of the roller hockey players fell. He got up and shoved some other kid who looked just like him, yelling about being hip-checked. Then that person shoved him back and told him to suck it up.

“Knock it off.” Steve’s father’s stentorian voice silenced everyone for a minute, but then the play started up again—business as usual within this big rowdy group.

Chandler had seen indications of Steve’s father’s fading memory over the course of the afternoon. It was barely noticeable but he didn’t know if things would get worse. The adults in the family all covertly watched over him, and his wife hovered by his side. There was so much love. It broke his heart to see the worried glances the Adams children threw their father’s way when they thought he wasn’t looking.

“So are you going to tell me why you nearly bailed on Christmas this year when you all seem to love it so much?”

“You really want to know?” Steve’s blue eyes seemed uncertain. It was obvious that Christmas meant everything to the Adams family. If Steve had run from it this year, there had to be an important reason. From the way Steve had stared at the stars when Chandler first saw him, flipping that lighter open and closed, so lost, Chandler sensed he was unhappy about something. Maybe it was a secret, but he wanted Steve to know he could be trusted with it.

“I like you. Tell me…I want to know.”

“I had some chest pains in the early part of the year and the doctor gave me a scare. There was some blockage, so they did angioplasty and I had to have a stent put into my heart.”

“Really?” Chandler frowned. “You had a heart attack?”

Steve shook his head. “It was leading to that. I had to change my behavior. I had to quit smoking, drop a lot of weight and start exercising regularly. As a consequence of that, I’ve been a little…maybe
ambivalent
about Christmas this year. I used to always dress up as Santa Claus. Then I dropped the weight and I don’t know…I didn’t grow the hair or beard this year. It seemed like a bother. I think I’m having a midlife crisis.”

Chandler suppressed a smile. “You’re probably the only person whose midlife crisis was
caused
by losing weight and getting fit and not the other way around.”

“Maybe.”

“So…are you okay?” Chandler remembered their ferocious pantry sex all too well. “Oh my g—”

“Don’t get nuts, I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in. I could fuck you longer and harder and in more ways than either of us ever imagined without breaking a sweat.”

Chandler’s beer bottle slipped from his fingers and fell to the grass at his feet with a thud. Good thing it was empty. Unlike his cock, which had chosen that moment to come to life dramatically beneath the paper plate that held his food.

Oh. Holy. Cow.

“Do you promise me?”

“Do I promise to fuck you longer and harder and—”

“Do you promise that you’ve got clearance from your doctor to have sex?”

“I promise…
Roger
, Roger. I’ve got clearance, Clarence.”

“Who the hell is Clarence…?”

“Never mind. There’s no point in worrying about that now, while everyone is staring at us. What do you say we dress Poppy like an elf and go do Santa stuff?”

Chandler thought about it, then shrugged. “Why the hell not?”

“Cool.
That’s
the Christmas spirit. You’re now an honorary Adams.” Steve stood up and called over to Poppy and her babysitters. “I’m going to need some elves. I have room for three, and one of them has to be Poppy. Who’s up for it?”

Some of the girls jumped up and down excitedly. “Can we to go to the mall?”

“Not this time, honey, I’m heading for the shelters.”

They looked disappointed, but they didn’t say no. Two of the younger ones, both of whom had curly blond hair, said, “Okay, Uncle Steve,” nearly in unison.

He grinned back at them and pointed to Poppy. “See if you can find some elf stuff for our guest. You know where Grandma keeps it.”

“Yep. I’ll ask Clark if he’ll drive me to get it.” Eyes that nearly matched Steve’s held nothing but mischief. She must be a handful.

“Tell him he can take my truck. And, princess?”

“Yeah?”

Steve tipped his head and looked down his nose at her. “
Baby,
you’re way too young and that’s your first cousin, so
ew.
You know? I tell you what, why don’t you start checking out his friends to see what you might like to look for at a later date, okay?”

The girls left Poppy with them and ran off, red faced and giggling. Steve turned to him. “That one’s going to break some hearts someday.”

“What about her uncle? Is that what they said about you when you were her age?”

“Probably not. The whole Santa gig? I was a natural for that. Big, hairy and shy as hell. I’ve come into my own since then.”

“No kidding. So…” Chandler took Poppy’s hand and followed Steve into the house. “You break any hearts lately? Are you planning on it anytime soon?”

“No broken hearts on my watch.” Steve took Chandler’s free hand and gave it a squeeze. He pulled at it until he had Chandler’s full attention. “Not yours anyway. The jury’s still out on my parents’. And my own heart could get seriously damaged here. You’re about to find out how weird I am.”

***

Steve led Chandler and Poppy into the guest bedroom where he stopped in front of some folding closet doors. They stretched across the entire room, and when he pushed them open they revealed a solid wall of Santa toys, costumes and paraphernalia.

Poppy’s mouth formed a small O of surprise, and Chandler barked out a laugh. “
Wow
. This is like the bat cave. I keep expecting to find the suit on a mannequin, or robots that come out of the floor and dress you, like Iron Man.”

“I’ve been collecting this stuff since I was a kid.”

“I can see that.” Chandler stroked his finger over a metal lunch box that featured a fifties-style Coca-Cola Santa Claus.”

“Did you carry this at school when you were a kid?”

“Hypothetically speaking, would you think it was cool if I had?”

Chandler snorted, then covered his face. “You are the cutest man ever.
Gods
.”

Steve tried not to let that go to his head, but he failed miserably. He bit his lip to keep from smiling, pulled what he needed out of the closet and tossed it onto the bed where Poppy had slept the night before. “For once, the weather is cooperating. Last year it was in the high eighties, and I thought I was going to blow a pressure gauge in my brain.”

Chandler sat on the bed, curling his fingers through the soft white fur of the cuffs on his Santa suit. “Nice. Faux fur. It’s cruelty-free and easy to spot clean.”

Steve couldn’t tell if Chandler was teasing him. “We don’t do a whole lot of fur. My folks are old hippies.”

“I’m so glad. It wouldn’t be right if Santa had like, deer heads on his wall or something. A stuffed-and-mounted grizzly bear.”

Poppy fixated on a cowboy Santa toy, which she peered at while holding her hands behind her back.
Good kid
. She didn’t just maul his stuff like some of his nephews had when they were little. “There’s a switch on the back, Poppy. He dances. You can turn him on if you like.”

Poppy found the switch and toggled it. She looked up at Steve. “He’s not skinny either. How come you are?”

“I had a problem in the beginning of the year and the doctor told me I had to lose weight to get better.”

“Oh. I get it.” She waved at the swinging, singing Cowboy Santa and he started a song that made her laugh while swiveling his hips provocatively. “That’s okay, then.”

Steve picked up his gear. “Why don’t I just take these to my room and change? I’ll meet you out here in a minute.”

He left Chandler and Poppy in the guest room with his toys. Their laughter followed him down the hall. It was nice, hearing that—friendly and fun—and in Poppy’s case rare. But hearing Chandler’s light musical laugh, a sound so pure and sweet when something really got to him… That was good for Steve’s soul. He could get used to that.

Once in his room Steve made short work of putting on his Henley and trousers. Everything had to be cinched in—belts tightened, suspenders shortened. The coat would be way too big around the middle, but the boots still fit perfectly. He hadn’t put the suit on since the previous Christmas, and he was afraid that beyond not fitting properly, his suit would just
feel
wrong.

Maybe he couldn’t wear it any more. Maybe it didn’t belong to him because he’d gone from gonzo party boy—the “Hell-Raiser Santa”—to a healthy, responsible and maybe even mature man. At last he realized what had been at the heart of the trip to Vegas in the first place.

Steve Adams had changed.

He might not like it, and he was for damned sure not going back to his old lifestyle to have a heart attack, but all the grilled fish and gambling in the world wasn’t going to bring back the man he used to be because the changes went beyond the physical. He could no longer outrun the clock or block out the loud ticktock of his lifespan. Someday everything would end.