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Eddie trailed Steve up the slush-covered mountain: “I’m terrified parts of me I reeeeally don’t wanna lose are gonna freeze and drop off.”
Steve glanced back. Eddie’s boy in action-mode—ax slung over his shoulder—looked damn fine. “You’re kidding?”
“Talking ’bout my fingers. Not the parts you’re obsessed with.” Eddie poked his tongue out. Ow! Too cold. “My gloves are soaked.”
“Quit whining.” Steve pitched Eddie his gloves, which plopped in the mud. “Jesus, you never could catch.”
“Keep ‘em.” Eddie stuffed them in Steve’s jeans’ back pocket. Mmmm, warm here. “Don’t want trembles when you swing that ax. Uh, remind me why we can’t hack a tree from the roadside?”
Steve’s heavy sigh clouded the air. “It’s a Harrington tradition. I loved tree-hunting with my grandpa for a proper, bushy Indiana pine. Dad didn’t bother. I guess I wanted to reinvent it. For us.”
“Ooookay. Gonna need a Gunja break to waft away that WASP juju, or…”
He grabbed Steve’s scarf. Steve scowled, dropped his ax, and Eddie sealed their chapped lips in a sizzling kiss. Soon, Eddie’s hands grew lovely and warm, happily stuffed down Steve’s pants. Eddie broke for air, arched a brow. “This tradition doesn’t suck.”
Steve scowled again, grabbed the ax: “We gotta move, or they’ll find our rotting corpses next spring.”
They lugged a tree down the hill then up to their second-floor apartment.
Pine needles got everywhere. Eddie overruled hoovering with a hot shower, pressing Steve to the tiles. They kissed each other silly again, hot steam billowing, and wound up rolling on the floorboards, jerking each other off amid a sea of pine needles.
***
When Steve awoke, his ass was ON FIRE.
“Jesus!”
He lifted Eddie’s arm, sat up, glimpsed his bare arms—they were bright pink! He tugged down his pants and twisted to see. “Nooooo! My butt!”
Eddie woke with a jolt. “What’s wrong? I wasn’t rough..? SHIIIIIT!”
Steve dashed to the mirror, consoled that his face wasn’t as livid as his rear. He stripped his shirt. Stared. Trembled. His torso was a blotchy mess. Eddie embraced him from behind. Steve elbowed him away. “I might be infectious.”
“Chill.” Eddie nuzzled Steve’s sore nape. “Allergic to pine needles, babe?”
Steve turned within Eddie’s arms, comforted that Eddie wasn’t repulsed. “Huh?”
Eddie coaxed him back to bed, headed to the drug store. Steve called his mom: “As a tiny kid, Steve, you got a rash at Christmas on your face and hands. We suspected your grandpa’s wild pine, so we ditched that tradition.”
“Oh.” Steve rubbed his palm in calming circles on his burning stomach. “Thanks, mom.”
Soon, Eddie smeared camomile lotion on Steve’s itchiest parts, to the soundtrack of angry metal. When Steve got a headache, Eddie turned it down, and chased his dabs of camomile across Steve’s sensitive skin with sweet caressing kisses.
“To be fair, Stevie,” he whispered, his breaths balmy in the small of Steve’s back, “I’ve had worse Christmases.”
Steve sighed into the pillow, while Eddie kissed his smouldering ass. “Yeah, me too.”