A/N: Hey look! I finished it with 15 minutes to spare! I mentioned on tumblr that I had abandoned this fic, but Sekrit (whose birthday is today!) encouraged me to finish it. So yay, birthday fic dedicated to Sekrit! I still need to go over this probably 10 more times to catch all my stupid typos, but hopefully I caught all the really bad ones.
Is everyone getting the awesome puns in my title? Don't worry, you will. Also, I know everyone says this, but I have the worst time coming up with summaries, though I figure it's best to forfeit length and detail in case it starts sounding too stupid. This story is a take on "weird games they played as kids," which has gotten popular in the fandom lately. I'm not as happy with this as I am with my first fic I've posted, and it's not as long either, but I'm glad I was able to transform it into something decent enough to post, lol.
Stan's biological clock is just as rigid in the summer, although it's delayed by two hours. The latest he can stay awake is one in the morning, which is laughable compared to Kyle's bogus schedule.
"One day you have to stay up with me and watch the sunrise," Kyle has said twice now in an unnatural, didactic tone, like Stan can't tell he's trying to conceal the fact he craves a romantic sunrise with his boyfriend. He does wish he could stay up all night every night with Kyle, but his body doesn't allow it.
Stan's sort of been trying to get a job, but he's yet to find one exclusively between eight in the morning and one in the afternoon, around the time Kyle wakes up. Stan is most bored during the morning hours, when he eats Cheerios straight out of the box while he flips through the channels or peruses the net for funny videos, his phone in arm's reach for when Kyle sends his daily text saying he's awake. In the fall, they'll be juniors, and Stan is worried Pre-Calculus will fuck up the C+ GPA he needs to stay on the football team. He tries not to think about going back to school as much as possible, which is easy enough, because South Park's new rec center has finally been finished. He and Kyle spend their afternoons shooting hoops in air-conditioned bliss or splashing around in the huge indoor pool.
On the second Tuesday of July, Stan wakes up at his usual time, eight a.m., and after taking a piss in the attached Jack and Jill bathroom, is about to make his way downstairs when he stumbles into something big and cumbersome that doesn't belong smack dab in front of his door. A fresh, refrigerator-sized cardboard box is now lying dumbly on its side, with an orange post-it slapped on top which reads, "Please clean out closet and put everything you don't want/need in here for Goodwill. Love, Mom." In addition to where he keeps most of his clothes, Stan's bedroom closet serves as the cluttered home for board games, old game systems, toys he hasn't touched since elementary school, and any and all other junk he has nowhere else to put. Stan cleans by chucking everything into his closet, so the idea of cleaning the closet itself is absurd. But, he doesn't have anything to do for the next five long hours, so he welcomes the chore as a suitable time killer. Stan plans to start after he lets Sparky out and has an actual bowl of cereal with milk, but suddenly watching golf seems very important, so he doesn't make his way back up to his room until eleven o'clock. He's digging into his closet's abyss, trying to gauge just how much stuff is even in there, when a bunch of junk comes toppling down on his head: some old sneakers that he isn't sure were ever even his, a dreidel which must have come from Kyle at some point over the years, and a red Santa Claus hat. A bright white mass of synthetic hair flops out of the hat when it makes its landing near the trash can.
Stan was supposed to return the hat, wig and false beard to the Salvation Army along with the rest of the get-up when he picked up his last paycheck. Since South Park High School's winter break was traditionally three weeks long, he scoured the Internet hoping to come across a part time job so he could buy Christmas presents for his family and Kyle. The jobs section of the South Park Craigslist was sparse as usual, but only two days into break, Stan came across an ad titled, "Operation Santa Claus seeks friendly greeter for South Park Walmart ASAP." Stan figured he wasn't fat enough to be Santa, although the job paid ten dollars an hour because it was outside, and he'd have to stand, which would suck, although it hadn't gotten really cold yet. He thought he was friendly enough to be Santa, though asking outright for charity money made him nervous. The ad's final note was "overweight men preferred," but stuffing a pillow under a coat could easily add the illusion of Cartman-sized girth, plus it would keep him extra warm. Best case scenario, nobody in town would even recognize him with a fake beard. The woman on the phone was thrilled to get his call since, she said, they desperately needed another Santa at this location. She explained that the current South Park Walmart Santa was "all p.o.-ed" because this was supposed to be a part time job, but he'd been doing double Santa duty while they looked for another recruit. She talked too fast and too excitedly, and Stan couldn't make out everything she was saying, but he did catch that he could start tomorrow at two, and that he would have to stop by the Salvation Army beforehand to get the costume. Stan spent every other day of Christmas break sniffling a constant stream of snot back up into his sinuses and ringing a little bell as the vast majority of Walmart customers sped past him. Once the novelty of seeing a kid excited to see Santa wore off, spreading holiday cheer just became taxing. It was still a tolerable job though, and he didn't even feel cold thanks to the red coat he shared with a jumbo pillow. On the Fridays and the Mondays, Kyle came a half hour before Stan's shift ended to sit around and keep him company before driving back to Stan's house to spend the night.
"I hear this ringing all the time dude, even when I'm asleep," Stan moaned, shaking the bell, then smacked on a smile as more shoppers approached. Kyle huddled on a dingy bench to his left, scrolling through something on his phone.
"You mean you have dreams about bells?"
"Um. Yes." Stan had actually had a dream the night before last that he was about to marry Kyle, but no one could figure out how to turn off the church bells so they had to reschedule. He tried to come up with a false dream which included ringing bells in case Kyle asked him to elaborate.
"At least you're not having dreams about fondling kids, you know, being Santa and all," Kyle said, smirking like this is very clever. He eyed Stan's faux Santa belly and snickered.
"Sick, dude."
"Well it's not like you haven't done it before." Stan must have looked mortified, because Kyle clutched his stomach and howled.
"Relax!" Kyle shouted over the carts crunching through the sludge. "I meant when we were kids."
"Oh. Yeah. That," Stan said, remembering this job wasn't his first stint as the jolly old man in imitation red velvet.
The Christmas Stan was seven, Shelly told him Santa Claus wasn't real, and when confirmed by his dad, Stan spent the rest of the day weeping quietly in his room, feeling cheated and stupid. The next day, he and Kyle were building a lopsided snowman in the Marsh's front yard when Stan revealed his parents' treacherous lies.
"Well, I never really thought Santa Claus was real," Kyle said, stuffing a fat, dirty carrot into the snowman's undersized head.
"That's because you're Jewish," Stan scoffed.
"Well yeah, but what does Santa even have to do with Christmas? In the biblical way, I mean. And how can he go to so many houses in one night? And why the hell would he be at the mall?" Apparently, Kyle had been punching holes in Santa Claus' existence for a while now. Stan huffed and punched two rocks into the snowman's face for eyes.
"You don't understand," he murmured in disappointment.
"I guess I don't. I don't understand what's so great about sitting on some old dude's lap." Stan hated that Kyle was acting so smug about this, like he was a genius for figuring out Santa was a sham. He suspected Kyle was secretly very bitter towards anything Christmas-related, because he would frequently brag, "Yeah, but I get presents for eight days in a row" whenever anyone started talking about Christmas.
"It's actually great. You get to tell him everything you want, and he says if you're good, you'll get it." Kyle considered him incredulously.
"Wait. I have an idea. Let's go inside and I'll get my Santa hat and you can pretend to be, like, a kid coming to the mall."
"Why?"
"Just – I don't know. I feel like you missed out." Stan heard the words flop out of his mouth. It was probably the wrong thing to say.
"So you feel bad for me?" Kyle asked, eyes narrowing, his voice more glum and offended than angry.
"No! Jesus, Kyle! I just wanted you to maybe understand why at least the idea of Santa is important. Even if he isn't real. But fine. Forget it." He whacked the carrot nose off the snowman's face and started heading toward the house.
"Wait, dude. I'm sorry. Yeah, you can show me what it's like to see Santa." Stan was hoping this would happen. They trudged inside through the kitchen, declining his mom's offer of a snack, and went upstairs to Stan's bedroom, where he closed the door as if this were a casual thing to do. Last summer his dad had thrown a shit fit when he found out he and Kyle still showered together after a day at the public pool, even though they were still wearing their swimming trunks, so Stan worried having Kyle sit on his lap for purely educational purposes might fall into the same category as "things you don't do with friends." In fact, he knew it was in the same category, but he didn't care. Stan shook the sparse flakes off his hat, then swapped it with his Santa one. He plopped onto his unmade bed, legs dangling over the side, his toes just touching the carpet. Stan slapped his thigh and motioned to Kyle, who was standing in the middle of the room, looking unsure. He walked slowly toward the bed and sat delicately on Stan's thigh.
"I don't think you're fat enough to be Santa, Stan."
"Well, Santa is on a diet. So anyway, little boy, what do you want for Christmas?" Stan chortled in his best Santa voice. Kyle snickered.
"Well first of all, Santa, I think you should know, I'm Jewish, so I doubt you'll want to bring me anything anyway. You never do," Kyle said longingly, with a twinge of dramatic flair.
"Santa loves all the boys and girls!" Stan reassured him joyfully. Then, in the voice he used when they played big city criminals, he demanded, "Just tell me what you want, kid," which made Kyle shriek with laughter.
"I want a new bike, like the kind with a bunch of gears. I would also like a Gameboy Advance. Oh yeah, and one of those fancy pens they have in the glass cases at Office Depot." Now it was Stan's turn to laugh, because of course Kyle would want a nice pen for Christmas.
"Have you seen those pens? I know we're not even allowed to use pens till fifth grade, but they're just so sweet-looking."
"Yeah, Santa will get you a fancy pen, Kyle. Just be a good boy." The words sounded unmistakably dirty, even in Stan's best imitation of Santa's deep voice, and his leg suddenly felt acutely aware of Kyle's body weight crushing it. An upsurge of nausea rose in the back of his throat and he tried to crush it by swallowing.
"Dude, you look like you're gonna hurl," Kyle said cautiously, brushing Stan's sweaty bangs up and pressing his hand to his forehead. Stan threw Kyle off him and raced to the attached bathroom he shared with his sister, flinging the toilet lid up just in time to start spewing chunks of macaroni and cheese.
"Mrs. Marsh! Stan's throwing up again!" Kyle shouted anxiously from the top of the steps.
Stan distantly heard Kyle nervously tell him the feel better, then his mom rushing up the steps before she crouched down beside him, saying consolingly, "That's it baby, get it all out." He finally stopped barfing twenty minutes later and spent the rest of the night in a daze watching the news with his parents, quietly sipping Gatorade and sourly regretting bringing up this Santa Claus crap to Kyle.
Stan tries the technically-stolen Santa hat on and wonders if the one he had as a kid is still crumpled up somewhere in the depths of his closet, but he must have thrown up on it, so probably not. He's vaguely horrified with his barfy seven-year-old self for having instigated something so overtly sexual, until he recalls that Hot Tamale, Dangerous Puppets, and most notoriously, Leap Frog Wrestling, were all games that Kyle invented. Remembering that day he roleplayed as Santa with Kyle has evolved into thoughts of the current, sixteen-year-old Kyle enthusiastically humping his leg while Stan chastises him, saying he'll never get off the naughty list if he keeps this up. Stan considers jerking off, and he suddenly really wants to, but he feels like it would be a waste since Kyle should be awake soon. Until Kyle texts him at quarter to one saying, "I'm up coming over now," Stan does a lot of unsuccessful Google searching to try to find gay Santa porn that isn't too weird. It's mostly fat bearded guys spanking young ones, which he finds unsettling and pretty gross, but he's still agitated and riled up when he hears the kitchen door open downstairs.
"Hey, Stan! I found something of yours rolling around in my yard again!" he hears Kyle yell into the house from below him. Stan hurries downstairs to find Kyle sitting at the kitchen table, holding his chin up with his left hand, boredly watching Sparky lick up big gulps of water from his bowl.
"Hey," Stan says, pulling out a chair and sitting down before Kyle notices he has a hand in his pocket to conceal his boner.
"How come you're wearing a Christmas hat?" Kyle asks.
"First of all," Stan says lazily, sprawling his arms out and putting his head down on the wooden table, "it is a Santa Claus hat, not a Christmas hat. And because my mom wants me to clean out my closet today and apparently I forgot to return it to the Salvation Army when that job was over." Kyle strums his fingers over Stan's outstretched arm, humming what sounds like Jingle Bells.
"You know, my mom used to tell me I should feel sorry for Christian kids, since their parents lie to them about Santa Claus and everything." Kyle laughs, but it turns in a yawn. He sets his head down on the table too, the tip of his nose just brushing the ends of Stan's hair.
"That's terrible," Stan mutters into the table, legitimately saddened when he imagines Sheila saying this to a young Kyle.
"Don't you remember how upset you were the day you found out he wasn't real? And you pretended to be Santa, and had me sit on your lap?" Kyle whispers, his breath making strands of Stan's hair whish over his ear. Stan is thrilled, but not really surprised, that another innocent discussion has evolved into something more deviant, a precursor to more of what they've been doing for exactly eleven days now. Two Fridays ago, they went to the drive-in movie theater in Buena Vista, and Kyle's frustration at being able to find the right radio station for the movie's audio track progressed into a sob-laden tirade of his latest struggles in life: how his parents were digging themselves into debt over Ike's CMU tuition, that he had no idea where to apply to college himself, or if he even should, and that he'd been distressed with how often he'd been thinking about Stan's dick after catching a glimpse of its seven inch, uncut glory while they were changing in the pool locker rooms at the rec center. Stan crawled over into the driver's seat, barely able to squish himself over Kyle, and kissed his wet face all over until he stopped crying. When Kyle was calm again, breathing normally, they started making out for real, which progressed into frantic pawing at each other, culminating in half-naked handjobs in the backseat of the Toyota that Kyle's parents got him as a birthday present. Stan grips Kyle's knee under the table, elated that he's allowed to touch him like this now, whenever he wants.
"So you wanna go upstairs, and uh," Stan clears his throat, then deepens his voice and asks, "tell me what you want for Christmas, little boy?" He spreads his fingers over Kyle's thigh, gliding them upward, and peers at him through his bangs.
"Sure," Kyle replies, biting his lower lip boyishly and grinning. They race each other up the steps, scaling two at a time, and Stan pulls Kyle into his room, locking the door behind them, even though no one else is home. Stan hops onto his bed, scooting back against the wall, and adjusts the red cap, then spreads his legs wide over the sheets, making sure Kyle notices the obvious outline of his swelling erection.
"I think you should sit here," Stan requests, patting the space between his legs. Kyle kicks his tennis shoes off and crawls onto the bed, eyeing him with cautious interest. Once Kyle folds himself into Stan's open body, Stan laces his fingers under his Math League T-shirt and lifts it up over his head.
Stan presses his open mouth to the base of Kyle's neck, licking the ridges of his spine, and says, "My records show you're on the naughty list this year, Kyle." Stan pinches Kyle's left nipple, and he feels his breath catch in his chest. He's decided to abandon the jolly tone. It was what made some of that porn from earlier particularly creepy.
"Well, I don't know how that happened," Kyle responds haughtily, pushing his ass back against Stan's groin. Stan grits his teeth, running his fingertips down Kyle's stomach and just underneath the waistband of his shorts and boxers, brushing them over his pubes.
"I think you do know, Kyle," Stan breathes choppily, licking behind his ear now. Stan continues to rub the pads of his fingers back and forth teasingly, avoiding even the base of Kyle's cock. With his other hand, Stan palms Kyle's dick over the fabric of his shorts. He's incredibly pleased with himself that he's able to make Kyle this hard.
"Goddammit, Stan." Kyle is openly panting now, and he tries to twist around in Stan's lap to face him, but Stan holds him in place with his body.
"I think you could get on the good list if you really wanted to," Stan says, unbuttoning Kyle's khaki shorts and slowly dragging the zipper down. Kyle lifts himself up, arm coiled behind Stan's neck for support, and Stan helps him pull them down to mid-thigh level.
"First you should tell me what you want for Christmas though," Stan says, finally grasping Kyle's cock in his hand, then prods at his cockhead, rubbing the wetness down the shaft with his index and middle fingers. Kyle shoves his shorts off all the way and splays his legs, lining them up with Stan's.
"I-" Kyle begins, then inhales loudly through his nose when Stan starts pumping him in long, delicate strokes.
"Yeah?" They haven't applied a lot of talking to what they've been doing lately, beyond "Is this ok?" Since the night at the drive-in, Stan's been kind of desperate to hear Kyle say something else about his dick.
"I want to feel yours against mine," Kyle says, turning his head over his shoulder, trying to make eye contact with Stan.
"My what?" If Stan didn't want to hear this so badly, he would have ripped off his own shorts and pressed his naked cock to Kyle's already.
"Your dick on mine," Kyle responds dazedly, his cock throbbing distinctly in Stan's hand as he says it. Stan squirms, helping Kyle move to face him. Kyle goes for Stan's mouth, licking in and around it as he tries to get Stan's shorts off too.
"Hold on," Stan says, kneeling up on the bed to shake them off, then flings his shirt off too. He falls back down next to Kyle, facing him, feeling a little dizzy from getting up. Kyle presses his face into Stan's neck, breathing him in, and loops his arms around his sweaty back.
"Good," Kyle moans contentedly when Stan clutches their erections together, squeezing and pumping them both now with a determined firmness. Stan holds one arm around Kyle's neck, drawing their faces together so their wet lips brush together at times, though they're both breathing too hard to kiss anymore. Stan is still mesmerized by how good this feels, how much better it is with Kyle than even his best solo jerkoff sessions. He sucks in long breaths, trying to abate his imminent orgasm, although he can't slow his pace, not now, because Kyle's started actively thrusting up into his hand and making tiny crying noises behind his clamped teeth. Stan tightens his grip slightly and grinds his dick over Kyle's, imagining he's inside him, rutting against the overwhelming heat, Kyle's ass clenching around him. Kyle starts rubbing his foot anxiously over Stan's ankle bone – his signal for Stan that he's about to come.
Feeling Kyle's hot cum spill onto the head of his cock is what makes Stan lose it. He pinches his eyes shut and presses his forehead into Kyle's, letting a sob echo through him as he blows his load. He comes a lot, and what doesn't trickle over his hand pools into a goopy puddle on the sheets. His hand slows as he rides through the aftershocks, coating both of their cocks in wet ejaculate while he revels in the sensation of the occasional trembling as they go soft. He bumps his nose against Kyle's inquisitively.
"There is come everywhere," Kyle says, peering down to examine the mess, his head still cradled in Stan's arm.
"Haha, yeah," Stan responds almost gleefully, feeling kind of delirious. Eventually, Kyle slinks out from Stan's grip and sleepily drags him to the bathroom.
"Fuck, it's almost four," Stan complains, checking his phone once they're freshly showered and Kyle is meticulously toweling his hair.
"So?"
"The whole point of today was that I was supposed to clean out my closet."
"Oh yeah," Kyle mutters distractedly, running his fingers over his scalp and grimacing at himself in the mirror above the armoire. Stan lifts the cardboard box from near his nightstand and props it up in the middle of the floor, frowning at its emptiness.
"Well, I guess I can help," Kyle proposes. "I'm sure there's a bunch of my stuff in there anyway."
An hour later, they're sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the teal area rug covering Stan's floor, surrounded by years' worth of school art projects, Stan's Nintendo 64, which they were very disappointed they couldn't get to work, a dark purple sweater that Kyle was elated to see again (even though it didn't fit him anymore), miscellaneous board game pieces, a flurry of paper squares from an origami kit they couldn't find, I Spy books, and Halloween costumes, among other clutter.
"God, how could I ever get rid of this stuff," Stan says, smiling as he leafs through a booklet of different types of clouds he made in seventh grade science class.
"Oh no, not this again. You should have cleaned this out years ago. Remember your hoarding problem, Stan? Remember? I mean, I bet you don't even know what half this crap is!" Kyle exclaims, gesturing to an unmarked box.
"I know what that is," Stan mumbles defensively, leaning over Kyle and lifting the lid to reveal a tangled mass of little electric Star of David lights.
"I remember these," Stan laughs, sitting back and beginning to untangle them.
"Why do you even have these?"
"I got them at Walgreen's when I was…thirteen or something? I wanted to put them on our Christmas tree, like, as homage to our friendship or something, but my dad wouldn't let me."
"You should see if they still work. Hang them in your room," Kyle says, resting his chin on Stan's shoulder. Stan gets up and loops the lights around his headboard, thinking of them as a sort of symbol that he can have Kyle in his bed now, their twinkling glow illuminating a new frontier.