The day before Christmas, it started snowing at about nine in the morning. It was the first snow of the year, so everyone was all excited about it. All the customers in the hotel restaurant commented on the weather when they gave me their orders. Everyone who came in after nine came in coated with snow.
The snow kept falling steadily, and by noon the radio was advising people to stay off the roads. The hotel manager came downstairs and told Roy to close the restaurant and send all the staff home. "All the staff" at the time meant Hyde, Kelso and me.
We walked out of the hotel into a completely transformed world. Everything was white and fluffy. The cars in the parking lot were softly-contoured white hills. The snow was falling so thickly I couldn't see to the edge of the parking lot.
"Oh my God, guys, isn't it beautiful?" Kelso exclaimed. He threw himself down onto the ground in the middle of the parking lot, and started making a snow angel.
"Crap," Hyde said. "We're going to have to walk home."
So, we did. It would normally be a half-hour walk from the hotel to my house, but it took us an hour and a half today. It was slow slogging through the snow, which was halfway up my calves, and we stopped to help a middle-aged woman whose car was stuck in a snow bank.
When we finally got to my house, we found Donna, Jackie, Naomi, and Fez out in the yard, rolling big balls of snow.
"Making snowmen?" I called out in greeting.
"It's not a snowman," Donna corrected me, putting her hands on her hips. "It's a snow woman."
Fez grinned and called out "I'm making the boobies!" He held up a pair of good-sized snowballs.
"The three of you look like snowmen!" Jackie said. "What did you do, walk all the way from the hotel?"
"Yeah." I tried to brush some of the snow off my coat. "Our cars were totally snowed into the parking lot by the time Roy let us go. Nothing's moving on the roads, anyway."
"But now we're here, so we can make a whole snow family!" Kelso exclaimed happily. The snow was really bringing out his inner child - not that it was ever very far from the surface. "Hey, Hyde, where are you going?" Kelso added. I looked over and saw that Hyde was walking towards the house.
"Inside," Hyde said, giving Kelso a patient look. "Where it's warm."
"But- but-" Kelso sputtered, "there's no snow in there!" He ran forward and grabbed Hyde's arm. "C'mon, man, it's the first snow of the year! It's Christmas Eve! The whole gang's here! When's this ever going to happen again?"
Hyde turned around and wrenched his arm out of Kelso's grasp. "Kelso, I'm freezing, I'm wet, I'm tired, and I think I'm getting a cold. Let me go inside or I'll kick your ass."
"You know what would warm you up?" Kelso asked in a singsong tone, backing up a couple steps from Hyde. "A snowball fight!" He quickly scooped up a handful of snow and flung it at Hyde, catching him square in the face.
Behind me, one of the girls giggled. Or maybe it was Fez.
Hyde stood there for a moment, glaring at Kelso with snow sliding down off his sunglasses. "You're going to pay for that," he said calmly, and then lightning-fast he scooped up his own ball of snow and hurled it at Kelso, getting him right back in the face.
"Ow, my eye!" Kelso yelped. Donna and I mouthed it along with him.
"Are you OK, Michael?" Jackie asked, moving forward with a look of concern.
"I dunno," he said, going down on one knee in the snow. "Psyche!" He stood up fast with a snowball in his hands, and threw it at Hyde. Hyde ducked, and it hit Jackie.
The war was on.
For the first few crazy minutes it was every man for himself (or woman for herself, as Naomi reminded me with a snowball to the back of the neck). Then rough alliances formed. Naomi, Jackie and Donna formed a girls' team and started to fortify the area between the tree and the fence. I paired up with Hyde - I made snowballs and he threw them. Fez and Kelso claimed the territory in the driveway.
We were all laughing so hard it hurt, and even Hyde had to admit he was having fun. We all called a truce so we could build some proper snow forts, and then we started up a real game of capture-the-flag. The game spilled out onto the street in front of our house, and the whole block became our playground - no one else but us was crazy enough to be outside in the blizzard.
By five o'clock it was getting too dark to see, and Mom opened a window to call out that she'd made hot chocolate and cookies for all of us.
When the seven of us trooped inside, Mom must have wondered what she'd got herself in for. We were all covered head-to-toe with snow. She got out a whisk broom and made each of us stand out on the porch while she brushed the snow off of us. Then Kelso and I went down to the basement and brought up the two lawn chairs so that everyone could have a seat.
Laurie wandered into the kitchen just as we were all taking our first sips of hot chocolate.
"Damn," I said, seeing her. "Isn't the airport closed?"
"I got in this morning before the storm," she smirked. She took a look around the kitchen. "God, you have more bratty friends than ever. There's no place for me to sit." She went over to Fez's chair and ruffled his hair. "Go on, hubby dearest, offer to let me sit on your lap so I can turn you down."
Fez shook his head. "I am sorry, Laurie, but since you give me no loving, I am courting Jackie now. Jackie, would you like to sit on my lap so Laurie can have your chair?"
I loved the shocked, pissed-off look on Laurie's face. I wished I could frame it.
Jackie, meanwhile, cast a challenging glance in Hyde's direction and said "Sure, Fez."
Fez grinned widely as Jackie took a sashaying walk over to his chair, and perched lightly on one of his knees.
Jackie was hoping for a reaction from Hyde, obviously. I would feel bad for Fez, but he knew exactly what was going on.
"Steven, do you have something to say?" Jackie asked sweetly.
I saw that Hyde did have an odd look on his face, and he wrinkled his nose like he was about to say something. Then he sneezed. "'scuse me," he muttered, and wiped his nose on the back of his hand.
Jackie rolled her eyes. "So, Fez, want to come over to my place tomorrow when your host parents go to church?"
"I would love to, Jackie." He slid his arm around her waist.
"So, hey, what does everyone think they're getting for Christmas?" Kelso asked. I silently thanked him for changing the subject away from the Laurie/Fez/Jackie/Hyde tangle before anyone got mad.
After that we all chatted comfortably for a while over our hot chocolate and cookies. Even Laurie wasn't too abrasive - maybe she was hoping she could fool Santa at the last minute into thinking she was a good girl. In the background, Mom got dinner ready. Soon it was time for everyone to wish everyone else 'Merry Christmas' and go home.
After dinner, Mom looked at the clock and clapped her hands. "All right, everyone, It's a Wonderful Life is about to come on TV!"
"Kitty, we've all seen it already," Red said, balling up his napkin and setting it on the table.
"Oh, don't be a sourpuss." She smiled at him. "It's a classic, that's the whole point! Let's have some family time. With the kids grown up, we may not have many more Christmas Eves when we're all together..."
Mom was getting that desperate 'my baby is leaving me' tone in her voice. Red gave Hyde and me a stern, 'don't upset your mother' look, even though he was the one who'd been trying to get out of watching the movie.
"I love that movie, Mom!" I said, almost managing to sound sincere.
We all went out to the living room to watch the movie. I sat on the couch between Hyde and Laurie, Dad took his usual chair, and Mom ran over to turn the Christmas tree lights on and the overhead light off. "Isn't this Christmassy?" she asked gleefully. She got a throw pillow to sit on, and she sat at Red's feet.
With only the light from the Christmas tree and the TV, the room was dark enough to reassure me that no one would notice the new bulge in the front of my pants. Considering I was sitting between Hyde and my sister, and watching Jimmy Stewart on TV, there was absolutely no safe explanation for the hard-on I was hiding.
God, Hyde was right there beside me. Our legs were almost touching. I hadn't been touching him nearly enough lately. In the past week we'd both had a lot of shifts at the hotel, and then when we were home the basement was always full of people. I was too scared to try spending the night with him again, even though I desperately wanted too. The consequences of getting caught were just too awful to think about.
Not far into the movie, Hyde started sniffling. Laurie noticed, too. "Christmas make you sad, orphan boy?"
"Only when I have to spend it with you," he replied. I smiled at the burn. Family time was so much more fun with Hyde around.
"Shhh," Mom hushed them. "Come on people, it's Christmas Eve. Can't you all pretend to like each other?"
"Sorry Mrs-" Hyde started to say, then interrupted himself with a sneeze. "Sorry Mrs.. Forman." He wiped his nose on the back of his hand again.
Mom briefly tore her gaze away from the TV. "Oh, for God's sake, Steven, go get a tissue."
Hyde left, and came back with a box of Kleenex. Jimmy Stewart saved his little brother from drowning. I started feeling kind of sentimental, which I guess was the whole point of watching this movie. I was tempted to slide my hand over onto Hyde's leg, but even in the dark it was too risky with my whole family right there. Laurie, for one, was very observant, and if she found out about me and Hyde we were royally screwed.
Jimmy Stewart saved the drugstore guy from accidentally poisoning his customers. Hyde sneezed again, and reached for another Kleenex.
"Ew, don't get your germs on me, orphan," Laurie said, looking across me at Hyde with a curled-up lip.
Mom looked over at us. "Steven, honey, you sound like you're getting a cold."
Hyde shrugged. "I guess so."
"Well, you should go to bed nice and early tonight-" Mom stopped, fluttering her hands. "Oh, no, you can't sleep in the basement if you're sick! It's so cold and damp..."
"It's OK," Hyde said.
"No!" I said, a little too sharply. "Mom's right. You sleep down there and you'll...you'll get pneumonia. On Christmas. It would be awful."
"Maybe he'd die!" Laurie added cheerfully.
"It's just a cold," Hyde said, sounding annoyed, totally not seeing where I was going with this.
I subtly kicked him in the ankle, and went on, "He can sleep up in my room with me tonight, Mom."
"Well, that would be perfect," Mom said, satisfied with my solution. "You can bring the cot up after the movie. And Steven, I have some cold medicine upstairs..." Mom took off up the stairs; I guess her mothering instincts were too strong to let her wait for the end of the movie before getting the medicine.
I could see Hyde struggling not to laugh. He covered it up with a cough. Then he said, deadpan, "I guess I can stand being roommates with you again for a night or two."
I had to restrain myself from breaking into gleeful giggles. We were going to spend Christmas Eve together in my room, with nobody suspecting a thing!
Mom came back downstairs just as Jimmy Stewart got to the bridge. She had a bottle of that deadly-tasting red cold medicine, and a large spoon. She poured out a spoonful, then said "Open up, Steven."
"Just give me the spoon, Mrs.. Forman," Hyde said with a barely-restrained sigh.
"Oh." Mom laughed uncomfortably. "Of course."
"Mom, aren't you afraid he'll spill it?" Laurie asked, sweetly sarcastic.
Hyde took his medicine, managing to keep his reaction down to a slight grimace. I winced in sympathy, knowing how bad the stuff tasted.
We watched the rest of the movie. Mom cried at the end, like she always did. Laurie yawned loudly to show how unaffected she was. Red told us all to get the hell to bed.
Hyde went downstairs to change into his pajamas and get the cot. I had no intention of letting him sleep on it, but we had to keep up appearances. I brushed my teeth, put my own pajamas on, turned my bedside lamp on and the ceiling light off, and waited.
I felt a little nervous. I knew what I wanted to happen tonight...or at least, I thought I did. I wanted to have sex with him. Sitting next to him all evening had left me aching for it. I wasn't sure how to ask, though, or whether that would make things weird and bad with him. We hadn't really done anything sexual together since the night of our last fight. He and Naomi had been going off alone together a lot in the past week - cementing Jackie's belief that they were dating now - and I hoped that meant Hyde was working through his shit. I didn't know how to ask about it, though, without risking setting him off again.
Hyde came into my room, lugging his cot.
"Right, you get that set up now," I said, smirking a bit. Meanwhile, I grabbed my desk chair and took it over to the door. I braced it under the doorknob, so that no one could open the door from the other side.
Hyde, looking over at me, laughed softly. "I remember you used to do that when we were kids."
"Yeah, we were perverted little boys, weren't we?" I went back over to my bed and sat down. "Come over here and kiss me."
He came over to the bed, but he kept his distance, standing with his arms crossed. "I don't want to make you sick."
I felt exasperated and touched, at once. I loved it when he was protective of me, but I was too damn horny to care about a cold. "If I'm going to catch your cold, I'll get it just from sleeping in the same room as you." Well, if he wasn't going to kiss me, I'd kiss him. I stood up and wrapped my arms around him and kissed him on the lips. He responded immediately, kissing me back and sliding his hands around my waist to pull me closer. Pressed up against him, I could feel that he was hard too. Good, then. We were on the same page.
We kept the kiss going for a while, lost in the joy of finally being able to do this after days of tension. But the longer we kissed, the more I wanted more.
Hyde broke away first, to turn aside and cough.
"How are you feeling?" I asked, wondering if maybe I was being a jerk for thinking about sex. He was sick, maybe he just wanted to sleep....
Hyde shrugged, and sat down on my bed. "OK." He smiled. "I've got a buzz on from the cold medicine. That's some strong stuff."
I smiled too, crawling onto the bed next to him. "Do you feel...uninhibited?" I suggested as seductively as possible, running one finger down the line of the buttons on his pajama top.
Laughing at me, he caught my wrist in his hand and then pushed me down onto the bed, pinning me under him for more kisses. I eagerly met his mouth, at the same time squirming under him so that I could get loose of his grip and get on top myself. The kissing turned into wrestling and kissing, with both of us rolling over each other on the bed and trying to hold the other down, and kissing wherever we could. We were both laughing out loud, giddy with it.
Someone pounded on my bedroom door. "Would you two shut up and go to sleep?!" Laurie yelled at us.
"Crap," I swore under my breath. Out loud, I called "Better get back to bed before Santa catches you and decides to take you back to the North Pole to be his whore!" I waited for more, but she seemed to be gone. I turned back to Hyde, who was giving the finger to the closed door. "We have to be quieter," I whispered. "Better turn off the light so they'll think we're asleep."
With the light off, we crawled under the covers of my bed and went back to kissing each other, quietly this time. It was all warm and soft and perfect. Protected by the covers, we slowly unbuttoned each others' pajama tops and slipped them off, so we could touch more bare skin. And I still wanted more.
"I've been wondering something," I said, soft and close to his ear, nuzzling his rough cheek.
"Yeah?"
"Wondering what it's like to do it with a guy."
His hands stopped moving over my body, and he turned his head a bit so he could look me in the eye. "You mean...sex?"
"Yeah." I laughed a little, suddenly nervous again. "I mean, I'm not even sure how it works...I've heard things, you know, guys talk, joke, but they don't go into detail."
"I have a pretty good idea how it works," Hyde said, looking just a little smug, running one finger along my collarbone.
"Oh." I didn't know quite what to think - did he mean he'd done this before? Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
I guess Hyde saw my hesitation, because he kissed me and said "Naomi and I haven't been talking about my fucked-up life the whole time we're off together."
"You mean she's told you how to-"
"Give it to someone in the ass," he smirked. "Yeah."
I laughed again out of nervousness, but wow, was I ever turned on. I felt like I could barely breathe. "Would you like to try it out on me?"
"Hell yeah." He kissed me roughly, then slid over to the edge of the bed so he could reach my bedside table. He took out the bottle of lube I had hidden there. "We're gonna need this."
It was definitely time to get naked. The streetlight outside gave us just enough light to see each other's pale, lean bodies. Hyde squirted some lube onto his hand and rubbed it over his fingers.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Starting slow," he said. We lay facing each other on my bed. He kissed me, and I felt him reaching his upper hand around to cup his hand around one of my butt cheeks. Then I felt him sliding one finger between the cheeks and - Jesus. I gasped, barely stopping myself from pulling away from the strange new sensation. I wasn't sure yet if I even liked it. "You OK?" Hyde whispered.
"Yeah." It was Hyde there with me, and that made it OK. It made it good. I was starting to get used to the feeling now. "More?"
He went slowly, constantly kissing me. I wondered how much this was like what Donna felt the first time we had sex. I wondered what it would feel like with something bigger inside me. And then - "ah" I gasped, feeling a jolt of bright sensation.
"Did that hurt?" he whispered.
"No, it just...surprised me," I said, smiling at him. "It felt good. Do it again."
After a little while, he moved away from me. "Why'd you stop?" I asked, just a bit petulant.
He cupped the side of my face with his other hand. "I wanna go all the way now," he said, speaking very softly, his voice a little husky from his cold. In the near-darkness his expression was painted in shadows, but I thought I could see his yearning mingling with apprehension. He was doing it again: giving me the chance to say no.
Tonight, we were both like virgins.
"Hell yeah," I said.
We fumbled to find a position that would work, stifling our snickering at our own awkwardness. It made me think, again, of the wrestling we always used to do.
Finally I lay on my back, and he knelt between my legs. I felt him stopping, hesitating. "Come on," I begged him with a frustrated groan, "fuck me, Steven!"
I think I surprised him. He let out a sharp laugh, and ducked his head down to kiss me. "That's what you want, huh?"
When he did, I yelped at the intensity of the feeling. He put one hand over my mouth - pressing hard, since the hand was bearing some of his weight. "shhhhh" he reminded me.
He started moving, thrusting in a rhythm that was as familiar to me as to him - but this experience was all new to me, and I was feeling tight and hot and bright in places I'd never even thought about before. Sounds kept bubbling up out of my throat, and I was glad his hand was pressed over my mouth to muffle them.
When I came, it was with more intensity than I'd ever felt in my life. It felt like I was lost forever in the orgasm's shuddering waves. I saw bright colors behind my closed eyelids, and at the edge of my consciousness floated the awareness that he was here with me, that he did this for me: Steven.
...Silence...
...Breathing...
"You bit me," he said after a while.
"Hm?"
"On the hand. I can see the tooth marks."
I opened my eyes. He was holding his hand up to get what little light was coming from the window. "I'll kiss it better," I said. I grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand close so I could look at it. He was right - I could see the marks, too. He wasn't bleeding or anything, though. I could tell he wasn't really mad at me, so I just kissed the palm of his hand. "That was your own damn fault," I said, "for making me come so hard."
He reached down to pull the covers up over us, and then snuggled in close beside me, with his body pressed against the length of mine and his arm draped over my chest possessively. "That was fun, man," he said evenly. "Let's do it again sometime."
"We can do it tomorrow night," I said, "if you still seem sick enough to Mom."
Hyde sniffled. "I think I might be sick for a week."
I grinned in the dark. "Merry Christmas, Steven. I love you."
His arm tightened around me in a hug, and he whispered very softly, "I love you too."