About Nice: Mistletoe on the Mountain

by PD Singer
13 pages / 6400 words
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc, epub and Sony Reader pdf

This is Jake’s first Christmas away from his family, and his first Christmas with Kurt. Jake’s shoestring budget doesn’t matter, because what Kurt wants most can’t be gift wrapped. He’d like to stand openly with Jake as partners before the world, but Jake hasn’t come that far out of the closet. Wapiti Creek is hung everywhere with mistletoe, taunting them both with opportunities not taken.

Jake is making a traditional Landon family dish for a Christmas pot-luck dinner with friends, but he’s short a key ingredient. Kurt manages to supply the missing ingredient for Jake’s recipe, but can Jake supply the missing ingredient for Kurt’s happiness?
 

Sample

“Hey, what’s your tradition of gifts? Everything on Christmas morning or on Christmas Eve, or some combination?”

“One on Christmas Eve when we were little, and then everything else in the morning, but when we got bigger it was all for the morning. What about you?” I thought of the various things under our makeshift tree.

“All in the morning.” He pulled on his bibs. “We can start making our own traditions, you know.”

“Sounds good. Let’s start with a tradition of exchanging naked Christmas greetings as early on Christmas Eve as possible. Or do you want to go to a midnight service? Or both?”

“Let’s do the greetings.” Kurt didn’t quite shudder, making me wonder what religion had been for him. We had plenty of tough stuff going right now, that one could wait.

“Sounds good!” I pulled him close for a quick squeeze and then we were off to a day of helping the tourists make merry. Kurt came by the bunny lift with his classes only twice, and each time his smile was the same sort he’d give Marty, Julie, or any of our other friends. He wasn’t pushing, but it wasn’t special, and I started rolling my shoulder now and then, just to feel the hickey.

The pounding on our door started when dinner was in the eaten- but- not- cleaned up stage-- Devon, Mark, Kim, and Julie stood laughing and singing off-key while we grabbed coats and gloves to join the crew on the hay-filled trailer that Charlie had commandeered and hitched to the back of a snowcat. We crowded onto the hay and sang Christmas carols with another thirty or so of our fellow ski-bums as the snowcat pulled us slowly around the base of the mountain. Flasks of “anti-freeze” passed from hand to hand, as did a sprig of mistletoe. Neither of us grabbed for them, but the press of numbers on that hayride let me lean against Kurt while bellowing about angels heard on high and distinguishing myself for knowing all the words about a grandmother crushed by reindeer. Kurt contributed a solo in what sounded like German, which made heads on some of our cultural exchange visa colleagues turn.

The Milky Way and a half moon glittered down on us, reminding me of a warmer night by a lake when Kurt had blocked out the stars above me. Fa-la-las stopped in my throat with the memory, and I wished the snowcat would go faster to bring us back to town.

“Now, about those greetings,” he told me, once the hayride under the clear night sky had broken up.

“Wassail,” I responded and tasted his lips.

“Merry Christmas,” Kurt murmured, and gave himself as a gift.