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Peter was cuddled in bed with Jonny, the covers at their feet as they cooled down, when he heard the front door slam open. “They said you checked out of the hospital!” Katie called indignantly. She stormed into the bedroom. “Why didn’t you... Oh.”
Her face turned bright red and she backed out of the bedroom as Jonny struggled to cover himself and Peter.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry about that,” Jonny said as Katie closed the door behind her. “Katie and I, we kind of don’t have many boundaries.”
Peter laughed. “I can see that.”
Jonny struggled to get up. “I should go talk to her.”
“No, you stay here. I’ll get dressed and introduce myself, and then I’ll leave you two for the post-coitus conversation about me.”
“We won’t...” Jonny began, then he stopped. “Yeah, we will.” He looked at Peter. “You have a BFF to talk things over with?”
“Not at present.” Peter got up and began dressing.
“I’m going to have that position open soon,” Jonny said. “If you’re available...”
Peter nodded toward the card he’d given Jonny, on the bedside table. “You have my number.”
He grabbed his coat, then leaned down to kiss Jonny goodbye. “This was fun. Let’s try and make a habit of it, okay?”
Jonny smiled. “Okay.”
Peter walked out into the living room, where Katie was folding clothes and putting them in boxes. “I am so embarrassed,” she said. “I never would have burst in if I had known Jonny had someone with him.”
“Hey, you’re not the one who got caught with his pants down,” Peter said. “I’m Peter. The EMT who picked Jonny up out of the woods.”
“The reindeer!” she said.
Crap. How much had Jonny remembered?
“He said he had this amazing dream while he was knocked out. That Santa sent one of his reindeer to rescue him so he could have a merry Christmas.” She shook her head. “Some crazy good drugs, huh?”
“Yeah, we hear a bunch of strange things while people are hooked up to painkillers,” he said. “So, uh, you’re leaving soon?”
“Tomorrow. But if Jonny needs help I can stay an extra day or two.”
“There’s a big storm coming the day before Christmas,” he said. It wasn’t quite a lie; there were almost always big storms in Vermont in late December. “You don’t want to get caught on the road. I can come over and check on Jonny.”
She stopped what she was doing and came over to him. She leaned up and kissed his cheek. “That would be sweet.” Then she smiled and added, “If you hurt him I’ll hunt you down and cut your balls off.”
He laughed. “Good to know.”
Peter drove up to the rescue center and put in a shift that night, though fortunately there were no emergencies. His shift ended at midnight and he drove home. Route 7 was dark and deserted, his car the only one on the road, which worried him because there were no other headlights to warn him of upcoming obstacles or patches of ice. He clutched the steering wheel so tightly that by the time he pulled into the parking lot by his apartment his fingers had cramped.
He checked his phone before he slipped into bed. There was a text from Jonny with a GIF of an exam paper with a check mark on it. “You passed the test,” Jonny wrote. “Hope to see you soon for another round.”
Peter smiled and quickly found a GIF of poker chips stacked up. He sent it to Jonny with the words, “You bet,” beneath it.
There was another text waiting for Peter when he woke up at ten. “Katie left. Feeling lonely.”
“Can’t have that,” Peter texted back. “C U soon.”
Peter dressed quickly and hurried out to his SUV. It had snowed sometime during the night, and he had to brush the light coating of white from his windshield and windows. Though Route 7 had been cleared, the plows were still working on the side roads, and Peter drove carefully to Jonny’s apartment.
Jonny answered the door, leaning on his crutch, and his face lit up when he saw it was Peter. “This a good time?” Peter asked.
“Absolutely. Come on in.”
Jonny turned around and walked into the living room of the small apartment. Katie’s boxes were all gone, as was most of the artwork and photography that had hung on the walls. Peter noticed that Jonny was getting the hang of walking with the crutch. And that he had a nice ass.
Jonny sat on the sofa and motioned Peter across from him to an old recliner. “This all part of the EMT service?” he asked with a grin.
“I think we’ve moved beyond the EMT-patient relationship, don’t you?” Peter asked. He leaned back in the chair, splaying his legs so that his dick, already hard, pressed against his pants. “It’s not like I blow every guy I rescue.” He smiled. “Just the cute ones.”
“Do me a favor?” Jonny asked.
“Ask away.”
“Come over here.”
Peter stood up and moved over to stand in front of Jonny. “Closer,” Jonny said as he reached out and tugged at the waistband of Peter’s jeans. He unhooked Peter’s belt and unzipped the jeans, and Peter’s dick strained against his jockey shorts. Jonny leaned forward and swiped his tongue up Peter’s dick, through the pouch, and Peter groaned with pleasure.
Jonny licked and sucked until the pouch of Peter’s jockeys was wet with saliva and precome, and then pulled the waistband down so that Peter’s dick popped out. He took it in his mouth, and Peter relished the warm, velvety feel of Jonny’s tongue.
“Oh, man,” he said.
Jonny began sucking in earnest, bobbing his head up and down, and Peter felt his orgasm rise. “Oh, oh,” he said, and then he shot off down Jonny’s throat.
Jonny swallowed it all and then licked his lips once Peter had backed off. “And now for the favor,” Jonny said. “You think you could drive me over to the grocery? Katie was in a hurry to get going to New York, and I didn’t realize she left me with no food in the house.”
Peter laughed. “With pleasure,” he said. He stuffed his softening dick back into his pants, feeling the cold dampness of the jockeys, but he manned up.
At the grocery, Peter pushed the cart while Jonny walked beside, tossing items in. Peter was surprised at how similar their tastes were — the same brand and variety of salad dressing, the same frozen pizza, and so on.
“How are you fixed for money?” Peter asked as they waited in the checkout line. “I’m figuring you can’t work for a while, can you?”
“I had to stop giving ski lessons, obviously. But the manager at the ski shop will give me extra shifts after Christmas, and he’s arranging for somebody to pick me up and bring me home until I can drive.”
Peter loaded the groceries into the back of his SUV and then drove Jonny back home. They sat in front of the TV for a while, Jonny’s leg propped up, and Peter periodically replenished the ice. It felt comfortable hanging out, just the two of them.
Early in the evening, Peter said, “I know we loaded you up with groceries, but you want to go out to dinner? I have this evening off because I’m on duty tomorrow night.”
That was close to the truth. He did indeed have Saturday night off, but he wasn’t working air rescue Christmas Eve, but his other gig instead.
“That would be great,” Jonny said. They went to the Two Brothers Tavern in downtown Middlebury. Once again, Peter was surprised at how much he and Jonny had in common—they both loved the brewpub, ordered the same beers and the same burgers. “It’s like we’re brothers from another mother,” Jonny said after the server had left.
“Yuck. That would make it incest when we have sex, and I’m definitely not down with that,” Peter said, though he laughed.
“You have siblings?” Jonny asked. “Tell me you have two older sisters like I do, and I’ll freak out.”
“Nope. I’m a lonely only. Deliberately, or so my parents said. They’re both middle children from big families and felt like they were ignored when they were kids. So they didn’t want that for me.”
“Did that work out? Sounds like it would have put a lot of pressure on you.”
“My parents are pretty into each other,” Peter said. “Lots of date nights, going to folk concerts, doing volunteer work. I think it was more like they felt obliged to have at least one kid but didn’t want to have to spend much time raising me.”
“Ouch.”
“Truly, it wasn’t that bad. I mean, yeah, I was lonely sometimes. My dad built our house himself, out in the woods, so we didn’t have close neighbors. But they put me on skis almost as soon as I could walk, and I spent a lot of time on cross-country trails. In high school, I joined the ski club, and that’s when I made my first bunch of real friends.”
The server brought their beers, and Peter took a long draw from his, feeling the ale go smoothly down his throat. “What about you? Are you close to your sisters?”
“Not really. They’re six and eight years older than I am, and they were always telling me I was a mistake, or adopted,” Jonny said. “And they were already grown and out of the house when my mom got sick, so any time we were together, it was all about Mom.”
“What happened when you went to college?”
“I picked Middlebury because it was close and I could go home on the weekends if I wanted. But then my sophomore year, my dad had that heart attack, and he and my mom decided to retire and move to Florida. I was worried I’d have to transfer schools, but Mom got better in the warm climate and I didn’t have to.”
He shrugged. “And then, when I finished school, I decided to stay up here for a while.” He sipped his beer. “I envy you having the EMT gig. I mean, that’s a career. All I do is pick up miscellaneous work wherever I can.”
“You have any idea what you want to do in the future?”
“None whatsoever. Having to be so responsible when I was a teenager has made me want to fuck around while I can.”
Driving back to Jonny’s that night, Peter was surprised at how close he’d become to Jonny so quickly. Was this what people called falling in love? Sure, he’d lusted after Jonny pretty much since they met up on the mountain, but this felt like something more. All the things they had in common, the emotional closeness he felt when Jonny talked about how he’d grown up.
He empathized with the way Jonny felt lost too. If he hadn’t stumbled on the job as an EMT, through his reindeer connections, he’d have been in the same boat. A college graduate with a less than marketable degree, his only real passions outdoor sports.
And working for Santa.
When they got back from the bar, Jonny was a bit tipsy, and Peter was careful to lead him inside so that he wouldn’t slip on the sidewalk.
Peter left Jonny’s apartment on Sunday afternoon. He drove home, and then walked into the woods behind his apartment, where he transformed, and then took off for the North Pole.
The transports were always exhilarating, and Peter loved them, but for the first time he wanted to be somewhere else—with Jonny. He knew that he had made a commitment to Santa, and that his work was important, but how much was he expected to sacrifice?
He was exhausted when he returned to the outpost from the last transport. Some of the other shifters took off for home, despite the exhaustion, but Peter couldn’t show up at Jonny’s in the early hours of the morning, so he collapsed onto a cot to sleep.
It wasn’t until nearly noon that he roused himself, shifted, and flew home, landing in the woods. He hurried back into his apartment and turned on his cell phone.
There was a single text message from Jonny. “Called the rescue center to wish you Merry Christmas and they said you aren’t working tonight. Why did you lie to me?”
Peter didn’t know what to do. Jonny was still a relative stranger, and he couldn’t trust him with the truth. And yet, he didn’t want to make up a story, and continue to build a relationship based on lies.
So he never answered the message, and Jonny didn’t send a follow-up. And so Peter gave up on the best chance for a relationship he’d ever had, because he had made a promise to Santa and he knew, deep in his heart, that he could never break that.
