#ficksuck

Stan brushed the cookie crumbs off his stubble, then spied a large piece of what had once been a snowman resting on his belly. “Oh, thought you could get away from me, eh?” He picked up the snowman midsection and popped it into his mouth, hearing a soft tutting from behind him as he munched away on the black icing button.

“Did you have to eat the whole box?”

He held out the opened box, colorful wrapping torn at the top, and gave it a shake to prove its contents. “Despite my well-known opinions on sharing, I saved you some.”

“I thought you didn’t even like the holidays,” Ford murmured, sitting down across from him at the table. “Yet here you are, neck-deep in holiday cheer.” He peered into the box and selected a cookie that was in the shape of a dreidel, taking a bite of the frosted gimel.

“That’s a nice way of saying I’m stuffing my face. But no, that’s you, ya Scrooge. People spending lots of money on useless junk? What’s there not to love?” Stan chuckled to himself and picked up another cookie, biting into Santa’s head unceremoniously.

“Ah, seasonal greed. That makes sense.”  Ford took another bite of the dreidel cookie, finishing it off with a satisfied hum.  He picked up another from the box, a blue snowflake, and picked off two of the branches to nibble on first.

“Plus, ya know, family and all. I may not be peddling cheap crap anymore, but when you’ve got a niece sending you a box of homemade cookies it’s hard not to….I dunno.”

“Be less of a cynical bastard?” Ford supplied.

Stan snapped his fingers and pointed. “That’s the one. Less of a cynical bastard.”

Ford pulled off another branch of the cookie-snowflake, chewing quietly and making a face that worried Stan. It was his ‘I’m overthinking again and about to ask my brother an uncomfortable question’ face, and as he lifted his gaze from the box Stan braced himself.

“Do you ever think about what the holidays were like at our house when we were children?”

Yep, there it was. Stan scoffed and sat back against the chair, which let out a tired squeak from his weight.

He had to admit that he did sometimes think about his childhood in New Jersey. There were happy memories to be had there. Their parents would light the menorah and take them for Chinese on the 25th, and they would trek down to the beach in their winter gear and watch the fireworks over the bay for New Year’s. Pops would save some of the weirder things in the pawn shop to give to them for Hanukkah, old maps for Ford and weird masks for him, and Ma would get them chocolate gelt that Stan would always be too impatient to use. Ford always let him play with just the empty foil shells though, never complaining when his winnings didn’t include the candy that his brother had already eaten.

“Nah,” he lied. “Never look back, I always say.”

“Stanley, you never say that.”  

“Well, I’m gonna start now.”

Ford was obviously skeptical.

“What’s with the reminiscing anyway?” Stan deflected. “I thought holidays weren’t your thing.”  

“Why would you say that?”

Stan reached for a glass of bourbon he’d been using as a cookie chaser. “I always figured you were too busy jerking off to Popular Mechanics to care about the traditions of us mere mortals.”

Surprisingly, Ford let out a laugh. He reached into the box and pulled out a Kwanzaa kinara, candles iced in three different colors. He let out a soft, impressed-sounding whistle. “Mabel really went all out.”

“I don’t know why you’re surprised. Mabel doesn’t do anything half-assed.” Stan stuffed the rest of Santa into his mouth and made a noise, suddenly remembering that something else had come with the care package of cookies.

“Ford--” He picked up a small bundle of papers and waved them in front of Ford’s face obnoxiously.

“Ah,” Ford muttered, taking the papers and flipping through the handwritten pages quickly. “Dipper’s notes on urban legends along the California coast. Mn...thorough, as expected.”

“Merry Christmas,” Stan said dryly. “Cookies for me, and dry, boring research for you.”

Ford smirked and tucked the letter into his coat pocket. “Cookies for us, and fascinating and useful research for me.”

“Whatever.” Stan grunted, shifting in the chair to get more comfortable. The gentle rocking of the Stan O War, combined with the lump of cookie-bourbon mush now sitting in his gut, was beginning to make his head nod.  Ford continued reading his gift from Dipper at the table, the gentle rustling of the papers adding one more soothing aspect to lull him to sleep.

“Stanley. Stanley.”

“Huh? Wha…”

“Stanley,” Ford sighed. “You’re falling asleep. Go to bed.”

Stan blinked in Ford’s direction and hauled himself up slowly in response. He paused, then picked up the cookies and tucked them under his arm, box rattling as he shuffled towards the boat’s sleeping quarters.

He fell asleep with a cookie on his chest, waking only when felt the bed move beside him. Ford was sitting on the edge, snorting in the dim lantern-light at the state of the other man. He reached over and plucked the cookie off of him, Stan groaning in protest.

“Hey, I was saving that for later.”

Ford crunched on it and wiped the crumbs from Stan’s shirt.

“You snooze you lose.”

Sleepily, Stan reached up to grab the remnant from Ford’s hand, but he was quickly and deftly swatted away.

“What’s with the cookie theft?” he grumbled, rolling onto his side.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier. How holidays ‘weren’t my thing’.”

Stan squinted. “And what’s that got to do with waking me up from my drunken stupor?”

Ford finished off the cookie. Stan wondered if he’d gotten into his bourbon as well, as his eyes looked a little glassy. “Maybe...maybe in the past I had been a little too focused inwardly,” he reasoned quietly. “That’s not something I want for myself anymore, Stanley. Not when I have family who goes out of their way to send me gifts for the holidays.”

“Persistent knuckleheads,” Stan yawned. “You’d think being halfway across the world would stop them from tracking down a mailing address.”

“Yes, persistent.  And, of course, not when I have someone I can share the holidays with.”

Ah, he must be drunk. “Grammar, Ford,” he snorted, trying to do his best nerd impression. “Ending a sentence with a preposition.”

How many times had he been corrected in the same way? He didn’t even know what a preposition was.  But Ford found it funny and they both chuckled for a moment; another pleasant surprise for Stan.

After a moment of comfortable silence Ford leaned in, placing a hand on Stan’s chest to push him onto his back. “Hey now,” Stan murmured, but Ford continued to move closer.

“You have a sprinkle on your lip. It’s distracting,” Ford whispered, but he did more than just wipe it away. His lips touched Stan’s, tongue darting out to lick away the spot of sugar.

Stan moaned automatically in response, heart thumping wildly in his chest as Ford continued to hover his lips over his. How long had he wanted this? He hadn’t realized Ford had felt the same way. “Ford….”

Ford didn’t move an inch closer, but he didn’t pull away either. It was as though he was suddenly too shy to do anything but freeze right there.  

“Dammit Ford,” Stan groaned in frustration. He’d finally gotten the balls to kiss him, and now he was just going to sit there? He reached up to grab him by the gray patch in his hair, forcing him to meet his eyes. “Are you gonna keep kissing me, or what?”

That seemed to do it. Ford let out a strangled moan and pressed his lips against Stan’s, pushing his tongue into his mouth. He could taste the bourbon on his tongue, and Stan smiled and greedily deepened the kiss.

Ford fell onto him, limbs tangling in the small bed as they slid their bodies together. The box of cookies tipped over as Stan tried to roll Ford underneath him, but as the other man was a little more on the athletic side all he succeeded in doing was smashing the cookies into the bed. For a while they didn’t notice though, moans filling the room as their hands and mouths roamed over each other.

Stan wasn’t sure when they’d fallen asleep, but he woke a few hours later to the sight of Ford with cookie crumbs stuck to his bare back. He licked his finger and dragged it slowly down his spine, sucking the crumbs off with a smirk.

“Mfnph...Stanley...”

“Go back to sleep, Poindexter.”

“Oh Stan!  I wish I knew how to quit you!”

You probably know the Oscar-winning 2005 movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.  If you don’t -- or if you know of it but you haven’t yet seen it -- WATCH IT!

However, did you know it was originally a short story in The New Yorker in 1997?  It makes for some magnificent summer reading.

The movie tracks the story quite closely, and -- NO SPOILERS -- the plot (at the highest level) is rather well-known.

But if you can, imagine that it’s 1997, and nobody knows what this story is about.  The author, E. Annie Proulx, had gained celebrity for her novel “The Shipping News,” and I was a fan her writing.  So when I saw there was a new Annie Proulx short story in The New Yorker I immediately say down to read it, probably the day it came out.  It started like a lot of Proulx stories: outdoorsy, full of life.  And around the 2000 word mark my jaw DROPPED.  I simply could not believe what I was reading.

This October will mark the twentieth anniversary of the story’s publication.  In 1997 LGBTQ people didn’t have anywhere near the visibility and acceptance they do today.  The TV show “Will and Grace” wouldn’t premiere for another year.  The publication of the story Brokeback Mountain was edgy and thrilling and I ran around to all my friends asking if they’d read it.  A couple years passed, and rumors circulated that a movie was in the works.  We heard Gus Van Sant would direct, and that Matt Damon and Joaquin Phoenix would star.  It seemed absolutely impossible  So when I heard Van Sant had dropped the project I thought it would stay solely on the page and never make it to the screen.

I guess I go on at such length because it’s important to remember that not too long ago things seemed impossible all the time.  Today, things seem somewhat less so.