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"Remind me why we're doing this again?"
Tao's mouth was turned into a decidedly Grinch-like scowl as he floated this question to no one in particular. Charlie squeezed past him, as his friend was mostly blocking the doorway to the conference room that would be their merry home for the foreseeable future, trying not to spill his peppermint oat milk candy cane mocha in the process. The sign above the door, in elegant gold lettering, read "COSMOPOLITAN UK."
"Darcy says it's our 'revenge against the heteros.'" Charlie winced as he collapsed into his seat next to Nick, dreading the task that lay before them. "Spreading the queer agenda and the holiday spirit all in one blow?"
Nick's eyes lit up. "All in one BLOWJOB! Ha, got one already! Write that down!" His friends stared at him blankly. Huffing, he sighed, "Fine, I'LL write it down. Let's get those juices flowing! Oh god, that's another one. SEX PUNS!" His eyes flickered with enchanted delight like a couple of sugar plum fairies as he leaped up to scrawl in obnoxiously scented marker onto a flipchart.
Elle shook her head. "Nick, I don't think generic sex puns are going to satisfy the brief this particular time." The assembled writers around the conference table looked like they had been awake for at least four days. More than one was already visibly sweating from nerves. Elle took a shaky breath. "Darcy's standards are going to be a little higher than that this time, I'm afraid."
As if on cue, a blonde whirlwind careened into the room, upending the flip chart onto which Nick was carefully drawing an adorable gingerbread person to accent his punny offerings. Darcy stomped to the whiteboard at the front of the room, bellowing as she went, "ALRIGHT, RUNTS! WHO'S READY TO SPREAD SOME HOLIDAY MAGIC AMONGST THE CHEERLESS TOWNSFOLK OF THE UNITED KINGDOM?!!"
She whipped out a marker and began scrawling with frenetic energy on the board:
WELCOME, FELLOW PERVERTS! THE ONLY THING BETTER THAN GAY SEX IS CHRISTMASY GAY SEX.
Tara spoke up hesitantly from her seat. "Darling, I think that's a permanent marker, not a dry erase -"
"UNIMPORTANT! IRRELEVANT! Today, my esteemed employees, we embark on a cherished, venerable, and ancient task. Jingle Bells, Sex Tips Sell (Magazines); therefore, YOU LOT, the greatest minds of a generation, will be writing the magazine's holiday edition of the Insane Sex Tips Column! YOU LUCKY LITTLE REINDEER, YOU."
She laughed in her best impression of Santa about to shimmy up a chimney. "And of course it goes without saying -" her expression turned suddenly stormy - "nobody is leaving this room until we finish this job to my satisfaction."
Nick shivered visibly. "Is it me, or did this room just get really fucking cold?"
"SHUT UP, NICK. WE BEGIN!! Ideas, now. Now now now. VOICE YOUR HORNY JOLLITIES, AND DON'T STOP UNTIL THE IDEAS DON'T SUCK ANYMORE."
Charlie leaned over to Tara and whispered, “How is it, exactly, that Darcy managed to land this editor position?”
Tara glanced up at Darcy with a look of concern, and replied to Charlie, “Every time I've asked her that, she just lets out a really horrifying little giggle and glances at the stack of obituaries on her desk. … I've stopped asking.”
Charlie swallowed hard, and nodded meekly.
Elle held up a small notepad, scrawled with loopy cursive, and cautiously offered the first suggestion. "They could hang a candy cane on his willy?"
Darcy grunted. "Boring. But fine, Nick write that one down on the Flipchart of Filth." Nick, seeming pleased with his appointment as scribe, dutifully obliged.
Elle, panicking, interjected, "Multiple candy canes! The - the whole BOX of them! A Hallelujah Chorus of peppermint dick-licking!!”
Charlie raised a hand. "The Christmas cookies - take the frosting and sprinkles from the cookie-decorating, and spread it all round your partner's bum hole! You know, and lick it off?" He glanced around for reactions, hesitantly happy with his suggestion.
Tao winced. "Is that like, medically okay? In terms of infection risk and such?"
Darcy cackled. "Tao, my cerebral colleague, this magazine has never once in its history concerned itself with silly things like 'safety' and 'medical inadvisability' and 'the limits of physics and biology' in our sex tips list. You're following in the footsteps of such monumental greats as 'put Pop Rocks in your mouth before you suck on his dick' and 'invite him to fuck you face-down in a canoe' and who could forget 'cook dinner topless and ask him to lick tomato sauce off your nipples.' BE BOLD, WRITERS!"
Tara looked stricken as she took in this list of greatest hits. She stage-whispered to no one in particular, "Are straight people…. okay?"
Charlie, just as horrified, responded, "Literally none of us would have any idea, but as a general rule it's always safe to say that's a big definite no."
The room devolved into a shouting match of depravity. Suggestions and demeanors grew increasingly desperate and unhinged as hours wore on. Nick's flipchart filled page after page.
"Shower mistletoe! You hang the mistletoe in the shower! And then … fuck??? Festively??"
"Snowball fight! … with… boobs?? Ooh I've got it, naked Twister inside an igloo!!"
"Christmas crackers, and when they explode, they are chockablock! full! of! condoms!"
"Make her spell out the names of each character in The Nutcracker with her tongue while she eats you out!"
"Date night in, and you're both only allowed to wear Christmas decorations instead of clothing? Yard decorations? ORNAMENTS?"
"Tie them to the bed with garland! Punish them with the Christmas Shoes song on repeat if they've been bad!"
"You - you take his cock, and dip it in yogurt, and very slowly cover it in chocolate buttons??!!"
"No no no, put your OWN cock inside a Yule log cake and roll it up inside for them to eat their way in to grant it freedom!"
"Put on a Christmas film from two decades ago and every time a character says something deeply problematic, everyone has to take off a piece of clothing!"
"CHRISTMAS TREE SHAPED BUTT PLUGS!"
"SEX DREIDEL!! SEX DREIDEL!!!! SEX DREIDEL!!!!!"
Darcy's expression was growing increasingly Scrooge-like, in rather alarming fashion. "TRITE, UNINTERESTING, UNINSPIRED. Get it together, gays! People buy the holiday season Cosmo to learn sex ideas beyond mortal comprehension. YOU, give me something good!!"
Her finger pointed threateningly at the far end of the table. A floppy-haired head blinked back. "Uhh. Mutton? Something to do with mutton," Ben suggested, and looked around beaming in anticipation of universal approval at this.
Silence fell. Darcy waited for a good three deep breaths before roaring "DOUBLE THE TAXES! TRIPLE THE TAXES! AND CALL OFF CHRISTMAS!!" She stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Nick gulped. "Is she going to -"
The door banged open, the doorknob colliding violently with Ben's crotch, as he had just gotten up to follow her. He crumpled and began whimpering quietly. No one paid any attention.
Darcy strode briskly back to her place. "Of course we're not actually calling off Buttsex Christmas; I just always wanted to yell that at someone. NOW IF ANY OF YOU WANT ANY HOPE OF SEEING YOUR LOVED ONES BEFORE NEW YEAR'S, TELL ME WHAT ELSE YOU'VE GOT."
Tao burst out in a lovely baritone voice, “FIIIIVE GOOOOOLLLD COCK RIIIIINNNNNGGSSS!”
Darcy fully rolled her eyes. “We've done variations of ‘The Twelve Days of Dickmas’ on no less than three occasions in the last five years. BE ORIGINAL, MY GAYS.”
Nick piped up from his perch by the list. "A jelly of the month club! But, for little samples of flavored anal lube? Christmas pudding rimjob, anyone?"
Darcy wrinkled her nose. Isaac looked ill. Nick pouted. "I thought we agreed there were no bad ideas."
Elle softly but firmly responded, "Literally no one said that." Charlie shook his head ruefully.
Isaac, who so far had contributed the most lines that earned a little smiley-face star from Nick on the flipchart, piped up. "What about a little Advent calendar, and inside every door is the key to another bondage lock hanging on the tree?"
Tao blinked. "Isaac. That's diabolical. Impressive."
Elle suddenly looked like she was going to leap out of her chair. "GINGERBREAD HOUSE DICK IN A BOX! YOU BUILD A GINGERBREAD HOUSE AROUND THEIR COCK AND EAT IT OFF."
Darcy let out a cheer. "ELLE ARGENT YOU GORGEOUS VIXEN, YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON AT THIS COMPANY WHO WILL BE RECEIVING A CHRISTMAS BONUS THIS YEAR!"
Elle clapped her hands happily. "Yay!! Oh, but - that's terrible?"
Ben, slowly crawling back into his chair from the floor, mumbled, "Make them put their cock in a bag of frozen peas before they fuck."
Everyone turned to stare. Tara replied, "That is HORRIFYING." Isaac pondered, "What does that even have to do with Christmas?"
Ben scowled even scowlier than previously. "Haven't you lot ever heard of 'no such thing as a bad idea.'"
Tao shouted in response, "ONCE AGAIN, THERE DEFINITELY ARE BAD IDEAS, SOME VERY MUCH SO."
Charlie sputtered, "Gingerbread man, gingerbread woman, gingerbread person, dancing… on their tits? Gingerbread strippers? Gingerbread Chippendales??"
Nick gave him a sympathetic and overwhelmed look, which shifted to a thousand-yard-stare out the window. "I feel like I'm starting to forget what sex even is."
Charlie strode to Nick and grabbed his face in both hands. "I swear if it's the last thing we do, we will make it out of here alive." Nick's eyes welled with tears, as he nodded in hesitant agreement.
Tara held her face in her hands. "I thought my Nutcracker cunnilingus idea was top tier, though."
Darcy patted her encouragingly. "I'm rejecting that one out of fear you'll want to try it, and we both know I'm incapable of remembering a single damn one of those fucking dancing candies past Sugar Tits Fairy or whatever her name is."
Tara, wiping a tear from her eye, turned to Nick. "Write down 'Sugar Tits Fairy roleplay,' would you?"
🍂🍂🍂
Jane's face lit up into a smile as she placed her last item onto the checkout at the grocery store, as she perused the display of magazines on offer. "Look, Olly! It's one of Charlie's magazines!"
Olly, now nearly a head taller than his mother, almost succeeded in stifling a chortle as he read the headline plastered across the Cosmopolitan that his mother was clutching like it was her child's first book report. "You're going to read that, then? Show it off to the relatives? Frame it on the mantel?"
Jane shot a glare at him. "The sarcasm is not appreciated! I'm proud of Charlie for pursuing his dreams as a writer. And I'll applaud his bylines, most certainly including…." her face flushed and her eyes widened as she took in the headline.
"Super Gay Holiday Sex Tips for Super Gay Holiday Sex! Gods Bless Us, EVERY Hole!!!"