“No, he got me a cute Build-a-Bear. It’s dressed up just like me at work…yeah…a little tool belt and everything. I don’t know how he did it but my Secret Santa is the best.”
Sound cheerful but not too giggly.
Happy but not devious.
Not too loud because then he’d become suspicious and realize I was talking to no one.
Phones really were amazing because no one could ever tell if there was someone on the other end or not. They also made it easy for me to look so distracted I wouldn’t notice my sexy and slightly nosy neighbor inching closer to the fence that separated our properties.
“No, the first one was that card and the chocolates. Yeah, he had to get those mailed out. They don’t sell them around here, so he’s been planning this out for a while.” Pretending like I was my cousin’s new boyfriend Terrence who was always oversharing with his best friend Leander made the necessary deception even easier.
I’d listened to him for weeks while we’d worked on his house and all I had to do was make his conversations sound more like me and less like I was a naughty and easily distractable spy.
Or whatever he did for a living.
Our whole family was convinced he was CIA or something, but I didn’t care because he was hilarious and I wanted to be him when I grew up.
Ha.
I didn’t have to grow up because I was going to be a little and that meant I could be young forever.
I just needed to get a Daddy first to make the rest fall into place.
Unfortunately, the man who was perfect for that position was slightly stubborn and convinced he was too old for me. That just meant I had to get creative. Terrence said that was the best way to make sure he got his way, so it had to be right.
He was really smart…strange…but really smart.
“They were moan-worthy and well…I shouldn’t tell you just how good they were.” Because I couldn’t compare chocolate to orgasms the way Terrence had without sounding ridiculous. I’d tried several times while I’d been practicing and it’d never sounded right.
I could pretend to laugh, though, because I was just embarrassed enough to want to giggle as I paced around the dark backyard. “You think there’s any left to share? Don’t be stupid. I ate them so fast I proved I don’t have a gag reflex.”
Terrence had eaten most of them so fast he’d given himself a stomach ache and had to postpone his afternoon orgasm session. That was the point where he’d realized the error of his ways and had shared the rest while he’d pretended to have good manners.
But my gag line sounded much better and wouldn’t worry my grumpy Peeping Tom as much.
“If I get more, I’ll think about it.” My imaginary phone person wouldn’t care if I didn’t share fake chocolate, so I could promise without having to worry. “Yes, I’m getting presents every couple of days, so I’m excited to see what I get tomorrow.”
This was the part where my nerves started to stand up and ask me what the hell I was doing. But I had a plan that I knew even Terrence would be proud of and that would make his friend Leander go off like I was crazy.
That was how I knew it was perfect.
Everything fun and interesting made Leander worry…and honestly…I was just doing Santa a favor to make sure I got what I wanted for Christmas.
Bastian.
“I can’t decide if I want something sweet and grown-up or if I want something cute and fun like toys to go with my bear.” Oh, I was going to have to buy Terrence toys to go with his bear. Enzo hadn’t gotten him any. “I’m not sure. He’s been sweet so far and has just been signing things…you can’t tell…promise?”
Ha.
I had him now…Bastian had inched closer to the fence and was peeking through the slats.
He needed to be a few inches shorter if he thought that would work.
“Okay, it’s from my Secret Santa Daddy.” Just imagining what that would be like in real life had me sounding a bit too realistic, so I had to dial back the excitement in my voice. “I don’t know. I didn’t tell anyone I was curious about being little yet. I think he found me through the profile I set up. Yeah. That one.”
Technically I had set up a profile on a kink dating site half the family seemed to be using, but actually meeting people on it wasn’t the goal.
I had my Daddy…he just needed to step it up and stop overthinking how perfect we were together. He already liked watching out for me and telling me what to do really nicely, so the rest couldn’t be as hard as he seemed to think it was.
Because that app wasn’t going to work.
If I wasn’t careful, I’d end up being matched with every relative I had in the state. If it’d been awkward when Terrence had realized how many of our relatives he’d matched with previously, I couldn’t imagine what they’d do if I matched with them.
Our family was odd but not kink together kind of odd.
We were just nosy and made bad decisions related to satisfying our curiosity.
Both of those traits were going to come in handy while I got Bastian to see we were perfect together. No matter if it was slightly devious, he was into me, into BDSM, and I was pretty sure into age play…it’d just taken me a while to figure that part out.
I hadn’t realized it was a thing, but in my defense, I spent most of my time at work or with family and I wasn’t really a porn kind of guy. Watching people have sex was technically hot but not in the made me want to grab my dick kind of way.
So I’d perfected doing that myself and had ignored all the weird stuff that my family talked about when they thought they were being subtle.
They were not subtle in any sense of the word.
None.
But I might’ve ignored too much until recently…working on Terrence’s house had been very educational.
My cousin Enzo had gone from carefully open about the kind of relationship he was looking for to fully out there and not hiding anything. It was probably Terrence’s fault because he was so busy hiding what he did at work he couldn’t use any brainpower to hide anything else in his life.
He was a little and he got to play, he got attention, and he called Enzo Daddy.
Yep, that was what I wanted.
I just had to get Bastian on the same page.
“No, it just took me a while to figure out what I wanted.” Mostly because I hadn’t realized I could want to be more take-charge with girls and be laid-back with guys.
I knew how to make bad decisions when picking girls I wanted to date, but I hadn’t dated enough guys to understand how different it would feel. For some reason, liking dicks meant I kept picking them out to date too…but that might’ve been because I liked crazy as much as the rest of the family did.
That was something someone in the family should’ve prepared me for. I got a really unhelpful and several years too late birds and the bees lecture, but it hadn’t included the important shit like watch out because every man in the family marries crazy, so pick your flavor carefully.
That would’ve been much more helpful than telling me if I slept too close to a girl, I’d give her a baby and she’d give me cooties.
It’d been weird and had made me wonder how in the hell my parents had ended up together.
But luckily for all of us, Enzo hadn’t minded answering weird questions when I was young enough for the information to actually be helpful and to prevent me from getting a girl pregnant. I really appreciated that because it’d taken me a while to figure out that my long-term crazy needed to be a guy.
“Ha. Take charge.” Telling my imaginary phone friend wasn’t as hard as I thought, but that was probably thanks to Terrence again. He’d talked to his friend about it so much I’d gotten used to hearing it.
It was still funny and I had a hard time being around him without laughing, but it’d been educational.
He’d even given me a lot of new reading material that had turned out to be highly educational.
Omegas.
Yep, working on Terrence’s house had been the best decision Enzo had ever made.
Working for family should’ve been hard from everything I’d seen online, but I thought it was turning out great.
“Yeah, I’m going to keep my fingers crossed.” Before I could go into my practiced conversation about spankings and what kind of toys I was hoping to get, my phone actually rang.
Shit.
I’d been smart enough to silence all the sounds and notifications so nothing like that would give me away, but if I wasn’t careful it was going to blow my cover.
Ha.
Not family.
Subtly turning away, I answered the call where Bastian couldn’t see what I was doing and just kept going. “No, it’s going to be fine. I know it.”
“What are you doing? Are you ordering food? Do I need to give you the same lecture I had to give my dad? Don’t answer the phone on the toilet.”
Marius could’ve just kept going, so I ignored him and chuckled. “No, I’m just going to enjoy it and see what turns up…but yeah…one or two more and then I think we’re going to move into real-world fun instead of just cute toys and teasing.”
As I chuckled again, pretending Marius had said something naughty, I headed back toward the house and smiled as he sighed. “What did you do? I’ve ended up in the middle of shenanigans again. Is your mother there? You need to learn to set better boundaries. Tell her you’re not going to talk about women with her. It’s weird.”
Snickering honestly that time, I made sure I was inside with the door shut before I started laughing. “He was listening. It was perfect. I’m a genius.”
Well, Terrence was a genius and I was just doing what he would do.
Marius sighed again and I knew he’d flopped back dramatically on his bed. “What did you do? Wait. Did you actually do it? Was this that harebrained scheme about faking having a Secret Santa?”
Snorting, I headed into the kitchen and started poking through my cabinets for what I should eat for dinner. “It’s brilliant, not harebrained.”
“You’re crazy.” Marius sounded like he was firmly convinced he was right, but he thought my cousin Sergio was the hottest guy he’d ever seen…so his judgment was questionable.
Enzo was hotter or our second cousin Nico, but he was so taken no one looked twice at him.
“Crazy smart.” And I was smart enough not to go to the window and peek out to see what Bastian was doing. “You’ll see.”
“Yeah, I’ll see insanity explode everywhere and have to go bail you out like we did your aunt Gabby.” Marius’ understanding of my family’s insanity was probably the only reason he hadn’t actually tried to get Sergio’s attention.
“No bail necessary with this plan.” Worst-case scenario Bastian would think I was ridiculous and too young to date, and he already thought that, so I had very little to lose.
“What did you do?” Finally sounding relaxed and like he was ready to hear how brilliant I was, I pulled out a box of cereal and sighed. The best thing about getting a Daddy was going to be having someone to make me dinner.
“I gave myself a pretend Secret Santa and might’ve been pacing around the backyard like I was talking to you about it.” And really oversharing compared to what I’d usually tell Marius.
He was kind of nervous about that kind of stuff.
“I told imaginary you about the gifts I’d been getting and about the notes he’d sent me.” Being able to just talk about the stuff Enzo had done for Terrence made the whole thing much more believable. “I pretended not to notice that Bastian was sneaking around his backyard, and I stayed very engaged in our conversation, so it was perfectly believable.”
I was amazing.
“We weren’t having a conversation, so it shouldn’t have been believable.” Marius was just a bit of a pessimist, so I didn’t take his drama personally.
Hmm. He really might’ve been my Leander.
“You were amazing too and asked very good questions.” Writing out the script hadn’t been as hard as I thought it would be. “I was cute and sounded believably excited.”
“Really?”
So much drama in such a boring-looking body.
“Yep, Bastian didn’t say anything or even do that snorty kind of sigh that means he thinks I’m being ridiculous. He can’t help himself with that, so it means I was amazing.” Bastian said a lot without actually using words, so I knew I’d have heard if he thought I was faking the whole thing.
“You’d better hope he doesn’t think it’s real because he’s the worry and tattle type. What if he tells your mother that you’re doing something dangerous?” Marius knew my family well enough to know what direction chaos could take.
“Then I’m going to play dumb and steer her toward Cousin Amy. She’s been dating that Hell’s Angel type and I’ve got good ammo on them.” They’d eloped to Vegas and thought no one knew. “But it’s not something I’m going to pull out unless absolutely necessary.”
I had a few other tiny revelations I could try first, but everyone was still so focused on Enzo and Terrence that I was pretty sure my life could explode with omegas and aliens and they wouldn’t notice. “They’re all still trying to find a way to bug Enzo’s house to see what type of CIA agent Terrence is.”
It was going to be really funny if he really was some kind of secret agent.
Enzo was going to end up with gray hair over the whole thing, but Terrence seemed to be having fun and was doing a good job at defending Enzo from the family. It’d made me realize that I was going to have to defend Bastian from the chaos when he finally agreed to be my Daddy.
Terrence was one big learning experience the universe knew I needed to see before I was ready to get my own Daddy.
Especially since I hadn’t realized that was what I needed…or that it was what Bastian had been hiding…but between the internet and Terrence, I was ready for anything.
Including my drag-his-feet Daddy.
And thanks to my Secret Santa Daddy, I was going to get everything I wanted for Christmas.
