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“I still don’t get it,” Sean says as Jacob takes the space to his right. “It’d make sense if he’d kept to himself. But Tolkien wouldn’t shut up about how religious he was.”
“I’m pretty sure he was Catholic.” Jacob settles into the sofa after placing the bowl of popcorn he just microwaved on the coffee table. Other than the idle image on the television, the fresh-cut pine in the corner is the room’s only source of light. Sarah helped Jacob string it with a roll of them yesterday (rainbow ones, after a dinner debate between her and Daniel over which color would look the best), but it’s bare otherwise, still waiting for them to hang the rest of its decorations. “Catholics and Protestants don’t exactly get along with each other. Plus, there’s the magic, the polytheism… The whole series broke all of Lisbeth’s rules.”
Sean’s eyebrow cocks with the mention of pagan practice. “Yeah, no shit. It’s a fantasy setting. The plot’s all about good-versus-evil, resisting temptation, redemption through struggling. I thought fundamentalist nutjobs got hard-ons over shit like that.”
“I mean, you’re not wrong.” Jacob shrugs, a minute movement of both shoulders. “But, you know. ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’.”
Sean scoffs through his nose. “That is such a load of bullshit.”
Then he drags himself out of the cushions so he can lean forward.
Jacob swats his hand away from the bowl. “Don’t start eating it now! We haven’t even pressed ‘play’ yet!”
“Who cares, dude? We’re at home.” Sean leans forward again, grabs a healthy portion of kernels off the top of the mound; Jacob, helplessly, watches on. A couple manage to jump ship before Sean can stuff them into his face, taking their refuge among the cushions beneath. “If we run out,” he says through the mass, “we’ll just hit pause and make some more.”
“Won’t pausing like that wreck the flow of the story?”
Sean dives in for another fistful before he’s even done demolishing the first. “Not having popcorn would ruin it more, right?”
Jacob tries to let out an exasperated sigh. What does result sounds closer to a laugh. “Okay, okay. Fine.” He leans forward this time, claiming a smaller share of the popcorn for himself. “But you have to get up and make the next batch.”
“Works for me.” Sean peers down between the two of them, then—digs one of the escapees out from the couch’s crevice. He holds it up to the foreground of the tree’s lights; they wink back at him, wreathing its knobby, white surface in their multicolored glow. “A popcorn garland would look good on it, I think.”
Jacob pulls a face at that. “Seems like a waste of popcorn.”
“Come on,” Sean argues; “it’ll be fun. We’ll make a whole evening out of it.” He lobs the kernel in his hand skyward, tilting to catch it on the descent in his open mouth. “The hardest part’ll be keeping an eye on Daniel. He’s gonna try to eat all of it by himself.”
Jacob’s lips compress, though the hint of a smile still ekes through. “Ah. So that runs in the family, then.”
Sean answers with one of his trademarked Diaz smirks. “We can always make some more if we end up running out,” he offers—then, once he gets the movie rolling, he plucks a piece of popcorn right out of Jacob’s hand.
“Did you say something?” Jacob asks around the thirty-minute mark.
“Hm?” Sean had just muttered indistinctly over whatever Gandalf was saying to Bilbo. His eyes, though, are fixed on the screen, engrossed in the characters’ ongoing conflict. After a moment, he startles back to reality. “Oh, shit. Sorry. Didn’t realize I started doing that.”
Jacob’s jaw goes slack. “Hold up. Were you just…saying the lines at the same time as the actors?”
“Yeah, well…” Furtive, Sean returns his attention forward. “Daniel and I used to do that with our dad whenever we’d watch this, so. Old habits, I guess.”
Jacob huffs out a breath. “Damn. That’s impressive.”
Sean shrugs. “It helps that the internet already turned half of this movie into memes. Plus, if you watched the same thing every Christmas for, like, nine straight years, it’d probably be burned into your brain, too.”
Jacob gathers another helping of popcorn out of the bowl. Frodo hasn’t even started his journey, and they’re already halfway through its contents—Jacob hopes Sean has a good stopping point coming up that they can use to replenish. “I couldn’t do that with anything I watched as a kid.”
“If you thought that was good, you should see Daniel,” Sean tells him. “He can rattle off parts of the script before the actors even get them out.”
The two of them ebb back into silence and let Bilbo depart the Shire uninterrupted. Eventually, curiosity getting the better of him, Jacob steals another peek over to his left; as Gandalf translates the Ring’s markings for his present and wider audience, Jacob watches Sean as he mouths soundlessly along with the words.
“So, what were your go-to Christmas movies growing up?” Sean asks, as the members of the Fellowship battle off descending swarms of Uruk-hai.
“Stuff about the nativity, mostly.” Jacob’s since shifted to recline against Sean’s right shoulder, one foot tucked under the thigh of his other leg. Sean has his propped up on the now-empty space where the bowl of popcorn used to be, which has moved to rest comfortably within the vale of Jacob’s lap. The second batch is almost gone, now; only a few dregs at the bottom remain. “Or at least something about the life of Jesus. It was always with the rest of the congregation, though. We’d all sit in the pews while they played on a big projector.”
Sean grunts. “Says a lot that you can’t remember a single quote.”
“I was too busy memorizing the source material.” Jacob rolls his eyes. Gimli lets out a war cry as he lodges his axe into a goblin’s midsection. “Movie adaptations always take liberties. Besides, Lisbeth only ever showed them as part of a larger service.”
“Were they any good?”
Jacob frowns. “The movies, or the services?”
Sean ignores the din of warfare to reach around Jacob and scoop up the last of the kernels. “Both, I guess.”
“They served their purpose.” Jacob tilts his head to look back at him; one of his cheeks bulges with lumps of popcorn before he swallows them down. “We could watch one of the movies together, if you’re curious.”
Sean grimaces. “I think I’ll pass.” But then, his face flashes, and he meets Jacob’s eyes. “I mean, unless you wanted to—”
“You’re fine. That’s not why I offered.” Jacob gestures at the screen, just as the orchestral score swells with drama, and Boromir crests over the top of the hill. “Trust me: this is a million times more interesting.”
Sean smiles at that, settling back into him. “Glad to hear it,” he says, over the clashing of Boromir’s sword as it strikes against orcish weaponry. “But the same boring Bible stories every single year was probably an easy bar to beat.”
“It makes sense to me now,” Sean mutters, a few moments after the credits start rolling.
“What does?” Jacob cranes his neck to look down at him. Some time after they polished off the second batch of popcorn, they ended up horizontal, lying parallel to one another across the length of the couch. One of Jacob’s arms hangs over Sean’s waist and torso, holding the contact in place; the other falls adjacent to the armrest, cradling the side of his head. Jacob’s chest presses warmly into the spread of Sean’s upper back.
“Why Lisbeth banned this series,” he continues. “It’s about a group of people who muster the courage to stand up against an evil, seemingly-unbeatable force.” Then, his upper lip tightens in a sneer. “She probably didn’t want her flock getting any ideas.”
“You could be right.” Jacob muses on the subject for a few beats. “Now that you mention it, she kind of got hold of a Ring of Power herself.”
“Daniel,” Sean interprets for him. “That’s all he was to her. She never saw him as a person—just thought of him as a tool she could use.”
Jacob hums his agreement. “She changed after she met him, believe it or not. She’d always spoken highly of herself, but she was never so…prideful. If that makes any sense.”
Sean forces out a seething breath. “That’s funny. Guess she only saw pride as a sin if someone else had it.”
“She really thought she was doing good for people through him. ‘Saving’ them, with his power.” Jacob’s gaze wanders again to the television, the seemingly endless list of names still lapsing across its screen. “Galadriel would’ve ended up like her, if she’d let all those desires get to her head.”
Sean arches back to fix Jacob with a look so incredulous that it borders on a glare. “I was thinking of her more as Sauron, actually.”
“Same perversion leaking down the pipes, yeah. But Lisbeth didn’t forge her Ring herself.” Sean’s brow furrows in consideration of that; Jacob tangles their feet together as he turns back toward the screen. “She was nothing like Galadriel, though. When Lisbeth was tested, she didn’t even try to pass.”
They let the rest of the credits run their full course, no sound in the room but the soul-stirring conclusion pouring from their speakers, only the rise and fall of their matched breathing cadence serving as its accompaniment. Through it, though—and only just in time—do Jacob’s ears spot one more camouflaged among the two: the lilt of Sean’s voice, its volume almost whisper-level, chorusing in tandem with the final song’s last refrain.
After the reel fades into the production studio’s logo, Sean stretches his arm out to hit the power button on the remote. “Daniel’s gonna be pissed when he gets back and finds out I showed it to you already,” he says. “Fellowship is his favorite movie of all time.”
Jacob frowns. “I thought he and Sarah were gonna watch it together later.”
“He probably wanted to be there for both of your first watches,” Sean tells him. “At the same time, I mean. All four of us, as a family.”
“We didn’t have to watch it tonight, Sean,” Jacob exclaims, sitting further upright. “I wish you’d have told me that. We could’ve waited.”
“These aren’t even the extended cuts, man. It’s better your first time didn’t have Daniel yammering over it nonstop.” He waves a hand, perfunctory. “Besides, we’re still gonna decorate the tree with them later. We can watch it again while we’re making the garland.”
Grunting, Sean wriggles around underneath Jacob’s arm until he’s facing the opposite way, and tugs Jacob back down, so that they’re lying nose-to-nose. Their puffs of breath mingle in the space between them, each still holding onto hints of salt and fat; one dissolves before the other into the room’s dim patchwork of light. The barest forward movement of either of their heads would bring their lips to touch. “Let me be a little selfish, okay?” The warm haze of the room palls the edges of the words—through them, Sean’s fingers trap a curl tumbling over Jacob’s cheek, drag it behind the space where his earlobe meets the corner of his jaw. “Sometimes, I just want you to myself.”
“Okay,” is all Jacob manages after a few long beats. If there are any other words in existence, he finds them impossible to voice.
Sean’s the one to do it—close the meager amount of distance left between their lips—but Jacob’s happy to oblige, and he shows it by deepening the contact, parting his own to savor them more. Jacob’s hand trails downward with undaunted purpose, stopping only to grip into the swell of Sean’s ass.
“Don’t we have two more to watch still?” Jacob half-breathes, half-laughs, because Sean’s dipped his head to mouth at the tender column of Jacob’s neck.
“We can do it later.” The words originate from some low place, at the plinth of Sean’s chest; Jacob feels them reverberate over his own flushed throat. “They’re not going anywhere, you know. Those movies are almost as old as us.”
“Hm… That’s true.” Jacob angles his head, greedy now, guiding the heat of Sean’s mouth toward where he wants it to land the most. He sighs again once he gets it nibbling across the lobe of his left ear. “Pausing for a sec won’t ruin the story, right?”
“Exactly.” Sean takes the chance to hook his leg around Jacob’s waist, and rut the stiffening length of his cock into the ridge of Jacob’s hip. He feels Sean’s smile when it spreads against his jaw. “But this threat,” he murmurs, punctuating the words by rolling his hips again, “is growing urgent.”
That has Jacob’s greed snapping into senselessness—he catches Sean by his shoulders and flips him into the cushions, body sprawled supine in a jumble of limbs. The gasp he tries to let out falls to a theriomorphic groan when Jacob drives his hips downward to meet Sean’s in full, silhouette looming over his in an arch. A grin splits Jacob’s mouth like an omen; the tree’s array of colors dance across his eyes.
“You have my sword,” he promises, then reaches between them to draw it out.