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“Hmk! Huck!...huck!huck!huck! Mm,” Otto sniffed and continued to work the crossword puzzle in a newspaper that he’d found in the cabin both him and Atticus were staying at on their honeymoon.
Otto’s reading glasses were low on his nose so he could shift from looking outside the sliding doors to the balcony overlooking the river and then back to reading the small type on the crossword puzzle clues.
“Hup!...huck’m!…” he swallowed down a rapid attack of gulpy hiccups that ended in a huck-ah!
The clock maker had the newspaper propped against one of the coffee table books the owner of the cabin had left. It provided him a hard surface to write on, but it bounced each time he hiccuped. Otto had to wait for those quicker fits to pass before attempting to write out an answer. He also had to shift his glasses back up his nose a little as they kept falling down.
For the most part his hiccups had been pretty evenly spaced. They had started, customarily, with his first gulp of coffee. He was incredibly grateful that Atticus had thought to bring their French press and coffee grinder. The cheap electric coffee maker in the cabin with the burnt coffee-stained glass carafe and burnt heating element was horrifying to consider making coffee in. But Atticus had saved the day, because of course they did.
Otto might’ve been good at planning and giving structure to his life, but smaller things tended to sneak away from him, especially when he was overwhelmed with the gravity of important events. Like, well, a wedding and planning a honeymoon. Atticus always seemed to pick up on what was needed that he’d missed when he was too focused on the big picture.
“Huck!Huck!HUCK!hmk!hmk! Ooh…” Otto remarked as deeper hiccups cut through the normal ones. Even though he’d left Atticus to sleep in (as he had woken up at sunrise) he still found his hand at his mouth in an unconscious gesture of etiquette. He almost said, ‘excuse me’, but caught himself with a chuckle.
Otto had wondered if he’d get hiccups this morning. He hadn’t had them in around a month and a half. Even the normal hiccups that came with his morning coffee sporadically hadn’t made an appearance. And, it was funny, he never really used to give his hiccups a second thought until he’d found out how much they aroused his partner.
They’d both been eating healthier before the wedding, so Otto mused that perhaps the reason his hiccups weren’t as frequent was because he’d been staying away from the empty calories of comfort foods and the spicy foods that tended to bloat him. He’d been drinking more water, too.
Another volley of rapid hiccups hit him right before he wrote down an answer: Hmk!Hmk!Hmk!Huck-uh! He waited them out before letting his pen hit the small squares.
The unfortunate fact about their healthy food eating was that the couple had been guilty of falling into society’s standards that looking better meant being fit. Furthermore, society defined fitness as being trim. And, in an even more detailed examination, trim apparently meant thin. So, while both of them looked very dapper in their tailored suits for their wedding, Atticus stated a very true fact as they were relaxing at home before packing for their honeymoon in the mountains.
“I really miss how soft you used to be. I miss how soft I used to be,” they had said, poking a stomach from underneath their white undershirt that was firm and recessed. “This is so stupid. We need to eat something carby. Like, now!”
They both would reflect and lament on cultural expectations of queer couples, and for people in general, while consuming great quantities of pasta they ordered from one of the newly married couple’s favorite restaurants. They’d then laze on the couch together, satisfied in their gluttony and symbolic rebellion of societal standards while holding their bloated bellies in an unspoken agreement that they’d both probably overdone it with the wedding cake at the end of their shared pasta binge.
“HUCK-uh!...HUCK-uh!...HUCK-uh! Holy crap…” Otto muttered aloud. Those had been the deepest yet. They didn’t hurt, but they snuck up on him. It’d felt like someone was having a tug-of-war with his diaphragm. And he’d felt the coffee he’d drank earlier flop around his otherwise empty stomach. He belched softly as the cacophony of activity in his gut had apparently created air bubbles. “Gosh…”
“You’re telling me,” Atticus’ voice startled him from the other side of the room.
Atticus was sitting at the small bar behind where Otto had been laying on the couch. The kitchen and living room joined in the cabin and the cabin itself was only one level despite having a balcony. The cabin was perched near a river, so the balcony was above the view while the whole building was still one level.
When Otto looked behind him, he saw his partner—spouse now—flushed faced and with a hand around a mug of coffee they’d apparently been nursing while they...watched him?
“How long-huck’uh!-how long have you been watching me? Hmk!” he asked. He’d craned his neck to talk to them, but now he reoriented himself as it hurt to hiccup with his neck extended and turned. He sat up on one side of the couch and deposited the newspaper, book, pen, and his glasses on the coffee table.
He patted a hand on the cushion next to him if they wanted to join him while they answered.
“Mmm, a while,” Atticus answered and ambled over to the proffered cushion. They sat down and sipped their coffee while leaning into their husband’s side, luxuriating in feeling his hiccups spasm on their back. “I woke up at the smell of coffee but started dozing again. But when I heard you...hiccuping I sort of...casually walked in to see this really cute guy trying to do his crossword puzzle while it kept jumping and leaping in his lap. And the scene was just so endearing that I didn’t feel like interrupting...so I’ve been quietly getting hard on that kitchen stool until I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“Hm, and I’m gonna assume hmk’ah!-that this-huck!-this cute guy w-was hnk!-me?” Otto asked, putting his arm around Atticus’ shoulders after giving the buzzed part of their undercut a scratch that caused them to snuggle their face into his chest.
“Brilliant deduction, dear,” Atticus teased. Their hand went up to lightly grasp his chin, fuzzy with his trim beard, and cup his cheek enjoying the way his head bobbed away from the light hold on it as his hiccups kept coming. “I love this face.”
“Never huck!-never under-understood what hmk!hmk!-uh, what you saw in i—t,” he said. The last hiccup had been silent but forced his head to jerk down twice and his belly jiggled sharply against Atticus’ side and back.
The writer tensed their legs and crotch before relaxing again, feeling the spasms of arousal between their legs.
Atticus laughed airily. Otto had always been so hard on himself for his unconventional appearance. He wasn’t a symmetrical being that was model-worthy, that’s for sure. But that’s what Atticus liked about him. His face was interesting. Attractive people often bored the writer.
“Well, firstly, your eyes,” Atticus started. And, yes, they were going to prove to their partner one day exactly how attractive Atticus found them. “Dark, expressive, soulful, and intense. You never have to guess at what you’re thinking. It’s right there. Right underneath that beautiful bone structure of your forehead.”
“Ah huck!-you mean m-my huck! Cro-magnon br-brow and hngk!hnk!-and crazy eyes?” Otto said, waggling his eyebrows as he widened his eyes down at them, emphasizing the features that were often read by others to be off-putting.
So much so was he aware of these traits that in pictures he often squinted on purpose to prevent his eyes from relaxing into what he and others read as a demented and unsettling appearance.
Atticus batted Otto’s nose lightly.
“Stop. I’m trying to tell you how attractive you are!” Atticus said with a huff.
Otto made non-committal noises of acceptance, hiccuping sharply.
“Also,” Atticus said pointedly. Otto reluctantly met their eyes again. “I love the curve of your nose and how you can see your freckles across it and your cheeks if you look close enough.”
“You mean the huck!huck!-the sun damage?” Otto parried.
“Sun kisses,” Atticus prodded.
“Pre-hilk!-precancerous?” Otto blocked.
“Rude!” Atticus said, slapping Otto right in the middle of his chest.
“Ow!” Otto said and coughed a little between the hiccups. Atticus had smacked his diaphragm in their enthusiasm. Touché, as it were.
“Sorry! I just...just allow me to think you’re hot even if you don’t? I love this face,” they said emphatically.
“I know! Huck!huck!hik’m!hmk!-uh. I just hip!-just don’t...hick’m!hip!-uh-hip!hip!” Otto trailed off with the hiccups filling in the silence as he gestured to his face. Nervousness and contact arousal were doing a number on the speed of his spasms.
Otto had been aware as soon as he’d started to develop into an adult how his features and height made people feel somewhat uncomfortable. His neutral face was often read as unsettling to some degree. Even though his demeanor was naturally subtle and meek, he’d found himself in situations where even getting a little upset could make his features look scary and intimidating. It’s why he went out of his way to be a gentle as he could. It was tiring to put on that mask and twist his face unnaturally to seem less aggressive or more friendly.
As such, he fought against Atticus finding his natural features attractive more than he probably should. He did believe that Atty found him attractive. The way they looked at him proved that much to him. But to hear it outlined his immediate coping skill to protect himself from thinking he was at all attractive (and therefore susceptible to being hurt by being reminded that he wasn’t by someone else) was to negate any statement thereof.
In some ways he thought he’d accepted the way he looked and how he was perceived. But conversations like this made him realize how ingrained his past experiences related to his appearance still were and how much more he still needed to claim in finding himself, by his own standards, to be acceptable.
“You went somewhere, huh?” Atticus said, bringing their partner out of his reverie.
Otto hadn’t even realized that he’d lost time while he was thinking but as he came back to the present Atticus was staring at him intensely as if waiting. They had their hand on his stomach as he kept steadily bouncing with hiccups that were increasing in speed.
“Yeah-hic!-yeah, I did. Huck!huck!-uh,” he confirmed.
“Hm,” the writer said, touching his face again. “Can I say one more thing I find attractive about this gorgeous man beside me? Then I promise I’ll stop cause I know it makes you uncomfortable.”
Otto smiled softly and nodded, head jerking in another back-to-back hiccup fit that he suppressed as he listened.
“Yours were the first lips I ever wanted to kiss. I don’t think I ever told you that. I don’t like kissing someone. I don’t, I never have. And I know we don’t kiss that often because you know that about me. I love that about you that you don’t push me into things that I don’t like. But when I saw your lips for the first time after we started our relationship, they looked so soft and full. I dunno. I just wanted to feel them. And I still don’t love kissing but...when we kissed at the end of the ceremony it was the most perfect sensation ever,” Atticus rambled. Then they got up on their knees so that their head would be level to his. “Can I kiss you again? With just, like, a little tongue. Not a lot. Just...a little?”
Despite feeling like his chest was being imploded with how powerful and fast his hiccups had gotten, and perhaps the cause behind it, Otto felt an odd prideful emotion gnaw from the inside of his body. His eyes watered at Atticus’ small monologue on his lips. It meant a great deal that Atticus wanted to kiss Otto at all as before they were together the writer had told him several times how much they hated kissing. The feeling of it grossed them out. Hugging and touching were okay but kissing?
Otto smiled at Atticus’ request. It was so cute how they specified how intimate they wanted the kiss to be. How could Otto possibly say no to such a sincere and endearing request. He nodded.
He felt Atticus’ small hand thread through his hair on the back of his neck and he did the same with Atticus’ clean-cut buzz, running his fingers over the soft texture of their head as they both leaned in.
He felt the soft edge of his partner’s mustache and Atticus leaned into the softness of Otto’s lips. It had taken a while to get the hang of kissing their partner. Atticus had insisted on practicing as they wanted to kiss him at their wedding, and they wanted it to look natural. It was important to them. The symbolism of cultural acceptance to seal a marriage with a kiss. Atticus was big on symbols, after all. Otto was more than happy to help them. He happened to love kissing his partner.
Atticus felt the dart of Otto’s tongue. The entire length of the kiss was spent staying with Otto’s mouth as he hiccuped, jerking strongly and rapidly before they both simultaneously tightened each other’s grips on the other person’s head to seal the kiss completely for a moment.
The experience of kissing someone with hiccups was electrifying. Otto’s hiccups snorted through his nose and suctioned his mouth as his head jerked in unison with his partner’s.
Hmph!hnk!nk!hngk!ngk!
Atticus let their tongues touch as much as their comfort would allow. The hand that wasn’t on his head was on Otto’s stomach. The stimulation was almost too much. They grinded against themselves desperately, squeezing their thighs together to get some sort of friction.
When they parted mutually both of them were breathing rough.
“The-huck!-they’re s-huck!-s-huck!-fast r-hmkp’uh-ri-hmk!-ight n-hock!-n-ow! Huck!hmk!hmpk!-j-jeez,” Otto gasped out.
“You okay?” Atticus asked, concern lining their aroused state.
“Y-yeah ju-huck!-j-ust r-real-unk!-ly ha-huck!-h-huck’m!huck!mk!-ard!” Otto whined a little, shifting his hand to his pants.
Atticus never had that difficult of a time understanding Otto while hiccuping but for a second, they had thought he’d meant that the hiccups were too hard. But then they looked down to his hand and saw that he was referring to another frustration growing.
“Are-are you hard because I’m so aroused right now?” Atticus stuttered, breathlessly.
Otto nodded, that marvelously unique face full of delicate desperation. Atticus grinned.
“So...I wanted us to try something if it came up. I had hoped...it would,” Atticus said a little sheepishly. They pulled out a strip of condoms from the back pocket of their sweatpants.
“I looked it up. They call it ‘posh wanking’? Stupid name but that’s beside the point. I thought I could put one on my fingers and you could put one on you and we could masturbate together and, see, it’s lubricated so it’s not as messy?” Atticus babbled.
Otto yanked one out of their hands and pulled his pants down putting it on and looked up at them, mouth open and letting his hiccups out: Huck!huck!hukkle...huck-uhHUCK’uhHUM’UK...huck’m!huck’m!huck’m!
“Oh god, okay, well that’s a yes. Yup,” Atty said and quickly slid the condom down their fingers and thrust it into their pants.
The writer almost straddled Otto’s side as they rubbed their condom sheathed fingers against their engorged member and clit gasping and moaning. Otto let out some of the loudest hiccups yet as he closed his eyes with his mouth wide open and with a buck of his hips he reached climax right before Atticus.
HOCK!HUCK’
K
!HNGK’
UH
!NGK!HOCK’
K
!
HUU
UCK!
HU
’UCK!
For a long moment they both laid against each other trying to catch their breath. Otto’s hiccups had slowed down immensely. But he still spasmed every once and a while. Atticus’ throat hurt and they wondered how loudly they’d verbalized their orgasm.
“Holy shit,” Atticus finally muttered emphatically.
“Yeah that-hck!-that was, wow, huck!-was really good,” Otto agreed. He then looked down at the utterly spent condom and delicately removed it. “These were-hmk’uh!-a really good idea mk!”
“You alright? You need to get rid of those?” Atticus said, eyes fighting to stay open.
Otto shook his head.
“N-no. Hmk! They’re okay now. A lot lESs forceful. Hngk!” he sighed and took some deep breaths, letting the much tamer hiccups pulse through him in a much more manageable manner.
“So...I guess this was kind of like consummating, huh?” Atty asked.
Otto chuckled.
“I think this-uck!-this counts, yeah. Ngk!” he said.
“I love you,” Atty said. They raised themselves and kissed his forehead.
Otto smiled through heavy lids at them.
“I lo-uck!-ove you too,” he said, and laughed.
Atticus laughed.
“God, hiccups are so stupid!” they said. “And so hot.”
“You’re so uck!-so hot!” Otto said.
“Your precancerous sun kisses are so hot,” Atticus said. They then kissed his cheeks.
Otto chuckled.
“You have some-mk!-some too,” he cooed, trailing his finger along their nose and cheeks.
“Yeah, I do. We can get them cut out together when we get all old and wrinkly and mole-y!”
“Mold-hip!-y?” Otto asked, mishearing.
“MOLE! When we get moles! Ew! Moldy. Wait, do you get moldy when you get older?” Atticus wondered.
“Guess we’ll huck! Guess we’ll find out!” Otto said, laughing.
“I hope I get mushrooms…”
“Hm?-huck!”
“...growing out of my ears…”
“What? Hmp!”
“...so I can hear the universe…”
“O-okay…”
“...through the mycelial network!” Atticus said, excitedly finishing.
“Uh-ngk!?” Otto said, furrowing his brows in confusion.
“Oh my gawd, that’s good! I gotta write that down!” they said, leaping off the couch to grab a writing pad.
Otto just laughed and picked up his coffee, now cold, and took another sip, shaking his head. This was what it was like living with a writer, he had learned.
“I’m going to call it Afterglow!” he heard Atticus shout from the bedroom.
“O-huck!-Okay!” he yelled back.
Otto’s hiccups continued until he’d fixed them both breakfast. They weren’t intrusive, though. His chest did ache a little and his throat was a little sore. But the remaining case was mostly made up of evenly spaced thumping. As opposed to someone pulling on his insides it felt more like someone politely tapping for his attention.
After they’d eaten the hiccups solved completely. He wasn’t quite sure whether this case was an omen for hiccups the rest of the day, but if it was, he wouldn’t mind. So far, the first day of their honeymoon was absolutely perfect. He wouldn’t change a thing. And the more he thought of it, the more he was convinced that this was the best decision he had ever made.