A/N - Sorry about the false start on this earlier - I posted before it was ready. This is just a short diversion for the holidays, in no way related to Moonlighting. Takes place in a theoretical timeline before Bo's sexytimes with Dyson or Lauren. Hope you enjoy! Next chapter tomorrow.
Chapter One - Ho Ho Ho
"Bo…I'm not so sure about this." Kenzi watched with trepidation as Bo hung up a string of multicolored LED twinkle lights. "We still don't know what the power situation is like in this dump…you might spark a fire or set off some minor explosion visible from deep space."
"Dramatic, much?" Bo stretched as far as she could go, using duct tape to fasten the last string of lights onto a boarded up window. "We've been here for a few months now and nothing has blown yet, not even a fuse."
"That's not true. Some things have blown. Some people have been blown. Some Fae I know have done some serious blowing up in this hizzy." Kenzi unwrapped a red Hershey's Kiss, then a green one, and popped both into her mouth at once.
"Well, if the whole place goes up in flames, it'll at least be easier for our guests to find, right? It'll be like…the three wise men, following the Christmas star." Bo jumped from her ladder, sneezing just as her feet hit the floor. She'd kicked up a lot of dust while decorating, and tiny particles were floating through the living room, visible by the glow of the Christmas lights.
"So, in this scenario, a grumpy dog, a smooth siren, and a whateverthehell Trick is follow the pillar of smoke rising above the city and it leads them to the charred remains of a former drug den in the warehouse district?"
"Yeah, that sounds about right."
"How subversive," Kenzi said, rolling her eyes. "So, what's the miracle in this Fae bastardization of a holiday? That we can have a houseful of guests without you banging at least one of them?"
"The miracle will be if I don't kick you out before the party tonight."
"You wouldn't make me homeless at Christmas, would you? You're too young and sexy to be a Scrooge." Kenzi skipped over to the stereo. She found the station she was looking for and cranked the volume.
The voice of an overenthusiastic deejay blasted through their apartment. "This is your ho ho home for the holidays! 105.9, KLUV, playing all your yuletide favorites. Up next a classic, Brenda Lee's Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree!"
Kenzi danced back over to the table where plastic bags full of holly and mistletoe and tinsel waited to be slapped onto the walls. She hummed along to the music as Bo raided a candy dish shaped like a snowman. "Do Fae even celebrate Christmas?" Kenzi wondered.
"I asked Lauren, and she said no," Bo managed to say through a mouthful of Kisses. "But that's why we're doing this. We're starting a new tradition in a new place with new people. Fae. People Fae. Are Fae technically people? I still haven't figured that part out yet."
"So we're celebrating with cheap decorations, a Secret Santa gift exchange, and a home cooked dinner – when neither of us can even make soup without burning it? We just made friends with these people, are you sure you want to chase them away so soon?"
"Would you relax? The food's taken care of. I ordered from a supermarket down the street so all we have to do is pick it up at 3, put it in our own pots and pans and then heat it in the oven. No one will know the difference."
"And you're sure it's okay to have Dyson and Lauren in the same room together? I get the feeling that they don't like each other. And by 'don't like each other', I mean it seems like Dyson wants to douse Lauren in oil and light a menorah under her butt."
"Nice cross-holiday reference."
"Thanks." Kenzi bowed, and Bo toasted her with a plastic cup filled with non-alcoholic egg nog. It was only 8am, and Bo wasn't ready to switch to the 'hard nog' until at least noon.
"It is weird, isn't it?" Bo continued. "Why do you think they hate each other so much? They both work with the Light, so it's not like they're on opposite sides. They're both really friendly to me, why not to each other?"
Kenzi did a facepalm, and shook her head. "Bo, you silly, naïve sex monster."
Bo made a face at her friend, and the two women sat for a while, munching on breakfast candy and chugging eggnog, listening to Brenda Lee.
"Rockin' around the Christmas tree have a happy holiday…"
"SHIT!" Bo exclaimed, making Kenzi jump.
"What, what is it?"
Bo threw her hands up in despair. "We forgot the most important part of Christmas, Kenzi!"
"What? Earplugs for when Uncle Alexi drinks a bottle of Absolut and sings the Celine Dion karaoke version of 'O Holy Night'?"
"No! A tree! We don't have a tree!" Bo grabbed Kenzi's arm and yanked her off the stool.
"Where are we gonna get a tree on December 24th?"
"I don't know yet…but we have to find something!" Bo threw her long, black leather jacket over her shoulders and snatched her purse from the end table.
"Sounds like the start of a bad Christmas television special." Kenzi groaned as Bo dragged her from their warm apartment, outside into the snow.
Doctor Lauren Lewis stood in the middle of the Eaton Centre Mall food court, feeling distinctly out of place. As silver bells chimed over the loudspeakers and shoppers rushed home with their 'treasures' – half of which would probably end up being returned the day after Christmas – she pondered the imponderable.
What kind of present are you supposed to get a 1500-year-old Wolf Shifter, when there's a twenty dollar limit?
Especially a 1500 year old Wolf Shifter who is a) your romantic rival and b) an asshole?
She'd known the Secret Santa idea was a disaster waiting to happen. She'd known from the very second Bo brought it up. It all transpired during one of their Succubus training sessions. Lauren had donned the only lingerie she could find in her dresser – a red and white tassled 'Sexy Mrs. Claus' number that she'd gotten as a gag gift from a girlfriend eight years ago. The idea was to present Bo with a potentially arousing stimulus so that she might learn to distinguish and separate the arousal response from the hunger response, allowing her to have sex with humans, not necessarily equate that to feeding, and therefore not chi-suck her partners to death.
It was all very scientific.
And it gave Lauren the chance to flaunt the goods, although Bo was still keeping to her 'let's go slow' rule. The lingerie exercise worked, in the sense that Bo was able to control her hunger. It was a failure, in the sense that it put the Christmas idea in Bo's head, complete with a gift exchange. Naturally, Lauren had pulled Dyson's name out of the 'Secret Santa' hat.
Her entire life seemed like a cosmic joke at this point.
She dodged a horde of little kids and their parents, who were rushing to the center of the food court to visit a jolly, red, 'ho ho ho'-ing Santa Claus. "If only they knew where the real legend of Santa began," she thought to herself as she wandered aimlessly into Spencer's Gifts.
Lauren hadn't celebrated Christmas in five years, ever since her girlfriend Nadia fell into a coma and Lauren started working for the Light Fae. By the time she figured out how to wake Nadia up, the Fae and her job were her entire life. So in the end, it was a blessing in disguise that Nadia didn't remember anything about their relationship and went back to live with her mother. That was two years ago.
Lauren passed a row of motion activated rock n' roll Elvis Elf dolls, which lit up and sang Jingle Bell Rock in robotic voices. Maybe she'd get one of those for Dyson, as a joke. She checked the price tag - $25 bucks. Over the limit. She sighed, and wandered deeper into the novelties store.
She passed the Twilight and Harry Potter shelves, practical joke aisles, and a wall filled with glowing electric plasma balls, disco lights and lava lamps. Before she realized it, she'd managed to land in the 'naughty' section – where mouse pads were shaped like boobs and straws were shaped like penii, and a person could get a set of naked lady playing cards or fuzzy pink handcuffs for five bucks. She chuckled as she picked up a box labeled "Inflatable Penis – Two feet tall, wow your friends!" It seemed appropriate for Dyson. A giant, inflatable dick for a giant, ego-inflated dick. She checked the price tag – 19.99. Under the limit. She grinned as she turned to head for the register, but stopped herself before the cashier caught her eye.
No. This wasn't right. Dyson might be her rival, but they were both adults. She needed to be the mature one. She put the penis back on the shelf, resigned to getting Dyson the same thing adults the world over get when they don't know anything about a person.
She'd get him a gift card.
She paid her twenty bucks for the card and left the store, ready to make a beeline for Barnes and Noble. She'd heard they had a new leather-bound, illustrated edition of 'Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body', and was practically salivating over how amazing and professional it would look sitting on her coffee table. Nothing screams 'classy' like the cardiovascular system. It would be her Christmas present to herself.
She strode purposefully through the crowd of happy shoppers, even humming along to the ambient musak version of "Winter Wonderland" on the speakers. But she hit the brakes when two familiar scents wafted in her direction – leather and perfume. She looked to her right, to see that she was standing directly in front of a Victoria's Secret store. And right next door – Wilson's Leather Outlet.
Lauren grinned. Just because they were playing Secret Santa, that didn't mean she couldn't get Bo a present just for the hell of it. And just because she was being an adult with Dyson, that didn't mean she couldn't play dirty in the fight for Bo's affections. She walked into Victoria's Secret.
Somewhere off in the distance, the mall Santa shouted, "Ho ho ho!"
"Okay. According to my trusty Google maps app, there's a tree lot right next to the library. So that's about a mile and a half away." Kenzi clicked a few buttons on her phone. "Turn right at the next intersection. And give yourself plenty of time to slow down; this snow is making the roads slippery."
"How did I forget the damn tree?" Bo mumbled to herself.
"Because you're a horrible hostess who is going to end up ruining Christmas for everybody."
Bo turned toward Kenzi with the saddest, watery eyed look that the human had ever seen. "I'm kidding! God, you're sensitive about all this."
"I know, it's just that it's our first holiday together too. I'm trying to make it special."
"Hey, as long as you bought me something shiny and expensive, it's all good."
"Kenzi!"
"It's a joke! It's like my babushka always said – Christmas isn't about the giving or the getting, it's about the loving."
"Awwww…your grandma sounds like a sweetheart."
"Don't give her too much credit. I think she stole that line from the Garfield Christmas Special." Kenzi squinted, as she noticed a figure running through the park alongside the road. Snowflakes were falling thick and heavy now, so it was hard to make out much other than the fact that the man/thing/whatever was bright, bright green. "What the hell is that?" She switched her phone to camera mode to try and take a picture.
Bo laughed. "It looks like the Grinch."
"Well, what's he doing down here?" Kenzi zoomed in. "Shouldn't he be up on Mount Crumpit, hating the Whos?" She gasped, as the green man suddenly vanished into thin air before she could snap a photo.
"Huh. Well, it's gone now." Bo frowned and turned back to the road ahead.
"Weird." Kenzi switched back to the map, and then eyed the road. "Okay, at that stop sign I want you to turn left."
"I don't see a stop sign Kenz, the snow's coming down too thick…"
Kenzi pointed. "Right up there, just behind the mailbox."
"That's not a mailbox, it's a phone booth."
"What is this, the 1980s? Phone booths don't exist anymore; that is a mailbox. You need to get your eyes checked, Succubus."
"Fine! I'll turn at the…SHIT!"
Bo didn't even have time to hit the brakes before the big green something reappeared right in the middle of the road. Bo and Kenzi screamed as they slammed into the creature with a sickening *thud* and it rolled over the hood, tumbled overtop of the car and landed on the concrete. Brakes squealed and the car fishtailed as Bo fought to bring it to a stop. Her chest heaved with deep breaths and her eyes bulged out of her sockets when the car finally stopped moving. "Oh my god did we hit it did we kill it is it dead am I going to jail do you know a lawyer I didn't even see because it came out of nowhere…"
Kenzi jumped out of the passenger door. The green creature lay on its side about twenty feet away. Kenzi looked around…the streets and the sidewalks were empty of people, which was a lucky break if they really had been guilty of vehicular manslaughter. Grinchslaughter. Whatever.
She pulled out her camera and snapped photos as she approached the creature. It clearly wasn't human – its feet were huge, its body covered with a thick layer of bright green fur. She could see it moving up and down. That meant it was still breathing and still alive.
"Bo!" She shouted back to her friend. "It isn't dead, but we need to call the Doc like, now." Kenzi went to take another step forward, but before her foot hit the pavement the creature jumped up into a standing position and took off sprinting in the opposite direction, sniffing the air like a bloodhound, hands balled into green fuzzy fists.
Bo caught up to Kenzi, still inhaling and exhaling deep breaths to calm down. "Where did it go?" She furrowed her brow, deeply confused.
"I don't know," Kenzi replied. "But we didn't kill it. There's your Christmas miracle."
"Did you get a good picture?"
Kenzi shuffled through her photos. "A few."
"Send them to Lauren and Dyson. Maybe one of them can tell us what that thing was."
"Got it." Kenzi hit send, and the photos were on their way. She clapped Bo on the back. "Come on, Grim Jeeper. Let's go find ourselves a tree."