Hi! I'm back with chapter 2!

I know it's been a while since my last chapter but I've had a super busy week again, hopefully I'll be able to update more regularly next week because that's when I break up from school.

But anyway, here's Lela's chapter!

On the second day of Christmas Lela got from Butchy, two jobs left to do on her own.

Just as Lela finished swirling the spoon around in her mug of peppermint hot chocolate, she heard a shout from the hallway.

"Lela?" her brother called.

"Yeah?"

"I's headin' out."

"What? Why?" Lela asked, grabbing her pink snowman mug and marching into the hallway to follow her brother. Her fluffy white slipper boots slapped against the floorboards furiously as she went.

"'Cause I have plans," Butchy said simply, slipping on his leather jacket. As it was growing closer and closer to winter, Butchy had finally had to put away his leather vest in favour of a coat with actual sleeves so that he didn't freeze.

"With who?" Lela demanded. Her eyebrows were firmly furrowed and her free arm was crossed across her chest in annoyance.

"What's it to you?" Butchy snorted, clearly not seeing the severity in the situation that his sister did.

Lela just sighed and rolled her eyes at him. "What about our plans?" she asked.

"What plans?" Butchy asked, seeming to be genuinely curious.

"Do you actually have a brain in that big head of yours?" Lela snapped, frowning at her still oblivious brother.

"Yous had better look into that one," Butchy replied sarcastically. "I ain't too sure."

"Butchy, we were supposed to be decorating the house today," Lela whined.

"I ain't gots to be here for it, have I?" Butchy asked, grabbing his keys off the table in the hall.

"Well, yeah," Lela said. But Butchy didn't look like he was changing his mind. "Where are you even going?"

"None of your business, Sis," Butchy smirked as he moved to open the door.

Lela just found herself rolling her eyes at him again. She struggled to find words to use with Butchy sometimes because most of the time she would just end up letting out frustrated squeaks and whacking him. "Fine, have a nice time," she sighed in defeat.

"Thanks," Butchy called as he swung open the front door.

"Don't stay out too late," Lela said.

"It's 2:30pm," Butchy said, clearly baffled by Lela's comment. But Lela knew that that didn't mean anything when it came to her brother. He could go out in the morning at 9:00am and easily not return until 11:30pm; it had happened on several occasions. "Alright, fine," he said after noting Lela's unimpressed expression and deciding not to press the matter further.

"If you pass the Christmas tree place then bring back a tree for us," Lela called as Butchy strode down the drive.

"Yeah, right," Butchy scoffed, immediately unwilling to administer the task.

Lela couldn't be bothered to argue with her brother anymore, so she shut the front door and settled herself in the living room. If she wasn't decorating the house today then she was going to use that time to do something equally as productive and festive: planning the Christmas fair that she had offered to help organise this year.

No longer than five minutes had passed since she had started though when a voice singing Christmas songs through the open window made her almost spill the remnants of her drink all over herself.

"Tanner!" Lela cried, practically choking on her of hot chocolate.

"Hi," Tanner said, leaning on the windowsill and grinning goofily at her.

"What are you doing?" Lela asked, setting her mug and clipboard down.

"I just thought I'd drop in and surprise you."

"You surprised me alright," Lela sighed, shaking her head at him. But she couldn't quite manage to get rid of the smile on her face. She got up off the couch and went to go and greet him at the window by giving him a quick peck on the lips.

"Hey, what do you call this? I thought you were supposed to be putting your decorations up today," Tanner started as a mischievous grin replaced his signature dopey one.

"I call this rearranging my plans to fit around Butchy's," Lela sighed.

"Why?"

"He's gone out," Lela mumbled.

"With who?"

"Don't ask me."

"Aww, I'm sorry, Lela," Tanner said, taking her hand in his.

"Don't be, it's not your fault that I'm not Christmas-ifying the house," she said, giving his hand a gentle squeeze and swinging it back and forth between them as she mustered a smile.

"Who said anything about not Christmas-ifying the house?" Tanner chuckled, his mischievous grin returning in a split second.

"Me," Lela chuckled miserably. "My personal 'Santa's Little Helper' isn't so willing to help and has left me sad and Christmas tree-less."

"I can get you a Christmas tree."

"And decoration-less because I can't get into the attic by my- wait, what did you say?" Lela asked, getting distracted partway through what she was saying.

"I can get you a Christmas tree," Tanner repeated, starting to laugh again at Lela's startled expression.

"What? Like, now?" Lela asked, unsure of what he was trying to say.

"Yeah, I've got a car, let's go pick one out," he chuckled.

"Are you serious? Right now?" Lela asked, hardly able to believe what she was hearing.

"Yeah, why not?"

"Tanner!" Lela cried, throwing her arms around him out of pure joy. But it didn't quite work out as well as she'd hoped because of the added difficulty of the window being there.

"Grab your coat and I'll go grab my car," Tanner said once they'd parted, giving her hand one last tiny squeeze.

"Ok," Lela grinned, dropping his hand and leaning against the window frame to watch him go. As silly as it sounded, when Tanner did little things like this to make her happy she truly felt like the luckiest girl in the world.

"Have you got your coat?" Tanner called, hopping out of the driver's seat and strolling down the drive towards her.

"Have you got your car?" Lela joked, locking up the house before hugging her pale grey winter coat to her body.

"Yeah, and my team of backup," Tanner said, signalling over his shoulder for his friends to follow suit and exit the car. Although, they kind of spilled out rather ungracefully in fits of giggles or grumbles; it was always one or the other when they were all together.

"You didn't have to round everyone up, you know," Lela said as her gaze drifted from her friends to Tanner in joyous disbelief.

"Well you lost one 'elf' so I brought you five," Tanner said jokingly, glancing back at Struts, Lugnut, Seacat, Rascal and Coral, who he had all dragged back with him from Big Momma's. "I wasn't about to let you do all this by yourself."

"Tanner, you're the sweetest," Lela said, cupping his cheek in her hand before planting a kiss on his lips.

"So I've heard," Tanner smiled. "But do you know what's sweeter? The festive complementary fudge at the Christmas tree place," he grinned, ushering Lela towards his car.

"They have free fudge this year? What happened to the crappy candy canes?" Lela asked.

"I don't know but I certainly don't miss them," Tanner chuckled as he opened the door for Lela to get in the car.

The rest of the day couldn't have gone any more perfectly in Lela's eyes. Well, excluding the great Christmas tree disaster that was the result of Tanner uttering the fateful words: "Alright, pick out any one you want." At first they may seem rather innocent, but after Lela's eyes lit up like the star of Bethlehem there was bound to be trouble. And that's how they left the Christmas tree place with the largest Christmas tree they had on sale. Clearly Lela had been overwhelmed by the immensely exciting task of picking out the tree though because she didn't quite seem to consider how on earth they were supposed to get the monstrous tree into her house, let alone decorated. But this didn't even become apparent to the group until they tried to carry it inside and only managed to fit around 2ft of it through the door.

A lot of sawing later, the tree was up in the living room. The entire first floor was carpeted with Christmas tree branches and the tree itself was still kind of wedged into the corner it was in, but it was up and that was all that mattered because now they could begin decorating. And decorate they did.

Just as the teens' giggle-filled fourth rendition of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town was coming to an end, Butchy strolled through the front door to find Lela and Tanner adding the final touches to the garland that lined the staircase.

"Lela?" Butchy asked warily. His eyes slowly panned around the hallway, trying their best to take in everything that had been put there since he'd left the house earlier that day. Snowflakes lined the walls, fairy lights ran up the banister, a wreath sat on pretty much every single door in sight and the floor was still covered in pine needles, more pine needles than Butchy had ever seen in his life.

"Oh, hey Butch," Lela chirped as a mischievous smile twisted at her lips.

"'Sup Butchy," Lugnut said, walking through the hallway from the living room and then straight out the front door with a bundle of Christmas tree branches in his arms ready to throw away.

"Lugnut?" Butchy questioned, thinking that he'd imagined the biker boy out of the sheer shock of seeing him there. But Lugnut was already out the door by the time that Butchy found any words to speak. "Lela, what's all this?" he then demanded, eventually finding composure.

"I thought I'd brighten the place up a bit while you were out," Lela said sweetly, but her wicked smile told Butchy everything he needed to know.

"'Brighten it up a bit'? The house looks like a freakin' grotto!" Butchy exclaimed, looking at Lela like she was insane.

"Well, 'tis the season to be jolly," Lela giggled, teasingly patting Butchy on the head before swiping a red present bow from one of the many boxes of decorations scattered around the house and balancing it on his head with a giggle.

As much as Butchy was trying to be a 'bah humbug' about all of this decorating, she could tell that he did actually quite like it, which was soon confirmed when Butchy replied with "Fa la la la la, la la la la," in a monotone voice, despite the smile that was pulling at his lips.

And that little victory, along with spending the day with her friends had just made her festive season all the more perfect.

There you go! I hope you enjoyed it! I know it wasn't the best but I've never been very good at writing stuff for Lela and Tanner. At least I tried though, right? Anyway, I'm always my worst critic so let me know what you thought of it!

Thank you so much for the 3 reviews I got (we're doing better than my failure of a Halloween story already XD). Owllover34, thank you for your suggestion! It's really helped me out and I can't wait to get writing that chapter now! CrazyTeenBeacher, I'm sorry to disappoint you but I'm kind of making it so that the chapters follow on from one another, so adding in a Mack and Lela chapter now would be kind of difficult. I do have a few other Mack and Lela stories though (2 on my Tumblr page and 1 as a part of my Valentine's day story from earlier this year) if you were interested in reading those. And KellyH, I'm so glad you enjoyed it! I know you love Mack and Brady stuff so I'm pleased that I could deliver something that you liked. I just hope you like the rest of the chapters as much as you liked that one. XD

Anyway, I think that's all for now! Stay tuned for the next chapter, which will be centered around Seacat. Until then, thank you for reading and don't forget to leave a review!

-cherrygorilla