Author's Note: These are my Christmas presents to the various friends I can't send mail to. They will be posted throughout Christmas day -- probably now, if you're reading this -- or all at once if I finish them all before then.

So, Merry Christmas, and enjoy your read. ( Tie-in with the Silver Rose series. )
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Reno's Sack of Gifts 3
by Reno Spiegel
Dante@towernetwork.net
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The mimicking voice that rose from her left was only half-serious. "Y'know, Seph, I feel really bad about making you go to Costa, how ab --"

"Shut up!" she yelled. Smoke billowed from beneath the hood of her husband's Cougar, and even the bulge in her stomach couldn't raise her mood. An hour ago the two tires on the driver's side had burst, and since then the car had been leaning to the side. Some idiot had spilled a toolbox of nails in the road, and their spares were small.

Then the engine had died on them.

"I'm starting to wonder why you push this car so hard," Aeris huffed. She was bundled in blankets and actually quite warm, but still shivered when Sephiroth opened the door and got out.

He patted the car affectionately and called back that this old thing loved him. Popping the hood, the smoke continued to roll out and he poked around inside for a moment, then he slammed it down, walked around the car, got in, and shut the door without a word. He sighed heavily and looked at her, smiling cautiously. "...We need to call a tow-truck."

The snow was letting up now, but there was still ice on the roads, the reason they had hit the nails. The sun was beginning to peek over the horizon -- Sephiroth had loaded his wife and their bags into the car at midnight the previous night without her having any idea at all, then told her when she woke up at the boatyard -- but it was moving extremely slow, as it did this far north.

Aeris' mouth turned down dangerously. Despite having been tricked into this, she had been looking forward to taking a break from the rest of the group. Just she, her husband, and little...well, whatever his or her name was going to be. "A tow-truck? We've been making this trip for a day and a half, and you want to quit this far in?"

Sephiroth, the cliché husband, chose his words carefully. "Not quit. I'll tip him extra and he'll tow us to Icicle Inn. It'll be a free ride the rest of the way." He paused. "Of course...it would be the only part we're directly paying for, but..."

She didn't look impressed, but not mad like he'd thought she might be. "This was supposed to be a quiet weekend with just the two of us in a cabin in the mountains. Not some greasy tow-truck driver and car repairs."

His eyes narrowed. He did this when he was nervous. "...Weekend?"

This didn't seem to be the idea she had. "Weekend. You know, today and tomorrow, then back to work."

"Err..." His dragged the last consonant out for a moment, then scratched his head. "I kinda cleared it with Reno that we'd be gone for two or three weeks."

Aeris glanced down quickly, then to the backseat. No wonder she had a third of the baggage he had. The woman did usually pack heavy, didn't she? Groaning, she looked back at him. "But -- what if -- ?" She looked down again.

The silver-haired Turk stared at her. "Aeris. It's been six months. I don't think we have to be on alert yet." She seemed to just realize this, and so he patted her on the arm and grabbed his phone. "It'll be fine. I'll have him tow us there, then take the car to the shop. I hear Icicle even brings you the car when they're done."

His wife saw she wasn't going to win this one, especially when he started the conversation with the towing company. After a few minutes of price negotiation, the phone was clicked off softly and there was an uneasy silence between the two.

"He settled at --"

"-- One-fifty. I'm ten inches away from you."

He settled into silence again. He never believed the stories that marriage was hell, and he still really didn't, but this was straight out of a movie. The trucker, who called himself Tow-Man, had said he was headed back to the Inn anyway and he would be there in a few minutes. And the man kept his promises.

Just as the sun shot out over the horizon, an average-size man with a ponytail and yello-rimmed sunglasses stepped down from a large tow-truck. If you could even call him a man, that is. He looked to be nineteen at the oldest, and not too tall even for that. Without a word he went to work, and the two got out of the car, still not speaking.

In five minutes, the young man stepped back up into his truck and opened the other side for them. The other side, however, was a ladder to a second level, to where the both of them ascended with muttered thanks. Closing the hatch behind them, they did their best to fit. As big as it looked, two adults were hard to fit in there. A small window was looking forward, nothing in the "room" aside from that.

Sephiroth was sort of surprised, then, when he looked over and saw her smirking at him. Giving her his curious look, she nodded to the window. "Don't worry about it. Sunrise is a lot better here than Costa, anyway."

Indeed, the sun was bouncing off the snow in that glittering way, hitting it at just the right angle as they rolled on. He shook his head, but he was smiling. "Merry Christmas, Aeris..."