Fic: "I'm Dreaming of a #FFFFFF Christmas"
Title: “I’m Dreaming of a #FFFFFF Christmas”
Author: kappamaki33
Rating: PG-13
Summary: “Culture Shock” ‘verse, though it's more a detour, not an actual chapter. Gaeta and Hoshi host a Christmas Eve party at their apartment. Their interpretation of Christmas turns out a little...interesting.
Characters: Gaeta, Hoshi, Dee, Hotdog, Nicky, Racetrack, Seelix
Notes: Upon looking this over, I think you need to have read at least Chapter 4 of “Culture Shock” for some of the jokes to make any sense. Also, one joke is tied directly to a separately-posted deleted scene from Chapter 4, “Two Hours and as Many Bars Later...” Messrs. Gaeta and Hoshi yet again pointed out to me the clause in their contract that says the author is not allowed to subject them to any angst in this ‘verse, so I can only hope that what this story lacks in conflict it makes up for in fluff and funny.
I'm Dreaming of a #FFFFFF Christmas
The first year that Dee and Felix were stationed on Galactica together, the old battlestar was stuck orbiting an uninhabitable desert moon for the whole of Saturnalia. Since they were both so far from home and friends, the two had celebrated the holiday the best way a pair of platonic bridge bunnies could: they bribed the galley crew into giving them extra holiday cookies, set up a prank pilot drill that forced all the Viper jocks out of their racks and onto the flight deck at 0300 for absolutely no reason (a crime for which they were never caught), and got really, really drunk on the homemade wine Felix’s parents had sent along with a “Merry Saturnalia” card.
Since they were so seldom able to go home for the holidays, spending Saturnalia together became a tradition for Dee and Felix. As they got older and wiser, the celebrations became tamer (also because they suspected Colonel Tigh was catching on to Saturnalia also being Anonymous Torture of Pilots Day), and sometimes there were boyfriends to join in the festivities. But Dee and Felix were the two constants. The only year they missed was when Felix was living on New Caprica and Dee was on the Pegasus. They revived the tradition the next year, though, and Dee remembered how happy she had felt for her friend when she realized that Louis was likely to become a permanent member of their Saturnalia tradition, even if there was no formal commitment between him and Felix like there was between her and Lee.
Lee hadn’t lasted to the next Saturnalia, and one might reasonably think that would have darkened Dee’s holiday spirit during her first December on Earth. Instead, Dee had decided-and Felix had agreed-that it was the perfect time to start a fresh holiday tradition. Since neither of them were particularly attached to any of Saturnalia’s religious observances and very few people on Earth celebrated the ancient holiday anyway, they decided to adopt the dominant winter holiday in Vancouver instead.
They had originally planned on celebrating this odd new holiday of Christmas on the day itself, but scheduling quickly complicated their designs. Felix and Louis, who had a very lucrative contract with an international coalition of space programs, teaching Earthlings how to build FTL drives, usually telecommuted and had a flexible schedule, so they volunteered to host. Their guests, however, were not so fortunate. Dee wanted to invite Seelix, who had to work at the hospital on Christmas Day, and Racetrack, who had to be back to the base by Boxing Day and needed Christmas Day free to recover from the whopping hangover she was planning on having. Then Dee’s new Canadian boyfriend invited her to Christmas Day dinner at his parents’ house, and everyone decided it would be simpler if they started a Christmas Eve Day tradition instead. They hoped this annual celebration would help them embrace the culture of their new home, but traditions can be tricky business.
That was exactly what Dee was thinking when she arrived at Felix and Louis’s apartment that Christmas Eve Day, with a package under one arm and a big evergreen wreath-her contribution to the decorations-under the other. The door was unlocked, so she hung the wreath on it and went in.
“Louis?” Felix called from the kitchen. Dee walked down the short entrance hall, rounded the corner into the kitchen, and found Felix surrounded with bubbling pots, steaming pans, and utensils of every description. He looked up, and his face brightened. “Dee!” He turned the heat down on the range and then rushed over to hug her.
“Merry Christmas,” Dee laughed. “I’ve got my present for the Secret Santa exchange.” She held up the package. “Should I put it under the tree?”
“There’s no tree yet,” Felix answered, turning back to tend to dinner. “Louis is out getting one, along with a couple other things, at that big open-air market down the road. Although I’m pretty sure they were going to close early since it’s Christmas Eve Day, so he should be back by now....”
Dee was surprised. “Wow, that’s cutting things a little close for your tastes. Here I was thinking your anal retentiveness would ensure you had all your decorating done by Canadian Thanksgiving.”
Felix shrugged. “We spent a lot of time researching Earth Christmas customs. You need to take your time if you want to get these things right. We might be off on a few details and nuances, but I think it’ll turn out to be a pretty authentic holiday experience.”
“Research? So, what, you and Louis asked your neighbors what they do for Christmas?”
Felix turned and gave her an odd, shocked look. “Why would we do that? That’s like asking for directions when you could just buy a GPS.”
“Men,” Dee muttered under her breath, smirking. Then she leaned over one of several pots simmering on the stovetop. “That smells amazing. I didn’t know you could cook.”
Felix didn’t even break the rhythm of his vegetable-chopping and pot-stirring when he answered. “If a scientist who works in a lab tells you he can’t cook, he’s lying. Well, except Gaius. It was a nice gesture on his part, helping prepare the Founder’s Day feast back on New Caprica, but my gods, the half of the government that wasn’t hung over the next day had food poisoning. The lines for the latrines were miserable.”
The lightness in Felix’s voice when he spoke of Baltar was one of the best Christmas presents she could have asked for, Dee thought. It was an even clearer indicator of how much healing he’d done in the past eight months on Earth than the ease of his movements as he navigated the kitchen without crutches or canes. Not enough healing that Louis wouldn’t kick Baltar’s ass all the way back to Florida if he ever came to Vancouver, but still.
Dee asked, “What are you making?”
“A traditional Christmas feast, but that’s all you’re going to get out of me. The details are a surprise.”
Dee, interpreting that as a challenge rather than a statement, reached for a spoon in one of the pots to steal a taste of the mystery dish. Felix playfully pushed her hand away, so Dee went for another pot. Luckily, Louis arrived home and interrupted their game before someone ended up wearing Christmas dinner.
“Felix, I have to tell you something before everybody gets here-oh, Dee, merry Christmas!” said Louis as he entered the kitchen, shifting the package under his arm so he could hug Dee. He kissed Felix on the cheek, clearly as a pretext for getting in range of the food, and tried to sample one of the dishes. He met with as little success as Dee had.
“The news can wait, I’m sure-let’s see the tree,” Felix finally said after he’d managed to bat Louis’s hand away from three pots and a casserole dish.
“Just a second, it’s in the hall.” He left the kitchen and returned moments later, proudly presenting a tall but scraggly, skinny evergreen. If it were a dog, Dee thought, she would’ve guessed it had mange.
Felix shared her disappointment. “I told you we should’ve gotten the tree earlier, before the selection was so picked over.”
Louis was offended. “No, I did good! I got one that looked exactly like the one in that movie with the bald-headed kid and the weird little hyperactive beagle.”
“A Charlie Brown Christmas? All the research we did for this party, and that’s the source you followed for buying a suitable tree?”
“Well, that, and I felt sorry for it,” admitted Louis. “It looked so lonely, like it knew nobody was going to take it home.”
Felix sighed. “At least there’s plenty of room for hanging decorations on it.” Dee could see Felix was already melting in the glow of his lover’s silly, sweet sentimentality, though. The look on Felix’s face, in turn, was having a similar sop-inducing effect on Louis.
Recognizing that the two would likely degenerate into downright gooeyness if left unchecked, Dee brought them back to more pressing matters. “You said you had something important to tell us?”
“Oh, right. When I was looking around the market for a couple things we hadn’t been able to find yet-and Felix, I asked every worker at the food stands that I could find, and they all looked at me like I was from another planet when I said I wanted Who Hash-”
“Who Hash?” Dee interrupted.
“Yeah. Like in How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
“Wait a minute,” Dee said as the pieces slid into place, forming a potentially alarming picture in her mind. “Did you guys ‘research’ Christmas by renting a bunch of Earth movies?”
Louis and Felix both leveled blank stares at her. “Yeah. So?”
Dee knew it was too late to do any good, so she just said, “Never mind,” and silently prayed they hadn’t run across any National Lampoon films.
“Anyway,” Louis continued, “while I was looking for the Who Hash, I ran into Brendan Costanza, and he had Nicky with him. The two of them were going to be on their own for Christmas. So, I invited them to come to our party instead. He had a couple errands left to run, but I expect they’ll be here any time now.”
Felix returned to stirring the contents of one of the pots. “We’ll have plenty of food, but what are we going to do about the gift exchange?”
“I already took care of it. I had Diana, so I gave her name to Brendan, I took his, we can save the bath item gift basket I got for Diana for another holiday-”
Dee interrupted, “Let me guess: Big Bang Theory?”
“Duh,” huffed Louis. “As I was saying, we’ll save Diana’s gift, and I figured we’d all chip in on a gift for Nicky, which I have right here.” He tapped the gift-wrapped box under his arm.
“I’m almost afraid to ask, but what did you get Nicky?” asked Dee.
Louis shrugged. “The woman at the toy stand asked me how old he was, but hell, I didn’t know. I just told her he was about this big,” he held his hands a little less than a meter apart, “and she suggested this thing with blocks and farm animal noises and guaranteed there was no choking hazard.”
Felix shrugged as well. “Sounds good to me.” Dee made a mental note that if she ever had children and Felix and Louis offered to watch them for her, she was going to make the two of them take a babysitting certification class first, no matter how much they complained about their classmates all being twelve year-old girls. “What did you get Hotdog?”
Louis froze. “Oh, frak, I got so caught up trying to find a toy for Nicky that he couldn’t eat, I completely forgot about Brendan’s present. We’ll have to re-gift something.” He thought for a moment. “We’ll just re-wrap what the GEECs sent us.”
Felix unleashed his best disappointed puppy-dog eyes on Louis. “Not the lightsaber chopsticks!”
“The GEECS gave you a gift?” Dee said. “All I got from them was a ‘May All Your Christmases be #FFFFFF’ card.”
“I imagine they only send gifts to members,” answered Louis with just a hint of smugness. Then he turned back to Felix. “Baby, I wanted it to be a surprise, but before the GEECs sent us those, I’d already gotten you a set in each color. They’re in your stocking.”
Felix’s smile lit up his whole face. “I love you.”
“I know.”
Before Dee had a chance to rib them for their Han and Leia moment (she may not have been a card-carrying GEEC, but she wasn’t culturally illiterate, after all), Seelix and Racetrack burst into the apartment, yelling merry Christmas and arguing about whether the cab driver had overcharged them. Seelix lugged in a large cardboard box, and Racetrack carried a very large thermos.
“I brought the decorations,” said Seelix. Louis picked up the Christmas tree by its scrawny trunk, and they went into the living room to start decorating.
“And I brought Christmas spirit,” Racetrack snickered, rummaging around in the kitchen until she found a punchbowl and poured a thick yellowish liquid into it. “Or maybe I should say Christmas spirits.” Dee raised an eyebrow. “Let’s just say I went a little heavy on the rum, which I now know is most definitely the ingredient in a rum and coke that gives it its kick.”
“Sorry, I didn’t hear. What did you bring?” Louis asked as he poked his head back in the kitchen.
“It’s called eggnog. You’ll love it,” she said, giving Louis a tall glass full.
He took a sip, and his eyes lit up. “This is great. Thanks so much for bringing it, Margaret.” Both of them grimaced at her name. “Gods, that sounds so unnatural.”
“Please, just call me ‘Racetrack.’ I’m thinking about having it legally changed to that.”
Louis barely had time to wrap Brendan’s present before he and Nicky arrived. Everyone crowded back into the kitchen to coo and smile at Nicky’s adorable green reindeer sweater with a red pom-pom for a nose, though no one was quite as impressed with Brendan’s matching attire.
“We’re really glad to have you here with us,” said Felix. “I take it Tyrol is out of town for the holidays?” They all knew that although Brendan and Galen Tyrol weren’t living together, they were semi-amicably co-parenting Nicky, so it was a bit of a surprise that Brendan was flying solo for Nicky’s first Christmas, so to speak.
Brendan smiled awkwardly and scratched his head. “Yeah, Galen invited us to come with him to the Cylon Family Christmas in Nashville, but we passed. Leoben was gonna pay our airfare and everything, but the Agathons weren’t going, so Nicky and me were gonna be stuck on our own at the human table with Starbuck and Baltar. Plus, I kinda figured I’d end up trying to flirt and just get shot down by thousands of really hot chicks.”
Racetrack gave him a friendly smack on his back. “Aw, you should’ve gone for it. Women love it when guys show that they’re good with kids.”
“Yeah, I guess,” said Brendan. “But with all the girl Cylons having baby obsessions, I was kinda afraid one of ‘em would try and run off with Nicky rather than be interested in me helping her make one from scratch, y’know?” He sniffed the air. “Wow, something smells good. What’re you whipping up there, Felix?” he said as he made to dip a finger into one of the pots.
Felix swatted him away. “Okay, it was cute the first two times, but I need to finish now. Don’t you guys have a tree to trim?”
Everyone else retired to the living room and started decorating the tree in earnest, which was a little tricky. First of all, they set Brendan the task of untangling the lights, which was a bad job assignment in retrospect, since he mainly succeeded in getting himself tangled in them rather than fixing them. Secondly, the poor little tree had a tendency to tip over every time they hung a bauble on one side without immediately hanging another on the opposite side to counterbalance it. And finally, Nicky was entranced by the shiny ornaments, but Seelix had to sit by the box and guard them from him so he wouldn’t try to eat any.
Once Brendan finally got the lights in order, the others pretty much took over the decorating and let him just relax (and inwardly pat himself on the back for his brilliant ruse to get out of doing any more work-all you had to do to get out of work around Dee, Seelix, and Racetrack was pretend ineffectiveness, and they’d take over your job for you). Eventually, though, something caught his eye.
“So that’s what the Yule Log Channel is for?” asked Brendan, pointing at the flat-screen TV in the corner of the room. Christmas stockings dangled in a neat row from small hooks stuck to the top of the TV’s plastic shell, approximating a mantle over the picture of a cheery fire in a brick fireplace projected on the screen.
“You’d be surprised how hard it is to make a lot of these Christmasy things work without a fireplace. Though I’m actually kind of glad that means we avoid the whole Santa Claus issue,” said Louis.
“No kidding,” said Brendan. “Santas are so confusing. Little kids all line up in the mall to see a Santa, and apparently some of them leave presents behind after they break into your house, but how can you be sure you don’t get the guy in Bad Santa, or the murdering robot one?”
Seelix’s brow furrowed. She opened her mouth, but Dee stopped her. “Futurama, and just-it’s better for us all if you don’t ask.”
Brendan and Louis didn’t notice this side-conversation and continued staring at the TV.
“Great picture quality,” Brendan commented.
“Yeah, the Yule Log Channel really shows off the black-level performance and color saturation,” said Louis. “Felix got it for me for Christmas. I got him the home theatre system and an Xbox to go with it.”
“Oh, that’s smart, both of you getting each other a gift that’s kinda a gift for you, too.” Brendan nodded, impressed. “I’m not sure a chick would get the logic of that. That’s gotta be a really nice thing about being gay: not having to understand chick logic in order to get sex.” He glanced over his shoulder at Dee, Seelix, and Racetrack, who were giggling as they put the finishing touches on the tree. Brendan sighed. “Not as nice as boobs, so not nice enough to get me to switch teams, but still-nice.”
Dee had overheard most of the conversation, but she decided not to take on Brendan and Louis’s interpretation of “chick logic”-it was a holiday, after all, and holidays were supposed to be days of rest, not of laborious instruction and correction. Instead, she said, “What I don’t understand is why you exchanged gifts so early. You and Felix aren’t going to have anything left for Christmas Day itself, are you?”
Felix walked into the living room as if on cue. “Well, not exactly....” He sidled up to Louis and put his arm around his waist, grinning at him lewdly.
Louis’s mouth curled into a mirror-image smirk. “We’ll be unwrapping something come Christmas morning, that’s for sure....”
Seelix rolled her eyes. “Thank the gods nobody told them about mistletoe, or we might never get to eat,” she muttered. She added more loudly, “Save the innuendo for tomorrow, boys. How’s dinner coming?”
Felix snapped back to reality. “Oh, the food’s ready. Do we want to squeeze in around the dinner table, or have it like a buffet and eat in here while we open presents?”
“I vote food with presents!” Racetrack said as they all got up and followed Felix into the kitchen.
Seelix, however, was waffling. “I don’t know, maybe a sit-down dinner would be nice....”
Racetrack, refusing to be thwarted in her quest to get to the gifts as soon as possible, decided to play dirty. She leaned over and whispered in Seelix’s ear, “By the way, Diana, we really need to resolve that ‘frak’ versus ‘fuck’ debate, don’t we? Should we ask Felix and Louis to cast the deciding votes? You remember that conversation, don’t you?”
Racetrack timed this comment so Felix and Louis’s dinner table came into Seelix’s line of vision at the same moment. The mention of that conversation instantly conjured up images of certain goings-on that table no doubt hosted-and they sure as hell weren’t visions of sugarplums.
“I hate you,” hissed Seelix. “Buffet. Definitely buffet,” she said louder.
“Okay.” Felix took the main dish out of the oven and proudly presented it to the others. He was confused when, instead of the rapturous compliments he was expecting, his friends only gave the dish confused stares. “What?”
Dee struggled to find the right words. “It looks and smells really, really great, Felix. It’s just that it’s...not what we were expecting, I think.” The others nodded.
Felix’s brow furrowed. “What’s so weird about Peking duck? It’s classic Christmas cuisine.”
Louis hesitated. “Baby, did you by any chance base your menu on A Christmas Story?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
Louis winced. “You must’ve missed the part where the neighborhood dogs destroyed their real Christmas dinner. The Chinese restaurant part was kind of a joke.”
“So Chinese food isn’t traditional Christmas dinner?” said Felix. “Huh. It did seem like moo shu and mince pie were an odd flavor combination....” He shrugged. “Well, traditional or not, it’s dinner, so I guess we should break out the lightsaber chopsticks.”
They all loaded up their plates with Peking duck, pot stickers, and green bean casserole (“Yes, I should’ve bought a Christmas cookbook-now shut up and eat”), grabbed glasses of wine or eggnog, and then settled in the living room, Louis and Felix on the couch, Dee and Racetrack in chairs, and Seelix, Hotdog, and Nicky on the floor, with Hotdog chasing after Nicky every thirty seconds when he made a break for the Christmas tree to try to eat the decorations. Brendan opened his gift first so they would have enough eating utensils for everyone, and it was a hit, as expected. (“Green! Awesome! The GEECs gave me the red ones, so now Galen and I can be the light and dark sides of the Force at dinner!” Brendan looked a little disappointed when no one questioned which one of them would be which.) Nicky’s gift went over well, too, though Brendan ended up playing with it more than Nicky did, trying to get Nicky’s attention. Nicky himself was more interested in Felix’s prosthetic, particularly in watching the blinking Christmas lights reflect off the metal and trying to catch them in his hand.
Felix especially loved the nice sweater that Seelix gave Louis in an attempt to get him to be a bit more stylish than he normally was, which was not at all; Louis, however, was a little skeptical of straying from his usual aesthetic. (“For heavens’ sake, it’s a blue sweater with one stripe across the chest, Louis. Having a sweater with more than one color on it is not ‘audacious.’”) Dee genuinely liked the leather-bound, color-tabbed day planner Felix gave her, but he was visibly irritated at how all the girls unabashedly drooled and gushed over Brendan’s last-minute gift of a box of chocolates to Seelix. Dee’s gift to Racetrack, the DVD box set of the first season of Sex and the City, elicited such wicked, mischievous looks from the three women, all directed at Louis, that it prompted him to scoot a little closer to Felix and whisper in his ear, “I don’t think I even want to know the in-joke there, do I?”
“And that,” Racetrack said, waving the DVD box, “seems like a perfect cue for your gift, Felix.” She handed Felix a neatly-wrapped box. “Actually, it’s kind of a gift for you and Louis-just a little thank-you for timing your hooking up so I won the pool.”
“Thank you so mu-” Felix started to say to Racetrack as he opened the box. It was unfortunate that he was unable to finish being gracious before he got a good look at what was inside. He slammed the box shut, and a deep blush crept up his face.
Dee and Seelix leaned forward expectantly. “Oh come on, Felix, what is it?” Dee goaded.
He looked at Racetrack, who stared back at him with an expression of complete innocence. She asked, “You don’t have those already, do you? I’m sure you could get in-store credit if you wanted to return them unused.”
Louis nudged him. “Come on. It can’t be that bad, can it?”
“Yes, it can. It’s from Racetrack,” Felix hissed. He wracked his brain for some sort of excuse or way out of this mess, but he knew he was stuck. “Fine,” Felix ground out. “But remember, you asked for it.”
He winced at his own word choice, but it was too late. He hesitantly lifted the lid a few inches, then shook his head. After a moment of thought, he grabbed the chopsticks off his plate, wiped them clean, and poked them into the box to grab what was inside. He raised them slowly until the gift came into general view.
Clenched between the chopsticks was a pair of handcuffs decorated with fluffy pink fur.
Dee had to clap her hand over her mouth to keep from spitting wine. Seelix fell back on the floor as hysterical laughter shook her whole body. Brendan raised an eyebrow, but the most disturbing reaction of all was Racetrack looking as if she had given him nothing more exciting than cookware.
Felix turned to Louis, the cuffs still dangling from his chopsticks. “What in the hell did you tell them when you four used to get together at Joe’s?”
Louis put his hands up in innocent protest. “Certainly nothing that involved pink fur!”
Racetrack’s poker face finally collapsed, and she broke into peals of laughter. “Oh my gods, if only you could’ve seen yourselves! The looks on your faces were the best Christmas presents ever.”
Felix relaxed a little. “So...that was a gag gift?”
“Sure-of course,” Racetrack grinned, shaking her head. “I was surprised everybody else took the gift exchange so seriously.” She stood on the pretense of gathering up discarded wrapping paper, but when Felix was busy pointing out to Dee some special feature of her new planner, she took the opportunity to whisper in Louis’s ear. “The gift receipt really is in the box, if you already have those, though.”
Louis, desperate to lead the conversation away from the gifts before things had a chance to get awkward again-particularly before Felix had time to realize that Louis had just impliedly admitted to discussing non-pink-and-fuzzy bondage fantasies with a sizeable percentage of their social circle-snatched up his glass of eggnog and rose to his feet.
“I propose a toast. To building new traditions-strange as they may be-with beloved friends.”
They all raised their glasses.
~*~*~
“DRADIS contact!” Louis shouted as he jerked awake.
“No Cylons, love. Just Racetrack breaking a dish,” said Felix. Louis lifted his head from Felix’s shoulder and was surprised that the living room didn’t become any less fuzzy after he rubbed his eyes.
“It wasn’t me!” Racetrack yelled from the kitchen. “Hotdog can’t set down a plate any gentler than he can make a combat landing, apparently.”
“Hey, hold it down, all of you,” Dee said much more quietly and calmly than the words might have suggested. Louis understood why when he looked over at her, still sitting in the chair across the room. She was rocking a blurry, green lump in her arms that eventually resolved into a slumbering Nicky Tyrol-Costanza.
“Did I fall asleep on you?” Louis asked Felix as he rubbed his eyes again.
Felix slid his arm out from behind him and flexed his fingers, trying to get blood circulating in them again. “Yeah. I think you drank a little too much eggnog. Don’t worry about it-you pinning me to the couch was an excellent excuse to not help with clean-up.”
Louis’s brow furrowed. “Wait a minute. I only get sleepy when I drink too much....” He noted with surprise how much his words slurred. “Oh frak, eggnog is alcoholic?” That explained why the blinking lights on the Christmas tree were suddenly making him feel like he was going to vomit, at least.
Felix smiled and tried not to laugh. “Louis, Racetrack brought it. It’s a drink, and she’s a pilot. I figured you had to have deduced that it was alcoholic from those facts alone.”
Louis moaned and let his head fall back on the couch. “What the frak happened? Last thing I remember was something pink and fluffy, and then a toast....”
“There wasn’t just a toast,” Dee cut in cheekily. “You made a lot of toasts, which became increasingly creative each time you refilled your glass.”
“You don’t seem drunk.”
“The rest of us just got pleasantly tipsy,” Felix added. “We started taking much smaller sips after the first three toasts.”
Dee continued, “And then-”
“Oh frak, there’s more?” Louis groaned.
Dee’s grin widened. “And then, you and Racetrack sang a few very unique Christmas carols.”
Louis sat up again. “But none of us know the words to any Christmas carols-that’s why we were going to skip singing at the party.” He looked over at Felix for help, but he wouldn’t meet Louis’s gaze and was biting his lip to keep from laughing.
Dee’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “You made the words up.”
“Oh, no.” Louis’s eyes went wide. He’d desperately been hoping that the lyrics to “Rudolph the Redhead Porn Star” had only existed in a liquor-induced nightmare.
“Yep, you did,” said Brendan, who had just come in from the kitchen. Dee passed Nicky off to him without waking the child. “I was surprised Cally didn’t come back from Elysium to kick your ass for singing that stuff in front of her kid.” Luckily, Brendan himself didn’t seem nearly that concerned.
“I am so, so sorry,” said Louis. “Gods, how could I ruin our first Christmas like that?”
“You didn’t ruin it!” insisted Racetrack as she and Seelix walked in from the kitchen. “Christmas is downright incomplete without singing at least a couple verses of ‘Santa Burnt His Chestnuts On Our Open Fire.’”
Louis buried his head in his hands.
“I don’t think you’re helping,” Seelix muttered to Racetrack.
“Louis, really, we all had a great time,” Dee reassured him. “We’re going to have to learn the real words to carols when Nicky gets old enough to repeat them, but this was a good first Christmas.” Louis relaxed, but he still felt like he was about to throw up, which Dee apparently noticed. “I think it’s time we wrapped this party up, though.”
As their guests gathered their things and headed for the door, Felix slid an arm around Louis’s waist. “Come on, let’s get you to bed before you fall asleep again.” They got to their feet without incident, but when they started actually moving, the room whirled before Louis’s eyes, and he had to cling to Felix to stay upright.
“Whoa, you can’t lean quite that heavily on me, love. Only one of these legs is mine, remember?”
Louis apologized and moved his arm from Felix’s shoulders to his waist. Seelix stepped toward them and made a silent offer of help-Louis vaguely realized what a funny sight a drunk and a one-legged man helping each other to bed must have made-but Felix shook his head. “We’ve got it. All we’ve gotta do is get to the bed, get you undressed, and then-”
Louis cut in, “Hey! You said we were saving a gift for Christmas Day.”
Felix maneuvered him around the corner and responded patiently, “Yes, we are.”
Louis lurched to a halt and fixed a serious expression on Felix. “No, that plan sounds very much like you’re unwrapping me early.”
“Wow, his brain does go straight to the gutter when he gets drunk,” Brendan said to Racetrack at the door.
“That’s nothing. You should’ve heard him the night at Joe’s where we did ambrosia shots and Gaeta came in and sat at the bar without his uniform jacket on.”
“Good night!” Felix yelled over his shoulder at his guests in a tone that made it clear he was not merely suggesting they leave. He heard them all laugh, Dee wish them a merry Christmas, and the door click shut behind them.
He turned his attention back to Louis and said more gently, “No, I’m not. I just know you won’t be able to get your pants off by yourself before you crash again.”
“Oh. That’s okay, then.”
They made it to the bed, and Louis sat down heavily on his side. Felix set to work immediately on his belt. Louis struggled to get his sweater off over his head. “Felix?” Louis said as Felix pulled his pants off and put them in the hamper. “Is it okay if we start Christmas late tomorrow? Not that I’m not looking forward to it, but I’m gonna need some time to sleep this off.”
“Hell, we can have Christmas on Boxing Day-it doesn’t matter.”
Louis lay down on his side and pulled up the covers. Felix left to lock the front door, then came back to the bedroom, removed his prosthetic, undressed, and slid into bed beside him. “I’m really, really glad we could all be together today. It was a good Christmas,” said Felix. He touched Louis’s face. “The best.”
Louis snorted and closed his eyes. “Considering it’s our only Christmas so far, that’s not saying much.”
“No, I’m serious.”
Louis smiled. “I know what you mean. It was for me, too.”
“Not saying that there’s no room for improvement for next year,” Felix continued lightly. “And yes, I did pick up on the fact that you’ve discussed with our friends your wanting to chain me to a bed-don’t think you’re going to get away with that one.” Felix paused. “Don’t you want to know what I want to do to get even? Louis?” The only response Felix got was a snore. He smiled, shook his head, and turned out the light. “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”