by Lauren Esker
Merry and Bright
A Shifter Agents Christmas story
Lauren Esker
This takes place after Guard Wolf and before Dragon’s Luck.
Copyright ©Layla Lawlor/Lauren Esker 2016
"Hey man, you gotta help me."
Avery Hollen blinked at the computer screen sliding in and out of focus in front of him, and turned his bleary, sleep-deprived gaze on the rangy figure that had leaned a hip on the corner of his desk. Jack Ross was wearing his usual beat-up leather jacket and jeans, but under the jacket he had on a festive sweater with snowflakes on it. He also had a plastic holly sprig pinned to his collar and was holding a steaming mug shaped like the lower half of Santa: belt, boots, and red-clad buttocks. His wire-frame glasses gave him a deceptively mild demeanor; right now, with the sweater and the mug, he looked like an unusually ripped professor at a faculty holiday party.
As Avery stared at him blankly, Jack frowned. "Are you awake?"
"I'm totally awake; why wouldn't I be?" Avery tried to push himself upright in his chair, rather than slumping over his keyboard.
"Because," Jack said, leaning around to see the screen, "you just typed a whole row of the letter D."
Avery rubbed at his gritty eyes and deleted the last line of text. "Okay, so I'm tired. Keeping up with four toddlers is no picnic, believe me, even with as much help as we've got. I see you've broken out the world's classiest holiday mug."
"It's a tradition," Jack said. "No, seriously, I need your help."
"Whatever you did, I'm not giving you an alibi."
"I haven't done anything. Yet." Jack rested one booted foot on the spare chair beside Avery's desk. He glanced across the room—where his girlfriend, trainee agent Casey MacLaren, was engrossed in conversation with intern Rivkah Rosen—and lowered his voice, leaning closer. "I have no idea what to get Casey for Christmas. Give me some ideas."
Avery rolled his eyes. "Really? You know Christmas is the day after tomorrow, right? Better figure it out in a hurry."
"You're a lot of help. Come on, man."
"Why are you asking me? You're the one who lives with her. You know her better than any of us."
"Yeah, but—you're sensitive. And stuff."
Avery gave him an incredulous stare. "Jack, do you happen to remember how many dates I've been on in the last five years, before Nicole? One. One. And that was the time Cho made me pretend to date her to get her mother off her back about being unmarried at the ripe old age of twenty-seven."
"... Right. I forgot about that."
"So how many dates have you been on, Mr. Charming Handsome Mercenary with Interesting Conversation-Fodder Tattoos? Why on earth are you asking me for advice on how to handle women?"
"None of my relationships ever lasted this long, though. I don't want to scare her off."
"You've been dating for almost six months. And she came after you when you did your patented Jack Ross intimacy-avoiding shuffle. At this point, I think she's probably un-scare-offable. You could give her mittens for Christmas and she'd probably think it was adorable."
"See, this is what I'm talking about! Why are mittens a bad gift? They're practical."
"Maybe if you knitted them yourself, out of your bear's underfur."
Jack opened his mouth to object, then frowned thoughtfully. "I'd have to learn to knit ..."
"Do not knit her anything out of your own fur; are you crazy?"
"It would be unique. And sentimental. And all those other Christmas gift things."
"Yes, Jack, but it would also be made out of you."
"You're the one who suggested it."
"Not seriously! Besides, do you really want a bald patch?"
"You've seen how much fur I have as a bear, right? Nobody's going to notice a few missing handfuls. Except it's hard to hold a pair of scissors without hands. If you could be a pal and help me cut it off—"
"Jack, for the love of God, I'm not shaving your bear for you."
"I love coming into the middle of a conversation," Jen Cho announced cheerily. She plopped herself on the other side of Avery's desk, swinging her legs. "Nice mug, Ross."
"Nice sweater," Jack returned. She was wearing a fluffy white one with reindeer on it; Rudolph's nose was lit up with a blinking LED light. "I think my grandma has one just like it."
"Thanks so much for that. I can't believe I'm asking this after that remark, but do you and Casey have plans for Christmas?"
"I haven't even bought her a gift yet. You think we have plans?"
"Really? It's two days," Jen said. "You better hurry up."
"Thanks for the useful advice. I certainly haven't heard anything similar in the last five minutes."
Jen poked Avery with her toe. "How about you and Nicole?"
Avery sighed and pushed his keyboard away; this report obviously wasn't getting written anytime soon. "I assume we're doing Christmas with her family, since we're living with them."
"Yeah, how's the house-hunting going, anyway?" Jack asked.
"We've found a few likely places, but prices around Seattle are out of control, and with four kids, we can't really get away with something small. Tim and Erin have been great about having us stay with them, but I know they'll be glad when we find a place. Heck, I'll be glad."
"You'll lose the live-in babysitters, though," Jen said.
"Yeah, I'm trying not to think about that." They were fostering to adopt four kids under the age of three, and since he and Nicole both worked, the daycare cost was going to suck down whatever part of their income didn't get spent on a mortgage. He had no idea how they were going to handle it. However, dwelling on it didn't help, so he shook it off and tried to tear his eyes away from the blinking red Rudolph nose in the upper left quadrant of her sweater. "Uh, what are you doing for Christmas?"
"Crying myself into a lonely puddle of tears, it sounds like, since the Lonelyhearts Christmas Club doesn't seem to be happening."
"Shit," Jack said. "I forgot."
They had been doing it for several years now. Avery couldn't remember how it had started or whose idea it had been, but the single people in the office, including Avery, Jack, and Jen, had gotten in the habit of getting together on Christmas to drink eggnog, exchange gifts, and generally pretend they weren't lonely and single at Christmas with no close family nearby. Or, in Avery's case, no close family at all.
It had soothed his lonesome werewolf soul, being surrounded by his chosen pack on the holiday, and the idea of not doing it anymore was a startling and unwelcome one. Still, it wasn't like he could invite a bunch of co-workers to Nicole's sister's house.
"Avery?" Jen prompted.
"Uh," he said, intelligently. It was hard to do any kind of thinking on three hours' sleep. The kids seemed to have gotten themselves on a rotating sleep schedule: if one of them was sleeping, two more were awake, at all hours of the day and night.
"Yeah, that's what I thought." Jen folded her arms. "You guys got hitched. You abandoned me."
"C'mon, there are still plenty of singles in the office," Jack said. "What about the rest of the usual suspects?"
"They've all got other plans. Noah's flying back to DC to spend the holidays with his family, Eva's with her pod, I guess Vic and his ex are having some kind of family thing with their kid. Dev said he'd go if other people were going, but since Christmas isn't one of his holidays, he doesn't really care. Same for Rivkah. Nope, it's just going to be me and a bottle of Wild Turkey, in my lonely, empty apartment."
"For pete's sake, your family's only down in California," Avery said. "Go spend Christmas with them. You can drive if last-minute tickets are too expensive."
"And spend the holidays with my mother shoving me in the direction of every unwed Asian-American male betwe
en the ages of twenty and fifty in Oxnard? And trust me, there are a lot of them. I should know, she keeps sending me bios."
"Tell her you're gay," Jack suggested. "You can get Rivkah to go as your date this time, instead of Avery."
"I should know better than to confide anything in you guys. Besides, she'd just switch to the unwed female population. A little thing like that isn't going to stop her."
Avery gave her a light poke in the fluffy-sweater-covered arm. "Hey, I'm sure we could squeeze in another person at the Leung-Yates residence. I don't want to invite the entire office, but I can tell Tim and Erin that I'm bringing a guest."
"Or you could come over to my and Casey's place," Jack said. "I have no idea how to do Christmas as a couple, and I don't think Casey does either. So it's not like you'd be interrupting anything."
"You aren't taking her home to meet the folks?" Avery asked. "Or do bear shifters not do big family Christmases?"
"Depends on the bear," Jack said dryly. "She's already met Mom—they get along great, by the way—and Mom's spending the holidays at my grandparents' place in Maine, like she usually does. Casey was a little nervous at the idea of dropping into the middle of the entire extended clan, so we figured we'd stay here instead, and I'll take her out to Maine with me sometime next year, when every bear shifter on the North Atlantic coast hasn't converged on the ancestral homestead." Turning to Jen, he appealed, "We'll just spend the whole day in our PJs sitting around and marathoning the Die Hard movies. Drop in and save us from ourselves."
Jen brightened. "Die Hard marathon? I'll bring the snacks. You're on, Ross."
She pumped a fist in the air and wandered off, looking a lot more cheerful.
"You look like you just turned into a puppy and someone kicked you," Jack told Avery. "You're invited too, you know. You and Nicole. Die Hard is the ultimate Christmas movie; you can't not watch it."
"Somehow I don't think turning up with four two-year-olds is conducive to setting the proper action-movie-marathon mood. And no," he said as Jack opened his mouth. "I'm not going to ask Erin and Tim to spend their Christmas babysitting my kids."
Jack closed his mouth and looked thoughtful. "This insta-family thing is so weird."
"If you think it's weird, try being me."
Jack smiled. "But it's good though, right?"
"I wouldn't trade any of it for the world. But there are times ..." He rubbed his temple, where a fatigue headache was setting in. "Times when I miss how it used to be. I know I was lonely as hell, and I wouldn't give up Nicole and the kids for anything. But I also miss being able to go out for drinks after work, rather than running home to the kids. Or things like the Lonelyhearts Club Christmas parties."
"There's got to be something similar we can still do. I miss hanging out with you too, man. And Nicole's really great. We could start doing, I dunno, double date night or something—"
"Kids," Avery reminded him.
"Shit. Right."
Avery laughed softly. "I keep forgetting too. You're right, it's weird. And different. But not bad different."
Jack punched him lightly in the shoulder. "I'm happy for you, man. Even though you still haven't helped me out on Casey's present. What'd you get Nicole?"
"A necklace and matching earrings." He could feel his face heating. "It's amber. She loves warm colors, and I couldn't help thinking how it would look against her skin, bringing out those light honey tones—"
Jack held up both hands. "Okay, steering awfully close to TMI territory here. I thought about that, but the thing is, Casey's not really a jewelry person. She has a few pieces, but she just doesn't wear it."
"Get her a custom gun holster of hand-tooled leather or something. She'd probably love that."
Jack's eyes went suddenly distant. "Huh."
"I was joking. Sort of."
"No ... but ... I think I know what to get her now." Jack grinned, a quick flash of the brilliant smile that used to charm every woman he met, back when he was single. "Thanks, man."
"You're welcome, I think." Avery grinned back. "Still not gonna help you shave your bear."
"No, no. No shaving needed."
As he turned away, Avery said abruptly, "Hey, Jack?"
Jack glanced back. "Yeah?"
"You and Casey should come over for Christmas dinner. And Jen, too. I'll check with Erin and Tim, but I really don't think it'd be a problem to have a few extra people." He shrugged, feeling suddenly awkward and shy. "It wouldn't really be the holidays without you guys."
The thing he couldn't quite say was that you didn't forget about your friends, your family, just because another family had fallen into your lap. Especially when you were a werewolf, and pack-bonding was what you did. Jack and Cho were pack. Would always be. And his lupine instincts had readily expanded the feeling to include Casey as well.
Jack didn't have the same set of instincts—bear shifters tended to be independent and solitary—but he seemed to sense the drift of Avery's thoughts, because he said seriously, "We'd love to."
"You might want to ask Casey before accepting an invitation on behalf of the both of you," Avery pointed out. "A bit of wisdom from the newly paired off ... And I haven't asked Erin and Tim yet."
"Well, text me if plans change. Right now ..." Jack checked his watch. "I'm off. Errands to run, gifts to buy, et cetera."
Casey surfed over on the wake of Jack's abrupt departure from the SCB bullpen. "Where is he off to?"
"Beats me," Avery said in semi-honesty. "He just said he had something to do and made his getaway. Hey, you guys want to come over on Christmas?"
"For what?" Casey asked, her shoulders lifting in an automatic defensive reaction. Even after several months of dating Jack, she hardly seemed to know how to react to people being nice to her.
"For Christmas. You know, eat some food, watch some sappy holiday movies while the kids play with their new presents."
"I'm not very good at that kind of thing. I'm an orphan, you know; my grandmother raised me. I haven't ever done the big family Christmas deal."
"Me neither." Avery saw her flinch; she knew he'd grown up in the foster system, even more isolated as a child than she had been. "So give me an ally to commiserate with. We can figure it out together."
After a pause, her quicksilver smile broke through. Casey wasn't an easy person to get to know, but at times like this Avery could see her as Jack did—resilient and beautiful. "Okay," she said. "But you know, we're going to be missing Die Hard for this."
"Bring it along. We could probably all use a break from It's a Wonderful Life."
Now all he needed to do was talk Nicole's sister and her husband into it. He didn't think Erin and Tim would say no, but it was starting to feel like he'd hijacked their family Christmas somewhat.
Next year, he hoped he and Nicole would be in their own place, no longer dependent upon the sufferance of her relatives. Avery hadn't bothered keeping his apartment, since he had moved in with Nicole, so there was nowhere else to go.
I guess we'll all have to work with what we've got.
***
Through a soft mist of falling rain, the Leungs' Christmas lights were mantled with blue and white haloes as Nicole and Avery came up the walk on Christmas Eve, laden with grocery bags—one-handed in Avery's case, since he had a cane in the other. He didn't normally use the cane to get around indoors, but for any kind of long-distance walking, it was a necessity unless he wanted to spend the whole evening paying for it.
The Leung house wasn't the most vividly decorated residence on the block—in particular, one neighbor had synced their extensive lights to music; they were currently rocking and rolling to the strains of Mannheim Steamroller. But there was a herd of light-up reindeer on the lawn, strands of lights draped around the porch, and a giant wreath on the front door. The Leungs had two children, ages nine and twelve, and therefore the house had achieved what Nicole jokingly called "peak Christmas": Forrest and Hannah were old enough to help out with the decorations, but
not too old to have lost interest in Christmas yet.
"I shouldn't have waited so long to ask," Avery lamented while Nicole fumbled in her purse for her key. "I just couldn't think of what to say, and time got away from me; now I feel like an idiot. What if they're angry about changing plans at the last minute? What if they say no?"
"They're not going to say no. Erin and Tim love to adopt strays who don't have anywhere to go for the holidays. Last year, Tim brought home two of his fellow faculty from the U-Dub campus. And your friends are great, Avery, I promise. Tim and Erin will like them."
"Yeah, but—"
She silenced him with a kiss. "No buts. If you don't ask them, I'll do it for you."
The door opened to fragrant smells of cinnamon, brown sugar, and baking bread. Laughter and high-pitched children's voices came from the living room, along with Christmas music playing softly. Garlands sparkled on the walls of the front hallway.
It was still disconcerting for Avery to contrast this warm, cheery, festively decorated house with the one-bedroom apartment, sparsely furnished with thrift-store furniture, in which he'd woken up on Christmas morning last year.
"You know, I can't get over how weird it is for Christmas to be cold," Nicole said as she folded her umbrella and hung it up in the hall. Her soft Australian accent was still noticeable despite nearly a decade in the U.S. "Back home, of course, it's the middle of summer. Christmas for me, growing up in Brisbane, meant beaches and barbecues. I wish we lived somewhere that gets snow at Christmastime. I'd love to see a white Christmas, just once."
"It's not impossible. I've seen it snow in Seattle in December."
"I know, but I mean a real blanket of snow, like you see in Christmas cards. I've never seen anything like that. I heard there's a big snowstorm sweeping the East Coast right now. I wish we could get some of that here."
Avery had a sudden, vivid image of Nicole in the snow, her cheeks pink with cold, wearing a fluffy knit hat in her favorite sunshine yellow. Nicole laughing as she ducked a snowball ...
