kitchen_maid | Christmas Party! Millitimed Vaguely to "Sometime Around Christmas"

Christmas Party! Millitimed Vaguely to "Sometime Around Christmas"

Anne and Amy have been very very busy over the last week or so, transforming their usually simple white room into the perfect place for a Christmas party.

There are garlands of holly and balsam strung around the room, leading away from the wreath between the windows (and there's a grumpy looking crow, perched in the middle of the wreath, trying to figure out how to get the red ribbon from around his neck). A Christmas tree, candles ablaze, stands in one corner, with presents tucked under its branches.

Welcome, dear friend, to Anne and Amy's Christmas party.

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"The lawyers will take care of that, sweetie. That's what they're for." Breezily.

"And I thought Neptune, seeing as you really can't go any place else. I mean, at least, not any place that has a halfway decent extradition treaty."

Logan sure seems to roll his eyes around Trina a lot. Fortunately, he's cute when he does it.

Logan pretends he doesn't care that she'll be around, but he doesn't try very hard.

"Yeah, no," he says. "All the really cool places do, and what I'm left with is pretty much Burkina Faso. And as much as I love Ouagadougou, I think I'll skip it this year."

"Please. Burkina Faso is so last year. We'd never live it down."

Trina is not about to admit that she has cancelled plans with friends in Europe in order to spend Christmas with her little brother. It's not how these two operate, really.

"Is there anything to drink at this party?"

"True," he says. "To be truly happening, we'd have to hit a Middle Eastern country, and they'd totally export my ass. Or else jail me on general principle."

He eyes the punch. "I kinda doubt it's spiked, knowing the chicks hosting this party," he says. "But I bet something can be done about the lack of intoxicating beverages."

"Whoever heard of a Christmas party without booze?" asks Trina, eying the punch suspiciously.

Certainly not anyone raised in the Echolls house.

"We will definitely have to do something."

"Um." Logan's torn. On the one hand, spiked punch is FUN!

On the other, it's a party thrown by Amy and Anne.

"Perhaps you could just order us drinks?"

It's the feeblest protest possible, but he feels that lodging one at all ought to count for something.

Logan's feeble protest has been noted, and the appropriate points awarded.

"Please," says Trina. "I'm not running back and forth to the Bar all night to get you drinks."

The only question now is what to spike it with.

"Okay," he says. "Maybe champagne?"

Champagne is fun! And less dangerous than vodka. Plus, people will notice its presence, which they might not with vodka.

"Suitably festive," says Trina.

Is she notices that he's just proposed one of the staples of his mother's Christmas parties, she doesn't say anything.

"Be right back then."

Right back, and with champagne.

Logan's getting into the spirit of things.

He didn't even think about Lynn's famous Christmas punch when he proposed it. He's not thinking about it now.

"Good choice," he says, noting the label. "When you've got an endless variety available, why stint?"

"Not at Christmas."

Or, really, any other time.

It's what the black AmEx is for, right?

"Cheers."

The punch is now officially spiked.

And Logan helps himself. "Cheers, Sis," he says. "So, you met anyone exciting in the Bar yet?"

"Not really. Ran into Veronica, and Lilly. But that's about it, really, so far. Haven't been here much. Anyone here tonight I should meet?"

She looks around. It's a very . . . sweet party, by Neptune standards.

Logan shrugs. "There are some very good people here," he says. "Emphasis on the good. Kind, clever, funny."

It is sweet. Quiet. Nice. That's probably why Logan likes it. No stabbings. No murder. Minor soap operas that will resolve themselves easily enough.

"So nothing at all like home then?"

She looks around.

"This really is what Lynn was trying to make her parties look like, isn't it?"

Logan smiles. There's not a lot of humor in it, but there's something sort of soft there, a fondness, maybe.

"It is," he says quietly. "I think these are the kind of people she always wanted us to be. Considerate and friendly and, well, better than we were at being a family."

"Well," she says, "I'd say something about doing better next year, but we both know we won't."

Nothing for it, then, but to refill their glasses.

And hope no one gets stabbed this year.

A few glasses from the new, improved, Merrier Christmas punch, and things are looking even shinier. "So," Logan says, gesturing expansively at the Bar. "Did I tell you I'm Bound now? Again?"

"Really?" Trina looks at him. "Didn't know you were into that sort of thing."

What? She hasn't heard the term yet.

Logan smiles faintly. "What am I not into?" he asks rhetorically. "The first week I was here, I kept looking for S&M chicks, until someone clued me in that it's about the door back to Neptune not opening. I'm stuck here until Bar lets me out."

He scowls. "She kinda hates me, I think."

"Oh is that what it means? Oh. How come you're Bound? And how do you know?"

"Dunno why," Logan says. "Never really understood the whole thing. But I know because every door I open takes me where it's supposed to, and the one that follows me around sometimes is gone."

This definitely requires more alcohol.

"A door follows you around? What, like a puppy?"

Lots more alcohol.

"More like a stalker," Logan mutters, drinking. "When I didn't want to leave last time - I was in the hospital, at home, after the bridge thing? - it wouldn't go away. Totally annoying."

"Wow. Your stalker is a lot more interesting than mine was."

You haven't really arrived until you've had a stalker.

"I mean, the story is. The door itself is probably pretty boring."

Christmas Party! Millitimed Vaguely to "Sometime Around Christmas"

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