Christmas Cracker

His time at the north pole had changed him in many ways, but the heart of his power laid in the belief of the symbol he represented. In putting his suit on for the first time, he took on the image of Santa Claus that people across the world knew and loved. There was great power in that. By the time he left his office that morning he felt like he could have moved a mountain with a mere suggestion.

When he walked out of his grotto and across the snow covered stone platform to look out over the factory he saw the conveyor belts had been halted and there were no elves to be seen. Even from there he could hear the rumble of noise coming from the stables. Two elves had been left to tend to him if he needed anything, and awaited his arrival at the top of the stairs. When he stepped before them, he greeted each one with a large, festive smile.

"Looking great, sir!" one of them said, giving him two thumbs up.

"Spot on!" the other agreed, adding two more thumbs to his approval rating.

"Ho, ho, ho! Thank you both very much! Now, let's get to it, shall we?"

They both nodded and hopped to it, leading him down the stairs toward the stables. Upon entering he saw why the room needed to be as enormous as it was. On Christmas Eve it seemed to house almost every elf in the north pole. Each of them passing along presents to the familiar, gleaming red sleigh settled in the centre.

He looked up to see Callie standing on top of the sleigh, balancing herself gracefully on the back of the seat. She was overseeing each brightly coloured gift carefully placed inside the large sack that which took up much of the rear compartment. She wagged her finger at a slightly wobbly line of elves and they quickly straightened up.

Then, as one by one the elves saw that their boss had arrived on the scene, the entire room fell to such silence that a snowflake could have been heard landing. He didn't say anything right then, but continued to smile at them all before stepping forward towards the sleigh. The elves made way for him, many of them returning his smile with a giddy eagerness whilst others remained reverently respectful.

Upon the sleigh, Callie nearly fell into the seemingly bottomless sack of gifts when she saw him. He didn't look at all like the big oaf she'd been in service of for over a century. In fact, she didn't think it was possible for two individuals to be so alike in their style and yet so utterly different in appearance.

Now standing at least 6 and a half feet tall, he towered over the surrounding array of pointed hats. His fluffy, white beard descended almost to his belt, and his long hair passed down to stroke against the fur collar of his coat. Still, she could see his bright blue eyes shining with a light all of their own, and looking upon her with such mirth that she immediately broke out into a somewhat goofy and adorable smile.

When he reached the base of the sleigh, he looked up to her and then down over himself.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"Red is definitely your colour." She jumped off the sleigh towards him, her arms opened out wide.

He quickly lifted up his arms and caught her in a big hug, and soon enough their lips pressed together until Santa was happily making-out with his favourite elf with quite the audience around them.

"Ahem! Do you really think this is the time?" A familiar albeit much more melodic voice interrupted them from nearby.

"Hey! You've had your smooch for the day already. Quit moaning!" Callie broke the kiss to yell over her shoulder at Elina, who had been stood nearby.

The high elf seemed stern for a moment before she lifted her fingers to her own lips and giggled to herself. Her cheeks practically glowed, though that glow did turn a good deal more pink at being so obviously called out in front of everyone.

"I think she's right." Santa agreed, though he planted another kiss on Callie's cheek all the same.

"Pfft! Typical guy! One snog from a hot blonde and suddenly I'm old news." She lightly touched the tip of her nose against his.

"I have a feeling that you might change your mind about that by tomorrow night."

"Promise?" she asked, shortly before she seemed to realise that several thousand eyes were fixed on them acting like a pair of loved-up teenagers. "What are you lookin' at!? We got work to do here!"

He recoiled, his ears ringing with the sudden increase in volume from the beautiful elf. She dropped down to her feet and reached around to pinch his butt through his overcoat.

"Time to get to work, Santa." She winked and then hopped back up on to the sleigh with a single graceful jump that was definitely beyond any human capabilities.

"Right you are then." He nodded and lifted his hand, gesturing for everyone to get on with what they were doing.

The elves immediately burst into a cheer that levelled off into the noise of thousands of them busily loading up presents. At the outskirts of the room he saw that the long lines of elves formed to pass the gifts to each other were actually wrapping them up in various brightly coloured papers and ribbons. It was a staggeringly impressive operation to watch, and he took his place beside Callie on the sleigh to make sure every gift was loaded into the magical sack.

Throughout the day, the warehouses emptied their supplies of what the elves had made. The process normally started much earlier, but since they only really had less than a month of production time it had been left until Christmas Eve. That morning from the moment he'd woken up he felt himself building up to what was going to happen that night. A sense of overwhelming joy filled him, and to an extent it made his past life seem like a distant memory. Being Santa Claus hadn't stomped out Wendall's personality, but rather had simply enhanced his good nature.

As with most long-awaited moments, it seemed like the time passed in barely more than a few heart beats. Then it was time to tie the golden strings of his sack and bring in the reindeer. One by one they greeted him with a small bow of the antlers before lining up at their place in front of the sleigh. The elves had started moving to give them a clear run toward the tunnel that would lead up to the starry northern sky.

Callie finally leaned over to plant a soft little kiss on his cheek before hopping down off the sleigh to stand beside him. He looked out over the assembled elves and all that remained was for him to signal the reindeer to take off. By some Christmas miracle they had managed to pull off his plan for the night. So, before he took the reins, he stood upon the sleigh and looked out over all his workers.

"Ho, ho, ho!" The laughter boomed from his broad chest. "Merry Christmas!"

It was the first time he'd said that aloud, and seeing their boss call out his catchphrase immediately got a big cheer from the elves.

"As I've had such a wonderful time working with you all, I now feel a strange sadness coming over me. You have all been so kind from the first moment I arrived, and I know how hard you all worked to make this Christmas so very special. In working toward that goal, I feel that we've all become something of a family. As I go out there tonight I'll eventually hear the chime of Christmas Eve turning to Christmas Day, and I will feel such a sweet sadness that I cannot spend that moment with all of you. For what is Christmas if we cannot spend it with the people we care about the most?"

He paused and smiled over them whilst a few teary-eyed elves took the opportunity to blow their noses on brightly coloured handkerchiefs.

"So, with that in mind I thought that the first gift I should give tonight would be my gift to you." With that, Santa raised his big arms and the stables gleamed with bright light.

Across the vast walls there sprouted a great many interwoven festive wreaths, each decorated with glittering tinsel along with gold and silver baubles. Great banners of festive ribbon spilled from the ceiling in colours of red and green. Music began to fill the large room, and a single elf was lifted along with the ground itself to stand amidst a DJ station. He cheered gleefully and then started spinning records of Christmas classics, starting the night off with Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.

"Enjoy yourselves! Make enough noise so I can hear you at the equator!" Santa laughed before looking down at Callie.

He reached down to slip his hands beneath her arms and pluck her up to place her cute butt in the seat beside him. She gave a questioning look before realising what he had planned.

"I'm coming with you!?" She left her mouth hanging open in awe.

"You certainly are. You got me into this, after all. It's only fair you pull your weight." With a sidelong glance and a little wink, Santa took the reins of the sleigh. "The time is here! The time is now! Ho, ho, ho! Now, Dasher! Now, Prancer! Now, Dancer and Vixen! On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donner and Blitzen!"

Nothing happened. At the front of the sleigh, a certain red nosed reindeer turned his head to look back over his shoulder. His feelings clearly hurt by being left out.

Santa chuckled, raised his hand in an apology and then the music died to silence for a moment as he and the entire hall of elves burst into a song of their own.

"And Rudolph with your nose so bright! Won't you guide my sleigh tonight!?"

The reindeer in question hopped giddily on the spot and then leapt forward with the rest of his friends to send the sleigh into motion. Santa waved goodbye to the elves as Callie grabbed hold tight to the fine vehicle with one hand and to her hat with the other.

With the sound of bells and a whoosh of air, they bounded into the tunnel at blinding speed before bursting out into the clear night sky above.

* * * * *

"This is Maria Rodriguez, coming to you live from a farm just outside New York City where hundreds of people have gathered tonight at the promise of seeing good old Saint Nick himself!"

The screen split revealing both Maria stood amidst a crowd of people on a snowy field and David Danvers back in the news studio. Maria's breath could be seen rising in the air, but she seemed content with the cold. That could have had something to do with her enormous beige overcoat and a hat and scarf combo leaving barely much more than her pretty eyes and nose visible between them. In the studio, David smiled indulgently at the obvious fluff piece in which he was taking part.

"Right you are, Maria. I take it that we haven't missed the big moment then?"

"No, we haven't!" Maria seemed uncharacteristically cheerful for a news reporter.

"Great! So remind us again how this all started?"

"Sure thing, David." The camera on Maria panned out to reveal a girl beside her wearing a hoodie stating that pop music had been killed by death metal. She had a nose piercing and her black hair carried a contrasting shade of vibrant pink across one side of her face. "This is Tulip, and she was the first to hear about it. Tell us what happened, Tulip."

Maria extended her Microphone in front of the young woman's mouth.

"Oh, man it was fubleeeep awesome! We were driving down the road back there. Me and my band had just had this rockin' gig for my buddies birthday. So, we're all driving along when Dylan, our drummer, yells: 'Shbleep guys! Check it out!' So then we all turn around to see this elf guy waiting for us at the side of the road. We stopped thinking that maybe the poor little dude was super high or something, I mean he's dressed as an elf out here in the middle of fubleeeep nowhere in December. Poor guy might have frozen to death or something. So we park up, right? Except rather than coming on over he waves to us with this big grin on his face. We figure, what the hell? It's only one crazy elf. So we all walk over and find that he's got this stash of fresh baked cookies just behind the shrubbery over there. I mean, these things are steaming like they just came outta the oven. Double chocolate chip. I got no freakin' clue how he got them out there like that. So he offers us some and we're all worried until he eats two himself. They were, like, the best cookies ever! Then he tells us that tonight his boss is going to do a fly-by of this field and there'll be more cookies for anyone who shows up. We figured it was some kind of scam or that he was selling something, but we also figured it was free cookies, right? So we told our friends about it and mentioned it at a few gigs. I guess the whole thing just snowballed out there and now everyone's here!"

"And the elf was as good as his word, right?" Maria asked.

"Oh hell yeah, and then some! When we got here that was just waiting for us all." Tulip pointed past Maria and the camera shifted to follow the line of her finger.

Three very long wooden tables had been made up with a seemingly unending festive feast. Turkey and goose were the main attractions between other traditional Christmas treats. It seemed like a few hundred people had shown up for the night to take part in the feast. Behind the food setting was an enormous green tent with enough beds to allow the guests to stay the night.

"And no one knows where this all came from? Besides it perhaps being a gift from the mysterious elf?" The camera swished back to Maria and Tulip.

"Nope! He asked us to invite a lot of homeless folks though, so we went around the shelters putting up flyers. As you can see there's been a pretty great turnout here."

"Thanks, Tulip! We'll be here all night until Santa shows up! Now David, it's back to you in the studio."

* * * * *

"Hey, Trish! Merry Christmas! Come on in." Hugh opened his front door for her.

"Thanks!" She stepped inside.

"Shitting hell! You know there's only us two here tonight, right?" He exclaimed as he looked down and saw the sack of various varieties of alcohol that she was hauling.

"Yeah! Well we don't have to drink it all and it's Christmas. Besides, I wanted to get you something for making us dinner." She jingled the sack with a smile. "Ho, ho, ho!"

"Oh, well in that case you can get us some glasses." He smiled and stepped aside to let her walk through his apartment.

From his friendly demeanour no one would have guessed that Hugh was absolutely terrified. Rather than going home for the holidays like seemingly everyone else in Christendom, he'd stayed there in New York to help his boss prepare a presentation to be delivered in early January. It had just been the two of them in the office for the past week, going over the company finances and checking everything was settled before they moved forward.

His boss. Also known as Patricia May. Trish to her friends. His boss who he'd been madly in love with for the last four or five days, and had a distinctly strong crush on before that.

He didn't quite know how he'd managed to get the words out to offer her dinner on Christmas Eve. She'd mentioned that she was sorry about him needing to stay in the city, and that she herself wouldn't be meeting with her family that year either. From there, the words were coming from between his lips before he could quite make sense of them. We shouldn't be alone at Christmas. Would you like to come over for dinner?

What in the hell had possessed him?

Well, she was a phenomenally attractive woman in her early thirties who had an exceptional mind and a vicious streak that scared him just a little bit. He'd seen what happened to the people who wronged Trish, and it was terribly good motivation to never ever fall on her bad side. She was always stunning to behold, but that night she looked positively glowing. Long, platinum blonde hair was fixed in luscious waves cascading about her naturally tanned face and falling to her shoulders. Plush lips had been coloured red for the evening, and she wore a matching red dress that was the same rich shade as his Santa hat.

Seeing the way the silky material clung to her body as she slipped her coat from her shoulders, he regretted wearing a horrific Christmas sweater and some brown pants. At the time he had felt comfy and familiar, and hoped that the silly sweater with a mangled image of Rudolph on the front might make her laugh. Now he felt distinctly underdressed and was suddenly very much aware of the floppy point of his hat swishing about his head.

She didn't seem to mind as she turned to hang up her coat on the clearly-visible rack and in the process showed him the dress was virtually backless. Only a few red strings criss-crossed over her smooth, tanned skin and he could see the toned waves of her athletic figure quite clearly.

"You look amazing. Are you going somewhere else later?" He asked, again allowing his mouth to get in front of his brain.

She turned back to look at him and shrugged her bare shoulders with a slightly nervous smile.

"Nope. Why? Are you going to kick me out?"

"Definitely not. I just... Wow."

That got a laugh from her and she swished on her high heels to pick up her sack of booze and head into the kitchen. As she unloaded the bottles onto his counter, he went to check on the pans he had boiling as well as the potatoes he had roasting in the oven. The turkey was already resting by then, and she walked over to peek underneath it's foil covering.

"Fucking hell, Hugh! It's huge! How are we going to eat all that?" she cried in surprise.

"Perseverance and determination," he replied with her own office mantra.

"Hah!"

She turned back to look at him. He looked fucking adorable in that silly hat and even sillier sweater. Although the comical ugliness of his attire made her think about how nice it would be to tear it off him and sink her teeth into the man beneath.

He'd shown up at work in the IT department and had gotten her attention in dealing with a particularly nasty bug in the new system software that the old head of IT had installed. Hugh had become her new head of that department shortly thereafter, and since online sales were a huge part of her business it had been good having someone she could trust running the technical side of things. He'd also been somewhat shy and reserved, which was a nice change from the usual motor mouths she dealt with day in and day out.

Then the chance had come to expand the company she'd built, but time was short and he'd been the only one of her team who had offered to stay behind. The man had a head for numbers, and had proved himself extremely useful in dealing with the issues that had arisen due to the short timescale. A single presentation to a potential investor and by Christmas next year she'd likely be a millionaire.

This also allowed for the rather happy incident one night when she went looking for him in the early hours of the morning. She found him in the small gym that she'd had placed in the building for her staff. It wasn't much. Just a converted meeting room with enough equipment inside to blow off steam. The idea had only come to her when she realised that they had a full bathroom on the floor equipped with a shower. She spent quite a bit of time in there herself.

She'd walked in, wanting his opinion on some figures she'd been running over. That's when she'd seen him on the running machine, his body gleaming with a healthy sheen of sweat. His breath coming in heavy pants that did wonderful things to his hard, muscular chest. Though he wasn't bulky, he was definitely ripped with gorgeously well-defined muscles. He also hadn't been wearing anything above the waist, and she had plenty of skin to feast her eyes on. She must have stood there in the doorway for about ten minutes before he noticed her and apologized for not wearing a shirt. She'd told him about the figures and he'd nodded and flipped through them before outlining a few problems.

She couldn't quite recall what the problems had been since her eyes were fixed on his pectorals and his chiselled abs. He didn't seem to notice her staring. That was partly the reason she'd gone with the little red number for that evening. Payback. He wasn't going to be the only on in their friendship to leave the other one stunned in their tracks. Oh no! His reaction had been exactly what she'd hoped for.