Chapter Text
“Deck the halls with boughs of holly!”
The off-key voice echoed in the low-ceilinged room. “For the love of God, man, tune that thing!” Garrick snarled, trying to untangle yet another mobius-like string of lights.
Konrad sighed and gave up on keeping the buffet table stocked. He made his way toward the source of the noise. “Shelley, give me the bottle.”
“No, ‘s mine!” Shelton Grant slurred, holding the bottle of rum high out of reach.
“You could at least share,” Konrad muttered, rubbing at his temple. “I don’t know why I agreed to this. Do you know why? Because I don’t, I really don’t!”
“Because you want to impress the Esset royalty!” Shelley giggled, offering his friend the booze. “You don’t have to be a reindeer to have a brown n–”
Konnor drowned out the comment with a long swig of alcohol. Glancing around the conference room, he took in the barely-contained chaos and, but for his station, he would have wept.
The party was in less than an hour.
Mendez had bogarted the cookies. All the cookies. True to his telepathic nature, he’d gone on bit of a bender and now had the munchies. Konnor had resorted to setting out a half-eaten package of Oreos, but those were long gone now.
With a soft “pop” the lights went out. Again. Colorful cursing could be heard from where Garrick had plugged in one strand too many.
A drunken Shelley chirped, “Find the mistletoe, everybody!”
Konnor took another drink. Rum wasn’t his preferred beverage, but right now he was starting to get mighty friendly with the stuff. Before they could fix the fuse and get the lights back on, he wandered out of Shelley’s reach.
Let the little sot try and reclaim the damn rum! He’d fight him for it, two falls out of three.