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The Royal Dragon, once again, hopefully this time with less attacks by the Hand. The largest table at the back was blocked off from prying eyes, and a carved dragon on a pillar sported tinsel spilling out of its jaws in a single concession to the nearing date of Christmas. (Or else it was supposed to fire, mist, or some other emanation from the depths of folklore; no one was exactly sure.) The Defenders were trailing in one by one, a box in the center of the table ready to receive everyone’s gifts to try to preserve the surprise of the Secret Santa gift exchange that Danny had managed to organize and somehow get everyone to participate in.
Fifteen years away from home had given Danny a powerful want to make up some of the things he remembered from his childhood and after the year most of them had had, well, it hadn’t taken much persuasion to get them to agree.
(That was, in fact, a lie. Luke had quietly pressured everyone to get with the program, just this once, so they could do something all together without anyone punching bad guys or dying. He’d thrown a useless glance as Matt as he’d said it, and Matt had sighed and finally agreed.)
Jessica was the last to arrive, everyone averting their eyes as she tossed something crinkly in the box, and flung herself down in the last remaining chair, unwinding her scarf and shaking snowflake from her hair. As promised, there was a bottle of beer by her plate (because Jessica had only agreed if there was going to be at least one drink in it for her; Luke considered it a Christmas compromise) that she cracked open immediately, ignoring the plates of food that graced the table.
“Merry Christmas, everyone,” Luke said, and stood up to perform his master of ceremonies duties, handing out wrapped packages or envelopes to everyone, before settling down with a thick shiny green envelope addressed to himself.
“Go on, you first!” Danny insisted, his smile a mile wide.
Luke opened his with care, and stared at the letter that had been in the shiny envelope with slowly-widening eyes, jaw starting to sag. Claire finally leaned over to look at what had him so spellbound and smothered a yelp so she wouldn’t alarm the staff.
Across the table, Danny was grinning like he was the world’s proudest Santa Claus, and Colleen was shaking her head. She wasn’t going to remind him about the price limit rules of Secret Santa, because it was clear he was having plenty of fun.
“How…” Luke said, finally managing words. “How did you get them? Their agent wouldn’t even return my calls!”
Danny gave an expansive shrug, wide grin still on his face. The Santa hat on his head bobbed as he laughed at Luke’s dumbfounded expression.
“Claire said you really wanted to get them, so… I made it happen,” he said gleefully.
Probably by waving a Rand Enterprises business credit card in the act’s direction and going, “Take what you want,” if Colleen had any guess as to what had happened. Danny wielded his economic power with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but at least he tried to come down on the side of good when he did. With the attacks that had happened in Harlem’s Paradise over the last couple of years, some acts were a little skittish, but the lure of Paradise’s reputation and Luke’s (plus a little extra incentive from Danny’s expense account for “incidentals”) would apparently get the club the headliner act Luke had been trying to get for a year.
“Wow. Um…”
“Merry Christmas!” Danny said, looking much more like a kid on Christmas morning than the Immortal Iron Fist.
“Thanks, man. Thank you,” Luke said finally, leaning over to give Danny a pat on the shoulder. He shook his head in wonder as Danny picked up his own present, a small package wrapped in brown paper, an over-large gaudy bow plopped on top.
After a few moments of Danny enthusiastically unwrapping his gift, Colleen realized that the bow was a large, weather-proof one with long wires that had to have come off of a wreath… like on of the wreaths on some of the shop windows around here, and the brown wrapping paper wasn’t trendy butcher’s paper, but a brown paper bodega sack. Danny brought out his present, a double pack of rhinestone-covered mini cannister key chains, one in pink, one in purple, the receipt wrapped around them. Colleen bit her lip, trying not to laugh, and saw more than one person at the table trying to keep their cool. Matt just raised an eyebrow after a faint sniff.
“Mace?” he asked, incredulously.
Danny took Matt’s word for it and grabbed one cannister in each hand. “Cool!” he proclaimed, with no an iota less of enthusiasm.
“Yeah,” Jessica said, leaning back a little farther in her chair, ignoring the precarious creak of the wood. “For when they aren’t worth fisting.”
Misty, Colleen, Claire, and Luke lost it, laughing out loud, Matt smothering a smile. Danny looked annoyed for a split second, before he went into a defensive pose, glittering tiny mace cannisters ready to deploy. Jessica rolled her eyes, but there was the tiniest bit of a blush on her cheeks that she said nothing about.
Misty groped for her present, a small, flat package, while she was still winding down from laughing. It was oddly soft, and she pulled it apart with a little care for her new hand. What spilled out were fine leather gloves, flexible and with enough give to fit over her bionic fingers easily. She pulled them on slowly, rubbing the fingertips together to get the vague sensation of soft skin, even if it wasn’t her own, on her hand again.
“I figured you looked good in black leather,” Colleen said, and Misty quickly blinked away some traitorous moisture from her eyes before giving Colleen a high five.
“Good call,” she said, picking up her chopsticks again. This time they didn’t slip and slide off her slick plastic hand, and she twirled them around once before setting them back down with a decisive click.
Matt took that as his cue, and reached unerringly for the empty space in front of him. “Seems a little light,” he said, weighing nothing in his hand.
Misty snorted, and stood up. “Sorry, I couldn’t have you guessing what it was before we got to gift-opening time,” she said, and headed towards the door. She came back a minute later, holding a package that she hurled at Matt. He plucked it out of the air and his eyebrows shot up as he held it in both hands. He ripped it open as quickly as Danny had, revealing a pair of police-issue handcuffs. Matt froze, fingers unmoving on the metal.
“I trust you with those. And that I’ll never have to use them on you,” Misty said softly.
Matt’s glasses hid part of his expression, but his voice was thick as he said, “Thank you.”
Claire took her present off the table, a rigid, flat package, small and square, and opened it into the slight hush that had fallen over the table. It was a small notebook, but when she opened it inside, it had several pages written on, names, notes, phone numbers, and social media contacts, all printed in a heavy, unfamiliar hand. She ran her finger down the list, looking surprised at the information.
“Since you’re kind of our self-appointed guardian,” Matt broke in, making Claire turn to look at him, “I thought you might like to know some people who could help you, if things come down to it. Those are some people I know who can find things, or fix things, without asking questions.”
“Like cab rides with bleeding vigilantes or fixing holes in my walls from accidents with furniture?” she asked, making about everyone in the room squirm.
“Or finding people. Or watching people. Or getting things you need,” Matt said, “Because times are weird.”
Claire chuckled a little, sighed, and shook her head, “That’s true enough.” She closed the notebook, opened it again, and stared at it, then back at Matt. “Did you write this yourself?”
Matt turned his head slightly away from Claire, but nodded.
“How long did that take?”
“Ages,” Matt confessed, laughing a little. “It’s been forever since I’ve had to do that!”
Jessica snatched up the envelope in front of her as the laughter at the table died down, and ripped it open carelessly, spilling out a check and a gift card into her hand. She stared down at them in disbelief before looking up at Luke.
He gave her a little smile and a shrug. “I owe you for the bed. And I figured that was your brand of whiskey. Should be enough on that card for a whole case of what I saw on your shelf. And they deliver. I put a tip on the card.”
Jessica folded the check around the card, slid both into her inner jacket pocket, and then hurled the envelope back at Luke with devastating accuracy. It bounced off his chest, and he raised an eyebrow at her.
“Fine. Thanks,” she said, and grabbed her beer to drain the bottle. And hide her expression.
Colleen picked up her present next, a much heftier box with a waterfall of colorful ribbon. Unwrapping it, she found a first aid kit, but one stocked nearly to bursting with not just gauze and band-aids, but suture kits, slings, and a few other things usually not found at the corner drugstore. She took out one jar and smelled it, eyebrows lifting as she smelled the familiar scent of her obscured-branded muscle balm.
Claire raised a finger as Colleen faced her with a grin. “If I am going to be patching each and every one of you self-sacrificing idiots up, I want proper tools on hand. Take notes, there will be a quiz, and the rest of you better get the something similar in your places before I get my next a midnight call,” she said, and shot a general good-natured glare around the table.
Colleen reached over to give Claire a hug, and got one in return. “Thanks. We’ll try not to bleed on you so much next time.”
“Appreciated.”
Laughter broke out around the table as plates and bowls of food were passed from hand to hand, from person to person, under the tinsel from a lone dragon, as the snow still fell softly outside, heralding Christmas.