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"How many people did you say we were expecting?" Tony texted Trent as he stared at the drink aisle of the grocery store and tried to figure out what he needed to purchase for the party.
"About five kids, fifty adults, and an unknown number of pets."
Pets? Were they expected to serve drinks to pets? What had Kort signed them up for exactly?
When Trent had first mentioned helping out with the CIA holiday bash, Tony hadn't thought much of it. He was used to being dragged into party prep by Abby and assumed that working with whoever was in charge of this one would be similar, but so far that seemed to be wishful thinking. He never thought he'd consider Abby's party planning to be the height of organization but if this is what other agencies had to deal with, she was hands down a five star rating when it came to party prep.
Initially, Trent had tried to volunteer the two of them for everything and Tony had quickly dissuaded his lover from that plan as he knew that would just be too crazy. They'd eventually settled on bringing the holiday drinks. He figured they had this in the bag. A punch for everyone to share, maybe some alcohol that could be ordered from a bar, but no the CIA was too good for such plebeian drinks. They only accepted the best and by that they apparently meant the most creative and festive drinks possible.
Tony had spent the past couple of days looking up holiday drink recipes online. He'd saved his favorites and had decided to use those plus anything he found in the store that gave him ideas to determine the full shopping list. Of course, it was kind of hard to figure out what he should or shouldn't buy without knowing appropriate numbers of people coming. Now he had to figure out if he had to make drinks for the pets too. He really was beginning to regret agreeing to this.
To be fair to Trent, he was doing his best to be helpful but the man wasn't strong on the creativity side of things in general. Tony was pretty sure that his creative juices were used up for sex and his various missions. Still that left the bulk of the work to Tony.
Pulling up the recipes he'd saved, he checked to see if any of them were safe for dogs. He had zero intentions of getting a drink for the pets. They could do water, but if one of the options for humans wasn't harmful to pets then if anyone demanded something he could say that x, y, or z was safe for pets. Maybe he could get Abby to print up some labels that indicated if it was safe for pets or not. A few of the drink options were safe for pets, but he wasn't going to spend a lot of time making sure all possible pets could drink something other than water.
He bought a variety of juices, some lemon lime soda, and a number of lighter alcoholic options that multiple recipes called for. Every drink he bought could be used towards at least two if not more recipes. That would give them the most variety for the least amount of money. It also gave them the option that if a particular drink wasn't doing well they could take it off the menu and just use the ingredients in the other recipes.
Normally, Tony would test every single recipe before serving it to make sure he knew exactly how to prepare it and how much wiggle room there was, but they weren't actually going to be in charge of making the drinks. They just had to gather the ingredients and provide the menu. It was super weird. Almost like the CIA wanted catering, but without actually paying for it.
A lot of things had changed with COVID. Even though the mask mandates had officially been lifted, the ripple effects would continue to be felt for years to come. Everyone was trying to cut corners and this must be the CIA's new way of doing so.
Tony knew that every single agency had been slashing budgets left and right. It was a miracle that they hadn't lost more people to the private sector than they did. Finally escaping the grocery store and glad to be almost done with this whole disaster, Tony returned home or well to one of his homes. Technically both he and Trent had at least two residences.
Tony had his apartment, which was the address that NCIS knew about. He didn't keep anything important there because his coworkers would break in to spy on him or hound him for one reason or another. For this reason, he'd driven to his shared home with Kort. No one at NCIS knew about this house, except maybe Gibbs and even then Gibbs could probably find it out, but didn't know the location himself. It would be much safer to store the drinks in their shared place.
Tony wasn't actually sure how many homes Trent owned. He knew of at least five and that didn't count the CIA safe houses the man knew about and Tony highly doubted that he was aware of all houses that Trent laid claim to. Needless to say both of them always had backup plans for their backup plans in case of emergency.
While Tony's job was unlikely to go nuclear, it was a very real possibility that an enemy of Trent's could burn both Tony and Kort's real identities. Tony wasn't enemy free either, though his tended to be more the 'I'm going to kill you' kind than the 'I'm going to do everything in my power to destroy your life and make it so that you have no choice but to live in a cardboard box' kind. They'd taken appropriate precautions with their belongings and homes and identities because of it.
Tony had actually considered driving to a few of the alternate home locations that he knew of to try and find room for everything, but ultimately he'd decided that anything that didn't fit in the two refrigerators that they had would just have to deal. He parked in front of the house and Trent quickly opened the door to their home and met him with a big hug.
"So was it very bad?"
"You'd know the answer to that if you came with," Tony retorted.
"I'm sorry. I couldn't. I had a meeting about one of my ops."
"Yeah, yeah. Anyway, since you're here you can help me carry stuff in."
Kort's eyes bulged as he took in all of the drink items Tony bought. A number of them were shelf stable, so he didn't actually need refrigerator access for most of it. Still, they definitely had enough for an entire army to drink.
"Why so many?" Kort wondered.
"You did say fifty adults."
"Did I? Oh my god, I'm sorry I meant five adults."
"That's how many kids you said there were." Tony walked over to the wall and started banging his head against it. "Exactly how many people was I actually supposed to buy drinks for?"
"Five kids, five adults. Should have been easy-peasy."
"Well apparently we have enough to host our own holiday drink party as well as cover all beverages for the other one now."
Kort smirked. "It won't be that bad. We just need to find a neutral location to hold it. Then we can show everyone what a true party looks like."
"You're organizing it, since it's your fault we have so much extra."
"Acceptable." Kort nodded in agreement.
Tony shook his head. He couldn't believe that he'd bought ten times the amount of drinks they needed and all because Kort couldn't get the numbers right in his text. This was going to be a party for the record books, maybe even two of them.