I (very excitedly) present the Christmas edition to my pride and joy: The Briefcase Series
Note: You don’t have to have read the series to read this, but I’d like to think it’s more fun if you have.
This is a prequel, of sorts. The characters are the same, though they’re called different things here. Plus the holidays have gotten (at least one of) them in a silly goofy mood.
(Warnings: suspected drink spiking)
Jingle Jingle
Civilian didn't go to the town square expecting trouble. Dressed to the nines in their reindeer-themed pajamas and clashing winter coat, they were really just there for the fresh-baked sugar cookies and free candy. They took the unlimited sign very seriously, red and white stripes poking out of all three of their pockets, their hands and mouth overflowing with sugary crumbs. A few round sprinkles fell tragically to their feet, decorating the ground around them in festive colors and giving the ants a few early Christmas gifts.
Civilian had arrived without a worry and joined the celebration, like the hundreds around them, without a care. And really, what was there to worry about on a night like this? Only a truly villainous person would be up to no good on Christmas Eve.
It was the time of the night when Civilian started eyeing the refreshments. The sun had long since set, dropping the temperature and allowing them to see their breath cloud the air in front of them. They were daydreaming of a warm apple cider and trying to catch sight of the price board when they spotted a man being passed three steaming drinks across the counter.
His hair was brown and well-combed, a charming smile plastered across his face as he tucked his wallet back into his pocket and turned away from the now-laughing volunteer running the drink stand. He was cheerful, polite, and seemingly innocent.
But there was just something about him that made Civilian's blood run cold as the wind. They pulled their hands up into their sleeves, pinching the cuffs to try to trap the warmth inside. Full disclosure, 'winter coat' may have been a bit of an exaggeration. Their threadbare Lifeguard hoodie may not technically have fallen under that category, but it was what they had deemed 'good enough' earlier in the day and would have to last them the night.
By all measures, this man was just another person out celebrating Christmas Eve on the town. Civilian tried their best to convince themselves of that, turning around and crouching down to dig for their own cash inside of their shoe.
Nosey as ever, Civilain scanned the crowd and went right back to watching that same guy while they advanced towards the line of people waiting, five dollar bill held tight between two red-tipped fingers. The suspicious man held the cups close and popped the lids in a dangerous move for someone dressed so nicely and holding three at a time. He angled his body away from their gaze, but Civilian didn't look away. Couldn't.
Something was wrong, they just knew it.
They were close now, just a dozen feet away, past the line where they should have been queuing. They were just waiting for him to do anything—
There. He was dropping something into two of the cups.
Just as quick the lids were back on and his hand slipped in and out of his pocket in a barely perceptible move, a packet of some type disappearing into the fabric.
Civilian cursed their naivety. It was the perfect cover for bad intentions: an ordinary man enjoying some good ole fashion holiday cheer.
The two spiked cups were passed into gloved and mittened hands, one set belonging to a man with raven black hair, the other to a woman with long braids that reached down to her waist.
Civilian never thought of themselves as particularly heroic, but they also didn't believe in succumbing to the bystander effect. They weren't going to just stand there and do nothing.
There would be no ruining of Christmas tonight.
Not on their watch.
Snow was beginning to flurry, so Civilian used the excuse to tilt their head back in wonder. They took a few 'absentminded' steps backwards before they finally collided with their target, who in turn bumped against their secondary target.
Both were startled, understandably so. The raven-haired man dropped his drink completely, and Civilian winced as they watched hot chocolate spill and soak the woman's magenta knitted mittens.
Still better than drinking it.
They put their hands out to begin profusely apologizing, but froze when they sensed a presence behind them. They turned, but the shiver running up their spine let them know who it was far before their eyes had the chance.
Civilian was close enough to read the logo off the brown-haired man's jacket. His face was unreadable, but his eyes were intelligent—and if you asked Civilian, they'd say he was reading them. He briefly flicked his gaze to his would-be victims, switching his eyes off of Civilian like he was putting down the Sunday paper. He took a step towards them but Civilian wasn't about to wait and see how close he planned on getting.
Not with that sinking feeling in their gut.
They took off in a random direction, past the shaved ice cart—okay, who on Earth was buying ice in these temperatures—around the children's jumpy pad, between beautifully lit trees and vaulting over a bench to avoid an oblivious couple holding hands and blocking their path.
Of course they weren't able to spot a single one of the patrolling officers that had seemed to be crawling around when they arrived. But even if they could, they would tell them what? They had basically just destroyed all the evidence. They couldn't exactly just return to the festivities either. For all they knew, they just foiled the plans of a notorius serial killer—who could now be planning for a new victim born of vengeance.
Trying to buy a few seconds under that scenario, they ducked behind the tree that had had its own lighting ceremony earlier in December. They looked around but didn't catch anyone barreling towards them quite yet.
While their eyes didn't detect anything, their ears certainly did. Raised voices from the other side of the tree, some concerned, some confused made Civilian's heart kick into a completely seperate gear. Spooked by the commotion, they decided the best thing they could do was play it safe and get the hell out of Dodge.
They had no idea who they were dealing with, after all.
For all Civilian could say about it, this was certainly a walkable city. It was not a long trek from the town square to residential areas, and there were plently of smooth, paved sidewalks and well-marked crosswalks to get you there. Case in point, just up ahead, a row of three-story townhomes stood that were decorated to a degree that suggested that there was no HOA to dampen their holiday spirit.
Seemed as good a place as any to go for an inconspicuous jog.
The first unit they passed had shepard's hooks lining both sides of the driveway with lights strung through each that created two hurtles Civilian had to clear—which they did, proudly only stumbling once.
Their head was turning rather chanlantly from left to right, not seeing but not trusting that they didn't see someone booking it behind them. They alternated randomly between a speed walk and a run. It seemed the further they got from the square, the more paranoid they became. They weren't a slow runner or walker by any means, but they hated how exposed they felt with all the shadows stretching across the ground around them.
As if to emphasize their point, they promptly fell victim to an inflatable Santa Clause monsterously morphed into a hot air balloon, tripping on a string staked into the ground to keep the colossal thing upright.
In their defensive, it was far too dark to have any semblance of a chance at seeing the treacherously thin black cord. Against their defense, their years of playing games of spy in the front yard as a child, ducking under and jumping over various December decoration obstacles probably should have forewarned them as to its existence.
They had just stubbed their toe on another stake when they saw what appeared to be a solution to several of their problems: Shining silver poles leaning against against the house in front of them, breaking up the red and green of a berry bush that was really far more berry than bush.
A ladder.
How convenient.
They clambered up the rungs, silently thanking the last minute decorator that was too lazy to bring it back into the garage.
Feeling much safer with a height advantage, Civilian planted their feet against the grippy shingles with a modest amount of confidence. In a last second moment of genius, they pushed off the top of the ladder with the bottom of their foot, pushing it off the roof and tipping it over so it landed back in the snow-dusted grass with a phoomp.
Surely no possible serial killers could reach them up here now.
The street light in front of this unit wasn't lit, so they stumbled uncertainly across the first roof. It became clear to them that the more time they spent on top of somebody's house, the higher the likelihood of them coming outside to see what the hell was going on. Coming up blank on a reasonable hypothetical explanation, Civilian decided it couldn't hurt to pick up the pace a bit.
The next street lamp wasn't broken, and wow someone really needed to clean their gutters. Old leaves and other gross debris were packed so high on the edges of the roof there was no way even a teaspoon of rain would drain correctly. Civilian shook their head to avoid getting further distracted by neglected home maintenance. They continued running with one goal in mind: don't fall down a chimney and get mistaken for Santa Claus.
Their footsteps were falling with heavy thunks that probably weren't being muffled all that well by the shingles. Oh well, Civilian figured they were spreading some real holiday magic, convincing some young kid up past their bedtime that nine reindeer really had just landed on their roof.
Civilian glanced down, catching sight of glittering antlers dotted across their legs.
They were certainly dressed the part.
This subdivision was on a hill, so pleasantly each house was slightly lower than the others. Talk about throwing a rock and hitting your neighbor, the gaps between them were only at most six feet—most closer to three or four—easy enough to clear with a running start.
Civilian encountered very few obstacles until they reached a house they dubbed NLTOH—or not like the other houses. This one sported new shapes that did not fit the cookie-cutter designs of all the other units. Civilian studied the eave in front of them, which came to a fairly high point. They approached it slowly, the roof groaning suspiciously below them as they did. They reached up to hopefully pull themselves up to the higher level of the roof, but the trim crumbled underneath their hands. Bits of dust presumably left by pesky carpenter bees that Civilian had personal beef with went sprinkling onto the shingles. Civilian dusted their hands off and took a moment to rethink their strategy.
They were above even the street lights, and they would have thought that all the blantant disregard for light pollution would help with visibility, but with all the extra standing structures accompanying them—like giant snowmen and various cartoon characters decked out in Santa hats—there were too many places back on the ground for someone to hide.
Civilian had the realization that the backs of the houses were much less exposed and would better hide them if the murderer alleged wrongdoer was still in pursuit.
In light—pun-intended—of this new thinking, they decided to double back and climb over the ridge of the roof, clocking several missing shingles on both sides as they did. Turns out, the roofs were flatter back here too. Civilian only had to worry about avoiding the occasional spinning silver discs—whatever those were—as well as exhaust pipes and two or three satellites dishes—which, who even watched satellite TV anymore? This allowed them to make significant and timely progress, but there was one small issue.
The snow was piling faster than they thought. Their grip on the shingles was starting to slip, the thin layer of snow messing with the friction against their shoes. Three more houses—they decided—and then they would call it, not willing to go sliding off a roof and breaking their leg for a chase they couldn't even confirm was actually happening.
They got past the first no problem. The second was where it got interesting, a giant wreath propped up like the Hollywood sign blocking their path.
Why someone had put up a giant wreath facing the woods and a small backyard was anyone's guess. Maybe they felt the trees deserved to celebrate too?
Now, Civilian could have just gone around it like a normal person. Granted, a normal person would typically not end up running across rooftops after—rather ironically—trying to stop two people from being roofied in the first place, so that argument was probably irrelevant. Plus, that hole looked plenty big enough to fit through.
Maybe. Totally.
Civilian shrugged.
One hundred percent.
They placed two hands on the bottom rim, pushing off with their feet and dragging their midsection slowly through the center, earning them several small cuts across their palm and stomach. It was a tight fit, but they managed not to meet the fate of an unfortunate cave diver that got in way over their head.
For the record, it wasn’t the wreath that got them.
It was the string of multicolored lights two feet after that that did them in. It was right on the edge of the roof, just as they were about to jump. They intended to leap across past the gutters but instead caught their foot, falling uncontrollably down, their descent stopped only by the harsh tug of wires against their ankle. They smacked not only their forehead on the gutter edge of the opposing roof, but also their nose into the side of the house they previously stood on, the two collisions leaving them reeling and left hanging upside down with only one limb keeping them suspended.
So much for playing Rudolph.
Actually, on second thought, the bleeding red nose was really quite fitting.
Civilian was able to get their hands out in front of them and on the flimsy sliding fast enough to keep themselves from colliding with the wall a second time. It took a moment for their situation to sink in, but once it did, Civilian had to fight the urge to search for hidden cameras, because there was no way this was actually happening to them. When no laugh track played, no screen cut to commercial, and no narrator started making sarcastic remarks from no particular direction, they turned their eyes reluctantly upward.
Civilian traced the lights up from around their ankle halfway to the roof, searching for the freakishly strong plug that was holding their body weight, plus the added few pounds of all the cookies in their stomach and the candy canes left in their pockets. They located it in a small unlighted portion about a foot and a half up, finding it to be reverse-tied to take pressure off the plug itself, partially explaining why the strand hadn't immediately turned into a Tarzan rope and left Civilian to hold on for dear life or go plummeting to the ground.
They just knew there had to be a dad in that house that would be ecstatically proud of his handiwork.
Somewhere along the way their hoodie had gotten torn, causing peppermint to be falling from their body like hail during a storm. Between the candies, the snow, and the blood dripping from somewhere on their throbbing face, the ground below them was a mess of red and white. The alley between the townhomes was starting to look like it belonged on the board of a cross-over between Clue and Candy Land.
Utterly fantastic. If this was a game, they wouldn't exactly be excited about picking up their next card.
They didn't exactly make a habit of carrying wirecutters around, not that it would be smart to cut into live wires in the first place. Maybe if they were going to start making terrible confrontational decisions around suspected criminals, they should start carrying something a little more substantial than a sharpened candy cane.
Though they didn't have anything close to a useful tool, they remembered that they did, in fact, have abs, and Civilian thanked themselves for every sit up they had ever done as they curled to reach the wires. Their fingertips were just brushing the dark green coating when the sound of an unexpected voice had them yelping and swinging their head back down to see who exactly was privy to their unfortunate predicament.
"You know, I wasn't even chasing you."
They studied the figure from top to bottom, noting too clean shoes, a cigarette tucked between two fingers, a puffy jacket, perfectly laid brown hair—
Oh shit. It was the Christmas Criminal himself.
So much for being paranoid.
He had his hands tucked into the pockets of a nice, warm, actual jacket that Civilian wasn't jealous of in the slightest. A small consolation: it was a rather ugly shade of green.
The Grinch’s proclamation was far from reassuring—and quite frankly not very believable given the fact that he was, you know, right here. However, there really wasn't much Civilian could do about it. This house must have been owned by Scrooge, because it was the darkest on the block. As a result, the thin opening between this home and the next was as secluded as it got in this neighborhood.
Perfect. Just perfect.
Because surely matters could not possibly get any worse, Civilian scoffed accusingly, "Sure, just like you weren't doing anything illegal at the square."
"I was actually just minding my business when I saw you," He denied lightly, which didn't surprise Civilian in the slightest. They knew the type: High in arrogance, low in accountability.
He lowered lifted an eyebrow and went on, "Unless sipping hot cocoa is a crime?"
He raised the paper mug he still held in his hand and took a pointed sip.
Yeah, right. Civilian wasn't falling for that.
They knew exactly what they saw. This absolute garbage dump of a man had grabbed the drinks and was putting several small, white—oh.
…
Well this was embarrassing.
As if to punctuate their stupidity, the anti-thesis to holiday cheer slipped the package of mini marshmallows out of his pocket and causually added three to his own drink. Civilian lowered their eyes to meet his, finding a knowing smirk adorned across his face.
So he knew exactly what he was doing.
It was getting hard to focus, blood rushing to their head and all. So they barely noticed the cup being set down in the snow and a glint appearing in each of the apparently-innocent man's hands.
A flick of his wrist and something—two things?— flew, and suddenly Civilian was heading for the grass two stories down. By way of a miracle, they got their elbows over their head and twisted their body to absorb some of the impact. The imprint they left in the ground could almost be mistaken for a snow angel, if that angel had been impaled by several candy canes and left to bleed out in an unrecognizable heap.
Civilian watched as he walked along the side of the house, leaning over twice to collect two shiny objects that had fallen in the snow and holy shit—were those knives?
That was…not how an upstanding citizen would handle the situation, right?
The sharp objects disappeared into his coat like they were nothing. Civilian stared blankly, blinking intermittently.
Cool. They needed to play it cool.
"…thank you?"
Civilian winced, hoping it just looked like they were reacting to their almost-certainly broken collarbone.
The showman gave nothing away, instead asking innocously, "It was an accident, was it not? Spilling my friends' drinks?"
It was a simple question with a simple—though blantantly untruthful—answer. Almost like he was giving them an easy out.
So why did it feel like a trap?
"Of course! I'm so sorry I didn't get the chance to apologize, did they want me to pay for some new ones?"
Was it meant to be taken as a bribe or a genuine offer? Civilian didn't really know.
"Is that so?"
Calculating eyes followed the movement of their hands to their laces to loosen them to grab some cash, foolishly hoping this ordeal could all be over with the emptying of their nonexistent wallet one way or another. Their fingers fumbled, hands shaking ever so slightly.
Okay, maybe not slightly.
"Then why are you so scared?"
Civilian's mouth dropped open and they narrowed their eyes incredulously. As if he hadn't just said the most appalling thing ever, Mr. Early-Onset COPD took a drag and knocked some ash to the ground. The lit cigarette soon followed, extinguising itself in the snow.
So he was a litterer too.
Figures.
The litterbug stepped on his trash for good measure, crushing it with a twist of his heel. For a brief, brief moment, Civilian wondering if he was approaching out of concern—possibly to help them to their feet. His eyes, however, told a completely different story.
Who the fuck was this guy?
"I'd get up if I were you." The aloof tone with which he said it was a dramatic juxtapostion to the implication Civilian caught between the words. They looked down to see the confirmation they dreaded in the form of purposeful footprints in the snow stepping towards them.
"Hey, woah, you said—"
They scrambled, knowing full well they didn't have any kind of weapon. Those shepard hooks from earlier would have come in real handy right about now.
"I said I wasn't chasing you." A full-toothed smile—not a smirk—broke out across his face. "Five seconds from now, on the other hand..."
Civilian face-planted twice in their struggle, earning themselves a mouth full of thankfully-fresh snow. Human Trash laughed as they attempted a third time to spring to their feet, and there was absolutely no mistaking it for a jolly ho ho ho.
They really, really should have stayed home. They could have been warm—well, warmer— inside watching definitely-not-pirated classic Christmas movies on their laptop right now. Not about to be murdered by some weirdo with an affinity for nicotine and marshmallows. The sugar rush wasn't worth it.
As they ran, they patted against the pocket on their hip, feeling the tell-tale hook of a single candy cane that had survived their upside-down foray. A small amount of relief flooded their system while they simultaneously almost went tumbling down a small hill, human-sled style.
Okay, maybe it was a tiny bit worth it.
When they reached the bottom of the hill, they paused for a breath. They turned to see how much time they had, scanning the slope, ready to take off again at a moments notice.
There was nothing there but the frigid air and snow falling from the sky.
Because of course there wasn't.
Against their better judgment, Civilian made the short trek back up the hill. They crouched low when they reached the top, peering over the yard and tracing their footprints back until they disappeared between two townhomes. Through the gap, Civilian could see across the street where—under the warm glow of a streetlight—a figure leaned against the post. A small cloud of smoke rose above him.
Bastard.
It was a shameful and slow walk to urgent care with both arms cradled to their chest, but at least they still had a candy cane to keep them company on the way.
Series taglist: @whumplicity @kayochine @dreamingofviolence
