And
A Chicken In A Grapefruit Tree: A Whose
Line
(Or,
Why Santa Needed Five Bottles Of Vodka)
by Jada
"Hey, Ryan, what's the matter? You look rushed."
Colin cast a critical eye over Ryan as the latter paced around the
room at top speed.
"I am rushed, Colin! Didn't you
hear the phone message? Greg was
just crowned emir of that Groovefunkistan he kept
talking about and
now he's visiting and it's just before Christmas and my back is
aching and-"
"Ryan, no offense, really Big Guy, but would you please get to the
point?"
"Huh? Point? Oh yeah, like I was saying, Greg is now
royalty, is
coming here in about six hours, and I can't find any Christmas
decorations!!"
"Really? I thought for sure we had
some... Wait a minute, Greg's
coming HERE?"
"Yeah, and he's going to expect this place to look like a million
bucks, and... Well, look at it!"
Colin glanced away from Ryan in time to see a large mouse run across
the floor. Maybe Ryan was on to
something, he thought. Their house
had been fairly cheap, and looked its price, though it wasn't too
junky. The walls just needed to be
repainted and the carpet redone
and they needed to redo the kitchen cabinets so they matched the
giraffe-and-dinosaur theme prevalent in the rest of the rooms. But
for the most part, it was a fairly decent house. Colin looked back
at Ryan, who looked about ready to burst into tears.
"Oh, come on now, it's not that bad.
We've got plenty of stuff here
to decorate with," Colin admonished as he wrapped his arms around his
boyfriend. "We'll just have to
improvise a little."
A spark of happy light returned to Ryan's eyes.
"Improvise?"
"Yes." Colin pressed a light
kiss to Ryan's forehead. "Come on,
we
don't have much time!"
*********************
"All right now, the first thing to do is get refreshments ready in
case we're not done by the time Greg gets here.
If we tie up his
attention with drinks or something, we can switch off decorating the
rest of the house while the other distracts him."
"But Colin, what are we going to use for drinks? We can't use our
normal supply of beer- Greg will be expecting something festive."
"Don't worry about that, Ryan."
Colin opened the refrigerator, and
then paused for a second. "Is it
okay if I use what was supposed to
be a surprise for the both of us on Christmas Eve?"
"What surprise was that?"
"I got some pre-made eggnog from the store 'cause I'd never had any
and was pretty sure you hadn't either. I
feel bad though- it was
supposed to be a surprise."
"That's okay,
forget we have any, okay?"
"That's the problem, though, the store's sold out."
"Oh." Ryan contemplated for a
second. "Then we'll just have to
have
some now, won't we? There's bound to be
enough."
"Oh, there's enough all right."
Colin pulled a huge ten-gallon jug
of eggnog from the fridge.
"Holy cripes! What were you
planning on doing, feeding the homeless
of the world?"
Colin shrugged flippantly. "It was
on sale."
"Never mind that, here, help me get the punch bowl down."
Colin set the jug on the floor and walked over to the cabinet. After
a brief struggle with an extremely stubborn pot handle that refused
to move and allow the punch bowl to be taken down, the contents of
the jug was poured into the bowl.
"Ryan, the bowl's only three-quarters of the way full. Greg's going
to think we drank it all before he got here."
"And that, my little maple leaf," Ryan paused to drop a kiss on
Colin's nose, "is where the wondrous properties of alcohol come
in."
He produced a bottle of rum from behind his back, removed the top and
proceeded to pour the entire contents into the punch bowl.
Miraculously, the very last drop of rum exactly filled the punch bowl.
"There, see, all better." Ryan
turned and grabbed two glasses from a
nearby cupboard. "You want to do
the honors?"
"Okay..." Colin grasped a
ladle and poured first Ryan, then himself
a glass of the eggnog. He raised his
glass. "To us?"
"To us." Ryan smiled at Colin
and chugged his eggnog. "Hey, this
stuff is pretty good!"
"Must have been the rum. Good idea,
putting that in. Come on, let's
go see about a better tree then the little one we have on the
table..."
As Colin and Ryan left the room, a furry shadow advanced unseen on
the punch bowl and began to drink...
*********************
"Tree, tree, what do we use for a tree?"
Colin paced around the room, muttering under his breath. Ryan,
sitting on the couch, was equally deep in thought and had been for
the last five minutes.
"Umbrella!" Colin suddenly shouted.
"No, Colin, this is Christmas. It
SNOWS at Christmas."
"Not for the weather, silly, the tree!
We have that umbrella
collection Uncle Bob left you! It's got
all sizes of umbrellas in
it; all we have to do is open them and stack them with the biggest on
the bottom and smallest on top."
"But Colin, how do we hold them together?"
"Two words, my friend." Colin
smiled and ran off to the kitchen.
When he came back, he was holding the all-purpose item that
homeowners have relied for repair jobs for ages.
"Duct tape."
*********************
Thirty minutes later, the umbrellas were taped into a semblance of a
tree, and Ryan was taking on the next biggest challenge: ornaments.
"I just can't figure out what to do about them, Colin. I mean I'm
glad we were eventually able to find that strand of lights, but it's
just not a tree without ornaments. Any
ideas?"
"None." Colin's short answer
from his position by the tray of snacks
he and Ryan had been eating was punctuated by a grunt of effort as he
managed to pry two crackers apart despite the cheese spread holding
them together.
"That's it!"
"What?"
"That! The cheese spread!"
"What about it?"
"Colin, think!! You just saw that awesome
demonstration of its
adhesive powers! We can use it to bond
whatever we're going to use
for ornaments to the tree!!"
"What are we using for ornaments?"
"I'm still working on that."
Ryan's eyes fell on the bag of cheese
puffs. "On second thought, belay
that. We can spread cheese on the
umbrella and stick the cheese puffs on it!!
Instant ornaments!!"
Colin said nothing, just gave Ryan a heart-melting smile and started
spreading cheese.
Between the two of them, they were able to get the tree done in about
two hours, owing to the fact that halfway through, Ryan smeared some
cheese on Colin's face and started licking it off. Colin retaliated
by dropping cracker pieces down Ryan's shirt and insisting that Ryan
take off his shirt so he could find them.
Eventually, though, the tree did get done, and then only the mantel
was left to decorate.
"It's got to have garland on it, Colin, Greg won't think it's
properly decorated unless it's got big ropes of the green stuff
hanging off it. But we don't have any
garland."
"We have a suitable substitute.
Remember when I was rooting in the
fridge?" Colin led Ryan into the
kitchen as he talked. A furry
shadow weaved away from the punch bowl, but neither of the two men
saw it. "Well, I noticed something
interesting behind the eggnog.
Remember the spaghetti we had two months ago?"
Colin pulled open the door to reveal a plate of green fuzz that
looked remarkably like coiled garland and looked over at his
lover. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Always."
*********************
As Ryan tacked the last strand of spaghetti to the mantel, he heard
Colin yell from the other room.
"Ryan! Greg's here!"
"Okay!!" Ryan shouted back,
and then checked the room quickly.
Christmas tree without the angel! What
do I do, what do I do…*
The furry shadow chose that moment to stumble drunkenly into the
room, revealing itself to be a large mouse that had somehow managed
to lodge it's head in a hole in the bottom of a
butterfly was also clinging to the back somehow. The mouse stood up
on its hind legs, the effect being that it looked remarkably like it
was wearing a winged dress.
Ryan smiled evilly.
*********************
"Colin?"
"Yes? Ryan, it's three in the
morning…"
"I know, but I can't sleep. Do you
think Greg was mad that there was
a live mouse running around in the tree?"
"No, he was so busy trying to say something inoffensive about the
mantel garland I don't think he noticed.
That was a pretty smart
idea with the mouse though."
"Really? Thanks, Colin. So…"
"So what?"
"It's Christmas morning…"
"And?"
"And I think Santa left you something under the tree…"
"Like?"
"Like whipped cream… and a dog collar…"
"Ryan!!"
THE END