~The Shy and The Stubborn~ (the santa clause)

Chapter 6: goodbye dignity

"Maxine! Good god, I missed you!"

With an overdramatic and exasperated sigh, Justice threw herself at her best friend, the taller woman wrapping her up in her arms as she rubbed her back caringly.

"Oh, Justice. It was really that bad?" she asked sympathetically, though knowing that her friend was just putting on a show for the sake of dramatic effect.
"I've spoken to too many people today!" Justice exclaimed, jumping back and abruptly grabbing Max's arms, "my social battery is critically low!"
"Hey now, it's nothing that can't be fixed by a smoke and a beer," Max assured her, wrapping and arm around her shoulder as they walked out of the factory together and towards her car.
"Where's Jamie? He usually walks out with us," Justice pointed out, considering Max always gave the two of them rides to work since neither had their own cars.
"He said there was some paperwork he needed to catch up on, someone screwed up an order and he has to file some sort of rectification form or whatever," Max explained, the lights on her car flashing once as she unlocked it with her keys, "said he'd take a cab home or something."
"Fair enough. At least he won't be around to scold me for my bad habits," Justice sighed, opening the passenger side door and getting into the car as Max did the same on the other side.
"You know how you get when you drink," Max pointed out, shoving her keys into the ignition and turning it, to which the car spluttered to life.
"It's not that," Justice clarified, looking over at her friend who was trying to carefully reverse out of the work parking lot, "I mean smoking. He treats me like I don't know how bad it is for me."
"He just cares about you...maybe so much so that he sees above your autonomy," Max guessed, clicking her tongue in annoyance at the elves that got in the way of her obvious manoeuvre.
"Just because I'm fragile mentally doesn't mean I'm fragile physically," Justice huffed, sinking in her seat as she held her calloused hands up in front of her face, "I mean, look at my hands! I'm not made of glass!"
"I know honey, I know," Max assured her, having made it out of the parking lot and reaching over to rub her friend's shoulder, "Just don't take it to heart - as hard as that is. I see past your fragility and I'll never treat you any less than you are."

Her icy blue eyes cast out the car window, toward the monotonous white of the coming winter holidays, and she let go of her frustration in a single, quiet breath. Jamie meant well, she knew that better than anything. After all, they'd known each other since she began retaining memories, he'd never do anything to intentionally hurt her. But then again, it was painful to be patronised like an innocent child, incapable of understanding mature concepts, what was bad in this world. She knew she was letting herself rot by participating in these activities,

and maybe that's why she did it.

-

When she was with Max, Justice always had one too many beers.

The bar on the outskirts of their little Christmas town was only ever open on Fridays, til 4am, and this would be any and every resident's only access to any alcoholic beverages.

Alcohol consumption was highly discouraged by the head elf - with the exception of a bit of eggnog closer to Christmas. However, it was a considerable issue to him that should there be no access to this substance full stop, some would try to obtain it or create it themselves, which in more cases than not, has caused casualties - at least in the human world. So, he would allow them this.

Every Friday, the elves of writing department plus Jamie would most likely find themselves here in varying numbers, though Max and Justice were part of their more avid customers. This week however, it was just the two of them of the group, which meant they had no one to monitor their drinks and make sure that they didn't have too much.