F the Halls

One

Recliner reclined, beagle on his lap, pizza en rout and Home Alone on the TV, Fields gave a contented sigh and prepared to settle into another pleasantly low-key, solo Christmas eve.

It wasn't that he was anti-Christmas, as such.  More so that he'd found, from various yuletides of yore, the whole holiday season was a thing generally best experienced at a distance.  Preferably a long distance.  Or, quite possibly, even better, not experienced—at all.

In fact, it would be fair to say that Fields felt the Grinch was seriously misunderstood.

He was just dozing off when the buzz of his phone intruded, rousing both him and his canine passenger.  With an apologetic ruffle of Wingnut's ears, he checked the screen, anticipatory pizza-delay frown already in place.  The frown became a grimace.  Ah, crap.  Suddenly, waiting for pizza didn't seem so bad.

"Hey, Peregrine."

"Hey?  Hey? What kind of a greeting is that, at this time of year?  Merry Christmas, partner!"

"Um, yeah.  Ditto, I guess.  Well, er—thanks for that.  I appreciate the good wishes and everything, right back at you, and if that's all, I'll guess I'll see you at the office, next week.  Bye, Pere—"

"Next week?  Oh, I can do better than that, Fields.  How does ten minutes sound?"

His heart sank.  "Unless you're talking about the arrival of my pizza, not good."

"You have pizza on the way?  Excellent; I can fill you in while we eat."

Feeling very glad he'd opted for the extra-large capricciosa, with garlic bread, it suddenly occurred to Fields that perhaps he wasn't quite focusing on the key issue at hand.

"Hang on.  Fill me in?  Fill me in on what?  Peregrine, what are you talking about?"

"Our new case, of course.  Try to keep up, kiddo."

"What new case?  Peregrine, we're on leave!  Can't this wait until we're back on deck?"

"Yeah, about that.  I kind of lost a bet with Higgs and Smolensk, those two bozos in vice, which means we're on call tonight, instead of them.  I knew you wouldn't mind, since you've got nothing on."

Instinctively offended, Fields opened his mouth to protest, but then glanced around the empty room, looked down into Wingnut's brown eyes, and did a quick estimate of how many times he'd seen Home Alone.  He sighed.

"Fine.  But please tell me the case is something simple.  Something not F-Filesy."

"Not F-Filesy?  Where's the fun in that?  Trust me, Fields—this is right up our alley.  What we've got is a genuine, bona fide, dyed-in-the-wool UFO.  Perfect F-Files material.  Great luck, huh?"

He closed his eyes.  "Oh, yeah.  Luck.  That's just the word I was thinking of.  Or at least, it rhymes with it, anyway."

"Ha!  Good one, Fields.  See you in ten."