Knotty Holidays #1
Benny wanted some overtime for the holidays, but it looks like he'll have to be an elf to get it.
Benny loves his job as a photographer, and he's good at getting the kids to smile. That's probably why his boss asked him to handle Santa photography. It's a long day dressed as an elf. At least the men playing Santa are good eye candy.
Pete and Warren love kids, and becoming Santa each year lets them get their fill of small smiles.
Being an alpha-alpha couple is hard. Both Pete and Warren want kids, but know the realities of adopting make it difficult. So every holiday season they don costumes and listen to the wishes of thousands of children—as mall Santas. But this year they're faced with something unexpected: their attraction to their photographer—Benny.
Can they find a bit of holiday magic in each other?
Santas' Elf is a 16K word, non-shifter, MMM, mpreg, omegaverse romance
Chapter 1 - Benny
~October~
“Smile for the duckie!” I sing-songed, waving a rubber duck above my camera.
The baby sitting on their papa’s lap broke into a huge giggling grin, eyes aimed exactly where I wanted them.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
Satisfied that I’d likely gotten a good shot, I had both dads shift a bit, then managed another huge laugh from the baby. The third pose was the trickiest, as the kid was getting fussy, but I managed another smile to finish the number of poses they’d requested.
I thanked the men as they walked out, the omega bouncing the baby slightly as they headed to reception, where they’d have the opportunity to review the pictures and select their package. I uploaded the photos to the studio’s cloud storage, then started prepping for my next appointment.
There was a knock at the door, and I turned to see my boss, Bob, standing there.
“Got a minute?” he asked.
I nodded, grabbed a sanitizing wipe, and cleaned the bench the family had sat on. “Sure, what’s up?”
“How’d you like to make some overtime before Christmas?”
I stood, turned, and our eyes met. “Seriously?”
He nodded, but there was something about his posture that made me second-guess his motive.
I narrowed my eyes. “What’s the catch?”
He sighed. “We’ve got a contract with the mall to do Santa photography, but Rosa can’t put in those hours with her pregnancy.”
“And I’m the low man on the totem,” I replied. “So I get the shit job.”
Bob rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s more that you already indicated that you wanted more hours, and you’re the best with the kiddos. We need somebody who can get the little ones smiling.”
I scrubbed a hand down my face. I had asked for more hours, and I’d probably end up on some Santa shifts regardless. So the question came down to how hard I was gonna make it for him to staff.
“What would I need to do?”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re going to hire temps to handle payment and package sales, so you wouldn’t have to worry about that. But it’s a long day dressed as an elf. Some of those shifts can be up to ten hours—eleven if you include getting changed.”
“What else?”
“Six days a week, Monday through Saturday, starting the second week of November. You’d have Thanksgiving off, of course, but Black Friday will be insane. I’ll have Jonah cover Sundays and we’ll do fewer in-store appointments to make it work.”
I ran my hair over my short brown hair. The extra hours would be nice through the holiday season…
“Ok,” I sighed. “I’ll do it.”
Bob smiled. “Fantastic! Stop by my office before you go home. I’ll get you the details so you can get a costume, and I’ll throw in a few extra paid days for you to use next year.”
It was at least a bit of extra compensation. “I appreciate it.”
“No, it’s a huge relief for me. Having one person is easier than cobbling together a bunch of you to cover it.”
“Who’s playing Santa?”
He shrugged. “The mall management already had somebody they were happy with before they contracted with us for the photography portion. I’ve never met them.”
“Oh, ok.”
He reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Yeah.”
He walked out and I sighed. “Well… if nothing else, it’s an extra bullet point on my resume.”
Author Bio:Lacey lives in New Mexico with her four critters. She’s a Jill-of-all-trades by day, but loves writing in her spare time. She dabbles in a variety of pairings, but jumped feet-first into the deep end of omegaverse the first time she read it. She loves the play on social expectations and the different ways to express romance.
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