FIC: Wonderland part 1
Dec. 3rd, 2005 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zouzounakiFandom: Hornblower
Rating: R/NC-17 (there's a reason my icon's smilin'! ;-))
Character(s): Horatio
Timeline: After Retribution, movie-wise; almost directly prior to Loyalty.
Title: Wonderland
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ghanistarkiller or Jean/Evenstar
Notes: Looking through my rather large back catalogue of smutty fics, I've found, disturbingly, that I have no Christmas specific fics, at least not in Hornblowerdom (one Hannukah story though, with Edrington! Done to meet a challenge)! But this fits the bill for seasonal reading as its main character really is winter and its, well, wonderland itself!
PART ONE
The winter wind, carrying a salty chill as it swept over the sea and through the icy streets of Portsmouth, rattled Horatio's bones, shaking him like a scarecrow in the bitter current of air. The uniform that had seemed so cumbersome, so damnable thick and heavy in the tropic heat now barely seemed to cover his slender form as if it were rags and tatters. It had, admittedly, seen better days; the cloth was well worn and was beginning to fade, his boots scuffed and rough from trudging about in the harsh English frost.
The small post office was crowded as usual as he lumbered in, feeling the warmth more from the mass of huddled bodies than from the tiny furnace located at the back of the building. He smiled as much as his frost-numbed face and down-trodden countenance would allow when he saw a girl, with her pale sea-green eyes, silken fall of hair as black as midnight and rosy cheeks, at the available stall. Collecting half-pay was a more tolerable necessity when he received it from comely young ladies.
"Aye, you look something a bit worse for wear," she teased, her full pink lips curving gracefully into a smile as Horatio stepped up to the stall. "Down on your luck, I'd bet," she commented as he pocketed his small amount of coinage. His eyes slid reflexively down the smooth arch of her neck to her ample bosom, so soft and inviting beneath her simple frock and the wool shawl she wore over it. Blushing, he returned his stare to her face. "If you're looking for a place to stay," she told him with genuine sympathy, a sentiment he had not experienced for quite some time, "there's a place kind to the likes of you. McCarttey's, just down the street and a turn to the right. Consider it, please."
Night was falling, the temperature dropping as Horatio sat on the small cot in the boarding house he was staying in. His father was dead; that was the first thing that had crossed his mind when he had returned to England. He was dead, the man he most looked up to in the world. Quickly, however, he had been turned from his grief with the urgency for practicality. His father was dead; he had only left him a small amount as inheritance and no place to come home to.
Really, he thought to himself, how much worse off could he be at this McCarttey's place? Before he knew what he was doing, he had packed his meager belongings and was heading out into the biting cold. He couldn't remember exactly what the girl had told him, the directions she had given him, so he wandered the avenue, hoping to spot a sign or marker for what he supposed, with a name like McCarttey, would be an inn. He found none. He was finally forced to ask, tired of feeling the slush crush beneath his boots. "You'll be looking for McCarttey's then," the man he had stopped laughed, looking him up and down, taking in his tatty uniform. He pointed him in the right direction and Horatio was not surprised when he arrived that he had missed the place on his first pass.
It was neither an inn nor a boarding house but what looked to be an old storefront. He entered to find the inside had been converted into a sort of tavern with officers of all rank sitting at tables, chatting, playing whist and drinking. They looked as he did: lacking in funds and alone, no family to return to during this time of uneasy peace. A fire was roaring upon the great brick hearth, creating a cozy, warm atmosphere. Horatio took a seat awkwardly, glancing around as he took the place in, folding his arms over the uneven wooden surface of the table. "Welcome, stranger," a pleasant Irish brogue greeted him and he turned to see a handsome middle-aged man coming towards him, walking somewhat clumsily towards him on his one leg, leaning greatly on a wooden cane to compensate for the lack of anything beneath the thigh of his other. "Lieutenant...?"
"Hornblower," Horatio answered, standing to address the man properly, "Commander, well, Lieutenant Horatio Hornblower, sir."
"Good to have you among our august company," the man smiled. "Lieutenant Eaemon McCarttey, formerly of His Majesty's service." He gestured towards his leg in explanation. "And you, sir," he smiled, smoothing his dark chestnut hair back from his forehead, revealing the distinct point of a widow's peak accentuated by his receding hairline, "are in luck. We've only one room left, and it's at the top which means the cold will be rattling away at ye." Horatio reached for his purse, expecting the man to tell him the fee of such humanity but Eaemon halted his actions. "You needn't be worrying about that here, Lieutenant. This is my way of repaying the brave souls who got me through this," he gestured again to his missing leg, "alive and back to me little girl, Alice. You look like you can use a good hot meal, you do! Sit and I'll get it to ye right away. I'll have me daughter run your things up to your room and prepare it for the night."
Climbing up the three flights of steep, irregular wooden stairs, he found himself in the attic room, stooping to avoid the low ceiling. His belly was more full than it had been in ages, his long fingers thawed from the seemingly endless lack of sensation they had suffered since winter had arrived. It was a snug little chamber, with an old cot draped in a patchwork quilt and mismatched wardrobe and table set. A shuttered, thickly paned window afforded him a view of the roof and of the alleys below. A lively figure was bent over the tiny woodstove, trying for her life to ignite the contents. She started when his footfalls alerted her to his presence, turning as her straight coal black locks fell about her. She smiled that familiar smile that reminded Horatio of a blooming rose in the spring--the girl from the post. "I thought it might be you," she said.
"Miss Alice, I presume," he said, inelegantly taking her hand to kiss it as he remembered the name of McCarttey's daughter. Her slender fingers were covered in ash and soot, most unbefitting for a girl as pretty as she, he decided, and fit perfectly into his large palm. "Commander Horatio Hornblower," he introduced himself. "Well, lieutenant, actually; I had not the time to claim my commission before the truce came."
"I hope you enjoy your stay here," she blushed a little, a shy little twinkle lighting her pale eyes. He felt his body react instantly, muscles coiling and tightening as the stirrings of arousal warming his groin. He had never much been a man satisfied by doxies; they relieved the urge but did not fulfill his greater needs. Here was a girl of about the same age as he, being twenty and seven himself, and the attraction between them was palpable. Though the idea of taking advantage of the daughter of a man who had just shown him so much generosity seemed distasteful. They stood there for several moments, facing each other in awkward silence before a clatter drew her attention to the window. She scurried towards it to make sure the latch was secure and glanced out.
"A storm's coming," she observed, glimpsing the darkening sky as the wind picked up, whipping through the bleak streets and lashing against the solid glass panes. "The Winter Queen is in a fury tonight; there'll be snow by morning, take my word for it." Horatio glared at her dubiously as he tested the cot, finding it to be much softer than that at the lodging house he'd been staying in. "Do you not know about the Winter Queen?" laughed Alice. "She lives at the end of the world, in her ice palace, and cries tears of ice. She rages that she cannot have the entire year to herself and flies from cloud to cloud, screaming her wrath at the world. And when someone passes on in one of her outbursts, she takes pity upon them and brings them to her palace, making them snow angels to assist her in her work."
"Who fills your head with such nonsense?" Horatio scoffed.
"It's just a tale, I know," she admitted bashfully. "My mother perished in a snowstorm and that is what was told to me. Fairy stories, silly really," she said almost apologetically, "but to look out upon a freshly laid blanket of snow... Winter can be so cold and brutal and yet there's so much loveliness, so much peace."
There was a simpleness about the girl though he doubted she was simple minded, an odd sort of innocent maturity conflicting with a willingness to believe in such fables and fabrications. She was illuminated by the obscured moonlight, haloed by the flicker coming from the streetlights as she peeked out the window then quickly secured the shutters, leaving them to the glow of tallow-light. "Why did her heart freeze, the Winter Queen?" he found himself asking.
"Why does any woman's?" she smiled lightly. "A man. She loved the Summer King; together they begat the Autumn Prince and the Maiden of Spring, neither summer nor winter. But he could not live in her frozen world and so he flew to the other end of the earth and left her. You play whist, don't you?" she inquired, glancing at his hands. Before he could reply, she answered herself, "And I bet you're good at it too. Got the mind for it and the hands. We've a few men who play whist, my father doesn't encourage it but they make their bets on it. The lucky ones earn their way out of this place and onto greener pastures quicker than the others. Brave Sir Knight is particularly talented with a deck of cards, though I suspect he cheats quite often."
"Brave Sir Knight?" Horatio frowned in confusion, wondering if he had indeed wandered somehow into an enchanted folk tale after all.
Alice laughed, realizing her mistake. "One of my nicknames I've given the boarders," she explained. "I call Midshipman Lorry Brave Sir Knight for his ship's last triumphant battle was against a French frigate named The Dragon. They slew the dragon, you see," she grinned. "He sleeps on the first floor along with the Scarlet Soldier, the Laughing Beggar and the Sea Dragon, he's a bit irritable in the morning." She retrieved a chessboard from one of the wardrobe drawers and set it up upon one of the tables, placing the pawns, to indicate where each man's room was located. Two rows above more, she laid out more of the pieces to show him where others slept upon the second floor including her father for whom she used the King in representation. "And Keira too, but I'm not supposed to know about that," she winked. The King of Dreams resides in this room," she indicated a square, "we don't go in there. And here," she placed a knight at the very top of the board, "is where you sleep."
He picked up the Queen piece. "And where do you sleep?" he asked, a bit of a naughty gleam passing over the engaging brown pools of his eyes.
"Anywhere I want to," she answered huskily, leaning in close to him, so close he could feel the heat of her body even in the sharp cold of the small room. She laughed as Horatio was slightly taken aback by her candor. He himself felt his cheeks burning crimson at her whispered suggestion, wanting desperately to take advantage of it, physically and emotionally; his body begged him to take comfort in her. She was buxom, comely with a pleasingly sweet manner and from the way she was looking at him, her beautiful smile like a blossoming rose, he knew she wanted him.
He bent forward and placed a kiss on her forehead, his body now aching with desire. He moved his lips down to her own in what began as a kiss one would bestow upon a favorite sister. It changed promptly as urgency and yearning took hold of the both of them. Her little hands slid beneath his jacket, feeling even through his waistcoat and shirtsleeves, his powerfully lean torso. The fabric was heated beneath her fingertips; his body alight with the flame of his arousal. She could feel him, hard as granite inside his breeches, his genitals aching and stretching to be free only to plunge into the silken confines of her wet hot lushness again and again.
He was beautiful, the force of his passion almost driving her backwards as she relished in it. His hair was so delicate like clouds as she ran her hands through his curls, the strong lines of his face focused, determined and yet so elegant in such an unusual way. She liked the way his nose squashed against her own, the way her lips seemed to envelope her mouth as his hands explored her body like an excited boy with a wrapped package. No, not a boy; he was most definitely a man in his caress and his desires. Her full breasts fit so wonderfully into his large palms as he took them in his hold, squeezing slightly, finding the peaks through her frock, circling them with fervent thumbs until she could feel them bloom unto hard little tingling nubs.
"No!" he suddenly broke free from her, his breaths coming in loud, deep pants. She watched him, confused, as he struggled to gain control of himself. "That was...extremely inappropriate of me," he stammered an apology, his face still flushed with their shared enthusiasm. "I am exceedingly sorry, madam, for my behavior..."
"If it's my father you're worried on..." she began, still looking bewildered at this sudden change. She was quite sure this wasn't the way it was supposed to work; she fancied him and her body had responded so delightfully to his attentions. She was sure he fancied her. How good he was, how admirable that he seemingly worried so much on her honor. She understood at last and smiled pleasantly at him and his protestations. He was as noble as she had at first thought him to be, as gallant as he appeared.
"Breakfast is usually prepared around seven," she told him cheerily, smoothing her dress out, "if you'd like a wake up call..."
"That won't be necessary, thank you," he murmured, even now mortified at his lack of decorum.
"I'll bid you a good night then," she said, kissing him upon the cheek. "I'll see you in the morn, then. Pleasant dreams," she giggled as she exited the room, her eyes swimming mischievously in the candlelight. Horatio lay upon the bed, breathing a prolonged sigh. Sweet dreams indeed, he thought, beating his pillow to softness as he settled back down onto the thin mattress.
Click here for chapter two...
Peace, Ghani
Rating: R/NC-17 (there's a reason my icon's smilin'! ;-))
Character(s): Horatio
Timeline: After Retribution, movie-wise; almost directly prior to Loyalty.
Title: Wonderland
Author:
ghanistarkiller or Jean/EvenstarNotes: Looking through my rather large back catalogue of smutty fics, I've found, disturbingly, that I have no Christmas specific fics, at least not in Hornblowerdom (one Hannukah story though, with Edrington! Done to meet a challenge)! But this fits the bill for seasonal reading as its main character really is winter and its, well, wonderland itself!
PART ONE
The winter wind, carrying a salty chill as it swept over the sea and through the icy streets of Portsmouth, rattled Horatio's bones, shaking him like a scarecrow in the bitter current of air. The uniform that had seemed so cumbersome, so damnable thick and heavy in the tropic heat now barely seemed to cover his slender form as if it were rags and tatters. It had, admittedly, seen better days; the cloth was well worn and was beginning to fade, his boots scuffed and rough from trudging about in the harsh English frost.
The small post office was crowded as usual as he lumbered in, feeling the warmth more from the mass of huddled bodies than from the tiny furnace located at the back of the building. He smiled as much as his frost-numbed face and down-trodden countenance would allow when he saw a girl, with her pale sea-green eyes, silken fall of hair as black as midnight and rosy cheeks, at the available stall. Collecting half-pay was a more tolerable necessity when he received it from comely young ladies.
"Aye, you look something a bit worse for wear," she teased, her full pink lips curving gracefully into a smile as Horatio stepped up to the stall. "Down on your luck, I'd bet," she commented as he pocketed his small amount of coinage. His eyes slid reflexively down the smooth arch of her neck to her ample bosom, so soft and inviting beneath her simple frock and the wool shawl she wore over it. Blushing, he returned his stare to her face. "If you're looking for a place to stay," she told him with genuine sympathy, a sentiment he had not experienced for quite some time, "there's a place kind to the likes of you. McCarttey's, just down the street and a turn to the right. Consider it, please."
Night was falling, the temperature dropping as Horatio sat on the small cot in the boarding house he was staying in. His father was dead; that was the first thing that had crossed his mind when he had returned to England. He was dead, the man he most looked up to in the world. Quickly, however, he had been turned from his grief with the urgency for practicality. His father was dead; he had only left him a small amount as inheritance and no place to come home to.
Really, he thought to himself, how much worse off could he be at this McCarttey's place? Before he knew what he was doing, he had packed his meager belongings and was heading out into the biting cold. He couldn't remember exactly what the girl had told him, the directions she had given him, so he wandered the avenue, hoping to spot a sign or marker for what he supposed, with a name like McCarttey, would be an inn. He found none. He was finally forced to ask, tired of feeling the slush crush beneath his boots. "You'll be looking for McCarttey's then," the man he had stopped laughed, looking him up and down, taking in his tatty uniform. He pointed him in the right direction and Horatio was not surprised when he arrived that he had missed the place on his first pass.
It was neither an inn nor a boarding house but what looked to be an old storefront. He entered to find the inside had been converted into a sort of tavern with officers of all rank sitting at tables, chatting, playing whist and drinking. They looked as he did: lacking in funds and alone, no family to return to during this time of uneasy peace. A fire was roaring upon the great brick hearth, creating a cozy, warm atmosphere. Horatio took a seat awkwardly, glancing around as he took the place in, folding his arms over the uneven wooden surface of the table. "Welcome, stranger," a pleasant Irish brogue greeted him and he turned to see a handsome middle-aged man coming towards him, walking somewhat clumsily towards him on his one leg, leaning greatly on a wooden cane to compensate for the lack of anything beneath the thigh of his other. "Lieutenant...?"
"Hornblower," Horatio answered, standing to address the man properly, "Commander, well, Lieutenant Horatio Hornblower, sir."
"Good to have you among our august company," the man smiled. "Lieutenant Eaemon McCarttey, formerly of His Majesty's service." He gestured towards his leg in explanation. "And you, sir," he smiled, smoothing his dark chestnut hair back from his forehead, revealing the distinct point of a widow's peak accentuated by his receding hairline, "are in luck. We've only one room left, and it's at the top which means the cold will be rattling away at ye." Horatio reached for his purse, expecting the man to tell him the fee of such humanity but Eaemon halted his actions. "You needn't be worrying about that here, Lieutenant. This is my way of repaying the brave souls who got me through this," he gestured again to his missing leg, "alive and back to me little girl, Alice. You look like you can use a good hot meal, you do! Sit and I'll get it to ye right away. I'll have me daughter run your things up to your room and prepare it for the night."
Climbing up the three flights of steep, irregular wooden stairs, he found himself in the attic room, stooping to avoid the low ceiling. His belly was more full than it had been in ages, his long fingers thawed from the seemingly endless lack of sensation they had suffered since winter had arrived. It was a snug little chamber, with an old cot draped in a patchwork quilt and mismatched wardrobe and table set. A shuttered, thickly paned window afforded him a view of the roof and of the alleys below. A lively figure was bent over the tiny woodstove, trying for her life to ignite the contents. She started when his footfalls alerted her to his presence, turning as her straight coal black locks fell about her. She smiled that familiar smile that reminded Horatio of a blooming rose in the spring--the girl from the post. "I thought it might be you," she said.
"Miss Alice, I presume," he said, inelegantly taking her hand to kiss it as he remembered the name of McCarttey's daughter. Her slender fingers were covered in ash and soot, most unbefitting for a girl as pretty as she, he decided, and fit perfectly into his large palm. "Commander Horatio Hornblower," he introduced himself. "Well, lieutenant, actually; I had not the time to claim my commission before the truce came."
"I hope you enjoy your stay here," she blushed a little, a shy little twinkle lighting her pale eyes. He felt his body react instantly, muscles coiling and tightening as the stirrings of arousal warming his groin. He had never much been a man satisfied by doxies; they relieved the urge but did not fulfill his greater needs. Here was a girl of about the same age as he, being twenty and seven himself, and the attraction between them was palpable. Though the idea of taking advantage of the daughter of a man who had just shown him so much generosity seemed distasteful. They stood there for several moments, facing each other in awkward silence before a clatter drew her attention to the window. She scurried towards it to make sure the latch was secure and glanced out.
"A storm's coming," she observed, glimpsing the darkening sky as the wind picked up, whipping through the bleak streets and lashing against the solid glass panes. "The Winter Queen is in a fury tonight; there'll be snow by morning, take my word for it." Horatio glared at her dubiously as he tested the cot, finding it to be much softer than that at the lodging house he'd been staying in. "Do you not know about the Winter Queen?" laughed Alice. "She lives at the end of the world, in her ice palace, and cries tears of ice. She rages that she cannot have the entire year to herself and flies from cloud to cloud, screaming her wrath at the world. And when someone passes on in one of her outbursts, she takes pity upon them and brings them to her palace, making them snow angels to assist her in her work."
"Who fills your head with such nonsense?" Horatio scoffed.
"It's just a tale, I know," she admitted bashfully. "My mother perished in a snowstorm and that is what was told to me. Fairy stories, silly really," she said almost apologetically, "but to look out upon a freshly laid blanket of snow... Winter can be so cold and brutal and yet there's so much loveliness, so much peace."
There was a simpleness about the girl though he doubted she was simple minded, an odd sort of innocent maturity conflicting with a willingness to believe in such fables and fabrications. She was illuminated by the obscured moonlight, haloed by the flicker coming from the streetlights as she peeked out the window then quickly secured the shutters, leaving them to the glow of tallow-light. "Why did her heart freeze, the Winter Queen?" he found himself asking.
"Why does any woman's?" she smiled lightly. "A man. She loved the Summer King; together they begat the Autumn Prince and the Maiden of Spring, neither summer nor winter. But he could not live in her frozen world and so he flew to the other end of the earth and left her. You play whist, don't you?" she inquired, glancing at his hands. Before he could reply, she answered herself, "And I bet you're good at it too. Got the mind for it and the hands. We've a few men who play whist, my father doesn't encourage it but they make their bets on it. The lucky ones earn their way out of this place and onto greener pastures quicker than the others. Brave Sir Knight is particularly talented with a deck of cards, though I suspect he cheats quite often."
"Brave Sir Knight?" Horatio frowned in confusion, wondering if he had indeed wandered somehow into an enchanted folk tale after all.
Alice laughed, realizing her mistake. "One of my nicknames I've given the boarders," she explained. "I call Midshipman Lorry Brave Sir Knight for his ship's last triumphant battle was against a French frigate named The Dragon. They slew the dragon, you see," she grinned. "He sleeps on the first floor along with the Scarlet Soldier, the Laughing Beggar and the Sea Dragon, he's a bit irritable in the morning." She retrieved a chessboard from one of the wardrobe drawers and set it up upon one of the tables, placing the pawns, to indicate where each man's room was located. Two rows above more, she laid out more of the pieces to show him where others slept upon the second floor including her father for whom she used the King in representation. "And Keira too, but I'm not supposed to know about that," she winked. The King of Dreams resides in this room," she indicated a square, "we don't go in there. And here," she placed a knight at the very top of the board, "is where you sleep."
He picked up the Queen piece. "And where do you sleep?" he asked, a bit of a naughty gleam passing over the engaging brown pools of his eyes.
"Anywhere I want to," she answered huskily, leaning in close to him, so close he could feel the heat of her body even in the sharp cold of the small room. She laughed as Horatio was slightly taken aback by her candor. He himself felt his cheeks burning crimson at her whispered suggestion, wanting desperately to take advantage of it, physically and emotionally; his body begged him to take comfort in her. She was buxom, comely with a pleasingly sweet manner and from the way she was looking at him, her beautiful smile like a blossoming rose, he knew she wanted him.
He bent forward and placed a kiss on her forehead, his body now aching with desire. He moved his lips down to her own in what began as a kiss one would bestow upon a favorite sister. It changed promptly as urgency and yearning took hold of the both of them. Her little hands slid beneath his jacket, feeling even through his waistcoat and shirtsleeves, his powerfully lean torso. The fabric was heated beneath her fingertips; his body alight with the flame of his arousal. She could feel him, hard as granite inside his breeches, his genitals aching and stretching to be free only to plunge into the silken confines of her wet hot lushness again and again.
He was beautiful, the force of his passion almost driving her backwards as she relished in it. His hair was so delicate like clouds as she ran her hands through his curls, the strong lines of his face focused, determined and yet so elegant in such an unusual way. She liked the way his nose squashed against her own, the way her lips seemed to envelope her mouth as his hands explored her body like an excited boy with a wrapped package. No, not a boy; he was most definitely a man in his caress and his desires. Her full breasts fit so wonderfully into his large palms as he took them in his hold, squeezing slightly, finding the peaks through her frock, circling them with fervent thumbs until she could feel them bloom unto hard little tingling nubs.
"No!" he suddenly broke free from her, his breaths coming in loud, deep pants. She watched him, confused, as he struggled to gain control of himself. "That was...extremely inappropriate of me," he stammered an apology, his face still flushed with their shared enthusiasm. "I am exceedingly sorry, madam, for my behavior..."
"If it's my father you're worried on..." she began, still looking bewildered at this sudden change. She was quite sure this wasn't the way it was supposed to work; she fancied him and her body had responded so delightfully to his attentions. She was sure he fancied her. How good he was, how admirable that he seemingly worried so much on her honor. She understood at last and smiled pleasantly at him and his protestations. He was as noble as she had at first thought him to be, as gallant as he appeared.
"Breakfast is usually prepared around seven," she told him cheerily, smoothing her dress out, "if you'd like a wake up call..."
"That won't be necessary, thank you," he murmured, even now mortified at his lack of decorum.
"I'll bid you a good night then," she said, kissing him upon the cheek. "I'll see you in the morn, then. Pleasant dreams," she giggled as she exited the room, her eyes swimming mischievously in the candlelight. Horatio lay upon the bed, breathing a prolonged sigh. Sweet dreams indeed, he thought, beating his pillow to softness as he settled back down onto the thin mattress.
Click here for chapter two...
Peace, Ghani
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2005-12-04 08:50 am (UTC)PS your Santa is sexy. Nah, I don't mean the Horry one. The nekkid one. Mrowr! ;)
no subject
on 2005-12-04 05:36 pm (UTC)Always a good way to get through a working Monday: smut! *g* How's the shopping going? We've been running around like crazy this year so there's no great rush at the end of the month which is fun but it can get a little hectic ;-) Think me and the sis are going to see Pride and Prejudice today, hmmm...
PS your Santa is sexy. Nah, I don't mean the Horry one. The nekkid one. Mrowr! ;)
Bwahahaha, he's a big hit with everyone! My poor header pic Santa ain't getting no love! Bwahahaha! ;-) Wanna sit on nekkid Santa's lap? Heh!
Peace, Ghani