A/N: This fic is dedicated to Invisible Ranger, who taught me to love all things Elysium and Kruger in particular!

WARNINGS: Mature themes, slightly A/U. Please forgive errors with the Afrikaans as I was using Google Translate. Thanks!-Maumauka

A Christmas Surprise

Defense Secretary Delacourt woke to a splitting headache. For a moment, she couldn't remember where she was, but as her vision slowly cleared, she recognized the ceiling of her bedroom. It was another beautiful, sunny day on Elysium. A delicious breeze, lightly scented with papaya, was wafting in through her window.

She wondered how long she'd been asleep. Surely there was something urgent she had to do today? Delacourt tried to think, but nothing immediately came to mind. Her headache didn't help. In fact, her whole body felt oddly sore, and her skin felt sticky. What in God's name had she been up to last night?

And then she remembered: the Christmas party. Last night had been the annual Christmas/Holiday party for the upper members of the Elysium government and as he did every year, Marc Montreaux had unveiled his latest vintage of synth-wine. It must have been powerful stuff to produce a hangover like this one. Delacourt prided herself on being able to hold her liquor.

She wondered what time it was. She had definitely overslept. She rolled over to look at the clock on the wall comm and nearly swallowed her tongue. She wasn't alone. Kruger grinned down at her, his head propped on his fist, a fluffy Santa Claus hat pulled rakishly down over one ear. He waggled his eyebrows at her. "Merry Christmas, darlin'!"

Delacourt gasped in shock and tried to roll away, only to be pinned by the mercenary's strong arms. "Hey now, none of that, eh? Don't want be punished again, do you?"

"Again?!" Delacourt was humiliated to hear just how high and squeaky her voice had gone.

Kruger chuckled. "Yer bum's probably a bit sore. Yer a stubborn meisie." He ran a hand over the aforementioned body part and she realized he was right. His palm was rough and callused against her skin. Her bare skin.

"Oh no!" she groaned, closing her eyes, as if that would make the whole ghastly situation disappear. "Dear God, no…tell me we didn't!"

Kruger laughed even harder and buried his face in the hollow between her neck and shoulder, nipping her skin with his sharp teeth. His beard tickled. "Why the fok would I say that? We had a great time, din't we?" His hands moved down her body, and to her everlasting shame, Delacourt found her flesh responding, growing more supple and warm. "It's completely wrong! Unprofessiona! Violates every ethical boundary!" she muttered.

"Yer boundaries needed violatin', bokkie. I thought you were gonna drain me dry for a while there! Just how long 'as it been, anyway?" His hand burrowed between her legs. Delacourt clamped them together, but of course it didn't deter Kruger. He gave her inner thigh a sharp pinch. "Open up! Ah, there's my girl. Yer nice and wet for me, aren't you? Wag 'n bietjie and we'll start the day off properly, ne? Then, if you're a very good girl, you can make me some fokkin' breakfast."

Delacourt responded by grabbing the lamp from her night table and bashing him across the temple with it. Kruger slumped down into the bed and she leaped out and retrieved the stunner she kept for emergencies. One blast to the head, another to the chest and he was out for the count. It wouldn't last forever, but at least it gave her some time to think. She had to get him out of her room! Damage control was going to be a bitch in any case; she simply could not allow Agent Kruger to be found naked in her bed.

I am going to ruin Montreaux, she thought. I will personally see to it that everything he touches turns to dust. He will never get another contract or a subsidy for his damned wine. NOTHING! It had to be the drinks. Every year at the Christmas party he unveils his newest "vintage" and every year someone ends up in some godawful situation. To think I used to LAUGH at those people!

Delacourt threw her clothes on as fast as she could, her mind working at hyper-drive speed, trying to think who owed her a favor. Tuyet. He's the only one. He saved my ass that time we had to have Kruger and his two flunkeys up here for personal leave and they crashed Eloise's party and pissed on her lawn. He's wanted the R & D Directorship since he started working for us. I think he'll deal.

She punched Tuyet's code into the wall comm, keeping one eye on the unconscious mercenary. When his voice came over the speaker, she tried to stay calm. "I need you here with a memory scoop and the footage for every security camera in this building, on the double, no questions asked. Do it and you can consider yourself launched on a fabulous new career."

"As you wish, Madame. I'll be there in five minutes."

Part of Something Magnificent

When he clicked off, Delacourt studied Kruger. She had to get him into the med-bay. Tuyet could only scoop his memory if he was hooked up. She had to find some way to keep him out until then. Maybe there was something in her personal stores.

A quick search turned up some of the mild sedatives she used when she couldn't sleep. The medicine was administered on thin sheets that dissolved under the tongue. Delacourt slipped two sheets out of the box and made her way to the side of the bed. Kruger still seemed to be out of it, but Delacourt knew better than to take that at face value. She kept her stunner charged, just in case.

Carefully, she worked his mouth open with her fingers, praying he wouldn't wake up and decide to bite. Fortunately, his jaw remained slack as she placed the sedatives under his tongue. She tried not to think about how long he probably went without cleaning his teeth. She expected his breath to be terrible, but instead a light, fruity scent wafted up to her when he exhaled. There were little dark things stuck in his beard and for a horrible moment, Delacourt thought they were bugs. A closer look revealed that they were seeds.

What in the hell…?

Carefully, she drew the covers away from Kruger's body. The bed was full of some kind of fruit rinds. She picked one up and sniffed at it. Papaya.

I'm not going to like this. I know it. I hope Tuyet manages to get ahold of all the recordings. Every single bit will need to be destroyed.

Delacourt rummaged in her night table for the remote that operated the security cams in her quarters. When she found it, she tapped the buttons to call up the footage from the last twelve hours. She remembered being at the party until midnight, then slowly making her way down the corridor outside the conference/ballroom. Everything after that was a blur.

The cam showed the time as being a little after one when the front door to her quarters crashed open, kicked by one of Kruger's heavy combat boots. He was carrying her over his shoulder and she was wearing that idiotic Santa hat and giggling like a lunatic. In his other hand, the mercenary carried a bottle of the wine she planned to declare an illegal substance.

"Quiet, meisie!" Kruger slapped her backside, making her giggle even harder. "You want to wake the whole fokkin' station? Shut up until I get the damn door closed."

"I wanna be part of shomthing magnifishent!" Delacourt slurred, still giggling. One of her shoes had fallen off.

"Oh, you will be darlin'. I plan to see to that."

Delacourt covered her face with her hand as she paused the recording. What had Kruger even been doing in the building?! Mercenaries were never invited to upper-level social events! She dimly remembered that he was due for rearming and upgrades. That meant he was supposed to be staying in the barracks near the docking area, but rules and regulations meant nothing to him. If Kruger wanted to visit a restricted area, then he would visit it. It was one of the reasons he worked so well for her, and one of the reasons she tried to keep him away from Elysium as much as possible. He probably heard there was free booze.

From the bed, Kruger made an indistinct noise. Delacourt moved swiftly, gripping him under the arms and hauling him up into a sitting position. He leaned back against her without seeming to awaken. With much grunting and swearing, Delacourt managed to haul him from the bed and drag him to the medbay. Getting him up into it might be more than she could manage, but at least he was near the thing. She wished he wasn't naked. For a filthy desert rat, Kruger was nicely built. He was slim, like most Elysian men, but there the similarity ended. Elysian men's bodies weren't corded with ropes of muscle; they weren't hairy; they didn't smell musky and sweaty and (though Delacourt blushed to admit it), they weren't nearly as well-endowed.

To stop the unprofitable turn her thoughts threatened to take, Delacourt looked around for his clothes. She soon located a pair of crumpled fatigue pants on the other side of the room, in a pile with his boots and armor. She snatched them up and began the laborious task of trying to thread Kruger's legs through them. The wall comm beeped.

Damn it!

"Yes?" she growled.

"Tuyet here, Madame, with the intel you requested."

"Enter."

The door to her quarters slid open. Tuyet was alone in the mercifully empty corridor. His eyebrows flew up when he spotted the Defense Secretary kneeling on the floor next to the unconscious mercenary whose camos were down around his knees. Tuyet cleared his throat. "We need to get him into the medbay. Shall I summon a droid?"

"No!" Droids automatically stored in their memories all the tasks they were asked to perform. "Just help me."

Tuyet nodded and carefully set his equipment down. He took over her position and Delcacourt moved down to grab Kruger's feet, noticing with distaste that he wasn't in the habit of cutting his toenails, either. "On three, Madame Secretary. One…two…"

"Three!" They lifted at the same time, and managed to maneuver Kruger's dead weight into the machine. Tuyet closed the lid and hooked up the memory device to the medbay's info-port. "How much do you need erased?"

"At least the past twenty-four hours. Did you bring the recordings?"

"Yes. Security has been notified that it's your order and that they are to follow the Code Orange protocol."

"Good. You understand, of course, that not a word of this leaves here."

"Of course." Tuyet focused on hooking Kruger up completely to the medbay's computer. The nice thing about bio-implants was that they made diagnostics a snap. While he worked, Delacourt loaded the Security footage into her personal tablet. The cams showed Kruger making his way into the building at around 11:45, flanked by his two goons. "Bound to be some good dop 'ere boss, eh?" one of them said with a grin. "Good food, too."

"I'm here for the meisies" said the other. "You reckon that dark one from the FPU's gonna be there?"

"She's fifty fokkin' years old, mate!"

"So what? Just means she knows what it's all about, eh?"

I must warn Darlene about this, Delacourt thought, wincing. Darlene Amble was fifty. She was also happily married to a businessman at Imports/Exchange and had two young daughters.

The men on the screen laughed. Kruger said something to them that she couldn't quite catch. She had a basic knowledge of Afrikaans, but not enough for her to understand everything, especially when they spoke fast. The two henchmen headed off down a side corridor while Kruger proceeded in the direction of the conference rooms.

He didn't come in, though. He would have been thrown out if he had.

Delacourt fast-forwarded the recording to midnight. She saw herself leaving the conference rooms, along with a few other sloshed party-goers. She was wearing the Santa hat and carrying a bottle of the lethal vino. She said goodnight to the others at the end of the corridor and took the turn that would take her to the elevators. Kruger was nowhere in sight. She called up the footage from the elevator bay and there he was, leaning against the wall. "Good evening, Miss Delacourt", he said with exaggerated politeness. "How lovely to see you again."

"What are you doing here?" she asked, only it came out "Whatyou dooneer?"

"Might ask you the same question, meisie" Kruger didn't move from his position, slouched against the wall. His dark, unblinking eyes slowly looked her up and down but his face remained neutral. "Yer pretty gesuip."

Delacourt snorted. "Am not. How dare you?! I would never allow myshelf to become on-in-toxshicated. I've just had shome very good wine. You want any?" She waved the bottle at him. "A little holiday cheer, hmm?"

"Why not?" Kruger took the bottle from her and swigged from it. It made him cough. "Dunno what you got here, but it ant any fokkin' wine. It tastes like papaya juice and rotgut."

"That's because it IS" Delacourt said, enunciating carefully as if Kruger was hard of hearing. "It's papaya synth-wine. Very latest thing. Montreaux's a genius, ishn't he?"

Kruger shrugged. "Dop is dop. Dankie." Kruger swigged again before handing the bottle back to her and wiping his hand across his mouth. "You like fruity kak? Why doesn't that surprise me?"

Delacourt shook her head and leaned close. "I'd like it better if it was FRESH" she confided with a silly grin. "Synth food isn't exactly in the gourmet class, you know."

Kruger chuckled, his eyes narrowing wickedly. "Like to eat, do you?"

"If it's the right kind of food, mais oui!" Delacourt took her own pull from the bottle, and it was a long one. Kruger finally reached out and tugged it from her hand. "You want to stop doin' that, meisie. You could give a man ideas."

"Good! I'm glad you have ideas. You're probly' the firsht man up here to ever have one. What we need here is more creativity."

"You want to see how creative I am? I could give you a personal demonstration. You might like that."

"By all means, make yourshelf useful!" Delacourt waved an imperious hand in Kruger's face.

"Right." And with that, he grabbed the bottle back and scooped her up over his shoulder. Delacourt fought the urge to glance at Tuyet. Heaven only knew what the man was thinking. She would have to take extra steps to ensure he kept his mouth shut.

The Only Way to Eat Papayas

"He's ready, Madame Secretary" Tuyet said quietly. Delacourt turned to face him and closed the program on her tablet. "Do you just want the past 24 hours scooped or should we go back further?" Tuyet asked.

"24 should be sufficient. Do an implant and then transfer him to sick bay. He can be in for a head injury." She gestured at the sizeable bruise her bedside lamp had left on Kruger's temple.

"As you wish."

The memory implantation only took a few minutes. As far as Kruger would ever know, he'd gotten hit with a blunt instrument while on an op. When it was complete, Tuyet used his wrist comm to request two medi-droids. "I'll make sure they're clean afterwards" he said quietly. "And I've taken the liberty of arranging medical detentions for Agent Kruger's two associates. We can do a scoop on them while they're in quarantine."

"Thank you. You've been most efficient."

"You're welcome, Madame. Anything I can do." Tuyet gave her a sympathetic look. "If it's not out of turn to say so ma'am, you're not the only one."

"That's all, Tuyet. Report to Logan at the R & D office on Wednesday, is that clear?"

"Bright and early, Madame!" The young man's face lit up and Delacourt knew that further action would probably be unnecessary. Nice to know there's one part of this whole ungodly mess that's going to be easy.

The medi-droids arrived and bore Kruger away on a hover-gurney. Delacourt locked her door after they and Tuyet had gone. Curiosity, and perhaps masochism, had gotten the better of her. She picked up her tablet started the Security recording again.

"Hey! Whadyoo think you're doing?!" she heard herself demand from her ludicrous position, slung like a sack of grain over Kruger's shoulder. "Put me down!"

"Vergeet nie, vrou! Not a chance."

She wriggled, trying to free herself, but Kruger merely tightened his grip. "Ne. Just this once, yer gonna do as I tell you. Now be still and shut up."

"Or what?!" she hissed, kicking out with both feet.

"Or you don't get what you need, meisie." Her body went still as one of Kruger's hands rubbed up the back of her thigh. He pushed her already short skirt up and popped the elastic on the top of her stockings, a demented grin spreading over his face. "I like these. You can keep 'em on."

"Thank you so much" she said sarcastically.

"Oh, I'm just getting' started!" Kruger smacked her backside again. "You can thank me after."

The elevator doors opened and he carried her inside. Delacourt scanned the other recordings and found that Kruger hadn't wasted any time locating her rooms. She was still wiggling and cursing him alternately in English and in French, but her fury didn't seem to bother him in the least. He strode from the elevator, humming a funny, perky little tune under his breath. When they got to her quarters, he kicked the doors open.

Delacourt switched back to the footage from inside her rooms. The first thing Kruger did was put her over his knee and administer a very thorough spanking. And did she protest? Did she call Security to have him arrested? No. Once he let her up she grabbed him and shoved her tongue down his throat.

Oh Jesus…

There was no way in hell she could claim this was an attack, or if she did, Kruger would be within his rights to claim the same thing, especially if he saw the footage of her clawing his pants down. "What in the name of Elysium was in that wine?" she yelled at her computer screen. "And who let him into the goddamn building in the first place?! Somebody is going to pay for this! Somebody is going to wish they were never born!"

There was no doubt in Delacourt's mind that something extra had been put into her drinks. She had plenty of enemies; no doubt they wanted to use the recordings for blackmail. She could only pray that Tuyet had recovered them all.

The images on the screen continued to flash by. They were revealing, to say the least. Delacourt had no idea that the human spine could be bent into so many different positions. There were almost no flat surfaces that she and Kruger hadn't made use of. At one point, Kruger groaned, "Jislaaik, woman! You tryin' to kill me?!"

Maybe she was. As hyped-up and insane as Kruger was, Delacourt doubted he was used to being ridden like a Derby winner by his female companions. I had no idea I was under that much stress. I need to take more vacation time.

She couldn't fault his creativity, however. After a brief lull in which she conked out asleep on his chest and he continued to hum that weird little song, he tipped her off him and got out of the bed. "Where you going?" she murmured drowsily.

Kruger grinned. "Watch this, meisie."

He sauntered out of range of the cam for a moment. There was a strange rustling noise followed by some Afrikaaner swearing. When the mercenary re-appeared, he was carrying a large, oval-shaped object. "Forget that synth kak" he advised as he set the object down on one of her antique end tables. "If you like papaya, this is the only way to eat 'em."

He bent down and retrieved the huge Japanese sword he carried with him everywhere he went and with one stroke, cut the papaya in half. "Didn't even leave a scratch!' he boasted. "Pretty good, ne? Now watch carefully, you might learn something."

He picked up half of the papaya and buried his face in the pulpy center of the fruit. Delacourt almost dropped the tablet. Oh dear God!

She would never look at papayas the same way again. Nor would she never forget the mixture of lust and glee in Kruger's dark eyes as he slowly tasted the papaya's flesh. Or what he did with the other half. Or the noises she made while he was doing it. No wonder her skin was so sticky. She'd spent the evening being a human fruit cup! The worst—or maybe the best—part was at the end when Kruger rested his shaggy head on her belly and remarked, "Looks like a poes and comes from a tree that looks like a piel. Most romantic fruit in the fokkin world, eh?"

Delacourt couldn't help it; she burst out laughing along with the recording.

A Hell of a Klop

The next day, Tuyet was on hand when Agent Kruger woke up. He bolted upright in his hospital bed and glared wildly around the room. "Where the fok am I? My fokkin' head hurts!"

"Relax, Mr. Kruger" Tuyet said soothingly, from a safe distance away. "You're in the Elysium sick bay. You've been recovering from a head wound."

"Fok. What time is it? What day is it?"

"It's Monday, Mr. Kruger. 10:30 AM Elysian time. Do you feel well enough to eat something solid?"

Kruger rubbed the side of his head and found it tender to the touch. He must have taken quite a klop. "Ja, might as well. Where's my boeties?"

"Agents Crowe and Drake are in the quarantine unit. When you three were scanned, you all tested positive for the HV2 virus. You were in the Congo recently, were you not?"

Was he? Kruger couldn't remember. He must have gotten a hell of a klop!

"You should be all right in a day or so. We've removed the virus and just have to process you out of quarantine and you'll be on your way."

Epilogue

It wasn't her usual practice, but Delacourt made sure she was on hand when Kruger and his boys shipped out again. She had briefed him on their next target, and was relieved that the memory scoop seemed to have worked. He gave her no winks or suggestive comments. Instead he wore his usual predatory leer as she described the arms dealers that were presently hiding in Mumbai and what she wanted done with them. "It should be fun for you" she concluded icily. "A chance to be inventive."

"I'm good at that." he said.

"Indeed. Consider yourself activated, Agent Kruger."

He gave her a semi-mocking salute and headed for his Raven. As he left, he began to whistle. Delacourt felt a chill move down her spine; she knew that tune.

Jan Pierewiet, Jan Pierewiet, Jan Pierewiet staan stil
Jan Pierewiet, Jan Pierewiet, Jan Pierewiet staan stil
Goeie môre, my vrou, hier's 'n soentjie vir jou
Goeie môre, my man, daar is koffie in die kan.