A jumble of simple little one-shots written on the fly, each connected very loosely by this common thread: things that Bernard is not. (But mostly it's just a pile of Bernard stories for the sake of having a pile of Bernard stories.) Inspired by his line in the 1994 movie, "Toys have to be delivered. I'm not gonna do it. It's not my job. I'm just an elf."

Nothing too involved here, genres will run amok. Mostly pretty tame but I'll warn if the ratings go up for some chapters. No idea how many of these there'll be. Thirteen or three, maybe somewhere in between.

I own absolutely nothing. And if I do own anything, I refuse to claim it.

(Lastly, as is the case with my other The Santa Clause fics… Bernard in the first movie was wonderful because he had The Attitude, The Accent, and, well, he was wonderful. He sort of lost all that in the second movie, in my opinion. All of my fics are based off of Bernard Version 1994. In my canon, Scott married Carol but I'm going to forget that most of the second movie ever happened. Too much of it makes no sense. And my canon ignores the entire third movie. Except Lucy.)

1: A Doctor

A/N: Bernard and Scott fluff and funny h/c. (When I say fluff I really mean manly bickering.) Takes place Feb. '96.

WARNING: If you don't like gratuitous bloody cringey ouch things, skip this.

"You want me to what?" asked Bernard, who had just teleported into the Miller's living room.

"Just give me a hand patching up the doorway. It'll take three seconds, tops," said Scott.

"Patching up the doorway?" the elf asked. "What happened? Why isn't there a door?" He followed his boss down the hall to the backyard doorway and felt an unnatural chilly breeze against his shirt.

"Laura and Neil's new door was delivered today," explained Scott, gesturing to the gaping hole in the wall, "so we took the old one off its hinges this morning in time to send it out with the garbage. Of course then we discovered that the new door is the wrong size. Really, it's not that hard to order the right sized door, but I guess Neil's ability to – "

"So you want me to do what, exactly?"

"Just help me with the plastic. It's getting dark and windy and there's some snow coming, I'd like to get this patched up before the kitchen turns into a snowdrift. Plastic gets really squirrely in the wind."

"Okay, boss," said Bernard, following Scott out into the snow, "but I wish you'd have told me to bring a coat."

"This'll take two minutes, you won't need a coat. Here's the stepladder. Let's do the top first."

"Thought you said three seconds. And what is this, four degrees out?" Bernard grumped, taking a handful of the clear plastic sheet that Scott had been trying to staple to the doorframe from the outside. He noted that Scott himself was wearing lined leather gloves, and bit back a comment about OSHA worker standards. A few steps up the ladder and it was clear to Bernard that it was not a trustworthy ladder; the rungs twisted on their spokes as he placed his weight on them. Scott merely smiled and hefted a large tool into his arms.

"What is that?" asked Bernard, and noticed a hose leading from the tool to the garage door.

"Pneumatic roofing stapler," said Scott, breezily. "We'll be using 16-gauge wide-crown staples."

"…You do want this plastic to come off eventually, right? Pretty sure we could be using Charlie's school stapler for this job. Where did you get that? Don't you need a license to use that?"

"Neighbor Steve is a roofing mechanic."

"Overkill," Bernard muttered, holding the plastic taught as Scott reached up and pressed the weapon into the doorframe.

"Come on, Bernard, we're males, aren't we?Why use a bb gun when you have a bazooka?" With that, Scott smiled like a boy and squeezed the trigger. The machine did nothing.

"Safety, Santa," sighed Bernard.

"I am being safe – "

"I mean the safety's on."

"Right."

Scott flipped off the safety and tried again; the machine let out a clean POP and the first staple was driven into the doorframe. Scott moved a few inches over and set the next staple. POP.

"I hope you're replacing the doorframe too," said Bernard. "Those are going to leave holes."

"I'll leave that decision up to Neil… Mr. ordered-the-wrong-door-size."

"Where is Neil?" asked Bernard, shifting his cold-weakened grip to make way for the gun.

"Drove out to Home Depot to pick up the right sized door, but they were out…" POP. "So he went off to a Jeld-Wen but they were out too… Now he's off somewhere else but he won't be home for a while and…" POP. "… and he might not even find a door."

"Where's Laura, did she go with him?"

"No, she's upstairs sewing. She offered to help but it's too cold out, I said I'd find somebody else." POP.

"So you think it's too cold for Laura but not cold enough for me to wear a coat, huh?" teased Bernard, and stepped down a rung on the ladder as Scott started stapling down the side of the frame. The breeze was picking up and Bernard's fingers were going numb.

"Aw, come on. You're an elf, aren't you used to the cold?" POP.

"Why didn't you ask Neighbor Steve for a hand?"

"What, and admit I need help with this? I'm a man, I can't admit to other men that I need help. Besides, he'd probably make me screw up."

"Right, right."

Scott finished stapling down the left side and they moved the ladder to the right. Bernard once again climbed up the ladder, careful not to let the rungs flip out from under his boots, and took hold of the plastic. The wind whipped it out of his hands; he snatched it again and pressed it firmly to the doorframe. While Scott reached up to begin a new row, Bernard raised his gaze and was surprised and more than slightly horrified to notice that not far above his head hung several massive icicles.

"Say, Santa, you may want to remind Neil to knock these icicles off before they fall and impale someone." POP.

"Yeah," said Scott absentmindedly.

"Seriously, look at those things. They're like two feet long. You don't want them hanging above a doorway like that."

Scott finally glanced up and did a double-take, whistling.

"Wow, look at those widow-makers. Yeah, I'll let Neil know when he gets home." POP.

"None of these other houses have icicles like that. Attic probably needs more insulation," said Bernard.

"Yeah, that's, um…" said Scott, "that's… Say Bernard, I may have just stapled your hand."

"What? No you didn't, it's…" Bernard stopped regarding the icicles and looked across at his right hand. "Oh. You totally did, didn't you?"

For one very quiet moment, they both stared at the 16-gauge wide-crown staple embedded in the side of Bernard's pointer finger. Bernard wasn't convinced that it was, in fact, his hand, as he could feel nothing below his wrists.

He uncurled his fingers from around the plastic and retracted his arm, leaving a small smudge of crimson on the doorframe.

"Are you okay?!" Scott finally gasped.

"Bit of a belated reaction there," muttered Bernard.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry about that, I didn't mean to…"

"I should hope not," said the elf, and tried to lower himself down the rickety ladder one-handed.

"I was looking at those dumb icicles and my hands are clumsy with these gloves on, I couldn't tell I wasn't stapling the door frame!"

"My hands are numb, fortunately." Bernard landed safely on the ground and was disgruntled to note that despite the sluggish nerves in his hand, his blood was having no problem exuberantly departing his body where the two staple prongs protruded. He noted the beginning of a sharp ache in his hand.

"Geez, what do we… How do we get that out?" wondered Scott, finally setting aside the stapler.

"Pliers?" Bernard wondered, trying not to imagine how that would feel.

"Pliers?"

"I mean you could use your teeth, I suppose…"

"That's disgusting," said Scott.

"I was kidding."

"Pliers," Scott muttered, and headed into the garage. Bernard listened for a moment to the unmistakable sound of a man rummaging for the right tool. The wind sent ribbons of snow snapping across Bernard's face and into the half-attached plastic door; he shivered. Drops of blood were falling to the snow and disappearing, burning tiny droplet-sized holes through the snowflakes. A triumphant cry from the garage, and Scott returned, pliers in hand. He paused a few feet from Bernard, and regarded the elf. Bernard narrowed his eyes.

"What?" he asked.

"You're just standing there with a staple in your finger."

"What, you want me to do a dance or something?"

"You're not even grimacing."

"That's because my hand's numb. We've been out here way more than two minutes." Mostly the truth, but he could feel more than a small pain in his hand now.

"I'm just sayin'," said Scott, coming forward with the pliers, "most people would probably be, you know, panicking or something."

"I've had my tetanus shot. Careful with that," Bernard warned, as Scott tentatively took Bernard's fingers in one hand and lowered the pliers with the other. The elf braced himself for what would probably amount to not much.

"Maybe we should bring you in to the ER," said Scott, and drew the pliers away.

"No way."

"At least the clinic."

"Are you kidding? They'd want to do bloodwork. Once they saw the results they'd forget they were looking for tetanus. They've never seen elf blood before. And what if they saw my ears? Just yank it out already, this'll work."

"Fine," mumbled Scott, and positioned the pliers again. Out of habit, Bernard averted his gaze, but once again, Scott pulled away. "Look, I'm sorry, I just… This is gross."

"Well, I can't pull it out, my left hand is – "

"It's numb. Right. Okay, let's go inside."

Scott, pliers in hand, herded Bernard in under the flapping piece of plastic; the air was warm, and Bernard's hand almost immediately started to wake up. He shook out his left hand, hoping it would thaw before his right one. Scott had procured a handful of tissues, which he passed to Bernard, who set them aside.

"Pliers?" he asked. Scott dubiously handed them over. Bernard said a silent apology to Laura for what he was about to do to her kitchen sink before he poised himself above the faucet and, stubbornly refusing to think too much about it, wrenched the staple from his finger.

"Aw, that's gross," said Scott, who was watching from behind Bernard's shoulder. Bernard said nothing, because he was afraid if he opened his mouth he'd hear himself agreeing with his boss. With the staple out of the way, there seemed to be nothing stopping the flow of blood. He flipped on the faucet and watched as deeply pink water swooshed away down the drain… and kept swooshing away.

"Hand me those tissues," Bernard said. Scott fetched them, and Bernard turned the water off.

"This is ridiculous," Bernard muttered, pressing the tissues to his finger in what appeared to be an extremely unsuccessful attempt at stemming the flow.

"I'll get more," said Scott. "Why don't you sit?"

Bernard sat, and then stood back up; better to stand above the sink until things slowed down. Scott returned with a box of tissues and Bernard gracelessly dropped the old ones in favor of clean ones.

"I am so sorry," Scott said, still hovering a safe distance away.

"It's fine," said Bernard, wondering if this was the sort of thing regular people got worker's comp for.

"I mean I'm really sorry," said Scott.

"Forget about it, it's really okay."

"Doesn't look okay. Is your hand still numb?"

"That would be a no."

"Is it... Is the bleeding slowing down yet?"

"Um… no, not really."

"Okay, I think we should bring you into the clinic. By the time they realize there's something funny about the bloodwork you'll be gone and I'll just tell them they got a bad sample."

"Not gonna take that risk. It'll be fine… eventually…"

"Well do you need stitches? I mean how long's this going to take to stop? What if, what if a nerve got severed or something?"

"I don't know, I'm not a doctor!"

"What's going on? Why do you need a doctor?" asked Laura's voice, and both Bernard and Scott turned around to see her rounding the corner into the kitchen. "What happened? I heard your voices and it sounded… Oh my goodness, Bernard, are you okay?" she said, rushing forward.

"Yeah, I'm fine, it's just your ex-husband drove a roofing staple through my hand."

"Scott?!" exclaimed Laura, totally missing Bernard's smirk and giving Scott a look before grabbing Bernard's hand and trying to see past the mess of blood and tissue.

"What? I didn't mean to!" Scott exclaimed. Laura merely sighed, turned the faucet on, and pumped out some hand soap.

"Mrs. Miller," protested Bernard, "you don't have to – "

"Yes, but I'm a mom," she insisted, maintaining a businesslike grip around his wrist. "Not a doctor but almost as good. Just hold still."

Bernard shut up as Laura washed his hand, then wrapped it in one of her good white dish linens – completely ruining it, he noted to himself. She had him sit and keep his elbows on the table, putting pressure on his finger and holding both hands at head height. Scott, meanwhile, awkwardly dismissed himself to finish (carefully) stapling the plastic down, as snow was beginning to accumulate on the linoleum.

"Sorry about the mess," said Bernard, who was woefully watching as Laura cleaned not only the sink but also the spotted trail from the door to the kitchen. The sounds of stapling came creeping towards them along with a dwindling chill breeze.

"This is nothing," she assured him. "Did Scott ever tell you about the time he tried to use Steve's power sander on the new bannister?"

"Ouch."

"Yes. He had considerably more skin at the top of the stairs than he had when he hit the last step."

"Somehow… that's not hard to imagine."

Laura, smiling, shook her head.

"Men and their toys," she said, and Bernard, watching her stand up with a wad of pink towel in one hand, was struck with a sudden memory from several decades past; Laura, at seven years of age, holding an icepack to the face of a struggling boy named Patrick (who had spent the previous year teasing Laura about her funny-looking bangs), who'd just finished running his bike straight into a telephone pole because the hill had been icy; a very stupid idea, which is what Laura was telling Patrick over and over.

"What are you thinking?" asked Laura, and Bernard came back to the present. From beyond the doorway, Scott exclaimed happily that the last staple was in, and began to tramp around to the front door.

"Hmm?"

"You looked thoughtful," Laura said.

"I was just… Charlie's lucky. Is all."

She watched him, a question on her face, but he lowered his gaze to the linen around his hand.

"I'm getting that man a kiddie stapler for Christmas," Bernard said with a smile. "I'd better get back to work. Thanks, Mrs. Miller."

She began to ask a question, but Bernard had already left.

A/N: Despite how I treat him, I really do love Scott.