Home of Greg Sanders Slash Fiction
Author: April May
E-mail: [email protected]
Rating: FRT-13
Archive: Greg Slash Archive, others please ask
Disclaimer: The characters belong to Anthony Zuiker and CBS,
and no profit is being made by this story.
Summary: Greg tries his best to improve morale at the office
tree-trimming party.
Notes: Written for the Christmas Challenge at Greg Sanders
Slash. Set in the fourth season and written in Nick's POV.
Because I wanted to.
Warnings: Includes scenes of heterosexual kissing. May not
be suitable for the Grissom/Sara intolerant.
"Can you tell me again why we're doing this?" Sara asked in a
tone that verged on whining. She, along with the rest of us, were
assembled in the break room as we always were at the start of
a shift, but instead of being handed assignment slips, we found
ourselves looking at a six foot artificial pine tree, boxes filled with
ornaments and lights, and a table filled up with plates of cookies,
a bowl of eggnog, and other Christmas goodies.
"Because the sheriff asked us," Grissom replied with barely
concealed impatience, as if he had gotten tired of explaining it.
For the past few years, one of the local malls had had a display
of Christmas trees decorated by various businesses or charitable
organizations, which were then donated to families who couldn't
afford to buy their own. This year, the new sheriff had decided that
it would be a good public relations move if a group from the
police department participated, and, for some reason, we were
the lucky ones who were chosen. "And because we've all been
through a lot of stress recently, and, since things are so quiet
right now, I thought it might be good for our morale if we took
some time off and did something a little more - well, fun - for a
change."
I never thought I'd hear Grissom use the word "fun" in a sentence
like that. But then, I had never thought he'd grow a beard either.
"Yes, but you don't really need all of us to do this, do you? I
mean, shouldn't one of us be taking advantage of this slow time
to work on our cold cases?" And, of course, by "one of us,"
she meant her. She was probably hoping she'd somehow
single-handedly figure out how to solve what was considered one
of the most unsolvable high profile cold cases, show up the rest
of us eggnog-slurping slackers, and put herself back on the fast
track to promotion. Whatever. I had gotten to the point where I
was sick of dealing with her unpredictable mood swings and was
actually glad that she was spending more time working with
Warrick lately.
"I meant all of us, Sara," Grissom said in that firm tone he'd been
using with her a lot more lately. With that, Sara apparently
decided to give in, although she still looked pretty ticked off.
I leaned over to her and quipped, "When the boss tells you to trim
his tree, you trim his tree," which she reacted to by looking over
at me as if she wanted to slug me, so I gave up on trying to lighten
her mood.
Meanwhile, Greg, who was standing on the other side of me,
wearing a Santa hat and a bright red sweater with cartoon
reindeer on it, looked as if he was already on a sugar high even
though he hadn't even started in on the cookies yet. Even more
than the rest of the year, the Christmas season seemed to bring
out the enthusiastically childlike side of him, and, now that we
were living together, he had gotten me involved in it, too. He had
insisted on buying a real wreath for our front door, which had ended
up shedding pine needles all over the townhouse, and just a few
days before, we had been decorating the new pre-lit tree that he
had persuaded me we needed to have. I had never bothered with
that before, feeling that it wasn't worth it since I never spent much
time at home anyway, but it had actually turned out to be kind of
fun. Although it turned out to be embarrassing when later on at
work, Warrick asked me why I had strands of tinsel and pine
needles attached to the back of my sweater.
We all then got to work on decorating the tree, pretty much the
same way we seemed to be working on everything lately, each
of us doing our own thing. Sara sat on the floor going through
the boxes of ornaments and sorting them according to category
and size, while Warrick and I worked on untangling the lights,
Catherine made popcorn strings, and Grissom more or less just
hovered around the edges, "supervising."
Greg, on the other hand, was into everything, checking out the
ornaments and putting hangers on the ones that needed them,
swiping popcorn from Catherine, munching cookies, and dancing
to one of the many Very Special Christmas CDs playing on his
boom box. Seeing him so happy and full of life reminded me of
the lab explosion, now seven months ago, and how I had
wondered if I would ever see him like this again.
Just as I was thinking this, he appeared at my side, his
expression now turned into one of concern. "What's wrong?" he
asked me.
"I was just remembering..."
"Well, don't," he said, and then gave me a quick, but firm, kiss
on the lips. When I was about to say, "Why..." he pointed to
a plastic sprig of mistletoe which was now dangling from the top
of the doorway where we were standing.
"Do you think that's such a good idea to have it there?" I asked
him. "I mean, these days, we could be accused of encouraging
sexual harassment..."
He gave me one of his "Get the stick out of your butt, Stokes"
looks and said, "Hey, you heard what Grissom said. I'm just
trying to improve morale. Speaking of which..." He motioned me
over the cupboard, and I assumed he was going to break out his
stash of Blue Hawaiian, when, instead, he brought out a small
paper bag with what appeared to be a bottle inside. With a wink,
he said to me, "I've got something that can really get this party
going," and opened the bag to reveal a bottle of rum.
"Greg!" I said. "You wouldn't...We still have to do some work
later, you know."
He said defensively, "Hey, it's not like anyone can drink more
than one or two glasses of eggnog anyway, so they won't get
that drunk. I just thought some people could use a little
loosening up..." He looked pointedly over at Sara, who was
currently placing strands of tinsel in the tree with the careful
precision of someone dismantling a bomb.
"I get your point," I said. "Go for it."
It was a little more than an hour later that the tree was finally
decorated to everyone's satisfaction and the lights were turned
on as we stood back and admired our efforts. I noticed that
some of the faces around me seemed to be a little more
flushed than usual - Grissom's especially, and I remembered
seeing him making several trips to the eggnog bowl.
After that, we filled our plates with food and sat down at the table
to eat, in a lot more - well, relaxed - mood than we had been in
before. We started talking about our plans for Christmas - Greg
and I were spending Christmas together, and then we were going
to his mom's for a quick visit over the weekend. Catherine and
Lindsey were having dinner with her sister's family, Warrick was
going to his grandmother's, and even Grissom was going to have
some family with him - his mother was making one of her rare
trips from LA. In fact, Sara was the only one who was going to be
alone on that day, and looking at her trying to reassure us that
she was actually going to enjoy the solitude while not looking
that convincing made me feel a little guilty about all the nasty
things I had been thinking about her before.
Then the subject turned to Christmas pageants, and, strangely
enough, all of us seemed to have been involved in them at some
point when we were growing up. First, Warrick told us about how
he used to always be picked to play the black wise man until he
got finally got sick of that and volunteered to play the piano
instead. Then Catherine said, "I played the Virgin Mary once,"
and when she caught Sara rolling her eyes, she glared at her
while Greg, sitting next to me, nearly choked on a stifled snort.
So I quickly jumped in, mentioning that I had played Joseph
once, although I mostly ended up playing an animal, usually a
sheep.
"That's strange," Greg commented. "Because I usually played
a shepherd."
Just about everyone laughed at that, except Grissom, who
looked almost as embarrassed as I felt and quickly got up to
refill his eggnog glass. And it was my turn to glare at Greg,
who just smiled back at me with fake innocence.
When Grissom returned to the table, he surprised us all by
saying, "I played the baby Jesus once." Noticing the way we
were all staring up at him, he explained, "My mother volunteered
me. Because it was a small church, and I was the only one who
could fit into the swaddling clothes."
"I'm sure you were adorable," Catherine told him, as Greg
mouthed at me, "Suck up."
"Thank you," Grissom said, with a small pleased smile, as
he sat back down.
Then there was a bit of an awkward silence until Catherine
asked Sara, "So what did you play?"
Looking as if she wasn't that eager to talk about it, Sara said,
"Well...I was always one of the tallest kids there, so, umm...
I usually ended up playing a shepherd, too." There was more
laughter, and she said, sounding defensive, "I didn't mind.
Really. Except for that one year where they put my beard on
with rubber cement, and after the pageant, I had trouble getting
it off."
"Nail polish remover can usually take care of that," Grissom
said in a professional tone, as if he was giving her advice
on the best way to get a fingerprint.
"I figured that out eventually," Sara said. "But thanks." With
that, she smiled at him, and he smiled back, and for a moment,
they were just sitting there staring across the table at each other.
"Total eye fuckage," I heard Greg whisper to me, but I pretended
to not hear him.
After we finished eating, we scattered around the room clearing
up, dividing into smaller groups again, still talking, none of us
really eager to get to work. Somehow I ended up in one of the
corners listening to Catherine tell Warrick and me, well mainly
Warrick, a story about the first Christmas after she had married
Eddie and her disastrous attempt at cooking a traditional
Christmas dinner for her in-laws. Just as she was in the middle
of explaining, with a great deal of gestures, how the shelves
holding her dishes had collapsed and how all the dishes had
fallen onto the floor and shattered, Greg, holding a camera, came
up to me, and with a nudge, motioned me to follow him. "Look
at this," he said with a grin.
I looked over and saw Grissom and Sara standing right in the
doorway, the mistletoe hanging between them as they spoke.
We couldn't hear what they were saying, as the music was still
on, but it appeared to be a very intense conversation, both of
them too caught up in staring at each other to notice anybody else.
Then Grissom said something to Sara that made her break out in
the kind of broad, genuine smile I hadn't seen on her in months.
He grinned back at her, pointing up to the mistletoe above them,
moved in closer, and, putting his arms around her, gave her a
deep - and definitely nonplatonic - kiss.
"Wow," Greg breathed when he saw that. He managed to regain
his composure quickly enough to pick up his camera and take a
couple of quick shots before they broke away from each other.
Then, looking at me triumphantly, he said, "If you think that's good,
I got another shot with Gris giving Catherine a big, sloppy wet one,
and that was right after she and Warrick nearly removed each
other's tonsils with their tongues, so..."
"You're going to have enough blackmail material for a while."
"Exactly," he agreed happily.
Gris let us go home early that night - maybe because he was
still feeling a bit woozy from the eggnog or maybe it had
something to do with the way he had been looking at Sara -
I don't know and I don't want to know. When I was in the
bedroom undressing, I heard Greg clearing his throat behind
me and turned around to see him standing in the doorway to
the bathroom, completely naked except for the sprig of
mistletoe, which was now attached to a red ribbon tied
around his waist.
"Would you like to kiss me under the mistletoe?" he asked.
And I did.