Title: Eggnog and Mistletoe
Author: April May
E-mail: jmpedlow@aol.com
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.