A/N - This is a fic I wrote for Bestkeptprivate's Secret Santa 2007. It's just a little Christmas fluff, hope you enjoy it!


Christmas, 2005

"Keep 'em closed, keep 'em closed," Gil said as he led Sara into her own house. She'd been closing her eyes for almost half an hour now, and was really starting to wonder what this man of hers had up his sleeve.

"You're going to like it, I promise," he said.

"How will I know I like it if I can't see it?" She asked, only half joking.

"Okay, dear, open them now. I guess patience isn't one of your virtues."

"Like you didn't know that about me already," she said, opening her eyes. And then she smiled. A lot.

"You got me a Christmas tree? In my own house? Gil, I..."

"Do you like it?" He asked quietly. She could tell he was nervous. It was adorable.

"No. I love it."

They smiled at each other happily, and he gave her a little peck on the lips.

They'd been dating for less than 6 months, but to Sara, it felt like forever. She'd loved him for such a long time, throughout the plants, the dominatrixes, the cheating EMTs, through the utter frustrating cluelessness...but now it felt right. They were making it work. It was hard at first, trying to figure out how to spend so much time together and not want to close each other out or put up their usual walls, but they were figuring it out one step at a time. Grissom was trying so hard to make her happy, to make up for all the years he wasted that they could have spent together.

A few weeks earlier, when he brought up the topic of Christmas, she told him about her old family tradition.

"It's so dorky, I know," she said, blushing slightly. "But every year, me and my dad and my brother and my mom would decorate the Christmas tree. We had all these ornaments, you know? Some that John and I made at school, some we bought, some we inherited from different people. My mom would put Bing Crosby on the stereo and we'd sing along while we decorated. Even in the bad times, my dad would put down his bottle of beer or whatever else and decorate that tree with us. It was the one thing my parents never fought about. The best part was when he'd put me or John on his shoulders and we would put the star on top of the tree. I don't know why, but that always made me so damn happy."

"What about...well, after that?" He asked, knowing she'd understand what he was asking.

"I haven't had a tree since then. My foster families, they never had one. One family was Jewish; the other had too many kids to worry about putting up a tree. And since I've been living on my own, I've never bothered. It just seemed a little pointless with..."

"With what?"

She shook her head.

"Come on, Sara, you can tell me anything. With what?"

"Without someone to share it with."

So he knew he had to get her a tree. Whatever she wanted, he wanted to get for her. He'd stop at nothing to make this beautiful, brilliant woman happy.

Now, looking at her tree, she couldn't stop smiling.

"How--I mean, you've been with me all day. Where'd it come from?"

"Greg," he answered simply. "I threatened him with a decomp if he didn't do it. I told him it was for an experiment you were doing, and for scientific purposes, you couldn't do it yourself. I'm pretty sure he knows I'm lying."

Sara laughed. It was that loud, crazy laugh he never quite got enough of. She was so sexy when she laughed.

"You are so sexy when you laugh," he told her. She laughed again, but this time it was more subtle, more suggestive.

"Oh, yeah? Why don't you show me how sexy?"

So he did. And after, during that time when Sara always wished she never stopped smoking, she kissed his shoulder and said, "Thank you."

"No, thank you, dear. I think what you just did there may be illegal. I think I might call Jim and ask him."

She pinched him. "No, I mean thank you for the Christmas tree. That may just be the sweetest thing anyone's ever done for me."

"You deserve it," he said. "Sara, I'd give you a whole forest if I could."

Sara fell asleep a few minutes later with a smile plastered on her face. She dreamed that for the first time in her life, she was really, truly happy. When she woke up, she tiptoed out to the living room to see her tree, the tree he got for her, and she knew it wasn't just a dream.