COUNTDOWN TO NEW YEAR
A/N: please read
Title: Countdown to New Year
Summary: Arastoo decides to put some romance in Cam's live to celebrate the holidays. My Secret Santa for Joanne Novak, who asked for Cam/Arastoo fluff.
Genre: Romance, humor, fluff.
Season/episode: Christmas break. Season 9 – episode 11 "The Spark in the Park"
Spoilers: Anything aired until "The Spark in the Park" (9x11)
Pairing: Cam/Arastoo (canon pairings)
Rating: K+ (If anyone disagrees please let me know)
Warnings: No warnings (again if anyone disagrees please let me know)
Comments: It's somewhat a continuation of "Love in Farsi" and "Operation Sweets in the Street".
Disclaimer: read profile
Acknowledgements: Big thanks to my beta, Whatever55, for her great job.
On the first day of December, Camille Saroyan walked into the lab looking as confident and serene as she always did. She was looking as elegant as she always did, wearing her favorite work dress and her favorite pair of shoes.
Haley Kent had stolen her identity and forced her to live on an allowance for months, but Angela had finally proved it and as soon as the FBI arrested her, Haley would be facing charges and thrown into prison. Now with Caroline and Booth backing her up, the bank has promised to return her money to her account once they have proved what was stolen by Haley, and allow her access to it again. She was back on her feet, or she will be soon. She was extremely happy to be able to use her accounts freely again. She was furious at Haley, and she was going to make sure that she paid for what she had done to her. Yet, Cam was feeling better than she had felt in months.
Cam was convinced that her newfound optimism was shown in her confidence that morning. She, however, never expected to feel even better when she entered her office. On her desk, the coroner found a big red envelope with a silver colored bow that made it look like a present. Her name, carefully written on it with Arastoo's delicate handwriting, made her smile, and she sat down to open it. Inside Camille found two pieces of paper: a poem and a letter. She decided to read the letter first, hoping it would reveal the reason for such a romantic gesture.
My dearest Camille,
We have recently celebrated our first anniversary, but I still wish to give you something to celebrate this beautiful year together. To that end, I will be leaving a present for you every day until New Year's Eve. I hope celebrating our love in this way will bring us an even better year together.
With all my love,
Arastoo.
Her first present was obviously the poem which was translated to English for her to understand. Cam was overwhelmed with the romantic gesture from her boyfriend and took her time to read and reread the poem as many times as possible. When she thought she was ready for the day, she decided to go back to work. She did so with a smile, though. She was really happy.
The days passed and Cam found little totems of Arastoo's love on her desk: poems; a mixed tape, in a flash drive rather than an actual tape, of course; a heart shaped stress ball; a frame with a photograph of them at some outing…
Everything always came perfectly wrapped in red paper and with a silver bow, and was often attached to a short, sweet note telling her that he loves her or reminding her of a good moment they both shared together in the past.
She had done her best to hide the presents but her constant smile and good humor were giving away that something good was happening to her. At first, most people assumed that solving her identity theft problem was the reason behind it, especially since her mood improved considerably when Haley Kent was arrested. And, Haley's arrest had indeed contributed to her optimism and good mood a lot, but it was not the real reason. No, no, the reason behind her increasingly good mood and happiness was Arastoo's little gifts that were becoming more and more personal every day, and now were always related to a shared and romantic memory for both of them as a couple.
Soon enough, her friends noticed that her happiness was making her even dreamy at times, though. Angela even found her once seated at her desk daydreaming while staring at her computer screen, not even noticing that her screensaver was displaying a selection of photographs of New York.
The shocking sight made Angela reach the conclusion that Arastoo must be doing something right and really romantic for her boss. She, of course, set her mind to find out what exactly their squinty poet was doing for Cam.
After a thorough inquiry of everyone in the lab, except for Cam and Arastoo, she learned that no one knew anything but everyone was wondering the same thing. They were all in agreement, Arastoo was doing some kind of romantic gesture, probably to celebrate the holidays, and it was definitively sweeping their tough Bronx coroner off her feet.
Clark suggested giving the couple some privacy instead of poking their noses into their business, and Brennan agreed with him, but the artist wasn't willing to let it go. She decided to try asking Booth. The agent has known Cam for almost twenty years and he had known about Arastoo sooner than her… not to mention he made that little number of threatening the squintern in Farsi. Angela was convinced that Booth would know what Arastoo was doing.
Angela had lunch with Booth and Brennan that day and tried her best to get the information out of the agent. However, Booth refused to budge, and gave nothing away. It was clear to Angela, though: Booth knew what Arastoo was doing.
Even more curious than before, Angela tried to get the information out of Cam and Arastoo, but neither of them told her. Refusing to give up, Angela decided to do a little more investigating. The next day, when Cam arrived to her office, Angela was already there waiting for the coroner to see what possibly could have this reaction in her. She saw how Arastoo left a little gift elegantly wrapped on the coroner's desk, and how Cam opened it a little later. She observed this behavior for a few days, against Hodgins' wishes; he was convinced that Cam was going to kill her for invading her privacy.
Not yet completely satisfied with her discovery, she tried to find some kind of explanation of this gift-giving frenzy. Angela snooped around Cam's desk a little one morning, hoping to find one of the gifts and that it would shed some light on the mystery. She got lucky and found a big red envelope with a poem and a letter inside. Reading the letter, she decided that Arastoo must be one of the most romantic guys on the world and proceed to share what she had found with the rest of the squints. She didn't go into details, nor did she tell them how she found out, but she did tell them about the romantic gift-giving calendar that Arastoo had set up for Cam.
Angela did not notice Cam or Arastoo getting angry at her, nor their hard glares, so when she went into her office the next day she was extremely surprised at the new decoration. Someone had made a template with the sentence "Thou shalt not invade other people's privacy" and used it to spray-paint her entire office, not one wall was clean. On top of her desk she saw a cowgirl hat exactly like the one she wore to Brennan's bachelorette party. Angela groaned in realization: Booth knew a bunch of embarrassing things about that night, and others, and he would share them with the world if she didn't learn her lesson and kept her nose out of others people's business.
Hodgins seeing the new decoration of his wife's office said, "I told you so" and ran for his life when Angela glared at him. The artist called the maintenance crew of the Jeffersonian to ask them to repaint her office, and then went looking for the offended coroner and squintern to apologize for her behavior. Once her apologies were accepted by the couple, she called Booth to promise that she was going to try to stay out of everyone else's business, and to reassure the agent that she had apologized to the couple. Angela supposed that she had gotten off easy considering the threats the boys in the lab have received and the punishment Sweets got after dumping Daisy in such a poor way. But still, she really didn't want to find out what else could Booth come up with next.
Once the busybody was taken care of, everything went back to normal in the lab. Meanwhile, Arastoo kept his romantic December going and Cam kept smiling constantly.
New Year's Eve arrived, and Cam found another red envelope instead of a box or a neatly wrapped gift. The envelope contained only a little note telling her that Arastoo was going to pick her up at seven that night to celebrate New Year's Eve in a romantic way, and asked her to dress up for the occasion.
At seven on New Year's Eve, Arastoo picked up Cam at her house looking absolutely dashing in a nice suit. He took her to a beautiful and romantic restaurant for a spectacular dinner and some dancing.
In the dancing floor surrounded by other couples and romance, they welcomed the New Year with a passionate yet tender kiss.
Thanks for reading. Please let me know what you think.
Joanne Novak: I hope you enjoyed your gift :-)