"'twas the night before Christmas, and all through the Hub, not a creature was stirring, not even a..."
"Cub?" said Jack.
"Shrub?" said Gwen, through a small smirk.
"Grub?" suggested Tosh, without looking up from her keyboard. Ianto snorted and screwed up the piece of paper from which he'd been so proudly declaiming.
"Well, if you're not going to take this seriously..." he said, and turned to leave. Jack winced and waved at Ianto's retreating back.
"Ianto, I'm sorry. Please come back? We liked it," he said, his words well and truly slandered by Gwen's overstated eye-rolling in the middle distance.
"So what's the rest of the poem?" asked Owen, earning himself a nomination for the highly coveted Deadpan of the Year Award. Ianto shrugged uncomfortably.
"Dunno, really. I couldn't find a good rhyme for 'Hub'" he said, to the echoes of an eruption of laughter. He paused to regroup, and looked around.
The lab looked like the aftermath of a fight between a drinks cabinet, a box of fairy lights and the Greater Spotted Tinsel Beast of Maxigar IV. Jack was propped up on the table on his last remaining elbow, the other having been soaked in brandy during a misunderstanding over a toast. Gwen was draped over an armchair in a position best described as 'Penultimate Turkey In The Shop'. Owen was investigating the contents of a tin of Quality Street in a manner similar to the way he'd normally rummage around in someone's intestines, and Tosh was, as per usual, working.
"You lot are disgusting," he observed, smiling dryly. "What about the true meaning of Christmas, eh?"
Owen pulled a sweet out of the tin and chucked it at Ianto.
"What's your problem, laughing boy? I put up that Nativity scene, didn't I?" Ianto sighed with forced patience.
"Owen," he said, "I saw it, and I'm sure Weevils didn't feature that prominently in the story of Jesus's birth."
"Yes they did, actually," interrupted Tosh, turning away from her keyboard. "After all, He came to deliver us from Weevil." This comment earned her the sum total of a half hearted groan from Gwen and a second ballistic chocolate from Owen.
"What about you, Jack?" asked Ianto, folding his arms. "What's it all mean to you?"
"I stopped buying presents a long time ago," said Jack, ruefully. "It's been sixty years since a bar of chocolate could get a guy laid in this country." He paused, observing Gwen's raised middle finger. "What'd I say?" he asked.
The finger wilted just as quickly as Gwen realized Ianto was now directing his attention at her. She panicked and pulled her paper crown down over her eyes for a second.
"Er," she said, playing for time. "My Christmas usually consists of finding out that someone's been sick on the crackers."
"Yeah, well," said Ianto, blushing. "I'll try and make it to the toilet next time, all right?"
"If I have to spend another afternoon picking lumps of carrot off my best doilies, Ianto Jones, you're not going to see another Christmas."
Ianto got the last of the squirming out of his system and turned to Tosh, who was trying to ignore the fact that Owen had stuck a sprig of mistletoe into his flies and was beckoning to her across the room.
"Your turn, Tosh," he said.
"My Christmas?" she asked, and folded her hands in her lap for a second before continuing.
"Well," said Tosh. "Considering that the events of the past twelve months have included rogue Weevils, cannibals, serial killers, psychopathic faerie folk, Cybermen and demons, I'd say Christmas is about miracles. It's a miracle we're all alive, and sane, and still together. It's a miracle that the planet is still in one piece." She brightened up all of a sudden, as if she hadn't just silenced the entire team. "Now," she said, happily, "who's for a game of Trivial Pursuit?"
"Can't," said Owen, frowning. "The pterodactyl crapped on the board a couple of months ago. It dissolved," he added, as a singularly unpleasant memory passed across his features.
"What, the pterodactyl?" asked Jack.
"No, the board, you prat," retorted Owen.
"Maybe we should roast it for dinner?" suggested Tosh.
"What, the board?" asked Gwen.
"No, the pterodactyl," said Tosh, making a sudden lunge for the mistletoe in Owen's flies.
"'twas the night before Christmas," said Ianto, "and all through the Hub..."