This one-shot is Don/Nikki romance, with Charlie/Amita established relationship. It's just a little Christmas joy which, although being slightly unbelievable, is a little too nice for me not to write. Enjoy, and constructive criticism welcome. Merry Christmas!!!
The Eppes family Christmas party was an odd affair. Despite the late Margaret Eppes and her eldest son's beliefs, every single year the tree went up, and the tinsel and the lights lined the windows and the mantelpiece. It was more to do with Charlie and Don's secret love of Christmas decorations than their belief in God, but all the same, up went that tree, tinsel and all.
Since it was more a social occasion than anything else, friends and distant family were invited around. The new were asked around to consolidate friendship, and the old to catch up. And of course, to play with tinsel.
Nikki was invited by Charlie and Amita, who had come to the FBI specially to welcome the whole team, and more if they wanted, to their Christmas dinner party. Charlie had taken Don aside and although none of his agents could hear exactly what they were saying, they knew that it was within the ballpark of Don's beliefs, which were unclear at this moment in time despite his attempts to define them.
Now, if you have ever attended a gathering arranged by a mathematician, you will know that everything is meticulously planned. If you have been to a gathering engineered by two mathematicians and a retired city planner, you will know that plans have undoubtedly clashed and now they were just winging it. It's a bit like the concept of two wrongs making a right, except with the substitution of math professors. Two logical minds create absolute bedlam, it's an unspoken rule.
Nevertheless, people were talking, laughing and being merry – perhaps a result of Alan's oddly strong mulled wine – and things appeared to be going just fine.
Entertainment in the living room was provided by the Eppes trio, as Charlie and Alan attempted to set up the large Christmas tree, which was shedding more than a Labrador in July, while Don laughed at them uproariously, leaning back on the couch next to Nikki and Amita. Father and son were being embarrassingly conquered by the inanimate Christmas tree, when three people arrived at the door.
"Hey, look what the cat dragged in." Said Liz, finding a space on the couch while David sat by her feet. Don immediately jumped up, and embraced his old friend.
"Cooper!"
"Eppes." They both grinned, and Liz shook her head at how similar they were.
"What's up?" He stepped backwards and accidentally kicked Nikki's foot, who yelped slightly in surprise, then curled up her feet onto the three-seater. "Sorry." He said. "I didn't expect your legs to be that long." Nikki shrugged.
"No one ever does." She frowned, pausing to consider the implications within her offhand comment.
Billy looked at her, interestedly.
"Hey, I don't think we've met." He said, smiling charmingly. Everyone else in the room simultaneously rolled their eyes, except Don, who narrowed his slightly. He was, for some unfathomable reason, extremely pissed off by the typical Billy flirtation. Nikki stood, holding out her hand, which Billy took gently, holding it for longer than he – or in fact she – usually would with anyone else.
"Nikki Betancourt. His new agent." She jerked her head at Don, who half smiled.
"I thought you were too hot to be a mathematician." He noticed Amita staring at him, with one eyebrow raised. "You are looking beautiful, Amita." He added, grinning, making her smiled.
"Nice to see you Billy." Charlie nodded in agreement, but was distracted by the tree, which was rebelling. Billy turned back to Nikki.
"I'm Billy Cooper. I used to work with him in-"
"Fugitive recovery. Yeah, I've heard some stories about you." He looked slightly unnerved.
"What stories?" he asked, apprehensively. Don chuckled, almost choking on his wine.
"I have told no one about Heathfield." He said, holding up his hands. "Ever." Billy looked vaguely disgruntled.
"Yeah, I didn't think that you would. That's bad for you, too." Nikki perked up, making Charlie and Amita laugh.
"What's this?" Don frowned at her, slightly amused by her blatant attempt to gather embarrassing information, and ineluctably, mock him with it.
"Nothing." He said, a little too quickly. Billy was grinning.
"You know, now I think about it, it was more embarrassing for you." He said, leaning against the wall. "What happened was that-"
"What happened was that we apprehended a fugitive. That's what happened." Don interrupted, going slightly pink in the cheeks. Amita giggled.
"Don's blushing."
"No I'm not!"
"Sorry to break it to you Donnie..."
"Yeah, Don, you are." Billy just laughed at Alan and Charlie's reactions. "What happened?"
"Nothin-"
"There was a fugitive which we knew needed another fix. Serial rapist and homicidal maniac; that kind of profile. So, we staked out his favourite spot, with staged agents." He grinned at the floor, as Don turned his face downwards, knowing what was coming next. "Unfortunately, there were no female agents available on short notice." He forced out, laughing as he spoke. "So, Don and I had to..." he shrugged, as if the rest was self explanatory.
On the most part, the whole room understood the story, but Charlie as usual, missed the cue.
"You did what?" He spluttered, looking positively horrified. Don took one glance of his brother's face, one look of Billy, and they both burst out laughing.
"No, Charlie," Don chuckled. "He meant that we had to try and pass off as girls." Charlie looked immensely relieved, but at the same time slightly unnerved.
"And did it work?" Billy laughed.
"That's the funny part. Don got chosen." Nikki laughed, sitting back down next to her boss.
"Seriously? He must've got quite a surprise." She remarked, mockingly. Don frowned at her.
"He didn't know what had hit him." Billy said. "And it was pretty damn impressive, too." He added. "Ever seen a guy do a roundhouse kick in high heels?" David shook his head, smiling lopsidedly.
"I am glad to say that I haven't." Liz giggled, at the look on Don's face.
"It wasn't funny, okay?" He said, smiling despite himself. "It was a serious guy!" Everyone present laughed at him.
"Wow. That must've been embarrassing." Liz said. "I don't think I've ever seen him go this red." David shook his head, swallowing his mouthful of munchies.
"I have. You weren't on the case, but I told you about it." Nikki leant forwards so she could see past Don.
"Was I here?" David nodded, trying to contain her laughter.
"Oh yeah, you were there all right." She narrowed her eyes.
"What-"
"That boat thing?" Asked Liz and David nodded. Immediately, Don and Nikki averted their gazes from anywhere relating to each other, ending up concentrating on the carpet. "Oh yeah. I wish I could've been there. Sounds priceless." Billy frowned.
"What's this?" Don shook his head.
"Trust me. You don't wanna know."
"All that anyone needs to know is that day involved towels one moment, and the next, it didn't." She said, grinning at the colour of Don's face.
"Hey Nikki, where were you before Don took you in?" Billy asked, taking mercy on Don and changing the subject. She smiled, merrily, after taking another sip of her refilled glass.
"LAPD, for four years."
"Cool." He said, keeping eye contact. Don snorted from the couch, making Nikki frown.
Liz, David and Amita traded omniscient looks. They knew why Don was being so sceptical, and it wasn't just because his old partner was hitting on his new agent. It was because his former partner, and good friend, was hitting on his new partner and favourite agent. Jealously may be a sin, but it's felt by everyone once in a while.
"What?" She asked, but he waved his hand dismissively. Alan sensed his son's distress growing, and decided to help minimise it. He stood, stretching his arms.
"Donnie, Billy. Help me clean up?" They nodded, Don tripping slightly on his way off the couch and his old friend laughing at him.
"You were always a bit of a lightweight." He mocked, on the way to the kitchen.
Once they were there, Alan left them at the counter, to gather up the dishes, saying that he'd only be a moment, and giving them a moment to talk.
"Cool?" Don asked, incredulously. Billy grabbed a nearby bottle opener and popped open a bottle of beer, leaning against the wall next to Don. Don just shook his head, amusedly.
"What?"
"Billy, you hate LAPD! They piss you off so much that you hired a voodoo priest to curse them!" Billy wrinkled his nose.
"That was once. Plus, they were being annoying." He shrugged. "And after meeting her, I've changed my mind." He looked around the kitchen door, to catch a glance of the agent in question.
Alan reappeared, laden with boxes brimming with Christmas decorations. Don took two, nearly dropping them, and then glared at the inanimate crates as if it was their fault. Billy snickered at Don's behaviour, and took one of his own, leaving Alan with none.
Nikki passed them on her way to the bathroom when they came into the living room, weaving through guests to reach their small group around the Christmas tree.
They handed the decorations to Charlie and Amita, and flopped onto the couch.
"Anyhow," Billy continued, and Don cursed his friend's inability to just let things go. "You seriously don't see how hot she is?" Billy was asking Don, who was visibly uncomfortable with that particular line of questioning.
"No and neither should you." Don took a deep swig from his beer, nearly finishing it. "She's with someone." Billy's eyes widened, looking extremely guilty for a split second.
"It's not you, is it?" Don appeared to be affronted.
"No! Of course not." Billy blew a sigh.
"Good, 'cause I would've felt like such a jerk." Don forced a smile, while Liz, David, Charlie and Amita suppressed theirs.
"No, but you remember Ian Edgerton, right?" Billy looked apprehensive.
"Crap, He's gonna kill me!" he grabbed Don's arm, in mock terror and fake desperation. "He wouldn't even hesitate!" Don had to laugh, despite his friend's earlier annoyances.
"Actually," Liz cut in. "Her and Edgerton ended. Something to do with not seeing each other enough." She played with the armrest, slightly awkward in her actions. "And trust issues." Billy glanced between her and Don, eyebrows raised.
"Sounds familiar." He said, bluntly. Liz snorted.
"It is similar, apart from the whole sex thing."
"Sex?" asked Don, confused. David clasped his hands together in his lap and smiled patronisingly.
"When a man and a woman love each other very much-" Don threw a waylay bauble at him.
"What about sex?" He rephrased, just as Nikki returned, carrying another box of decorations. She grinned lopsidedly, placing it down by the Christmas tree.
"I'd love some." He made a show of ignoring her, and Amita quickly changed the subject.
"Charlie, Larry and I have worked out the most effective branch to decoration ratio, to make the tree look prettier." Charlie positively beamed at how happy his fiancé was, and kissed her temple lovingly.
"Amita used to want to go into interior design, when she was little." Added Alan, who had just entered behind Nikki. Amita smiled.
"He means really little." She said. "Then, I realised that I was kind of good at math." The group laughed at her understatement. "Who wants to do the Christmas lights?" Nikki bounced over on the balls of her feet, looking very much like a happy-go-lucky kangaroo.
"Ooh, me!" Don laughed.
"You were that kid who put up their Christmas tree in November weren't you?" She nodded, beautiful face split into a wide, joyous smile.
"Every single year, without fail." They laughed, and Liz grinned at how clueless they were. Did they seriously think that no one else had noticed that they blatantly had feelings for each other?
Billy was staring at them, realisation dawning, and Liz could tell that he felt like a right ass for hitting on Nikki. They locked eyes and she winked. She mouthed 'don't worry', and he smiled embarrassedly back at her.
Meanwhile, Nikki was having some trouble.
"Why are these so tangled?" She hissed, frustrated. Don stood to help her, setting his final and countless beer down onto the mantelpiece.
"I'll find the plug." They rummaged around for a moment, then straightened up and spoke simultaneously.
"I've found the end."
"I've found the plug." They stared at each other, eyes narrowed as they contemplated their awkward position. "This should be fun." Don added, as an afterthought, making Nikki giggle and Charlie roll his eyes. Yes, even Charlie had noticed that they wanted to get it on. Charlie.
"Go left."
"Okay."
"Nikki, that's not left."
"Yes it is!" Don frowned.
"Then go your other left." They circled and weaved, ducking and swearing good-temperedly, gradually becoming more and more entangled with each other. And neither particularly minding.
David and Alan had begun a game of cards, with Liz as the official card shuffler.
Charlie and Amita sat back in the armchair, and talked to Billy who, to tell the truth, was exactly the same as when they had talked to him the previous summer, when they had helped him track down another dangerous escaped fugitive.
Eventually, and ineluctably, Nikki and Don became stuck. With wire and little light bulbs wrapped around their knees, their ankles, their arms and a section of Nikki's impressively large hair, if they even thought about moving, there was more than a good chance that they would end up on the floor.
Unfortunately, mere inches from a slightly merry Don Eppes, who smelt vaguely of cinnamon spice from the shedding Christmas tree, and who she had developed a small soft spot for within the first week of their partnership, the thought of movement, however brief, was inevitable.
"Eek!" Nikki lost her balance, falling towards him, but fighting valiantly not to actually fall into him. Her over-compensation for her imbalance caused her to tip backwards, slowly pulling her boss down with her.
With a crash, a whoop from Liz and a wolf whistle from a passing Colby, the two agents toppled over and lay, laughing and completely stuck, on the carpet.
Their torsos splayed in opposite directions, but their legs remained hooked and intertwined to the point that they were tightly bound by the Christmas lights.
"Christ, Nikki." The unexpectedly tender use of her first name took her off guard, and she found no words. A bubble of laughter burst forth from her, before she could stop it.
"Sorry!" He laughed harder, unable to even pretend he was angry. He grinned up at his brother, whose feet he had landed by. "I think we need some help." He declared, as though confessing to some sort of sin.
"We've fallen over," Nikki informed David, as though he would not have otherwise guessed. "And we can't get up." She added, after briefly trying.
Alan shook his head at his son and his employee as they lay on the floor, smiling at their merriness.
"How many beers have you had, Don?" Teased Amita. Don frowned at her, disapprovingly.
"I resent the implication that I am drunk." He stuck his nose in the air. "I'm just a little... jolly." He chose his words carefully, but Amita laughed at them.
"You make it sound like you're Santa Claus." She said, grinning down at her future brother in law.
"Santa Claus always scared me as a child." Nikki said, absently.
"Why? He always seemed like such a nice chap." Said Don, as if he had known him personally. David laughed into his juice.
"Well yeah," Nikki struggled onto her side, so she was facing Don, and so their bodies were closer and more aligned. "But my parents taught me from a young age that I shouldn't welcome strangers into my home, even if they're fat and jolly. They always told me that if anyone tried to come down our chimney, call 911 and light the fire." She made a face. "But they also told me not to play with matches, so I don't know how they thought I should've done that." Don watched her, his expression simultaneously concerned and unnerved.
"You must've had a weird childhood." She shrugged, laying her head down onto the carpet.
"Not really. Just a bit..." She fought for words.
"Weird?" Don offered. Nikki snapped her fingers.
"That's the one." They stared at each other for a while, they eyes canvassing and admiring the other's face. It was only when Don's eyes began to rove down Nikki's neckline that Amita chose to intervene, les the situation become embarrassing and uncomfortable.
"So Nikki, you seeing your family this Christmas?" She asked, loudly, taking the young agent's attention away from where she was appreciating her boss' large shoulder muscles. With an alarmingly hungry expression on her face.
"No, but that's 'cause my mom's dead, my dad's drunk and my little snitch brother's on the run from the Russian mob." Don's eyebrows shot up, and Amita looked pained.
"Oh... sorry." She glanced sideways at Charlie for help for a change of subject. In hindsight, maybe not the best of ideas.
"Why doesn't he go to the FBI for protection?" Amita rolled his eyes, but Nikki didn't seem to mind the prying.
"Because he's paranoid that the government is conspiring to kill him. I think it's an after affect of all the weed." She said, carelessly. Don made a wry face.
"As you do."
"Hmm." She said, playing with one of the small green lights lying against her forearm. "Oh well." She twisted around, bored with the present conversation, and smiled up at Billy, who was diagonally to her left, between her and Don. He grinned back, though his smiled faded as he saw Don's expression, which was less than pleased.
Nevertheless, his face brightened considerably as he noticed what was in the nearest box.
"Ooh! Tinsel!" This made everyone present with the exception of Nikki, laugh. She looked up at David questioningly, and he grinned.
"Every single year since he was twenty-one, Don has got drunk at one of these events and ends up preying on anything that's sparkly." He watched his boss attempt to struggle out of the Christmas lights, in order to reach the box brimming with the shimmery decorations. "Or shiny." He added, smiling, as Don was distracted by the baubles rolling about on the floor around them.
Nikki giggled at the happiness on his face.
"You know," Alan began, in his storytelling voice, "Donnie used to absolutely love Christmas time just because of the tinsel. We never celebrated it as such, because of Margaret, but she understood that the boys just had to have the decorations. He used to sit for hours and just stare at it." Alan frowned slightly.
"Which in hindsight is slightly weird." Charlie cut in.
"But it's just what he's doing right now." Alan added fondly, as Don tipped over the box and withdrew a long section of silver tinsel, staring at it like it was the most beautiful thing in the world.
"He's a right magpie." Liz commented, smiling down at the eldest Eppes brother.
Nikki wriggled out of the now looser lights, tripped in less than a dignified fashion, and crawled across the floor which was by now blanketed in little strands of shiny paper which the tinsel had shed, and needles from the tree.
Liz elbowed David, and raised her eyebrows. David touched Billy's arm and cleared his throat.
"Well we're gonna find Larry. He had something to tell us about..." He glanced sideways at Liz for inspiration.
"Math." She said, bluntly and slowly, unable to think of anything more imaginative under pressure.
"Yeah," Said Amita, catching on. "About the trigonometric functions applicable to some game theory graphs, right?" Liz smiled, and nodded, though she clearly didn't have a clue what any of that had meant.
"Yeah, something like that." They all stood, taking one last look at Don and Nikki, sitting on the floor in the midst of a sea of sparkles and shines, grinning like small children who had finally managed to open the cookie jar. They left to 'go find Larry'.
Don sighed, running a strand of tinsel through his fingers.
"I love tinsel." He said, happily. "It's very pretty." Nikki smiled, finding a blue one and dangling it from her left hand, batting it with her right one. Don glanced at her sideways, looking almost shy, before turning his gaze back onto his beloved tinsel. "You're very pretty too."
Nikki smiled, staring at him through big brown eyes, feeling the same twizzly feeling in her stomach that she had felt the first time she had ever been asked on a date.
"Thank you." He handed her a piece of his favourite silver tinsel, and began to play with some gold instead.
"It's more sparkly than you though." He continued, very seriously. "Which is good really, because people aren't meant to sparkle." Nikki giggled.
"Yeah, that would look weird." She leant sideways onto his strong shoulder, sighing happily and fingering the piece of tinsel he had given her, clutching it to her chest.
"You're pretty too." She said, after a moment. "But a pretty man, not a girl." Don frowned, taking a moment to process.
"You think I look like a girl?" She shook her head, shaking his torso with the force of her movement.
"No silly, you don't look like a girl." She smiled up at him, her cheek resting gently on his shoulder. "I think that you look nice." He smiled back, leaning down slightly and placing his mouth gently on hers.
She didn't move at first, and Don didn't know whether she was shocked, horrified, or had just passed out from too much alcohol consumption. Then, slowly, she responded, moving her soft lips against his.
The kiss was long and sweet. There was no tongue, hands, or really much of anything else at all, just the closeness between their bodies and their emotions. They were both comfortable in that slow moment, because their hearts raced and their spirits soared. They were content in the knowledge that while the intensity of their feelings for one another did not make their relationship move fast, they were at least moving a little. Towards something good.
He pulled away to look at her beautifully sculpted face, the warmth of their bodies seeping freely in the tenderness of the moment. She took a piece of tinsel in her hands, a pretty blue one, and draped it around his shoulder, feeling her heart leap with joy because they were finally going somewhere.
He played with the end of the tinsel, which was slightly bald from years of use.
"I really love tinsel." He said, and Nikki didn't think that she had ever seen him so happy. He looked down at the tinsel, then back up at her, smiling widely.
"I really love you too."
FINI