How on Earth it'd happened, Christian had no idea.

He looked at the calendar and tried to work out if somehow he'd skipped days, but no. It was true.

It was Christmas Eve.

Luckily he had thought about things in advance, and his Christmas presents and cards had all been sorted out way back before his life had taken a hectic turn in the past week. The decorators hadn't finished by the time the gym equipment began arriving but somehow they'd been able to work around everything while treadmills were being plugged in and two flat screen televisions were being hung from the ceilings... and the IT guys had moved in too, with all the computer equipment for their databases.

He'd had far too many balls in the air but now everything seemed pretty settled. He'd go in a few days next week but they still looked on schedule to open on the 2nd of January, and Alec had already advertised it as the perfect New Year's resolution, which Christian had to admit was pretty savvy.

He was sitting in what was going to be his office - what already was his office, just a bit of a mess still, when there was a knock on the open door.

"Hey," he said, and smiled as Alec's head popped around the door.

"Thought you might still be here," he said as he came in, his hands behind his back.

"I'm just finishing up before I head off home."

"Well, before you do," Alec moved closer to the desk and produced a small wrapped gift from behind his back.

Christian's eyes widened. He hadn't expected anything, he hadn't bought anything for Alec either... he'd only thought of family this year and it had been a while since family and work colleagues had been separate entities for him. "That's... very nice of you, Alec. I wasn't expecting..."

"Think nothing of it. Consider it part of your Christmas bonus."

Christian opened it, keeping an eye on Alec's expectant face as he did so. The wrapping gave way to a small box and, opening it, he was rather surprised by what he saw. "They're lovely," he said, as he picked up one of the gold cuff links and examined it more closely, noting the design wasn't just a design but a logo... "Monogrammed?" he asked.

Alec nodded enthusiastically. "When I was 16, at my first job, the manager of the company gave out trinkets with company logos on them as Christmas gifts for the staff. Of course, he had hundreds to give out so it was usually just a mini bottle of whisky or coasters... other drink paraphernalia."

"Did he think all his employees were alcoholics?"

"No, it was a drinks company." Alec laughed. "But I only have one employee here so far, so I was able to stretch the budget a little. I'm glad you like them."

"I do." Christian smiled as he put them back in the box and closed it, placing it on the desk in front of him. "Speaking of employees, I've got the new staff coming in on the 28th to take a look around and get some orientation on the software."

"That's fine. I trust you to get everything done for the opening."

"Great. Well, I'd better just close up and get going, Syed will be wondering where I am."

"He knows your work is important to you." Alec stepped back. "I'll lock up, you get going. Say hello from me."

"Thanks," Christian responded, grabbing his jacket and letting his computer finish shutting down. He grabbed the box as he walked around the desk and once more thanked Alec for the gift before heading out.


"Sy?" Christian called out as he came in the door, without even looking around yet. As he took two steps into the flat he stopped dead in his tracks.

Wow. Syed had been standing in the kitchen and he walked out, dressed sublimely in his tightest jeans and a dark cardigan with no shirt underneath, leaving little to the imagination with his chest on display. He'd moved the Christmas tree to beside the pillar and there was a stack of presents all laid out underneath it. He'd clearly found Christian's hiding place because he recognised the wrapping he'd done for Syed's under there, along with some he hadn't seen before.

He slowly took off his jacket. "What...? What's going on?"

Syed looked Christian up and down as he revealed himself in his black training gear. "You've finished work, I'm taking a break from studying and so it's time for our Christmas party."

"You didn't invite people..." Christian suddenly worried, not just that he'd have to put on some fake smile and be nice to people when all he wanted to do was relax, but also that Syed was in no way dressed for visitors.

"I would have, but it's the office party and there are only two employees..."

"Oh," Christian realised as he slowly made his way around the table to where Syed was standing, skirting past the table, running a hand over it as he went by. "How could I forget..?" he flirted.

Syed smiled knowingly and then lifted his hand between them with a plate on it. "Sausage?"


They'd enjoyed some food, and then grabbed their plates and taken them to the sofa. After some joking around about playing party music and photocopying body parts, they had instead put on a CD and kissed under the mistletoe. Christian had sneakily used his phone to take a picture of them while they did it.

A short while later they had taken off everything but their underwear, grabbed a large blanket and were snuggled together underneath it on the sofa.

"I think this party lived up to expectations," Christian laughed, as he lay hugging Syed close to him from behind.

"Why, because we're practically naked?"

"Of course." Christian twisted his head around and looked towards the table behind him. "We haven't pulled our crackers yet."

"Excuse me?"

Christian pushed Syed's head. "I meant the actual crackers, cheeky." Christian contemplated moving from the cocoon they had created on the sofa and then leaned his head on Syed's shoulder. "Go get them," he whined.

"You go get them if you want them so badly."

"You're the one on top of me, I can't get out." He pouted.

"Fine," Syed groaned, and he pushed back the blanket and quickly went to gather two crackers from the table. Coming back, he sat next to Christian rather than getting back between his legs, and pulled more of the blanket to cover himself, beginning a playful fight over who was taking up most of the 'covers' before they settled down.

Syed won both the cracker pulls but gave Christian back his to take out the contents. They weren't the most up-market crackers in the world and so it wasn't a shock when Christian pulled out the fortune telling fish and Syed got a plastic moustache. They laughed as Syed wore it with his yellow party hat, but in true cracker novelty form, it kept falling off and it wasn't long before it was abandoned somewhere on the sofa beside them.

Christian sat in his blue party hat that barely fit his head and unraveled the piece of paper with his joke on it. "What's a specimen?" He read out.

Syed just looked at him expectantly.

"An Italian astronaut."

"That's terrible."

"It came from a cracker, of course it's terrible. And it's your turn."

"Okay, it's just as bad, if not worse... What comes at the end of Christmas Day?"

Christian grinned. "Well, I know what I want to come at the end of this Christmas Day..."

"I'm surprised you want to hold out until tomorrow night!" Christian poked Syed's ribs, making him giggle and jerk back in response. "Actually..." he said between pokes, "the answer is the letter 'y'."

"Pretty much saw that coming."

"Then why didn't you say?" Syed answered as he felt safe from pokes now and leaned back in against Christian.

"Because I wanted to give you the satisfaction of reading it out to me."

"Speaking of satisfaction..." Syed looked towards the bed, "the sooner we go to bed, the sooner we can get up in the morning and see what Santa brought us."

"I like your thinking." Christian smiled and pulled Syed to him, the blanket getting caught between them and Christian's paper hat falling off somewhere between the sofa and the bed...