A/N Don't own the characters. Or the incredibly contrived fluffy plot. But it's just a bit of G/J fluff. Bad fluff, but hey, fluff can be good. In honor of the holidays.
I jostle the things in my hands to free one of them enough to knock on the bright red door. I wait for a moment before she peeks her head out. She grins when she sees me and opens the door. "Hey." She says, stepping out of the doorway, letting me inside. I look around her apartment, trying hard not to look at her. Her hair is falling down in damp ringlets and the only thing she's wearing is a crimson robe that's tied very loosely around her, exposing more than I want to see. She may be my best friend, but I'm only human. She's gorgeous, I've known that since I met her, and no matter how hard I try not to think of her in that light, there are sometimes when she does things like answer the door nearly naked that make me want her.
I set the bottle of wine that I brought down on her kitchen counter and she hands me a corkscrew and two glasses. "I'll be right back; I wasn't planning on anyone showing up on Christmas Eve." I smile and nod, uncorking the wine and pouring it into two glasses. I sit down on her couch and look over her meager tree.
"Taking a page out of Charlie Brown's book?" I ask, setting the wrapped package down beneath the tree as she comes back out dressed in a tank top and pajama pants, considerably more conservative than her previous attire, but there's still that teasing glimpse of flesh.
"Yeah, only unlike Charlie Brown I can't wave my hands and make everything look better." I chuckle slightly and she curls up next to me, watching It's A Wonderful Life for the umpteenth time. It beats spending the night alone though. And she feels so comfortable against me, her head against my chest. I hated the holidays; they're bad enough when you have somebody but even worse when you don't. I look around her apartment again as the movie ends and I feel one stray tear drip from her face onto my shirt. It's hard for even me to watch that movie without getting just the slightest bit choked up.
"Mistletoe." I point out the small bit of green hanging above her door. She laughs.
"Yeah. JD put it there-I haven't gotten around to taking it down yet." I smile slightly.
"So the two of you-" She shrugs.
"Neither of us, I don't think, wanted a lasting meaningful relationship. He was just like Tyler all over again only not a surfer." I chuckle. We watch the first two minutes of mass on TV before she picks up the remote and changes it, switching over to some Britcom that I had never seen before curling back up against me. "Just the two of us lonely folks on Christmas." I look at the clock. It's almost midnight.
She was right, the two of us, here all alone. I look down at her, and her grin at the movie. She looks so-I try to think of a word to describe it, to describe what this all feels like. I don't feel all that lonely, really, with her sitting here with me, curled up against me. I take a long sip of wine, trying to steer my thoughts into a different direction. She was my best friend. Nothing else. I was just a lonely bastard on Christmas, I wasn't looking for anyone, if I was I'd been in some seedy bar right now, half drunk trying to pick something up. No, I was here because she was my best friend and neither of us wanted to spend the holiday alone.
"Yeah." I say and wait for the clock to turn to twelve. Once it does, I reach forward and grab the gift that I had brought. "Merry Christmas Jordan." I tell her and she smiles before tearing into the wrapping paper. She glares at me when she finds the box to contain two more wrapped gifts. I know her patience, or lack thereof. She opens the smaller of the two first to reveal a gold pen with her name engraved on it. She grins at me. "This way you might actually do some paperwork." She laughs and opens the second wrapped gift. She laughs again as it reveals the complete fourteen-disc set of Flying Circus and she throws her arms around me.
"Thank you." She tells me as she reaches for a small package underneath the tree with my name written on the tag. I open it slowly enjoying the impatient look on her face. It's pretty easy to tell what it is just from the size and weight of it. I know what a good box set of vinyl feels like and I find it to be Billie Holliday's the Voice of Jazz set. I grin and flip it over to find another gift taped to the box.
I look at her, she didn't have to. "Jordan-" I start, knowing full well how much what she got me cost. I had mentioned seeing it in a local shop at a quarter of what the price should when I was on the phone with a friend at work, she must have overheard. Even at quarter price, it was still almost two hundred dollars; she didn't need to spend that much on a comic book, even if I was going to spend it on myself. "Thank you." She grins and clinks her glass against mine, draining the rest of her glass and I do the same with mine.
She gives a slight yawn and I smile. "I think I should get going." I tell her, and she nods, getting up to walk me to the door. I pause in the doorframe and watch her eyes flit upwards.
"Merry Christmas Garret." She says and I figure what the hell and kiss her gently. We are underneath the mistletoe. It's supposed to be a quick, chaste kiss but the second my lips hit hers, I feel the hair on the back of my neck beginning to rise. It lasts only a second before I pull back but I see it in the way that she's looking at me that she felt it too. As if suddenly looking at me in a different way.
We stood there in the doorway for a long minute before she kissed me again. This one was certainly not the chaste kiss that the first one was. This one felt too damn good. I pulled back suddenly as I realized who it was that I was kissing and looked at her. "Jordan, is this really such a good idea?" She shrugs.
"Have a better way to spend Christmas?" She asks and I try to think of an excuse.
"It's just, you, me, neither of us is any good at this sort of thing."
"Speak for yourself. I happen to be very good at this-" She kisses me hard "-Sort of thing." I've already stepped back into her apartment and she closes the door behind me.
"I meant relationships. I don't want to screw things up between us." She looks at me, the words got through to her.
"How do you feel about me?" She asks suddenly off the top of her head. I look at the bottle of wine. It's too far away. Right now, I want to down half of it at once.
"You-" I try to think of a way to answer the loaded question. "You're my best friend. The one who gets me to loosen up a little, without you I'd be locked up in a white padded room having driven myself insane." She grins and steps forward.
"Garret, we've had what was damn near a relationship without the sex for as long as we've known each other. Do you really think that friends with benefits will screw us over?" I don't know. I honestly don't know.
"I-" She kisses me again, leaning into it and runs her tongue across my bottom lip. I open my mouth willingly. She tastes like the wine and when we finally pull apart, we're both breathless.
"Stay, its Christmas." I look at the door and then back at her. This christmas might not be so lonely after all.