Any fic two hundred words or more involving a promise to be home for Christmas. Bonus points for slash ;)
Here's mine.
Saint Nick
He'd broken yet another promise, and although it wasn't his fault this time he felt guilty. The potentate had called him in to New Babylon to do a special report about a speechhe was going to make, andBuck hadn't even been told what it was about.
Buck was going to miss his first Christmas as a married man.
He felt like scum.
Yet when he saw Nicolae's smiling face, and the ridiculous Santa hat he wore, all that dissolved in the face of an emotion very much like going home after a long, tiring week reporting at the front lines. He couldn't help smiling back, and even let Nicolae talk him into wearing an equally ridiculous elf hat.
As it turned out, Nicolae was addressing the world, asking them to give the world's homeless and parentless children a gift. He'd started a charity foundation called Santa's Sleigh, the proceeds of which would all go to needy children. The first year, the money would be split between thirty cities, three in each of the ten Global Community regions.
By the time Nicolae had whisked Buck back into the main building of GC, the reporter had completely lost track of all thoughts about his wife, and his guilt had slipped away as well. And it didn't return when he noticed the mistletoe they were caught under, or the during the customary response to it. Instead, Buck grinned when the chaste kiss ended. "Merry Christmas, Saint Nick."