A/N: What's that? You want a Christmas fic two months after Christmas? Well... it seems a little weird... but alright. Just for you.
Haha, I started this back in December, then went down south for the break and forgot about it. I was just cleaning out my computer when I stumbled across it. It was only missing the ending (chapter 4)so I figured I'd finish it up and post it anyway. Normally I'd save it for next year, but Nick's a bit cynical and I didn't think it'd fit next year. Plus, Nick and Sara need more fics... Sandals are catching up. Hope you like it. As always, feedback is appreciated.
Nick Stokes stared incredulously at the traffic light in front of him; he had never paused to reflect the colours before today. Red and green. God he hated those stupid colours! If he never saw them paired together again it'd be too soon – but it seemed unavoidable now that he'd noticed that the annoying combo had somehow managed to escape the confines of the season and worm its way into everyday life.
The longer he sat idling at that intersection, the red glow of his captor mixing with the rest of the temporarily festively-lit city to bathe his Denali in the colours he so despised, the more frustrated he became. In a fruitless attempt to distract himself from the funk that had darkened his mood Nick flipped the radio on, hoping to hear a depressing story sung in a country twang; focusing on someone else's problems would surely make his anti-Xmas dilemma seem trivial."Yule tide carols--" Nick let out a grumbled curse as his favourite station betrayed him. He angrily stabbed at the preset controls, cutting Bing Crosby off mid-sentence in a quest to find anything that didn't rub his face in today's date:
"--by a reindeer, as she was--" Another curse.
"--but it's a green Christmas for m--" It didn't even have to be a country song anymore. He just wanted something that wasn't seasonally dominated. He'd even settle for heavy metal at this point.
He growled as each channel failed him. "Ho-oly Night. All is--"
"Simply having a wonderf--"
"--stmas baby, you don't have to be alone…" Now he remembered why he had turned the damned radio off on the way to the scene. He shook his head, knowing he was foolish to expect anything else this early on Christmas morning.
Finally the light had turned to green, still an irritating colour but welcomed over its counterpart, and Nick burst through the intersection. He pushed past the speed limit as he headed back to the lab with the intention of holing himself up in an evidence room, away from the exasperatingly cheerful world at large, and finish off his case. This year it was the only way he felt like spending Christmukkah (as the day was dubbed in today's newspaper, a phrase apparently stolen from some teen drama on television). Celebrating the world's peace and love just seemed hypocritical after all he had struggled through this year; hopefully he'd be in better spirits for next year.
As he drove through the streets towards his work he couldn't help but notice the subtle changes in his city. The neon lights that polluted the air, promoting eternal daytime all year long, had ever so slightly become dominated by the two colours that had recently sparked his desire to become colour-blind. The shady characters that normally littered the streets seemed to have taken the night off; perhaps they were trying to preserve the innocence of holidays by conducting their business indoors or perhaps they had all actually turned in for the night… either way they had made the sidewalks appear more welcoming. As he passed the unusually empty street corners he hoped that the majority of the women that "set up shop" there had indeed decided to be innocent for at least this one night. However, the cynical part of him reminded that now would be the ideal time to work: there were probably thousands of lonely, broken-hearted men to take advantage of tonight, each simply looking to not wake up alone on year's most magical and loving morning. He pressed the accelerator closer to the floor with that thought, springing forward to try and outrace his pessimistic mood.
If he did manage to beat it to the lab, it caught up mighty quickly. He supposed that the fact that the case he was working was about an elderly man beaten to death in a last-minute-shopping fight over a rare toy for his grandson wasn't helping his morale much. The good news was that it wasn't the most challenging of cases: all he really had to do was get one or two clues to link the offender to the crime and he'd be done. The attack had taken place in an area without cameras but there had been several witnesses to describe the man to the police. Nick had given the description and a surveillance tape of the store's entrance to the lab tech covering for Archie to find the man entering or leaving the place. There was also a sliver of hope that the idiot had paid for the toy he'd wrestled away from the old man before leaving… and that he may have used a credit card. Of all the cases to pull, he had certainly gotten an easy one. Normally this thought would have made him happy – it meant more time relaxing in the break room with whomever else was on shift tonight – but tonight he just wanted the distraction of a mysterious case.