A/N Sorry its taken a while for me to write this, I've been reading the Time Paradox, which came a day early for some reason :P There'd better be another one or I may get very slightly depressed!

"You're absolutely certain," began Foaly, for the eighth time that morning, "that only Commander Kelp will have access to Ops?"

"Yes," sighed the LEP technician whose shift had finished at least an hour ago.

"You're sure? Because if I return from Atlantis to find the place covered in tinsel again..."

Trouble interrupted, prompting a sigh of relief from the aforementioned techie: "Foaly. Everything is going to be fine. Just enjoy your anniversary!"

Reluctantly, Foaly left Ops, running a finger fondly over one of his early V-Boards. He was nearly at the doors when he stopped, unable to resist.

"You're 100 percent sure..."

"Foaly!"

20 minutes later, Commander Trouble Kelp was sat at his desk. It had been a slow few days and today promised the same lack of excitement. He sighed. More forms; all forms that passed through the LEP now had to be personally signed by the new Commander under new rules most probably suggested by Corporal Kelp.

This morning, he had been given CCs of the repositioning of Hybras, several complaints registered by his younger brother, and some Holly Short's Psych forms, although a few appeared to be missing. The Commander decided to collect them from her himself, not necessarily standard procedure, but he wanted to talk to Holly about a couple of things. He left his office, careful on the way to make sure that no-one had broken into Ops (they hadn't), and found himself watching her banging her head on the desk.

Holly groaned. She was sat in her office filling in yet another LEP Psych form: Do you regularly travel through time; How often would you estimate you eat the following vegetables per week; You want to go out tonight for some Verbil Action? The last question had undoubtedly been added by one of the new recruits assigned to Chix Verbil, or indeed, the sprite himself. She screwed up the form in sheer despair, and threw it into the Recycling bin behind her.

"Nice shot, Captain Short," came a voice from the doorway. Holly turned to see Trouble stood, holding the offending form.

"I'm afraid I came to collect another form," he continued apologetically, seeing the already unsavoury expression on her face darken a little, "Although I can see it's been...sabotaged, so I expect we can forget about this one, I'll photocopy one of your others if you want."

"Thanks, Trouble," she smiled, lighting up the room, not literally, although Foaly was currently developing lights which reacted to the dominant mood and emotion in a room.

"No problem." He turned to the calendar on the wall, and recalled why he had come down in the first place.

"It's your birthday on Wednesday, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yes, why?" she replied, secretly pleased that someone had remembered.

"I was just wondering if you'd made any plans," Trouble said, hoping that she hadn't.

"Not that I know of, it seems that everyone has better things to do now!" there was a trace of bitterness in her voice, masked by her characteristic sarcasm.

"Do you want to come over to my place after work? I think Grub's going to our Mum's for tea so he won't be around to play any...Westlife" he seemed to shudder as he said the last word, they truly were awful, even for a human band.

"That sounds good," her smile widened a little as she answered.

"Excellent! I think we're on the same shift, so we can walk back from work, if you want." He looked at his watch.

"I'd better get back to my office; Grub will probably have lodged another 6 complaints since I've been here," Trouble remarked, well used to his brother's whining nature.

"Alright then, I'll see you at lunch?" It was part of the day she looked forward to, punctuating her usual day of form-filling and finding rogue gnomes.

"Yeah, hopefully!" He leant over and kissed her lightly on her forehead, making both of them blush a little in pleasure.

Holly watched him as he made his way up the corridor, and was mildly surprised to find that, for the first time in 4, no, 7 years she was looking forward to her birthday.