Title: Holiday Stress
Author: Jane (jat_sapphire)
Contact:jat_sapphire@femail.org
Series: TOS
Rating: [PG-13 for language, implied sex]
Codes: Mm, no, read and see.Summary: Response to Mistletoe Challenge. Rand puts mistletoe above Spock’s door. Absolutely no angst.
Archive: Go ahead.
Disclaimer: Paramount in its glory owns the Enterprise, its crew and the space it flies in. I just visit, and I don't make any money while I'm here.
Same-sex sex implied in this story. Don’t like it? Read elsewhere.
Note: Thanks to the RL Mary who spoke the first line of dialog on December 13, 1999, and to beta readers Islaofhope and T’Aaneli, who finally got to read something more lighthearted of mine, and to Omega, who thought up the Mistletoe Challenge. Well, I admit these aren’t my very favorite characters. But these two hardly ever get to come out and play.
Holiday Stress
When I heard the door sound, I said "Come" as usual, but nobody came in. Instead I heard an insistent knocking. It sounded annoyed. I went to the door and opened it, meaning to ask what the matter was.
Five or six pieces of Christmas candy hit me in the face. "Hang your fucking *stocking* already!" shouted Mary from Engineering, and then she was gone.
Evidently she was tonight’s Secret Santa for our corridor area.
Holiday stress hits people in different ways.
Mine pushed me against the doorframe, laughing. I leaned unsteadily out the door and called down the corridor after her in my best icky-sweet, Tiny-Tim voice, "*Thank* you, Mary, for this holiday *cheer*!" Then I tried to pick up the candy. Unfortunately, most of the pieces were round - - you know those little chocolate marbles wrapped in foil - - and I just kept missing them when I started giggling again. Where had she gotten them, anyway?
That reminded me of my secret Christmas stash, and the prank I had thought up weeks ago, the last time we had been near a Starbase with one of those awful, tacky Ye Olde Christmas Shoppes. I bought some mistletoe. Tonight was the time to use it.
I knew I had a while, though by rights alpha shift was over, because the end-of-year reports were due soon and everybody was working overtime. Soon I’d be putting the information together for the Captain and then *I’d* be the one working overtime, but meanwhile it was department heads who were reliably turning in an extra three or four hours a day. Of course, it was possible, even probable, that Mr. Spock was working faster than any three other department heads put together, but I thought I still had enough time, if I was quick.
I got out the mistletoe and ribbon and a universal fastener, tied everything together, and crept along the corridor to his quarters. Very quickly I jumped up and slapped the fastener above the door. I was very good at tumbling and floor exercises and so forth at school. That’s one of those things almost nobody knows about me. Well, there are a lot of things I don’t mention. There’s more to me than a complicated hairdo.
I hesitated for a moment looking at what I’d done. Mistletoe is highly overrated as decoration. It looks dead even when it’s fresh, and mine wasn’t. Here was this little, limp, dry-sage-color thing, not even very noticeable.
But only one person needed to notice it.
Mr. Spock would of course see it right away, probably clear from the turbo-lift door. If that happened, and anybody found out I’d done it, I was pretty much toast. I knew this was not the kind of joke a Vulcan would find funny, and it wouldn’t take him more than a second to pull the mistletoe down or untie it.
But it wasn’t Mr. Spock I put it up for.
I lurked in the hall for a few minutes, trying to look like I had a reason for standing there, but the person I was waiting for didn’t arrive, and I almost gave up and went back to hang that stocking - - when I saw Chris Chapel.
She walked around the curve of the corridor as if her feet hurt, which I’m sure they did. She was so tired, poor thing, that even the sparkly ribbon didn’t immediately catch her attention. Then, since she always looks at his door when she passes it, she did see. And stopped dead in the hall and gasped. And then there I was, coming along like I was on my way to Something Very Important.
"Janice!" she said. "Janice!"
"What’s the matter, Chris?"
"Look!"
I did, and reacted as if I were surprised. "Mistletoe! On Mr. Spock’s door! *Who* could have put that there?"
All right, I never claimed to be a vid actor or anything. But Chris never noticed.
"I’ve got to get that down!" she said, and began stretching up and pulling on it, which tightened all those carefully-planned knots.
"Why?"
"If he comes back - - he’ll see it - - and be embarrassed," she gasped between struggles with the ribbon. She wasn’t tall enough to reach the fastener or to see what she was doing with the knots. "He might even think I did it - - oh god - - that would be awful!"
"You never know your luck," I said. "Maybe the Captain did it. Maybe Mr. Spock will guess right away."
She gave me a wide-eyed shocked look, and I lost my patience suddenly. Holiday stress, I tell you, it hits like a brick sometimes.
"Chris, now be *real* with me," I said right into her face. "*Everybody* has heard that rumor."
Her gaze fell. "OK, yes," she said.
"And even if you hadn’t, just *look* at them sometime."
"Yes, I said OK."
Poor baby, I felt ashamed of myself for pushing her. "I’m sorry," I said. "I’ll help you get it down."
"Could you?" she asked, suddenly radiant. And boy, she can *be* radiant when she tries.
"Hmm," I said, pretending to consider alternatives. "The nearest ladder is probably in Engineering someplace. And it would take some time to get something like a chair or whatever from - - somewhere - -"
"Oh, please, we’ve got to hurry."
"Well, one of us could lift the other one."
She looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
"Hey," I said, getting irritable again, "I only *look* puny and insignificant. I do weight training. I had to pass the same physical everybody else did."
"Medical personnel don’t," she said.
"Well, then, I lift," I answered.
She hesitated.
"Or I go on to my quarters and let you figure it out," I said by way of encouragement.
"OK, you lift."
I bent my knees and she put her hands on my shoulders, and I put my arms around her knees and stood up. I may do weight training, but there’s a lot of difference between the weight machine and an armful of Chris Chapel. In these little miniskirt uniforms, and wearing nothing but tights down those long legs. Oh, my. I felt dizzy. Couldn’t breathe. Of course, that might have had something to do with the fact that my face was jammed into her hipbone.
She fiddled with the ribbon for awhile.
"I am hurrying," she said apologetically.
"’S OK," I mumbled. She smelled wonderful.
"Got it!"
Well, that was too soon. But this, I had known all along, was the best part, right now, sliding her down my body to the floor. One second, two, three, her hips dragging down, her belly pressing against my cheek and slipping, and then her breasts on either side of my face. Who needs to breathe? I turned my head and faced into her. She pulled back and I let my arms loosen, but didn’t let go. Before I could think about it, I stretched my neck and kissed her. Not a long kiss, but warm and moist. My hands on her face. Oh my, she’s soft.
Then I let her step back, and looked at her, prepared to see almost anything.
She had that beautiful blurry expression she usually saves for looking at Mr. Spock.
"You were under the mistletoe," I said.
"So were you," she answered.
I took a breath and said in a rush, "I haven’t decorated my quarters yet. Want to give me a hand?"
"Only," she said, "if I get to decide where this goes." She tickled my cheek with the mistletoe. I giggled.
Damn, what a brilliant idea this was! I *thought* holiday stress would hit her that way.
I may even get that stocking up. Eventually.
*end*