Work Text:
There were some days Nathan wondered why he’d ever wanted to come back to Eureka – like when he’s spent almost three hours chasing down rogue electronic mistletoe… on St. Patrick’s Day.
It was Taggart’s fault, of course.
As usual the mistletoe was rather ingenious, and if it had been unleashed at the G.D. winter holiday party Nathan might have been fine with it.
But it was March. (And it was freely roaming through the entire facility.)
Why couldn’t one of the scientists have tried making a giant rainbow for the holiday? That was surely in the reasonable scope for the atmospheric labs? Although a mental voice that sounded disturbingly like Carter posited that the rainbow would likely have turned out to be a giant “death ray” or something equally disastrous. And it was probably just as well that no one was experimenting with leprechauns.
He couldn’t even hope to be trapped under the mistletoe with Allison, since she’d calmly told them they clearly had it under control, and then locked herself in her office.
And it would have been trapped under the mistletoe. Taggart’s greenery, in addition to being able to fly and hover, was equipped with a portable forcefield generator. Any two people caught in close proximity to the mistletoe were trapped inside an impenetrable barrier until the device registered a proper kiss.
He, Taggart, Lupo, and Carter had been tracking the thing for three hours now, following a trail of red and awkward faces. (Although a few of those red faces bore a distinctly hand-shaped pattern.)
Annoyingly, the mistletoe monstrosity seemed to practically disappear the moment the forcefields dropped after a successful kiss. Taggart swore up and down that he hadn’t installed any sort of transporter or displacement device, but judging by the look on Carter’s face he suspected he was not the only one having serious doubts about that. Especially after three hours.
During that time, they’d only caught up to the damn thing thrice, and it’d been resistant to capture while it was under the forcefields – and, well, none of them actually wanted to be trapped under the thing themselves.
In fact, Nathan was mildly impressed at some of the acrobatics Carter had pulled off in order to avoid being trapped under the plant. At one point he spun in something resembling a do-si-do, all but flinging Fargo at a hapless Dr. Kilgore. He’d have felt sorry for the woman, but she’d also looked far too eager when she thought it was the Sherriff she’d be kissing.
One of the keys to not being targeted by the mistletoe was maintaining large social distancing, since the forcefields had a limited range radius to pull two people together. They couldn’t quite determine how the mistletoe chose its next targets, as it wasn’t always the closest two people, but Carter did eventually have the bright idea that if they limited the number of available targets (people) they could lure it to a specific destination.
So very carefully they locked down all the exits in the section where the mistletoe had last been spotted, evacuated all the staff through a single monitored exit, then waited for the mistletoe to zoom in looking for victims so they could lock it in an empty lab.
They were too slow. (What kind of thrust boosters had Taggart put onto that thing?) Even worse, Carter, idiot that he was, forgot to maintain distance.
The panicked look on Carter’s face when the forcefield flared up around the two of them almost made it worth it. Of course, Carter quickly narrowed his eyes and changed his look to one of defiance. Nathan could almost hear the silent taunt of “Chicken?” Nathan was going to kiss that cocky smirk right off his face.
He leaned forward; Carter met him halfway.
Huh, Carter was better at this than he expected. Well, never let it be said that Nathan Stark backed down from a challenge. With that thought, Nathan grabbed Jack by the front of his annoying polyester uniform in order to deepen the kiss and get a better angle.
It was the wolf whistle from Lupo that finally broke through Nathan’s …competitive haze. He spent several smug seconds enjoying the Sheriff’s slightly dazed expression before his gaze finally refocused over to Lupo and Taggart …who were now themselves trapped under the mistletoe. Apparently, the other two were too distracted by Carter and Nathan’s little one-upmanship to actually try to contain the mistletoe.
Well then, he and Carter would have to… Before Nathan could enact a new containment plan, from within the forcefield he saw Taggart reach up – completely unimpeded – and flip a switch that made the low hum of the hovering mistletoe peter off into silence as it fell into his hands, completely inert.
Carter started squawking immediately. “What the hell, Taggart? If it was that easy to turn the damn thing off why didn’t you do that three hours ago? Or tell someone else trapped inside how to do it?”
The cryptozoologist was entirely unruffled by Carter’s yelling, turning instead to his deputy. “No one I’d rather be under the mistletoe with than you, Jo.” He held the inert mistletoe over his head with a hopeful grin, “Any chance for a kiss sans forcefield?”
********
Nathan spent the rest of the day locked in his office. No, he wasn’t hiding from the already rampant rumors. Or from Carter. That would be ridiculous.
Unfortunately, while he always had an infinite amount of work he could do while ensconced in his office, his body still required food and his refrigerator at home was depressingly bare. So with great reluctance, Nathan stopped by Café Diem for dinner – to go – keeping his glare firmly at “don’t even think about approaching me” levels.
While waiting for his food (in a back corner, where no one should bother him), he saw Taggart saunter through the door with Lupo on his arm. They strode up the counter where Taggart proceeded to whisper with Vincent, and it looked like something exchanged hands. Lupo was grinning.
Nathan adjusted his position for a closer look when his vision was suddenly blocked by tan polyester. He looked up into the smirking face of the Sheriff and thought, I may need to kiss that damn smirk off his face again.