Author's Note: It's Secret Santa time! Fortunately, Sarahinprint matched me with Spitfire303 and I say fortunate because she gave me three amazing prompts. I actually had a hard time deciding. :)

Thank you to Sarahinprint for taking on the responsibility of matching names this year, as well as keeping track of the stories that are posted. In the end, considering that important role the organizer plays in any Secret Santa operation was what led me to choose Spitfire's Secret Santa prompt. I mean that literally, by the way. She literally asked for a Secret Santa in the Lab story featuring Hodgins, Angela and Brennan.

~Q~

~ The Match Under the Mistletoe ~

~Q~

Angela

3 December 2006.

"Hey. Doctor Saroyan said it's okay."

"What's okay." She didn't even bother to look up from the book she was buried in, oh so typical. The Forensic Anthropologist that Angela Montenegro had begun calling 'best friend' would not be easy to reach when something containing letters on leaves of paper was within her grasp, and that was not to mention the topic itself, which Angela hadn't actually mentioned yet. As soon as Temperance Brennan realized what Angela had in mind…?

There would be a battle royal.

Wondering how much resistance she'd be facing, Angela pushed further into her best friend's office and offered the opening salvo. "The party, here in the lab."

"Hm. That's good."

Hm, that's no resistance, which is not good. It means she's not paying attention. Angela halted at the edge of Brennan's desk and leaned down to get more action out of her than a distracted murmur meant to hide an all but obvious oblivion. She put her hand over the page. "You're going to be there, right?"

"What?"

Only because the words were blocked.

Finally Brennan looked up, her eyes hazed in rainy day hues and Angela felt relief to finally hash this out. "You will be at the Christmas party."

"No I won't."

That was quick. (And disappointing, considering all the progress they'd made last year.) It was also completely expected, what she'd come in here prepared to face: absolute resistance to the idea of voluntarily participating in Yuletide festivities. Raising a brow, Angela crossed her arms and the battle was on. "Why not?"

"I'm going to—"

Before she could finish with 'Timbuktu' or the 'Outer Wild Banks of Madagascar' (or whatever other primitive hellhole she had in mind) Angela stomped her foot, stamped the idea right out. "No! I thought we were friends!"

Bafflement made Brennan halt, nothing more. "We are."

"Then you're staying here to help me."

"Angela…."

Imbued with twin pangs of guilt and whatever invented obligation she'd managed to conjure as her excuse to flee the family Christmas tree, Brennan admonished her with a passable effort at pitiful. Really, it looked very authentic. Absolutely that woeful expression was the epitome of 'torn' and 'pensive,' even a little bit of 'conflicted' and all so highly perfected that a lesser expert in all things awkward anthropologist might accuse her of advance preparation.

Steep learning curve and all that….

"Come on, Bren. Where else could you possibly go that would be better than here with me, and Hodgins. Zack. And Booth!"

Angela even thought she detected some additional softening there, right before she risked mentioning the FBI Agent's name. She wasn't sure which way Booth's name was going to send her friend, though. It really was a toss-up these days. (All that sizzling sexual tension but if anyone went so far as to suggest they just jump each other already, that fool would be met with frosty denial that he was anything more than 'her partner.' And Booth wasn't any better, his denials tending towards more frantic and high-pitched than Brennan's, which was rather comical considering he was a manly, sniper-turned-FBI Agent alpha-male. Really. Should such a brave warrior be reduced to quivering panic at the mere mention of him having the hots for his 'partner?' No— Unless it's true.)

"Booth will be with Parker."

That was the end of that. Angela crossed her arms. "Fine that still leaves the rest of us."

Instead of arguing, Brennan flipped shut the book she'd been looking through, a travel guide to North Carolina, and lifted her chin resolutely. "I've got plans."

"What, there's a mass grave in North Carolina?"

Rolled eyes. (Now where did she pick that up?) Very adolescent, but then in many way Temperance Brennan's adolescence had been halted at the age of fifteen, lingering in stasis for years until only recently when meeting Booth had triggered a long overdue 'first crush.' Truly, she was a late bloomer.

Angela's amusement turned all soft and mushy, therefore, when Brennan confessed quietly, "I'm going to spend Christmas with my brother, Russ."

Oh. Oh, wow.

This was the brother Brennan had lost sixteen years ago, days after losing both parents at the tender age of fifteen herself, and all of this the reason she had shunned Christmas ever after. After last year's lockdown in the lab on Christmas morning, they'd all gotten closer — Booth included — and even Brennan had grudgingly participated up to a point. The real breakthrough came just a few months later, when Booth had facilitated a long overdue reunion and reconnection with Russ Brennan.

So this news was, without a doubt, the only excuse Angela would ever be willing to accept: trading a 'work' Christmas for a family one. "Oh, that sounds wonderful, Sweetie."

A shy smile ghosted across her lips, rather like she was afraid to be happy. "He invited me and I want to go."

With a satisfied sigh, Angela took a seat and watched her lonely friend adapting to the idea of spending Christmas with family again. "I never even thought of this: of course you'll want to be with him instead of here."

Nodding, tracing an idle fingertip across the cover of her tourist guide, the anthropologist finally admitted, "It still doesn't feel real. I'm going to have Christmas with my brother."

"It's your first Christmas together in sixteen years. But this is good. It's really good."

The happy, unguarded smile returned and went all the way to Brennan's eyes this time. It was the rarest of sights, bright enough to seem the personification of Christmas spirit in a person who didn't even believe in that sort of thing.

Who could help feeling misty-eyed? Not this cynical artist. Wiping a genuine teardrop away Angela laughed, realizing she'd been bested by a misty little sister who'd finally found the way home. Brennan won this round but it was a long time coming.

"Okay, I'll stop nagging you to stay and party with us but will you still help me with the Secret Santa?"

"What? No."

I lost round one, I am not losing round two. Angela put her foot down again, which meant she had to stand back up. "You won't be here so you're off the hook on participating, but then that makes you the perfect choice."

"For what…."

"To match the names, of course. I trust you'll be completely objective."

"But, I—"

"No look, it's easy. I give you the names, you match us all up and tell us who to get a gift for. That's it."

It was too easy. Oh, the suspicion rolling off Brennan, like fog on the coast. "Why can't you do it?"

"Well, because." A cheeky grin. "I won't be impartial."

Taking a few seconds to consider that admission, Brennan frowned. "You mean as a participant, you have a vested interest in securing the best possible contributor for yourself."

"Well, I wouldn't put it that way." On the other hand, Brennan was not wrong. Angela smirked, knowing her friend's inherent sense of justice would do the rest of the convincing for her.

"It's human nature," the anthropologist shrugged. "Therefore I concede you are wise to seek my input."

"So you'll do it?"

"Yes. I will match the names." And she smiled again, actually looked intrigued by the responsibility. "A spreadsheet would be too simplistic. Perhaps I will design a flow chart…."

~Q~

Surprisingly, that wasn't all that she did.

Angela wandered into the Ookie room two days later to find Temperance Brennan — hater of all things holiday themed — haggling over a sprig of mistletoe. Bickering, mind you, over the most strategic location for placement.

"People should not stop in doorways, it occludes traffic flow."

Jack Hodgins beheld this protest with widely opened eyes, bluer than his lab coat, and a mouth to match. (Not blue, just in case you were wondering, his mouth was only a match in the 'wide open' sense.) He held off from hanging the herb just long enough to clarify. "Well where else would you lay in wait but right where there's no escape? That's why this is the tradition. You hang it over a doorway."

With this indisputable fact dispensed, he stretched out the contentious specimen (freshly culled from several oaks reigning on his estate these last two centuries), preparing to affix it upon the lintel while Brennan furrowed her brow below. "Properly speaking, tradition would have it placed over the front entrance."

And while she was right, this could go on all night.

"You know what? We're going to put mistletoe over all the doorways," Angela drawled. "And one or two on the platform."

So what if the ceiling was 30 feet high out there, Angela was determined to end certain charades and what better way than mathematical leveraging. The more chances for mistletoe mayhem, the better: get the numbers stacked and eventually something was bound to happen. Though she would never admit it, Brennan would welcome any excuse to lock lips with Seeley Booth and Angela was only too happy to provide it. Consider this my Super Secret Santa gift to you, my sweet unsuspecting friend. Gathering up swags of holly garlands for trimming, she winked at Jack and brushed past her bemused best friend. Brennan, for her part, swung a semi-circle to face outwards towards her own threatened territory.

"Why?"

"Because that's where you spend most of your time." And where one Seeley Booth might hopefully seize opportunity and would, even if Angela had to drag him there by the hair. Hopefully Cam wouldn't catch on until it was too late to stop fate. (That 'friends-with-benefits' thing they had going was another of the charades Angela intended to halt this Christmas.)

Laughing, Jack finished tacking Cupid's favorite herb above the entrance to his Ookiedom. "If you want to avoid getting caught, you'll have to keep moving."

Her arms fell into an embrace crossing her ribs, a veritable bumper meant to ward off collisions and kissing coworkers alike. "Easily accomplished, as I won't be here."

"Won't be where?" Booth breezed in at just that moment, pausing when he spied Hodgins hard at work setting traps for the unwary. "And what's this about keeping moving — are you going somewhere?"

"I won't be at the Christmas party." Brennan's arms dropped rather quickly, Angela noted, even as she sidled a little bit further away from the ladder where her coworker had firmly attached his first lure. As Jack came down the ladder and set it aside, oblivious Booth was clearly preparing to change his partner's mind. Neither one of them paid the slightest bit of attention to the mistletoe dangling above them.

(One might think these two were blind as bats but in fact, they had eyes only for each other and that made them blind to everything else.)

"Why not? If Cam is making me go, then you have to go, too."

That threw her. Upon learning that Booth would attend the party she was sworn to miss, Brennan's breath snagged on a syllable that sounded suspiciously like a startled ejaculation. And then disappointment. "Wha-? Well, uh, I've already purchased tickets."

"To go where? Come on, I thought we got you over the Grinch phase last year. Even Scrooge turned up at the company party, you know." His most tempting grin softened the tease considerably, but not the sting buried within. His implication that she was a Grinch, even if she still didn't know what that was, stiffened Brennan's resistance.

"Only after being terrorized by a nightmare phantom. Are you suggesting I must attend pro-forma holiday celebrations as a prophylactic against my own ignominious death?"

"Bones, real people don't use words like 'ignominious.' I don't even know what that means."

"It means shameful or having a bad name."

"Then why didn't you just say that?"

Laughing, Brennan leaned in closer. Close enough to kiss him, mere centimeters apart. "Efficiency. Why use six words when one will do?"

"One word is useless when no one knows what you're talking about."

Ignoring the bickering proceeding beside him, Jack Hodgins beckoned to Angela. "Come hither, my darling."

Smirking, she sauntered closer, eyeing the herb with genuine affection. So many great kisses, so many happy excuses to kiss the daylights out of whatever man or woman caught her fancy. Angela loved Christmas, unapologetically, and she loved Jack Hodgins all the more for being on her side in this caper. "Are we taking it for a test run?"

"I figure somebody ought to, since these two are wasting a perfectly good opportunity." Hodgie's brows waggled, a saucy wink crinkling his eyes all that much deeper when his dig and none-too-subtle usurpation of their position below the mistletoe caused the partners to stop sparring and turn their gazes upwards in tandem.

Angela noted Brennan's cheeks washing pink just before she happily wrapped herself around her favorite entomologist, their mouths melding under the mistletoe.

Booth whistled.

Brennan (probably) rolled her eyes.

Camille Saroyan halted her exit from the autopsy bay and groaned. "Oh good grief, do I have to banish mistletoe from the Jeffersonian?"

Breaking loose, Angela laughed. "What, it's just a harmless kiss under the mistletoe. Doesn't mean a thing, right Bren?"

"Well anthropologically speaking—"

"Oh no you don't," Booth interrupted, grabbing her by the wrist and dragging her off towards her own office. "Don't you dare ruin mistletoe with one of your anthropology speeches."

"But in England they held the belief that a man and woman who kissed more than once beneath mistletoe were destined to get married. And the Druids…."

"Hear that, Hodgie? Brennan says we're getting married."

"At the rate we're going, probably more than once."

She snickered, stole another three kisses, then sighed as she considered the novel idea of attaching herself to one person forever.

"So…" Jack smoothed her hair and held her eyes with that shade of adoring blue she would never tire seeing. "Did Doctor B give you your Secret Santa yet?"

"Yeah," Angela chuckled. "She gave me, um … Zack."

"Really. Hmm, that ought to be interesting."

"Who did you get?"

"Um, well…."

He looked so reluctant that she guessed right away. "Did you get Cam? You did, didn't you. Maybe Bren will let you switch, if you want."

"No, not Cam. She matched me with the perfect Secret Santa." He soothed her so hastily that Angela was now more than a little suspicious. She arched a brow, a silent challenge. "I got it covered, don't worry. Heh, Brennan actually seems excited about this Christmas party."

"Well, she's not gonna be here," Angela reminded.

"Yeah I know, but I kind of wish she was, you know?" He shrugged, thinking back to the twelve, terrifying hours he'd spent trapped underground with the smartest, most caring co-sufferer he could have hoped to have. "In that car I saw a side of her…."

"Hey, look, you're both fine. Let's not think about that anymore, okay?"

"It's just … I think she's in love with Booth."

Every female within a certain radius was a little in love with Booth, meaning Temperance Brennan — who spent all of her time within his sphere — would be more in love than most. Though part of her was tempted to laugh heartily at the obvious, the rest of Angela sighed. Yes, Brennan was in love Booth; the only question was which partner would be the last to figure it out. "Booth is with Cam and he seems to like it that way."

"So then why are you plotting to cover the ceiling in mistletoe…?"

"A girl can hope."

~Q~

Author's Note: Dearest Spitfire303, you asked for one final element which is snow. This was meant to be a story in two parts, with the second part featuring the actual gift exchange and snow. However, as I began writing part two it took on a very unexpected form that included something you did not want. (This time of year brings it out in me, I'm afraid.) The solution, therefore, was to break this story into three parts. Part one has nearly everything you wished for aside from snow. Part two has snow and something you didn't want, however ... there's a reason for it. Part three will hopefully make you forgive part two by offering a warm, fuzzy ending where everyone's Secret Santa delivers the perfect present at the perfect time.

Meanwhile... Happy Christmas!