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It’s a week before Christmas and Guo Chang Cheng is the one who decides to make a big deal out of celebrating it at the SID. The team goes along with his request like the losers they all are when faced with the puppy eyes of Xiao Guo.
It’s Lin Jing and Da Qing who come up with the idea of doing a Secret Santa for the gift exchange. Personally, Zhao Yunlan thinks it’s because both of them want to get away by giving the worst gifts possible without getting caught for it.
Wang Zheng makes them all write their names in a piece of paper, throwing them all inside Lin Jing’s stupid popcorn maker and makes them all pick out one paper each and everyone gets a member of the team to get a gift for. Wang Zheng glares at Zhao Yunlan while she declares there will be no change in the lots drawn.
Zhao Yunlan opens the scrap of paper he picked out, finding Da Qing’s illegible chicken scrawl handwriting and feels the most evil smile curl upon his face. He turns to look down at Shen Wei beside him who has his paper folded back already, looking like he never opened it.
However, Shen Wei clearly has his thinking hat or thinking mask on - whatever he uses to think about stuff if Zhao Yunlan has to go by the deep furrow between his eyebrows. He leans onto Shen Wei’s shoulder and gives his husband the most pretty smile and Shen Wei frowns down at him.
“Did you get my name Bao Bei?”
Shen Wei opens his mouth to respond but Wang Zheng cuts him off with,
“And no telling anyone who got whom. Let's keep it a nice surprise.”
Shen Wei shrugs at him and turns back to stare at the ceiling in deep thought again and Zhao Yunlan rolls his eyes at his behaviour.
The week rolls by quickly, blissfully without any major cases, leaving Zhao Yunlan with lots of free time to contemplate his gift for Da Qing and for everyone else to pretend like they aren’t trying to figure out who their own secret Santa is. Zhao Yunlan himself tried to wheedle it out of Shen Wei who didn’t respond to him at all, he even tried to tempt Shen Wei into confessing after one of their romps in the bed when Shen Wei looked blissed out after Zhao Yunlan made him come twice, but Shen Wei still held on strong refusing to divulge his secret.
Zhao Yunlan didn't take a lot of time thinking about Da Qing’s gift. The cat has been with him since forever. Zhao Yunlan knows what the damn cat would love to have, and he is definitely sure Da Qing would appreciate at least one of the gifts Zhao Yunlan decided to get for him.
Lin Jing clamours for a real live tree and Zhao Yunlan puts his foot down and ends that topic of discussion very quickly, leaving the team grumbling and going to their storage to pull out the ancient faux tree Wang Zheng found.
Decorating it the day before is another chore, but everyone joins in, with Zhao Yunlan lazing on his sofa and pretending to direct his troops. Before the day’s end, Shen Wei joins him at the SID office as well and both of them stare in amused detachment at the chaos the entire staff of SID get up to in the name of decorating the tree.
Zhao Yunlan has to physically stop Lin Jing from putting his own scientific experiments under the guise of Christmas tree ornaments on the tree, the fact that his “christmas ornaments” have already started smoking also doesn’t help his case. However, he is late and somehow unable to stop Wang Zheng from putting up a string of dried fish along with the popcorn strings.
He throws a look back at Da Qing perched on Shen Wei’s lap in cat form, happily purring away as his husband strokes his fur, but his round eyes are hyper focussed on the dried fish string.
Zhao Yunlan suppresses a sigh when he sees Da Qing actually lick his lips. All of them will be lucky if they still have a tree standing by tomorrow evening.
Christmas morning is a calm and quiet affair in Zhao Yunlan’s home. He wakes up to lazy kisses from Shen Wei, who for once hasn't left the bed early and is still wrapped around Zhao Yunlan, keeping him warm and toasty. He hears Da Qing scratch at their bedroom door and snuggles into Shen Wei’s neck so his husband doesn’t go out to cook them all breakfast.
Shen Wei snorts lightly and kisses Zhao Yunlan’s hair before whispering,
“Merry Christmas Yunlan.”
Zhao Yunlan sighs happily and cuddles more into Shen Wei, wrapping his arms around him like a koala as he looks into his husband’s face with a smile,
“Merry Christmas Xiao Wei.”
Shen Wei kisses him once more, on his lips this time, barely there, sleep soft kisses and goes to untangle himself from Zhao Yunlan, who is doing his best impression as an octopus trapping Shen Wei in bed.
Zhao Yunlan lays back in bed making dramatic noises as Shen Wei leaves the bed and gets on with his daily routine of feeding the cat and his husband.
Zhao Yunlan proposes a lazy day on the couch till they all have to be at the SID office for the evening Christmas get-together. Da Qing purrs in agreement from where he’s perched on the back of the sofa and Zhao Yunlan leans in to snuggle with Shen Wei once again as they put on some mindless movie on the television to watch before they all have to inevitably be back at their workplace.
It’s late evening when they all drive to the office and Zhao Yunlan looks around the office in approval. Wang Zheng went all out with the decorations of the place and their normal office place has changed into a welcoming and homely place for Christmas.
Zhao Yunlan looks up at the doorway and smiles in triumph when he notices the sprig of mistletoe hanging from the archway. Sang Zan did his job remarkably well.
“Xiao Wei, give me my kiss?” Yunlan whines loudly, attracting everyone else’ attention.
Shen Wei looks over at him and flushes pink as he tries to steer Zhao Yunlan towards the table in the middle of the room without creating any drama, but Zhao Yunlan stands his ground, digging his feet in and cheekily points towards the mistletoe again and makes kissy faces at an exasperated Shen Wei.
Da Qing makes gagging noises and goes ahead to jump onto the table and sniff around the food piled high on the table. Zhao Yunlan continues to waggle his eyebrows at Shen Wei, leering at him before Shen Wei pulls him close and in full view of the entire SID kisses the living daylights out of Zhao Yunlan. The gagging noises reach a higher volume as Da Qing is joined by the rest of the staff.
Zhao Yunlan wobbles in place after Shen Wei lets go of him and walks into the party, with red ears and flushed cheeks but otherwise not looking the least bit affected. Zhao Yunlan narrows his eyes before following Shen Wei as they make their way to the Christmas tree set up near the stairs and drop off their presents along with everyone else underneath it.
The rising noises from the table make them turn back quickly towards them before a food fight breaks out between the teams of Da Qing and Lin Jing attempting to sneak food off the table and Wang Zheng and Zhu Hong trying to put a stop to them.
Zhao Yunlan tries to sneak in between Da Qing and Wang Zheng but gets pushed to the head of the table and he’s joined there by Shen Wei coming to stand beside him.
He looks out to the bickering members around the table and rolls his eyes when Shen Wei pushes him forward to the edge of the table,
“Okay all of you start stuffing your faces,” Da Qing doesn’t wait for him to finish before he’s picking up his chopsticks and poking into the multiple bowls he’s pulled closer to him.
“Or you know be like the damn cat and just inhale the food.” he finishes with a laugh.
Shen Wei laughs softly behind him and Zhao Yunlan looks back at the man he loves more than life itself.
“Bao Bei want to go to my office?”
Shen Wei throws a suspicious glance at him before replying, “Why? Do you have something to tell me?”
Zhao Yunlan winds his arm around Shen Wei’s waist and leans with his whole body weight against him and it’s a testament to Shen Wei’s strength when he doesn’t even budge an inch, the casual display of his strength is just a slight bit of a turn on for Zhao Yunlan.
Okay, it’s a huge turn on.
Zhao Yunlan has to put a stop to that idea before it starts running away inside his head.
And anyway Shen Wei would argue that Yunlan does not eat enough and thus couldn't even push him a step back and it had nothing to do with Shen Wei’s powers.
Zhao Yunlan tunes back into their conversation after ignoring his filthy mind for once in his life, “Want to find out how many doorways have mistletoe strung up so I can kiss you under them?” Zhao Yunlan leers at Shen Wei, loving the little blush that trails down his cheeks and disappears under his tightly shut collar as Shen Wei stares with an unamused smile.
Zhao Yunlan chuckles and turns back to snatch some food up before the table is cleared by the hungry jerks. Shen Wei stands beside him and sips at his glass of water while looking over everyone with a fond gaze.
The food disappears in minutes with Da Qing and Lin Jing polishing most of it off and Lao Chu ensuring Xiao Guo got enough to eat. Zhu Hong has the alcohol out and everyone apart from Shen Wei has a bottle of beer in their hand. Even Xiao Guo is brave enough to dare a sip under Chu ShuZhi’s watchful eyes.
Da Qing is the one greedily whining about his present a while later and Wang Zheng agrees to get started on the gift unwrapping part of the evening, prompting Lin Jing to run down to their tree and bring up the basket of gifts.
Zhao Yunlan stands up and clears his throat in a bid to sound very important and there are muffled snorts all around. He chooses to ignore that in favour of being nice for the Christmas spirit.
“Okay everyone, gather around and pick your gift out. Since this was all Xiao Guo’s idea he’ll be the one unwrapping his gift first.”
Their little puppy squeaks in alarm when everyone focuses their attention on him and he starts pulling at Lao Chu’s elbow in a poor bid for help. Lao Chu, unmoved as ever, just shoves his hand into the basket and starts rifling through it.
He pulls out a rectangular box wrapped in red gift paper and pushes it towards Xiao Guo. Xiao Guo takes the gift and opens it with nervous fingers with each and every one of them staring at what he’ll get as a gift and who is the person who is the puppy’s secret Santa.
Shen Wei shushes Zhao Yunlan who makes an impatient noise when Xiao Guo takes too long to open his gift with meticulous fingers.
Finally, Xiao Guo unwraps the box and holds a wooden box with beautiful snake scale marks on the sides.
Zhao Yunlan snorts when he says. “Well, I sure can’t tell who gave that, eh Hong Jie?”
Zhu Hing rolls her eyes at him and turns back to look at Xiao Guo, who is opening the box with some trepidation and then yelps loudly surprising even Shen Wei who looks at him in alarm.
Xiao Guo brings out a small knife with a jewelled hilt, holding it gingerly between his fingers and Zhao Yunlan has to stifle a laugh with how Xiao Guo holds the knife like he expects the knife to stab him.
Zhao Yunlan raises his eyebrows in alarm as he thinks that might be an actual possibility.
Chu Shuzhi must have had the exact same thought and he slowly plucks the knife out of Guo Chang Cheng’s fingers and glares at Zhu Hong while Xiao Guo offers her a steady stream of thanks. Lao Chu puts the knife back in the box and hands it back to Xiao Guo, carefully keeping it slightly out of reach of his flailing hands.
Zhu Hong puffs up in obvious pride at her gift for Xiao Guo and the rest of the team applauds while goading her to open her gift next. She pulls out another red wrapped box out of the basket, this one with her name on it and opens it quickly. Her nails making short work of the wrapping paper.
She coos as she brings out a medium-sized glass bottle with liquid audibly sloshing inside it.
“Thank you Sang Zan. This is very useful.”
Their librarian blushes as he stutters his way through Zhu Hong praising him for gifting her oil for her snakeskin and scales.
Wang Zheng saves him from dying again, this time by blushing too much by dragging the basket towards her and bringing out the gift labelled for her.
She opens the roughly packed gift and brings out two beautifully hand-stitched puppets and laughs delighted.
“Are those Wang Zheng and Sang Zan puppets?” Lin Jing asks as he leans over the table to peek at the little stuffed dolls in Wang Zheng’s hands.
Wang Zheng nods at Lin Jing before bringing them up and sitting both the dolls together on the table and looks at Chu Shuzhi with a watery smile and tears in her eyes.
“Nice job, Lao Chu.” Da Qing pats Chu Shuzhi on the back and Zhao Yunlan has to agree when he sees Wang Zheng’s glowing smile.
Zhu Hong claps and pushes the basket towards Lao Chu, so he can bring his present out, and the forever stern-faced guy pulls out a thin little green wrapped box with his name on it.
Zhao Yunlan watches as Lin Jing becomes more animated with a manic grin growing on his face and he hopes Lao Chu’s gift doesn’t explode in all of their faces.
He is thankfully proven wrong on that front, but he still can’t control a snicker when he sees what Lao Chu pulls out of the thin box after unwrapping it.
The entire staff is treated to a view of Chu Shuzhi blushing red as he holds up the little acrylic standee of a familiar figure in his hands.
Zhao Yunlan throws a glance at Shen Wei and cracks up laughing when he finds Shen Wei blushing similarly as they all take in the acrylic standee of Shen Wei in his Black Cloaked Envoy robes.
“It’s a good liking. You have to admit, Hei Lao Ge.” Zhao Yunlan croaks out between wheezing laughter and is delighted when Shen Wei shoots him an annoyed glare.
Lao Chu also glares at Zhao Yunlan laughing and then turns to glare at Lin Jing opposite him. He grudgingly says his thanks to Lin Jing and Zhao Yunlan laughs harder when he sees Lao Chu softly and lovingly place the standee beside Xiao Guo’s knife box near his hands.
Lin Jing shoots finger guns at Lao Chu before quickly shoving his fingers inside the basket in search of his own gift.
He brings out a slim envelope stamped with pretty stickers and looks at the little sticker that has Wang Zheng’s initials stamped on it.
He looks up at Wang Zheng with stars in his eyes as he holds the envelope in front of him with a gaze akin to worship before he says,
“This..this is the cheque for my bonus isn’t it Wang Jie?” Lin Jing looks at her with hopeful puppy eyes before turning the eyes on Zhao Yunlan, “Chief, you told Wang Jie to give me my bonus right?”
Zhao Yunlan shrugs in response and Lin Jing goes back to slowly tearing the envelope open carefully. He looks at Wang Zheng out of the corner of his eyes and smirks when she winks at him in response before looking at Lin Jing who is making excited noises in hopes of getting his bonus early.
He rips the envelope open and slides out a thin strip of paper and everyone leans closer to see what Wang Zheng got him.
Lin Jing turns over the paper excitedly before letting out a noise of pure dismay as he drops the paper on the table.
Wang Zheng titters from the other side as Da Qing leaps up to grab the paper. He quickly looks at it and starts laughing loudly before wheezing out,
“A coupon. Wang Jie got him a hair salon coupon.” he goes back to convulsing with laughter again, as Lin Jing groans in pain and pulls at his hair making it stick up straight all over his head looking like he plugged his finger in a socket or most likely another one of his experiments went wrong.
Wang Zheng smiles like an angel and Zhao Yunlan gives her a thumbs up in appreciation. She picks up Sang Zan’s gift out of the basket and gently pushes it towards her lover. Sang Zan gently holds the neatly wrapped gift and starts to open it slowly. Zhao Yunlan feels Shen Wei stiffen beside him and looks at him curiously.
Shen Wei has an intense look on his face as he looks at Sang Zan opening his gift and Zhao Yunlan realises Shen Wei must be the one giving the gift to Sang Zan. He takes Shen Wei’s palm in his hand and slowly rubs his finger over Shen Wei’s knuckles in an effort to calm him down.
Shen Wei looks at him and Zhao Yunlan smiles at him before leaning into his side and feels Shen Wei relax against him.
Sang Zan opens the blue wrapping paper and brings out a book and everyone leans closer once again to look at the name of the book. Sang Zan solves them all the trouble by slowly reading the name of the book aloud.
“21st Century Made Easy - a guide for dummies.”
Da Qing snickers in amusement and even Lin Jing looks up from sniffling over his lost dream of getting his bonus cheque to giggle at Sang Zan.
The book looks worn and well used and Sang Zan turns through the pages quickly before looking up at Shen Wei with clear worship in his eyes.
“Th-Thank you so much, Professor Shen. I will use this a lot.”
Shen Wei blinks with wide eyes before wetting his lips with his tongue and goes to speak.
“It helped me a lot before. For a lot of things.” he nods at Sang Zan again, “I hope it comes of use to you as well.”
Sang Zan nods back at Shen Wei vigorously before going through the book again and Wang Zheng looks at Shen Wei with a grateful smile.
Shen Wei shifts in place when all of the SID look at him with admiration clear in their gazes and Zhao Yunlan decides to put him out of his misery by dragging the almost empty gift basket towards him finally
He picks out the soft yellow wrapped gift out of the basket and hands it over to his husband and Shen Wei looks flustered at it being his turn to unwrap the gift now.
He takes the gift box from Zhao Yunlan and slowly opens the wrapping paper and Zhao Yunlan does not complain when Shen Wei takes his time and meticulously unwraps the gift; no complaints at all, not when he finally has a proper reason to shamefully ogle at Shen Wei’s hands and fingers.
Shen Wei holds up a glass photo frame, he turns it over and makes a soft noise of contentment.
Zhao Yunlan looks into the photo frame and is surprised to find a picture of both him and Shen Wei staring at each other with fond smiles on their faces.
He tries to remember this day and finally remembers that it’s a picture from the week before when they were all having a lazy day at the office and Shen Wei had brought them all home-cooked food and the entire SID had lunch together.
He remembers Xiao Guo clicking pictures of them all on his phone. Zhao Yunlan looks up at Guo Chang Cheng and finds the guy blushing when he notices Shen Wei is already looking at him.
“Thank you, Xiao Guo. I shall treasure this.” Shen Wei says with a voice full of emotion and Zhao Yunlan leans into Shen Wei again to kiss his hair softly.
Shen Wei takes a deep breath in and smiles softly at Zhao Yunlan before pushing the gift basket towards Zhao Yunlan.
Zhao Yunlan looks into the gift basket, in which only two more gifts remain. He looks around the table and finds that every one of his team has already opened their gifts apart from him and Da Qing.
Zhao Yunlan grins when he realises that Da Qing and he got each other as their secret Santa. Across the table, Da Qing must have stumbled on the same revelation as he grins back at Zhao Yunlan in response.
“Ahh, fat cat you’re going to love your gift.”
Da Qing narrows his eyes at Zhao Yunlan’s words but still watches with an evil smile as Zhao Yunlan picks up the small box and looks at the wrapping paper.
“Really? You used newspaper as wrapping paper???”
Da Qing snorts from the other end and quips back, “You’re lucky, I decided to wrap it at all.”
Zhao Yunlan rolls his eyes at Da Qing muttering about ungrateful pets as he easily rips apart the flimsy newspaper wrapping and holds up a box of underwear and his very own acrylic standee of Shen Wei in his Black Cloaked Envoy robes.
Zhao Yunlan whoops in glee as the rest of SID snicker. He drops the underwear box on the table and raises the standee to kiss it and hears gagging noises around him. Beside him, Shen Wei looks tragically embarrassed yet again.
Zhao Yunlan keeps the standee down on the table away from Shen Wei, who looks like he’ll chuck it out of the nearest window and picks up the box of underwear.
“I hope you use those and save my eyes from seeing what it doesn’t need to see.” Da Qing says loudly and Zhao Yunlan grins before pushing the basket which contains Da Qing’s gift towards Da Qing himself.
Da Qing picks out the small gift box and rattles it near his ears. The small box doesn’t make any noise and Da Qing frowns in suspicion before opening the rough and shoddy packaging that Zhao Yunlan remembered only last night.
Da Qing makes a face as he pulls out his gift from the box - an eye mask and a pair of earbuds to keep out noise.
“I’m really just listening to what you wanted,” Zhao Yunlan crows delightedly, “Use those and you won’t have to hear or see anything.” he winks at Da Qing when the damn cat fake gags again.
“Zhao Yunlan” Shen Wei sounds adorably exasperated.
Zhao Yunlan gets up and Shen Wei stands up beside him, still looking embarrassed on behalf of Zhao Yunlan.
“Merry Christmas once again. Please don’t show your faces around here before tomorrow afternoon. I know I will be too tired to move.” he finishes, triggering another round of complaints.
Zhao Yunlan turns to Shen Wei and intending to let everyone hear his shamelessness, he says loudly, “Let’s go home Baobei..we can find more of the mistletoe to kiss underneath,”
Da Qing’s face immediately changes colour and he rips the earbuds out of the package and stuffs them in his ears on hearing Zhao Yunlan’s words and Zhao Yunlan howls with laughter before leaning in close to Shen Wei and whispers against his lips, “and you can unwrap your real present under my clothes.”
Shen Wei stiffens when Zhao Yunlan winks at him but doesn’t respond further and instead opens a portal right in between their office to transport them back home. Zhao Yunlan giggles as Shen Wei whisks him away and proceeds to give Yunlan the best Christmas night ever.