Work Text:
Snowmen, gingerbread men, snowflakes, or light-up Christmas tree? I looked at the ugly Christmas sweaters on my bed, brow furrowed. I had only twenty minutes to make it to NASA's staff holiday party. When I started working at NASA in October, I was hoping that not everyone would be a stereotypical anti-social scientist, but I was proven wrong. I was hoping to make some friends tonight.
Who was I kidding? I picked up light-up Christmas tree. A loud ding startled me out of my thoughts. It was my phone, reminding me to “HURRY UP OR YOU’LL BE LATE!” I threw on my sweater, scooped up my phone, and slid into my small kitchen where the cookies I had baked sat on the island, arranged carefully on a plate, and covered with plastic wrap. I picked them up with one hand as I shoved my feet into my shoes and slipped my phone into my purse.
The whole drive to the party I gripped the steering wheel hard and tried to calm the giant butterflies that had taken up residence in my stomach. What if they don’t like me? What if they think my sweater is too much? What if they don’t like my cookies? What if—
The car behind me honked its horn, impatient for whatever reason. I sighed and kpt driving. If I kept worrying, I’d lose myself in everything that could go wrong and ruin the party for myself. Easier said than done.
I opened the door to the building where the party was being held. There were soft green, red, and white lights and Christmas carols playing in the background. I took a deep breath and stepped in, holding my cookies with white-knuckled hands. I stopped just inside the door. Oh no.
Everyone was wearing very formal clothes: suits, button-ups, and the occasional bowtie on the boys, nice dresses and the occasional high-heels on the girls. I thought back to the invitation I had been sent. It hadn’t said anything about dressing like you were going to meet Barbara McClintock. At least, I didn’t think so.
Part of me wanted to just declare this a bust and leave, but I steeled myself and continued in. I quickly strode past small groups of scientists, heading towards the refreshments table near the far wall. Of course it had to be the far wall. It was a warm night, so I hadn’t worn a coat, but now I wished I had grabbed one anyway. Maybe I could ask to be transferred to a different NASA research facility, somewhere colder and far away from California. In my ugly sweater I drew a few sideway glances, muttered questions, and even a few open stares.
I shifted a few plates of snacks to set down my cookies, peeling back the plastic wrap as slowly as possible to buy myself time to decide what to do next. I looked up and caught the eye of a guy leaning against the opposite wall with a plastic cup of eggnog. He grinned at me, brown eyes sparkling in amusement. His head was tipped back ever-so-slightly with a casual confidence, and his smile suggested mischief, but the most striking thing was what he was wearing: a blue sweater with “Happy Hanukkah” displayed across the top in yellow iron-on letters above a colorful fabric menorah that took up the majority of the sweater. It was beautiful. I glanced toward the door one more time, then started to walk toward him. I was here to make friends, after all.
I stopped in front of him. “I love your sweater!” I gushed. “Did you make it yourself?”
He sheepishly tugged at the hem of said sweater. “Yeah, well, kinda. My friend Stone knitted it for me.” He pointed at a solid man in a teal dress shirt chatting with a blonde woman in a beautiful green dress and an older man in a gray suit. Stone didn’t exactly look like the kind of man that’d like to knit, but appearances could be deceiving. “And I decorated it. Watch this,” he said, and pressed a button on the left side of his chest.
The menorah lit up.
“Pretty cool, huh?” smirked Ezekiel.
I pressed a button on my own sweater and the colored lights danced in response. “Pretty cool.”
“Yeah, I figured if I was going to stand out anyways, I might as well do it proper,” he said with an Australian accent and a smile.
I leaned against the wall next to him. “I’m glad to meet someone else who shares my affinity for sweaters. What department do you work in?”
“Right, formalities,” he said, extending the hand not holding his drink. “Ezekiel Jones. I work in computer programming.”
I took the proffered hand. “Cassandra Cillian. I work in flight trajectory. You know, plotting the flight paths for the rockets and satellites and all of those. There’s a lot of math, of course, don’t get me wrong, I like math, physics was my favorite class in college…” I trailed off as I realized I had been babbling, dropping my hand back to my side. “Sorry. I just haven’t had much of a chance to talk to anyone since I got here.”
Ezekiel laughed. “I can see how we’d come off as the ‘anti-social, awkward scientist’ stereotype. The people here are all pretty nice though. You just gotta talk to them about their thing to get them going.”
“Their… thing?”
“Yeah. Everyone has one.” At my lack of response, he sighed and gestured across the room to a woman wearing a pink dress. “Like Dolores. She really likes the Beatles, for whatever reason. And you see that guy who just cornered the guy holding a slice of pie? That’s Eric. He bakes, like, a lot. And Stone, the guy who knit my sweater, he has the weirdest thing for art,” Ezekiel finished. He relaxed his shoulders and looked down.
I took that as my cue to start talking again. “What’s your thing?”
His eyes flickered to me once, then darted around the room, focusing on everything but me. “Well, there’s skateboarding, and,” he seemed to recover some of his bravado, “and certain… illegal activities.
“What?!” I screeched. That wasn’t exactly what I was expecting at an office holiday party.
“It’s nothing too bad,” Ezekiel continued, although his fingers tightened on his cup.
“You— you know what— I’m not even going to ask,” I spluttered out. We lapsed into silence, and I slowly cast my eyes around the room, taking in the small clumps of people, mostly clustered around the refreshment table, the soft rendition of Sleigh Bells being played, the fairy lights hung from the ceiling, the sparsely populated dance floor. I tried not to get overwhelmed by all the details, but I was already calculating the equation of the curves in the fairy lights, the pattern of blinking lights, red, green, white, red, green, white, every 1.7 seconds. I shook my head, trying to get a handle on my hallucinations. Maybe I should just leave.
“I’m sorry if I upset you,” said Ezekiel softly. He looked like he was going to say something else, but took a sip of his eggnog instead.
“Are you really a criminal?”
He hesitated. “Not anymore.”
“Really?”
“I don’t lie, Cassandra.”
Sip. Maybe I should get something to drink.
Maybe I should go home.
I sighed, and Ezekiel spoke again. “Well, we’re already here at the party with our amazing sweaters, so why not enjoy ourselves?”
“I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” I agreed. “What did you have in mind?”
The tops of his ears were starting to turn the same color as my sweater, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes as he answered, “Let’s dance.”
I squeezed my hands into fists and swung them so they brushed against my legs. “Okay. Sure.” I did my best to ignore the formulas swirling in front of my eyes. “We should show off our ugly sweaters,” I grinned. We both pressed our respective buttons, and our sweaters flashed red, green, and white, and yellow respectively. Ezekiel drained his eggnog and tossed the cup into the trash can, then gestured for me to follow him.
We strode to the middle of the dance floor and started to dance, a little hesitantly at first, but growing more confident as the songs went on. Sometimes we danced apart, sometimes together. At one point, Ezekiel spun me, and I nearly fell over.
When we had tired ourselves out, we staggered back over to the snack table and took cups of eggnog. We leaned against the wall and took gulps between heavy breaths. A slow song started to play, and Ezekiel offered me his arm. I took it cautiously, and we strolled back to the floor. “Can I…” His hands hovered above my waist.
“Sure,” I smiled, heart beating wildly. I looped my arms around his neck. I couldn't get a read on Ezekiel. He said he was a thief, or at least used to be, but he was so nice. Sarcastic, yes. Arrogant, a little. But nice. A gentleman even.
We swayed awkwardly through the song. I wondered if it would be too much to lean my head on his shoulder. Probably. I had only met him tonight.
After the song ended, we broke apart, and I pulled out my phone to check the time. I'd stayed a lot later than I intended to, but, hey, I’d wanted to make friends, and I had. Or at least one friend. I looked back up at Ezekiel. “I have to go now. But maybe I’ll see you around?”
He looked crestfallen for a second, but quickly covered it up with a small smile. “Yeah.”
We both knew there was little chance of us running into each other again in the giant facility. Not accidently. Unless…
“Um, can I have your number?” Ezekiel asked, blushing. “Just so, you know, we can keep in touch, and—”
I cut him off. “Yeah, that’d be great.” We swapped phones and set our contacts. Then we made our way over to the door.
“So, see you soon, I guess,” Ezekiel started.
I dredged up my courage. Now or never. “Yeah. Do you want to go out for coffee sometime?”
Ezekiel blinked at me before breaking into a breathtaking smile. “Um, yeah, definitely. How’s tomorrow at noon?”
“That’s great.” I hesitantly turned and stepped towards the doors. “Bye, Ezekiel.”
“Bye, Cassandra.”
Then I left, the lights and music fading behind me. Even the December wind that hit me when I opened the doors couldn't quell the warmth flowing through me.
Mission accomplished.
