salute [h.s]

three senior agents, decorating f*cking christmas trees

december 8 - decorating the tree

1D fanfic/Salute extra

Harry/Piper

*

Entry-level jobs were bullshit.

If the awful pay and the lack of benefits wasn't enough, entry-level jobs had the added bonus of always including demeaning tasks that were below your level of intelligence and, frankly, below the level of plain old human dignity. Piper had a Ph.D. in computer science — she did not want to spend her days making tea for department head meetings, or filing confidential, print only files in the sub-sub-sub-basement, or helping some completely inept F branch idiot fix the computer he spilt his drink on. And she certainly didn't want to be putting up the Christmas trees in the front lobby.

Contrary to popular belief, you could walk into Vauxhall Cross. A lot of people did, actually, looking to snap a couple of photos, or even just so they could say they'd been. There was little to no chance of them making it past the security desk though, and Piper had seen someone get tackled down when they snuck into the elevator bay. It was serious stuff.

Despite the general mistrust and scepticism that MI6 as a corporation had for visitors, they still needed to impress the shit out of anyone who happened to stick their head in. Hence the Christmas trees that were well over eight feet that stood towering in the entrance. Three of them. And it was Piper's job to decorate them.

Normally, she enjoyed decorating Christmas trees. Who didn't. The lights, the colours — finding that exact perfect place for that one decoration that had a special place in your heart. But it was a lot less fun when a disorganized box of decorations was stacked beside three enormous trees and you had to sort through the whole thing and then find a way to spread a box of measly decorations across them. She'd been at it for, oh, about an hour now, and she'd only just finished sorting the decorations by colour to do themed trees and had managed to string the lights together so she could begin winding them around the tree.

Which brought her to her current position, barely balancing three quarters of the way up a ladder, leaning dangerously off the side so she could attempt to wind the lights around the outside. She could hear snickers, little chuckles of laughter from people passing. They were probably laughing at the subordinate idiot who had been stuck with this job, aka her. She probably looked incredibly pathetic scrambling up here, trying to get this stupid goddamn tree decorated.

Someone cleared their throat behind her and assuming it was one of her bosses, she immediately straightened, clutching tighter to the ladder so she didn't plunge to her death. Glancing over her shoulder, she was able to see who was standing behind her and she sighed. "Agent Malik. Agent Styles."

They'd obviously come from some sort of meeting together because the two of them were wearing polished suits, fancy dress shoes, and proper ties. Harry's was a nice shade of forest green that brought out his eyes and emphasized the hint of laughter dancing within them. His face was relaxed but his lips were tugging into an amused expression as his eyes ran down her body once and then back up. He crossed his arms languidly as he met her eyes once more. "Agent Stone."

"Was there something you needed?" she asked him, her voice a little cross because she was just frustrated and the last thing she needed was to have to play this game with Harry, the we're just colleagues and we're definitely not fucking game.

"I just thought you might want to know that your skirt's hiked up a bit and every time you lean over you can see right up."

"Fucking excellent," Piper muttered as she lay the string of lights on the top of the ladder so she wouldn't ruin her hard work so far. With her hands free, she reached down to yank the material down, shimmying her hips to try and get the skirt back in place (because of course, it had twisted around her body so the seam was in the front). She nearly took a dive right off the ladder as she lost her balance. It was only Harry's hand shooting up to support her lower back that kept her upright. "I guess that explains all the laughter," she grumbled as she placed her hands on the ladder once more, slowly lowering herself so she was standing with two feet back on the ground.