Title: T'is the Season

Author: CarpeSomeDiem

Email: carpesomediem@gmail.com

Feedback: I'm begging you...

Archiving: Ask and ye shall receive; it's the holiday season, after all.

Rating: G

Fandom: Popular

Pairing(s): B/S

Spoilers: Uh, none.

Summary: Brooke has a gift for Sam.

Warning/Disclaimer: Slash and all that jazz. Don't own them, no matter how much I whine about that to Touchstone.

Author's Notes: Response to my own challenge...

Sam was in a panic. She couldn't have lost it, could she?

"Breathe, McPherson, breathe," she kept telling herself, pacing around her room. "Where could it be?" She continued to pace, and at any rate, she must just rip through the carpet, the floorboards below, and land herself in the room just below her. She didn't care right now, all she wanted to do was try to get her brain to remember where exactly she had placed it.

Normally, she carried it in her journalism textbook; it'd been housed their since freshmen year, and the year before that it proudly hung on her tack-board in front of her desk. Once she became a reporter for The Zapruader Reporter, however, she liked having it with her to encourage her to be a better journalist, and as such, had made its home in her journalism text, a book she brought with her to school everyday and opened at least ten times more than it needed to be in a day.

Now, it was gone.

"Where... where... where," Sam racked her brain, but it didn't help, and the knock on her door did nothing but fuel her fiery fervor even more. "WHAT?"

"Calm down there, Speed Racer," Brooke peeked her head in. "We can hear you pacing downstairs. It's quite unpleasant, if I do say so myself." Brooke was pleased with her witty repetoire, but Sam kept pacing and more importantly, didn't respond, "What's wrong?"

"I lost it!" Sam exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air and beginning to cry, "I lost it, and I don't know where it is, and I lost it..."

"What did you lose?" Brooke entered her room, throwing caution to the wind. "What did you lose that's making you so upset?"

"The article..." Sam spoke softly, wiping her tears, "The article about my dad... winning California Journalist of the Year. I lost it."

"Oh, Sam!" Brooke's eyes filled with tears as she brought her into an embrace. "You didn't lose it. I... I took it."

"You what?" Sam pushed her away. "How could you take it? How could you? It's mine! You know how much it means to me! How could you..."

"Sam," Brooke raised her voice a bit, "I took it to get it laminated... I thought it could use it, so, that it wouldn't fade away. You were talking about how he was fading away, and I wanted to do something to prevent that, and I thought this was a start." Brooke broke away and rushed through their shared bathroom into her room and back again before Sam even had time to process what Brooke had just told her.

"Thank, thank-you," Sam mumbled as Brooke handed her the torn article, not laminated and protected from the wear and tear of time. "Why? Why did you do this, Brooke?"

"It was suppose to be a Christmas present," she admitted, "I thought that you wouldn't notice by the time I took it from you textbook and I put it back there... which was going to be as soon as dinner was over... I thought it'd be a surprise."

"It was a surprise," Sam smiled. "Thank-you, Brooke, it means a lot to me."

"I know," she smiled. "Listen, dinner's almost ready... see you in a few?"

"Yeah," Sam nodded. "See you in a few."