Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“And all I want for Christmas… is yooouuuuu”, Holtzmann sang, perhaps not quite hitting the notes, but making up for that with enthusiasm; smiling fondly, Erin watched her as she danced around the firehouse to the song blasting from the radio, stringing up Christmas lights with a speed that was quite impressive.

She’d never been a big fan of Christmas, especially not ever since she had moved out of her parents’ house, the two elder people insisting to pretend that they were a perfectly happy family during those days of the year and barely bothering to hide their dismay about her life choices for the rest of it, but Holtzmann was so enthusiastic about it, she couldn’t help herself, but just had to let the engineer’s joy infect her, too.

“Behold!” Holtzmann cried, distracting her from her ponderings about Christmas and how it might be much better this year – she had told her parents that she couldn’t risk going to Michigan, what with the possibility of a ghost haunting someone during the Christmas days being so high; this might not have been completely honest, Abby and Patty both would visit their families, but Erin figured that a little white lie couldn’t hurt if it was for her own well-being. And Holtzmann, she knew, had no family she could’ve visited, so it was only right and nice to stay with her, make sure she wasn’t alone.

Not wanting to leave Holtzmann to be on her own on Christmas was a big and good reason for why Erin didn’t want to go to Michigan; there was another, equally big or perhaps even bigger one though, and as she watched Holtzmann push a button hidden somewhere on the endless string of lights and her bright, happy smile as they flickered to life, her second reason grew even bigger.

Erin really wanted to kiss Holtzmann – had been wanting to for a while now – and had made the perfect plan to get a kiss and have an excuse in case the engineer wouldn’t want her that way after all.

Now all she had to do, she thought to herself as she complimented Holtzmann on her new and improved Holtz X-Mas Lights, was to put her plan in motion, and hope it would work out the way she wanted it to.

She waited until Holtzmann had retreated back to her lab – for work on their equipment, she had reassured the physicist, and not to make more Christmas lights, because while they were very beautiful, there were also so many of them, all over the walls and ceiling and door frames of the ground floor, and Erin was pretty sure they were bright enough to light up their neighbours rooms, too – before she opened her desk drawer and smiled at what she had hidden in there, her heart skipping an excited beat.

Careful, not wanting to damage the object which was crucial for her plan, Erin took the mistletoe out of the drawer; she glanced towards the stairs again, making sure Holtzmann was nowhere in sight, then moved to the doorframe near the entrance and hung it up there, Kevin watching from his desk with slightly baffled interest, an expression he seemed to be wearing most of the time.

Erin gave him a brief smile, but didn’t bother to explain anything – if he had gone this long without learning about mistletoe, she figured he would survive a few more days, making sure the mistletoe was properly fixed in place before she walked to the stairs and called out. “Holtz! Can you come down here a second? I need your help with something!”

“Be there in a minute, hot stuff!” Holtzmann called back down, and Erin smiled to herself, then cleared her throat; keeping her eye on the staircase, she walked backwards until she stood in the doorframe, Holtzmann coming down a few moments later and walking over to her, smiling at her as she asked what she needed help with.

“Oh I just wanted to…”, Erin started, glancing up as she spoke – and falling silent, because the mistletoe was gone.

Holtzmann was looking at her questioningly and a bit confused, confusion only growing when Erin frantically looked around – before she spotted the missing item, just in time to keep Kevin from taking a bite from it.

“Kevin!” she yelped, rushing to stop him, Holtzmann looking more and more confused, “don’t eat that!”

“Aw, I thought you put that up there for me”, Kevin said dejectedly, “you were smiling at me after you’d hung it up so I thought it’s mine!”

“Um, Erin?” Holtzmann inquired, apparently having no idea what Erin had been trying to do; she turned and hid the mistletoe behind her back, smiling a very fake smile at the engineer in response.

“Nevermind Holtz”, she then said, grip on the mistletoe tightening when she felt Kevin tug on it, “sorry for interrupting your work.”

“Um, okay”, Holtzmann gave back, not questioning her though; she smiled at the redhead instead, still looking confused though, “I’ll go back to work then…?”

“Have fun!” Erin brightly replied, earning another questioning look; her fake smile widened, and after a moment, Holtzmann turned and hurried back upstairs, Erin letting out a heavy sigh the moment she was out of sight and bringing the mistletoe out of hiding, looking at it unhappily for a moment before she figured that one misfire was no reason to give up her entire plan, telling herself that all she had to do was find a spot where Kevin wouldn’t get the idea to eat the mistletoe to make this work.

Chapter Text

The mistletoe looked a bit worse for wear after Kevin had nearly eaten it and then had pulled on it when Erin had been hiding it behind her back, but the physicist figured it still looked good enough to be used; now, she just needed to find a good spot for it, and be a bit patient, because Holtzmann would think she’d lost her mind if she called her down again two minutes after telling her she didn’t need any help after all.

Looking around, Erin decided that the kitchen would be a good place – Holtzmann would go there sooner or later, after all, to get Pringles or a drink or maybe some actual food, so all she had to do was put the mistletoe up and then wait for the engineer to make an appearance.

She absent-mindedly patting Holtzmann’s cat as she walked into the kitchen, a stunningly fat black and white tomcat named Nino who’s favourite place was on top of to the radiator in the kitchen, and earned a content purr in response; she smiled at the cat, then moved to the doorframe, making sure to fix the mistletoe above it in a way that the little damage had done to it was hidden.

She gave the cat another smile, then got herself a drink from the fridge before she went back to her desk; and as she worked, she made sure to not get lost in the numbers and equations too much, because she didn’t want to miss Holtzmann coming downstairs and go into the kitchen.

As it turned out, her focus couldn’t have been too high to miss the engineer coming down, because when she did, Holtzmann didn’t take the stairs, but came sliding down the fireman’s pole, and landed with a heavy thump; she beamed at Erin as she made her way to the kitchen, the physicist smiling back at her, and waiting until she heard the fridge open before she got up to follow the engineer.

“Niiiinoooo”, she heard Holtzmann say as she approached, “you’re always down here on this radiator. I’m starting to think you love it more than me!”

“I’m sure he doesn’t”, Erin commented, entering the kitchen and smiling at the blonde, who grinned back at her, both hands buried in Nino’s fur, the cat looking as if he enjoyed the attention quite a bit and purring loudly, “just look how he purrs at you. That big ball of fur loves you.”

She gave Holtzmann another smile, then opened the fridge and helped herself to a can of coke; she turned, and looked over to the doorframe, just to make sure… and her fingers tightened around the can, because yet again, the mistletoe was gone.

For a moment, she wanted to yell for Kevin, just to make sure he hadn’t taken it and was trying to eat it again; he hadn’t gone into the kitchen though, she then realized, she would have seen him, so it had to be somewhere else.

Trying to hide her alarm, Erin glanced around, trying to figure out where the mistletoe had gone; she had a moment to wonder if perhaps, a ghost had escaped from the containment unit and had taken it, just to spite her – before she spotted a few sad green shreds on the ground, her eyes briefly widening, then narrowing as she turned to look at Nino.

The cat looked back at her in perfect innocence, but now that Erin took a closer look, she could see bits of green hanging from his claws, and held back a groan as she realized what had happened.

As if the poor mistletoe hadn’t suffered enough at Kevin’s hands, it now had been completely shredded by Nino, and she’d have to go out and buy a new one, but she still was determined to make this work, eager to get her kiss, even if it meant she had to venture out into the cold winter day to get what she needed.

Chapter Text

To Erin’s relief, she had managed to find new mistletoe fairly quickly, and she had bought more than one, just to be on the safe side; she wanted to make sure that Holtzmann didn’t see it when she came back to the firehouse, but quickly learned that she didn’t need to worry about this, Holtzmann still up in her lab when the physicist returned.

She hid three of the four sprigs of mistletoe she had bought in her drawer, then looked for a good place to put the fourth one up; the kitchen wasn’t an option anymore, not after how Nino had taken apart the one she had hung up there, and anywhere where Kevin could see it wouldn’t work, either, the redhead worried that he’d try to eat it yet again and kill himself.

Frowning to herself, Erin tried to find another good spot; it had to be a place where Holtzmann would end up sooner or later, and one she could keep an eye on during her own work, her eyes lighting up when she looked over at the stairs and realized that the spot there was perfect.

Hopefully, Holtzmann will actually walk down those stairs at some point, and not use the pole all the time, she thought to herself as she walked over to the bottom of the stairs, looking for a good place for the mistletoe; she finally decided on a spot, close to the Christmas lights Holtzmann had put up, and carefully taped the mistletoe in place there before she returned to her desk.

Of course, for the next few times Holtzmann needed something from the ground floor, she did use the pole, to Erin’s increasing frustration; telling herself that the engineer wasn’t doing this on purpose, since she had no idea what Erin was planning, she tried not to get annoyed, even though this became more and more difficult each time she heard the thump of Holtzmann’s boots on the floor.

By the fourth time, she felt like slamming her head down onto the table, and seriously contemplated just grabbing Holtz and dragging her over to the stairs; since this wasn’t exactly romantic though, she pushed that thought to the far back of her mind, and was rewarded for her patience when finally, another hour later, she heard Holtzmann come down the stairs.

Oh thank God.

She quickly got up and moved to meet the blonde, who looked surprised to find her waiting at the bottom of the stairs, but smiled at her; Erin smiled back at her, shifting from one foot to the other, quite nervous now that the moment was coming closer with each step down the stairs Holtzmann took.

“Hey hot stuff”, the engineer said as she made it to the bottom, “something I can help you with?”

“Sort of”, Erin replied, shifting nervously again, “why don’t you look where you are…” She had been planning to ask Holtz to look where she was standing, but before she could finish, a weird crackling sound came up, accompanied by a sharp, unpleasant smell, one she had smelled around the firehouse often enough to identify as…

“Fire!” she yelped, eyes going wide as she stared at the burning mistletoe, which by now was barely recognizable as mistletoe anymore; Holtzmann started, then rushed to the nearest fire extinguisher without a word, Erin feeling glad that they had several stored all over the firehouse, what with the engineer’s penchant for making things light up and go poof.

She quickly got out of the way, feeling like screaming when, in addition to the burning mistletoe, the fire alarm went off, blaring loudly through the station; Kevin came running, instead of going outside as he was supposed to when the alarm sounded, Holtzmann beaming at him as she came back with the extinguisher.

“No worries, Kev”, she let him know, casually aiming the extinguisher and putting out the fire, “no biggie here. You can go back to work, I’ll shut this off.”

“Alright boss”, Kevin said happily, marching back to his desk at once; and while Holtzmann went to shut down the alarm, Erin pulled down the sad remains of the mistletoe, glad that she had bought more than one, sighing to herself as she tossed it into the trash, wondering if perhaps, her plan which had seemed so simple at first perhaps wasn’t so good after all.

Chapter Text

After three failures, Erin decided that she would try again in the next day, not having the heart anymore to face a fourth mishap; she really wanted to kiss Holtzmann, finding herself staring at the engineer’s lips quite a few times as they had dinner together, somehow managing to look away again each time though before Holtzmann caught her.

At least, that’s what Erin thought, but she figured that, if the blonde had noticed what she was doing, she would have made some flirty remark or comment laden with innuendo, and since none of the sort came from the engineer, Erin decided that her staring had been subtle enough.

After dinner, the two of them moved on to the couch, where they spent a while browsing Netflix, looking for something they both wanted to see; while they were looking, Nino came to join them, getting comfortable in Holtzmann’s lap, only to look all offended when Erin made the mistake to reveal she had never seen Alien and Holtzmann cried out “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat” in reply, eyes opening wide.

“Shame, Erin Gilbert, shame”, she then said, while Nino settled down again, purring when Holtzmann started rubbing him with one hand, “we have to watch that, then. I can’t believe you’ve never seen it.”

“I don’t like scary movies”, Erin mumbled, blushing a bit, “come on, I’m a Ghostbuster, and I had my very own ghost haunting me and only me when I was little. No need to add extra horror to that.”

“I’ll protect you”, Holtzmann promised, selecting the first of the four movies, “and Nino will too. If it gets too frightening, we can choose something else, just give it a try? Please?”

“Alright”, Erin sighed, figuring that, if she did get scared, she could use it as a good excuse to snuggle up to Holtzmann; and so, she nodded when the engineer gave her a questioning look, the blonde beaming at her as she started the movie.

They watched in silence for a while, Erin, as unobtrusively as possible, shifted closer to Holtzmann on the couch; she let out a yelp which startled Nino when the chest buster made an appearance, and immediately, Holtzmann reacted by putting one arm around her shoulders and asking her if she was okay, the physicist taking the chance given at once and nodding while she snuggled up to the engineer.

“You know”, she then said, peering at the screen, “that Ripley character kind of looks like your mentor.”

“You think?” Holtzmann wanted to know, squinting at the screen; Erin nodded, smiling at Holtz’ response that she couldn’t quite see it, and relaxed against the engineer, enjoying the rest of the movie quite a bit, and not just because she was so close to Holtzmann.

After the movie was over, Erin excused herself to bed, feeling quite tired; and she fell asleep to the sounds of Holtzmann tinkering in the lab, sounds she associated with comfort and safety, no matter how often they created tiny to medium sized poofs.

And she did wake up at one point, due to a poof closer to medium than to tiny; by now, she was quite used to them though, and so just rolled over after Holtz had called out “all good!” and went back to sleep, having forgotten about the brief interruption by the time she woke again in the next morning.

In the next morning, Erin was determined to make her plan work out at last; she could hear Holtzmann snoring from her bedroom, and decided to make use of the fact that the engineer was still asleep, quickly going through her morning routine and, after her shower, changing into comfortable clothes before she headed downstairs, quickly finding one of the backup mistletoes in her desk.

Glancing around, she tried to figure out where to put it – after all, she by now knew that it had to be kept safe from Kevin, from Nino and his claws, and couldn’t be too close to the new and improved Holtz X-Mas Lights, but thanks to the engineer’s enthusiasm about putting said lights up, this didn’t leave her with many options.

Her workbench, Erin then suddenly realized, smiling brightly to herself at this ingenious idea – the workbench was where Holtzmann spent most of her time, after all, so right above it would be the best place for it.

With renewed vigour, Erin hurried upstairs, grabbing some tape along the way; Holtzmann was still sleeping, her snores echoing through the lab, but the physicist knew how quickly the blonde woke up, often going from deep slumber to wide awake within seconds, and thus knew she had to be fast, climbing up on a chair to reach the a good spot for her to hang the mistletoe.

Just when she lifted her arms, her ears popped, and the fine hairs on her arms rose up; she had a second to realize what this meant, her eyes going wide – then the ghost was rushing at her from where it had been in hiding close to the containment unit, and she yelped, ducking in the last possible moment, the ghost flying over her head instead of crashing into her and throwing her off the chair.

“Holtz—!” she started to yell, then the ghost made a U-turn and flew back at her; its mouth opened wide, and she brought her hands up out of pure reflex, yelping again when the cold, sticky slime hit her.

At least though, having been locked up in the containment unit had apparently weakened the ghost, since it didn’t spew as much as they usually did; and a moment after it had stopped, she heard Holtzmann yell “Duck!” and crouched down on the chair, squeezing her eyes shut when she saw the engineer aim the proton shotgun, the blast Holtzmann fired another second later being enough to disintegrate the ghost.

“Holy crap”, she heard the engineer say, daring to open her eyes again, “how the Hell did it get out? I’m so sorry Erin, I’ll check the unit immediately, are you okay?”

“Fine”, Erin replied, with a small sigh, “just slimed. Again.”

She glanced down sadly onto the mistletoe in her hand, which was covered in slime as well; Holtzmann didn’t notice the item in her hand though, already heading towards the containment unit, and with another sigh, Erin threw the slimed mistletoe into the trash, then went to have yet another shower, miffed that her plan hadn’t worked out yet again.

Chapter Text

There were two mistletoes left, and Erin wasn’t quite ready to give up yet; and so, after the slime had been removed and she’d had breakfast with Holtz, she went to get one of them, Holtzmann unaware of what she was doing as she had gone to work on the containment unit, making sure that no more ghosts would escape and surprise-slime them.

While the engineer was busy with that, Erin yet again looked for a good place for the mistletoe; the lab hadn’t been a bad idea, she knew, but she didn’t want to risk getting slimed again, figuring that perhaps, it’d be smarter to wait with putting it up there until Holtzmann had gotten done with the repairs.

So, she kept busy until then, doing some of her own work even though she found it hard to focus; the numbers which normally were so clear to her refused to make sense this time, and she grumbled at her whiteboard, as if the object was to blame for her predicament.

I can’t believe I have such bad luck with this, Erin thought to herself as she stared at the numbers and equations in dismay, it always looks so easy in the movies. Why is this so difficult?

She sighed to herself as she wondered if perhaps, it would be easier to simply march up to Holtzmann and kiss her; she was fairly certain that the engineer wouldn’t mind, would in fact be quite happy about it.

Fairly certain didn’t equal completely sure though, and the last thing Erin wanted was to embarrass herself by realizing that she had read the signals wrong when she’d kiss Holtzmann and the blonde would be freaked out or annoyed or something equally bad; the mistletoe would give her the perfect way out in case Holtzmann didn’t feel the same, and while Erin might be brave and reckless when fighting ghosts, she wasn’t when it came to risking friendships, and so, a way out was just what she needed.

No giving up, she strictly told herself, giving up on her equations and sitting down at her laptop instead, booting it up and opening the draft of the new book she was working on together with Abby.

At least, work on that went fairly well, even though Erin still found herself distracted by her repeated failures to put her plan in motion and made quite a bit more typos than usual; fortunately though, she caught most of them, and figured that the few she might have missed could be taken care of when she’d go over what she’d written again.

She worked studiously for an hour, then the thump of Holtzmann’s boots on the floor as she came sliding down the pole distracted her, and she was thankful for the distraction – she had no good spot for the mistletoe yet, but Holtzmann coming down from the upstairs lab might be a sign that the containment unit had been fixed, and so, Erin could give it another try up there.

“Hey hot stuff”, Holtzmann greeted her, giving her a bright smile as she stopped at her desk on her way to the kitchen for a drink, “unit got fixed, it was just a teeny tiny leak, thankfully. Sorry again, I really didn’t notice that when I worked on it yesterday…”

“So that was the poof which woke me up”, Erin realized, prompting Holtzmann to give her a somewhat sheepish look while she nodded; Erin smiled at her and reassured her it was okay, no one had gotten hurt after all and the ghost had been taken care of.

“And now, I didn’t exactly lie to my parents when I told them I wouldn’t visit for Christmas because there might be a ghost problem”, she then added, earning a snort and nod from the engineer; the two smiled at each other, then Holtzmann moved on the kitchen, asking Erin if she wanted a drink as well as she walked.

“Sure”, Erin replied, getting up from her seat; and as she followed Holtzmann, quite distracted by the fact that the engineer was wearing rather tight pants, she didn’t notice the mistletoe slide out of her pocket and fall to the floor, the mistletoe too soft and light to make any noise as it hit the concrete.

Unaware that her plan was about to be foiled yet again, Erin entered the kitchen with the younger woman, both of them petting Nino as they walked past him; he purred happily in response, a bit louder at Holtzmann than at Erin, but at least, Erin figured, he didn’t try to scratch her anymore, as he had when Holtzmann had originally brought him to the firehouse.

They both helped themselves to drinks from the fridge, then stood there and chatted for a while, Holtzmann asking how the book writing was going and Erin telling her more than gladly; and then, as they left the kitchen to get back to work, Erin spotted the mistletoe on the ground, her eyes widening while her hand shot to her back pocket, mortification setting in when she realized that it was gone and was indeed on the floor up ahead.

And then, before she had the chance to say something, Holtzmann stepped on it.

“Oh, oops”, Holtzmann said, looking down in surprise, “what is that? Is this weed? Oh, maybe it’s Kevin’s, that would explain so much.”

Erin just hid her face in her hands and held back a scream of frustration.

Chapter Text

Perhaps, Erin thought as she returned to the firehouse after an errand she’d run in the city, she was exaggerating now, but she had learned from her failures, and wanted to be prepared; and apparently, there was only one way to make this work, and so, Erin would go down that path, even if it might make her look slightly insane.

She made sure that Holtzmann didn’t pay any attention to her when she practically snuck past her and into her bedroom; this, perhaps, wasn’t only insane, but quite daring too, but at this point, she was ready to take extreme measures to finally get what she wanted.

With what she was about to do, Erin knew that there was no way she could talk her way out of it anymore, should Holtzmann not be into her after all; she had reached the point though where she just wanted that kiss and clarity, and if things would be awkward between them because she’d read all the signals wrong, she’d deal with it another day.

And so, she got to work, with fierce determination; she used up two whole rolls of adhesive tape, and since she used her teeth to rip it off, her whole mouth tasted of glue by the time she had gotten done, but she didn’t care at this point, not anymore.

“Holtzmann?” she called out once she had gotten done, tossing the tape aside carelessly, “could you come in here for a second?”

“There in a minute, hot stuff”, the engineer called back; and even though she felt nervous, Erin forced herself to stay where she was, in the middle of her room, next to the bed, fingers fidgeting as she heard the blonde approach. Well, time for the moment of truth, Gilbert.

“What do you need, hot…”, Holtzmann began as she entered her room, then trailed off and fell silent, eyes going wide behind her yellow glasses.

Erin had been determined to take no risk this time, and to make her intentions more than clear; and from the look on the engineer’s face, she had managed just that, Holtzmann just standing and staring, mouth hanging open.

The ceiling of Erin’s room was covered in mistletoe, it was everywhere, even around the lamp – which possibly was another fire hazard – and Erin stood right in the middle of the room, looking at her, a small smile curling her lips despite how obviously nervous she was.

“Look where you’re standing”, she then said, and Holtzmann couldn’t help it, but just had to laugh; it was a happy laugh though, Erin could tell at once, and not one which made fun of her, and then, just as her smile widened, the engineer stepped closer and wrapped her up in her arms and kissed her deeply.

Erin kissed her back at once, and returned the embrace, her heart hammering so fast that part of her feared it might burst of her chest; she would have died happy then though, a feeling which only grew when one of Holtzmann’s hands moved up to entangle in her hair, and she responded to that by pressing herself closer to the blonde.

“You taste like glue”, Holtzmann mumbled once they had pulled apart again, of all things to say; Erin just laughed though, and shrugged, then replied with “I used a lot of tape”, before she pulled the blonde closer for another kiss, heart impossibly speeding up even more when immediately, Holtzmann kissed her back.

“I’m so glad this finally worked out”, Erin was the one to speak up after the second kiss, resting her forehead against Holtzmann’s, “this was getting ridiculous, really, I had such bad luck!”

“I have a confession to make”, Holtzmann gave back, earning a questioning look from the other woman, “I, um, kinda figured out what you were doing at your second try? But I wanted to see how long you would try. I’m sorry, now that I say this out loud, it makes me sound like a jerk, but… I have a mistletoe in my desk, I was gonna use that sooner or later, if it had kept going wrong.”

“It doesn’t make you sound like a jerk”, Erin reassured her, earning a relieved smile, “and I think I know just the place for that one mistletoe you mentioned. I’ll put it right above your workbench, so I can kiss you whenever you work there, which is often.”

“You don’t need a mistletoe though to kiss me, hot stuff”, Holtzmann reassured her, smiling brightly at her; Erin laughed, feeling giddy and happy, then kissed her again, all the frustrations of the previous failures falling off of her shoulders as she finally was given what she had been longing for.