Sitting on the couch beside the Christmas tree that had just been put up, Jack dug through one of the boxes of Christmas decorations in search of the spare light bulbs to replace the burnt out ones on the strings of tree lights that Sam had plugged in to test.

In the first box he found general decorations, tree ornaments and the tin with the hooks for them, the star for the tree, a paper bag of used tinsel with an unopened tinsel box stuffed inside, and candleholders for putting candles on the tree that he'd never used but not extra bulbs. Moving onto the next box he found more tree ornaments, the shoe box that held the nativity his parents had made, and underneath the bundle of tinsel garland were the boxes of extra light bulbs.

"Found them," he pulled out a box and passed it over.

"Good," Sam stopped untangling two strings to accept the box, "thanks."

Jack took a moment to admire the pretty picture she made surrounded by strings of brightly coloured lights as she sat on the couch next to him and then returned his attention to the box. In particular his attention was on the sprigs of green bundled together with the tinsel garland. Sprigs of smooth-edged oval shaped leaves with clusters of waxy white berries.

Huh, he thought as he picked up the mistletoe, he didn't remember this decorating the house last year. Not even one sprig and he held over a dozen in his hand. "Hey, Sam, where'd this come from?"

She looked up from the new light bulb she had just screwed into its socket. "Oh. Daniel."

"Daniel gave us mistletoe?" He never would have guessed Daniel. Cassie was more likely, maybe even Sam herself but not Daniel. At least, not without a cultural lecture attached. "Why?"

"Well, more precisely, Vala bought some mistletoe for Daniel for Christmas last year—"

"Vala bought Daniel mistletoe?" he arched an eyebrow in amusement. Mistletoe? He was under the impression from Daniel's complaining when the man's credit cards had been swiped that lingerie was more the alien woman's style.

Sam grinned. "Yeah, a lot of it and Daniel didn't know what to do with it all so, ah, we ended up with some. Everyone did I understand. But Daniel and I didn't see each other until after the New Year, which meant we'd already taken our Christmas decorations down so I just put it away for next year—that is, this year."

Jack nodded and tried to think of the most strategic places to hang the mistletoe in the house to maximise the plant's kissing power. Speaking of kisses though... He selected one of the sprigs, held it up, leaned towards his wife with a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth and said in a sing-song voice, "Oh, S-a-m. Look up."

She looked up, laughed, and her blue eyes sparkled as she shook her head at him. "Oh, you. All right, come here."

He bent his head to meet her as she obligingly leaned into him and the kiss was sweet and short, more a laughing kiss than a kiss-kiss as their lips couldn't stop grinning.

"There," she said sweetly as she settled back, "you had your kiss. Now you have to take one of the berries off."

"Oh?" he arched a questioning eyebrow at her.

"It's tradition. Each time you claim a kiss, you have to take a berry off and then when all the berries are gone, you can't claim kisses under that mistletoe anymore."

"Oh, that tradition," he waved the tradition aside and tossed the mistletoe sprig back into the box. "But that's no fun, so we don't follow that tradition in this house."

"We don't?"

"Oh no, in this house, we just kiss," he leaned forward again and brushed his lips to hers, "and kiss," lips sweetly touched lips again, "and kiss." His lips pressed against hers and as his hands cupped her face the sweet simmered to hot and demanding and mouths tasted and breaths mingled and decorating the tree was quite forgotten until later.

Much later.

-FINISHED