Grunt rolled over onto his other side once more and opened his sideways facing eyes. The one on the right side of his head was staring directly at the floor while the one on the left side of his head was met with its own reflection on a piece of a dented tin pie pan that someone had strung up. He had half a demolished Christmas gift in his mouth and he noted that whatever it was didn't even taste all that good. Clearly it must be some byproduct of noodles.

His eyes slowly drifted shut as he started to doze off once more. "Huh. It's Christmas," he mumbled to himself. Not even ten seconds later, both eyes shot wide open once more. "It's Christmas..." he said a little more excitedly. Grunt sat up so fast that several ornaments flung from the tree branches from the force of the impact. "HEY EVERYBODY! IT'S CHRISTMAS!" he shouted over the sounds of groaning and hangovers.

Grunt sprung to his feet and went flying towards the elevator screaming, "IT'S CHRISTMAS!" all the way past. He rode the elevator down to engineering and ran down the hall, skidding to a halt in Zaeed's room. "IT'S CHRISTMAS!" he shouted, waking Zaeed up with a start.

"I was wondering when he would wake up," Zaeed grumbled to himself. Admittedly he predicted he'd be there an hour ago.

Grunt next charged down to the cargo hold. "IT'S CHRISTMAS!" he shouted at Jack before charging back up on the opposite set of stairs. "IT'S CHRISTMAS!" she could hear him shouting all the way back to the elevator. "IT'S CHRISTMA-" he was cut off, presumably by the closing of the elevator doors, though he could still vaguely be heard shouting "It's Christmas" on his way up.

"Gee, I wonder what day it is?" Jack yawned while she stretched and got up.

Shepard probably got about two hours of sleep at the most before he heard the pounding of krogan feet charging from the elevator towards his bed. "SHEPARD!" a loud and boisterous voice shattered the silence. "WAKE UP!" Shepard hardly had a chance to react before almost 700 pounds of krogan leapt through the air and flattened him. "IT'S CHRISTMAS! IT'S CHRISTMAS!" Grunt shouted in his face while he attempted to catch his breath.

The weight of the krogan kneeling on his mattress caused it to indent enough that Shepard was worried that should he spring back up, it would bounce back with enough force to fling him into the ceiling in a comical manner reminiscent of a cartoon.

"Grunt...can't breathe..." Shepard gasped under him.

"Come on, get up! You've slept long enough and we can't open gifts without you!" Grunt grabbed Shepard and dragged both him and his blanket from the bed as he ran with him towards the elevator.

"Can't I at least put a shirt on first?!" Shepard asked as the door closed behind him.

No sooner did they make it back downstairs before Grunt ran to the tree and came back. "You were my Secret Santa! I got you this!" he shouted, shoving an individually wrapped slice of processed cheese-like food product into his face.

Shepard accepted it with a forced smile. "Oh, you got me a slice of fake cheese? That's perfect because I was just getting hungry and now I don't have to walk all the way to the mess hall to get anything." He noticed that it was warm and limp from sitting under the tree when he accepted it and had to stop himself from gagging.

"Yeah, and it comes with its own wrapping paper so I didn't even have to wrap it first!" Grunt said jovially.

He wasn't all that surprised. On Garrus' birthday, Grunt had given him a soda that he already drank most of that Garrus couldn't even safely consume. Apparently to a krogan, the greatest gift you could give someone was whatever was found in the refrigerator five minutes after remembering what day it was. He guessed it might have been considered more heartwarming on a planet where the dinner menu was decided by whatever critter didn't run fast enough that day.

The rest of the room slowly stirred, having since been woken up by the krogan who was eagerly digging through the boxes under the tree for presents with his name on it already. Tali subtly eyed Shepard when she realized that he wasn't wearing a shirt, which Shepard seemed to remember just now too as he was currently reclaiming his sweatshirt from her so he had something to wear.

The elevator door opened and Jack shouted, "IT'S CHRISTMAS!" in a mimicry of Grunt.

"Now don't you start!" Shepard barked back at her.

Some aspirin and several pots of coffee later, there was a frenzy to unwrap gifts. Paper and bows went flying everywhere and the room looked like a battlefield had broken out at a department store.

"Another shirt. Ha ha," Jack said before throwing another one onto the growing pile.

"These units are pleased with these gifts," Legion announced as he sorted through the video game activation codes he'd been gifted.

"What the hell is this thing?" Garrus asked. He held an electronic toy that looked like some kind of fuzzy, demonic cat that had been in a package marked, "Love your Secret Santa".

"Oh, you got a Furby! You're supposed to talk to it and it talks back!" Jacob replied.

"A toy actually knows what I'm saying?" Garrus said skeptically. He looked at it and asked it, "Hello, fuzzbutt. Do you want to eat my soul?"

"Yum yum!" it replied. Garrus instantly freaked out and whipped it across the room. He glared at Jacob when he dared to laugh at him and asked, "Okay then, what did you get?"

"I got..." Jacob unwrapped a box and opened it. He stared inside as though he didn't actually believe what he got.

"Well?" Garrus pressed.

"I got a pack of gum..." Jacob said, removing the gum, "...and a lemon." Sure enough he also removed a whole lemon from the box. "What the hell..."

"Why does everyone keep giving me framed holos of a sloth in a spacesuit?" Zaeed asked. He had a growing stack of them by this point.

"Shepard, I got this for you too!" Garrus said before dropping a gift in his lap. Shepard unwrapped it and looked back at him with a baffled expression when he saw it was a framed holo of Garrus looking as creepy as possible. "Now you don't have to walk all the way down to the battery every time you forget what I look like!"

"Thanks Garrus, I'll certainly treasure it," Shepard replied sarcastically.

"Jack! I thought of you and I got you this!" Grunt said as he held out his gift to his best friend.

Jack laughed when she saw that it was a thawed out freezer waffle. "That's exactly what I got you!" she replied before holding a freezer waffle out to him.

By now, most of the gifts had been unwrapped. Grunt was standing on a mountain of food, a can of spray cheese in one hand, a handful of varren jerky in the other, and a mouthful of bacon. Legion was happily cozying up inside his new "room", which was actually just a cardboard box full of packing peanuts that someone had saved for him from one of their packages. Thane was still confused as he stared at his Secret Santa gift, which was nothing more than a really big sock.

While they were busy playing with their new gifts, Miranda wandered in, a datapad in one hand, and a cup of the strongest coffee she could make in the other. "I am so glad this holiday is finally over," she sighed. She flopped down on what she thought was an unoccupied lounge chair but jumped back up again when the chair shrieked. There was a flicker of distortion before Kasumi became visible once more after having just been sat on.

"Sorry. I thought that chair was empty," Miranda apologized. She took a seat next to her on the edge of the couch instead.

"That's okay. I should have seen that coming, in hindsight," Kasumi replied. "You missed most of the Great Unwrapping. There's just a few more Secret Santa presents to go through, and everyone's done."

"Oh no..." Miranda grumbled. "After all that with C-Sec, I completely forgot I was supposed to get Jack a present!"

"Oh, don't worry about it. I noticed you hadn't bought her a gift, so I gave her something in your name. You can thank me later."

Miranda was instantly relieved. "Thanks. What did you get her?"

Jack turned the gift over in her hands and started unwrapping it. Once she'd gotten the paper off, she stared at it silently a moment before holding it up and demanding, "Okay, which one of you jackasses got me 'The Elcor Tabernacle Choir Sings Christmas Carols'?"

Merry Space Christmas, everyone! I finally got this bitch of a fic finished! Now I can go back to that Fallout fanfic I've been working on for seven and a half years!