Crossover cable, straight cable and a hub, straight cable and a router, wirelessly, any of them will work.
Please read the link in my signature. You aren't giving us much to work with here. Just saying a desktop and a laptop gives me nearly limitless options to tell you, and I don't want to spend 10 minutes writing a post or telling you how to do each and every possible way when it would only take 10 more seconds in writing your post to give us some information on your setup/options.