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“Come on, get your coat on and let’s go! We have quite the drive ahead of us,” Magnus called from somewhere in the loft – waiting by the front door already if Alec knew him right.
Alec grabbed his scarf from the back of a chair, having first won a tug-of-war with the Chairman, who had been sleeping on it and refused to let go. He then checked his pockets to make sure he had everything and headed towards the door where he, sure enough, found his boyfriend waiting eagerly.
“Magnus, why are you wearing my sweater?” he asked, a smile tickling his otherwise stern expression.
He got a shrug in reply.
“It’s warm, and it smells of you. I…” Magnus hesitated, not sure whether he wanted to admit he actually liked something from Alec’s side of the wardrobe. He settled for another shrug, eyes conveying what he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say.
“I don’t understand why we can’t just portal there. It would be so much easier. Besides, do you even have a driving license?” He eyed his boyfriend dubiously.
He hadn’t wanted to go along with this plan at first, but seeing how excited Magnus got over the prospect of a road trip to pick out a Christmas tree had eventually won him over. He would never deny Magnus anything.
Magnus huffed as he headed down the stairs, “Don’t need a license, it’s a Tesla. The car drives itself.”
“What if we get pulled over by cops?”
Alec shut the door behind himself, checking it was locked and feeling the wards seal up underneath his fingers.
Magnus was waiting on the first landing, grasping Alec’s hand gently as soon as he was within reach. Together they set off down the stairs again.
“If they do I’ll just…” Magnus wiggled his fingers around, making blue sparks dance between his fingers. His smile as he met Alec’s wary gaze and raised eyebrow was mischievous and, Alec found, quite contagious.
After stocking up on snacks and two steaming hot cups of coffee at the corner store, they got into the sleek car.
Alec double and triple checked his seat belt, making sure it was fastened properly and didn’t have any defects. While he would definitely trust Magnus with his life (and had previously), he didn’t quite trust technology. Or all the Mundane drivers on the road, stressing about Christmas and getting everything done in time.
Magnus shot him a reassuring smile as he started the car and pulled out into the street.
It only took them about an hour and a half to reach the tree farm in upstate New York, and Alec was thankful they hadn’t had any accidents on the way over.
Right as that thought flitted through his mind, however, he heard a god-awful screech as Magnus attempted to squeeze into a tiny parking space.
“These cars sure drive themselves, but they don’t appear to park themselves,” Alec muttered drily as Magnus squeezed out of the car to inspect the damage. He watched the Warlock pace around the car, surveying the scratches, before glancing around to make sure no one was watching. The next thing Alec saw was blue flames engulfing both cars.
Magnus seemed happy with the results and gestured for Alec to step out of the car. Instead, he ended up having to roll down his window.
“It’s all well and good that you fixed the cars, but there’s not actually enough room for me to open the door wide enough to get out.” He was not amused, and thought to himself that he should never have agreed to this.
Magnus just rolled his eyes, a goofy smile plastered on his face, and gave the cars a nudge through magic so that all the cars in their row moved a couple of inches further right. It turned out to be enough for Alec to squeeze through, and he was thankful to get out of the tin can of doom.
Alec was making his way through the snow, cursing this mission as Magnus shot down tree after tree, claiming they weren’t bushy enough or tall enough. Only the very best would do for the High Warlock of Brooklyn.
He hadn’t anticipated that they would have to be out in the cold for so long, and he could feel his hands going numb in spite of the heat rune burning away under his skin.
He sighed in relief when Magnus finally stopped in front of a tree, but that was before he looked up. His eyes went wide with horror when he took in the size of it. It had to have been at least 13 feet tall, and wider than he was tall.
Magnus, in his turn, was practically beaming as he rooted around his coat pocket, pulling out an axe. He extended it in Alec’s direction.
“Get to chopping, dear. This is the one.” His cat eyes were sparkling with joy.
“Magnus, I can’t even feel my fingers, how am I supposed to wield an axe?” he groaned. Having never been interested in Christmas, since Shadowhunters generally didn’t partake in Mundane celebrations, he couldn’t understand the appeal of the massive, snowy tree in front of them.
“Well, I’m not doing it, I don’t do manual labour,” Magnus quipped, but when he saw Alec’s genuinely pained expression his face softened. “Hey, darling. Give me your hands. I’m sorry I’ve been dragging you around for so long.”
Alec could feel the warmth spreading from Magnus’ hands to his own as the Warlock cradled his hands in his smaller ones. It felt downright heavenly, after feeling like an icicle for so long. He leaned in for a chaste kiss, leaning his forehead against Magnus’ when they broke apart.
“It’s okay. I’m glad you’re happy, I want you to have a good Christmas.”
The warmth had now spread from Alec’s hands to his entire body, and he could feel Magnus’ breath on his face, warm in the otherwise freezing cold. They stood there for a moment, breathing each other in as it began to snow gently around them.
After much squabbling – Alec begging for Magnus to just cut the three off through magic since the axe kept getting stuck in the enormous tree trunk, and Magnus claiming a hand-cut tree was just so much nicer – Alec finally won Magnus over after almost an hour of chopping away.
The tree fell with a massive thud, launching the top layers of loose and powdery snow into the air and straight at the two by now very cold and tired men. They both blinked sheepishly, trying to brush themselves off as well as they could, before Alec started laughing. It started off as a small giggle, but soon grew to a full-fledged rumbling laugh.
“Magnus, how are we ever going to get this back to the car? How are we going to get it onto the car? How are we going to get it up and into the loft? It won’t even fit,” Alec pointed out while wiping away a tear.
Magnus seemed shocked by Alec’s outburst at first, but eventually he too began to realise the problems they were facing.
Eventually they ended up just levitating the tree back to the farm, walking alongside it hand in hand in the knee-deep snow, leaving behind two pairs of footprints but no trail from the tree. They were lucky most Mundanes seemed to have already bought their Christmas trees, so the farm was fairly empty.
After paying for it, they were then faced with the issue of getting it onto the roof of the car and tying it down. They heaved and heaved, but the tree wouldn’t budge.
Eventually Magnus sighed and took a quick look around, checking for Mundanes. When he could see none, he snapped his fingers, and suddenly they were instantly transported – car, tree and all – to the street outside of their loft. A Mundane loitering around a doorstep close by yelped in shock at the sudden appearance of a car and a tree, since both Alec and Magnus were glamoured, but Magnus just mumbled something and waggled his fingers in the direction of the frightened boy.
In the end, Magnus ended up having to extend the ceiling height to accommodate the massive tree, as well as put up a ward to keep the Chairman from wreaking havoc on it.
With the tree finally decorated and lit up, Alec and Magnus collapsed on the sofa, sipping mulled wine as the sound of Christmas carols filled the air.
Here, when all the troubles and trials of the day were almost forgotten, Alec could admit it was a beautiful tree. But even more beautiful was the man currently breathing deeply in sleep against his shoulder.