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The station Christmas tree is the beginning of the end for him, every year. He’s not a holiday guy, but Christmas is the worst.
This year, despite Lucy, everything feels heavier. He’s learned that just happens sometimes, for reasons he can’t figure out, and it’s usually simple enough to push through. But now Genny’s here. Now he can’t just put his head down and forget about the tinsel and the music and the gaudy decorations.
“Can I say something?” Lucy asks, leaning against his desk, her knee brushing his.
“Don’t think my response to that has ever stopped you,” he teases.
“At least you know,” she returns with a grin. “I just…I know you’re not the biggest fan of holidays. And I know that Christmas is the worst one for you—.” He must make some sort of surprised sound at that because Lucy smiles at him, all tenderness and wonder, which he’s still adjusting to. “What, you think you’re hard to read? Because you’re not. Like, at all.”
“Hey! That’s not true! This stoicism is practiced and curated,” Tim grouses. But she knows him. Better than he knows himself sometimes.
“My point is…I think it might be worth considering giving yourself a break,” she says, reaching for his hand and placing it on her knee, leaving her own over the top, warm and reassuring.
“I don’t need a break. I just don’t like Christmas. It’s not a big deal.” The words aren’t quite defensive but they’re stiff.
“It’s not, in itself. People either hate holidays because they hate the unpredictably, which, you’re not that much of a control freak.” She sticks her tongue out playfully and he scoffs, tickling her ribs. “Or they hate them because they carry something. And I know enough about your childhood, Tim, to know that holidays were probably pretty terrible.”
He stares at their overlapped hands and wonders why the walls in this place are glass. Whose bright idea was that?
“It was a long time ago,” he says, finally. “Water under the bridge.”
“I think you and I both know that’s not how that works,” she murmurs. “But that feeling you get? The one that happens when Smitty starts wearing his damn Santa hat? That feeling isn’t going to go away on its own. I wish it would. But…It’s like football.”
Tim blinks, refocusing on her eyes, deep and dark and warm.
“Football?” he echoes.
“You’ve been on defense,” she says. “Because the other team? They were attacking you. But…they left the field now. The game is over. You’re playing a new team now and this time, you get to be the offense.”
His brow furrows and he wants to laugh because the metaphor is slanted, absolutely, but she has a point.
“So…you’re saying I should have an…offensive Christmas,” he says, the corners of his mouth ticking upward despite his every attempt to keep a straight face.
“Oh my God, why are you like this?” Lucy groans, tipping her head back briefly, which only serves to distract him because he knows, now, what it feels like to kiss her there, the kinds of sounds she makes when he does.
She looks back at him, questioning, and then barks out a laugh, smacking his arm.
“Behave!” she chastises. “This is a serious conversation.”
“I’m behaving!” Tim protests. “Tell me, Coach Lucy, now that you’ve outlined the problem, how do you propose I fix it?”
The look on her face is worth everything. She lights up and he wants to ask how–how she can carry so much damn light inside her, knowing what she knows about the world. It’s the same light that had made him question her viability as a rookie. Because he’s never known someone who could be so absolutely aware of the horror that curses humanity, yet maintain the kind of all-encompassing happiness he sees in her.
“Well, first, we’re going to go out with Genny and the kids and get a tree. And then we’re going to decorate and bake cookies and watch Christmas movies and do all the stupid things you should’ve gotten to do when you were a kid,” she says. “Oh, and I got us matching Christmas pajamas.”
“You what?” he asks, horrified at the idea.
Except then it sits and he remembers standing in Jimmy Tatum’s kitchen at the ripe old age of 8, staring at the plethora of family Christmas cards on their fridge, and wondering why all the families looked so happy, because last time they’d tried to take a family Christmas picture, his dad had knocked the tree over and broken most of their ornaments. They didn’t have a tree this year. And at 8, he’d thought about the future and about how he’d have a family Christmas card someday, with matching outfits and corny sayings like “Merry and Bright!” emblazoned across the bottom. He’d put that dream aside at some point. Another thing his dad had stolen.
It’s about damn time he started playing a little offense.
“Okay,” he agrees. “We’ll wear the pajamas.”
“Okay,” Lucy echoes, and she doesn’t say it but he knows she’s proud of him. Her approval shouldn’t matter so damn much, he thinks, but warmth settles in his chest every time he catches it.
Later, when they get home and she wraps her arms around him, fitting herself perfectly against him, he feels lighter somehow. And when she tips her head up and points to the spring of mistletoe she’d apparently hung in the entryway, he kisses her and thinks “Merry and Bright” describes his feelings to a tee.