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“Mav, it’s getting late,” Ice chuckled, slightly exasperated.
“Well, I haven’t found it yet!” Mav exclaimed, “So we’re not done yet.”
“Okay, okay,” Ice held his hands up in surrender, wishing he could lean over and peck his boyfriend on the forehead without causing some raised eyebrows.
It was their first Christmas since moving in together. Mav had made the final decision that they would have a real tree displayed in their home for the holidays. Ice personally couldn’t care less, since he didn’t even put up a tree every year given the fact that he didn’t really celebrate Christmas anymore, so he’d agreed. And they’d found themselves at a Christmas tree farm, picking something that would fit their small two-bedroom bungalow.
Ice hadn’t considered it until they’d arrived, but Mav had never gotten to pick a Christmas tree before. Or at least, he was too little to remember a time when he and his parents might’ve gone to pick one, though he knows they must’ve since he has old pictures of his earliest Christmases with very real trees behind him and his family. By the time he gained a conscious memory, his father had died and left his mother a cold shell of herself who could barely crawl out of bed in the morning, let alone decorate for Christmas. And of course, none of his foster parents or the group homes he bounced between had ever put time and effort into making Christmas a happy occasion for the children in their care.
By the time he’d met the Bradshaws, he barely understood Christmas as a base concept and they’d had to teach him everything about the holiday. But he still never went and picked a tree with them because the Bradshaws put up a fake tree that went back into its box every January and lived in the attic through the other months of the year. And since Mav never really settled anywhere on his own, he’d never once picked a Christmas tree.
So letting Mav loose on a Christmas tree farm had unlocked something of his inner child like he’d let Bradley loose in a candy store. Ice couldn’t care less if they ended up with a Charlie Brown tree but Mav was determined to find the perfect one. And Ice knew his partner well enough to allow him this indulgence.
Suddenly, Mav’s back went tight as a bowstring and his eyes filled with a glow, something so childlike in nature and yet inherently endearing. His steps hurried until he reached the base of a blue spruce, the color of the needles leaning a lovely cool blue shade, its shape conical and yet not so perfect as the Firs, non-fragrant and so less irritating on Ice’s sensitive sinuses, and standing a solid six feet tall in stature. Short enough to fit their seven-foot ceilings with room to decorate the top, but still large enough to fill the room.
“It’s perfect,” Mav beamed, his fingers caressing the prickly needles and Ice smiled back, something closed-mouth and endeared.
“Then that’s that,” Ice nodded, “Perfect.”