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"Ummm," you tilt your head to the side, squinting thoughtfully. "Maybe it was better the other way. Hey, can you put it back the way it was before?"
"Yea, sure, honey," Jon calls down from his spot on the roof, and you think that if he couldn't fly, you'd never let him up there - snow packed onto ice and crystallizing to the shingles until the whole thing had turned slippery.
"I'm sorry," you call up to him, and he leans over the roof to look down to you with furrowed brows, a frown tugging on his face.
"What for?"
"For making you redo the lights seven times," you say pointedly, sheepish as you shove your hands into your pockets to try to ward off the chill.
"This is only the sixth time," he corrects you gently before lifting himself back up to keep tugging on the lights. "Don't worry about it."
"Does that mean I have one more?" you call up to him, mostly joking until he looks down at you brightly.
"Yea, what's wrong with it?" he asks kindly, and you wonder, somewhere in the back of your mind, what you did to earn such a patient love.
"I just feel like the white lights were better," you shrug, sort of guiltily, but Jon looks down at the multi coloured lights in his hands like he's really considering it.
"But it's not my house, you know," you continue on in a hurried sort of way. "It doesn't matter what I think -"
"I'll ask," Jon says simply, and your protest is only half out of your mouth when he's shouting down for his mother to come out and see.
"Oh, you really didn't have to -" you try, but Lois, it seems, is on her way out, anyway. Two steaming mugs of coffee are balanced carefully in her hands as she pushes the front door closed behind her with her hip, and as she treads down the path, you walk up to meet her, throwing a scathing look up to Jon on the roof.
In turn, when she hands you one of the mugs, Jon beams down at you like he couldn't be happier. Annoyingly enough, you think that really might be true.
"I like the coloured ones, by the way," Lois says, apparently having heard your conversations from inside the house. You wince up at Jon as he begins coiling up the white lights that he's half put up for the third time.
"The multi coloured ones are nice," you agree politely - because really, you think, Lois deserves it. She's kind to you, she brings you hot drinks when you're standing out in the cold and lets you come knock on her front door any time you please.
"They are," she agrees kindly. "But so are the white ones. They're different - but I just think they suit different people."
Different, you think haltingly as you stare at the coils of white lights that Jon's tossed off the side of the roof to land in the snow. In the endless blanket of white, they sort of blend in - sinking in and letting fluttering snowflakes cover them until they're difficult to make out - different, but maybe not in such a good way. Maybe -
"God, I hate when you do that." Your words come out in a long breath as Jon is suddenly next to you, close enough that you can feel the body heat rolling off of him as he takes the second mug of coffee from his mother appreciatively.
"Sorry, sweetheart," he says kindly, and the kiss that he places to the crown of your head softens you, melts you against the frozen backdrop.
"Alright, both of you come inside when you're done out here," Lois says as she fluffs some snow out of Jon's hair and then heads back up the path. "I'll set a place for you at dinner."
"Oh, I… guess I'm staying for dinner," you say flatly as you watch Lois close the front door behind her.
"Good," Jon says simply. "I was hoping you would."
You hum, tipping your head back to stare up at the darkening sky. It's difficult with the snow falling, and you have to keep blinking freezing little flakes out of your eyes, but the lights that Jon has strung up across his childhood home beam in an endless stream of colours, and you think that something as nice as this is probably worth being a bit uncomfortable.
"They're going to ask you to spend Christmas here," Jon says quietly, and your gaze snaps to him.
"What?"
"Well… I let slip that you're just staying at your dorm over the holidays and… you know," he shrugs sheepishly.
"Oh, babe, you know I don't… I don't do things like that."
"It'll be fun," he says, and when you look at him a bit scathingly, he hastily adds, "it'll be quiet. Honestly, no big deal or anything. We don't do much."
"I just watched you put Christmas lights up for five hours," you point out.
"Your decision-making skills might've had something to do with that, honey," he says kindly, wrapping an arm around your shoulders to squeeze you against his side. "Your coffee's gonna get cold."
"Do you think they'll be upset if I say no?" you ask between sips.
"No," he shakes his head. "There's no pressure. Please act surprised, though - I wasn't supposed to tell you."
"Why did you, then?" you laugh, and the kiss that he presses to your cheek tingles - cold mixed with something else that heats you from the inside.
"Because I love you," he murmurs, his nose still pressed to your skin. "And I know you."
And there it is, you think - that soft little feeling that unfurls in your chest. You'd say yes to anything, you think, when he looks at you like that.
The snow around the two of you has begun to fall heavily, and endless crystalized snowflakes stick to his hair and weigh it down. The Christmas lights reflect off of him as you look up at him, reds and greens painting streaks across his skin as he looks down at you with shining eyes, his hand smoothing some of the snow off your shoulders.
"Maybe Christmas wouldn't be so bad," you murmur, and the way he lights up, you think, is more blinding than any decoration you've seen.
"Yea?" he beams.
"Yea," you respond, the sound of it cut off by him as he presses a series of quick kisses first to your lips, and then across your cheeks.
"I think our coffee's cold," you murmur, and he takes the freezing mug from you kindly.
"That's ok," he says gently, unbothered in that shining way of his. "Come inside, we'll warm up anyway."
And you think, as you trail in after him towards his parents' house, as he opens the door for you and a wall of heat and the smell of Christmas cookies and pine hits you - you think that coming in from the cold might not be so bad after all.