Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. -Calvin Coolidge

Friday, December 4. Tree lot was starting.

And Dick Grayson was 14 years old.

Why was that a milestone? Well, he was finally old enough to work at tree lot.

It was a volunteer job. An uncomfortable, hard, lengthy volunteer job, run by the local outdoor Venturing Crew. The year before, volunteering had been open to the local Boy Scouts because the crew hadn't had enough members, but apparently it had been closed to Boy Scouts due to the recruitment of new Freshmen onto the crew. Dick was not part of that recruitment, but that was why he was so excited.

Even with the Freshmen, the crew could definitely use two or three more bodies helping out. They had opened up to the community of Gotham for any high school students wanting to help out their neighbourhood tree lot. Of course, Dick knew that they were reluctant to have the billionaire's son on the crew. They likely assumed Dick as careless and expecting a fun little time of Christmas carolling and were resigning themselves to signing Dick's hospital bills when he ran into a chainsaw. However, they didn't specify 'no rich people allowed' on the recruitment placard, and Dick was an annual member of the annual tree lot.

Therefore, he was allowed.

The weekend before opening day had been hard labour for a ragtag team of high school kids. They were forced to transform an ordinary parking lot into the famous tree lot, complete with the largest rectangular, bottomless, metal tent that Dick had ever seen; sawdust over the entire parking lot, done manually; and over a thousand trees, ranging from 2 foot Grands to 12 foot Nobles - something also hand carried, hand netted, and hand drilled. Dick had been there from 9AM to 10PM. When he went to bed that night, he had been aching all over from picking up an eight foot Nordmann by himself and holding it up to the boring machine used to bore, or drill, holes into the bottom of the trees (they named it Boris) in order to show that he was not a weak little boy. Many eight foot trees, actually, and a few nine foot ones that dragged on the ground because no matter how strong Dick was, his arms were not very long. But what was his response when his butler, Alfred Pennyworth, asked if he would like to do it again?

Why, it was a rather enthusiastic 'yes'.

The team had already begun to warm up to Dick, though Dick himself had not begun to warm up to the weather, leading Dick to wear 95% of an outfit that was not his (made of polyester and wool that would keep him far warmer than cotton could ever try) within his first week of volunteering. By the time the 4th rolled around, Dick had a clipboard in his hands with the base prices of trees by height (and by three categories of quality: poor, good, and excellent, along with the note of 'the lowest you should price a tree is at good, unless it's been mauled by a bear, then it's poor') on a laminated sheet of paper. Other than his clipboard, he was armed with a sharpie marker and at least a hundred little blank price tags hung by wire clipped to his board, where he would write the prices of trees based on the price sheet, his opinion, the type of tree, and its height. Dick would be walking around for most of that day, double checking the prices of trees and running back and forth as trees got sold and other crew members carried new trees in to replace the empty stand where the sold tree had once been (in other words, 'stocking').

Dick didn't expect to be doing much. By noon, he was doing a lot.

It was shocking how many customers could buy a tree at once. Some customers would even approach him and his hat (all workers on the tree lot were required to wear santa hats so that the customers would be able to spot them) and ask him what they were supposed to do once they had bought their tree. Dick would find himself telling them to rip off the bottom part of the tag that he had wrote (it had a dotted line for tearing) and turn it into the office. Sometimes, he was forced to run after them, usually losing his sharpie in the process, and hurriedly asking them if they wanted the bottom trimmed (the actual word was having the 'butt cut', and Dick would usually find himself saying, "Do you want your butt cut?"), the tree netted, the description of the car they had, and how far they would be going. Then they would leave, and Dick would realise that he was stranded alone with a tree twice his height, a tree that he could carry on his own except for the fact that he wasn't allowed to put down the pricing board (or else someone would be able to see the way the crew priced).

After that, Dick would usually have to walk in circles around the tree in order to desperately scan the area, without losing said tree, for someone who could take care of it for him.

At one point, Dick was kneeling beside a 6-7 foot tree (in other words, a yellow tag, from the colour of the string at the bottom of the tree - which was the colour of the box that had the height at the top of his sheet) and squinting at it. It had been snowing all morning and it was getting harder to tell the trees apart with the white layer on top. It caused the trees just getting unraveled from being tied up to stay frozen shut, and Dick was having a hard time pricing their quality and breed due to it. His fingers were icicles, making it so that writing '6-7' at the top of the tag took two minutes and a lot of adjusting his grip on the board. In fact, it was so difficult and Dick was so tired that he settled for the tree being a Nordmann, only to have his mind thinking 'What if it's a Noble?', and by the time Dick glanced down, the sharpie had wrote 'Noblemann' on accident (the sharpie, not Dick).

"How's it going?" said a voice behind Dick, and Dick glanced to his side to see a girl in a santa hat walk up to him. Dick was eternally grateful for the hat, because the girl seemed to be almost obsessed with wearing camouflage and, considering that they were working with trees, camouflaged employees were not the most awesome thing.

"Hey, Artemis," Dick greeted, stressing the 'hey' playfully in order to tease the blonde for her lack of introduction. She only rolled her eyes and glanced at the tree that Dick was attempting to price.

"Any luck with getting the trees to open up? They literally froze overnight," she said instead.

"I could tell," Dick snorted, nudging the trunk of the 'Noblemann' with the toe of his snowboot.

Artemis' eyebrows rose. "Yeah, and we still need to price them. Meaning someone seriously needs to keep a tab on you, because it's a bit harder opening up tall trees with one hand."

Dick ignored the jab on his height and glanced down at his half written tag. "I can agree. Maybe someone else should do pricing for a bit and I can thaw."

Artemis walked to look over Dick's shoulder, hand posed to grab the clipboard. Her mouth was already open, about to say something, but words that she probably hadn't been thinking of two seconds before came out instead. "Noblemann? Wall of Shame!" she declared, yanking the tag from the board.

"Wall of Shame?" Dick repeated, bemused.

"No one told you?" Artemis said with a cheeky grin as she stuffed the tag in her pocket. "It's where the horribly labelled price tags go. Usually things like if someone mistakens a Grand for a Noble"-Dick snickered at that-"so we can laugh at it later. That's why we have to write our initials at the top, like you did."

Fantastic. Absolutely tastic.

"Whatever, I think I win a Noble prize for all of my hard work," Dick decided to respond instead, and Artemis only huffed good naturedly. Dick stopped examining his tree, though, in order to grin at her mischievously, silently waiting for her to register what he had said.

"Did you seriously just make a tree pun?" she said slowly after a second of comprehension.

"Yes," replied Dick bluntly.

"That's sad."

Dick pretended to gape at his friend. "Woe is me, how dare you TREEt me so!"

There was a moment of silence where Dick could practically see the gears turning in Artemis' head. She was probably debating whether or not she should encourage the situation. "I don't know, I think my treatment is pretty Grand," she replied finally.

"You've only Doug yourself a bigger hole."

Needless to say, passing customers were either amused or bemused. It all came to an end, however, when a blonde-haired dark-skinned older teenager appeared around the corner and looked at Artemis. "Artemis," he called. "We would like your help in moving a rather large tree to this one man's vehicle."

Artemis nodded, though Dick was slightly pleased to see a fleeting disappointed expression on her face. "Sure thing, Kal. I'll see you later, Dick," she said, flashing Dick a small smile as Kaldur disappeared behind the trees with a nod.

Before Dick could respond, she was already running back down the 'hall' of trees. "By the way, for that tag you mislabelled, it's a very noble Noble!" she called over her shoulder.

Dick huffed, his breath curling through the air as he knelt (thank god for wool pants, if he stayed in his cotton from before he would have been soaked by then) and sluggishly attempted rewriting the tag.

His fingers really needed to work.

"Oh, uh, hiiii," a voice drawled awkwardly roughly five minutes later, when Dick had already moved onto the tree beside the one he had been trying to tag and was digging a knife out from his pocket to cut the twine from the new stock. Dick turned his head to face the newcomer.

It was a teenage boy. Probably slightly older than Dick and much taller (right around that awkward age when everyone one year ahead just had their growth spurt and he had a few months left to go, that was where Dick was at). His hair was mussed up and glistening with snow, and he had an obnoxious bright yellow rainjacket on that made him hard to miss. His face was pink from the cold and his ears were as red as his hair, his freckles standing out against the white backdrop. He smiled sheepishly. "You work here, right?"

"Sure do," Dick responded, pressing the pricing board against his chest in order to prevent the tags from falling out of their clip. "Did you find the tree you're looking for?"

"Actually," the boy said, "that's my goal."

Dick tilted his head. "Oh?" he answered, a gesture to go on. The teenager stuck his hands in his pockets.

"What sort of tree do you get when you haven't had a tree in a while?"

There was a long beat of silence, one that had Dick staring dumbfounded at the boy. The boy didn't even look abashed or bothered by what he had said at all - that, or he just couldn't turn any more pink than he already was. "Uh- what?" Dick responded stupidly. He couldn't blame himself, though. Something so suddenly depressing wasn't what he had been expecting on a cheerful day of tree shopping.

The boy's grin turned even more sheepish, as well as slightly apologetic. "We haven't had Christmas in a while, and I want to get the prettiest tree possible. One that'll last a while and smell really good. It doesn't have to be super big or anything. I'm trying to surprise someone."

Dick automatically glanced at his board, sucking in a quick breath. "Right," he said softly. "Okay, do you have a price range or something?"

"Nope," the boy piped back jauntily. Dick's eyes darted to the worn in clothes he was wearing, his lack of hat and gloves, and sneakers.

Dick would try to find something cheap.

"Alrighty, then," Dick responded, already smiling as he would for a customer, but finding himself smiling even wider at the loose and happy expression on the other boy's face. His eyes darted around the row they were in. "Well, I think Douglas smells the best. It's kind of...sweet. Probably can't smell it right now, though, since it's so cold and all. But they don't last very long. People like Nobles the best because they're the strongest we have and hold a whole bunch of ornaments, but they're also the most expensive."

"Which one's your favourite?"

Dick paused to consider the question. "My favourite?"

"Yup," the boy said, still grinning all the while. "You sure do know a lot about trees, so I'm going to take your word for which one you like the best. Plus, you seem honest enough."

Dick didn't know if he should ask the customer whether or not they should trust the employee of a business about their own products or if that would be counterproductive. He decided on not questioning it at all. "I like…," he had to think about that. "I love Grands when they have snow on them." He pointed to a frosted Grand Fir. "The way their needles droop reminds me of fur, and they make curling patterns that I like to look at."

The customer looked ready to open up his mouth. "But," Dick interrupted, and he closed his mouth. "I love Nobles the best."

The boy chuckled. "Because they're the biggest or because they're the most expensive?"

"Neither," Dick responded. "Because they can hold the most ornaments, and my favourite part about Christmas is forcing my adoptive father to put up ornaments with me." He snickered.

The customer started to snicker, too. Suddenly, though, realisation must have lit up in his eyes. "Wait, that means I was right, then. You're Richard? Richard Grayson?"

Dick winked cheekily. "Sure am."

"Tree expert, employee, and famous son-of-billionaire," the boy whistled. "You're everything."

"I try," Dick retorted. "And you?"

"Me?" the customer asked.

"You," Dick repeated. "What's your name, cheeky teenager, sappy son, personification-of-Christmas-spirit?"

The customer laughed. "Wally." It seemed the customer's smile was even wider than before, if that was possible.

"Well, Wally," Dick said, "follow me."

And Wally did. Wally followed Dick to the very end of the tree lot, where one tree was seemingly neglected. However, it was lively and opened, having been there for a while and receiving time to thaw. "This is a Noble. It's around 7 feet, a decent 60 bucks realistically, but it's my favourite so I priced it more as if it were 9 or 10 feet." Dick scratched his neck sheepishly. "It worked, though. People haven't been buying it. Plus, they just automatically assume that the best ones are at the front."

Wally laughed. "Are the best ones up front?"

"No way. The biggest ones are at the front, but the best? The best are hidden in the deepest, darkest corners where nobody finds them."

Maybe Dick didn't know that what he said stood for more than just Christmas trees, but no matter how Wally deciphered it, it made the boy happy.

And what was a business without happy customers?

Before Wally could speak, Dick tore the tag off of the tree and adjusted his sharpie in his frozen grip. "You know what? I think 60s a bit more reasonable, don't you?" He began writing on a new tag.

Wally dug into his own pocket and pulled out a pen of his own, scratching '60' behind the dollar sign on the new tag. "I think someone not wearing gloves with snow on them writing prices is more reasonable."

Dick snorted and wrote the rest of the information on the tag, giving it to Wally at Wally's request and watching the teenager twist the wire onto the tree. Dick tore off the bottom and gave it to the redhead. "You take this to the office to pay for it. Do you want the bottom trimmed and the tree netted?"

"Just the bottom trimmed," Wally answered.

Dick nodded. "And which car's yours?"

"My uncle's car; the red truck in the deepest, darkest corners of the parking lot."

Dick looked towards the front of the lot as if he could see, from where he stood, the truck parked. He couldn't, but it was a directional gesture all the same. "Sounds good. I'll find someone to bring it right over."

Wally nodded. Then, he nodded again. And again, slower, slowly shuffling to the side to get into the hallway that Dick was unintentionally blocking the entrance to. He walked down the hall, glancing behind his shoulder, still slow.

Dick laughed. "One more thing, Wally," he called after the retreating figure. Wally stopped completely and turned back around.

"Yeah?"

"Make sure that person you're surprising puts up ornaments with you. That was the biggest part I missed when I had to miss Christmas."

"I take it that it's good family bonding time?" Wally called back.

"Exactly," Dick said. "That's why I missed it."

Wally nodded again and continued walking away, waving in the process. "Thank you! Merry Christmas!"

So what if it was almost a month away?

After Wally had disappeared through the trees, Dick ran to find someone, anyone, in a santa hat. When he did, he unceremoniously thrust the board in their arms and ran back to his favourite tree and twisted it out of its stand, grateful that it wasn't frozen to the stand as most of the other trees were. He set it out on the ground, and though it took a lot of shuffling and adjusting of his grip, Dick carried it all the way back through the trees and into the parking lot. He revved the chainsaw himself and cut away the tiniest sliver from the bottom, grabbed it once more while ignoring offers to help, and slide it into the back of the aforementioned red truck just as Wally walked out from the trailer that was the office.

Wally stopped at the steps and stared at Dick. Dick waved back and smiled, running to find his clipboard again. "Merry Christmas to you, too!" he called.

Then, feeling the spirit of Christmas already, Dick watched Wally get in the truck and inch his way past the 'Come again next year!' sign at the gate.

Dick had a feeling that he would be coming back.

GUESS WHERE I WORK.

I WORK AT A TREE LOT.

And I am also part of said venturing crew.

I just came back from a 24-28 hour weekend working there and my head is filled with annoying Christmas music and my dreams are filled with trees. It's kind of insane. I was driving to school, though, and realised that I've read plenty of one-shots and parts of multi-fics where Dick has gone tree shopping and been super syked for Christmas, but I've never seen him actually work at the tree lot or volunteer for something Christmas-y.

Yes, I spent all of Saturday making tree puns. Yes, I wrote Noblemann. Yes, I did in fact waste (and try to hide the fact that I wasted) many trees trying to get them to be 'less frozen' (in other words, broke their branches attempting to open them with one hand). Yes, I did ask a customer if they wanted their butt cut.

Yes, I'm writing a Christmas one-shot in November (or, did. But now I'm posting it and it's the beginning of December).

Yes, I'm going to ask you if you enjoyed. Yes, I hope you enjoyed. Yes, please review. Yes, I very much want to hear what you think.

And finally, have a very merry early Christmas!