AN: arianakristine prompted 'gremma + tinsel', which turned into what might be the schmoopiest christmas fic in the fandom. I have no regrets.
"So neither of you have any Christmas decorations," said Henry, staring at them both sceptically.
Emma exchanged an amused glance with Graham, trying to tamp down on the laughter that was threatening to bubble out. "Sorry, kid," she said with a shrug. "Neither of us have had anyone to celebrate Christmas with before."
It was their first Christmas: the first with Henry, the first with each other, the first with her parents and the first since the Curse broke. Emma's experience with Christmas amounted to the unhappy, often half-hearted ones at the homes as a child. She didn't know what Graham's Christmases had been like under the Curse, but she couldn't imagine they had been much fun, either.
Henry huffed. "Then we have to fix that, obviously," he said. "We need everything! Lights! Tinsel!" His eyes went wide and he urgently added, "A tree!"
"We'll get everything," said Graham, reassuringly. He tipped his head, considering. "Doesn't Mary Margaret make decorations with you all?"
Henry grinned. "Heaps. I'm going to make a list," he declared, standing up and scampering away before Emma had a chance to say anything else.
Emma turned to Graham, finally letting out the laugh she had been holding in. "Well, looks like we've been given our mission for the next few weeks."
"Looks like," agreed Graham. He was all fond amusement, soft smile and relaxed posture. Emma ached a little to see it: there was a time, after he'd first gotten his memories back, when he had been skittish and anxious. But Regina wasn't a threat anymore and Storybrooke was starting to settle into some sort of normality again, and peace for Graham had come with the calm settling over Storybrooke.
She hesitated. "Was there anything like Christmas in the other world? Some kind of winter holiday?" She paused. "Was there even winter?"
"Your mother is literally called Snow White," pointed out Graham, and she had to huff out a laugh at that. "I think there was, but I was never able to celebrate it." Emma nodded; she knew all about his early life, separate from humans, and she doubted Regina would have let her favourite toy have fun at a party.
"Do you want to?" she asked.
Graham was silent for a moment. He drummed his fingers on the table, obviously thinking deeply. "I don't have to," he said, "but I will if you want to." Emma opened her mouth but he beat her to it. "It's your heritage, Emma. You can get to know it if you want to."
"I'll think about it," she said, finally. "I'll talk to Mary Margaret, first. I don't even know what it is."
Neither Emma nor Graham had ever had to pick a tree out in their life, which meant it was probably for the best that they had both Henry and a farm-boy-turned-prince-turned-cop on hand to help pick one out.
David and Henry were both inspecting all of trees very seriously. Graham was on one side of Emma, looking faintly bewildered, and Mary Margaret was on the other, looking indulgent. Emma was somewhere between the two. Her knowledge on Christmas tree hunting came mostly from the Christmas specials on TV, but her father and son both appeared to be taking it far more seriously than any television character had.
"Graham!" called Henry, turning to wave the man in question over. "You need to learn all this." Graham looked at Emma, who looked back at him and shrugged. Henry at Christmastime, she was quickly learning, could be a force of nature.
"Henry's teaching you both the ways of Christmas?" asked Snow, voice amused.
"He's called it Operation Claus," answered Emma, earning laughter from her mother. "I actually want to ask you about what it's like…" Emma shifted her weight uncomfortably. She never knew how to refer to the world of her birth. Even after having been there, it still felt unreal. "What it's like over there."
"Well, we didn't have Christmas or Christianity, obviously," said Mary Margaret. "But we did have a winter holiday that's a little like the secular Christmas, I suppose. It was about coming together in the depths of winter and holding back the dark." She brushed a piece of hair off her face, smiling slightly at the memory. "It wasn't like the Middle Ages here, where every day was a struggle – magic was pretty easy to come by, after all – but winter could still be hard. So we came together in the middle of winter and used lights and colour and laughter to drive back the dark. We didn't use trees, but we used candles like we use lights here, and we used any bit of colourful fabric or plant that we could get our hands on."
Mary Margaret looked like she could go on, but before she could, Henry had scampered back over to them and looked up at Emma. "Do you think Santa is real?" he asked.
Emma blinked. "Santa?"
"Well, if all the fairy tale characters are real, why not him?" said Henry.
Emma opened and closed her mouth several times before she finally found the words to say, "I really wish I could say he's not." Henry nodded, and hurried back over to David and Graham.
Emma turned back to Mary Margaret, who was smiling at her. "I think if you want to celebrate our holidays, too, your Christmas decorations will just about cover it."
They had the tree. They had all the decorations. Now there was just the struggle of putting them up.
Henry had organised all of the tree decorations into neat piles and was now sitting next to them, blinking up at them with well-practiced puppy dog eyes. It was enough to crack Emma right then and there. "Alright, kid," she said, and his face lit up. "Where do we start?"
Emma spent the next hour being bossed around by Henry, Christmas carols crooning in the background. Hanging a red and gold bauble from a branch half way up, she ducked under Graham's arm as he started winding tinsel around the tree. He brushed by her as he went, and she smiled at him over her shoulder, feeling warm all over.
Was this was it was usually like? she wondered. A happy Christmas. A calm Christmas. She'd never known it before. She glanced at Henry, Santa hat jammed firmly on to his head, and then to Graham, shuffling his way around the tree, and wondered if any of them had.
She was just going to have to make it the best Christmas, then, she decided, and turned up Frank Sinatra singing about the snow.
"We need more tinsel up," announced Henry, once the tree was finished. He patted the pile of red tinsel still sitting on the bench. "Let's put it around the walls."
Emma raised her eyebrow at him. "And how are we going to do that?"
Henry sucked on his candy cane thoughtfully. "Stickytape," he decided.
Graham shook his head. "That just damages the walls." He looked overly thoughtful for someone wearing reindeer antlers, but eventually suggested, "Tak?"
"We can give it a go," agreed Emma, Henry already hurrying off the retrieve some. He arrived back, split it in half, and handed one each to Emma and Graham, beaming at them the whole while.
Emma and Graham set off sticking the tak to the wall throughout the room. Emma retrieved the tinsel from Henry and she threaded it along the wall, Graham supporting the end. She pushed the end of the tinsel against the last of the tak and nodded to Graham.
"Do you think it'll stay up?" he asked from the other end of the room, where he was stretching to hold the tinsel firm against the wall.
"One way to find out," she said, and they let go together, watching the tinsel expectantly. She almost had time to breath a sigh of relief before the tinsel on Graham's side slipped off the wall, landing and tangling itself in Graham's antlers.
Henry started giggling at the sight, and Emma had to take a deep breath to contain her own laughter. "Very funny," grumbled Graham, although he unable to hide the smile tugging at his own lips.
"Here," said Emma, going to untangle the tinsel.
"But he looks so Christmas-y like that!" protested Henry, and Graham made a face at him over Emma's shoulder. Emma hid her face in Graham's neck for a moment, unable to contain the smile. She took a moment to get her expression to a more respectable level of amusement before she finished untangling the tinsel.
"Thank you," whispered Graham, kissing her quickly.
She smiled, tugging at his antlers. "Anytime, Sheriff Rednose."
"Ready?" asked Graham. Emma glanced at him in the mirror, leaning against the door in the tackiest Christmas sweater Henry had been able to find.
"Almost," she replied, tugging a fluffy Santa hat on. Mary Margaret and David were holding a Christmas party for the whole town. Emma had never been one for Christmas parties before; it was just one more change Storybrooke had brought. "I wanted to do one thing, first."
Graham raised his eyebrows. "What's that?"
Emma picked up a candle from her dresser. "Mary Margaret said that in the Enchanted Forest, they'd light candles to hold off darkness," she explained. "I wasn't sure if she meant metaphorically or literally, but I think Storybrooke needs all the help it can get."
Graham snorted. "I can't argue with that." He pulled her close as she went to pass. "Is that all it is?"
She took a deep breath. "I'm not a superstitious person, but it's nice to have the reassurance."
Graham nodded, keeping hold of her hand as she led him to the kitchen. She retrieved the matches from the drawers and lit it on second try. She held it over the candle. It was a plain candle; big and white - more than enough to last a few Christmases. The wick caught light and she watched the flame for a few moments.
"Merry Christmas, Graham," she whispered. Graham stood behind her and slid his arms around her torso, his jaw brushing against her hair. She caught hold of his clasped hands with one of her own.
"Merry Christmas, Emma," he murmured.