The unsuspecting detectives stood clustered around the box for nearly a full five minutes, and it told them nothing more than they already knew. Any information on the label had lost the battle with London's winter rain, the ink running, swirling through colours and patterns as delicate and intricate as the tracery that the morning frost left on the city's cars. The box's intended recipient had vanished, telling them oh, start without me, I'll be back in a few minutes. The invoice, once folded helpfully in a pouch behind the address, was now nothing more than a formless pale sogginess, oozing from a split in the plastic.
There was no way that they could have known what was about to happen. And yet, each of them had settled into their own version of standing still and hoping that someone else would deal with it, avoiding eye contact.
Mansell was the first to break, his shoulders slumping a little. Chandler almost felt it as the others zeroed in on the movement, mentally assigning the DC responsibility for the Christmas tree, and the blame for when it, inevitably, all went wrong.
"Let's get it open, then," Mansell said, sighing. He went to collect a pair of scissors from his desk, and, when he was as far away from them as he was going to get, Chandler could hear him muttering. "Frustration-free packaging, my arse."
The blades sank into thick, resilient cardboard, with a noise like a car crash. Mansell sawed at it, and the box gave him about a millimetre.
"It's got–" Chandler began, and then Miles shook his head urgently at him. He cleared his throat over where the next words should have been, his skin growing uncomfortably warm under his suit.
"What?" Mansell demanded, turning his head to stare accusingly at Chandler, leaving the scissors stuck in the box like a latter-day sword in the stone. "What has it got?"
Chandler looked to Miles, but there was no longer any help there. The sergeant had raised his eyebrows and was staring at the ground, refusing to involve himself. He could feel Mansell's outraged expectation, and swallowed. It felt, not for the first time, as if he had been stranded in the middle of some sort of team tradition that no one else thought needed any explanation, and was expected to navigate it flawlessly.
"It's got tabs," Kent said, gesturing at the clearly labelled pull heres on the sides. Chandler shot him a grateful glance, which he didn't see.
Mansell huffed, and snatched at the tabs with far more force than was necessary. They tore easily, and it would have been a satisfying thing to watch, except for the scissors, still embedded in the top and shuddering with the movement.
He removed the lid, and a mass of spiky green prickled out at them, the instructions caught under a cluster of branches. Mansell picked them out, and narrowed his eyes at them.
"Apparently it's got four parts plus the base," he said, flipping the paper over as if searching for more information. He found none, the only thing on the instructions a diagram of the tree. "Skip, you'd better take the base..."
"What are you saying?" Miles demanded, glowering with all the force that he was capable of mustering. Mansell shrugged at him, unaffected.
"Nothing, skip," he said. "It's just that... well, you are closer to the ground than the rest of us."
Miles was still for a long moment. Perhaps he was counting backwards. Debating whether or not there was any point in snapping at Mansell, given that any and all rebukes would be, at best, forgotten in about an hour. Eventually, he held out his hand, and Mansell handed him the base, barely even trying to conceal his grin.
"You," Miles said, his voice only just above a growl. "Are going to do the lights. On your own."
Mansell rolled his eyes, and then offered part of the tree to Chandler, a piece of card labelled A hanging off it like the world's least exciting bauble.
"You'd best take the top bit, sir," he said, and Chandler accepted it without argument. The artificial needles prickled against his skin, trying to catch in his sleeves.
Miles had set up the base, and he held it steady as Riley inserted part D. His head vanished beneath a fall of hinged branches, loose needles showering down into his hair. He straightened up, brushing them out irritably, and studied the resulting quarter-tree.
"It's a bit wide," he commented. "Not too in the way there, is it, boss?"
It wasn't in the way at all. Miles was just trying to give him an excuse to refuse to have the tree, in case the idea of dropped needles made him uncomfortable. He'd been doing it since Buchan had first announced that he had bought a Christmas tree for the incident room, demanding to know why he'd done it when it wasn't as if any members of the public were going to see it, arguing that detectives shouldn't be decorating a tree on the company time. Buchan had countered that it was an important team-building exercise, and that it wasn't as if they had a case, anyway.
"No," Chandler said. "There's fine." Dropped needles were easily hoovered up, and it wasn't as if Mansell didn't track worse in on his shoes every other week.
Miles nodded, and turned, expecting the next part of the tree, to Mansell, who shrugged one shoulder at him, still standing over the box and holding the instructions as if they were a decree of the gods.
"I'm doing the lights, remember?" he said.
Mansell remained unhelpful as they constructed the rest of the tree and separated the branches. It reached higher than the light fittings, into the darkness close to the incident room's ceiling, where Mansell had, days before, hung vast quantities of mistletoe and turned the incident room into an odd version of minesweeper. After Miles and Buchan had had a close call in the first week of December, everyone had taken to walking across the incident room alone.
"Do you think he checked the size before he bought it?" Miles asked.
"It's going to be a job getting all the lights on that," Riley said, and shot a sideways glance at Mansell, who winced.
"We probably won't have enough," he said. "Just have to use tinsel instead."
"Oh, we'll have enough," Riley told him grimly. "I'm going to text Buchan and make sure that he gets enough."
"Right now?" Mansell puffed out his cheeks and made a show of checking his watch. "It's lunchtime."
"It's only just twelve," Kent protested.
"Lunchtime," Mansell surmised, already starting to walk backwards towards the incident room doors. "I'm off, then. Everyone want their usual?"
He didn't wait for them to answer, just turned and pushed his way out.
"I'd better go with him," Riley said, snatching her coat from the back of her chair. "Make sure he doesn't get everything wrong again. I think he does it on purpose."
She rushed after him, and Miles headed after her, rummaging in his pockets for his car keys.
"I've got to go too," he said. "Sorry, but I promised Judy I'd pick up some things for the kids' stockings. I'll drag Buchan back here if I run into him."
"See you later, then," Chandler said, left standing beside the Christmas tree as the sound of Mansell and Riley's bickering faded, and was then cut off completely.
Kent had gone back to his desk, searching for something under the boxes of decorations.
"Are you off somewhere, too?" Chandler asked him, and Kent shook his head, settling back into his seat, phone in hand.
"I'm on Mansell-watch," he said, tapping at the screen. "Erica's out shopping for him. I'm supposed to text her to let her know if he leaves the station. She doesn't want to risk a chance encounter."
Mansellwatch, Chris Packham's newest and least exciting venture, Chandler wanted to say. He didn't. He couldn't.
"Is that likely?" he asked instead, and Kent pulled a face.
"You wouldn't think so," he said, and as he spoke, his expression changed into something closer to a smile. "But she's convinced that she nearly ran into him while she was getting his birthday present. Had to hide behind the special offers. I don't mind helping her out."
Text sent, he set the phone down, then seemed to realise that he didn't have anything else to do. He reached for one of Buchan's decoration boxes, searching through it, fingers hooking over bauble strings. He looked down, into the box, away from Chandler, and Chandler tried to stop looking at him in return.
They'd done quite well at being professional while they were on the job that year, after all, to the point that it had taken Mansell three months to work out why Kent was suddenly so happy. Sometimes, they might as well not have had first names. It wouldn't do to ruin it now. But this was going to be one of those times. The times when it got difficult to look at Kent and pretend that he wasn't the same person that he woke up next to in the morning. Pretend that Chandler didn't know what he smelled like, how soft his skin was, or that, when he was cold, he liked to wear jumpers that were far too big for him, his hands swamped by sleeves so long that he couldn't turn pages.
Chandler cleared his throat, tried to look away, and found himself focussing on the same box of decorations as Kent.
"There's another one of them downstairs, isn't there?" he said. "I should probably go and fetch it." Best to remove himself from the situation for a little while.
Kent looked up at him, and smiled briefly, before his attention went back to the box, and as forced there as it might be, Chandler wondered how he did it. He had the image of it in his head all the way down to the Archive, and had no idea how he'd managed to go four years without allowing himself to see it. Maybe that was why Kent seemed to have an easier time of it. He'd had more practice.
The decorations weren't as well-hidden as he had hoped. Buchan had left them in full view, with the lid off, on top of an old Roses tin. Chandler breathed out hard, and managed to get himself a couple of extra minutes by inspecting them. Nothing special – shiny plastic baubles, a few stars, some wicker angels. The only one that was any different was a small felt donkey. Grey, instead of brown, but Chandler glowered at it anyway, all the way back up to the incident room doors.
He stopped just in front of them, squinting through the glass. Frowning, he shoved through, setting the box down on the nearest desk, and turned to survey the scene.
Kent had moved his office chair over to the Christmas tree and was standing on it, one hand clinging to its back and the other holding the star tree-topper. He was hunched down a little, clearly trying to be as short and stable as possible. The chair rotated slowly, picking up speed every time that his knees juddered with the strain of holding their awkward, half-straightened position. His expression was that of a cat which had made poor life decisions, and was now beginning to panic and regret everything.
He saw Chandler on his next pass, and winced.
"Stuck?" Chandler asked, fighting down a smile, and Kent managed to nod once, before the movement set the chair turning faster, and he wobbled, his eyes widening and the hand with the star flapping in an attempt to regain his balance. Chandler weighed his options, and decided that he was never going to get an opportunity like this again. People tended to learn their lessons after making the mistake of climbing onto a spinning chair once. It probably wouldn't do any harm if, for the next minute or so, he was about as professional as Mansell.
The next time that Kent was facing him, Chandler took a photo, then stuffed his phone back into his pocket, with a mental note to change the password to protect it until he could back it up, meeting Kent's affronted look with an innocent one of his own.
"Would you like some help up there?" he asked.
"If you wouldn't mind," Kent managed, his voice wavering as much as the rest of him.
Chandler took his time walking over, because every time the rotations brought Kent to face Chandler again, his expression had changed, and the physical effort that it took to swallow his laughter made it impossible to do anything with speed.
Once he was close enough, he steadied the chair with one hand. The turning stopped so abruptly that Kent wobbled in the opposite direction. He stepped off the chair, and his momentum carried him into Chandler, all awkward elbows, the star held as far away from Chandler as possible. Probably because it was responsible for the glitter that had somehow ended up in Kent's hair.
Chandler set him back on his feet, only for him to sit promptly back on the chair.
"So, what were you doing up there?" Chandler asked, trying to stop his eyebrows from going too far up.
"Need to put this on before the lights," Kent replied, between breaths, waggling the star at him. "Have to get the best angle for it. So it glitters."
"Hm," Chandler said. He plucked the star out of Kent's hand, and set it easily at the top of the tree, turning it so that the flat side faced their desks. "There."
He turned back to Kent for approval, or an indication that it still needed adjusting, only to find him staring at the space just above Chandler's head.
"You're not that much taller," Kent muttered.
Half the time, I have to tilt your chin up to kiss you, Chandler wanted to say, so much so that the words were bubbling up into his throat before he managed to swallow them. He couldn't. I'll remind him later, he decided. "It's all right like that, then?"
"Yes, that's fine," Kent said, shaking his head slightly, as if trying to bring himself back to the present time and place. Apparently without success, since his frown was now aimed directly at Chandler.
"What?" Chandler asked, and Kent's eyes dropped abruptly.
"I was just wondering," he ventured, but he was interrupted by the sounds of voices from beyond the doors. "Never mind."
Something personal, then. There would be time for that once the others had gone, and they were on their way out. Back to Chandler's apartment, which felt like their apartment so often that he kept forgetting that he hadn't asked Kent to move in yet.
The others were back, apparently having found Buchan somewhere on their travels, Miles all but driving their resident historian and his light-up Christmas jumper towards the tree, something in his face suggesting that this was the tail end of one of their arguments.
"Did you even check how tall it was?" Miles demanded, gesturing up at the star as if it went against everything which he stood for. "That's more than six foot."
"It was very reasonably priced," Buchan said, hesitantly. "I just assumed it would be the normal height for a Christmas tree. And it had frustration-free packaging."
"Too late to change it now, anyway," Riley said. "And I'm sure it'll look lovely with the decorations on it."
"Lights first though," Miles reminded her, with a pointed glance at Mansell.
"Yes," Buchan said, in the same voice that he used for his eureka moments, delving into his plastic bag. "Lights. They had bright white and blue, and I wasn't sure what colour we would want, so I just got both."
"Ooh, bright white," Riley said. "Makes everything look all frosty. We used to have them back home, but the kids wanted the multicolour ones."
"I can take the blue ones," Miles offered. "Martha's knocked the tree over and Judy can't get the lights working. And she was talking about how nice next door's looked, they've got blue ones. You can have them back in the new year."
"That's fine," Buchan said, handing him the blue box and then throwing the bright white one at Mansell. "I understand that this is your job?"
Mansell caught it, then looked around at the rest of the team in silent appeal. Kent, just glancing up from his phone, presumably texting Erica to give her the all-clear, accidentally caught his eye, and shrugged at him.
"Thanks," he muttered, starting to pick at the tape which sealed the box. "I'm burning all your presents."
"I see you've brought the decorations up," Buchan said, glancing over at the boxes on the desks, as Mansell started to search for the end of the lights. "I did make some spiced biscuits as well, did you find them?"
Chandler shook his head, and Buchan bustled off, back downstairs, as his jumper started to play a slightly off-key version of Jingle Bells.
The team turned as one, Chandler settling leaning against the edge of Kent's desk, to watch Mansell struggle with the lights. He had managed to find the end, and was unspooling the wire out onto the floor, where it collected in a looser, but still impenetrable, tangle. Behind him, Chandler could hear Riley offering everyone popcorn.
By the time that Buchan returned from the Archive, carrying the old Roses tin, all that Mansell had managed to do was tangle himself in the lights. He tried to reach for another strand of wire, only to find that his arms were bound to his sides. He turned to stare pleadingly at the others, and Riley plugged him in. The lights were strong enough that Mansell was now the brightest thing in the room, odd shadows flung out in every direction.
Kent took a photo, and Mansell swore at him.
"I'll tell Erica," he declared.
"I've just texted her this," Kent informed him, waving his phone. "She knows."
After half an hour, Kent and Riley took pity on him and went to help, the cold lights bringing out strange shapes in their faces. Between the three of them, they managed to light the tree without any of them ending up physically tied to it, which was more than Chandler had expected, given that Mansell was wilfully attempting to sabotage the other two.
Throughout it all, Chandler could feel the question that Kent hadn't managed to ask, heavy in the air between them, even if Kent did manage not to stare at him. He hardly saw the felt donkey even when Riley, unknowing, started to coo about how sweet it was, and hung it near the top. He barely noticed the taste of Buchan's Christmas biscuits, or the even glitter of the tree when it was done.
Not that anyone on the team had much time to admire it, as the end of their shift approached. The others didn't linger, rushing home to their other lives. Chandler stood and tried to lose himself in it, in the way that the pale lights made it seem as though his mind couldn't quite get a grip on the tree, standing there all purple and gold and with the shades of a dream along its branches. The star winked with its reflected light, throwing faint glimmers up into the shadows that lined the ceiling as deeply as the snow lay on all the Christmas cards that no longer looked like real life.
He gazed at the lights until Kent switched them off, and then he turned to finally meet his eyes in an empty incident room.
"What was it you were going to say, then?" he asked. "You've been thinking about it since the others got back."
"It's nothing, really," Kent said, and Chandler raised his eyebrows at him in a practiced expression of incredulity. "I was just wondering – why don't you have a Christmas tree?"
"Oh," Chandler said. There was a question. He swallowed, and found that the answer came more easily than he had been expecting. "There hadn't really been anything to celebrate. Are you ready to go?"
"Yes," Kent said, his eyes dropping away from Chandler's again. He went to his desk to retrieve his coat, and by the time that he came back, his smile was back in place.
They walked out together, leaving the Christmas tree dark behind them.
It was the cold that woke him, as it often did. Nothing abrupt. No shock. Just the slow awareness that the sheets had turned cool where before there had been warmth and weight.
Kent opened his eyes, but it was too early in the morning too deep in winter for him to see anything but the ghost-whites of the room, eerie and lurking. No incentive for him to do anything but rearrange the duvet and hope things warmed up again. He squinted towards the clock, and cursed the faint numbers for meaning that that wasn't an option.
Chandler never had any trouble getting up. Almost always gone when Kent woke up, he'd be sitting on the sofa reading the paper, fully-dressed and immaculate, two mugs on the coffee table in front of him. One with a little tea cosy on top of it, waiting for Kent to emerge.
Sometimes, he stayed, and Kent would wake to the soft sound of his breathing rather than the cold of his absence. Sometimes, he'd move closer, his touch seeking Chandler's. Sometimes, he couldn't, Chandler still something that he couldn't quite reach for, even after a year. Sometimes, Chandler would reach for him first.
This, Kent bemoaned, as he crawled out of bed and went to search for him, overlarge pyjamas flapping, was not one of those times.
Chandler wasn't in his usual place, and neither was anything else from their morning routine. No mugs on the table, no paper rustling gently in the air, not even the faint whistle of the kettle to indicate that any of those things might be imminent. Instead, he was on the other side of the room, arranging and re-arranging the branches of an unlit five-foot Christmas tree.
"Sir?" Kent asked, and then waited for a rebuke, because they'd talked about this before and he was absolutely not supposed to call the man that he'd been sleeping next to sir in the morning. He was getting a bit better at it, he was sure, but it was difficult to break a four year-long habit.
At least, this time, Chandler didn't seem to notice.
"I didn't mean to wake you," he said, circling around to stand between Kent and the tree as if that would somehow hide it from view.
"You didn't," Kent told him. He could hear in his voice the faintly-confused tones of the recently awoken, and did his best to will them away. "Where's that come from?"
"The internet," Chandler replied, shuffling awkwardly out of the way so that more of it was visible. "I ordered it the other day. Before yesterday. I wanted to have it ready before you woke up. Sorry."
"It's beautiful," Kent said, and it was, not just because it looked like a real tree, the branches dense enough that the fake trunk wasn't visible. "Really. And it looks ready to me."
"I forgot to get any decorations," Chandler said hesitantly, but from the smile that was starting to creep onto his face, he'd heard exactly what Kent was saying. "I don't suppose you have any?"
"One of my housemates owns the tree and everything associated from the house," Kent said, shaking his head. "I did lend her twenty-five pence which she never paid back, so I could probably claim one bauble, maybe, but we can pick some up in town. And we'll need lights. Do you have a colour preference?"
"We used to have white ones," Chandler ventured, relaxed enough now to let the smile properly onto his face. His features were soft with it, and Kent felt as if there was suddenly far too much air in his lungs. "But not like the ones on the incident room tree."
"Warm white?" Kent asked, relieved when the words came out without a hitch. "We had those ones too, back home. We'll have to see if we can find some, as soon as we can so there'll still be plenty of time to enjoy it before Christmas Day."
"Won't we be enjoying it on Christmas Day, too?" Chandler frowned, the smile gone, and Kent blinked at him, half shock at that and half confusion at his question.
"The skipper says we're going round to his for Christmas dinner?" he said.
"No," Chandler said, digging his phone from his pocket, checking his calendar. "He already invited me, and I said no... Wait, did he order you to bring me around for Christmas dinner?"
Kent nodded sheepishly. "He said Judy insisted." And he said you'd try to get out of it and that I wasn't to let you.
Chandler huffed, putting his phone away again. "I don't think Judy insists on half the things that he says she does," he muttered, and then looked back at Kent again. "I'm happy enough to go, I just didn't want to be any trouble."
Kent nodded again. That was Chandler, trying not to impose to the point that he didn't seem to understand that most people didn't see him as an imposition. He felt his eyes going past Chandler again, back to the tree, considering it with those implications. Then he looked back at Chandler, and bit his lip, trying to work out how to say what he suddenly needed to, his fingers fussing at his sleeves.
One day, he told himself, he wasn't going to be so nervous around Chandler. He'd tried to ask Erica if she had any idea when that might be, but she, with her endless confidence, hadn't really been very helpful. She'd given him all her self-doubt and worry in the womb, he was certain.
Maybe it would be around the same day that Chandler stopped looking at him like he was about to disappear.
"You didn't have to do this," he blurted, his gaze dropping to Chandler's feet, head down. "The tree, or anything. We've talked about it before, and you don't have to do anything that you don't want to or that you're not comfortable with and – and. You didn't have to."
"I know," Chandler said, quietly. He was still for a long moment, and then he crossed the room to stand in front of Kent. His hands came up, fingertips ghosting over Kent's jawline, before gently tilting his face upwards. "But, what I said before – things change."
Chandler leaned down to kiss him, and Kent stepped closer, his hands at the small of Chandler's back, so that there was no distance between them. His eyes slid closed, but he still felt Chandler's fingers, tracing into his hair. He felt the pressure of Chandler's lips, the heat of his breath. And he felt the warmth that he had missed that morning, dispelling the last of the cold.
From the way that Chandler's kiss had broken, just for an instant, into a smile, Kent could tell that he felt it too.
A/N - Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! Reviews are all very much appreciated so thanks in advance to anyone who leaves any of them - you deserve cookies. I can also be found over on tumblr (username: yszarin), if you want to come and say hi (I promise, you are absolutely never bothering me). Hopefully, I'll be back here in the new year posting angsty fic, but in the meantime, I hope you all have a merry Christmas!