A/N: My early gift to you: some festive holiday Jamko fluff. Also, Jamie's clothes aren't specified, so feel free to imagine him in boxers this entire time if his usual jeans-and-henley look doesn't do it for you. ;) Merry Christmas! -Sandy


Jamie jumps at the sudden, insistent sound of the buzzer that hits his ears over the college basketball game he's watching. With a curious arch of one eyebrow, he checks his phone to make sure he's not missing something he's supposed to know about before he sets his beer on the side table and gets up to see who it is.

"Yeah?"

"Hey, it's me," Eddie says. "Come down here and help me."

"Help you what? I'm not giving you a piggyback ride up the stairs, Janko, I don't care if it was the worst leg day of your life-"

"Hurry up!"

He wishes she could see the dramatic eye roll he directs at the wall as he pushes the button to unlock the building door. "It's open. Get your ass up here."

"No, you get your ass down here and help me!"

"Nope." He lets go of the button to meander back to the couch before he even says the whole word.

Before he can sink into the leather cushions again, Eddie's laying on the buzzer once more. Jamie glances at his beer and considers turning up the TV volume until she quits, but he knows she'll outlast him so with a resigned sigh he shoves his feet into the worn-out New Balances in the entryway and heads downstairs.

"Finally!" Eddie cries when Jamie cracks open the door and peers at her through the narrow gap. "Do you have any gloves?"

"What - gloves? No, Eddie-"

"Okay here, use mine and take this. I have to run back to my car-"

Jamie has no time to react as Eddie pulls off the gardening gloves she wears, shoves them against his chest, and somehow finds his hand to tug him out onto the stoop. There he nearly trips over a Christmas tree bound with twine and all he can do is wedge one foot in the door before it shuts, staring behind Eddie as she bounces away through the fat snowflakes that float sleepily through the fading late-afternoon light.

"The hell, Janko," he mutters to himself.

There's no way his hands will fit into Eddie's tiny purple gloves so he clutches them under one arm and tries not to flinch at the prickly needles as he finds a good grip on the tree. He's managed to drag the damn thing all the way to the hall outside his fourth-floor walkup and he's wrestling it towards his front door when Eddie catches up to him.

"Good!" she exclaims. "You made it. That tree's heavier than it looks. I had to drag it two blocks from my car..."

"Uh yeah - what are you and this tree doing here, exactly?"

"We wouldn't have to be if you weren't such a Scrooge. Here, move."

Jamie flattens himself against the wall as she squeezes by, weighed down by several bags and a good-sized brown box decorated with some kind of shimmery metallic appliqué. He can't help his entertained smirk while she balances the box between one hip and his doorframe, freeing a hand to let them inside.

"What's - that mean?" he calls after her through the effort of yanking the tree forward the last few feet.

"What's the point of putting a tree up in my apartment?" Eddie says, her voice deep and mocking. "I'll just have to take it down in a month and that's just extra work and I have no Christmas spirit at all, bah humbug."

"What?" he scoffs. "I never put it like that-"

"Yeah, you basically did. And I can't let you be miserable so here, where should we set this up? In front of that window?"

Jamie's brows draw together in restrained amusement as she shakes a tree stand free of the plastic grocery bag she used to carry it here. "What I said was," he insists, "the Sunday after Thanksgiving my sister makes us all help put up the tree and decorate at my dad's and that's more fun than trying to decorate this place. It's just me and I'm hardly ever here."

"You're here right now," she points out.

"Yeah, and it's the first night all week."

"And putting up your tree is the perfect way to spend it!"

Jamie just chuckles at her, finding his beer and watching as she shoves his living room chair forward against his coffee table to make room for the tree stand behind it.

"Okay - put those gloves back on and then can you pick up the tree and bring it over here? You don't want to cut the string until it's up-"

He holds up her gloves and tosses them to the coffee table. "If you think my hands will fit in these things you're insane, Janko."

She peeks up from where she crouches behind the chair to set up the stand. "Not my fault!"

Kneeling on the chair, he reaches over its back to show her the red scratches that cover his hands. "Yeah, this is."

"Don't be a baby."

"I'm not! You brought me a killer tree!"

Eddie offers a dramatic groan towards the ceiling. "Fine, come hold this still then."

"No, no, you stay there. I can do it…"

"Apparently you can't."

Standing, Eddie steers Jamie around the chair with hands on his back and then goes over to the entryway where the tree lies pathetically on its side just past the door. Jamie is anchored in place and he can't help the laugh that rumbles out of him as Eddie puts on the gloves and manages to loop one arm underneath the widest part of the bound tree. She hoists it up in the crook of her elbow, not quite able to maneuver it all the way onto her shoulder and the top branches drag on the floor behind her as she moves further into the apartment.

Jamie watches until Eddie begins a precarious turn to avoid the couch, nearly sweeping the legs out from under his side table in the process. Then he scrambles forward to lift the top half of the tree off the ground and avoid some kind of disaster.

"Don't touch it!" Eddie teases. "The sharp, pointy needles might stick you!"

"Well - if the choice is scratching up my hands or wrecking my living room, my hands are cheaper to deal with."

"Hold the stand with your foot," Eddie orders, all business again as she eases to her knees to direct the tree stump into the stand. "And tip up the top so I can get it - into the - okay perfect. Is it straight? Hold it there so I can tighten the screws."

"Um, no, you hold it straight with your tiny gloves and I'll tighten."

Her eyes light up with a cheerful giggle as she stands and walks her hands up the tree to keep it in place.

"Got it?" Jamie confirms before he bends to tighten the stand's four large screws against the trunk to hold the tree upright.

Eddie gives it a gentle back-and-forth push between her hands to make sure it's not going anywhere, then lets go and steps around Jamie to assess the tree from across the room. "Looks good," she decides. "Here, spread this out this underneath." She tosses a red lump of thick quilted fabric at Jamie - he realizes it's a tree skirt - before she pads to the kitchen in her socks to help herself to a beer from his fridge.

With the skirt in place he makes his way back to his own beer but he gets distracted by the rest of Eddie's crap tossed carelessly across his couch. "What's all this?"

"Um, decorations. You wanna start testing the lights? I found them in my mom's garage and I have no idea if they're any good."

"Your mom's garage?"

"Yeah, I don't have room for this stuff at my place," she says, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

"Oh, of course."

"There's plain white and multicolored - I like white but I wasn't sure for you," Eddie continues. "And the garland - are you feeling this ribbon? I thought I liked it but now I think the sparkly one is better."

She leans over the back of the couch, beer in one hand while the other fishes through the bags to display the contents as she mentions them. Jamie just lets her talk, his lips stretched into a lopsided smirk at her overflowing enthusiasm. He guesses this is all because of a passing comment of his in the car the other night - that he doesn't put up any Christmas decorations of his own - and she must've decided that pointing out every holiday display in the city since then like it's proof of his ultimate lameness wasn't enough.

She continues to ask for his opinions without allowing him the time to give them. He steps sideways while she rambles to take the lid off the decorated box she brought inside. Tugging at a wrinkled corner of balled-up tissue paper, he reveals a wooden rocking horse and realizes that each compartment of the gridded dividers inside the box contains a few ornaments wrapped protectively for storage.

"What are you doing?" Eddie snaps, suddenly aware of him again. "No ornaments until we're done with lights and garlands - don't you know how to decorate a tree?"

"Okay, sorry!" Jamie laughs as he brings his free hand to hs shoulder in a show of innocence.

"Find an outlet and figure out which lights work."

He takes the grocery bag of Christmas lights she hands him and ducks behind the tree to plug them in. A moment later the sound of the basketball game he was watching disappears.

"I was watching that!" he calls. "Janko-"

"Since when do you care about Virginia Tech basketball? We need Christmas music."

He knows it's useless to argue so he directs his mental energy to wondering how Eddie manages to send the opening guitar of "Jingle Bell Rock" bouncing through the room so quickly - either she pulled the song up on his phone, which wouldn't surprise him because she's known his passcode since always; or her own phone is synced to the small bluetooth speaker on his kitchen counter, which would be news to him but not all that surprising either. And when he shifts, feeling the pressure of his phone still in his pocket, he shakes his head a little at the realization that it's the second one.

Testing the lights isn't as simple a task as Jamie anticipates. There are five or six strands tangled into a hopeless knot and he can barely tug the plug ends free enough to test them in the outlet, much less unravel the entire mass to keep track of which strands he's already tested. Finally he lets out a groan of frustration and drops the whole thing over the back of the armchair onto the seat.

"This is impossible," he complains as he shuffles around on his knees. "I don't know what hole in the ground you dug these out of - hey, what're you doing? You drag all this shit up here and then park your ass on my couch-"

"Shut up," Eddie scoffs, narrowing her eyes at him as she takes a sip of her beer. "I'm strategizing."

Jamie grabs the ball of lights from the chair and makes a show of stepping over Eddie's legs that are propped on his coffee table. "Strategizing what?"

"Decorations! I think there's a wreath hanger in my car - we can grab you a nice simple wreath for your door, red bow, nothing flashy-"

"Wreaths now? And who carries a wreath hanger around in their car? Can we deal with this whole situation before we start talking about anything else?"

Eddie giggles, recoiling when he drops the lights heavily onto her lap from his spot on the other end of the couch. "Nope, this is all you," she says, pushing the ball back across the cushions until it stops against his leg. "I'm gonna start on the other stuff. We'll worry about a wreath later."

"No wreath!"

Ignoring him, Eddie plants her feet on the floor and gets up, brushing past his knees on her way back to the kitchen. "Time to see what this baby really looks like."

He pretends to fiddle with the lights but really he's keeping a sideways eye on Eddie as she digs for scissors in his kitchen drawer. When she finds them she comes back over to the tree and cuts the twine that binds it. It takes her a minute to pull it all away and then the tree finally stands uninhibited and hugely fat in the cramped space between the chair and the window.

"Yes! I picked a good one," she announces. "Good shape, no dead branches…"

"You didn't look at it before you brought it over here?"

"Hard to do that when they're already tied up in a pile inside that little landscaping place," she explains. "It was a gamble. And it paid off."

"Well - it looks so good by itself I don't think it needs any lights."

"It needs lights! Keep untangling. Hurry up. I've always done the lights first but I think it'll be okay if I start the ribbon while you work on that…"

While she considers for a minute, Jamie looks for the remote to unmute the basketball game. He sees it behind him on the kitchen counter, way out of reach from his spot on the couch, dammit.

"It should be fine," Eddie decides. She grabs the wide, shimmering gold ribbon from a bag - Jamie rolls his eyes at how nicely wound it is and of course he's stuck dealing with the tangled mess - and starts to circle it around the tree from the bottom up.

Eddie holds a one-sided conversation about whether Thai food or pizza will be better tree-decorating fuel when it's time for meal break. Jamie would offer his opinion - pizza, or Chinese if that's what Eddie's in the mood for, but not Thai - if she slowed down to take a breath every so often, but she doesn't. Oh well, he's a little busy anyway with this damn ball of lights from hell that, after ten minutes of meticulous concentration, is about three percent of the way untangled.

"Eddie," he finally sighs. "It's hopeless. This dumb tree isn't having lights - I'm done."

"What? No!" She pauses as she shimmies sideways to get out from behind the tree. "It has to have lights or else what's the point?"

"Well it's not going to have these lights," he snaps.

Eddie frowns at him as he tosses the lights aside onto the couch with an irritated groan. "Come on, Jamie-"

"I'll do the ribbon," he offers, voice softer now. "You try to get somewhere with the stupid lights."

"Fine - you try to get somewhere with the stupid ribbon - do you have a stepstool in this place?"

"Don't need one. Out of my way, shorty."

He shoulders her away from the tree as he takes the remaining roll of ribbon. She pretends to put up a fight, swiping for it over Jamie's forearm defensively braced in her direction until she dissolves into hysterical giggles and gives up.

"Lights!" he reminds her with one more playful shove towards the couch. "Get moving. This is your project."

"My project to do a nice thing for you." It sounds like she's still arguing but she directs a glittery joking sneer his way as she grabs the mess of lights.

"I didn't ask you to!"

Jamie doesn't miss the way she scoffs up at the ceiling just before he squeezes behind the tree to keep going with the ribbon. It's a much easier job and he finishes pretty quickly with three more revolutions. He's too focused to worry about what Eddie's doing so he doesn't realize she's left the couch until he comes around for the last time and nearly trips over her where she squats on the floor next to the outlet.

"Look! We've got two!" she says, and before he can ask what she means she plugs an untangled strand of white lights into the wall so they illuminate the dark corner behind the tree.

"How'd you do that?"

She shrugs and flicks a smile at him over her shoulder. "Christmas spirit."

Pulling the white lights away from the wall, Eddie fumbles in the momentary darkness until the purplish warmth of a multicolored strand takes their place. "I hope two's enough," she muses. "Ugh - it would look better if they were the same - but you don't mind, do you?"

"No, I don't mind - let's just get lights on the damn tree."

Eddie agrees, plugging the white strand into the free end of the multicolored one, and it takes conscious effort for Jamie to tear his gaze away from how the whimsical glow softly highlights Eddie's features, the curve of her cheek edging her smile and the mischievous spark in her bright blue eyes-

"Jamie!"

"Hmm? Yeah."

"I said you should just do this since you can reach all the way to the top. I'm gonna order some food." She gives him the looped lights draped over her hand and scoots away to make the call.

Soon the lights are up - it does look weird that the top half of the tree is white and the bottom is colorful, but he's not about to say that to Eddie - and Thai food is on the way.

"You better not have gotten me that spicy crap you ordered last time," he warns just before he lets himself fall onto the couch with an exaggerated groan of exhaustion.

"I got you the blandest thing on the menu, don't worry," she says. "I'm pretty sure it won't even count as Thai food."

"Perfect, sounds delicious."

"Sounds disgusting. How come you're sitting down? We're not done. Ornaments!"

"I've got a tree. With lights on it. Isn't that enough? Ornaments are a pain."

Eddie straightens and plants a hand on her hip. "I have never met someone who is so ugh about Christmas. You're Catholic! It's supposed to be a big deal, Jesus being born and all." She tosses the lid of the box at him and he can detect the hint of genuine irritation underriding her tone.

"It is a big deal. But Jesus doesn't care about whether or not I have a tree full of ornaments that I'll just have to take down in six days."

She scowls. "Not six days - you can leave the tree up til New Years. And it's going to have ornaments whether you help me or not. What're you going to do when you have kids someday, huh? Oh, sorry kiddos, we don't get a Christmas tree because Grandpa has one in Bay Ridge?"

"Come on, that's different. Of course I'll have a tree then. But for now it's just me."

"And me. And I'm not letting you not have ornaments on your tree. Now's the time you start building the traditions that'll matter then, you know."

Jamie doesn't exactly buy her argument - in five or ten years, when any hypothetical children he has are the perfect age to revel in that Christmas magic, he doubts they'll ask about their father's apartment decorations from before they were born. And he already knows what his future family's big traditions will be: church on Christmas Eve, breakfast of homemade cinnamon rolls made with his grandma's recipe, and presents before heading to his dad's for family dinner. But now there's something else in that picture - a flash of blonde hair and the curry smell of Thai food as his kids, who he imagines with blue eyes all of a sudden, reach up to hook wooden rocking horses onto nearby branches-

He feels his jaw clench and he clears his head with a little shake. "Okay, okay, alright," he concedes. "But this means you're coming over on New Years to help me take all this down."

"I was already planning on it."

"Good. Let's get this done."

Eddie presses her lips together into a satisfied little smile and hands Jamie the first ornament.

At first Jamie's mostly doing this to appease her. But he can't help but enjoy himself as Eddie sings along to "Here Comes Santa Claus" and backs herself up with an adorably dorky dance, bobbing her head and swaying her hips as she places the ornaments. He props his hips on the back of the armchair, pausing to watch her without even realizing it, until she grabs his hands and tugs him back to his feet as she sings "You - have to - help - me - or I - won't come - back on - New Years Eve!" to the tune of the song. Returning his focus to the ornament box, he can't quite get his goofy grin under control. But he's not really trying that hard.

Eddie dances through two or three more songs while they work their way through the box. Her contagious enthusiasm makes Jamie lose track of the time and when the bell rings to announce the food's arrival he realizes they're almost done.

"I got it," she insists. "You finish this - since you're having so much fun."

"I'm having fun dreaming about watching the second half of this basketball game without interruptions," he teasingly says to her back as she goes to the door.

He feels through the compartments of the box, searching for any last ornaments hidden among the old paper that Eddie insists on saving for when it's time to repack everything. He finds a couple of small glass balls, what looks like the tiny attachment paddle to a fancy kitchen mixer, a miniature coffee mug featuring the Flyers logo - he thinks about throwing that one out before he settles on tucking it away in a bottom corner - and one last thing so flat he almost misses it as his fingers trace across the bottom.

When Eddie turns away from the door, food in hand, he's waiting for her with narrow-eyed smugness as he holds up his find.

"What?" she questions, quirking a glancing eyebrow as she sits to spread the food across the coffee table.

He flashes the ornament closer, right under her face where she can't miss her seven-year-old self grinning up from a faded, cheaply printed yearbook photo that threatens to come unstuck from its popsicle stick frame.

"Hey! Where was that?" she cries, swiping for it.

"It's an ornament! It's going on my tree." Grinning, he backs away and turns to hang the frame by the pipe cleaner glued to the top. "I think that's the finishing touch."

"Come on," Eddie whines.

"You want me to take an ornament off?"

"That one, yes!"

She reaches over his shoulder for the frame but he's too quick, blocking her with one arm while his other hand moves the picture out of her reach.

"No, Jamie!"

"That's my favorite thing on this tree," he insists. "Handmade and heartfelt."

"God, you're weird," she mutters.

She strains against him for just another second before backing down, distracted by the food. Jamie looks at it again - tiny Eddie's bangs chopped halfway up her forehead, those same sparkling blue eyes, the uneven glitter-glue Merry Christmas across the popsicle sticks that form the top and bottom of the frame - and something squeezes hard inside his chest, that same fleeting image of blue eyes and matching Christmas pajamas and basil chicken in the soft light of the Christmas tree, and it forces the air out of his lungs.

He can't let himself dwell on it, not now. But his gaze drifts to Eddie, cross-legged on his couch with food in her lap and the remote in her hand - browsing Netflix for a cheesy Christmas movie, he's sure - and her comment about building traditions floats through his head as clearly as if she's saying it out loud once more. And he wonders, for just a second, if that's what they're doing right now.