Finn knows that Santana thinks it's stupid that he wants a real tree. He's heard all of the arguments against them: they drop needles and sap, you have to keep water in the stand, they're a fire hazard, the cat will drink the water and end up barfing everywhere, they stab you when you're trying to decorate them. Yes, fake trees look better now than they ever have, and there are a lot of perks to having them, but that isn't the point.
For Finn, it all boils down to one thing that trumps the rest: You're supposed to have a real tree for Christmas.
It's been years since he's been able to have his own real Christmas tree. He didn't have a tree at all when he was in the dorms, and when he moved into an apartment off-campus, the landlord didn't allow real trees. The apartment that he and Santana were in for the last two years was the same way, but now they have a house with a landlord who doesn't seem to mind a real tree. ('Just don't burn the place down,' he said, and Finn might be accident prone, but he isn't going to burn a whole house to the ground. Anyhow, he's more likely to do something like trip and fall off the roof.)
"This is the only Christmas we're going to have while we're engaged," he points out one night when they're getting ready for bed. He's been trying to talk her into this all week, and he's not giving up. He's pretty sure he's going to win this one, actually.
Santana rolls her eyes at him in the bathroom mirror and spits out a mouthful of toothpaste. "We've been together for Christmas before," she reminds him.
"Yeah, but this is like, special. You were my girlfriend before. Now you're my fiancée."
She doesn't look impressed, but she's got the toothbrush back in her mouth, so she can't really argue with him.
"And this is our first Christmas here." He leans against the counter beside her, looking down at her face instead of at her reflection in the mirror. "I want it to be special."
She spits again, then cups her hands under the faucet so she can bring water to her mouth to rinse. "You said that the first year that we were together," she says when she finishes, dropping her toothbrush into the holder and turning to face him. "You're always going to do this, aren't you?" He raises his eyebrows questioningly. "Insist that we make Christmas special. You're going to do this every year." She says it almost like she's surprised, like it's some revelation. It's pretty cute, actually, and he likes that he still surprises her every once in a while. Usually it's the other way around.
He grins and slips his arms around her waist, pulling her hips against his and locking eyes with her. "Every year for the rest of our lives, baby."
She draws in a sharp breath. "Fuck. Finn."
He holds her close when she leans up to kiss him, groaning against her lips when she slides her tongue against his the way that has always (will always, he thinks) made him crazy. He never expected Santana to be the woman who got off on the idea of being with him - with anyone - forever, but she totally does, and he loves it.
She pushes him onto his back when they make it to the bed, gasping his name when she straddles his hips and guides his length into her. "Fine," she breathes as she rolls her hips once.
He has no idea what she's talking about. This feels way better than fine, and he knows it. "What?"
She lifts herself up. "You can have a real tree," she manages, though the last word is kind of a groan when she lowers back down over him.
He rolls her onto her back and kisses her as he thrusts hard into her. "Santana." She groans from the back of her throat and brings her leg up over his hip.
He's not sure what's turning him on more: the idea of having a perfect Christmas, or the fact that he won the argument.
(That's stupid. It's totally his fucking gorgeous fiancée gasping his name underneath him that's turning him on.)
"No."
"'Tana."
"No."
"Santana," he says again, ignoring the way that she glares at him. "You can't just pick a tree off a lot somewhere. You have to cut down your own."
He really doesn't know how she doesn't know this.
"So, not only do you want me to deal with watering a tree and cleaning up all the shit that it leaves on the floor, you want me to traipse out into the woods somewhere and actually cut one down?"
"Of course not." He's already told her that she won't have to deal with the tree; he'll take care of it, for one thing. "We'll go to a Christmas tree farm."
She blinks at him. "A Christmas tree farm."
"You walk around a field full of trees, and when you find the one you want, they cut it down for you," he explains. "I found a place online. They have wreaths and poinsettias too, and they have a stand where they sell hot chocolate and stuff."
He thinks that she expected him to do the whole thing, to go somewhere and bring a tree home, and then they would decorate it together. They could do it that way, sure, but he likes the tradition of doing it the other way. Walking around in a field of potential Christmas trees, drinking hot chocolate and bickering over bare spots and misshapen branches - that's all part of the fun for him. It's the way he and his mom always did it, and he wants it to be a tradition for his family too, the kind of thing that they're doing when they have their own kids.
"You're worse than a little kid," she grumbles. He grins, because he knows that means that he won. "Fine. We can go on Saturday afternoon. But you're getting up and making me chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast."
He leans over and kisses her temple. "Done."
Finn decides that the best way to approach the whole cutting-down-a-tree thing with Santana is to have her in the best possible mood before they even leave the house. This isn't really her kind of thing, even if she did agree, and Finn isn't above buttering her up. So he sets the alarm on his phone, but leaves the thing on vibrate so it doesn't wake her, and puts it under his pillow before he falls asleep. She's absolutely not a morning person, and there's exactly one way that Santana actually likes being woken up.
He's watching her face, and she moans before she even opens her eyes, reaching down to push her hand into his hair. "Finn."
"Morning, baby," he mumbles, grinning against her when the sensation makes her moan and roll her hips up towards his mouth.
"God, Finn." She gazes down at him with dark eyes, her fingers tightening in his hair when he wraps his lips around her nerves and flicks with his tongue. "So good."
He doesn't think this is such a terrible way to start a day.
He thinks the fact that it's a little warmer than usual - for December in Ohio - is kind of a blessing, because it means that with a coat and scarf, Santana isn't going to complain about being cold. It's one of those bright, clear winter days that make you want to get out and make the most of the semi-decent weather while you have it.
Perfect for Christmas tree hunting.
The place Finn found online is a couple of miles out of town, and there are more than a few cars in the lot when he pulls in. "Hot chocolate first," Santana suggests when he cuts the engine. He grins at her. "If I'm going to be walking around a field of trees, I deserve chocolate. With marshmallows."
He's laughing when he gets out of the truck, meeting her at the front and slipping his arm around her waist. "Hot chocolate first," he agrees, brushing his lips against her temple. She shoots him a pointed look. "With marshmallows."
He knows that she doesn't completely hate this though, bcause when they set off walking through the field, she loops her free arm through his and looks up at him through her eyelashes for just a second. It's cute as hell and makes him just a little bit crazy. He tugs her between the trees to the next row, where there isn't a family with two little kids like where they just were, and leans down to kiss her. "Thanks for this," he murmurs, and he wishes that he had both hands free so that he could hold her closer.
She kisses the corner of his mouth gently. "It's important to you," she says simply, which means that he has to kiss her again before taking her hand and leading her off towards a couple of trees further down the row that catch his eye.
It only takes half an hour of wandering through the field to find the perfect tree. Finn judges it to be a little over seven feet, which means it'll be perfect after he's trimmed the trunk, and it doesn't have any of the little scraggly bits that you usually see on live trees. It's the tiniest bit lopsided, just like all of the trees in the field, the result of a fairly consistent breeze that comes out of the west out here.
"What do you think?" he asks Santana.
She tilts her head and looks at the tree. "Finn, honey, it's a tree," she says, more gently, he knows, than she wants to. He still looks at her a little pleadingly. "It looks like a Christmas tree," she concedes. "I like it."
That's more than good enough for Finn and all he's going to get. He's going to call it a successful outing.
It takes another forty minutes to get the tree cut and strapped down into the bed of his truck, time during which Santana has another hot chocolate and picks out a wreath and a pair of poinsettias from the little greenhouse.
Santana's cheeks are pink with cold when they get into the truck, but she's smiling as she teases him about how he almost fell out of the bed of the truck when he was climbing down, so he doesn't think that she's too upset about today went. If he let himself, he could be pretty smug about that; this isn't the first time that he's talked her into doing something that she didn't want to do when he brought it up, but he's just happy that she's having fun. He really does want this to be something that they do every year, a tradition that his kids grow up with the same way that he did with his mom.
He doesn't let himself think about having kids too often, because as much as he knows that he wants them (and he knows that Santana does too, because they are smart enough to have talked about it before he proposed), he also knows that they're at least a couple of years away from being ready to have any. When he does think about it though, he almost always catches himself imagining a little girl with Santana's dark eyes and his sandy hair, and right now he's picturing her dragging him through the field of Christmas trees he was just in with Santana, insisting that the tree she picked is better than the one he likes.
He's startled with Santana says his name. "Are you okay?" she asks when he looks at her. "You're off in your own world."
He grins and reaches for her hand. "I just got distracted," he lies instead of telling her that he was imagining their future daughter. She just smiles and leans forward to fiddle with the radio when he starts the truck.
They have a cat. Well, Santana has a cat. He started as a stray who kept hanging around Santana's college apartment until she gave in and fed the scroungy thing a can of tuna from her cabinet. That was just the beginning. After a check-up with the vet and three months of living indoors and being fed twice a day, he turned out to be a gorgeous long-haired yellow cat with golden eyes and the longest tail Finn has ever seen on a house cat. Santana eventually named him Goose (which was some reference to an actor she likes; Finn can never remember), and even though she acts like she just tolerates him, she loves that stupid cat.
Apparently drinking Christmas tree water can makes animals sick, which was one of her arguments against getting a real tree, but Goose has zero interest in the tree. He doesn't even come into the living room once to sniff at it. Maybe the guy just got enough of nature when he didn't have any choice about being out in it. Whatever. Finn thinks it's like a sign from the universe that they are, in fact, meant to have a live tree.
He puts the lights on by himself, a playlist of Christmas music playing in the background, because Santana doesn't like messing with lights even on a fake tree 'that isn't going to stab the ever loving hell out of me,' but she comes into the living room when he starts opening the boxes of ornaments. She hands him a beer and laughs when he lifts a brow at her. "It's a winter lager, okay? That's festive."
He kisses her. Things like that are why he's marrying her. The big stuff is important, of course, but it's the little stupid things that made him really want to be with her forever.
The last thing to go on the tree is the star on top. Santana stands on an ottomon that she tugs over next to the tree, Finn's hands on her hips to steady her as she leans up to place the topper. They wait to turn on the lights until they have the whole tree decorated, which is already one of their traditions instead of one that's his or hers. (Finn's mom likes to leave the lights on while she decorates, and Santana's family generally prefers to hire someone to decorate a tree to doing it as a family.)
"It's pretty," Santana murmurs, tugging him with her to sit on the couch. She curls into his side when he puts hs arm around her. "I like it with all the ornaments instead of doing a color scheme."
"Me, too."
She tips her head back so she can look up at him. "Merry Christmas, baby."
God, he loves her. He curves his hand around the side of her neck, stroking his thumb along her jaw when he leans down to kiss her sweetly. "Merry Christmas."
They don't often sit and do nothing, mostly because Santana has too much nervous energy and not enough patience for it. Now though, sitting on their couch, listening to Christmas music, and looking at their Christmas tree, is sort of the perfect time for it. Finn likes it, this quiet, easy thing they have going on, so he makes a point of keeping his mouth shut so he doesn't spoil it.
They fall asleep there on the couch even though it's barely even dark outside, the lights from their Christmas tree glowing softly.