A/N: It's prompt time again, and since it's that time of the year this, it's a Christmas one! The prompt for this one was: OTP are decorating the christmas tree when person A playfully puts the star on person B's head. It was so cute of an idea not to whip up a little something, so here it is. Hope you enjoy it, Merry Christmas, and please leave a review if you liked it!


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OH CHRISTMAS TREE

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"Krill, what are you doing?"

The sound of his wife's voice startled Krillin, and he shot up, bumping his head against the low roof of the cupboard under the staircase and earning a snort of laughter from 18.

"I'm just," he rubbed his head as he turned around. That had actually really hurt. Stepping out of the cupboard, Krillin looked up at 18, who was standing on the staircase above him, peering down over the bannister with a big grin on her face. "I'm looking for the Christmas tree," he disappeared back inside. "Roshi has so much crap stuffed under here though. I'm definitely making him sort this mess out after the holidays."

"Uh-huh" 18 jogged down the stairs, taking them two at a time. She'd heard that line before. Every time they needed to find something under there, Krillin swore he was going to make the old man turf some of it, but he just never had the heart to ask him to part with his stuff, even if it was nothing but junk.

Eventually, between them both, they managed to drag out the dusty old Christmas tree box without everything else collapsing on top of them, and assemble the tree in its usual spot in the corner of the living room.

"You know," 18 began, and Krillin rolled his eyes, knowing exactly what was coming next. "I don't understand this whole Christmas tree thing. I mean-"

"It's not even real." Krillin cut 18 off before she could finish her sentence and then quickly threw his arms up across his face, blocking against the cushion 18 hurled directly at him. He caught it with ease and threw it straight back at her with just as much force. "A real one would be nice, but pine trees don't exactly thrive in the tropics, babe. Master Roshi made us, Goku and me, bring him one once, when we were kids, after we nagged him about it for weeks, and it didn't end well." Krillin chuckled as he thought back on the fond childhood memory.

"What happened to it?"

"It humidity killed it more or less straight away. We came down from bed the next morning and the poor thing was all brown and wilted. So then we got ol' plastic here," he patted the tree, "and it's been going strong ever since. We must have had this tree for…. at least 15 years."

18 eyed the sad looking tree up and down, it was missing its fair share of branches, and the ones that still remained were all bent and poking out in strange directions. Years of being either stuffed haphazardly in the closet or sitting in the blazing tropical sun had caused the plastic foliage to fade from what was presumably once upon a time, a bright and vibrant green, to a dull and lacklustre off-white, greenish kind of mess. "You can hardly tell," she said with a sarcastic grin.

"Aww babe," Krillin darted across the room and back into the cupboard. "Don't be like that," he said when he re-emerged holding a plastic tub full of decorations. "Not all of us can look as flawless as you when we're naked." Krillin waggled a silly eyebrow at 18 and shook the tub. "She just needs to get dressed, that's all!"

Plonking the tub down in the middle of the living room, Krillin yanked the lid off and peered inside. The first thing he felt wasn't the joy and excitement usually brought on by his favourite time of the year, but rather an all-consuming sense of dismay. He could already see the smug I-told-you-so look on his wife's face without even looking up at her.

Reaching in, Krillin lifted up an absolute tangled mess of lights, tinsel and long strings of beads. "Oolong…" He glanced up towards the pig in questions bedroom with a clenched fist and the look of death in his eyes. "He promised me he put this stuff away properly last year."

"Oh, c'mon, it's not really that bad." It really was that bad, but 18 could see the upset on her husband's face and decided that she'd already poked enough fun at him. Krillin loved Christmas, and 18 loved making Krillin happy, so even though Christmas spirit was something she didn't really understand, for him, she was willing to try.

She dropped to her knees, took the jumble of wire and glitter from his hands and began the tedious task of untangling the knot while Krillin sorted through the remaining decorations in the tub, tossing all the broken ones aside.

The going was slow, but a little while later, 18 had untangled enough of the knot that she now had a complete set of fairy lights. Krillin had migrated to the other side of the room, and had just hit play on the CD player, piping sickly sweet Christmas music into the house, when a lasso of fairy lights dropped over his head and onto his chest. Behind him, 18 laughed, as if she couldn't believe she'd actually managed to get him on her first try.

"I bet you couldn't do that again," Krillin challenged, as 18 reeled in the lights, dragging the still trapped Krillin across the room and down onto the floor beside her.

"I don't need to do it again," 18 replied as she shuffled herself into Krillin's lap. Their foreheads pressed together and as she leaned into him, 18 produced the tree-topping star from behind her back and placed it proudly on top of Krillin's head.

"Hey!" Krillin laughed and reached for a ribbon of tinsel. He wrapped it around both of their necks, like a giant, itchy, double scarf. "Two can play at that game you know."

"Well in that case…" 18 didn't miss a beat, and dug two glittery baubles from the plastic tub beside her, draping them one each over Krillin's ears, giving him a pair of oversized Christmas earrings. Laughter filled the room as they took turns covering each other in increasingly more elaborate decorations, until the plastic tub was all but empty, and there was barely an inch of free skin to be seen between them.

As far as Krillin was concerned, Christmas had just come and gone, and he'd been given the best gift of his entire life. They could stuff the dusty old tree back into the closet right now, and he'd be happy just sitting on the floor, tangled up in the mess of decorations with his perfect wife. "I love you," he smiled against 18's lips as he kissed her. His heart fluttered when he felt her smiling back, he would never, ever tire of her love. Everybody always said that 18 was cold and brash, he'd heard the term 'Ice-Queen' thrown around more than once when his friends spoke about her, but they truly had no idea. No idea just how warm and affectionate and funny and loving she could be. No idea of the lengths she went to too cheer him up when he was feeling down. No idea of how effortlessly she brought out the very best in Krillin.

"I love you too," she replied, as she pushed his scruffy black hair up off his face before kissing him again, more firmly this time, as if it were the only way she could think of to truly express how she felt. Words may not have always been 18's strong suit, but she always made sure that her husband knew exactly how she felt about him. "Should we dress the tree?" she asked as they parted.

18 felt Krillin's hands creeping under her shirt and up her back. "To be perfectly honest, I'd rather undress you," he replied, sending a shiver down 18's spine when his lips found their way to the sensitive spot on her neck. She made no attempt to stop him as one by one, he removed the ornaments he had covered her in, kissing each patch of skin he revealed as he went.

The Christmas tree could wait until tomorrow.

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A/N: So I hope you enjoyed this, I thought it was pretty cute personally, and I'm happy with how it came out. Feedback is always appriciated though. If you would like to follow my writing adventures, find your way to my tumblr on my profile page. That's the place to go if you want to submit your own prompt ideas to me, and to interact with not just me, but an entire amazing community of K/18 and DBZ lovers.

Until next time,
Big Love

D.B.