Morgan Household-
Courtney walked into the house once more. There really weren't that many bags when three people were carrying them from one end of the hall to the other. Carly had some colorful words to say to Courtney the whole time, but Courtney just laughed. She wasn't hurt by Carly's words, she was more amused than anything. Sonny needed to get Carly her own apartment, just to hold all the things that she bought. She scarcely got rid of anything. Being a packrat and a shopping demon did not make for a very pleasant combination.
Dillon didn't stay in Sonny's house for very long. She had seen that a few times. He tried to get out as fast as possible. Sonny was intimidating to him, even with the cusp of being Damian's best friend and Jason's cousin there was something about Sonny that scared Dillon.
"Thanks for the help, Dillon. We both appreciate it," she let out a heavy sigh of relief when she could walk straight from the doorway into the living room without worrying about tripping over anything.
"No problem, Courtney. You're letting me stay here, I can carry a few bags for free if it means room and board and food. I make out like a bandit in the end. You know, my mom would just laugh at me for helping you. She'd say something about how I shouldn't worry about helping people that were beneath me. But I don't think that anyone is beneath me. My family is rich, but that doesn't make us better than other people…"
"I'm glad that you realize that," Courtney saw Dillon for who he was, a good young man with a level head on his shoulders. Somehow he was able to keep that spark of sanity amid being around the family who seemed to spew values that were anti-everything that seemed to be worth valuing.
"A lot of people helped me realize that. Georgie, you, Jason, but most of all my grandmother…"
"Hey… Dillon… do you want to deck this place out for Christmas?" Courtney figured that the best way to get his mind off of losing someone that was so dear to him and to the rest of the people in the town. "We don't usually do much, but now that you're here I figure that we can. I mean, this is your home, which means that this is your Christmas, too."
"Jason wouldn't like it if we did that, would he?" Dillon asked, ever mindful of the fact that he was merely a guest in the house of Morgan. A guest that could be thrown out without a second thought.
"We live in a democracy, Dillon. Now there are three of us here, that means that even if Jason doesn't want us to decorate the house and we do, we win."
"You think that'll work?" Dillon asked, not buying the democracy idea. Mobsters with a vote. That was ironic, wasn't it?
"Dillon, do you want to have a nice Christmas here or not? It's up to you. But, if you want my opinion, I've always wanted to make this place a little less drab during the season, but Jason didn't want it and I didn't want to impose on him."
"So you want me to impose on him? Impose on him more than I already do, I mean…"
"You don't impose on either of us, Dillon. We like having you here. Really, we don't have any complaints. Our biggest fear was that you were going to clog up the sink with hair gel, but that hasn't happened yet, so everything is fine."
"I don't waste hair gel, it's a sin," Dillon retorted. He looked around the house. There were so many things that could be nice to have around. Some garland, maybe a few lights. But most important was the tree. "Could we… get a tree?"
"Of course we can get a tree, Dillon. You can't have a good Christmas without a tree…"
"Yeah, I know, even when me and my mom were staying around the places that we stayed in Europe, each Christmas she would get me a small little tree for the room. It was never that big, but it helped put me in the mood, in the season. It's a fond memory. One of the only ones that I have with my mother."
Courtney went up to Dillon and softly put a hand on his shoulder. "We're going to build some memories for you here, too, Dillon. Don't worry, this will be a good Christmas for you, I promise."
"I believe you," Dillon wanted a nice Christmas. It could have been his last with Georgie. They were going to graduate and then what? Would they stay together? Their love was fated, or so they told themselves over and over, but did that mean that it could survive the distance that was placed on it? Even though they planned on going to the same place, it really didn't seem like it was going to happen. Film schools didn't make the best technical schools, the schools that Georgie wanted to go to. And the preppy Ivy League schools that she had always dreamed of didn't churn out that many famous directors.
Even though the door was open, Damian still felt that he needed to knock. It was his Aunt and Uncle's home, but he wasn't the type of person who would walk into a house that wasn't his own without knocking, unless he was accompanied by someone who lived in the house. He also felt the undying urge to apologize to Dillon, and in order to do that, he needed to speak with Dillon. "Can I come in?"
"You never have to ask," Courtney gave a warm, welcoming smile. She hid the fact that she was really worried about him. "Did you need something?"
"Just to speak with Dillon, Aunt Courtney, but if you guys are busy, I can come back… I'll just stand out in the Hallway while Carly gets rid of whatever it is that she's battling in the walkway of the house…"
"Get inside here," Courtney ordered. "Actually, maybe you can help us… what do you think, Dillon?"
"We're going to cut us down a Christmas tree," Dillon boasted. "You want to come along?"
"Wouldn't it be easier to just buy one from a lot like normal people?" Damian didn't see the fun in going into the forest and looking around for the perfect tree. It was cold!
"Normal people go cut their own trees down, in the forest."
"You forget, I'm from Los Angeles, we don't have forests."
"Oh, right," Dillon smirked. He'd forgotten. It didn't matter where Damian was from anyway. Although when they first met it was a certain plus. He knew someone who was from Los Angeles, that was where Hollywood was. "Well, we're not getting a tree from the lot, we're going to get out and cut one. I like cutting down defenseless trees."
"Don't say that around environmentalists," Damian warned. He'd seen plenty of them in his time. They were especially rampant around the more business oriented areas of his hometown. He was all for saving the earth, preserving it for the future generations, but he also knew that for something to get done in life there needed to be progress, maybe not complete destruction, but Los Angeles was already too late to save. "Look… Dillon… about…"
"Don't," Dillon shook his head. "I feel bad about what happened, and I know that you were just hurt."
"So… we're done being mad at each other?"
"I wasn't aware we had really started being mad at each other," Dillon wasn't mad at Damian. Was Damian mad at him?
"I wasn't mad at you. I just thought that you might have been at me. Never had a best friend before, this is all pretty new to me."
"Does anyone want to explain what happened here to me? You know, the adult?" Courtney was perplexed. She wanted to know, but maybe she didn't need to. The boys seemed to be dealing with it just fine on their own.
"Its water under the bridge now, Aunt Courtney," Damian was glad that it was a dropped subject. One less thing to cause him grief when he slept at night. He already had more than enough things to keep him up at night, fighting with Dillon didn't need to be on that list.
"It was stupid anyway. I blame Brando."
"Are you allowed to do that?" Damian glanced at Dillon. "I mean, you worship the man… blaming him for something, isn't that sacrilege?"
"He's dead… I think I can get away with it."
"Come on, you two, if we're going to do this tonight then we're going to need to do it before Jason gets back. He'll try to stop us…" Courtney didn't want to argue with Jason about getting a tree, but she somehow doubted that he would be all for the idea. Maybe he was just allergic to pine? But then he helped Sonny decorate the tree each year, so that idea seemed a bit out of place.
"Wait," Damian thought of something. "Maybe Michael will want to come along? Do you think I should go ask?"
"We'll need all the help we can get," Courtney didn't see how much help Michael could be, maybe in lugging the tree back he could pick up a side and carry it a little, but he could pick out a good one. Jason wouldn't want to dare burn down a tree that Michael picked, would he? Maybe if it was in his house, but the Michael factor was as good a defense as they were going to get. "Go get him, I'll see what I can do about getting the truck, I don't think any of the cars will take having a tree on their roof very well."
Damian walked down the hallway into his own home. There was still a great deal of things in the way, but he was able to sidestep them. "Dad, is Michael sleeping?"
Sonny, who was mentally counting the bags, looked up at his boy, "No, he was playing his video game the last time I saw him. Why?"
"We're going to go look for a Christmas tree…"
"I usually have someone do that for me," Sonny said, erroneously thinking that the tree was for his own home. "You don't need to go to all the trouble of looking for one yourself."
"It's not for the house, dad, it's for Uncle Jason's…"
"Jason? A Christmas tree? In Jason's house?" Sonny tried to comprehend the idea. A tree, in Jason's house. With lights. And candy canes? "Are you sure about this?"
"What's the worst that could happen, dad?" Damian asked.
"Believe me, you don't want to know," Sonny's response fell on deaf ears as Damian traveled up the stairs into the upper level of the home. "They're not going to use any of my ornaments," Sonny mused to himself as visions of Jason tossing the tree out the window flashed in his head.
"Michael!" Damian called as he got up the stairs. "Could you come out here for a second?"
Michael stopped playing his game the second that he heard his big brother's voice. He loved spending time with Damian, learning from him, trying to act like him. That was more important than a video game.
When Damian saw his little brother, he knelt down, "Do you want to go somewhere with me, Michael?"
"Where?" Michael would go anywhere with Damian, except to the bad man's house, but Damian would never ask him to go there. Still, he was curious.
"We're going to get a Christmas Tree for Uncle Jason's apartment."
"But Uncle Jason's never had a tree in his apartment before…"
"We're starting a new tradition," Damian was beginning to think that Christmas was taboo in the house of Morgan. "But we're going to get the tree right now, and we thought that maybe you would want to come along and help us pick it out. If you don't want to, you don't have to…"
"No, I want to!" Michael rarely got to pick out a tree. He did it a few times, but that sort of stopped. He didn't mind as long as he had a big tree for himself.
"Get your coat, then," Damian watched Michael run back into the room and a sad smile came on his face. He remembered a time when he was that happy about Christmas. Too bad that it was a time that was long since gone. Now it was little more than another day on the calendar, but he wouldn't ruin the Christmas of everyone else just because he didn't care for the day.