Warning/Pairing: 1x2, this is a peek back into the world of "Happily Ever After"

Happily Ever After

The Finest of Christmas Traditions . . .

There was a wreath on our front door.

I guess that meant it was officially the Christmas season. Deck the halls with boughs of blah, blah blah.

Heero had somehow gotten the idea that now we were homeowners it was our duty to decorate it. With lights outside. And stuff inside. Green and red stuff. That sparkly puffy metaly stuff . . . tinsel I think they call it.

A pain in the ass is more like it. We have tinsel everywhere now. On the carpet, in my hair, in my clothes, I was even picking tinsel out of my pancakes this morning.

Actually Heero informed me that it was technically called "garland" and that there were many different kinds. For example, we would be putting another form of garland on the tree tonight. An old-fashioned version where you strung popcorn and cranberries on a string. I didn't roll my eyes. But it was a damn near thing.

Popcorn. And Cranberries. For fucks sake.

Though I admit, I did enjoy watching Heero crawl around setting up the tree. Not only did I get a splendid view of his ass, and let me tell you, Heero Yuy has a fine ass; but I also got to listen to him swear and rant as he took the tree back outside to saw off several more inches from the bottom.

I'm not a total humbug. I helped. I held the door open for him on his way out.

While he was outside with the handsaw, I peeked into the bags of decorations he'd bought. There were bows and some candles, gift bags, something I hoped wasn't supposed to be a present for me, a wooden nutcracker, though he looked too fragile for any real purpose, and boxes of ornaments for the tree. I was intrigued by a sprig of green I found in a separate bag and smirked when I realized what it was. Checking to make sure Heero was still outside, I carried it into the bedroom and hid it in my underwear drawer. I knew exactly what I was going to do with it.

Several hours later and Heero had flopped onto the sofa looking entirely too pleased with himself. Our house was transformed. Nobody can say Heero doesn't do a job throughly when he sets his mind to it. Icicle lights were strung from the eaves and we even had a snowman. Actually I'd been in charge of the snowman, which was why ours was upside down, on his head.

Heero had thrown a snowball at me when he saw, but I won the fight that ensued so I got to keep it. I'd been quite pleased with it myself.

Inside, our house smiled like pine and vanilla. The tree stood in the corner, finally the right height to fit under the ceiling. Heero and I had decorated it that afternoon. Which had been fun, though I knew I'd be vacuuming up pine needles until we got rid of the thing.

We even had two stockings. A green one for Heero and a burgundy one for me. They'd been gifts from Sally Po; she'd made all the guys a stocking this year. Though I noticed Wufei's was the only one that had a little grumpy looking elf stitched on the front.

Last year we'd still been at my shitty little apartment and hadn't done anything more than exchange a few gifts. It's not that I don't like Christmas. It's just that, well . . . I don't like Christmas. For me, the holiday had always been about what other people had and I had not. It was a season to emphasize Us and Them.

I was a Them now and the idea didn't settle to well.

But it really wasn't fair to take my aggravation out on Heero. Christmas hadn't existed for him other than something read about in a book, until after the wars. Now he was taking to the season like a little kid who's been given a free pass at an amusement park. I supposed the least I could do was to try and restrain the sarcasm.

I stripped and pulled on the bathrobe he'd given me last year as a gift. It was large and warm and a nice shade of dark blue. I didn't wear it that often, I was never quite sure what to do in a bathrobe, but tonight it would suit its purpose well.

I walked into the living and looked down at Heero, still sitting on the couch. He looked up and I undid the tie on the robe, opening it wide and grinning.

He stared at me and then shook his head but grinned back. "I'd wondered what happened to the mistletoe . . . "

I nodded and swivelled my hips, making the leaves swing. "Tradition says you have to kiss me."

He snickered. "Something tells me you want more than a kiss."

"Well I thought about, 'Ride me Santa' but that seemed kind of tasteless."

He threw back his head and laughed, plucking the mistletoe off to toss over his shoulder. "It could have been worse."

I unbuttoned his pants and pushed them down, giving his own Christmas package a fond pat. "How so?"

He squirmed and the pants came off to join the mistletoe on the floor. "You could have said, 'Want some eggnog?'"