Note: I wasn't planning to write this side story to Holiday Missteps, but I got a comment on AO3 about it and I could not sleep until it was done. Thanks a lot, readers, for screwing over my sleep schedule. (Really, I'm always looking for reasons not to sleep, so thank you.)
Also, apologies for uploading Holiday Missteps a day late on FFN. My brain just buffered on that one.
Operation: Random Forest
A few days after Heero's apartment caught fire, just after he settled moving in with Duo, they went to a tree farm and bought a blue spruce. The woman who ran the farm was confused.
"You must be getting this for orthodox Christmas!"
"No ma'am."
"Oh. But... why do you need a tree this late, if you don't mind me asking? It's almost the new year!"
Duo smirked an in an open, happy, and terrifying way.
"We're gonna plant it, illegally, and build a forest one tree at a time."
She didn't know what to say, and just took their payment and left them to tie the tree to their truck. While they worked she stole a few glances at them, and couldn't quite figure the two men out. But it was hard to forget the smiling man with the impossibly long hair and his taciturn companion. So when they returned the following year, this time just before Christmas, she recognized them.
"Return customers!"
The friendly one smiled at her, and it was just as brilliant as the year before.
"Last year's tree worked out great, so we wanted a repeat."
His companion was already browsing trees and she noticed he was looking at the taller selections. Still short enough to fit in most rooms, but tall enough to reach up near the ceiling.
"A little larger this year?"
She watched him turn to look at his dark-haired friend. Perhaps partner? He seemed happy, and it was infectious.
"Yeah, the bigger the tree, the more confusing."
Automatically she nodded at his reply, because usually her customers said things that made sense. Usually they weren't so strange. But as the words processed and he stepped away to examine trees with the other man, she found herself staring at them. What did he mean by more confusing?Who buys a tree to confuse people?
Vowing to get to the bottom of this the following year, she prepared in the weeks leading up to her busy season. Crowds came, the peak time to purchase a tree passed by, and she worried they wouldn't come back. But they arrived on Christmas eve, one of them using crutches and the other with a nasty bruise on his face.
She didn't ask any questions.
They bought another blue spruce, though a bit shorter this time. She assumed it was for convenience, as it was much more difficult to move with their injuries. However, they still insisted they needed no help and somehow, against all odds, actually loaded it into the truck.
The following year things changed. Duo was there with someone new. She was proud of learning their names and wanted to open a conversation by addressing them both, but Heero was replaced. She realized last that year they were a couple, and watching them figure out how to move a tree in spite of their injuries was endearing. Each one was more concerned for the other than himself. It was sweet. She found herself pulling for them, hoping they'd be back year after year, happy and odd as ever.
This new man of Duo's did not meet her approval.
"Good afternoon, Duo!"
"How's life treatin ya, Shahnaz?"
"Not too shabby. How about yourself?"
She hated how bright his smile was when he glanced at the new man.
"Honestly pretty great."
"Where's Heero?"
Instantly she regretted asking. It wasn't her place, and a handful of meetings once a year over time didn't make them friendly enough for her to pry. But his smile shifted, and it wasn't into the expected frown. It simply became something softer. A smile she'd only seen on his face when he looked at Heero and never when he talked to her or anyone else at her tree farm.
"He's off planet right now for work. Won't be back for another two weeks, so I wrangled our pal Wufei over there into committing crimes with me. It's a two-man job, and he's solid for keepin his trap shut. There won't be any information leaks so long as he's on board."
With a wink, he sauntered over to this friend of his, and slung an arm across his shoulders while he gestured towards the trees, clearly explaining some criteria or another used to pick them. Upon closer examination, his smiles with this new man were different than with Heero. And she found herself fully believing her favorite, strange couple were still together. For whatever reason it warmed her heart and made her dislike of the new guy vanish.
Were Heero and Duo... her soap opera?
She pondered that on and off for a year until they arrived again, but this time they also brought that same man, that friend who filled in when Heero was gone.
"You're all here!"
Three men looked at her with what could only be described at The Devil in their eyes.
"Ro an' I wanted to go BIG this year, so we needed extra hands. And Fei was real tight lipped last time around, provin' himself to be a true friend and ally, so he'd got our backs."
"Exactly how big are we talking?"
Heero shot a sly grin towards Duo and snaked an arm around him to pull him close for a side hug. He rarely spoke over the years, so she was not expecting him to be the one to explain.
"What's the biggest blue spruce we can purchase that the three of us can move and plant together without heavy duty equipment? Please do consider that we're strong and creative, so if four or five men can move it, we three can."
Quatre was... amazed.
He was absolutely amazed.
He didn't have to remember the exact year it all began because he only needed to count the trees. Five. There were five trees in one area of his property. They weren't out of the way, and they weren't immediately next to the house. They stood in the middle of what was supposed to be a small field.
It began with a large about his height just appearing one morning. There were no tracks leading into the property. No security footage with damning evidence. Just a tree that may as well have lifted its own roots and walked into his yard. When he alerted Trowa, his partner had the audacity to laugh. The landscaper didn't see it for weeks because he rarely stopped by in the winter. According to him the tree was a crime, breaking the flow of land. But Trowa insisted not to kill it, and the tree was healthy and growing well by the time spring rolled around.
There were worse things than trees. He could live with it.
So when a year later, almost to the day, a second tree showed up next to it, Quatre was flabbergasted. Security footage was clean. No tracks, no evidence, nothing. It was as though his resident blue spruce, something he had to look up online, found itself a life partner.
Trowa asked him if trees could get lonely.
Of course not.
Could they?
When he asked Duo the same question it took minutes for him to stop laughing.
Year three he was ready. New cameras. Motion detecting flood lights. An alarm system to wake him when someone, anyone, showed up in the middle of the night. Even a wayward tree. He installed the system and tested it before the end of November. And one day at the end of December he woke up to Trowa causally handing him a cup of tea and informing him that those two trees had a baby.
He dashed out of bed and sure enough, another blue spruce, but half the size of the first, stood with them in his yard. To his dismay the added security measures caught nothing. The motion lights never turned on and the footage was dark.
Wufei, amused, suggested perhaps Quatre's property was haunted.
Determined to get to the bottom of the Miracle Trees, as Sally called them, he decided not to rely solely on tech and instead stay awake to catch the culprit. Trowa joked it wouldn't be so easy to catch aliens, but he ignored his lover. What did Trowa know?
What did Trowa know?
Was he behind it? Was this some plan of his to turn Quatre's field, where they could picnic or play sports, into some kind of evergreen forest? The trees weren't even that green.
He decided not to trust his lover and in October made arrangements for him to be off planet when that two week stretch came. The trees always appeared between Christmas and New Year and if Trowa was away, with his location irrefutably confirmed, there was no way he could be part of it.
Year four saw Trowa on L3 with his sister, and Quatre sleep deprived when the next tree showed up.
An uncle, this time? Perhaps a visiting parent? Did the first two trees have a polyamorous relationship? Why was his brain even making up stories about the trees?
Security footage caught nothing. Per usual. The craziest part was he upgraded the system again to be infrared. Surely that would catch whatever brought that tree to his property. But the tree simply appeared on the recording, much like it did when Quatre awakened to find it outside. The prior year he had the recording analyzed and no one could figure out how it was tampered with. They were certain it was tampered with, because the tree just blinking into existence made no sense. But how? No one knew.
At the very least, Trowa was off planet. He wasn't a suspect.
Year five he got creative. Cameras around the perimeter of his property. Cameras focused on that bit of land. Motion detectors. Hired security. And dogs.
He got dogs.
The dogs must bark and alert to intruders, yes? The were trained. He hired them for the job specifically because of their training. The handlers asked what he was looking for, who he expected to catch over a two week expanse of time, and he couldn't tell them the truth. He couldn't admit he was looking for a walking tree, or alien arborists, or reverse eco terrorists.
Actually, eco terrorists fit well. They were clearly in favor of preserving the environment, and they were terrorizing him. And yet with all those systems in place, he stood on his property, amazed.
The largest tree of the group appeared overnight.
Dogs never barked. Security saw nothing. He didn't have to check, or even analyze the recordings, to know the cameras would have no evidence to share. So he sat on the ground and simply stared up at the growing forest until Trowa arrived to console him. Later in the day their friends would arrive, at Trowa's request, to give their comfort. Quatre knew they'd only laugh behind his back.
By now it was clear the only people in the entire Earth Sphere who could pull this off were Duo, Heero, and Wufei. His sweet Trowa wouldn't torment him, or he hoped he wouldn't. And now it was just a game to see if he could ever catch them in the act.
Deep down he knew that it was somehow Duo's fault the dogs didn't work. Or maybe it was Heero's fault? In the war they spent some downtime together between fighting and Heero proved to handle dogs fairly well.
Before they arrived to check out their handiwork and pretend to know nothing, Quatre was already planning how to catch those bastards next year.