Disclaimer: I am House-less.

Just a little Christmassy ficlet that I had to write because it wouldn’t leave my head. Sigh. Silly rabbit. Anyway, enjoy. Happy early holidays to everyone!

Feedback is appreciated. And this time, you get my eternal gratitude AND candy canes.

Pine Needles

“I think we should get a real tree,” Cameron announces, shrugging off her coat. Snow drips onto the floor. Chase glances at the little pools. Snow. Is it Christmas already?

Time means nothing to him. The calendar is still on June, but the frost on the window says December.

“What?” he asks.

“I think we should get a real tree,” she repeats.

“Alright,” he agrees, slowly. Then, “Are we even allowed to have one here?”

Here. In the apartment they share. It hasn’t really sunk in yet. Them. We. Our.

She shrugs. “You can’t have Christmas without a real tree.”

“Really,” Chase says.

“Really,” she replies. “We’ll smuggle it in.”

“Right. We’ll sneak in an eight foot tall tree, without anyone seeing us.”

Her wool socks make whispering sounds along the floor. “Oh, Chase,” she says, a sigh in her voice. She kisses him, her fingers brushing against his ear.

-

The second time it snows, really snows, Cameron is awake. They forgot to close the blind on the window and the streetlight shines in, filtered by the snowflakes. She sits up, pushing hair out of her face.

It’s so pretty, she thinks. Like a snow globe.

Thirteen inches by the morning, though, and they don’t get into work until that night.

-

“What are you doing?” Chase asks. He shuts the door. A delayed burst of cold rushes past him to Cameron, and she shivers.

“Decorating,” she says. He quirks an eyebrow, and takes a seat at the table. Items are spread out all over the place – candles, little figurines, lights…she’s clearly spent years collecting and they make the remembrance of his packed-away ornaments look pathetic. He’s the kind that remembers Christmas at the last minute and picks up a package of marked-down miscellaneous stuff at the grocery store.

But that seems about right to him.

He picks up a tiny snowman, and studies it. Cameron stops what she’s fixing – gluing the leg of a reindeer back onto its body – and watches him. “Do you want to help?” she asks.

Chase makes a fist around the snowman. The small carrot nose digs into his palm. “Sure.”

She smiles.

-

He’s not sure why he is the one putting up the tree, but Cameron is sitting on the couch, her feet draped over the arm, while he wrestles the tree into place. “Why did you have to pick the fattest bloody tree in the lot?” he demands into the braches. A few needles fall into his face and he thinks he’s going to be the first person to beat the crap out of a tree.

“You’re a little too off to the left,” Cameron replies.

“You’re -” he breaks off, gritting his teeth and glaring at the ceiling.

“I’ll help,” she says. “Don’t worry.”

And then she’s there, tugging the tree. With his help, they manage to get it into the place cordoned off for the tree. She steps back, and Chase has to laugh, a little: Cameron is absolutely serious about the perfection of this tree. She walks around it, checking every branch, before ducking under to fix the stand.

“Does it pass?” he asks, finally.

She straightens up to look at him. There’s sap in her hair. “Yes,” she replies. “Yes, it does.”

-

Two days until Christmas, and Chase thinks he might actually be getting excited. Or at least interested. The apartment is drenched in holiday décor, and the Christmas music in the elevator at the hospital is starting to crack his shell. God knows he was never that kid who counted down the minutes, and he was never that teenager who looked forward to it because it meant more stuff, but he might be that adult who gets that strange, child-like excitement over the thought.

He pulls himself off of the wall and starts for the lobby door. He still has to do his Christmas shopping.

-

It’s just so typical, really: Christmas Eve and a serious car accident in the ER. It’s so clichéd that Cameron wants to laugh, in a sick way, but she can’t because the little boy she’s treating is bloody and scared and crying.

A car crash. Christmas Eve. Leaving her stuck in the ER, and Chase in the OR.

Cliché.

She wraps the bandage around his leg tightly, letting him squeeze her knee.

He gets some more blood on her scrubs. And now she wants to cry.

-

They meet in the locker room at one-thirty that morning, Christmas Day. Cameron looks a little grisly, the blood still smeared – although Chase doesn’t look much better. Wordlessly, they both get ready to leave.

Both of them remain that way, wordless, until they reach the apartment. Chase pulls out a key and pushes it into the lock – but he doesn’t twist it. Cameron waits for him, watching his back. “The mother, you know?” he asks hoarsely. “She didn’t…”

“I heard,” she says. She doesn’t say that she had watched the surgery. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” he says. The click of the lock rings out as Chase opens it and they head inside the little foyer.

And there it is: the tinselled, decorated, still lit-up tree. The hum of spinning ornaments is there, and they just admire the tree for a minute. Cameron gives Chase a sideways glance. “Merry Christmas?” she offers.

He doesn’t say anything.

“Are you going to go to bed?” she asks.

“Not yet,” he says.

“Okay,” she replies.

He flicks on the TV, and collapses on the couch. She doesn’t know if she should join him. But she does, and he doesn’t move away when she does curl up in the corner of the couch.

She almost falls asleep, watching the flickering light of the TV, and soft colours of the tree. She’s drifting in and out, seeing a familiar red suit on the screen, falling back into her black snow of sleep.

But she is awake when Chase brushes her cheek with a kiss, and when he whispers, “Merry Christmas.”

And this is what it means, to be together, on Christmas.