Chapter 9
Nolan loved all the Christmas decorations Sky had lovingly spread throughout his home. He loved it even more when Sky had demanded he bring some of his decorations to the house they shared so they could be woven in with Sky’s, making them feel even more like a couple.
However, by the time the new year celebrations were finished and the ball had dropped, Nolan was ready to get the house back to normal. He didn’t want to see another cheery snowman or jolly Santa until after the next Thanksgiving.
And now that they’d celebrated the end of one year and the beginning of a new one, it was time to get all this holly-jolly crap packed up.
After enjoying a mug of coffee and a sausage sandwich with his lover, Nolan tromped into the basement to grab the boxes that would hold the decorations.
Not an easy task. Sky had almost a dozen boxes and plastic containers holding his Christmas decorations.
They were now stacked in the hallway and all over the dining room.
“Are you going to give Frank a call later to drag the dining room table and chairs up from the basement?” Nolan shouted as he set the last box on the stack in front of him. He thought he’d heard Sky rummaging in the kitchen a minute ago, but his boyfriend’s voice echoed from the second floor.
“What? You don’t want to carry all that up for me?” Sky teased.
“You’re not funny. If even attempted that, I’d break my neck on the stairs, and you’d have to raise my body from the dead.”
“Ugh,” Sky groaned. He padded halfway down the stairs and stopped in the middle to smile at Nolan over the railing. “That’s too much work. It’s easier to call up a few minions. We can make sandwiches out of the ham from New Year’s Eve dinner.”
“Sometimes I feel like we’re feeding half of the underworld.”
Sky’s grin spread. “It’s always worse during the holidays because there’s too much to do and not enough time. Just imagine that we have teenage boys who complain when we ask them to do things and then empty our pantry after they’re done.”
Okay. That sounded pretty damn accurate from what Nolan remembered of being a teenager. A growing body meant that he was a bottomless pit of hunger. Minions, as far as he could tell, were also always hungry.
The creepy tree wasn’t a big fan of the minions as they popped into the house to do a job for Sky, but they’d seemed to have developed a “live and let live” attitude during the past month. So long as they didn’t cross each other’s paths, they didn’t fight, which meant fewer headaches for Nolan.
“Where do you want to begin?” Nolan inquired. This was Sky’s show, and he was happy to follow his lead. Most of this Christmas stuff was his boyfriend’s anyway. His job was to make sure it was all safely packaged up for another year and to carry the box to the basement storage.
“I have only a handful of things on the second floor that need to be boxed up. I thought I’d start there. Could you tackle the kitchen? There are just a few things in there, and they all go in that blue box.”
Nolan nodded. Sounded like they were going with the easiest rooms first and would eventually converge on the living room, where the bulk of the decorations resided.
He turned on some music that wasn’t Christmas music and grabbed the box Sky had indicated.
Treasured items, kitschy knickknacks, and other holiday things were enveloped in old towels, plastic bags, and bubble wrap to protect them before they were moved to the box.
He completed the kitchen in about twenty minutes and moved on to the dining room, taking down strings of lights and part of the snowy village that had grown by three buildings that year.
He couldn’t help but pause at the quaint bookshop Sky had gotten him.
His darling boyfriend had even repainted the flag that hung outside the shop so that it was now a rainbow.
After about an hour, he stood at the edge of the living room with his hands on his hips and sighed. This was going to take a bit. It seemed like beloved Christmas crap blanketed every inch of the space in front of him.
“Deep breath,” Sky called out as he strolled in. “It takes a couple of hours, but we can have lunch and relax afterward.”
“It’ll go faster because you have my help,” Nolan reassured him.
Sky snorted. “That was the adjusted time estimate accounting for your help.”
Nolan’s shoulders slumped. “Ugh.”
“Start small. You take the ornaments and lights off the tree while I get the stepladder.”
Nolan turned his gaze to the little tree that was sitting near the window, several of its roots resting in a blue-and-white speckled pan filled with water.
Its white lights were glowing warmly and reflecting off the hodgepodge of ornaments that covered its stubby branches.
They’d learned that the quickest and easiest way to placate the tree was to give it shiny ornaments.
As a result, Nolan had made stars and short chains from aluminum foil for the tree since they were very unwilling to risk any of Sky’s more delicate ornaments.
Something in the pit of Nolan’s stomach warned him that this would not go well.
He walked to the tree and kneeled. He stared at the tree, waiting for it to…
what? With a sigh, he rolled his eyes. It was a fucking tree.
So what if it could scuttle around the house on its roots and fight with underworld minions? It was still a tree.
He reached for an ornament, and the tree jerked away so that he missed. He tried again, and the tree dodged him a second time. When he tried a third time, the tree dodged and shook, chittering as if demanding to know what the hell he was doing.
“Look, the holidays are over. We have to pack all this stuff up,” Nolan stated, waving one hand behind him at the stacks of empty boxes they still had to fill up.
A small noise left the tree that made Nolan think maybe it had resigned itself to giving up its decorations. Good. He reached for a different ornament. The tree dodged and actually splashed him with water.
“Ahhhh!” Nolan shouted, jumping to his feet and stumbling back away from the tree.
“What happened?” Sky called.
“The tree splashed me.” Nolan wiped the water from his eyes and face. A long streak of water was soaking into his sweat shirt across his chest.
“What did you do to it?”
Nolan shifted his glare from the tree to his boyfriend. “What you told me to—I was trying to get the ornaments off it.”
Sky smirked. “Be gentle about it. The tree is like a two-year-old. You need to coax it.”
Uh-huh. Coax it.
Slowly, Nolan squatted by the tree. “We’re packing up all the ornaments and lights for next Christmas. You can stay in your nice warm corner, but we’ve gotta pack everything else away. Besides, you don’t need these things to be pretty. You’re a beautiful tree without them.”
The tree did nothing. It didn’t chitter or move. Nolan felt like an idiot.
He reached for another ornament and got splashed in the face again for his troubles.
He squawked and tried to lurch away but landed on his ass, cold water dripping from the end of his nose.
At the same time, he heard the tree unplug its lights and skitter across the living room with a series of soft thumps.
“It’s on the run!” he shouted. “Block the exits! We can’t let this thing dart down the block in the middle of the day.”
Sky’s squeal filled the house, followed by the thunder of roots across the floor. Boxes tumbled, and bells jingled softly. Nolan shoved to his feet and charged through the living room, trying to figure out where the tree had darted off to.
“Front door! Get the front door!” Sky shouted from the rear of the house even as the pounding of roots hitting the floor grew louder.
Nolan leaped over a box and slid in sock-covered feet across the hardwood floor, just barely getting ahead of the tree as it ran for the entrance. Nolan slammed his back against the door and cackled. “Ha! Beat you!”
The tree retreated and squatted on all its curled roots, seeming to contemplate its options.
“If you go upstairs, you’ll be trapped. No escape,” Nolan argued.
The tree froze for a moment and then, one after another, the ornaments hanging on the ends of its branches were drawn into the tree, disappearing from sight completely.
That was the end of it as far as Nolan was concerned.
“I hope you didn’t have any of your favorite ornaments on that tree, because they belong to the tree now,” Nolan stated, lifting his voice so Sky could hear him.
“No, but…” Sky’s voice faded as he left the kitchen and entered the foyer to stare at the tree. “Oh. You got the ornaments off.”
“Nope. The tree sucked all the ornaments into the inside of its branches. If you want them, you can stick your hand in there.”
“What?” Sky gasped, half laughing. “Why won’t you do it? It’s not like it can bite you.”
“You sure about that? We’ve both heard it making that chittering noise. Where’s that noise coming from if it doesn’t have a mouth?”
Sky swallowed and gazed at the tree. “You know, on second thought, the ornaments are handmade or easily replaceable. Let the little tree have them if they make it feel special. That’s fine with me.”
“Uh-huh,” Nolan muttered. Sky’s cheeks grew redder the longer he stood there. This “pet” was turning out to be far too crafty for them. He was beginning to fear whether they’d be able to get it out the door when winter was over.
“All right.” Nolan sighed heavily and pointed at the living room. “Back to your pan. And no more splashing the water about, or you’re going outside tonight.”
A happy noise escaped the tree, and it turned toward the living room. Sky closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around Nolan’s waist.
“You’re such a softie,” Sky murmured, pressing a kiss to his jaw.
Nolan looked at his boyfriend and felt a smile tugging on his lips despite his best efforts to maintain his glare. “Only for you.”
As they walked into the living room to continue their work, they found the tree in its usual spot with its lights glowing and its ornaments glittering under the light.
Yeah, they’d been outmaneuvered by a freaking tree.