“That doesn’t answer the question of what you’re doing looking at Christmas decorations.”

Wilson sighed. House clearly wasn’t going to just let this go. “Don’t you think we should put up a few decorations this year?”

“No,” House answered scornfully.

“For Chase?” Wilson added.

Comprehension broke across House’s face. “That’s not a terrible idea,” he acknowledged. “No Nativity set. I draw the line at magic babies.”

“Fair enough.” What Wilson had in mind was considerably more secular. “I thought maybe…a tree?”

“Like one of those tabletop ones?”

“I was thinking a full size one,” Wilson admitted. When House didn’t immediately object, he pressed on. “If we move the TV and your chair, we could put it in front of the bookshelves.”

House frowned. “We’re going to need a lot more ornaments.”

#

Wilson twitched a corner of the sheet down over the last of the boxes. “Okay, it looks…”

“Like we’re hiding something,” House finished.

“…yeah,” he admitted. “Do you have a better idea?” They had decided to buy the tree and put up the decorations next weekend, when Chase would be working again. That plan necessitated hiding everything someplace where he wouldn’t see them ahead of time. They’d settled on the back of the hall closet.

“The bedroom closet’s bigger,” House pointed out.

“But it’s completely full of our clothes,” Wilson reminded him. They’d already discussed this. The trunk of the car, the other choice, would work only if they could come up with a good reason not to go grocery shopping that week, or not to have Chase unload the groceries if they did.

“Maybe once we put the coats and the ironing board back in, it’ll look less obvious.”

As they started putting the things back in the closet, Wilson remarked, “What worries me, is if we’re having this much trouble hiding the decorations, where are we going to put the presents?”

“Nobody said anything about presents,” House said.

“Well, obviously we’re going to get him some presents.”

“Well,” House said musingly, “maybe if he’s a very, very good boy.”

“Isn’t he always?”

“Unless you count fucking half the population of New Jersey, getting high at work, and getting arrested, sure,” House answered.

“That was before,” Wilson reminded him.

With the coats and ironing board in front of them, the pile of boxes under the sheet looked like…a pile of boxes under a sheet. They might as well have hung up a sign reading, “The Thing We’re Hiding is Hidden Under Here.” Wilson was contemplating it, rubbing the back of his neck, when House stumped off toward the kitchen.

There, he rattled around in a drawer for a long time, and returned holding a large old-fashioned key. He chucked their coats out of the closet and onto the floor, and locked the door with a flourish. “Problem over.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s way less obvious than the sheet.”

“He’s going to know something’s up,” House agreed, “but he won’t be able to find out what. It’s the best we’re going to do.”

Wilson hated to point out the flaw in his plan. “Except you taught him how to pick locks when he was working for you.”

“Yes, but if he picks this lock, I’ll beat his ass. And Santa will put him on the naughty list for sure.”

#

Over the next few days, Wilson found himself logging on to gourmet food websites every time he had a spare few minutes. It wasn’t long before he ordered a free-range organic heritage-breed turkey, which would be humanely slaughtered by the small farmer who raised it mere days before being delivered to their door. After ordering it, he started to wonder if maybe he should have gotten a goose, instead. Or duck. Maybe some kind of game. Pheasant? His ideas about what made up a Christmas dinner came exclusively from old movies and TV commercials, and he had no idea what they had in Australia.

In an effort to stop mindfucking the dinner, he started looking at other sites for gift ideas. They’d have to get Chase a few things, of course, and House, even though he claimed not to like Christmas, would pout if Chase got presents and he didn’t.

He’d planned to just bookmark a few things and then talk to House about their gift budget, but before he knew it, he was typing in the security code from the back of his Visa, and requesting that things be shipped to the hospital so that Chase and--especially--House wouldn’t get into them early.

When he discovered with delight that there was still time to have stockings hand-embroidered with their names, he began to admit to himself that perhaps their very small Christmas celebration was spiraling out of control. He hadn’t thought that he had a subconscious store of Christmas envy, but apparently there had always been some part of him just waiting for an excuse to take part in the annual gentile orgy of consumerism.

His main worry was how to break the news to House that they would be celebrating on a larger scale than he might have anticipated. However, Friday evening when he went into the kitchen to start cooking, he discovered that might not be a problem. “House, what’s this?” he asked, going into the living room with a lidless Tupperware bowl he’d found on top of the refrigerator, full of what looked and smelled like the vomit of a drunk who’d been eating Skittles.

House glanced at it. “Dried fruit.”

“And you’re…pickling it?” he hazarded.

“I’m soaking it in rum,” House said with injured dignity.

“For…any particular reason?”

“Why, Jimmy, it’s fruitcake weather!” House said, in a bad southern accent.

“Excuse me?”

“Fruitcake, I’m making fruitcake, you--fruitcake.”

“Do you…know how to make fruitcake?”

“Yes,” House said, his tone suggesting this should have been obvious.

“When are you going to do it?”

“Next weekend.”

“You want to leave this bowl of…stuff…in the kitchen all week?”

“Yep.”

“…can we at least put a lid on it?”

House considered. “I guess. If you insist.”

With a final dubious look at the fruit, Wilson fastened on a lid and put it back on top of the fridge. At least, if House was making fruitcake--of all things--he didn’t have to worry that he was taking this Christmas business too far.

#

The next morning, Chase had to go in to work at nine. They woke up enough to take a shower with him, but Wilson was looking forward to going back to bed after he left. Chase had finally gotten his license back, so Wilson didn’t have to ferry him to work anymore. He yawned and said, “Have a good day,” as Chase struggled into his overcoat. Once he had it on, Wilson draped a scarf around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss. “Love you.”

“Behave yourself,” House added, thumping Chase on the shoulder.

“Okay,” Chase agreed readily. “See you this afternoon.” He stood on his toes to kiss House’s cheek.

“Don’t wreck Wilson’s car,” House added as he left.

Once the door was shut behind him, Wilson turned to shuffle back to bed, but House blocked the way with his cane. “Where are you going?”

“Bed?” he suggested weakly.

“Are you kidding?” House squawked. “We have to put up the Christmas decorations!”

“I don’t think it takes all day,” Wilson pointed out.

“We have to go buy the tree,” House said. “And then put it in the stand…that can take all day, trust me.”

“I ordered one from L.L. Bean. The UPS guy should get here between eleven and one.” He glanced at his wrist and realized he hadn’t put his watch on. Why would he, when he thought he was going right back to bed?

“L.L. Bean?” House repeated, his tone suggesting that he might as well have used wehatechristmas/jew.net.

“Yes. This way we don’t have to bring a tree home in the Corvette.” Wilson was confident that this argument would convince House he had made the right call.

“But what if it’s no good? And it won’t be fresh! You have to look at every tree they have, or as many as you can before your feet fall off, and then cut it down yourself with the dull, rusty saw they give you. It’s not Christmas unless you draw blood!”

That explained House’s timeline for the day, then--Wilson hadn’t included a trip to the ER in his version of the schedule. “L.L.Bean overnights them from Maine,” Wilson informed him. “And every tree is guaranteed to be perfect.”

“At the tree farm, they give you cider.” The weakness of this argument was as good as an admission that Wilson was right, and the closest thing he was going to get.

“They sell cider at the grocery store.”

“Hot cider.”

“We also have a stove. And a microwave, and a crock pot, and several other appliances that can be used to heat liquids.”

“What about a wreath?” House demanded. “At the tree place, they have wreaths. Can’t have Christmas without a wreath.”

“I ordered one of those, too,” Wilson confessed. “And twenty-five yards of white pine roping.” He’d been wondering how he’d break the news about that to House. Now he only had the stockings to come clean about, and those were shipping separately from the greenery, so he had a few days.

“Twenty five yards? Where are we going to put that?”

“We can put some on the mantel.”

“That takes care of two and a half yards.”

“And…I don’t know! We’ll put it…somewhere.”

“Oh, great idea. Why didn’t I think of that? Somewhere, what a brilliant idea.”

“I’ll figure it out when it gets here. In, at minimum, two and a half hours.” He moved toward the bedroom.

“If we have so much extra time, then, why don’t you test out some recipes for the Christmas breakfast?”

“Christmas breakfast? I spent the whole week figuring out the Christmas dinner. Now you tell me it’s supposed to be breakfast?”

“It’s both,” House informed him.

He sank onto the sofa. “What am I supposed to make?”

#

“Is it straight? Hold it straight!” House ordered from his position on the floor, under the tree. He’d discovered, on their first attempt, that he wasn’t steady enough on his good leg to hold the tree upright while Wilson got down on the floor and screwed the little pegs into the trunk, so they had to do it the other way around.

“It’s straight,” Wilson told him. “I think.”

“You think?”

“It’s hard to tell when I’m right next to it,” Wilson explained. “Maybe we should wait and set the tree up when Chase gets back.”

For a moment, House was tempted. Let Chase do the lying-on-the-floor bit. “No. We have to have it all set up when he gets home. Don’t you want to see the look on his face?”

“Yeah,” Wilson admitted.

House finished twisting in the last peg. “Okay, I’ve got it. You can let go. He scrambled to his feet and he and Wilson stepped back to admire the tree.

“Looks good,” Wilson said.

“Yeah, I guess L.L. Bean did a decent job. This time.”

Wilson circled around to look at the tree from another angle. “I hate to say this, but from this angle it looks kind of…”

When he mentioned it, House started to see the problem too. The tree was listing noticeably to the right. As he watched, the slant became more and more pronounced, until within a few seconds it reached escape velocity and toppled to the floor, knocking several boxes of ornaments off the coffee table on the way down.

“…crooked,” Wilson finished.

#

After three tries at setting up the tree, the lower portion of the trunk was starting to look like it had been attacked by a finicky beaver. Wilson wondered if it was any solid wood left for the stand pegs to bite into.

“We’re going to have to cut a few inches off the bottom,” House said, echoing his thoughts.

“With what?”

House gave him a duh look. “A saw.”

“Do we have a saw?”

In lieu of answering, House rummaged around in the hall closet and emerged with what looked like an antique bone saw. He started working on the tree trunk, with more enthusiasm than finesse. Wilson thought that he might get the Christmas blood he was after, after all.

In an effort to distract himself from the impending domestic accident, Wilson turned his attention to the tree problem. By the time House had finished hacking off the bottom of the tree, he thought he had a solution. “We’ll put the tree in the stand,” he told House, “and we’ll turn it so that when it falls, it falls out here, toward the middle of the room. But it won’t fall, because we’ll have sunk two eye-bolts into the book case, there--” he pointed, “--and there, and we’ll tie some string, or surgical silk if you’ve got some, from the eye-bolts to the tree trunk. It’ll stay up.”

House listened to him, then shook his head. “No.”

“No?”

“No. Some people have to tie their Christmas trees to the wall to make them stay up, but we don’t.”

“We’ve never had a Christmas tree before,” Wilson pointed out.

“My father never did.”

Ohhhh. “Maybe he just never thought of it,’ he suggested, without much hope.

“Everybody’s thought of it. It’s a well-known Christmas tree hack.” House got back down on the floor. “New plan. This time, we put the stand on while the tree’s still lying down, then stand it up.”

#

After two hours, about twice as long as Wilson had estimated, the Christmas tree was finally standing up. It was about a foot and a half shorter than it had been when UPS brought it, but it was standing up.

“Now, if we hadn’t just bought all-new Christmas lights, we’d get to do the traditional untangling of the lights, and the even-more traditional trying to fix the strings that mysteriously stopped working at some point since last Christmas,” House said. “You’re not really getting the full experience this way.”

Wilson looked at the lights. “I guess we could tangle them up and throw them off the roof, if it’s that important to you.”

“I think we’ll just take the untangling and fixing as read,” House decided. “We’d better plug them in before we string them, though, just in case some of these are duds.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

“Yeah. Christmas tree lights are the most failure-prone electrical devices in the known universe.”

Fortunately, the lights all worked. The rest of the decorating process was more like Wilson had expected. House put on most of the lights and then decided he was worn out from his efforts and retired to the couch to supervise. Wilson carried on with the decorating, and after a while, House allowed himself to be persuaded to play a few Christmas carols on the piano.

“What do you think?” he asked House when he was finished.

“Needs more tinsel on this side.”

Wilson applied more tinsel. “Happy now?”

“Ecstatic.”

#

Chase’s Saturday NICU shift felt like it lasted about ten years. They had a high-risk delivery--a thirty-eight year old multigravida, nullipara having 32-week twins. Fortunately, both babies were in good shape. One was even large enough to pass for full term, but they went ahead and admitted both to the unit so they could be in the same incubator. Chase and a couple of med students attended the delivery and got the babies and parents settled. After the father was assured that his wife and children were doing well, his next question was, “Do you think we’ll be able to take the babies home for Christmas?”

Chase knew better than to make any promises, but he said, “There’s a good chance you could be, but it really depends on how the next few days go.”

The rest of the day was full of reminders of the upcoming holiday--from coworkers’ complaints about having to work on Christmas, to parents who knew their babies would still be hospitalized planning how to make the day at least a little bit festive (stockings on the incubators, a potluck lunch, and something called a Yankee Swap). Checking the schedule, he was a little surprised to find that he wasn’t supposed to work Christmas, or even Christmas eve.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Christmas had never been particularly special for him. Growing up, it had been church and presents in the morning, and the rest of the day putting in appearances at parties held by people important to his father. They spent forty minutes at each party--far too long if there weren’t any other kids to play with, but not long enough if there were. Then after his mother’s death, he’d usually gone home from school with some friend or other, or else stayed in the halls of residence and gotten ahead on his studying. After coming to the US, he’d mostly worked, with maybe a plate of turkey and mashed potatoes at the diner near the highway afterwards.

This year might be different, or it might not. As far as he knew, House didn’t do much for Christmas, and Wilson was Jewish, of course. So it would probably be another year of not really celebrating--but at least he wouldn’t be not-celebrating alone.

#

“How about over the mirror in the bathroom?” Wilson suggested.

“Great, that’ll use up another two yards.” House clipped off a section of white pine roping and passed it to him. They still had about 12 yards to use up, after putting sections over the mantle and the headboard of the bed. “What about over the stove?”

“If we want a nice festive kitchen fire, sure.” Wilson hung the section of garland in the bathroom and returned. “What about over the windows behind the piano?”

“The other windows might get jealous.”

“They’ll live.” Wilson clipped the rest of the garland in half and climbed into the piano bench to hang it. “We should’ve gotten more white lights.”

“Gosh, yeah. We don’t have anywhere near enough Christmas stuff.” He looked around the apartment. They had the tree and the garlands--and the bed and mantle sections were paired with strings of white lights--enough candles to operate by, and the wreath on the door.

“We should talk about presents,” Wilson remarked, climbing down from the piano bench.

“I’m in favor of them,” House answered. “What’s there to talk about?”

“What we’re getting?” Wilson asked. “So we don’t get the same things?”

“Okay, I’m getting you one of those pink Kitchenaid mixers, and a set of hot curlers so you can make your hair all pretty.”

“You think you’re funny, but that Kitchenaid mixer has Consumer Reports’ highest rating. The red’s nice. Or the stainless steel.”

“I already bought the pink,” House lied.

Wilson looked like he wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. “Eh. I can live with it. Anyway, I meant what we’re getting Chase.”

“I’m getting him an iPod,” House answered. “You can’t get him that, because I called it.”

“I got him a cashmere sweater, and a couple of books, and some Australian snacks from the international grocery store. I was also thinking about--”

“Ipod and a hand job,” House elaborated. “You can get him anything that’s not an iPod. He can probably use two hand jobs.”

#

“Where is he?” House wondered, glancing at the clock for the fifty-bajillionth time.

“It’s not even quarter after five,” Wilson soothed him. “He’ll be here any minute. Try to be patient.”

“I don’t like being patient.”

“I’m shocked.”

“What do you think he’ll do when he sees the tree?” House demanded. “I bet he’ll shriek like a little girl. Or maybe faint.”

“He’s not going to faint,” Wilson said. “He might cry, though.”

“It’s not that ugly.”

Wilson was about to retort when he heard Chase’s key in the lock. “That’s him! Should we hide?”

House gave him a withering glance. “It’s not a surprise party.”

The door opened, and Chase entered, saying, “Did you guys know there’s a--what the hell happened here?”

Wilson glanced at House. They hadn’t predicted that. “We decorated,” House answered proudly.

Chase dropped his bag and walked toward the tree. “It looks great. When did you have time to do all this?”

“Today,” Wilson answered.

“It was a surprise,” House added.

“It’s great,” Chase repeated. He touched one of the tree lights.

Wilson glanced over at House. It was hard to tell if Chase was happy.

House got up and hugged Chase from behind. “Okay?” he murmured.

“Yeah,” Chase repeated, sniffling. “Yeah, it’s great.”