Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was never very bright and sunny in Gotham, but late in the evening at the tail end of fall the sky was nearly black.

It made for a beautiful backdrop to decorate their first Christmas tree together.

“I've never had tinsel before, but I've always loved it.” Conner pulled a coil of the sparkly red rope out of a shopping bag. “So I got us some. Red, green, silver, and purple. What do you think?”

Bernard laughed and left the living room, coming back in a second later with gold and silver tinsel. “My parents gave me these to help the three of us out.”

“I… guess we should've made a game plan before deciding to do this.” Tim, sweeping up pine needles from under the tree in the center of their living room, pointed to their recliner, where he had brought over a box of decorations from Wayne Manor. Sitting on top were coils of blue, silver and red tinsel.

“Okay, soooo…” Conner stood and looked around at all of their decorations. “We have things other than tinsel, right? Or is our tree just going to be sparkling and multicolored?”

Tim straightened up, dumped the dustpan in the trash, and opened the flaps of his box. “I've got a few generic packs of snowflake and bird ornaments, but the rest is table settings, a few snowglobes, and a wreath for the door.”

“We're in a condo?”

“We can still hang a wreath on the door.”

“Yeah, I always had a wreath on my front door growing up.” Bernard came over to see what their new wreath looked like. "I loved it. It's like, no matter what kind of day you had, you can come home and see this and be reminded that it's Christmas time. I always looked forward to seeing them go up this time of year.”

“Oh, my god. You're one of those people.” Conner rolled his eyes playfully.

“‘Those people’?”

“‘The most magical time of the year’?”

Bernard laughed and shoved Conner. “Shut up. It is.”

“What about spring, huh? The season where literally everything comes back to life?”

“Or what about we get back to figuring out how to decorate the dead tree in our living room?” Tim once again held up his tinsel.

“I'm dating a Grinch, and a Scrooge.”

“You know you love us.” Tim pecked him on the cheek and handed him a coil of the green tinsel. “Now lets see what we can do with these. Then this weekend we can head out to the mall together and actually get some variety in our decorations.”