Toi Et Moi

“Remind me again why we’re doing this?”

“Heero, we’ve been through this. Neither one of us have ever celebrated Christmas before, so I figured now might be a good time for us to start.”

Trowa opened the car door for Heero and offered the smaller boy his hand. Heero allowed himself to be pulled from the warmth of inside the car and out into the chilly winter afternoon. He couldn’t help but shiver as he glared half-heartedly at the other people milling cheerfully about.

“If the wind changes, your face will stay like that,” Trowa said mildly, taking both of Heero’s hands in his own and bringing them towards his lips. He blew his breath over them before rubbing them vigorously. “I thought I told you to wear your gloves.”

“You did. They’re in my pocket.”

“Well, put them on,” said Trowa, rolling his eyes.

“I like your method of warming better,” Heero replied with a smirk. Trowa shook his head in amusement and led his lover off into the small shop. For some reason, Trowa had gotten it into his head that they had to have a real tree in their apartment. Heero had been in favour of getting a plastic one and had argued that they were more practical and less messy than real trees. Trowa had stuck to his guns though and now here they were, picking out a tree they could take home with them.

Heero frowned slightly. They could have stayed at home where it was warm instead of freezing their asses off out here. Trowa had promised him that their trip would be worth it though and Heero had never denied him anything before, so here they were.

“See one you like?” Trowa asked.

Heero shook his head. All the trees looked the same to him. He hadn’t come across one that seemed to stand out from the others yet, but then he didn’t really expect he would.

“These ones seem pretty big,” Trowa remarked thoughtfully. “You stay here while I go inside and ask if they have anything smaller.”

Heero nodded, strolling casually around the selection of trees. He still thought that this was a slightly ridiculous idea, but they were here now, so he’d better make the most of it.

He ignored the people who walked past him and they didn’t pay much attention to him either. They were mostly families and couples anyway. Heero sighed to himself. Maybe he should just close his eyes and just pick out a tree at random.

He turned a corner and stopped suddenly. Almost hidden behind a bunch of taller trees stood a particularly pathetic looking thing. Most people wouldn’t have noticed it, but Heero had keener eyesight than most.

He walked over to the bedraggled looking tree and stared down at it for a long moment before finally making up his mind.

He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around to see Trowa standing behind him. “The manager said they have some smaller trees out the back,” Trowa told him. “We should take a look at them and–”

“I think we should get that one,” Heero interrupted, pointing out the little tree to Trowa. The taller boy raised an eyebrow, looking at the tree, then at Heero, then back to the tree.

“Are you sure?” he asked uncertainly. “It looks like it’s at Death’s door to me.”

“I think we should take it,” Heero repeated, picking it up. “Besides, no one else is going to buy it.”

“Well, at least it’s small,” Trowa said slowly. “The only thing that worries me is whether or not it’ll live to see Christmas Day.” Nevertheless, they went to pay for it, but the manager just took one look at the spindly little tree, waved them off and let them have it for free.

“Told you no one else would want it,” Heero announced as they made their way back to the car.

“I guess we can spruce it up a little with some ornaments or something,” Trowa said thoughtfully as he placed the tree in the boot.

“Or we could just leave it bare,” Heero suggested. Trowa narrowed his eyes and Heero held up his hands. “All right, all right, I guess we can buy a few decorations for it.”

Later that evening, Trowa had carried the tree inside their apartment, Heero hovering after him anxiously with the vacuum cleaner, frowning in distaste at the sight of the copious amounts of needles the tree had already shed over the carpet.

They decorated the tree together. Heero had meticulously colour coded the baubles, making sure that they ran in the order of red, blue, green and yellow. Trowa had made a point to buy quite a few strips of tinsel and had carefully covered up the numerous bare patches on the poor tree with them so that when he’d finished, it didn’t look nearly as bad as it had when they had first picked it out.

“So does this mean that we’re officially celebrating Christmas now?” Heero asked as he cast a critical eye over their work.

“I guess we’re at least adhering to tradition,” Trowa replied, making his way over to the couch stretching a little before sitting down. Heero finally decided that the decorations were to his liking and he went and sat beside Trowa, resting his head on the taller boy’s shoulder.

“Is there supposed to be a meaning to all this then?” Heero asked. “Or is Christmas just an exercise in commercialism?”

“It depends on whether or not you believe in the Catholic faith, I suppose,” Trowa told him. “Christmas is commercial, but there’s a story behind all the giving and receiving of gifts.”

“What is the story?” Heero queried, nestling closer to Trowa.

“Well, it’s all about the birth of Christ,” Trowa said. “People travelled great distances just to bring him gifts.”

“Hnn,” said Heero with a snort. “Going all that way just to give presents to a baby?”

“He was an important baby,” Trowa informed him. “So important that a powerful king wanted to kill him because he was so afraid of him.”

“How do you know all this?” Heero asked curiously.

“Duo told me the story a while ago,” Trowa said softly. “When we were on the Peacemillion. It was before you and Wufei came to join us and Duo was trying to think of things that might jog my memory.”

Heero listened intently. Trowa rarely talked about the time when he’d been suffering from amnesia, so he was surprised to hear him mention it so casually now.

“Duo was the one who first found me at the circus,” Trowa continued quietly. “I don’t think he understood at first why I couldn’t remember who he was, but for a short while, he seemed to make it his personal mission to talk my ear off in the hope that I’d recall something.

“Anyway, he decided to tell me a story one night which happened to be the Nativity. I remembered small parts of it, which seemed to please Duo, but when he tried to get me to remember how I knew the story, I just couldn’t.”

Trowa sank into silence, keeping his gaze fixed on the tree in front of them.

“What was it like?” Heero asked quietly. “Not being able to remember anything, I mean.”

“It was cold,” Trowa replied after a while. “It was…frustrating. Upsetting, I guess.”

“So what happened when you went off to the colony in the Wing Zero? What was the first thing you remembered when you got your memories back?”

“You,” Trowa said simply.

Heero shifted slightly so that he could look into Trowa’s eyes. “You remembered me?”

Trowa nodded. “I remembered you…then Catherine, and then Quatre. I realised that you three were the most important to me, the ones I needed to protect. The ones I still need to protect.”

He rested his forehead against Heero’s and closed his eyes. Heero’s hand crept up to the back of Trowa’s head and tangled in the soft strands of hair. “I love you,” he murmured, moving his other hand against Trowa’s cheek.

Trowa smiled. “That’s good, because I love you too.” He lightly brushed his lips over Heero’s. “I didn’t finish telling you the rest of the story, did I?” he added.

“No,” Heero replied. “But you can tell me it now if you’d like.”

Trowa smiled again and nodded, wrapping his arms around Heero and shifting so that he was lying on his back on the couch, Heero pillowed on his chest. “I guess I’d better go back and start at the beginning. Once, there was a girl called Mary and a boy named Joseph…”