“Good.” Sky spun and marched to the kitchen. “I need to get the muffins in the oven. Dinner should be ready in about fifteen to twenty minutes.”
As Sky walked past Nolan, his loving boyfriend caught him for a quick but toe-curling kiss. “While you finish dinner, I’ll go to the basement and get the last boxes of ornaments. Might as well work up a good appetite for dinner.”
“How did I get such a thoughtful, loving boyfriend?”
“You caught him with muffins and your sexy body,” Nolan murmured against his mouth.
“Sweet talker.” Sky sent him off with another kiss and turned his attention to the meal he was attempting to finish up.
While moving the dining room table to the basement meant they were eating dinner off TV trays in the living room, it would give them the chance to catch up on their Christmas show watching. Since the start of December, they’d been taking turns picking out their favorite Christmas shows to watch each night, and they still had a very long list to get through before the end of the month.
He’d just gotten the roast moved to the side of the oven and was sliding in the pan of muffins when a loud crash filled the house. But this time, a shrill chirping noise and continued thrashing followed it. Sky barely got the muffins safely into the oven and slammed the door shut. He whirled around, already pulling on the dark magic that coursed through his body. What evil demon could have crawled into his house? No one was allowed to threaten his boyfriend!
As he cleared the counter and moved to the dining room, he found that his artificial tree was lying on the floor, and the creepy tree was stomping on it and pulling on the branches with its roots. Plastic needles flew everywhere, and ropes of lights were tangled in the remains.
“Eeeeeeeeeeee!” Sky screeched. “Stop it! Stop it! Leave the tree alone!” he shouted, but the creepy tree continued to attack it, ignoring him completely.
Sky lunged into the kitchen and snatched up the first weapon he saw—a long wooden spoon. He charged into the dining room, swinging his spoon at the creepy tree. “Stop! Get back! Leave it alone!”
Footsteps thundered up the stairs, and Nolan burst out onto the first floor. He charged into the kitchen and slid to a stop in the doorway.
“What the?—”
“Help! It’s killing my tree!” Sky cried.
A noise escaped Nolan, but a rough cough suddenly covered it up. “It’s an artificial tree, baby. It?—”
“Nolan!”
“Okay! Okay! I’m sorry.” Nolan waded into the fray, making a shooing motion at the creepy tree. “Enough! Leave it alone. It’s dead. Go on. Into the living room.”
The little tree poofed up like a pissed-off cat, bristling and shivering at them as it chittered, but at last it retreated to the living room. It didn’t return to its pan. It squatted not far away, as if it were watching them. Or possibly the destroyed tree.
“What the hell! My tree!” Sky moaned. He dropped the spoon and hurried to his mangled Christmas tree. Some branches had been stripped of their needles, while others were broken off. The top of the tree had been snapped off completely. Even some lights had been stripped off the strand. There was nothing he could salvage. “Why did it attack the tree?”
“How do you know it wasn’t protecting you?” Nolan interjected.
“What?” Sky squawked. “Protecting me? From an artificial tree?” He shook two handfuls of broken branches at his crazy boyfriend.
“Look at it from the tree’s point of view. Your tree was twice as big and seemed to appear magically while it was out of the house. Maybe it was worried it would attack us.”
“You’re insane,” Sky muttered, dragging his eyes to his poor tree.
“Well, think of the alternative. You brought another tree into its territory. It was defending its home.”
“Why are you defending the creepy tree? You’re supposed to be on my side!”
Nolan sighed and kneeled beside Sky, wrapping his arms around his boyfriend’s slumped shoulders. “I’m not defending it. Just trying to understand it. You let a wild animal…tree…that has a mind and instincts of its own into the house. It’s like letting in a feral cat and then a week later adding a second cat. You think that’s going to go smoothly?”
Sky groaned. “I hate when you’re so reasonable and smart.”
“At least you hadn’t put your ornaments on it.”
Sky squeezed his eyes shut and shuddered at the image that flashed through his mind. Some of his ornaments were over a hundred years old, having been handed down from Grammy. All of them were glass and very fragile.
“Why don’t you go into the living room with the tree and apologize to each other? I’ll finish dinner and clean up this mess.”
“Are you sure?” Sky mumbled.
