Chapter Text
The damn trees were mocking him.
Embarrassed by the level to which this affected him, Lance stopped in the middle of the shelves and stared, grimace pulling at his lips. He’d already managed to put the idea out of his mind after passing the aisle where they were located twice, but now they were following him, like sentient little demons determined to sow seeds of doubt in Lance’s happiness via brightly colored wooden evergreens. Lance was all the way on the other side of the store and here was another fucking advent tree just daring him to take it home and convince Keith that it was as innocuous as it looked and definitely not the relationship landmine it actually was. Someone had obviously picked this one up and then changed their mind and put it back on a different shelf to torment him - probably someone else only three months into the most backward and confusing relationship with the most infuriatingly hard to read yet utterly adorable man ever. Or Lance could be projecting.
He stopped and picked up the tree to look it over. It was sort of cute in that “it looks like a third grader made it” way, but mostly it was just horrifyingly gaudy. Lance had been in love with it instantly; he was always falling for lovable hot messes. (He could just be projecting again.) But it was sort of great because this was the kind of advent tree where the squares were big enough to actually fit things in. Lance remembered the year his oldest brother accidentally broke his and their mom bought an emergency tree with really tiny boxes. She hadn’t been able to fit her famous candy-cane chocolate balls inside. Even though she replaced it with a better version when doing her after-Christmas shopping, all of the kids had been way more careful with their trees after that.
Lance turned the wooden thing over in his hands, checking out the construction. If he did this, and who was he fucking kidding, he knew himself well enough to know he was going to do this, then he’d need one that would last. It would (hopefully) have to survive years of being put away and then taken back out and shuffled between kitchen tables and mantles and being knocked over a few times. Maybe even survive a few over-eager maulings from kids. He snorted and shook his head at the direction of his thoughts. Like always he was getting ahead of himself. He and Keith may have been fucking for a while now, but they’d only been together for a little over three months. Thinking about it like that, the whole idea of sharing this with his boyfriend seemed too hasty.
Advent trees had been a tradition in Lance’s family for generations. A tree of their own was always one of the gifts each child received for their first Christmas. Lance remembered being a toddler and bouncing around excitedly over the idea of toys and candy every day for almost a whole month. He remembered being a sullen pre-teen, awkward and insecure and wanting to hate the world but incapable of it with the taste of his mother’s baking on his tongue. He remembered being an even more awkward teen and the first Christmas after he’d come out as gay and coming down the stairs on December 1st and his advent tree had been repainted so that all the doors were rainbow colored. That year the supportive messages inside hadn’t just been from his parents but all his siblings. He remembered his first year in college, coming home for the winter break feeling homesick and out of his depth and about ready to give up. When he got back to the dorm, the encouraging notes from his parents about how proud of him they were had been carefully taped to the front of all his notebooks and binders so he never forgot what he was working so hard for.
Taking a deep breath, Lance ran his thumb over the large red “1” on the top door. He felt stupid having a relationship crisis standing in the middle of a Target and holding a garishly painted decoration, but there were very real fears at work here. Truthfully, Keith probably wouldn’t react poorly to the silly little thing. He’d probably take it in stride the way he did with all the goofy “couple” things Lance demanded they do. But this was more than just a couples thing - this was a family thing. Keith probably wouldn’t get it, but Lance doing this, wanting to invite him into this tradition meant he was essentially inviting him into his family. The fact that he had the damn thing in his hands right now meant he already thought of Keith that way. How crushing would it be if Keith didn’t get that and brushed the importance of it off? How devastating would it be if he did get it and rejected the idea of the relationship being that serious already? Lance honestly didn’t know what would be worse.
With a sigh, he set the tree carefully in his basket. His heart was pounding in his chest and he felt way too fucked up for just making a purchase, but this was so huge. There was a serious possibility that Lance was going to jump, take this flying leap of faith - and come crashing back to earth painfully. But he hadn’t gotten anywhere with Keith so far without taking a few risks, so he knew he had to do this. Besides, he was too far gone on that boy not to want this anyway. He’d put a tiny little piece of his heart behind each one of those doors and he’d just have to hope Keith would take care of each one long enough to put them back together at the end.
Another panicked thought occurred to him and he turned his basket around and hurriedly headed back to the holiday aisle to elbow soccer moms out of the way for the good candy. Because holy fuck it was November 28th already. He only had three days to fill this tree up with all the things he wasn’t sure if he wanted to Keith to understand or not. Stupid, impossible relationship. Stupid, impossible boyfriend. Lance never thought to question why he couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of his shopping trip.