#I’ve been very into ✨FESTIVE✨ fic this year idk what that’s about

[sesamestreep]

Chirrut/Baze, 35

35. It’s brighter now (from this prompt list)

“It needs more lights.”

Baze grunts in both acknowledgement and frustration from his precarious spot at the top of a very tall ladder. “Can you let me get down first before we critique?”

“Sorry, Professor,” Chirrut says, with a smile, clearly unrepentant.

Baze grumbles again, at the glib nickname and at his knees, which are registering their complaint over going up and down a ladder repeatedly. He doesn’t know how he ended up here—well, that’s not entirely true. He knows how he ended up here today in a literal sense. Chirrut had asked him this morning, as they were both getting dressed for work, if he could stop by the community center after he was done with his classes for the day and help him set up the Christmas tree in the lobby. The kids who attend programming at the center will make ornaments and garlands and all that during their art classes and decorate it to their hearts’ content, but someone needed to assemble to enormous fake tree and add the lights. Somehow, this person ended up being Baze.

“What did you used to do about assembling the tree?” Baze had asked earlier, as he moved papers around on his desk looking for his keys. The back half of that question—before you met me—is left unsaid, though Chirrut clearly heard it anyway.

“Grindr,” Chirrut had replied, straight-faced.

Baze had tripped over his own feet and knocked a small hard drive off the desk for good measure. “What?!”

“Idiot,” Chirrut said, lovingly. “Bodhi normally helps me, but it needs to get done this week and he’s busy.”

“Bodhi is busy with something that isn’t catering to your every whim and eccentricity?” he asked. Chirrut’s assistant is, as far as Baze is concerned, an actual saint for the amount of nonsense Chirrut puts him through. He’s convinced Chirrut would forget to eat without Bodhi to remind him. “I can’t believe it.”

“Neither can I,” Chirrut said. “Just between you and me: I think he’s dating someone.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He suddenly has plans outside of work.”

“That’s not that strange.”

“It is for Bodhi,” Chirrut replied. “I’m not complaining. I think it’s good for him.”

“But now you’re realizing how much unpaid overtime you ask of him.”

“I’m a terrible manager,” he said, with a bright grin. “And an even worse boyfriend.”

“I’ll help you with your tree,” Baze had said with a heavy sigh. It’s always pointless to argue with Chirrut. “Just don’t introduce me to people as your boyfriend. It makes us sound like teenagers.”

“We’re not teenagers?” Chirrut had asked, as he slipped his arms around Baze’s waist from behind and kissed him on the shoulder. Against the shell of his ear a moment later, he’d added, “Could have fooled me.”

In the end, they’d both been a little late to work this morning.

Now, safely back on the ground, Baze steps back to survey his work. Chirrut is perched atop the front desk in the lobby, feet swinging like a little kid and gaze fixed on the tree.

“It looks good,” Baze says, but not quite firmly enough. He does think the tree looks good, but the statement still went up at the end like a question. He, stupid man that he is, wants Chirrut’s approval.

“It needs more lights,” Chirrut says, in the exact same tone as before. Pleasant, but brooking no argument.

“You can’t even see it!”

“And still I know it needs more lights.”

“How?”

“I can feel it,” he says. “The tree is too dim.”

“Chirrut…”

“I know, I know. I’m very taxing. But we have more lights. We might as well use them.”

“Fine, but if I fall and die because you insisted on the tree needing more lights on it, when it looked fine already…”

“I’ll feel very silly indeed. They’ll all chuckle at the eulogy I give.”

“I don’t want you anywhere near my eulogy,” Baze grumbles.

“Who else would do it?”

“Leave it to Jyn,” he says, crossing over to the desk, where the extra sets of lights are sitting next to Chirrut. “The service will last five minutes, tops.”

“You would want an expedient funeral.”

“No point in dithering. I’m already dead.”

“Jyn won’t be your graduate student forever, you know…”

“No, but I’ve made the mistake of getting emotionally attached to her, so she’s a permanent fixture, I’m afraid.”

“I like Jyn,” Chirrut says, pleasantly. “Why should you be afraid of admitting that?”

Baze waves a hand, dismissively, even though such a thing is useless around Chirrut. “You know how I am about feelings.”

“You’d just as soon not be burdened by them?”

“Yes,” he replies, pulling out another strand of lights to test at the nearby outlet.

Chirrut snorts. “You know, it’s that kind of attitude that kept you single well into your fifties.”

“‘Well into my fifties!’ I’m fifty-three! And you, if all people, should be happy I stayed single as long as I did.”

“I’m not prone to jealousy,” Chirrut says. “As long as you were single when we met, I would have been happy.”

Baze unplugs the lights rather more savagely than necessary. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

Chirrut’s hand darts out suddenly to grasp him by the wrist. His thumb moves gently over Baze’s pulse point. It’s enough to stall him in his plan to retreat in a huff, and he covers Chirrut’s hand with his own.

“I sometimes feel guilty that I didn’t find you sooner,” Chirrut says, earnestly. “I know that’s foolish, but it is how I feel.”

Baze doesn’t know what to say to that. It’s almost too big of an offering to understand, let alone accept. “You found me,” he says, after a moment. “That’s what matters.”

“Still, we could have had a life together…”

“We have a life together now.”

“You think I’m a silly old man.”

“Yes,” Baze says, squeezing his hand. “And I love you for it.”

“You hear that?” Chirrut asks the empty lobby. “He loves me!”

“A very silly old man,” Baze says, as he feels his own face warm in equally foolish embarrassment.

“More lights!” he chirps, happily, his former earnestness now pleasantly forgotten.

“Is this why you wish we’d met sooner? So tormenting me about the Christmas tree could be a yearly tradition?”

“It still can be! Life is what we make of it!”

Baze groans, but dutifully returns to the tree to add the next strand of lights. He repeats this process until they’ve used every last strand that Chirrut had the staff at the center pull out of storage, and then steps back to admire his handiwork.

“See?” Chirrut asks, even though he himself cannot.

“You were right,” Baze admits, begrudgingly. The tree is bright enough to light the entire lobby now. “It looks better.”

“I’m always right. When will you learn?”

Baze returns to Chirrut’s side. “I’m getting used to the idea.”

“Does this mean I’ll be able to convince you to buy a tree for your place?”

Baze sighs, and turns to face him, letting his head tip forward until their foreheads touch. His hands come to rest on Chirrut’s hips. He doesn’t normally decorate for the holiday, partially because he doesn’t really celebrate Christmas but mostly because he’s just never seen the point. He’d just have to take everything back down in January! That’s far too much effort for his taste. Still, he can already feel himself wavering on that conviction. This compulsive need to make Chirrut happy is really interfering with his reputation as a miserable old bastard.

“I’m fairly certain you could convince me to do almost anything,” he says, and Chirrut’s answering smile is even brighter than the damn tree.

✨