#normally shed at least pretend to make an attempt to have thanksgiving with me even if not on thanksgiving but she hasnt even texted

[anotherpapercut]

today at work we had a little thanksgiving dinner with just our teens and afterwards one of them told me it was the best thanksgiving she'd ever had and I almost straight up started sobbing because I had been thinking the same thing

[everlarkchristmasgifts]

Rated T for mild language

A/N: Part Four to the Christmas Drabbles followup of Pasty White Raisin for @everlarkchristmasgifts

Nine Days to Christmas - Christmas Tree

The tree for the inside of the brewery’s restaurant had gone up promptly the Friday after Thanksgiving. It was a beautiful, if fake, eight-foot thing with white fairy lights, paper-craft snowflakes, and garlands made of kettle corn that mysteriously lost kernels whenever patrons had to wait for seating. The rustic look was all Annie’s doing.

The real presents under the tree, were Katniss’.

Peeta routinely donated unsold baked goods to the local Salvation Army and youth center. Back in the summer, when they’d still been together, Katniss had often tagged along on his post-closing deliveries to them, and gotten to know some of the staff and regular patrons.  With Annie’s blessing, she’d offered up the Tribute Brewery’s tree to double as a charity tree come Christmastime. And so, along with the other decoration, gift-wish tags from kids hung on the branches, and fulfilled requests were already starting to pile up under the tree.

It set the atmosphere, made the already cozy grill feel more like a place for family.

Sung its own carol of home.

Katniss felt a deep pang as she walked past it, pushing through the doors to the outside.

There, at least for the moment, others were feeling their own Christmas tree pain as well: The big spruce outside was only half done.

“I’m not Gumby, for crying out loud! Get me closer!”

The box at the top of the man-lift swayed precariously, jerking Finnick around like Raggedy Andy while Thresh operated the controls from the ground.

“Sorry,” Thresh called up, not sounding sorry.

“Next year, it’s you up here,” Finnick shot back. “And this year I actually mean it!”

“Nah uh, you like the thrill too much!”

On cue, the box jerked again, making Finnick grip the railing to keep from getting bucked out.

The owners of the brewery had been using the machine to decorate the tree for Christmas since long before any of them had come to work at Tribute. And every year was discussion and theorizing about how old the rickety thing was. Based on the peeling paint, rust, and tendency to produce grinding noises, general consensus among staff was was that it was probably at least as old as Christopher Reeves’ stint as Superman. The controls up in the box had long-since stopped working, and for the last several years, what should have been a two-man job, had required at least six staff:

One to operate the box from the controls at the unit’s base (Thresh), one to fetch whatever forgotten items needed fetching in terms of decoration (Katniss), one to risk life and limb going up high (Finnick), at least three to watch with oohs, ahhs, and wisecracks, and make bets about whether Finnick “really might die this time” (Johanna, plus two), and one to direct the placement of the decorations (Annie).

It was supposed to have been decorated for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving, like the tree inside, but between staff sick calls, a super busy season, and Finnick having seemed mysteriously distracted, it’d been put off.

“No, further to the right,” Finnick shouted down.

The box, with Finnick in it, jolted again, wobbling excessively.

“I swear, Finnick’s actually going to fall out of that thing one of these times,” Katniss said as she handed Annie a box of outdoor decorations she’d been sent for from one of the storerooms.

“He’s got a thick skull; he’d survive,” Annie smirked, right before a look of sudden horror crossed her face. “No, Finn baby, loop it on the next branch over! Yeah… No… Yeah, that one right there. Perfect!”

“Of course I am,” he called down.

Katniss snorted, then left them to it.

__

“What the hell is that?”

Haymitch muted the t.v. then tilted the neck of his beer bottle to the thing Katniss was dragging in with her through the front door. She wrestled it inside far enough to kick the door shut.

“It’s called— wait for it— ‘a Christmas tree.’”

“And what exactly do you do with one,” he smartassed back.

“You erect it and decorate it.”

“What,  sort of like a—”

“STOP!” Katniss glared at him as severely as she could, anticipating the joke, and growling when she almost tripped while dragging her haul towards the living room. “Come on, just help me.”

“Just help me,” he aped back in a little girl’s voice. Nevertheless, he dutifully set his beer on the coffee table and helped her pull it over next to the t.v. It wasn’t a large tree, but it was still larger than her, and she had to body hug it to keep it upright. “I don’t have the stand anymore, you know,” he said.

“Under my arm,” Katniss butted him with her elbow as best she could, to signal where.

She and the tree almost went over for it.

“Stay,” he said to both, once he’d helped them back to satisfactorily vertical. He ferreted the base free and knelt down to work on setting the tree in it. “Scraggly damn thing,” he complained, once it was up and the netting cut away. He felt bad enough for it he actually tried to help the branches spread apart a little. “Where the hell’d you get it, Boyscout clearance aisle?”

“The youth center sells them.”

He eyed her.

“How come you didn’t just stop by the hardware store and get one of those fake ones that don’t shed damn pine needles all over my floor?”

“Our floor,” she grumbled, stripping herself out of her jacket like she’d been having a fight with it all day. “I live here, too, remember? And anyway, it’s a fir, not a pine.”

“Whatever.” He snatched his beer bottle back up dramatically, but instead of drinking, he eyed her again. “The center’s way outside your normal route home. That was a you and the boy place. Why’d you do that to yourself?”

“I had to go see  them about a Christmas Eve thing. The brewery’s working along with their gift tree program this year.”

“Is it now.” Haymitch looked at her like he suspected she wasn’t telling the whole truth, but he didn’t press. Instead, he took a sip of his beer. “You do remember I don’t have ornaments, right? I got rid of all that stuff after you and Prim left.”

Katniss rolled her eyes, went to her room and came back with a small stack of boxes, putting them on the coffee table, opening each to reveal ornaments, lights, and other decorating fare.

“I’m the one who took them when I moved out, remember? Exactly because I knew you’d never set up a tree.”

“I had a tree last year.”

“It was ten inches tall and its lights were powered by a USB cord. Not exactly big enough to put presents under.”

“Which is another draw back to having a real tree: Now I have to populate it with presents. This coming back home thing of yours is getting expensive.”

“Uh uh. Like I haven’t already seen the top shelf in your bedroom closet.”

“And why exactly were you in my bedroom closet?”

“It’s where you always keep the presents.”

“When you were a kid.”

“I was never a kid,” she came back, and then kissed him on the cheek. “But you loved me anyway.”

“Yeah,” he said, after flashing her a look of faked irritation. “I guess you kinda grew on me. A bit like a weed. But, anyway, that’s a pretty ballsy assumption. Who’s to say those presents are for you?”

“I’m pretty sure the thing wrapped up to look exactly like a compound bow isn’t a regifted ugly sweater for that lady friend of yours.”

Haymitch humphed.

“Yeah well, haven’t decided whether to give it to you yet.”

“Because I might shoot you with it.”

“Exactly.”

Katniss started picking through the boxes, and pulled out a glass pickle ornament. It was one Prim had begged Haymitch into buying the first Christmas after their parents had died.

Haymitch noticed Katniss drawing her fingers over it.

“Did you call her back yet?”

Katniss tucked her braid back behind her ear with a quiet, “No.”

“You should take her up on the offer. You haven’t seen her in almost a year.”

“What, and spend Christmas as an  outsider with my sister’s boyfriend’s family?” She shook her head. “Not my idea of fun.”

“It’s a hell of a lot better than hanging out here with your Uncle Grinch while pretending you’re not hurt about the boy. It might distract you. Throw on a bikini and you might even meet one of those muscled surfer types, too.”

She frowned at his attempt to cheer her up.

“I have plans here.”

“Come on, a little California would do you some good. Watching streaming video with your uncle over beer isn’t exactly Christmas, sweetheart.”

A thought made her snort. “It is if we watch the Hallmark Channel.”

“Like hell!”

She grinned. “Yeah, agreed.”

Haymitch took the pickle and placed it front and center on the tree, despite her complaints about it needing to go on last. Then, he unmuted the television and they decorated to the background noise of Storage Wars until Katniss caught a glimpse of her watch twenty minutes later.

“Here,” she handed him a strand of tinsel and got up.

“I hate tinsel.”

“Then wrap it in the loving arms of our tree creature.”

She disappeared to her room, then reemerged carrying a wrapped present. She slipped into her sneakers and jacket.

“And where are you going?”

“To deliver a present.”

“To who?”

“Don’t forget to water the tree,” she said as she left.

“Another reason to have a fake tree,” he grumbled once he was alone. He shook the dregs from his beer into the base, then gave the tree his best stink eye, “You start dripping resin onto my carpet, son, and it’s to the fireplace with you.”