Christina lights the candles on her mantle.

"No, it's, you're--" and britney is speaking through her microphone, hooked up to the connect for three hours trying to get them a real live tree delivered. Pharrell might like her but not that much.

"you're going," and christina sat back on her haunches, blew out the match. three candles on the mantlepiece, three on the hearth. The fireplace goes nowhere, it's basically a place to put the woodstove which they can't use anyway, the temperature outside is almost eighty degrees. "when will it be here," britney asks the person on the other end of her wrath, and Christina grins, wry. "When? No, sooner. WHEN? ...good," and she doesn't say goodbye when she hangs up.

"you found yourself a christmas tree?" Christina asks, still crouching in front of the hearth. With thick white candles burning, it was a little like there was a fire.

Britney flops down on the chair closest to her, brow sticky and glistening. "I remember having a fire when I was little," she says, almost wistfully. "we used to build a fire. My mother used to tell me," she continues, "that when she was a little girl? they'd get snow."

Christina bites her lip. Snow is the kind of legend that they don't speak of anymore; she can't even picture it, cold fluffy flakes falling and sticking on the ground. Up in the mountains, sometimes the rain gets cold enough to freeze, she's heard, but Christina's spent her entire life in the burrough they live in. her entire existence is tropical weather. Snow is the stuff of legends.

"we'd have hot cocoa," Britney continues, staring at the candles on the mantlepiece. "and sing songs. And people would all get together and bring presents."

Britney's parents used to live outside the city, when she was a very small girl. her earliest memories are full of farm life, shotgun blasts and pirates, the new frontier. "Sounds nice," Christina answers, because the sense of community of a farm is almost as legendary and fleeting as cold weather.

"It was," and britney smiles. "He's bringing a tree over in a few hours. one of his boys cut us down one."

"Jesus," Christina says softly. Trees didn't grow in the desert much, anymore, and she'd never seen a tree. Oh, there were trees in the city, little spindly things that swayed in the breeze, but a real tree, that remembered how to be a tree and survived on sunshine and rain and fresh dirt, not the kind that could live in a planter? "Jesus," Christina repeats.

"It's his birthday, today," Britney answers her, even though there really wasn't a question in Christina's curse.

"You know what?" Christina says. Her knees are starting to ache from the crouch. last week she popped one out of joint in the ring. "you know what."

there's nothing to come after that. Britney slowly stands, and joins her beside their fireside. Britney folds her legs underneath herself gracefully, loose skirt flowing out and pooling on the floor. the corner comes to rest against Christina's ankle. "I loved my parents' farm," Britney says, and kisses her lips softly.

Christina has just enough time to gasp quietly before Britney's hand comes up underneath her miniskirt.

~

later, Pharrell comes over with the tree. Red is actually dragging a crate of food and Pink has some wine, and Justin is supposed to be at his parents' place except his parents hate his guts and Justin hates them too, so he calls and comes over with his boy, some rich kid who actually has a box of chocolates. Christina wears something long, and fills up Britney's wine glass without being asked.

 


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