Stores have been advertising and decorated for the Christmas season since November. Jongin likes to wait until at least December to bring out the lights and candles and ornaments accumulated throughout his life. No matter how carefully he packs things away at the end of the season, they seem to shift on their own and tangle in new and frustrating ways.

He's sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, a dull knife in one hand and the long strand of lights in the other. It snakes messily over his lap and coils around him. He looks up when he hears soft laughter, knowing full well that Baekhyun is just standing there and probably recording his struggles on his phone.

“Are you going to help me, or not?”

Baekhyun breathes a giggle. “You're doing great, babe.”

Jongin pulls a bulb from its socket and plugs it in place of a bulb that lights. It flares red. A good bulb. Jongin puts it back in its place and moves to the next one. He's been at this for a good twenty minutes, and his fingers are sore from working the bulbs from their sockets.

Finally, he ah ha!s and tosses the last bad bulb aside. He looks at his hard work, reviving the half-dead strand of lights to full illumination.

“Good job!” Baekhyun praises. He's never had the patience to test bulbs or things like that. It's easier to just buy a new set, but Jongin is persistent and sees it as some kind of personal challenge. Even something as mundane and fixing Christmas lights.

“My fingers hurt really bad,” Jongin pouts at his hands, “but maybe this means it'll last for next year, too.”

“Hey, you wanna do something fun?”

“Like what?”

“Show off your hard work?”

Jongin frowns at Baekhyun, eyes narrowed, but his boyfriend's smiling and staring at the lit lights. He slips his phone into his pocket and heads to their bedroom. “You've still got white jeans, right?”

“Yeah... Don't mess up my clothes!” Jongin can't untangle himself fast enough.

“I'm not!” Baekhyun calls, reemerging within a minute with the jeans over his arm. “They were right at the end. No worries.” He helps untangle Jongin and holds the lights over the jeans. “Let's try this. Put these on.”

“Why?” He can't help but be suspicious. Sometimes his boyfriend asks him to do something tedious and routine and manages to turn it into a dirty photoshoot. He's brilliant with a camera like that, and Jongin trusts him wholeheartedly, never assuming his true intentions.

After six years, he still can't predict his boyfriend's plans.

“I think it'll be prettier with white than those old Hogwarts sweatpants.”

“But these are comfy...” They're from his final year of high school, worn soft to near sheerness. Jongin obediently pulls them off and steps into the jeans, drawing them up his legs and hopping a little to get them on all the way. He rarely wears them, but they still fit. “You want me to change my shirt, too?”

“No, the red works.” Baekhyun plucks at it a bit, making it sit in some more ideal way over Jongin's shoulders. “Sit back on the floor with the lights like you were.”

“With the knife?”

“Uh...no. I'll take that.” Baekhyun puts the knife back on the kitchen peninsula counter and crouches to frame the shot with his fingers. Jongin sitting cross-legged surrounded by red, white, and green lights and their tree—a full, fragrant Fraser fir—standing behind him with the windows and night sky as a backdrop. The lights glow over his thighs and chest when he playfully tosses the tail of the strand back. It highlights his straight jawline.

“Gorgeous...” Baekhyun takes his phone from his pocket—he always uses his phone for candid shots and an impromptu shoot. Jongin wonders if it's easier for him to use than a regular camera, although a camera affords some camouflage for his disability.

The fun thing about a shoot at home is Baekhyun doesn't care what Jongin does. He'll take tens of photos and pick them through until he's left with a small selection of the “best shots.” Some get printed on paper and framed or printed on canvas and hung right away. Baekhyun's newest delight is printing on glass.

“Are you done, yet?” Jongin whines. He sees the screen's reflection flicker and pouts, knowing at least one image will be of him mid-tantrum. “I'm losing feeling in my .”

“Yeah, okay. I can't let your go flat, even for art.”

Even after complaining, Jongin just shifts to sit with his legs bent and holds out his hand, opening and closing his fist. “Lemme see.” Baekhyun pushes lights aside to sit beside him so they can scroll through the photos together.

He keeps swiping the screen until he finds the photos his boyfriend had taken of him fixing the lights. They're more candid, capturing a brow furrowed in frustration and his wide, dimpled smile when he found the final burnt bulb. Some are taken at the most inopportune times, capturing his face frozen with an ugly expression or motion blur, but even if Jongin deleted them from the phone, they upload automatically to the cloud.

“You know, I thought you were going to tie me up with the lights and garland or something.” There's a series of oily smears from his finger, and he rubs the phone screen on Baekhyun's thigh, resting his hand when Baekhyun takes his phone away.

“If I was going to tie you up in anything, it'd be velvet or silk ribbon.” Baekhyun kisses him. “Because you're the greatest gift.”

“Gross,” Jongin hums against his lips. “But thank you.”

---

a/n: I had an idea for an AU, but this is the first thing I've written for it, so there may be details that don't make sense yet but also don't change this story at all.