They do have Christmas decorations.

Not a lot of Christmas decorations; they’re both only a few years out of college, and their décor reflects that status, the word “decorations” mainly referring to beer coasters with Santas and reindeer on them and a sad string of colored Christmas lights that were previously used to frame the door to their bedroom year round, but still. They have Christmas decorations.

And Kris knows that the Christmas decorations survived the move to their new house because he personally packed them into a box labeled “HOLIDAY DECORATIONS." And he knows that the “HOLIDAY DECORATIONS” box has to be one in the wall of boxes that he’s currently facing in the living room because he’d told the movers to put it in here last week. Or did he tell them to put it in the spare bedroom? Or maybe in their basement for storage?

He groans internally, staring at the sea of boxes that litter the floor around him. Crap.

“Any luck?” Tao asks, emerging from behind a stack of cardboard boxes near the doorway to the kitchen.

“No,” Kris tells him, shaking his head. “What about you?”

“Nothing. I went through all of the boxes in the kitchen, but I couldn’t find anything.”

Kris sighs and sits down on a large box labeled “ELECTRONICS, MISC.” They may have Christmas decorations (somewhere), but they’re still sorely lacking in actual furniture, all of their previous pieces belonging not to them, but to their apartment. They have a bed, but at the moment, that's about it. For the past week, they’ve using two boxes pushed together in the kitchen as a table on which to eat meals.

He lets his head hang, the stress of packing and unpacking and getting settled and trying to find things as they need them catching up to him. He’s glad they moved---it took only a few dates with Tao, before they were even officially a couple, for him to want to commit fully to him, house buying and all--- but now he wonders about timing. There’s something undeniably disheartening about a house that doesn’t yet feel like home around Christmas.

“You know,” he says honestly, “I’m starting to think that the people who told us it was stupid to try to move house during the holidays were right.”

For a few seconds, Tao just stares at him silently. Then, abruptly, he disappears back behind the stack of boxes from whence he came, presumably walking back into the kitchen.

Again, Kris sighs, wondering if he should go and apologize, if maybe Tao interpreted his “bad timing” comment as a “bad relationship” comment, but before he’s even mustered the strength to stand, Tao reappears, clutching a large amount of crumpled newspaper. Kris guesses he got it from one of the boxes in the kitchen where it had been used to cushion delicate items.

“Here,” he says, placing half of his stack in front of Kris and handing him a pair of scissors, one of the only things they have on hand to cut into boxes. “Start cutting.”

Kris frowns in confusion, scissors held limply in his hand. For a few seconds, he simple watches Tao where he sits on the floor with his legs folded, clutching his own pair of scissors and pile of newspaper, before he suddenly, clearly understands. He grins, wide and real, and grabs a sheet of newspaper, folding it onto itself and beginning to cut.

When it’s all said and done, they have around one hundred paper snowflakes, taped to every bare surface in their house: walls, doors, boxes. In the living room, they stack boxes in the shape of a triangle, large ones on bottom, progressively smaller ones on top, and drape newspaper garlands around the makeshift Christmas tree. On the topmost box, Tao places a wad of newspaper formed into the rough shape of a star, all while humming along to the Christmas music that pours out, tinny and small, from the speaker of his phone.

“Better?” he asks Kris, smiling knowingly, and Kris feels a warmth in his chest that can only be attributed to home.