They could not be mistaken for anything else.

Scotty had gotten the note while he was at GAME that his order was ready to pick up, and so, in between shifts when he was due to go over to Mai's, he stopped to pick it up. He'd already paid in advance on this particular Christmas present, and he had been somewhat anxiously watching the days tick by towards Christmas, hoping they would be done in time.

And they were.

He wasn't quite prepared for the feeling he got when he looked at them for the first time; it was an intense rush of things. Love. Hope. A fluttering nervousness. A shining joy. A certain weight. He was looking at something that he and Harold would have for the rest of their lives. And Scotty knew it. He could feel it.

The forger had done a good job -- beat the metal into these rings, then sent it to a jeweler for final sizing, and polishing.

The result was a pair of matching wedding bands; wide, gold and shining, there could be absolutely no mistaking them for vanity or casual jewelry. They looked, and were, the visual representative of a permanent commitment.

His hands were trembling some, when he took them out of the box to look them over, just as they trembled when he carefully sized Harold's ring finger with a piece of ribbon while Harold slept. He almost fumbled and dropped the ring, but didn't. His was a half-size smaller, though equally wide. And Scotty knew he should try it for size, but he didn't want to until he and Harold were together.

The inside was engraved, tiny etched script...

Harold & Scotty

...with space left under that for the date. Just in case they had to postpone. Or move it up to sooner.

The gold rings, under the jeweler's display lights, cast halos into his palm, and reflected light across one another. Despite his general pragmatism, even Scotty couldn't miss the beauty of that particular metaphor.

"Are they what you expected?" the jeweler asked, a knowing little smile on his face as he watched.

Scotty carefully put the rings back into the black velvet box they were in. And only then did his hands quit trembling quite so badly. And he looked up with a smile. "Even better."

As he left the shop, he put the ring box in the inside pocket of his coat.

The rings they would wear forever after spent their first hours in his possession resting right over his heart.

It was the tree of them.

Harold slept, and Scotty crept, and out into the night he went to get the tree he had already staked out as theirs. It wasn't a big tree, all of three feet tall, and he dug it out of the cold ground, wrapped its roots and tied the branches and lugged it back to the Red Dragon and up the stairs.

It wasn't a big tree, but it lived and Scotty didn't want to cut it down, because it was important that this little tree lived. And as he had dug it up, he thought of Harold's tree on the beach, a creation by an amateur botanist, and that was why this little tree wasn't cut down. That, and other reasons.

So, it was the tree of them.

Harold slept, and Scotty crept around their room, holding his breath anytime his fiance stirred, stilling and waiting for Harold to settle again to quiet. And every time that Harold moved, he felt that spike of warmth and giddiness and it was amazing to him, even now, that he even had this man in his life. Harold's words, given to him in a moment of insecurity, about the sheer odds that had to come down into their favor for this to have even happened were ever after remembered. And for his part, Scotty never forgot to be grateful, not even during those times when he felt so far away.

Now was not one of those times; he was firmly here. He went and got a couple of crates from the kitchen downstairs to give it some height, and he set the tree up, surrounding it in red and blue fabric he'd gotten off of Mai, moving as quietly and quickly as he could. He could live with it, if Harold woke. But he wanted Harold to sleep, and to open his eyes and see this tree in the morning light.

Outside, it snowed.

Inside, this was the tree of them.

Harold slept, and Scotty crept about gathering up the things to go on the tree. Little things, that were theirs -- things he had commissioned, things that he had made himself, things that came from the beach. The first thing he put on the tree was lights, just plain white lights, and the second thing he did was tie thin red and blue ribbons on the branches, in lieu of garland.

He did not really know when those became their colors, but they were, and they looked beautiful on the tree lit by white lights, which shined dully off of the satin ribbons.

He put those on, and he stood back to look at it. Bereft of ornamentation, but Scotty was going to change that in short order.

This was, in all ways, the tree of them.

Harold slept, and Scotty crept back to his coat, setting it close to pull out the ornaments for it. First, Scotty's only remaining piece of his life before the beach, and that was the soft little shell he had found under the pier on Risa, where he and Harold sat and God, that was back when they were only friends; Scotty could never have guessed he was sitting with a man he would someday marry.

The shell had sat in the bottom of his backpack, and he'd not remembered putting it there. But there it was. And now, it hung from this tree, fixed with a bit of glue and a ribbon, both of which could pull free if he wanted them to. But he didn't think he did. This was their first Christmas. These were their first Christmas tree ornaments.

Second, a little stopped bottle of sand, from the beach, dangling from a thin white ribbon. Harold had saved the sand; Scotty had stolen a tiny amount, for the sake of this. This was where they fell in love. With it, he could picture their house there, this haven of reality and he could remember the nights, tangled in bed, and he could remember the easy, domestic routines they fell into. Different world, different time.

They were still together, through it all. The illusion of the beach left behind, and the reality that was them, still here. Against all those odds.

The leaves and flowers Harold had given him, lovingly pressed between the pages of a book that Harold had drawn for him, now cased in thin, clear glass by a mage, preserved forever to hang on a tree and be remembered with a glance. He had kept them all, and he hung them all now, and the light caught the glass and the pressed memories inside.

All from Harold's tree, and now the blue flowers that only came out just before the dawn, likewise set in glass to hang.

For this was the tree of them.

Harold slept, and Scotty crept and pulled out the ornaments he had made himself -- little snippets of pages, one taken from the book Harold made for him, red clovers and vines over alien script, in a flat, square glass hanger, and one taken from the notebook he had drawn in for Harold of the trees in the wilderness well beyond the beach, on those days he had hiked and walked and looked for reality and tried to get his head together.

Now he'd found reality, here, and Harold shared it with him.

Now his own leaves, the ones he'd pulled from trees along the way and brought back to his lover; some still held their color, and some were dried, but all of them were now on the tree.

Little things, like that. The shells he'd picked up while hiking the sea shore, woven around with some very fine silvery metal to harness them for hanging without damaging. Two grayish sand dollars, almost identical but found far apart. The bits of iridescent shells, scrambled out from between rocks where the sea put them. Those had been his engagement gifts, of a sort, to the man he was going to marry.

Outside, the light eased slowly into the sky; Scotty had been at this all night, and outside it snowed as the thin gray light filtered past it.

In this room, this was the tree of them.

Harold slept, and Scotty crept in the predawn time, hanging up the memories and often finding himself following them back, to his before, something Harold had given him. To the kitchen table, to their bed, to the laughter and tears and to the hopes and fears and joys and sorrows. He followed them as he put them on the tree, and sometimes he smiled, and sometimes he winced, and he never forgot to be grateful for both.

Finally, he stood back to look and the result, he thought, was something beautiful. No traditional Christmas ornaments; every one meant something, every one a piece of them and their lives together. From the pier, all the way up until now.

And he closed his eyes, and in his mind he saw the future that he thought they could someday have, if the odds allowed. A big, living tree, in some happy place, and in his mind he saw a little girl with black hair and Harold's warm, tanned skin, and his own eyes, diving for the presents underneath of it, and it hurt, and it felt good, all at once. Harold's dream, once whispered so long ago. And on that tree, the ornaments he had put here on their first tree, and a hundred more.

The before, and the ability to dream of a someday; Harold had given him both.

Scotty opened his eyes again, and the last thing he put on the tree were their rings, hanging together from a blue-and-red twinned pair of ribbons. Right at the front, facing the bed, so that when Harold opened his eyes, he would see them first, reflecting gold off of one another. Everything else on the tree paid homage to their before.

The rings, to the hopes of someday.

And in the dawn, snowy light, Scotty went and crawled into bed, leaving the tree lit and muffling his yawn deep into the pillow before curling up against Harold's warm, smooth skin. And picked his head up for one more look, at the memories and the future and all of the things that made them.

This was the tree of them.

Scotty slept.