We begin as we always do, with some accounting for his waking hours, that first burst of consciousness where True finds himself tangled in sheets, amidst a lover's lock of limbs - Gideon's. Hereby, we find him kissing and coddling and cooing over the stoic prince until reality eventually penetrates thick, albeit pale, skin, and it suddenly dawns on the boy that he's been alotted some time alone. The sun will set eventually, but it is in no hurry, though these later months have certainly ushered it to sleeping sooner than naught.. It is on one particular afternoon that True has a greater than usual grasp on time, though the clockwork sings the same old songs, chiming in tune along Gideon's otherwise silent walls and manltes. It is this day that he's realized the shrinking of the light, the ever expanding night, and the certain chill hanging about the air. In his wanderings of the flat, True happens to come across a calendar, and by means of simple math, the shock sets in. He has only days. And so when he leaves, he remembers to scribble some benign excuse for his absence, hoping he'll be back by the time the sun truly sets. Shrugging into one of Gideon's heavier overcoats, his hair in a state of complete distress, he slips into a pair of ruggedly handsome waterproof boots and makes tracks for the road. Errands will keep him enslaved to the clock. He has hours. He has only days.

Poor prince, to miss such affections, to be so dead to all the sweetness of those urgent caresses, only to wake later, alone and in silence. He drew a slow, deep breath and rolled over, blinking blearily at the metallic wall ticking back, revealing the chill grey light of sunset closing over the city below, windows kissed with frost around their edges. No True, no warm body nestled against himself. He groaned softly and rolled back onto his stomach, grabbing his lover's pillow and hauling it toward himself to bury his face in its folds, inhale the scent lingering in the dark, satin soft cotton. A few minutes later he was up, had pulled on a fitted, long sleeved dark shirt and was wandering out to the living area, fingers raking through hair, setting it on end in hedgehog spikes and quils.

He lifted True's note from the ledge of the counter and frowned to himself, shrugged and took up residence upon the couch before the fireplace, one of True's cast off books in hand, turning too quickly through the crisp paper pages.

The note was benign, yes, but vague, ringing of be back soon. He makes good on his promise regardless, bursting through the door just as Gideon lost his place in the fable he had marked up the night before. Ever searching, in secret, and in plain sight. The boy doesn't notice the focal point of Gideon's attentions, though. He's too busy shivering, kicking his boots at the threshold, shaking off the bit of ice he's managed to salvage from the long trek along the road. It's a balancing act, you see, colt years still cleaving to those too-long legs, and his arms, oh his arms were all but perpendicular, supporting a mess of decor. Holly and bells, glass baubles and candlesticks, pounds of it wrapped and sacked and spilling from the bundle he balances at his chest. Blue eyes can't quite see beyond the perimeter, and so he inches forward, toe to heel, tracking in what bit of water and dirt he couldn't leave at the doorstep.

Gideon glanced round as the door swung open. He'd yet to tell True that Kestrel was gone, gone for good, perhaps because he did not yet believe it himself. Every and anytime the door to the apartment opened he felt his heart lodge itself in his throat, convinced she would breeze back in, straddle his lap and and sink sharp nails into his tongue to rip it from its root. Tense muscles relaxed as True came into sight, and handsome features broke into a broad smile. He tossed the book aside and long legs made an arc as he rolled off the couch and to his feet lithely. Long strides took him to the door where he made himself useful, unloading arms overflowing as much as he could.

"You've been busy. What is all this?" He glanced into the bags and bundles he held, dark brows drawing together. "C-Christmas things?"

One corner of his mouth curled upward slowly. Christmas. He couldn't recall the last time he'd celebrated, much less even marked the holiday. Even in his human life, it was a joke of a holiday. An excuse to come home from school, albeit briefly, spend time on the town, make trouble with friends.

"Solstice, Gideon. Yule. Christmas, if you like. Or, do you not like?" His face holds the look of instant bereavement. One minute, he was happily patting himself on the back for a job well done, the next, he was disappointing his lover. Oh to see the smile he found just seconds ago...

The boy leans in, hunched with his burden against one arm, his other outstretched for Gideon, for fingers to trace the corner of his curling mouth. "Something about this time of year, my lord, calls to me. The coming dark. Will you allow me the honor? I had wanted to make it beautiful for you, upon your waking.. But I, I was late..."

Soft, soft sadness, as feather-fine as the hair that wafts at his brow, drying in the heat of the room. "You have given me so much, beloved. I want.. I wanted to give you something in return." Blue eyes make a study of the other's face, in particular his chin, before taking a deep dive to his collar. "I mean, maybe it's dumb Gideon. Is it dumb? It is something humans do.. I, I have to admit, I'm not human. I know that now." His frown is fierce, but it doesn't shake the sorrow from his face. Not entirely.

Bags shifted, dropped slightly, found themselves upon the floor, tipping over, scattering their contents haphazardly as hands found True, curled over the back of his neck, shaped themselves to a press across his chest, across the hard hammer of a heart. He took the changeling's mouth for his own, barely let breath by in the hard heat of that kiss. True must have been suffocating by the time Gideon pulled back, pressed his forehead to the one with soft black hair plastered against it.

"I love that you would do this for me. For us. Thank you." He drew a hard breath, and something in it shuddered with emotion. "Thank you."

All the world breaks and scatters, like so many ice crystals under weighted, running feet. He can't see for a moment, can't breathe, nothing but pull and cling to the body against his. Hands wind hard and hungry about hips as his mouth retaliates, tongue flicking against the ivory gate of Gideon's teeth, teasing his finer points. Ah, but those words, those words are an even greater threat to his keeping together. His cry is small, faint, a slip of a thing against the shell of his lover's ear, easy for a mouth to find when the body it belongs to holds three inches overhead. And then he wraps the other, hot and cold at once, bulky cotton coat chaffing his neck as he squeezes back, buries his face into Gideon's throat, blind and burning.

"I love you. I love you always. I will do anything for you."

God, it broke him, sweet and slow, like a hallelujah chorus. Arms slid under the bulk of that coat, wrapped tight round True's lean torso and squeezed hard as he dared, hard as he could without cracking bones.

"I love you, True. Always, forever. Since before I knew you. My heart was only waiting for yours to claim it. I am sorry it took such a long path, and such a black journey to find my way." Words lightly muffled against the collar his face pressed to. He pulled back and caught that face between his hands, thumbs smoothing over the rise and hollows of cheeks.

"True. My True." He drew a breath and took a step back, surveying the mess around them slowly. "Alright. Christmas. You're going to have to show me how to do this."

And show him, he does. In fact the boy makes quite the supervisor, sorting his festive collection of odds and ends. In twenty minutes, the holly was already everywhere, wrapping about every mantle, hanging from sconces and other small fixtures. There were wreathes that True applied to empty wallspace with care, but the largest of these was reserved for the door. He hung silver bells and candycanes and set little candles into the sill of each window, ever-cautious to keep Gideon from the tiny flames. As the last of these is lit, in the greatest of windows, the boy takes his lover by the hand, too-long fingers sinking between the spaces of the other's, giving them a squeeze. Follow the leader, he says with a smile, a silent wink that fades into memory when his stare lingers at Gideon's face a bit too long. Kissing his knuckles, True pulls him back to the door, leads him outside into the cold. There, at the gate, is a seven-foot Douglas fir that he's managed to prop against the property lines. Maybe now Gideon won't wonder about his lateness. Turning his eyes back to his lover, beaming notes of neon blue, he smiles once. And then he breaks from the hold of hands, starting for the naked, lonely tree.

"It will be dressed and radiant by morning!" He shouts from the small distance away, hoisting the top of the fir over one of his shoulders. The base, he drags through the dirt.

He was fairly useless through the lot of this, save for picking up all the fallen baubles from the bags. Ever adept at outfitting himself, Gideon had no business attempting to decorate a home. He was happy to lend a hand as True took the lead, following in the changeling's footsteps, arms full of the trinkets he'd brought. When he'd thought they were done, he quite clearly was wrong, as True lead him outside. Poor unsuspecting Gideon.

Out into the hallway, into the elevator he let himself be lead, trapping True up against the glass of it, facing outward, his arms braced against the frosty glass as he took advantage of the slow ride down, teeth and lips making a game of exploring the back of his lover's neck, the secret hollow under the hook of a jaw. All too soon the elevator was grinding to a halt and he followed the other out into the cold, stopping short only when he spied that tree, an incredulous look ransoming of his features for a moment before he managed to carefully reassemble them into bemusement.

"That will be fun to try to fit into the elevator." He replied, albeit under his breath a bit. He crossed the Lanseborough's courtyard and caught up the sticky sap end of the tree's trunk, one dark brow arching itself at True's back. The changeling aught to thank whatever gods he believed in for granting him such a charming disposition. It saved his skin more times than he was surely aware of.

If the boy feels the weight of those eyes, in all their glacial-glory, he doesn't show it. He's far too busy balancing the fir across his shoulder, far too busy keeping the nettles from his nose and mouth, far too busy laughing aloud as he measures the angle of the elevator door with his eyes, peering over his shoulder at Gideon taking up the rear. "Diagnol, lover?" Oh, sweet suggestion.

He eases into the cart, tree in tow, just now starting to shiver as the cold sets in along his arms. The small tee shirt just wasn't cutting it, especially as it rode over the top of his stomach, baring his navel to the light of the moon. As he turns, Gideon might see the shadows where a track of silver once charted the way down. All that's left are the circular hollows that glare out of the waistband of his jeans, angry and black.

"I think I got it," he says with a sigh that runs from the crown of his head to the base of his back. The changeling, for all his youth, is struggling. With a shoulder pressed to the top of its trunk, arms snaking outward, wide, to hold down the spray of branches, he wedges the base in with his foot, using his ankle as a hammer.

Gideon took the suggestion, grin tugging at one corner of his mouth. He bent to drop the base of the tree and let True kick the thing into position. He only got half risen, though, before he paused, the lift doors shutting them and the massive fir in. Icewater eyes trained upon those empty divots in bare flesh. You could feel the silence fill up that tiny compartment as his fingertips reached out, touched the scars. Eyes ticked upward slowly. He looked as if he'd been struck across the face, and his voice was little more than a murmur.

"And what's happened here?"

He can't help the shiver that Gideon encites by the mere touch of fingertips. His question is secondary, but it surfaces to the forefront once the quiet overwhelms the air. Sucking in a breath, the changeling opens his mouth to reply, but the car reaches the landing with a furious ring, the yawn of open doors. Inching his foot across the doorframe, pulling the tree by a stray branch, the boy breaks down.

"I bought some things," he says, the shame of it, the secret, creeping between each syllable. Before Kestrel, he had a steady job. And now... Perhaps, in contrast with his sylvan origins, humanity had instilled a certain sense of pride for paving your own way through the world. Despite the frigid weather, he can feel a flush to his face as he stalks forward, away from Gideon's prying eyes.

"I utterly fail to see what that has to do with those holes in your skin." He replied tersely, righting himself sharply as the lift came to a halt once more. Sometimes Gideon really was thick, sometimes he was absolutely a product of his own upbringing. He stepped out of the way as True brought the haphazard tree down and picked the thing up from the center as the fae drug it along by a hapless branch, delving a fist deep into the annoyingly sticky depths of the pine boughs to grasp its trunk. He lifted it as easily as one might lift an empty valise, following in True's footsteps, eyes narrowed at his back.

"I sold them, Gideon." Softer now, that voice blows from the depths of his throat, apple-laced breath lacking the spice that once was. He peers back delicately, eyes half hidden behind blades of raven-black, taking in Gideon's ease with the tree that sought to outdo him.

"I didn't want to ask you for the money," he confesses finally, setting his eyes into his sticky palms, picking at the few dozen needles that cling to his traitorous shirt. "Don't be mad. I'll put something else there so they won't close."

Gideon's eyes closed for a painful moment, and were his hands not covered in sap he might have pinched the bridge of his nose hard between thumb and forefinger in that habitual gesture of long-suffering consternation. As it was he simply drew a slow breath and wedged the tree in through the door of the penthouse and lent it up against a wall. He reached out, closed a sap-laced hand round True's wrist and dragged him close, close enough to bite at his chin.

"Don't sell your bits of silver, True. My money is your money. I have a bloody embarrassment of it. Use it, enjoy it." He glanced down and pulled up that shirt once more, surveying the damage with a shake of his dark head. He dropped slowly to his knees and tugged at one of the beltloops of the tall youth's jeans, just to drag them low enough that he could run the tip of his tongue lightly over each little divot in pale flesh, his own form of mourning.

"But... But Gideon... I wanted to do s-something f-for y-you..." The fae loses all ways with words, drowned as desire hits him hard, evident by the friction at the front of his jeans. He moans ever-soft, and as fingers seep into Gideon's scalp, he sighs.

"Just.. wanted.. by.. myself..." Tripping over his own tongue (still silver-coated, that much was spared), he leans forward, all the better for his lover to lather him with that tongue. Something else is noticeable by this pressed proximity, something else in the pit of one pocket, so near to Gideon's jaw: something hard, and smooth, a coin, mayhap. It is about the same size.

"I.. I won't alter myself.. ever again.. I promise, beloved." The boy's hands slip from scalp to the top of Gideon's cheeks, fanning out around his face as if to memorize the shape. "My body is yours," he murmurs.

"Mmn. Say it again." Velvet voice purred against the flesh before it, and sticky fingers rose to cup and cradle the want that presented itself. Wanton fae, ever at the ready...and such a turn-on. Simple thing; to tug loose button and draw down fly with his teeth, hands too full of pine to do the job need not be involved, save to peel away the part of jeans and rest upon hips as cool tongue and smooth lips took turns bathing in slow strokes and light kisses as jeans still kept him half encased.

"Yours! My body is yours, Gideon!" His voice is on high alert, no velvet here. Immediately, he's pulsing to life amidst the attentions of that tongue, those lips, the cool breath that brushes across his skin with every spoken word. True cries out under the stress of light kisses, presses his palm to the nearest wall in support as his legs are trapped in a tangle of designer jeans. What a happy mess.

"Yours.. This body... Yours.." He fumbles, shaky on his feet already, and this dance has yet to begin.

In Entirety