✓ 𝐎𝐃𝐃 𝐄𝐘𝐄 ! stranger things ¹

𝟭𝟴. merry christmas, i guess?

They contemplated doing everything that was opposite of what the holiday called for. This Christmas was just a sad reminder that someone's gifts were missing from under the tree or that there would be one less plate at the dinner table and neither male wanted to go through that pain and sorrow.

The two males finally came to the decision of going through with the stressful and heart wrenching task as they knew it was something that would appease Wendy's spirit. The young girl loved the joyous holiday so much that she went all out each year to celebrate and it brought a fun atmosphere to the house.

In the end, the two males reluctantly agreed to put up a cheap evergreen tree that they got on clearance to decorate and accepted the invitation to the special Harrington family dinner. Neither had any interest in doing either activity but ultimately forced themselves to go through with it to make the spirit of Wendy happy.

That's exactly what Stanley and Thomas Harrington were doing in the moment. They were begrudgingly decorating their sad looking Christmas tree.

They had picked up a cheap evergreen tree that was wilted and shedded it's pine needles too early, at the last possible minute as it was only three days before the official holiday.

Thomas had even pulled out the boxes of ornaments from underneath the cabinet in the stairs for them to actually decorate the tree.

But he was only expecting Stanley to only get one side down as the pain of decorating alone would get too unbearable. Even the strands of the rainbow coloured lights were practically thrown over each branch as neither cares enough to wrap the lights around gently.

The amount of heavy emotions the two males were facing was evident in their sad looking attempt at a Christmas tree.

It also didn't help that every time Thomas Harrington had glanced into the drab living room, he expected his little girl to stand there.

He imagined Wendy, dressed in her cherry red and white fluffy Santa hat and her favourite tacky sweater covered in Scooby Doo characters. She would be decorating the tree with strands of dried out popcorn and a selection of cheesy ornaments the family had collected over the last ten years or so.

He also expected her lilac coloured stocking to be hung up the fire mantle or her badly wrapped presents were currently waiting under the tree.

But it was all just a dream. It was just all in Thomas Harrington's head.

Thomas so desperately wished that he could have his daughter for one more Christmas. He wanted nothing more than to see his two children bicker over how they would decorate their tree or what kind of dessert they wanted after dinner or which Christmas movie was the greatest of all time.

The male always used to complain that their bickering would give him a headache but he so desperately longed to hear the two yelling at each other again as it brought back a sense of familiarity but that was not the case.

Instead, he was met with the sight of Stanley solemnly placing the cheesy ornaments onto the tree by himself.

Currently, Stanley stood by himself, in front of half decorated tree, rummaging through the newest plastic bin of decorations.

The first ornament he came across was a baseball sized glass ball, painted with wild strips of different colours of the rainbow and plastered with a few cat stickers. The sight sent a smile to the boy's face. It was a childish looking design but it was still somehow fitting.