Ryden Oneshots

The Magical Quest of Finding the Most Glorious Christmas Tree

Brendon nods enthusiastically and gives her back an even brighter smile. “Yeah,” he cheers and bounces on the balls of his feet. “We’re having Christmas at my house this year -- which I’m really excited about because I just bought a new house and it’s too big for me so I need all the holiday fixings to make it feel more at home -- and I figured I should get a real tree and do it right.” 

Why Brendon feels the need to explain this to the woman, Ryan does not know. Then again, Ryan should be used to Brendon welcoming the urge to tell strangers his life story, more or less. Brendon calls himself friendly, Ryan calls him strange.

“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” she says confidently and leans comfortably onto the flat surface before her. “I’ll go ahead and let you boys fill out this form --” she hands Ryan a sheet of paper and a pen and he grimaces. Thinks, Great, paperwork. “-- and you can get started.”

“Awesome! Thanks,” Brendon says politely while Ryan fills out his name, address and phone number into the designated lines. “Ryan. Ryan,” Brendon says and Ryan looks up to meet Brendon’s anxious stare through his fringe. “Do you know how many trees they have here?”

“No, Bren,” Ryan says dismissively as he scribbles his signature at the bottom of the page. “How many?”

“I don’t know,” Brendon says, “But they’re open until nine so we have plenty of time to count.”

Ryan looks at his watch -- 11:37 -- and groans.

----

After the first thirty minutes of “embarking on the magical quest of finding the most glorious Christmas tree” (as Brendon fondly addresses it), Ryan is ready to leave.

“Look at this one, Ryan!” Brendon shouts five rows ahead of Ryan who is dragging behind.

“I’m coming, Brendon,” Ryan mumbles as the bats his way past a particularly annoying branch, one he saw Brendon pretending to battle with moments before.

“Ryan, look!” Brendon repeats, eyes wide and excited when Ryan finally reaches him. “This one is tall and skinny. Like you!” Brendon giggles and Ryan finds nothing about the situation amusing, considering that a) the tree isn’t even that tall -- they’re only on row seven out of fifty and the lady up front said they got increasingly bigger as they got further into the farm -- and b) he was just compared to a tree.

“Haha,” he remarks dryly and shuffles passed Brendon. The sooner they can get out of here the better.

“You know,” Brendon begins and Ryan prepares himself for another one of Brendon’s life experiences. “I never knew they had farms for Christmas trees,” he muses. “Like, I knew there were nurseries for trees and stuff. But farms?”

Brendon’s ignorance is slightly endearing, Ryan thinks, but he ignores the small smile tugging the corners of his lips as Brendon weaves through a placement of four trees all relatively the same size. “And what do we do when we find the one we want?” Brendon asks. “Do we dig it up or do we call for the lady up front? I hope they don’t send some big lumberjack out here,” he says, looking a bit frightened as he stops and looks back at Ryan worried, as if Ryan’s ever been to a place like this before and knows the ways by which trees are uprooted.

“I’m sure we’ll figure it out, Bren,” Ryan says and is slightly humored by how easily Brendon shrugs off the thought and goes into a long spiel about how Ryan should be lucky he didn’t drive them out into the middle of nowhere to get a tree.

“Like on National Lampoons,” Brendon says with an evil grin. “Oh, and speaking of that: Jon invited us over to watch Christmas Vacation with him and Spencer on Christmas Eve. I’m picking you up at seven.”