Surprisingly, Calum showing up at Michael's door was planned this time. They were choosing to spend Christmas together rather than being forced by random circumstances.

He showed up a week before like they'd planned and Calum had strung up a plan of his very own, he was going to try and ease Michael into the Christmas spirit.

He was expecting the boy to put up somewhat of a fight but he also knew that Michael was easily persuaded, quite an easy first step. The next however would be pretty hard considering the amount of snow on the ground already. It's not like Calum was planning something spectacular, he just wanted Michael's house to look a little less dreary for the time of year.

He'd gotten to Michael's house a lot earlier than he'd expected, less Christmas traffic he assumed. Michael and him had exchanged phone numbers finally, and talked once in a while to catch up or just laugh, Michael had also skyped him a couple times so that they could play dress up games together on the computer--to make fun of them, why else would they play pretty princess dress up games? Michael liked trying to make them look as pretty as possible and it wasn't hard to succeed, Calum on the other hand liked themes, usually it was sad emo, Michael thought it was pretty funny.

Calum had gone to the store in advance, although he would have to drag Michael along to get a tree because it was rude to assume that Michael would want the same kind of tree as Calum, if he even wanted one.

He'd also gone present shopping little by little on his way to Michael's he'd gotten a few items that he thought Michael could use. Even though him and Michael had spent a lot of time together he hadn't really come up with something extraordinary that screamed Michael.

Calum thought it was right to assume that Michael was home, his truck was parked in the driveway and the door was unlocked when Calum checked so he waltzed in, throwing off his winter attire and was prepared to be ridiculed for his choice of clothing, not that it was out of character for him to dress up for the Christmas holidays, Calum decided to play down his look by wearing a green shirt that had Santa on it. Santa also happened to be throwing up an imaginary gang sign while wearing some sunglasses and gold chains, the shirt was topped off with a candy cane font that spelled out South Side towards the bottom. He got one for Michael too, although not the same design. He hoped that Michael liked it.

The house was oddly quiet, usually Michael was in the kitchen or at least had the tv on. Calum circulated the downstairs, pausing in the kitchen to look at what was on the counter. A plate of gingerbread men and some kind of plant that Calum couldn't pinpoint the name of in his mind, besides the detail on the gingerbread men caught his attention pretty much immediately, they looked pretty familiar.

There was a gingerbread man that managed to look darker than the rest somehow, the icing depicted someone with a lot of hair and an ugly Christmas sweater and black pants, it became obvious that it was the gingerbread representation of Calum himself. Beside him on the plate was a gingerbread man with blonde icing hair that stuck up all over the place, there was a small dot above it's green candy eye that Calum wrote off as a small mistake. He assumed it was Michael, mostly because the boy had given the gingerbread man a lightsaber and big muscles.

He finally gave the plant a second glance and realized what it was, he ended up blushing profusely as he examined the mistletoe. If Michael didn't like Christmas then why would he buy mistletoe? It was really Christmasy. What if Michael was thinking about what happened last year? Calum started blushing even more at the thought, he'd never been kissed by a straight guy before then and sure as hell hadn't been kissed since, whether it be by his own bad luck or him accidentally avoiding each would be kiss on his own.

He found Mallory lounging on the stairs, the cat let out a small meow upon seeing him and started purring as soon as Calum's hand was near her. He heard the music then, it was muffled by a door and there was a few other noises that didn't match the song.

Michael was singing in the shower.

Michael was singing.

A Christmas song no less.

He was singing a Christmas song.

In the shower.

Calum froze, blushing once again when thinking of their kiss last year, and for thinking of Michael having a shower. Wow, how did it get so hot all of a sudden? Calum blamed the fact that Michael was obviously having a hot shower on the sudden temperature change, it seemed to be a reasonable assumption.

Calum snorted when he finally realized what Michael was singing, of all the Christmas songs he could choose from, Michael was such a sap. Although All I Want for Christmas is You happened to be one of Calum's favourites, he'd expected something more anti-Christmas from Michael.

Michael stopped singing for long enough that Calum noticed it was a cover performed by My Chemical Romance, which he did expect from Michael so maybe it wasn't such a surprise that Michael was singing along.

Calum didn't realize he was literally creeping on Michael while the boy was showering so he could listen to Michael sing until the water turned off and the singing got quieter. Calum was embarrassed even though he hadn't even been caught, he raced downstairs and quickly turned the tv on to a random channel.

"Hey, when did you get here?" Michael asked, hair still slightly wet when he came downstairs some time later. His loose white shirt seemed to have soaked up quite a bit of water and looked more transparent than anything else, and maybe Calum was thinking about the muscular gingerbread man again.

"Like just," Calum lied, getting up to hug the damp Michael even though he was still extremely embarrassed about listening to Michael shower.

"Oh, I didn't know you liked tennis," Michael said while still being trapped in the tight embrace, looking at the tv over Calum's shoulder.

Calum cursed himself for not paying attention to what was on when he turned it on, and why was golf even on tv a week from Christmas?

Calum snorted, "I like making fun of them, look at those shorts and tell me that he's totally not forty years old with three kids and a second wife that's as old as his oldest child."

"Well you're not wrong," Michael laughed, looking at the middle aged man on screen who wore a visor and shorts short enough to expose a good length of his hairy calf. "But look at the other weenie, his socks match his sweater vest--who even wears sweater vests anymore? It's got to be like thirty degrees there and he's playing tennis in that fucking thing--dear god, look at that thing on his lip, could you even call that a moustache?"