Pre-emptive Strike

Many thanks to the wonderful Mac for encouragement with this Rob and Tim vaguely
xmassy snippet. You're a star!

*****

Damn he was good.

Citing hayfever, Rob had delightedly declared me in charge of the tree if I was
going to insist on a real one and left me to it as he attacked an order in his
workshop out back.

By the time I'd wrestled the damn thing into place my arms
were stinging from the combined effect of sweat and the needles. It smelt great
but the effort of trying to keep it from toppling had sapped some of my
enthusiasm for decorating and it showed. The tree was obviously a rush job,
tinsel tossed about in a contrived carelessness. That's okay though I told
myself, there's a certain charm to it even as I regretted spoiling our purchase
with half-arsed attention.

The screen door fell back into place and moments later Rob was leaning against
the living room door and eyeing off my endeavours.

"Well?"

Rob stooped and picked up a decoration from the tissue wrapped few remaining in
the shoe box on the rug.

"I was always crap at this sort of thing", I said, waving my hand on what I
hoped was a casually dismissive way that would raise a laugh.
My words seemed to hang in the air (funny how people trot out those sayings and
you don't know they have basis in truth until they are suddenly *there*) as the
expected grin did not come. Rob turned a glass bauble over in his hands slowly
and then put it down with exaggerated care. His measured words, when they came
at last, made me feel sick.

"If you can't do something well, you make a point to it badly. You adopt that as
a defining feature, "Tim who can't dance, or do math, or master this or that."
You diminish yourself and I don't like it, not one bit."

I felt read, seen through, and it was not a good feeling. I felt small and he
had done so armed only with the utmost truth and courage to tell me what he saw
where others let me flail in polite lies.

And for a moment I hated him for it.

"Fuck you!"

He moved fast, I'll say that for him. He raised his hand and for a split second
I swear I thought he was going to slap my face for me but I felt his rough
finger against my lips and a moment later was rocked forward onto my toes by an
almighty whack of his hand on my bum.

"Ow!"

"I. don't.like.it."

I could have argued that it was just a tree and drew breath to offer that
retort, but I knew in an instant I would not. Not because I was scared to, but
because we both knew he was dead right and it would have been disingenuous on my
part to pretend it was about the tree. I have some pride, you know?

"Sorry", I stammered, shaken anew by the power he contained so well and
sometimes let me glimpse.

His warm hand left my bum and cupped the nape of my neck, one thumb rubbing
roughly on the short shaved hair in a way I liked.

"Give me a bit?"

He pulled me in for a rough kiss and let go.

"I'll be out back; call me when you're done."

I could only nod, feeling still impossibly small. Any desire to save face by
pretending I did not care was gone and I set about salvaging the damn tree,
feeling a little bit worse and a lot better and not for the first time
thoroughly confused by that.

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