Chapter Text
“Jesus Christ,” Louis whispers after bumping into Harry’s back in the hallway. It’s dark, and he’s barely awake, and his husband just stopped out of nowhere.
“Reason for the season, innit?” Harry teases before guiding them down the staircase.
Louis rolls his eyes and follows, biting his tongue as he avoids the squeakiest step so as not to wake Florence, Roman, or Paris. Or the dog, who is probably in Roman’s small bedroom anyway, so the poor lad doesn’t have to sleep alone.
The dim nightlight casts a shadow against the wall as Harry passes by into the kitchen, where tonight’s elf mischief will be staged. Louis hates this tradition. Hardly a tradition, really. Some corporate cash-grab invented to torture parents even more during a tight month, budget-wise. Not only do they have to come up with some precarious and elaborate production every day, but it’s like the kids are addicted to it.
Thanks, Instagram.
Tonight, Fawn, Roscoe, and Praline will be swinging from the chandelier (a.k.a the Ikea light fixture over the dining table).
Louis will play along, though, because hopefully this will be his last Christmas as an elf puppeteer. Next year, Harry can do whatever he wants, alone. Which he sort of already does, since he rarely allows Louis to help.
“Grab the elves.”
See? Louis is no more than a servant to Harry’s elf-capades.
Louis marches off to the fireplace, where they’d “arrived” this morning in a plastic see-through “parcel” from the North Pole. Florence had let everyone in the room know that Svalbard is the northernmost inhabited place on earth, to which Harry had gently reminded her that the North Pole is magic, an argument which her younger siblings weaponised the rest of the morning.
And then over tea, Roman had shared that one of his mates at school said the North Pole isn’t real, and Harry had looked like his heart broke because, at nine, Florence has already been on the brink of jumping the Christmas magic train. She’d only said, “Told ya” and moved on.
“See?” Harry had whispered to him when the kids had gone back to the living room. "It’s really going to be their last true Christmas.”
Louis had wanted to tell Harry to get real – still does, in fact – but his green eyes had filled with tears as he thumbed over the exposed skin of his ring finger. He hasn’t worn it since Halloween, and the kids haven’t mentioned it again since Bonfire Night. But Louis knows Flo has noticed, and when Flo notices, she catalogues all the details away to pull out at the exact wrong time.
The elf-on-the-shelf dolls are creepy. Too-big eyes looking up to no good. Luckily, Florence’s blonde hair hasn’t darkened too much from when they started this, when she was three and Roman had just been born. They’d guessed on his, with his hazel eyes not changing as he aged, but they’d luckily gone with the brunette doll, and lo and behold, brunette. Paris’ blonde will likely bronze into something darker.
Even though they’re meant to resemble his children, Louis hates looking at them.
“Here.” He tosses the dolls onto the table as Harry finishes scribbling the elves’ note, written in glue, then dusted with glitter.
Harry’s jaw sets tight, and Louis can all but see steam coming out of his ears.
One of the elves’ limbs had nearly knocked over the little jar of biodegradable glitter. Nearly being the operative word.
Not good enough.
“Would it kill you to be more careful?” Harry seethes. Louis has suggested a glitter pen multiple times.
Louis shrugs and comes up behind Harry to look over his shoulder.
We wanted to help decorate your tree, but you haven’t put it up yet!
“Bit cheeky, aren’t they?” He doesn’t mention how they’ve clearly inherited their attitude from Harry.
With a huff, Harry says, “Could you please take care of the ribbons on the baubles? I’ve already cut them. Just need you to string it through, tie a knot…”
Louis tunes him out to look at the parcel on the table, which contains whatever new yearly design Harry has picked out to mark each of the kids’ Christmas. This year, there are three individual snowmen with their names in calligraphy and one family of snowmen, with two big ones and three little ones. The year is in big black letters under STYLES-TOMLINSON FAMILY.
Holding it in his hand, Louis chuckles.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He doesn’t think he’d make it out of the kitchen alive if he told Harry what he’s really thinking of is how funny it would be to Sharpie in the year they got married and add a hyphen. Here lies the Styles-Tomlinson family. Or maybe he could paint over one of those baubles celebrating first Christmases of various sorts. Our First Last Christmas Together.
Silently, Louis ties the ribbon through each of the bauble’s hooks.
Oh! Or he could have one made. Reindeer. Here lies the Styles-Tomlinson Family: They had a good run.
When he’s finished, he dares not try to hang them from the light fixture. Harry will redo it anyway, so he plucks a toffee penny from the sweets bowl.
“Sh!!” Harry spits. “You’ll wake the dog with all that crinkling.”
“Not if your hissing and pissing do it first.” It’s paper wrapping, by the way. Soft wax paper.
Glare cold as ice, Harry rips his eyes away after a long moment to pop open his expensive glitter to pour over the glue note.
“I’m not doing this, you know?” He pops the toffee penny in his mouth and tosses the wrapper on the table.
“Doing what?”
“This elf shite. At my place.”
Harry sets the jar down a little heavier than necessary. “That’s your choice,” he says without looking up from where he’s tapping and shaking the paper to ensure even glitter coverage.
“And I think it’s only fair that I have them for Christmases since it’s my birthday and all.”
Harry’s lips purse, and he sits back in the chair as he looks at Louis.
“Do we have to talk about this right now?”
Louis sucks on his toffee penny the way he knows Harry hates.
It works.
“Firstly, you’re going to pull your crown off with the toffee. And two, Christmases should be spent at home, and this is their home. We agreed to that already.”
“No,” Louis says. “Christmases should be spent with family, and I’m their family as much as you are. And so are my family. I want Christmases in Doncaster. Proper family Christmas.”
“Alternate holidays.” Harry pours the excess glitter into the jar, funnelled by the coloured paper he likely nicked from work.
“My birthday isn’t alternate years, Harry.”
“I’m not doing this right now. We still have to take the Planning Together course.”
“We haven’t even met with the mediator.”
“Nick sa-”
“Well, Nick isn’t my solicitor.” He is his friend, though. But, Louis reckons Harry’ll get Nick in the divorce.
“Can you just bloody leave it for now, Louis?!”
Louis raises his hands in the air.
“And spit that out! It’s distracting me.”
Louis smirks, then sucks on it sharply.
“Spit. It. Out.”
“I’m not one of the kids. I can have a sweet if I want.”
Harry closes his eyes and takes a deep, meditative breath. This is a recurring argument, and one they’d hashed over in therapy for the better part of a year – that Harry treats Louis like another one of the kids because Harry thinks Louis is immature, but Louis experiences it as Harry trying to control him. Where Louis sees untidy shoes at the front door, Harry sees a landmine. A scraped chin is not a catastrophe worth yelling about.
Harry juts his hand under Louis’ mouth.
“Spit it out.”
“Are you taking the piss?”
“Now.”
“No.” Louis crosses his arms. “Finish your project.”
Maybe six months ago, Harry would’ve pried it out of his mouth, but now, he’s just resigned. All the anger boils up under his skin, though, turning his ears and nose red.
“You’re such a dick.” He turns to the ribboned baubles. “Are you serious?”
“What?”
Harry picks up one of the snowmen.
“How am I meant to hang this?!” He’s doing his best not to shout. His best is skating on thin ice, though.
Louis defends himself at a reasonable volume. “I made loops at the top!”
“Exactly.” Harry holds the loops up to the light fixture, demonstrating how there’s no open hook to pull the loop onto. “I’ll have to tie new loops. It’s going to look awful.”
“It’ll be fine. They’re not going to be looking at the ribbon.”
“That’s not the point!”
They both still. Harry has broken the whisper-bubble. Both their eyes snap upward, as if they could see through the ceiling to check on their children. When a reasonable amount of time passes with silence, Louis sighs and snatches the Florence snowman from the table to begin unworking the loop with his blunt nails.
“Forget it. It’s fine.”
“No, you said it was wrong, so I’m fixing it.”
“Just–” Harry tugs it out of his hands – “let me do it.”
“Fine.” Louis acquiesces, tipping his chair back and crossing his leg as he works through the sticky mess in his mouth from the toffee penny “You look like a gremlin.”
“You look like… like a…” Harry studders, and Louis smiks at him. “You’re an arse.”
He is, and he knows it. But Harry’s buttons are just too easy to push. It’s fun getting a reaction from him. It’s like some warped video game, and while he thinks fondly about earlier versions with simpler narratives and fewer enemies, this is the version he has now.
For now.
Teasing Harry used to mean – for years – flirting. A smile, then a kiss, then sometimes sex. Banter. It used to be banter. Then Harry started yelling and screaming and calling it all sorts of things other than banter and started unironically calling Louis all sorts of names. Not in front of the kids, not anymore, since Roman’s teacher wrote home that he’d called someone a twat in the schoolyard.
Louis had investigated, and the fucker had deserved it for stealing the football Roman and his mates had been using. Harry had been overly apologetic to the school, then ripped Louis’ head off for it later that evening.
“I’d never call you a twat, darling. You’re a proper cunt.”
He’d slept on the couch.
“They should bring back the mint one like they did coffee creme,” Louis says.
“What are you on about?”
“Quality street. I miss the mint creme fondant.”
“There’s never been a mint fondant.”
“Yes, there has. I remember it fondly. Mint green wrapper. Only me and my grandad liked them.”
“You make up the strangest shit. Pass me Paris.”
“Please and thank you,” Louis says, doing as he’s told. “I’m not making it up. I remember it when I was little.”
“Well, I don’t remember it.”
“I’m older than you. Maybe you’re too young.”
“You are only four years older than me!”
“Exactly, I had enough sweets-eating experience behind me to catch the last of the good stuff before those fuckers discontinued it.”
“Whatever.”
Neither of them say anything more until Harry’s finished and Louis has worked his way through a fudge.
It looks fine, and Louis has to threaten another toffee penny to get Harry to let it go and go back to bed. And when he does, Louis gives him an hour or so to read in bed alone while he watches Severance on low volume before crawling up the stairs. He hears Harry rearranging their body pillow wall, and the lights are off when he finally enters the room.
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