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Toby swung back the bottle of scotch and closed his eyes.
“Slow down darling, I’d say you’re almost a third of the way through that.”
Toby grunted in mock indigence, but a smile broke over his face nonetheless. He rested his chin on top of the head nuzzled into his neck with a sigh. All around him was warmth--warmth of the thick blankets above him, warmth of the body lain against him, warmth of the red wine they’d already consumed running through him, warmth of smooth trumpets as Blue Champagne played on the radio. Part of him swore he could even feel warmth from the flickering flame of the Christmas candles he’d lit. His finger traced along Adil’s back with the crescendo of the music.
“I shan’t. It’s a holiday.”
“It’s not even Christmas Eve yet, you dolt,” Adil pestered, though Toby felt a grin against his neck. They both knew that this was Christmas for them; the Christmas that they could not have on the actual day, as Toby’s mother would whisk him away to mass and parties and dinner and all sorts of other things, much of which seemed terribly unnecessary in wartime. There would be drinks and sweets to consume, gifts to exchange (sans the rationed paper, as apparently the very concept of surprise had to be taken by the damn Nazis as well), and most of all, available girls to avoid. Toby was filled with more preliminary exhaustion than he was excitement. Yet he understood his mother’s need for distraction. If she hadn’t opened the hotel to the extra festivities, all that was left was to face Christmas with a dead husband and a son off at war, just the two of them left.
Adil would be spending much of it, sans Christmas day, behind the bar. Not that he minded much, he said. It wasn’t his holiday. Not that he much had “his” holidays anymore either. Adil still fasted during the holy month, as much as he could, and saved up his day off to visit his sister on Eid. But it was not nearly a match for the feasts and celebrations he’d describe to Toby in his room after the sun went down.
“We’d get new clothes, money,” he’d reminisced one night, between hungry chews of the meal that Toby had ordered him, “Ammi would buy Ruhi a set of bangles and she’d spent the day clicking them in my ear.” He’d chuckled gently. “I’d push her away, but it was all in good fun.” The unspoken addition was, of course, “I miss it,” but Toby heard it loud and clear all the same.
As for Christmas, Adil enjoyed looking at the candlelights in frosted church windows and listening to the carolers as they paraded the streets, but he was perfectly content to enjoy it from afar. Just as he had his entire life. Perhaps just a little closer now that he was with Toby.
“Look at that,” Adil mumbled, nudging his head towards the window. “That’ll be a beast to walk home in.”
A cold rain pelted outside the window. It had snowed the day before, so no doubt the streets were now running with browned slush. The kind that seeped into your shoes, soaking and staining your socks and freezing your feet to the bone. London was usually lacking for the picturesque white snowdrifts romanticized in country landscapes, but if Toby’s mother’s grumbling was anything to be believed, the crystalline white was not worth the droning monotony of a rural winter.
“I simply couldn’t let you, in this terrible weather,” Toby said as he dipped back to take another swing of his bottle, balking a bit when it was suddenly taken from his hand. Adil rolled to his side and took his own long swing, humming in contentment as he lowered it. “I’m afraid I really must press that you stay here tonight.”
“If I must,” Adil sighed and drank again, longer this time. Toby had said it in jest, but part of him hated watching Adil walk out in his worn coat and street shoes. He'd always wanted to offer him some of his older winter clothes, but a hotel employee being seen wearing the belongings of the owner would likely arouse questions, even if they could try and explain it away with an act of charity. In any case, Adil had refused his offers to buy him new ones.
Adil fell back against Toby, this time resting his head on his chest and looking up towards the ceiling. He swirled the bottle on his torso, until Toby took it back from him and took another gulp himself.
“’S good,” he heard from under him.
“Glad it is,” Toby said. “I bought it because of the damn ad. Was all festive, I suppose. God, this war has so deprived us that I fall for some well-drawn snow and holly on a booze ad.”
“Toby, I feel as though even without the war you’d fall for that sort of thing.”
“Hrm. What do you know?” Once again the bottle was wrestled from his hand and into Adil’s, who took two affirmative gulps. “I have another bottle, you know. You can have your own and stop taking mine.”
Adil rolled his head back to send Toby a smirk. “But annoying you is half the fun, Mitwa.” He drank two more swallows, holding up the bottle to study its contents--it was more than half gone, with what remained sloshing behind the amber-colored glass.
“Never took you for much of a drinker.” Indeed, Adil spent his life pouring and mixing alcohol, with the scent often clinging to him as a result, but Toby had hardly ever seen him partake in it. He’d spent more than a few drunken nights looking up at a pair of concerned or jestingly scolding dark eyes. Yet this image--a slumped, messy-haired Adil tipping back a bottle after they’d long abandoned the glasses to Toby’s bedside table--had eluded him for quite some time. And he had to admit, it as alluring as it was amusing.
“You must be a terrible influence on me, I’m afraid.”
“Indeed.” Toby wrapped his arms over Adil’s chest, strategically placed so Adil could still comfortably sip from the bottle. The warmth was now encompassing, all-consuming, mixing with the weight of alcohol in his stomach. Toby felt his eyelids get heavier, letting his hands feel the rhythmic expanse and exhale of Adil’s stomach as he breathed. That is, until Adil started pressing messy kisses to his cheek, chin—shakier than usual, less controlled than Adil usually was. The scotch drifted on his breath. Toby let his head fall back in contentment. But then--
“Damnit! I almost forgot!” Toby gently pushed Adil off of him and scrambled to the other side of the bed. He reached down to rustle through his work bag, hanging off the side in a rather undignified manner. Until his got his hands on a package wrapped haphazardly in newspaper, pulling it quickly back to Adil.
Adil seemed to sober in an instant. “Toby, I thought we said no gifts. I can’t accept anything if I haven’t gotten you anything in return.”
“I’m sorry, I just had an idea, and I would love it terribly if you’d open it. I don’t expect anything from you.” Toby looked to him with a wide smile, and Adil relented as Toby knew that he would. He gave a scoff for show, but Toby could see his curiosity all the same.
Adil seemed to have wanted to remove the paper with the same concentration and grace that he used in all aspects of life, but the alcohol got the better of him and before long he was simply ripping it away.
“You tried, darling.” Toby quipped.
“Oh, shut up--oh. Oh, Toby...”
Adil’s protests died when the paper fell away to reveal an Urdu record.
“Is this...?” Adil asked. Toby nodded.
Toby had managed to find one from a work colleague whose father had spent some time as an officer in the northwest of the subcontinent, brushing off the young man’s questions about what suddenly interested him in Indian music. He wasn’t sure what the title meant, what year it was from, or if Adil had even heard it before, but he knew that he’d done well. As far as he knew, Adil hadn’t managed to get his hands on any music in his native tongue other than the few records that his family had brought over, and even those he never heard with how rarely he saw them.
Adil looked to him, eyes gleaming.
“Thank you, Mitwa,” Adil whispered, before leaning forward. Toby accepted his kiss. It was chaste, but affectionate. The proper kiss for a cold not-quite-Christmas night.
“Shall we put it on?” Toby nodded towards the record player, and Adil seemed briefly tempted. But then his face fell.
“Best not, I’d think. It’s late, and the neighbors might hear. This would attract more attention than our normal fare.” Toby nodded solemnly. He ran his hand through Adil’s hair.
“We’ll find another time. Perhaps over at your place.” Adil smiled gently and cradled package in his arms. Toby couldn’t help but feel another burst of pride over his work. Adil still rarely spoke of things he missed from India, unless prompted—Toby hoped at this point that it was more of a coping mechanism than fear of bothering him. But he’d heard enough passing comments as Toby tuned the wireless to know that he missed Indian music just as he missed Indian food or Indian heat. He could certainly get by without it, and England had its own fares to offer. But the lack of spice or bitter cold got to him on certain days, much like how, from time to time, Toby caught him absentmindedly singing to himself in Urdu early in the mornings.
And of course, on holidays like these there was so much talk of home and family. Adil had sacrificed so much of that already. Perhaps a piece of his birth country, at least, could lessen that cut.
“I would like that very much.” Adil stood, with just the slightest of wobbles, to place the record atop his white work coat, flopped across Toby’s chair. Toby invited him back into bed with the bottle back in hand.
“At this rate I won’t be able to clock into work tomorrow,” Adil groaned, though he took the bottle gladly and tipped it back before he’d even fully lay down. He shuffled back into his place resting on Toby’s arm, tucking himself back into the crook of Toby’s neck. The warm returned, and Toby accepted it gladly. “It’ll be all your fault...” a pause, another sip, “...if I’m too hungover to serve your mother her poinsettias.”
He was exaggerating, of course. Toby couldn’t imagine that he couldn’t walk this off. But there was no harm in playing along.
“Sounds alright to me. Then we could go back upstairs and I might have you all to myself.”
“You’ll have none of me, if I’m fired and sent out to the street. A-and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”
"My mother does get rather testy if she doesn't get her cocktails." Toby tapped Adil’s hand, still firmly wrapped around the neck of the bottle, with an impish expression. “But didn’t you say that takes two hands to clap?”
Adil sent him a playfully apprehensive expression, pulling his hand (with the bottle) away from Toby’s teasing with a huff. “Don’t use my proverbs against me, you monster.”
“All weapons are fair in a battle of wits.”
Adil took another swing. Then, inspiration seemed to take him. Before Toby could question what he was doing, the bottle (practically empty) was placed firmly on the bedside table. Adil crawled back, then swung his leg over Toby’s body. Toby let out a little "umpf!" but didn't fight at all, simply lying in shocked amusement. Adil sat straight up, high and triumphantly astride his waist. Then, bending forward slightly, he took Toby’s hands in his and laced their fingers together with a devilish smile playing at his lips. Toby’s back was pressed against the mattress, and his head fell limply against the pillow.
“You may have the upperhand in a battle of wits, Mr. Hamilton. But unfortunately for you, I...” another pause, this time just to steady his head and take a gulp without any drink, “I know how to win in the end.”
Toby stared up at him, that infectious warmth now spreading to his cheeks--and he knew Adil could see it. Yet he was determined not to give in. "You'll not best me, Mr. Joshi."
Adil, much to both Toby's delight and dismay, was quick to take that as a challenge. He bore forward, pressing down a little farther, dipping down to mumble oh-so-softly into Toby's ear, "Have I not, sir?" His voice was even, far moreso than it had been all night. The same even it was when he was straight-laced and proper behind the bar.
Toby’s mouth opened, then closed. His throat had tightened up, and Adil chuckled low against his ear. Then Toby simply let out a defeated laugh. “Alright, I admit it. You've won, darling.”
Adil lifted his head and pressed forward yet a little farther, close enough to rest their foreheads together. Toby closed the gap, and they kissed lazily, taking the time to breath one another in without urgency. Before too long, however, Adil broke away before sitting back again. He was still a little shaky and uneven, his breaths a little ragged. He pulled his hand from Toby’s to push back his hair, still a little gelled and sticking every which way. Sometimes it amazed Toby, who watched him blankly, how easily this man struck him dumb. Especially on nights like tonight, lit by gentle candlelight.
“You’re also a delightful drunk,” Toby said once he'd gotten his voice back, helping Adil down from his perch to lie back at his side. Adil, suddenly seeming to be very tired, nestled himself under the covers. He hummed something like “I’m not drunk,” into Toby's shoulder, but Toby just shook his head in response and laced their fingers back together as Adil flung his arm over his chest.
There was something about Christmas, Toby realized, that had eluded him all the years, yet now made sense looking down at this boy he loved. The meaning of it--togetherness, love, the promise of salvation--he'd gotten them all before, in an intellectual sense. The urgency of it all was increased with the war, as nothing was certain anymore, and so much loss was felt by all of them all around them. After all, both he and his mother were acutely aware that Freddie would not be there on Christmas morning. Once upon a time they'd run side by side to the Christmas tree in the hotel lobby, ripping open presents and collecting sweets from the servants who couldn't go home, laughing all the way. He remembered the Christmas that they both received stick horses, his brown, Freddie's white. They galloped up and down the halls, Toby trailing just barely behind his twin, being knights and cowboys and soldiers and everything in between. Even father couldn't muster enough annoyance to stop them. All of that, in more ways than one, was gone. And who knows? At any time, any of them could be too.
But something precious, something small, felt a little more real here. Perhaps it was the power of a tiny, yet great hope in times of despair, not much noticed, in fact hidden away by a world that didn't understand yet. Hope for the future, hope that everything could be as it should, even if it required great sacrifice. Like a candle lit in the dark.
“Happy Christmas, my love,” Toby whispered.
“Happy Christmas to you, Mitwa.”
Toby pressed a kiss to the top of Adil’s dark hair. “And to all a good night.”