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I tap rhythmically over the keys, trying and trying again to reply to my mum’s email about Christmas. I never usually leave this long between my replies, not wanting her to worry about me, usually replying within a day but here I am almost five days late. The last question has just bugged me. She asks every year and the answer is always no.
‘Do you think Dan will come up this year? We have enough room, did I mention that Martyn is bringing Cornelia?’ and on and on. It should be easy for me to type out that he isn’t coming, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Not when I can imagine finally spending Christmas together. I glance up to him sitting on his computer doing his final liveshow for the year. I’m so use to sitting in the same room as him it feels silly to leave, even when he’s busy like this. I love the way his eyes light up animated as he talks about his passions, music, plans for the future. Plans for our future. Only they don’t know what he’s leaving out, plans for a forever home after the tour, maybe a dog, maybe a Christmas not separated with our individual families. It pulls me back to the email and I finally type my response. It’s nothing like I normally reply with long paragraphs and general fluff but I can’t bring myself to write anymore than how I feel.
‘I’m coming up, Dan is staying here until Christmas eve then leaving to see his family. See you soon.’ I don’t even answer her other questions and other things we’d been talking about in our other emails. I sit back, feeling tired after only answering the one email, ignoring the others that had piled as I watch Dan again, talking about our mince pie list. He makes eye contact with me in the middle and notices my frown. Well I assume he noticed as he pauses his words for half a second and raises his eyebrows at me. I shrug back at him, not wanting them to speculate what made him pause. There always speculating, theorising, every pause, every look. He makes some sort of comment about me sneaking about and finishes off the lifeshow soon after.
“What were you frowning about?” he says, turning to me after his final goodbye.
“Don’t worry about it,” he gives me a look, nodding his head to the side and his hat hits him in the face. I stifle a giggle but he isn’t laughing, I know that look, it’s telling me to ‘cut the bullshit’.
“I just wish we could spend Christmas together,” he purses his lips, thinking.
“When we get a house we can,”
“That’s just too far away,”
“I know,” he looks away, back towards our tree. The real tree we decorated together last week, when we drank mulled wine, played soft Christmas tunes and kissed in our Christmas hats. He gets up from his spot on the floor, brushing the fluff off his knees.
“I’ll get started on dinner,” I watch after him as he leaves the room, unable to answer my question. It’s not like him; we’re good at talking through our emotions. We learnt how to do that after 2012 and we said never again would we let that happen. Before I can get off the couch and go after him my phone buzzes in my pocket. I answer reluctantly when my mum flashes up.
“Hi mum,” I say, putting on a false level of enthusiasm despite knowing she’s calling about my last email.
“Philip, how are you dear? I’m calling about Christmas as you didn’t seem to answer any of my questions in your email,”
“Sorry,” I say cringing at the sound of my voice, a mix between tired and apologetic.
“Let’s cut to the point, I’d like to invite Dan to Christmas,”
“He needs to visit his family,”
“You and I both know he can do that over New Years,” I know what she’s referring to, when Dan stayed with us right before Christmas in 2009 and ended up in tears the day he was leaving, telling me he didn’t want to go to his family, almost begging me to let him stay and telling me how his family didn’t care much for Christmas and he could see them in the new year. While I’d tried to console him my mum had been eavesdropping from the other room. When he finally left after I’d agreed he could come back as soon as Boxing Day, she’d come to comfort me. My own resolve cracked once he’d walked out the door, I’d only been keeping it together for his sake. And then last year he almost threw his Colin mug at the wall, frustrated after spending probably a little too long with his family, wishing more than anything to be with me, not around the people he knew loved him but he always felt never understood him.
“I don’t know mum, what are the fans going to think?” I chew on the inside of my cheek, she’s making this harder than it needs to be. This is how it is, Dan goes to his family and I go to mine. We don’t get to be a normal couple, not with a million eyes watching our every move.
“Let them think. Does it matter these days anyways, don’t they think you’re a couple regardless of what you do?” I regret making my mum a private twitter account, now she can see everything the fans are saying. She always sends me links to long posts of theories that are a little too close to the truth. She is right though; I don’t really care what they think of our relationship in the end.
“What do you want for Christmas?” she says after a long moment passes.
“To spend it with Dan,” I answer without any hesitation, it’s all that’s been on my mind.
“Exactly, now no excuses, I’ll book both of you train tickets for Thursday,” before I can begin to stay anything she’s hung up on me and left me gaping into the air. Dan pops his head back into the room, holding two jars.
“Thai curry or butter chicken?” he glances up at me.
“Who was that on the phone?”
“My Mum, she’d like you to come with me for Christmas,” he ponders, twirling the jars around in his hands, breaking our eye contact.
“I need to see my family,”
“But do you Dan? You know you’d have a better time at mine, and you can see them for New Year’s,” he puts the jars down on the kitchen table, spinning them so the label is facing towards him, distracting his hands and his mind with anything. I wait, give him time, it’s like this when he needs to think, goes all silent and I hold my breath, patient, waiting.
“You’re mum’s really okay with it?” a small smile creeps onto my lips, hoping this is it, he’s finally agreeing.
“She was practically begging on the phone?”
“And you don’t think my parents will mind?”
“Do you think they would?”
“No,”
“Isn’t this what normal couples do, spend Christmas with the in-laws?”
“I think it is,” he smiles now, still not meeting my eyes but he’s looking towards our glistening trees. “Let’s do it, fuck waiting for a house,”
“Yeah?” I say cheekily, as he finally looks at me, the mirth in my eyes dancing between us, shared excitement buzzs around.
“Yeah,” he says with more certainty. He pads over to me in his socks, leans over the armrest of the couch close to me. I lean up and kiss the smile on his lips. Excited for the promise of Christmas together.
~~
He drags our bag in the door as I kiss my mum on the cheek. She fusses over him next, kissing him on the cheek too as he flushes. I know he hates this kind of attention but I don’t tell her to stop as she takes him into the kitchen leaving me to take our bags to our room. Martyn’s standing on the stairs as I head up, arms crossed and a smile on his face.
“So Dan’s finally staying for Christmas,” I know he’s teasing me but I can’t keep the grin off my face.
“Yeah. He is,”
~~
We pause at the top of the hill, I pull the hood up of my jacket and Dan insists on taking a picture. We giggle over the photo as it looks like I have boobs and I say I’ll post it later. We stand for a moment and I think back to the last time we were here for my birthday at the start of this year. Dan slipped down this very hill. I feel him step closer to me and grab onto my hand. I pull my hand away quickly.
“Dan what if they see?”
“What if who sees Phil?” he gestures with his other hand, the path ahead of us barren of any others. I breathe out a sigh I hadn’t realised I’d been holding. The stress of being out in public fizzles away and I allow myself the chance to hold his hand. I link my fingers with his in a tighter grip and happily walk beside him. While he’s taking in the view, I’ve got my eyes cast down to our gloved hands linked between us with the biggest smile on my lips.
~~
“Merry Christmas Phil,” I open my eyes slowly basking in the warmth of the blankets and the warmth of the man next to me. I pucker my lips lazily and he kisses me. I pull away to notice his phone pointed towards us.
“Are you filming this?” I say, my mind immediately jumping to pictures of us all over the Internet.
“I never want to forget the first Christmas we spend together,” I soften at his words and kiss him again, bless him and his soft heart.
~~
“Dan this one is for you,” Dad says, he’s standing by the tree handing out the presents one by one, playing Santa for the family. Dan raises his eyebrows at me, the presents from me in his lap, a hatching dragon egg candle, a bottle of black glittery gin labeled ‘unicorn tears’ and a cute mug that says ‘I f*cking love you’ across the front. I shrug, not knowing what it could be. He takes the present from my Dad and glances over the label.
“Kath, you didn’t have to-“ he starts but she cuts him off.
“How could I not Dan,” a soft smile on his lips as he opens the present. He holds it up a photo frame, I lean over Dan’s shoulder to see the picture. It’s a picture of all of us, my mum, dad, Martyn, Cornelia, me and Dan. Taken from my birthday, now encased in a dark wooden frame.
“Because you’re apart of the family now,” he looks on the verge of tears as he leans into my side, his thank you muffles on the fluff of my jumper.
~~
I sip on my mulled wine as I watch Dan chat passionately to my Dad about the tour this year. He’s so excited for this one, we haven’t even rehearsed yet but he’s already talking costumes and all his ideas, if I didn’t know any better I think he’d be stepping on stage tomorrow.
He looks so happy here, chatting away with my family, flaunting his obnoxious Christmas jumper, munching on one of my mum’s famous roast potatoes. He turns to me raising his eyebrows, I blink out of my staring and realise they’ve asked me a question. Dan rolls his eyes and turns back to my Dad to continue chatting, mumbling something about how I never pay attention when he’s talking. But how can I when I’m looking at him and the way his eyes light up. When we go home in a few days it’ll be on a high of spices, warmth and just happiness.
~~
Dan hurries back to the table and scoots into the chair next to mine. I feel a tap on my leg and look down to see he’s holding out one of my mum’s gingerbreads that were meant to be for dessert.
“Dan,” I chaste, but I take the biscuit nonetheless. He grins at me and a few stray crumbs leak from the corner of his lips.
“So that’s why you were so eager to help clean up?” he nods, slyly pulling another gingerbread out of what seems like thin air to munch on.
“Don’t need to make a good impression on my family then?”
“He already has,” he turns to look to the kitchen door and I follow suit, my Mum standing there with a smile I could only describe as fond.
~~
Later Dan would post a picture of his present from his family, this year a Christmas bauble with Colin on it, how original. It settles down the rumours for a while about Dan spending Christmas with us. That is until Cornelia tweets about losing to darts, and a certain boomerang ends up on Instagram. But tonight they can speculate all they want, I can’t seem to care, not when this has been the best Christmas of my life.