Work Text:
It’s the week before Christmas and the worst night of my life.
“Go on. Do it. You know you want it.”
“No.”
“Go on, Baz. It’s yours―take it!”
“I do not want it and I will not part with my money for your sick amusement. I categorically refuse. Find another sad case to fling yourself upon.”
I stand adrift in a sea of pine needles, hoping against hope that a stranger will save me from Simon Snow and his relentless pursuit of a seasonal profit. Cars pass, ignorant to my misery. If I’d known he worked here, at this last-chance market stall at the side of the road, I never would have pulled over―I would have continued my drive into the night, pinning my hopes for passable decorations on the scratchy, artificial disgraces slumped in a corner of Asda.
It’s my own fault for leaving it this late. Christmas. For pretending it wasn’t happening, rather than coping with it at a sensible point in the year―November, perhaps, or the first week of December. Not now, hours before my family arrives for a “festive gathering”. (My insides shrivel at the prospect.) I’ve nothing to greet them with―a single battered box of mince pies and now this, a roadside wrestling match with my nemesis turned boyfriend turned nemesis once more, dressed in a MERRY XMAS! apron and lopsided Santa hat.
We fell apart one Christmas. Do you remember?
“You’re out of options. It’s my tree or nothing. Suck it up, sunshine.”
“I’ll make do with cheap tinsel and smashed baubles. I can hang them off my father’s ears and sing carols, to drown out the agony.”
“Come on, Baz. Where’s your Christmas spirit?” He’s grinning, a devil from my past. I unveiled my desperation as I leapt from the car, unaware who I’d be haggling with. Snow and I haven’t exchanged a word since the break-up. (We ought to have A-Levels in miscommunication.) (Or in his case, three Ds and a C scavenged from a bin, like a wraith of Countdowns gone.) “If you don’t buy it, I’ll have to throw it away. You, Baz Pitch, will be the killer of Christmas trees. Is that what you want?”
I glare, though he has ever been immune to my disapproval. No. This isn’t what I want. Under-the-table tree sales isn’t the career I envisioned for him, though I imagine his abrasive approach to life might be an advantage. He’s certainly wearing me down―my hand curls around the money in my pocket, and it’s all I can do not to toss it in his face. I would pay you to leave me alone.
Though that’s not entirely true, is it?
Was there not a time you would have done anything, everything for Simon Snow’s attention?
I run a hand along the nearest branch. Needles shed between fingertips, spilling into the gutter. Snow isn’t selling much else tonight―there are a few cans of cheap artificial snow, a withered holly wreath, a lonely bag of bows. (The sort with a pathetic amount of adhesive, so they’re guaranteed to fall off within moments of being applied. A shining metaphor for my life, these days.)
Snow sees me looking, eyes alight with malevolent joy. “Had a good night. Lots of desperate people about, know what I mean?”
Desperate people. Yes, I know what you mean.
“Where are the good trees?” I despair. “The real trees?”
“Gone,” he says with a shrug. “Best ones were sold by the tenth.”
This is a competition, and we’ve been here before. It’s a matter of whose nerve holds, and historically he has been the victor.
I always give in to Simon Snow. It’s futile to resist.
“Fine,” I gasp, thrusting a twenty pound note at his apron. (Far too cheery. Candy canes and disgusting little elves wearing bells.) The money disappears into a pocket, presumably to be coughed up later for his favoured cider, or whatever else his debauched mind deems suitable in celebration of my surrender. “I’ll take the blasted tree.”
“Good man,” he winks, knocking off more needles as he drags it to my car. It’s an arborous bloodbath. “I’ll throw in a wreath for your trouble.”
I’d rather he didn’t, but it’s too late―his fingers are already reaching for a barbed monstrosity.
“Anything else?” I ask, more of the universe than him.
“Need any snow?” He shakes one of the cans. I bite down a response. “Two for a pound. Finest snowfall this side of the Thames.”
I make it clear, through a dazzling array of indecent hand gestures, that in a choice between death and his unsavoury waves, I favour annihilation.
“Suit yourself,” he shrugs, slamming the boot shut and severing several branches. “If you want your house to look seasonal, this is the stuff for the job. It’s a party in a can―you can’t buy that sort of festivity.” He hesitates, rubbing his neck. “Well, you can. Like I said, two for a pound.”
I try to resist. I really do. I’ve tried my whole life to resist him, the years between before and now.
And yet here we are.
(The current, it errs.)
I return to my car a broken man, three cans of fake snow and a dilapidated wreath balanced in my lap. (He somehow managed to cut me a worse deal mid-suffering―three fer two quid Baz, you can’t go wrong!)
Branches poke at my neck, a prickling reminder of my lack of spine. Whatever ruin the evening’s purchases bring is my own―giving in to Snow is a lifelong habit best left to die in school hallways, along with my pathetic, undying crush.
As I pull out of the lay-by, I glance in the rearview mirror. He watches me go, a hand raised against red light. I let myself enjoy the vision of him trapped in the glow, watching me leave him behind.
As it should be, I tell myself, merging into traffic. The tree scratches my cheek, a bloody lesson in regret. Season’s greetings to you, Snow.
Days pass quickly, an escalating blur of frenetic events. The tree lurks in the corner of my flat, spreading misery and misfortune as I rush about, hanging shredded bits of tinsel around picture frames, burning the pudding and undercooking the roast. (You can forget all about cranberry sauce and stuffing―I bloody well did.)
My family arrived the night the tree fell into my life, my sister grimacing in unhappiness. We made a game of dressing it with sticks and miscellany from the communal garden―when it was done, she said it looked as ghastly as I did. I kicked at it with petulant feet, wrapped in cheerful Christmas socks. A malignant presence. He curses me, even now.
But it’s nearly done. I glance at the clock―almost eight. Another step closer to the end.
At half past eight the lads show up uninvited, as is their wont―it’s the twenty-fourth, Christmas Eve to those who care. They tell me to dress in my best. “No flowery pyjamas tonight, Basil―look lively!”
They’re taking me to a party at a colleague’s flat―further details were not forthcoming―and from there we’re venturing into the city, to see which pubs and clubs might have room for a trio of seasonal discards.
“I don’t want to go out.”
“Stop being a Dickensian villain and put some trousers on.”
I do as I’m told.
“Who is this colleague?” I ask Dev as we exit the taxi, looking up at an unassuming terraced house. (Three storeys, four flats. In London, you make the most of all available space, up to and including the broom cupboards.) “Why the mystery?”
“It’s Christmas,” he shrugs, as if that’s an answer.
We push past a pair of inebriated elves and climb a tinselled staircase. We reach the first floor, where there must be twenty bodies crammed inside a tiny living room. Dev’s laughing, Niall’s making a pass at the snack table, and I’m left in the midst of trampled carpet, staring around at my imminent demise.
I know where I am. I realise, with an ache of dread, who this colleague must be.
Weeping mistletoe above our heads, tinned remixes of pop classics blaring out from an old speaker...there’s an ex-garland draped over the television, and a tree not unlike my own propped in the corner, presents beneath wrapped in tacky foil paper. It’s as if the one responsible for this tableau viewed The Nightmare Before Christmas as some sort of aspirational documentary, rather than fiction.
“Baz! You came!”
I turn, dreading the reveal.
You. It has to be you.
It’s always you.
I crash into blue eyes, framed in sparkly glasses that proclaim Happy New Year!!! along the frame. Wrong occasion, Snow.
“I didn’t realise I was invited,” I say tersely, sneering at felt stockings sellotaped haphazardly to the wall. “These decorations are atrocious.”
“Thanks, I picked them myself. And of course you were invited―I sent your cousin a text. Told him to nag you out of your pyjamas.”
“You’re a festive pox, a pestilence.”
The insults ricochet like so much unheeded life advice. He takes my arm and we wind between strangers, dancing to the worst playlist I’ve ever heard, drinking flat cola from paper cups. Once he has me cornered by his spindly Christmas tree, I find I can’t ignore it any longer. The need to know usurps all else.
“Snow, why are you wearing New Year’s Eve glasses? Are you a week ahead of the rest of us?”
“I wish!” he laughs, passing me what I hope is wine. “I’m just ready for it, you know? A new beginning. Another fresh start.”
A fresh start.
It’s woefully optimistic, and I haven’t the heart to remind him that the years come but never change. That we might be standing here three hundred and sixty-five nights from now, having this same conversation. (Though hopefully his taste in decorations will have improved. The Father Christmas figurine pinned to the door by his hat is truly the stuff of nightmares.)
“So...you work with my cousin? I suppose the life of a tree salesman is but a fleeting thing.”
He grins, and I join him in draining my cup. (Definitely not wine. Possibly an unidentified fruit juice.)
“Yeah, I had an interview on Monday. He said you’d be pleased.”
I try to disguise whatever weakness is lurching to the surface, but perhaps he sees. He always saw through me at school―knew when I wanted to skip maths and waste time behind the PE block, reading books. Knew when I didn’t want to be anywhere and waited for me, so we might walk and talk about nothing.
He has known me best, all these years. Through the good, the bad, the worst. The day it fell apart and the long years since, wondering why.
And he knows me still.
“I’m pleased to hear you’ve found steady employment,” I say evenly.
The way his face lights up, like Oxford Street at the beginning of November, has me melting into my cup of unidentified slush.
“How’s the tree? Couldn’t believe it, when you climbed out of that car.”
I try not to look too delighted. We’re here. Indulging in idle chatter. This is all sorts of fresh starts, and despite his flat looking like an arborist’s funeral, I don’t despise it.
Quite the opposite.
“It’s like making eye contact with my own skeleton.”
“That’s great,” he nods, grabbing my hand. “Does your skeleton dance?”
And though under any other circumstances I’d say no, the foul concoction in the cup says yes, yes you do.
So we do.
Later, when the buzz of the party has died to a hum, I listen to feet on the stairs. Voices in the street, echoes in the night.
Snow and I stand together, cramped in a tiny kitchenette. We swap stories of life since last we spoke. He tells me about his various jobs―washing windows, painting walls, repairing bicycles―all leading to the lay-by last week.
He says he hasn’t done much of anything except run; I tell him my years were the same.
“And then I realised I was running in circles.”
Always, always life brings me here.
To you.
And I think about what he said, about a fresh start. Dev and Niall are long gone; they gave up on dragging me to the pub. They watched me take one look at Snow’s “grotto” and sensed the weakness rising. The inevitable, unending pull that persists between myself and this man.
I should have known this was where my year would end―in his home, his eyes. Though time might take him far, the sea turns to bring him back.
“Baz,” he whispers over the lip of his cup. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad I sold you that tree.”
Laughter, trips on the stairs; the last guests leaving for late-night adventures. The past few Christmas Eves have been spent curled up on the sofa in my flat, demolishing selection boxes of biscuits, foil wrappers piled at my feet.
This, I think, as Simon finds a bin bag and begins to tidy. This is better.
I help him wrest his flat back from ghosts who came and went. We abandon the tidying and dance to old songs from our school days, standing in the aftermath of confetti and mince pie crumbs. I recall his face at the roadside, a red glow in the rain.
He walks to me,
Face in the brake lights. I was leaving you behind.
pushes his ridiculous glasses back,
Now I’m moving towards you. The light, drawing me in like a beacon.
looks around at the mess and opens his mouth to say,
Simon Snow. What were we running from?
There’s no fighting the current.
“Baz. Happy New Year.”
I step across the ocean of waste, meaning to return what was given―a greeting, a beginning―but at the pivotal moment he succumbs to clumsiness, tripping on the lid of a biscuit tin and flying over the peanut-strewn coffee table.
“Oh, fuck. Stupid table. Sorry!”
I roll my eyes and help him up. (Another inch to the left and he would’ve taken the villainous tree down with him, done society a favour.) “What was that, Snow? Words both wise and gracious?”
He huffs, cheeks red in the glow of flickering fairy lights. He’s never been good with words―at school he was a bumbling mess of vowels, sounds brawling to be heard first―and he abandons them now.
Simon Snow transcends the carnage and kisses me.
In front of the wilting tree, the limp wreath, the dying sprig of mistletoe he must think I haven’t noticed, hung above our heads. He kisses me, and I kiss him back because it’s what I know and all I don’t. The things I’ll never understand.
It’s rain, memory, holly, chocolate, wine, regret, forever, at once.
When it ends, we split a breathless pause.
“Baz,” he says, hands in my hair.
“Yes?”
“If you give the tree enough water, it’ll last longer. Maybe―”
“There’s no saving it.” I kiss him again to prevent another sales pitch. One mention of fake snow, and I swear to god. “It’s an abomination, a fucking disaster.”
But this isn’t―this can be saved. Resurrected, remade.
Headlights at the roadside, life bringing you back.
Later I’ll say happy new year, and I’ll mean it.
He’ll remind me there’s a week left of this year, and do I want to spend it with him, once Christmas Day is laid to rest?
(I’ll say yes.)
We stand in the midst of ruined things, wreaths and trees and decorations that no one wanted. That he saved, because that’s who he is. That he gave to me, because it’s who he knows I am.
He knew the seas would change.
And I see now what the waves bring, reflected in the lights.
