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Adam was used to the festive season consisting of going out on Christmas Eve, getting off his face enough to stomach the company of his unbearable uni mates and their unbearable girlfriends, possibly getting with a total stranger while coked-up in the smoking area, and waking up alone on Christmas morning with little recollection of any of the above. He would prepare the traditional Christmas Day banquet of a Tesco ready-meal and a bottle of something unpronounceable, and settle in front of Film4 to watch whatever satisfyingly un-festive arthouse shit was on. He’d get drunk enough to call his sister, ignore her pointed remarks about how he never visited anymore, and fall asleep early, wondering whether next year would be any different.
-
Of course, in the year of the coalition, all that changed. They’d been on the way to work one morning when Fergus had told him, bright-red and stammering, that his mother had told him in no uncertain terms to invite Adam for Christmas. Adam had told him to kindly fuck off to start with - it had been less than four months since that fateful night in Hertfordshire and he wasn’t a huge fan of domesticity in any form, let alone domesticity with sleigh bells on. The countryside wasn’t exactly his friend, either; anywhere outside of the M25 might as well have been a wasteland, as far as he was concerned. But the more he thought about it, the idea of waking up in a warm house where someone else was cooking his breakfast, and where people genuinely wanted to be in each other’s company, seemed quite appealing compared to his usual fare. So he had accepted, realising with a mild panic that this meant buying Christmas presents for the first time in around 15 years. He had ended up putting the inevitable off until the day of his train out to the East Sussex countryside, and as a result had spent the worst two hours of his life trawling through the crowds of Oxford Street, trying to figure out what on earth one buys for their boss/boyfriend and said boss/boyfriend’s mother. It had taken almost every last drop of his will to live, but now he was lighter in pocket to the tune of a couple hundred quid, and relaxed into his seat on the 9pm train to Haywards Heath and to Fergus. Not long into the journey, Adam felt his phone buzz in his pocket, and couldn’t help but smile at the grainy picture of Fergus that flashed up on the screen. It was fuzzy as anything, a zoomed-in snap of the side of his face, from the background of one of Adam’s uni photos. It had taken them a good three weeks of working together to realise that they had in fact met before, albeit briefly at a party of a sister of a school friend of Adam’s in third year. It was, unsurprisingly, a rather small world for private school boys in politics.
“Where the fuck are you?” Fergus muttered, crackly down the line, “Mum’s got me peeling fucking Brussels sprouts, and she’s put shitting Strictly on as well, and if I have to hear one more comment about how much she likes that one off of Eastenders’ big muscly arms I will start peeling my own face.”
“On my way, dickhead.” Adam eyed the bag of gaudily gift-wrapped boxes taking up the seat next to him, “I’ve been busy making sure you wake up to something decent on Christmas Day.”
“I’ll be waking up next to you, won’t I, so it still remains to be seen why the fuck you aren’t here letting me get you off in my childhood bedroom.”
Adam pulled a face. “Ferg, I really don’t want to be thinking about your childhood while you’ve got your hand down my jeans. Also, you’d be fucking annoyed if the only thing you got tomorrow morning was a quick shag, so be grateful I’ve spent my evening picking through all the overpriced shit that Oxford Street has to offer.”
“Alright, alright, piss off, I’m very bloody grateful.” Adam could hear some over-jazzed pop song in the background, and could all but see Fergus bopping along when he didn’t think his mother was watching.
“Listen, what time’s your train getting in? I’ll come and pick you up. I can’t promise I won’t suck you off in the back of the Jeep, though. It’s been a long fucking three days without you and don’t tell Mum, but the one off Eastenders does have nice arms and it’s starting to get to me a bit.”
Of course Fergus had a pissing Jeep. He really was country born and bred, although it wasn’t like Adam would have rather a sports car; they typically had very little wiggle room in the back. He let his attention drift to the sky outside as the train pulled into Gatwick Station, the planes overhead nothing more than little red and white lights in the night.
“Just into Gatwick now, probably 15 minutes,” he replied, “You’d better be serious about the back of the Jeep.”
-
Fergus had indeed been serious about the back of the Jeep. So serious, in fact, he’d nearly managed to acquire a parking ticket for overstaying their welcome in the station car park, and by the time they pulled into the sprawling drive of his childhood home, Strictly had long since finished. They were met at the door by the dogs, bounding into Fergus’ chest as he crouched to greet them, and his mother, who took Adam into her arms like he was the prodigal son, all but dragging him into the kitchen - “You must have some dinner, Adam, I’ve got soup on the hob ready but I’ll have to make you something else as well, you’re wasting away…” She carried on like this for a good five minutes, pottering around the kitchen with the dogs at her feet and lecturing Fergus about not feeding Adam enough, as if that was his bloody Ministerial duty. As embarrassing as his mother was, though, Fergus was forever grateful for the way she had welcomed Adam into their little family. She’d never had any kind of problem with her son being gay, but even so he had never felt anxiety like it, making the phone call to tell her that his advisor was no longer just his advisor. Of course, she had taken it completely in her stride, claiming she’d known from the moment she met him on that afternoon back in the summer - “A mother always knows these things, darling” - and had been glad she “would only have one bed to make up, next time you both come down for the weekend”. She’d figured out that Adam was low on family before Fergus had brought it up, and had resolved to treat him as one of her own ever since. Fergus could see the difference it made to Adam, too. He was still a grumpy bastard, but he was definitely calmer when he was here, relaxed and looked after by a woman who genuinely cared for him.
-
By 11:45pm, both Adam and Fergus had been fed liberally, and had made a decent dent in Fergus’ mother’s whisky collection. She had ushered them upstairs, claiming that “Santa wouldn’t come if they were still awake at midnight” and ignoring Fergus’ reminders that they were both grown men with real jobs in the actual government, so Santa could piss off, thank you very much. They washed with heavy eyes, only half-awake as they sank onto the double bed that was far too wide for the sloping ceiling of Fergus’ childhood attic room. It had been jammed in there ten years ago when Fergus had got the job at Npower and decided that it was absolutely not acceptable for a man of his age to be sleeping in the same bed he lost his first tooth in. They lay in silence for a while, each listening to the other breathing, slow and heavy in the dim lamplight. Then, wordless and languid, Fergus reached out and traced along Adam’s shoulder, and allowed himself to be kissed so slowly and gently that he found himself shivering under Adam’s touch, overwhelmed by the sheer intimacy of it all. His hand inched down cool skin, finding the jaunt of Adam’s hip and pulling him against his own softer stomach. Stubble rough on his throat, warm whisky-breath less so. Outside, church bells faintly struck midnight. Fergus smiled against his boyfriend’s neck, aware that if this was the last night of his life, he wouldn’t mind too much.
-
The big day itself was satisfyingly not-big, an understated and cosy affair mainly involving food, drink and awful festive specials on the crackly old telly. Adam had been woken far earlier than he’d have liked by an already-dressed Fergus, wrapped in far too many layers and with the dogs at his feet. Despite Adam’s sleepy grumbling, they had spent the morning demonstrating how little benefit their weekly squash games actually had on their physical fitness by chasing the dogs around the frozen fields. On returning, exhausted, they had collapsed into the kitchen and were plied with plates stacked high with turkey, potatoes, gravy and all the trimmings (Fergus had wordlessly passed Adam his unwanted sprouts and parsnips and that had been absolutely fine). Then, stuffed full with the only square meal he’d had across the last ten Christmases, Adam had found himself drifting in and out of sleep, content and cosy, waking at one point to find he had been joined on the sofa by a now-unconscious Fergus, draped with a blanket and lying with his head against Adam’s chest. Watching his chest gently rise and fall, Adam teased his fingers through Fergus’ hair and wondered whether he’d done something absolutely fucking spectacular in a past life to be allowed this moment.