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8th of November
“There, my first wreath of the year!” exclaimed Sarah, as she wired the final cluster of dried orange slices into the pine, nestling them in between the needles. “Oooh I feel all festive now, I might go and put some Christmas songs on!”
Nick rolled his eyes. Nobody loved Christmas as much as his mother did, and he couldn’t understand why. It was a slog, and it seemed to get earlier every year. Gone were the days where their annual onslaught of Christmas installations actually started in December. Now he was fielding requests as soon as Halloween was over.
As Sarah admired her handiwork, he leaned over the counter and flicked through the shop diary. Six pubs, two offices, eight restaurants, three shop fronts and one massive hotel. All needing christmas trees and garlands and various other festive decorations, all seemingly within the same three-week period. And that was before you counted the winter weddings, the Christmas markets and the shop orders that had also started trickling in.
Great, thought Nick, I’ll just split myself in three so we can get all this done. No worries. Merry Christmas.
“One down, only about three-thousand more to go. The amount we have on this month is insane. I swear we’ll all be dead from exhaustion by Christmas Day,” he grumbled, not looking up from the diary.
“Don’t be a grinch, Nicky. We’ll manage it. Have you booked Imogen in for the month?”
“Yep she’s here for pretty much the whole of November and December, so we better get her a decent Christmas present this year. Plus Charlie said he’d help if he could.”
"Oh he's such a good boy. See? It'll be fine sweetheart. You get so stressed about these things, but it really will all be okay!"
His mum gave him a squeeze before heading off to the back of the shop to dig out her much loved Christmas Hits CD, Nellie hot on her heels as usual.
Famous last words, Nick thought, and he sighed heavily as the opening bars of Step into Christmas started to blast out from the shop's ancient CD player with Sarah humming cheerfully, if slightly tunelessly, along.
Exasperated, Nick pinched the bridge of his nose, futilely trying to ward off the oncoming Elton-John-induced headache. Like it or not, and he was very much on team not, Christmas was definitely coming.
1st of December.
There was something a little bit creepy about being in an office building on the weekend, Nick decided. It was eerily quiet, with only a solitary security guard sat at the front desk, and he was far more interested in watching a tinny version of some action movie on his mobile phone than what a couple of florists were up to at stupid o'clock on a Saturday morning.
In theory, this should be a quick job for him and Imogen. Just a tree to put up and decorate, and a garland to hang on the reception desk, and this wasn’t even the biggest tree they had to decorate this year, that was next week’s eighteen-footer. Still, this one was choosing to be an awkward bastard and they’d already repositioned it about ten times, which was making Nick's arms and back start to ache.
“Can you just shift it over my way a bit? I think it's wonky,” he grunted at Imogen whilst trying to ignore the burn in his shoulders.
“I’m trying my best, Nicholas, we don’t all have your rugby muscles,” she grumbled as she tried to barge the mountain of pine a couple of centimetres to the left. “Right, you hold it steady and I'll check.”
Tentatively, Imogen let go of the tree, letting Nick take its weight whilst she moved back a few paces to assess if the thing was straight in its stand. She squinted at it, contemplating the tree in front of her as she moved around it, umming and ahhing.
“In this lifetime, Im?!”
“Yeah, I mean, I think that's good? It looks straighter from the front than from the side but I think that's the best we’re going to get… I’ll screw it in.”
She crawled under the tree and screwed the trunk into the base, until there was no way the huge tree was going to budge.
“Right, moment of truth!” Imogen took her scissors and sliced through the netting that was keeping all the branches contained. As they began to fan out, the tree taking shape in front of him, Nick had a bad feeling about it. Stepping back, he took in the finished product.
“Oh fucking hell, this tree is about as straight as I am. We can’t give them this!”
“Yeah…I mean, now we can see it properly, the trunk is quite…wobbly?”
“Wobbly? It looks like it was cut down from a forest in fucking Whoville!” Nick rubbed his face, ignoring the fact that his hands were filthy from hauling in the tree. “What the fuck are we going to do? This needs to be installed today. I don’t have time to go back to the wholesaler, get a new decent tree, and get it lit and decorated. It’ll put us so behind and we have so many other jobs on this weekend.”
“Can you send David to pick up a new one?”
“Who do you think picked up this one?! I don’t trust him not to just get another one that fell off the back of a van, like this one clearly did.” Nick squawked.
Imogen exhaled a deep breath.
“Can you just calm down a bit Nick, you’re stressing me out. We will sort this, it's going to be okay. Let's take it down, get the garland hung up, and think of something to sort this mess out.”
******
“And it was so crap we just had to haul it back out to the van. There was no way I could pass that off as ‘a grand seasonal spruce, beautifully lit and tastefully decorated in festive shades of green and gold.’ Nice words on the quote, by the way, they ate that shit up.” Nick said as Charlie handed him a cup of tea and sat down next to him on his battered old sofa.
“Thanks, I’ll let my editor know you’re impressed with my copy,” Charlie answered wryly as he slid his socked feet into Nick’s lap. “What did you do in the end?”
“Imogen called Chainsaw Chris, who saved the day by bringing over a new tree, so we only ended up a couple of hours behind rather than a whole day. Thank fuck.”
“You have got to stop calling him Chainsaw Chris. He's a tree surgeon, not a serial killer, and you know Imogen hates it when you call her boyfriend that.”
“That's why it's so funny, Char. I need to find the humour where I can at the moment, Christmas is terrible. It should be cancelled."
Charlie sighed, and rolled his eyes. “Seriously, are there any holidays that don’t make you massively grumpy?”
“Hmm,” Nick hummed in pretend contemplation. “Bastille Day? That's alright I suppose.”
“Yeah, not so many flowers associated with prison breaks and guillotines I guess, very cheery...”
Nick gulped down the rest of his tea and put his mug on the coffee table before sliding down the sofa next to Charlie, wrapping his arms around his waist and burying his face in Charlie's jumper with a groan.
“Urgh, I have to go to bed soon, I need to be up at 3am. Don’t wanna put up any more Christmas trees.”
Charlie chuckled at his boyfriend’s continued grumpiness and ran his fingers over the short hairs at the nape of Nick's neck, rhythmically tracing little lines up and down. “You haven’t even put your own tree up yet!”
“Not going to,” Nick grumbled. “I don’t want to decorate any more bastard trees.”
“Ahh, there it is, the spirit of Christmas. Joy to the world, and all that jazz.”
“There is no joy here, Charlie. Only pine and pain and tiredness.”
Rolling his eyes, Charlie kissed the top of Nick’s head, which made Nick squeeze him a little tighter.
“I guess I should head home if you have to get up so early, I don’t want to keep you up.”
“Nooo. Not fair.”
Nick scooched up a little and pulled Charlie tighter to him in one swift movement. He crushed their bodies together on the small sofa, legs entwined, his lips moving down to Charlie’s neck as he pressed kisses onto the exposed skin, in the hope that it would make Charlie forget any notion of hometime.
“I see what you’re doing,” Charlie laughed. His voice sounded a little more breathless than before.
“Argh, my plan is foiled,” Nick mumbled into Charlie’s neck as he peppered it with a few more tiny kisses. He rested his chin on Charlie’s chest, looking up at those blue eyes that made his insides turn to absolute mush on a daily basis. “Maybe I could stay over at yours tomorrow night?”
“You better,” replied Charlie, stroking his thumb softly along the stubble on Nick’s jawline. “You’ve had so many ridiculously early starts, I feel like I’ve hardly had any proper Nick-time recently. I want you back in my bed before it starts making me dislike Christmas too. We can’t both be grinches.”
“Nope,” agreed Nick, as he leaned in to kiss Charlie one more time. “Better not let that happen.”
10th of December
With a large crate wedged under his arm, Nick pushed open the door to the function room of the noisy pub, fully expecting to find his mum tidying up after the wreath-making class she'd just been running.
This pub had been one of their contracts for years. Flowers on the bar all year round, plus decorations for Christmas. Simple.
This year, however, they'd asked Sarah to run a wreath-making session in the run up to get punters in the festive mood, and spend a bit more money. For the price of the ticket, those attending would get everything they needed to make their own door wreath, under Sarah's expert tutelage, plus a glass of mulled wine thrown in.
By now the class should have been over, it was only meant to last a couple of hours, but instead of being greeted by boxes of leftover pine cones and spruce ready to load into the van, Nick was instead met by about twenty very tipsy middle aged women. Including his own mother.
"Mum?" He asked, his eyebrows raised as he assessed the scene in front of him. "Everything alright?"
"Nicky! My darling boy!" She practically screeched at him. "I forgot you were coming to help pack up. We just got a bit distracted by chatting, didn't we girls?"
"Is this your son Sarah? He's handsome isn't he!" A woman piped up from the back. A murmur of agreement went round the group.
"You all seem very… merry?" Nick said, tentatively, popping the crate down on the floor.
"Well we finished the mulled wine and then Linda over there suggested we get some prosecco, and it's just been so much fun. I feel so festive!"
Festive is definitely one word for it, Nick thought as he fought to keep his expression neutral.
"Glad you've been having a good time mum, you carry on. I'll start taking things down to the van, yeah?"
He loaded as much as he could up in the crate and picked it up with ease, balancing it on his hip to free up one of his hands as the women chatted behind his back far more loudly than they probably realised.
"So strong too! Is he single Sarah? I have a daughter about his age…"
"Never mind your daughter Jill, I'm bloody single!"
Nick decided he better pack up quicker and escape before they started pawing at him.
"Stop it Sandra, you'll scare him off! So Sarah? Is he single?"
"Oh no," said Sarah, misty eyed, as she watched her youngest son slip out of the door. "He has the loveliest boyfriend! They're so perfect for each other!"
"The good ones are always gay," someone, possibly Sandra, grumbled.
"He's bisexual, actually.” She corrected, taking another sip of her drink. “I'm so proud of him, he's been so happy since he met Charlie. I feel like I can finally stop worrying about my baby," Sarah's voice was starting to wobble a little bit. "Oh look at me, I get so emotional when I've had a drink. Do you think we have time for one more for the road?"
24th of December
The afternoon of the 24th officially brought the curtain down on Christmas at Nelson's Floral Design.
Orders had been sent out, a mountain of gift bouquets, potted hyacinths and table centre pieces had been collected, and Nick and Imogen had both had a glass of mulled wine to celebrate whilst they tidied up the remnants of the week, which was about as close as he was going to get to festive cheer. Now, he could lock the front door, and turn his back on the shop knowing he had at least a couple of days off to recharge before he had to go back in there and clean everything out properly ready to reopen in the new year.
Hauling himself up the stairs to his flat, Nick was looking forward to having a hot bath, and vegging out in front of the television for a bit before crashing into bed. His muscles ached like never before, and he wasn’t convinced at this point that the pine sap that was ingrained into his hands was ever going to come off, no matter how many times he scrubbed at them.
Wearily, he shoved his key in the front door, but as he turned it, something felt off. He could have sworn he double-locked it this morning? Maybe I’m just tired, he thought. It had been a very long month, after all.
Stepping into the small hallway and quietly shutting the door behind him, things felt even stranger. His flat should have been in darkness, but instead there was a warm glow emanating from his front room. Nick was sure he hadn’t left any lights on when he’d left that morning. He was usually very good at remembering to switch everything off.
Confused, he walked through the doorway expecting to find a lamp he’d stupidly left on, but instead he was met by rows and rows of warm white fairy lights strung up all over his living room. In fact the whole place was looking decidedly more festive. Some paper snowflakes hung from his mantelpiece, and in a corner by the window there was a Christmas tree, adorned with a mish-mash of colourful decorations.
And there was Charlie, perched on a chair, attaching a star to the very top branch.
“Oh my god Char, did you do all this yourself? Nick gasped.
Charlie whipped his head around and positively beamed back at Nick.
“Um, yeah? Sorry, I wanted to surprise you. You’re home earlier than I thought.” Charlie stepped down from the chair and went to wrap his arms around Nick’s neck instead. “It felt a bit sad that you don’t have any Christmas decorations of your own, so I borrowed your spare key off your mum and put up the best that big Tesco still had to offer… I got some bits to make dinner too. Thought I could stay here tonight and then at least we’d get to wake up together on Christmas Day before we have to go and do all the family stuff…”
Nick pulled Charlie closer to him, burying his face into the crook of Charlie's neck, breathing him in and hugging him as if both their lives depended on it. “It's amazing, I can’t believe you did all this for me.”
“I’m glad you like it,” replied Charlie with a soft laugh, as he squeezed Nick back.
“I love it,” Nick murmured as he nuzzled closer to Charlie, “I love you.”
Shit. He froze. Did I just say that out loud?
“What?” Charlie pulled back to look at Nick properly. “What did you just say?”
Nick could feel his heart seizing as he processed what he’d just said, as usual, his tired brain was about three steps behind his big mouth. His face was burning up, and his palms felt weirdly clammy. Was he having a panic attack? Was this what a panic attack felt like?
Even though he knew he loved Charlie with every fibre of his being, this was still terrifying. What if Charlie thought it was too soon for ‘I love yous’? Nick didn’t want him to feel pressured to return the words if he didn’t feel it too. Or worse, what if he got freaked out by Nick’s clinginess and decided to break up with him? He didn’t think he could bear the heartbreak if that was the case, but now there really was only one way to find out…
“Erm, I love you?” answered Nick tentatively, brown eyes wide as they stared into Charlie’s blue ones, trying to seem an awful lot calmer than he actually was. “You don’t need to say it back or anything! I don’t expect… I just… yeah. I love you, Charlie.”
Without warning, Charlie crashed his lips against Nick’s in the most passionate kiss of his life. Nick felt as if all the air had been pulled from his lungs as he grabbed at Charlie’s jumper, desperate to have him even closer. Just as his heart was starting to feel like it might burst out of his chest, Charlie pulled back, smiling at Nick with barely contained glee.
“I love you too, you idiot!”
“Really?!”
“Nick, I’ve loved you for ages.”
At that revelation, Nick’s face broke into a wide grin. He felt like he might burst with joy right then and there.
“Ages?! Why didn’t you say something?"
“I just… didn’t want you to think I was being too much I guess?” Charlie confessed.
“I’ve been in love with you for ages. I just didn't want you to feel pressured into saying it back!”
Charlie laughed, and buried himself into Nick’s chest, their arms still wrapped around each other.
“Why are we like this? I guess we’re both idiots.”
“I don’t care,” Nick replied as he pressed a kiss to the top of Charlie’s head. “I kinda like it. We’re idiots in love, at least”
“Hmm,” Charlie murmured in agreement, as he stood on his tiptoes to brush his lips to Nick's, “idiots in love.”