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“Now!” Arthur declared theatrically as he emerged from the kitchen with two large steaming mugs gathered into one hand and a pot in the other, the ladle in it scraping along the rim as it swung about with his movements. A scent cloud of apples and spice trailed about him. “This is what we drank back home at the holidays. In England, I mean.”
John took the pot and set it down on the raised brick hearth, then took the mug angled closest toward him in Arthur’s other hand.
“You called it wassail?” John took a drink. “Oh, fuck, that’s…” He took another drink while Arthur chuckled, pleased that his offering had found favor.
John caught his wrist and guided him down to sit next to him. Arthur got around their flat well enough, but this close to the fire it was best to be safe.
They weren’t rich. The flat came cheap, and part of the reason was because the landlord skimped on heating. It was the coldest day of the year so far, and Arthur had broken out the tactics he remembered from his own childhood: a nest of blankets and cushions on the floor near the fire, filling themselves full of hot drinks, and cuddling.
Arthur sucked down a not-insignificant portion of his own wassail, and then snuggled in against John’s side with a total lack of self-consciousness that made John’s heart soar—even now, after weeks of him getting easier with John physically.
John thought it was pretty fucking strange, when they’d spent so much time sharing a single body, for it to be so difficult for Arthur to be physical with him. But then nothing had ever come easy when it came to being together with Arthur, and John had learned to take his victories where he found them.
In this case, with Arthur going so willing, he was hardly about to miss the opportunity. He wrapped an arm around him to tuck him in that extra bit closer, and pressed his nose into the soft curls of his hair. Arthur smelled like citrus and lavender from his aftershave, and cloves and apples from making the wassail, and he laughed when John stuffed his nose deeper and sniffed him again.
Seemingly unaware he was giving John something akin to a divine blessing, he squirmed in John’s arms to settle their bodies more comfortably together, and then said, “Well. This isn’t so bad, is it?”
“No,” John agreed. He felt positively aglow, frankly. A warm fire, soft blankets, and armfuls of an Arthur sounding positively cheerful. There was a time—most of the time he remembered, in fact—he’d thought he would never get something like this.
Arthur lifted his mug, and then lowered it again. “I’m out. Where’d you put the pot?”
John took the mug. “It’s right here.” He drained his own and refilled both cups, then set the pot further away, closer to the fire where it would stay warm. “Is this spiked?”
“Of course,” Arthur said archly. “Rum is traditional. Speaking of holiday traditions,” he added mischievously, when John had passed his mug back. “We have one called caroling. It’s where a group of people get together and go about singing songs to people.”
John snorted a laugh into his drink. “That seems awfully random.”
“Yes, well, people didn’t always have radios.” Arthur grinned at him. “Winters get very dark and boring, you know. You have to liven things up somehow. Would you like to try one?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know any?”
He snickered at the sarcasm in Arthur’s response. “You listen to the radio obsessively, John. You must have picked up one or two. Here, how about this? Oh little town of Bethlehem…”
Sometimes John thought it was just as well Arthur couldn’t see, because if he could catch the moony expressions on John’s face, he’d never live it down. A couple of lines in, he forgot about the whole idea of joining, in favor of listening to Arthur’s tenor.
Arthur broke off with a scoff after the first verse. “Oh, John, you aren’t even trying.”
“No, no, it’s just that I don’t know that one.” He struggled to keep the smile out of his voice, because he was fucking lying through his teeth. “Try a different one.”
Arthur snorted at him, not fooled, but he obliged anyway, launching into “We Wish you a Merry Christmas.” He cut off again after the first verse. “Come on, John, if you want any more then you have to sing along.”
“Fine, fine.” Considering they’d heard it about ten times in the past week, he could hardly pretend he didn’t know it. They started over from the beginning, and after four verses, Arthur broke off laughing.
“Get any louder and the neighbors are going to start pounding on the floor again,” he teased.
“I was just getting into it!” So maybe he’d been booming a little. He liked singing. He liked the way it vibrated in his lungs and throat and how it came out of him. Something he’d created, just with this body of his. Not to mention how it felt to twine his voice together with Arthur’s.
He thought they sounded rather fucking lovely together.
“Give me a refill,” Arthur demanded, and held his mug out for John.
John glanced at it, then over at the pot, now too far to reach without moving, and took it with a sigh. It was awkward, stretching over to reach it, and he spilled some, and maybe he could have done that more easily but bah. The spilled liquid sizzled on the heated bricks of the hearth and the flat took on the scent of baked apples.
When he returned to his position, Arthur pulled blankets up over their knees and they sat companionably for a bit, basking in an entirely unexpected peace that, considering their life, they would never take for granted, and listening to—and watching, in John’s case—the fire flicker and crackle. Muted, drifting through the closed but not particularly well-sealed windows, came the sounds of the city: cars with their engines growling and tires hissing in the slush of the streets, people’s voices, a set of bells chiming distantly from the next street corner down where the Salvation Army had set up.
John reached up to poke his own nose. The tip felt a little tingly. He suspected Arthur had been generous with the rum.
Then Arthur, who John was learning had trouble sitting still for any real length of time in the absence of an immediate threat, squirmed around in the arm John had looped around his waist so he could lean sideways into John’s chest, nose against his neck.
“It’s been…a long time,” he murmured, “since I celebrated Christmas.”
John resettled his arms around him and hummed to show he was listening.
“I mean,” Arthur continued with a tone in his voice that meant no, John, he had things to say. “I’m not…well. It’s a religious holiday, you know? And, hm, walking through a world effusively celebrating a deity that I don’t believe in or, hah, very much like doesn’t exactly put a man in a celebratory mood.”
Normally John waited. Well. All right, sometimes he waited, while Arthur talked through these little foibles and hangups of his. Trying to justify or excuse some human silliness that John quite frankly didn’t give a shit about in the first place. It was hardly as though it was usually important. It wasn’t as if Arthur ever really talked about himself.
Only now he was. Oh. Holy shit. John sat up and tried to focus. He knew—god, how he knew—that this was a sore point for Arthur, and leaving him hanging seemed cruel. He stroked a comforting hand down Arthur’s back. “It’s all right, Arthur. I don’t need a holiday.” He snorted, struck with sudden amusement. “It’s no god of mine either.”
Arthur huffed a rough laugh against his collar bone. “No, no, that’s true, isn’t it? No, but John, what I’m trying to say is…” The empty mug chimed as he tapped it a couple of times with a fingernail. “I need some water.” He lurched upward to his feet and headed to the kitchen.
John watched those long, lean legs go from the room and then, in just a moment, come back. Arthur was never a beefy man—tended toward lankiness, even when John first met him—but he’d never regained all the mass he’d lost. But there was something enjoyable about his gawkiness. Something not frail, but…raw. Bare. The graceful strength of exposed wood or metal, stripped of its trappings. Arthur was all bone and will.
John took the mug when it was held out to him and set it aside, then pulled Arthur back down to himself. He was greedy and he didn’t care if Arthur knew it. He wanted him in his lap. Arthur laughed softly at being gathered in, but he drew the line when John would have curled him against his chest.
“Water, John,” he said imperiously, resisting being turned and holding a hand up.
John rolled his eyes and pressed it into his hand. “Fine. Now what were you saying?”
Arthur didn’t answer immediately. He settled in against John and stared sightlessly into his mug. Thinking. “Christmas is traditionally a time of family,” he said after a bit. “I suppose that’s important to know; culturally, how we’re raised with it. We give each other gifts, try to be especially mindful of one another's happiness and well-being and, you know, be compassionate. Care for one another. Families and friends come together. There’s a great deal of celebration, and also generosity, and gratitude. Decorations and parties and dinners. It’s…fun. And pretty, and happy. That’s what it’s meant to be.”
John nodded. Every time they went out into the city, he saw all that. “It does seem…nice. I like the decorations.”
“Yes. You don’t need to have faith to be able to enjoy it. For many people, it’s…it’s more about family than it is about that, even.”
Ah. Now the pieces came together. Oh. “And you don’t have family.”
It was an ache in John, Arthur’s loneliness. They’d shared a body, shared a life, and sometimes that loneliness felt like a bottomless gulf inside him. Something John could never have a hope of filling.
But fuck. Fuck, he wanted to. And sometimes, it seemed like he was making inroads.
Now, he could feel the recoil in Arthur’s body; the tiny flinch that wanted to sink back down into himself and disappear, hide from the endless ache. He held Arthur closer. No one could protect Arthur fully from his own past but damn if John wouldn’t use whatever power he had to try. At least to remind him he wasn’t alone.
“Not…anymore, no.” His body swelled and then deflated in John’s arms as he heaved a heavy sigh. “I haven’t celebrated since I lost Faroe. When there are children…oh.” His head lolled dreamily against John’s shoulder. “It’s magic, John. And I always wanted magic for her. I wanted her world to be wonderful.”
John kissed him on the forehead, just to give him something kind to feel. To make sure Arthur could feel him there. “I know you did.”
Arthur nodded. “Sometimes…a couple of times, Peter took me with him to spend it with his family. Said he didn’t want me sitting alone and brooding about it,” he added wryly. “Said it wasn’t good for me. Hah, and he wasn’t wrong. So I let him. But it…hurt. As much as it helped.”
“Arthur…” Oh that ache. Like Arthur had just plummeted into a frigid lake at the bottom of a black chasm. He’d give so much to know how to pull him out reliably. To shake away these moods that took him out of nowhere. He wanted that brightness and cheer from earlier back.
Arthur. Happy.
But Arthur shook his head. And then shook it again, harder. “No, no, what I’m trying to say is…it’s been a long time since it felt like Christmas to me. Since I wanted to celebrate. Since I had anything to celebrate, John. But here… Today. With you.” He set his hand to John’s other shoulder and followed it up John’s neck to his jaw.
John followed his gentle tug to let himself be pulled down into a kiss. Kept Arthur there when he made to pull back, because he wanted Arthur to feel how much John felt for him. Wrapped his arms around him and held him tight and kissed him like he could pour it from his mouth into Arthur’s, till Arthur finally pushed away in self-defense, laughing over John’s enthusiasm.
He stayed there for a moment, though, held in John’s arms and holding him, tight in each other’s embrace, before he shifted around again. This time, he settled between John’s legs and leaned back against his chest, pulling the blankets up around them both till they were snugly wrapped against the drafts that were sneaking with increasing eagerness through the crumbling caulk around the window panes now that the sun was going down. And when John folded both his arms around him, palms pressed against his belly, Arthur laid his hands over the backs of John’s.
No amount of rum could ever have made John feel this warm.
John woke a few hours later to find the room dark except for the low red glow of the fire’s embers. Arthur was cradled in his arms, stretched out against him where they’d settled to the floor, wrapped cozily in the blankets.
John blinked a couple of times, and then let his eyes drift closed, full of warmth, spiced punch and happiness.