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adore-laur · 5 months

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AULD LANG SYNE

— gold rush christmas flashbacks (read parts 1-4 first)⏳

❅ ❅ ❅

How's one to know if love is everlasting?

Harry used to prioritize the notion with you, sealing the promise with a glistening diamond ring on your finger because that's what love is, right? Marrying the one person you can't live without. He vowed to be eternally yours, making up for lost time with secret oaths of pleasure and intimate words that unfurled from his tongue like the petals of a rose.

Each garland of his ivy intertwined perfectly with yours, the spark of young love nurturing every vine that started to wilt from the first dusting of snowfall.

Yet that light soon eclipsed with a shadow of neglect.

The last glimpse of radiance Harry witnessed was one he took for granted. You were right there, shining just for him, but the moment burned out right beneath his fingertips.

He remembers getting lost in the cadence of your voice and the familiarity of your presence. Blue lights had danced over your figure as you stood on your tiptoes and turned the house into a winter wonderland, a certain glow to your skin that only he knew the cause of.

❅ Time Gone By ❅

Harry stopped you from gracing around the room like an angel on ice skates by trapping you in a one-armed hug from behind, a champagne flute of vintage Dom Pérignon in his hand. Your delicate fingers reached up to hook a shiny ornament on one of the tree's upper branches, right where they started to narrow. It made him realize it had been far too long since he'd been home as he took in the evergreen standing tall and proud before him.

Cheek to cheek, Harry swayed your frame to the faint Christmas music playing in the background. He watched your every move, from how you resettled the ornament an inch over because you were a perfectionist to how you leaned back into his chest to get a better look at your work. He wanted to put you in his pocket like a plucked primrose and take you everywhere with him.

"How many more..." Your voice faded as your spirited eyes scanned the living room. You released yourself from his hold when you spotted the box of ornaments, much to his reluctance.

Harry sauntered over to the fireplace while taking a sip of his drink. After setting his glass down, he grabbed the fire poker and opened the chain mail curtain to shift the logs around. The flames instantly grew stronger, the crackling louder as orange embers tried and failed to escape. They seemed to know there could only be one clinquant brilliance in the room.

Magnetizing admiration guided his gaze to you once again as he sat down and folded his legs on the carpet. Once he was comfortable, he grabbed the half-empty bottle of champagne on the hearth and poured more of the effervescent liquid into his glass. The roaring fire heated his back as he coated his tongue with refined notes of ripe fruit and vanilla. Moonlight gleamed through the window and reflected off the many decorations he had helped place in every crevice of the house. The sweet smell of sugar cookies straight out of the oven made his stomach rumble with delight.

Then there was you, the only thing he could truly focus on for longer than a minute.

With your hair pinned back with silver snowflake clips, it was like he was seeing you for the first time. A halting feeling of falling in love all over again nestled into his heart, and you didn't even have to say a single word.

"Why are you staring at me?"

Harry almost laughed at your question. How could he not stare at you? You were made for him.

Smirking over the rim of his glass, he said, "I have a complaint," then took a quick sip and stood.

You turned back to the tree, pensively looking it up and down. "Do you not approve of my decorating?"

"You're doing a wonderful job, baby." He emptied his hand and beckoned you toward him. "Come here. Take a break for a little bit."

You shyly shrugged your shoulder up to your cheek, his favorite habit of yours, and then made your way to him. You wrapped both arms around his waist, then rested your chin on his chest with raised eyebrows in silent questioning.

"My complaint," he said lowly while smoothing his thumb over your temple that had somehow collected glitter, "is that I can't see the bump when you wear sweaters."

The tightening of your hold warmed him up, along with the knitted material loosely draped over your upper half. "It's too cold to wear anything else," you replied, smiling knowingly.

Reaching around your waist, Harry bunched the material of your sweater behind your back and tugged on it until it tightened around the small, growing curve of your stomach. "There," he whispered satisfactorily, grinning and glancing up at you with a boyish glint in his eyes.

You just scoffed amusedly and swatted his hands away before unraveling yourself from him to continue hanging the last of the ornaments. Two glass spheres dusted with lines of gold glitter were still waiting to be put on the tree with your strategic placement. Blue twinkling lights still needed to be strung and weaved around the protruding branches. The tinsel garland adorned with sparkling leaves and flowers still needed to be embellished on the staircase's banister. Harry, however, thought all those things could wait. He wanted his wife's undivided attention.

One of the cardboard boxes contained mistletoe, so he searched through them while he hummed along to Eartha Kitt's rich, sensual voice. After noisily sifting through miscellaneous Christmas items, he finally found the artificial red berry attached to an even more artificial plant. While your back was turned, he plucked it out and quietly walked toward you, turning up the volume of "Santa Baby" with the remote on his way over.

"Hey," he said, tickling the nape of your neck with the mistletoe.

You squealed and damn near elbowed him in the stomach. "Stop! You're supposed to be helping me."

"We have all night to do this."

"There's only a few more hours until Christmas. We should have done this weeks ago."

Harry's warm hands traveled under your sweater and splayed over your first-trimester bump. It wasn't fully rounded out, yet it was still a bump, and he loved it dearly, even if a baby hadn't meant to happen so soon. "We've been worried about other things, yeah?" he murmured secretively, even though no one was around to eavesdrop.

"Yeah," you replied.

"But just think… this time next year, we'll be spending Christmas together as a family of three."

"When are we going to tell people? I won't be able to hide it for much longer."

The anxiousness on your face worried him. He knew that sooner or later, the ravenous public would find out. It was only a matter of time before the vultures came circling, and his pledge of protection would again be at risk.

"Let's talk about it later," he dismissed, rubbing a circle around your belly before retreating his tender touch and spinning you around. Once you were facing him, he asked, "Can I have a kiss?"

"You're trying to distract me."

"Just one kiss. Pretty please."

You trailed your fingers down his arm. "Begging gets you nowhere."

He mockingly grumbled an echo of what you said and then bent down slightly to wrap a strong arm around your waist, effortlessly lifting you as you scrambled to hook your pajama-clad legs around him.

"I want to dance with you," he said, staring at your glowing cheeks. I beg of you."

"Put me down, then."

"What kind of dance do you fancy? Polka? Waltz? Ballroom tango?"

You laughed as Harry set you back on the floor. "Remember when you danced the polka with my grandma at our wedding?"

"I couldn't keep up with her!" he replied humorously, loving how your eyes reacted by sparkling. "Had me tripping over my feet and everything."

There was a beautiful mixture of yours and his laugh at the memory, and amid the mirth, Harry grabbed your right hand with his and held it against his chest while his other rested on the small of your back. It became a gentle sway to "Silver and Gold" with the occasional twirl and romantic dip, the two of you spinning around in a personal snow globe. He touched his forehead to yours, lazily smiling down at your lips, then nudged your nose with his before tilting his head to kiss you nice and slow. Lips that tasted like sugar melted into his, soft and addictive. His senses were heightened by the champagne he drank. His feet stopped moving as he got lost in the moment, entirely focused on how your kisses couldn't seem to catch up with his. The breathless sounds you released, and the wet pops of your lips separating made him fall under your enchanting spell.

"Your phone," you mumbled through lazy kisses.

"Hmm?" Harry hummed distractedly, kissing you again before opening his eyes and licking his swollen lips.

"I think your phone is ringing," you said more clearly, pulling away.

He processed the default ringtone and sincerely hoped it was just his mother wishing him a Merry Christmas from across the pond. Sighing, he unlaced your fingers with his and gave the back of your hand a semi-comforting pat before walking over to his vibrating phone on the hearth. He had seen the disappointed look on your face; it pained him every time. Deep down, he knew who might really be calling him.

The assumption proved to be correct when he checked the screen. The familiar number was work-related. He answered the call with a guilty scratch behind his head and left you in the living room.

How easy it could have been to just ignore it, but second nature had a poisonous grasp around his heart.

❅ ❅ ❅

How's one to know when the first crack in the glass will shatter into a million fragments of love astray?

A capricious shift in your husband's demeanor created the first sign of rupture. Pixelated countenances of despondency and physical guises of weariness were little fissures that shaped a shard so minimal that you could have brushed it aside if not for the inescapable ache in your chest that mercilessly came around at nightfall like clockwork.

The withering love between you and him was a ticking time bomb made of glass left to be disarmed by whoever was audacious enough to get their hands near the lethal sparks.

Yet the fuse burnt out quicker than expected.

That fateful detonation happened at midnight in winter. Harry was the culprit, and he never realized it until his unspoken fear blew up in his face.

You remember it all too well. The stillness was so deafening in your empty home, barren winter seeping through the walls and icing over a bed of primroses to paralyze them from growing further.

❅ Time Gone By ❅

A pathetic excuse of a Christmas tree in the corner was the only provider of light in the otherwise caliginous bedroom. Tucked and sat in the opposite corner, you brought your knees to your chest and let your husband's slurred greeting on the phone fill the lonesome silence. It was better than nothing, you supposed.

The first question you asked him was a straight nosedive toward the forthcoming bone crush. "Have you been drinking?"

Harry sniffed and replied, "Whiskey, yeah."

You shook off his lethargic tone and plastered on a smile. "Must be nice."

"Pour yourself a glass," he said, his voice sounding far away. You assumed you were on speaker. "It's the holidays, innit?"

"Can't. I need to pump later."

"Oh. That's right." A strange lull of silence passed. "How is she, by the way?"

Brass-knuckled fists squeezed your heart when you told him, "She misses you a lot."

It was an unequivocal lie. You weren't sure if she would even remember him when he eventually came home. In the year since her impromptu arrival, her own dad had been across the world more than he'd been at the house in Nashville.

"I'll be home at the end of January," Harry assured you. I just have a few more promo appearances that I need to make."

He didn't need to, did he? With a snap of his fingers and his gift of persuasion, it shouldn't have been that hard to fly back to his family when needed. You wondered if he heard himself, ignorant of the fact that his selfish words pierced you as a mother doing everything on her own. Surely, he felt guilty, but he was an expert at shrouding the parasite.

"Why can't you cancel everything and stay with us for the holidays?" you asked, letting out a muted laugh.

Through a phone call with no way to see your face, Harry didn't quite catch your attempt at being humorous. "You know the answer to that," he answered accusatorially.

"No, I really don't." The mercurial shift in moods with him was something you'd gotten used to. "Tomorrow is Christmas, and you're in Los Angeles. Not with your family. It doesn't make sense to me."

"Are we arguing right now?" he asked through a yawn. "I'm too tired to argue, love."

Patience wearing thin, you took a brutal dig at his buried flaws. "No, you're too drunk to understand how miserable this has been for me. God forbid that I want you home with our baby."

Harry scoffed and then dared to bitterly laugh. "Don't give me that petty shit, all right? You know my job, and you know my schedule. It's never changed."

"It should change now that you're a dad, don't you think?"

"Why do we always end up fighting when I call you? I've got better things I could be doing."

Cruel. Harry could be so casually cruel when drinking. On the last phone call, his tongue, as dangerous as a deadly weapon, had been laced with Hennessy and Coke.

"Our daughter's first Christmas, and you aren't here," you thought aloud while shaking your head slowly. The worst type of tears, ones stemming from frustration, prickled behind your eyes.

"You're being mean," Harry said quietly, every outside noise from his end being cut off except for his breathy voice, sounding like a gust of wind had taken it and carried it to you. His phone was now held up to his ear.

You stood your ground. "I think I'm being fair. I'm not asking much from you."

"Fuck's sake," he muttered before clearing his throat. "I can't do two things at once."

His words were a poison-soaked dagger to your flesh, cutting right to the bone and unleashing blood of vulnerability and hurt from the man who had once vowed to never cause you such harm.

Being a husband and a dad—he, of all people, should have been able to balance those two responsibilities with no problem. Where was his sudden spitefulness coming from?

You let out a morose noise of disbelief and confessed, "I hate you sometimes."

Harry sighed. "I love you," he said with that goddamned soft voice of his, a blatant attempt to veer away from the issue at hand.

Your emotions finally broke through, the lump in your throat growing until it started to ache. Looking down at the silver wedding ring on your finger, you wondered if he put it there just to lock you in. Little did he know that you were about to go down the agonizing route to get the key.

"Right now," you said shakily, "it feels like you don't give a fuck about me or our daughter."

He groaned, and you could picture him running a heavy palm down his flushed face. "We were having an innocent conversation, honey. Why do you always get pissed at me?"

A blazing assumption in the dark, considering he was the one who started it. He had lit the fuse with a single spark, and now time was ticking.

Who would pass the bomb over to whom?

Whose tears would douse the flare?

Which one of you was capable, and which was a coward?

"I get pissed because I wonder why I ever married you," you admitted, trying not to choke on affliction. "I wonder why I ever had a child with you. Why do I stay with you when you treat our family like an afterthought?"

"You're making me out to be a monster," Harry said with a twinge of helplessness. "I love you, okay? I would die for you both."

"You barely see us, so I doubt that."

"Christ, why do you say things like that?"

Running your fingertips across the carpet to seek comfort, you replied, "It's how I feel, Harry. It's how I've felt for the past year."

"Then fuckin' leave since I make you so miserable!".

Tick.

The fragile bomb was in your hands.

Tick.

There were only seconds left to make a decision.

Tick.

You passed it over to him with a detonating question.

"Do you give me permission?"

A deathly silence.

"I'll leave," you continued, your ears ringing. "You don't seem to mind. I'll talk with a lawyer, and we can settle a divorce."

Boom.

Harry inhaled sharply through his nose. "Don't even think about doing that."

"You just told me to leave!" you shouted.

"No, hey." His breathing was becoming shallow, and his voice was desperate. "Hey, listen to me. I'll come home. Just give me another month, and I'll be there. I won't leave again. I promise you that."

This was different from what you had wanted. Married life with him was supposed to have been blissful. Parenthood was supposed to have been alongside him. The room spun around you as the clock ticked with each passing second. It wouldn't change anything. Might as well set it in stone and float it down the river.

"I don't believe you. I want a divorce."

"Baby, please. Look, can you video call me? Let me see you."

You screwed your face up and rested your pounding head against the wall. "I can't look at you right now."

"I'd like you to look at me when you say you want a divorce, yeah?" He was on fire from the explosion. "God, I'll get on a plane right now, okay? Please."

He was only willing to do what you asked when he needed to save himself. It was never for you.

"My decision is final," you told him. "I can't be in this one-sided relationship. All I need is for you to be a dad and a husband. Here, with us. Not thousands of miles away."

"I'll come home. Let me... shit, let me find my laptop, and I'll book a flight."

"Well, when you come home, your things will be packed by the front door."

"Stop," he whispered painfully.

"Just listen to me, Harry!" you yelled, finally losing your patience. Taking a deep breath, you lowered your voice and continued, "If you love me, you'll let me leave. It's what's best for us."

"You're my wife." Then, show some compassion. "Do you hear me?" Barely. "You can't just leave like this." Yes, you could. "I'll lose my mind."

Your mind was made up.

"I'm gonna hang up, okay?"

"No, we're going to talk—"

"When I hang up, I need you to breathe," you interrupted gently. "I need you to stay where you are. I need you to not do anything stupid."

"You're drunk too, right?" Harry said. "We're both drunk, and we'll forget we had this conversation." You heard a mattress creak and then a slight stumbling of feet. "Let's go to bed, sweetheart. Tomorrow is Christmas. I'll call first thing in the morning."

"Okay. Bye, Harry." You knew you wouldn't answer.

"Did you get my gifts in the mail? I spoiled you two so much." You didn't like how his breathing had gotten faster. "Hey, can you give her a kiss goodnight for me? Please?"

"I will." It was the least you could do. "Goodbye, Harry."

"No, baby, stay on the phone. I love you."

You swallowed down the last shred of your dignity and pulled the phone away from your ear, telling him to breathe one last time before ending the call.

All at once, the four walls of your bedroom caved in on you, and the feeling of suffocation began. The ground ate you alive as you sunk down into a fetal position and cried out into the wool carpet until it burned your cheeks. You could blame the drink in Harry's hand all you wanted, but you knew his integrity had fallen short lately. He couldn't be what you needed, so why stay and suffer in a situation so futile?

A sharp wail suddenly pierced through the wall behind you. Moving your teary eyes to blearily gaze at the clock, you saw the big and little hands join at the Roman numeral twelve.

How terribly blue of a Christmas, yet the reasoning had been long overdue.

❅ ❅ ❅

How's one to know if the bone crush is worth it?

As Harry looks at you now, a newfound love coursing through his veins, he knows that it is. The fireplace warms you and your daughter, both wrapped in a blanket. You're letting her help you open your last present.

It's crystal clear that the scene in front of him is entirely what he fought for. A family to protect. The home he sits in. Your love he spent so long missing.

He walked through hellfire summers to revive your love in him and trudged through icebound winters to ensure you never forgot about him. All to get to that spring garden of everlasting primroses which never entirely died.

"What did your mum get?" Harry asks his daughter while powering his phone off.

She holds up a tiny jewelry box and looks back and forth between her parents. You take it from her and inspect it, then look up at Harry and give him an unreadable glance.

"Open it," he insists softly.

You slowly lift the top, revealing a gold ring that weaves into a flower-shaped diamond. A gasp gets caught in your throat as you take it out. "Harry..." you trail off.

This time, you say his name differently than when you found his wedding ring in his dressing room months ago. This time, you say it with a particular fondness that puts him together again.

"Thought maybe we could try gold this time," Harry explains, kissing your cheek. "See if that works."

He thinks of the silver ring you had put back on your finger after you both decided to try again. It reminded him of hurt more than he'd like it to, so he bought a ring with a different, more sentimental purpose.

"I think it'll work," you say with a genuine smile.

A Christmas long past left scars still unhealed, but each wound led him right where he belonged.

❅ ❅ ❅

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