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‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except for Kathryn Lester. She was pitter-pattering back and forth in the hallway outside of Phil and Dan’s room.
The tradition of Kath coming into her boys’ rooms before Christmas had started when both Phil and Martyn were young enough to believe in Santa. Even in the few years in which Martyn had grown a rebellious streak and had flippantly insisted that he no longer needed his mother to try and trick him, he never did more than lightly protest. He also – and this was a point of pride for Kath – never tried to tell his little brother that Santa wasn’t real.
Obviously, neither of her sons believed in Santa Claus anymore. At least, she didn’t think they did. She wouldn’t be fully surprised if Phil was still holding on. In some part, she hoped that he was. Still, she supposed they were both at that age when an omniscient magical creature felt less special than having another person looking out for you.
The only time when Kath hadn’t been able to fully carry out the tradition was the year that Freja was born. Her crib was set up in Martyn and Cornelia’s room, and Kath risked waking the already fussy baby if she opened the door and started walking around, so she’d settled for leaving the presents in the hallway instead.
This year, she didn’t know what to do about Phil. She assumed that he, knowing the tradition, would have taken a moment to speak with her if he didn’t want her to come in. And if he and Dan were expecting her to leave them gifts and she instead excluded them…. well, that would be worse than anything. She didn't even want to think about that.
On the same token, this was new terrain to navigate. Dan had been to their family home plenty of times – he was family as far as Kath was concerned, ever since long before he and Phil felt comfortable being open about their relationship – but it had never been in this context. Among other things, they’d never openly shared a bed as a couple before.
They’d never shared a bed at all, not here. Sure, there were a few times that Kath swore she could hear one of them sneaking into the other’s room at night or sneaking back out in the morning. Mothers have an ear for these things, and besides, it’s not exactly easy for two men as tall as they are to move around quietly. But there was no sneaking now. What a relief.
Kath knew that Phil and Dan had had an unusual experience within their relationship, and that they took the concept of privacy very, very seriously. She supposed that that was just what happened when two people – especially two people as young as they had been when it started – had millions of people interested in their every move.
So, she hesitated to go into the room that they were sharing. Not because she was uncomfortable or afraid of finding them in some compromising situation, but because she didn’t want them to feel violated, especially not in a home that was theirs as much as it was hers.
Granted, the announcement of their relationship had been far from a surprise to Kath. She’d had her very strong suspicions the entire time. What was she supposed to think when her son brought home a man – though man may have been a generous term at the time – who took all the batteries out of her clocks, who wore a hat bigger than his head and refused to take it off inside? Who gazed at her son with such love that she felt it taking up a physical space in any room they were in?
The moment that had really sealed it for her was one much like the one she was experiencing now. Christmas of 2012. Dan wasn’t there. She’d entered Phil’s room to find him holding onto his pillow, having curled it around his body like it was holding him. He’d been resting his cheek on his second pillow, the exact same position that he would have been in if he’d fallen asleep in the arms of another tall man.
Kath took a deep breath and let it out. She needed to come to a decision.
She decided that she would try the door. Just try it. If Dan and Phil really didn’t want to be intruded on, they would have locked it. Not only was the door not locked, it was hardly even latched.
The room was bathed in navy blue darkness and insulated by the kind of quiet that could only come from snow. Through their window, the stars twinkled in their friendly way. The room was lit only by a faint glow from the hallway lamp, and a strong silver moonlight shine.
In the slight light, Kath saw, immediately, that the assumptions she made in 2012 had been correct.
Dan and Phil were wound together in a bed that was hardly big enough for Phil on his own. Phil was fast asleep on Dan’s chest, his ear pressed right by Dan’s heart. He was snoring lightly and had a peaceful smile on his face. His mouth was slightly open. Dan, meanwhile, had one hand dangling off the mattress. His hair was disheveled and formed a crest of fluff on the pillow. His legs were splayed out in unlikely directions and he was wearing pajama pants that definitely belonged to Phil. His other hand lingered by the back of Phil’s head, as if he fell asleep playing with Phil’s hair.
Kath had always thought that when Phil was asleep, he looked so much like his younger self that it sent her back in time by thirty years. It turned out that that was true of both of them. She hadn’t known Dan when he was a boy, but seeing the two of them turned into each other like magnets, fully unguarded, made her feel like she did.
On the end of his bed, Phil kept a heavy knitted blanket that his grandmother had made for him when he was born. There was a funny story behind that blanket; Martyn had a matching one, but, being a larger newborn than anyone could have anticipated, the blanket that Kath’s mother made for him hadn’t been big enough to fully wrap around him. On her second go, she had overcompensated, and made Phil a blanket so large that he basically drowned in it until he was six. And now it looked tiny next to him. Funny how that happened.
She took the blanket off the bed and draped it over Dan and Phil. It covered only their shoulders, but she knew that Phil would appreciate it, and that Dan would too once Phil explained the blanket’s significance to him, if he hadn’t already.
She arranged the presents in a pyramid shape in the corner of the room as quietly as she could. Neither of them stirred. Before leaving the room, just for good measure, she kissed Phil on the forehead and ruffled Dan’s hair.
“Goodnight, loves,” she whispered, “Sleep well.”