Chapter Text
“Have you ever seen Die Hard?”
Nicholas was fairly sure Danny had already asked him that, the first time they patrolled the streets of Sandford together, just as they were doing now.
“No,” he said, watching his and Danny’s breath turn to clouds. It had been the middle of spring when they’d first had this conversation, but now it was a spectacularly cold afternoon in December. They both resembled cartoon policemen with their red noses. Danny in particular looked like he should be saying, “‘Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello,” to the people walking past them. That thought would have made Nicholas smile if the chill hadn’t frozen his face into a frown.
“We should watch it at Christmas,” said Danny.
“Okay.”
“That’s kind of the only Christmas tradition I can do this year, seein’ as there’s no family to celebrate with.” Danny gave a slightly rushed sigh, the way he always did when he wanted to move on from a sensitive subject very quickly. “What do you normally do on Christmas day?” he asked.
Nicholas bit his lip, which was getting chapped in the wind. Danny looked at him with wide, expectant eyes.
“I said —”
“I heard you,” said Nicholas.
“Well? What do you do on Christmas day?” Danny repeated insistently.
Nicholas looked at the wet pavement under his feet. “Work.”
Danny’s eyes became even wider. “What, every year?”
“Someone has to.” Despite the cold, Nicholas’s cheeks suddenly felt very warm, and he suspected they were turning red to match his nose. His family and Janine had got used to his absence on Christmas day. He didn’t feel good about missing it year after year, though if the domestic abuse and drunken shenanigans that he’d witnessed on duty were anything to go by, it was quite a stressful time and in some weird way he was glad not to be part of it. He always tried to pay his mum a visit on Boxing Day. Occasionally they would be joined by a few hungover cousins and his even more hungover aunt, and they’d pull a leftover cracker and some poor sod would go home with a flimsy paper crown on their head and a shitty little plastic car in their pocket. When he’d started seeing Janine he’d brought her along to a couple of these Late Christmases, as his mum called them, though she’d decided to give the most recent one a miss.
“I don’t think we’ve ever needed to work on Christmas day here,” said Danny. “Nothing usually happens.” He paused. “Nothing I knew about, anyway. Could’ve been all sorts goin’ on, couldn’t there?”
“Maybe. Unfortunately, the festive spirit doesn’t stop disasters from happening.”
“Guess not. You probably get more family arguments than usual, right?”
“Yeah. And drunk drivers. And drunk people in general. And sometimes you get Father Christmas attacking you with a knife and stabbing you through the hand,” said Nicholas, with a tone that suggested getting into fights with Father Christmas was something he did regularly. He made it sound so mundane that it took Danny a second to realise what he'd said.
“You what?”
“Oh, have I not told you about that?”
“Did you get stabbed by Father Christmas?” said Danny.
Nicholas held up his left hand to show the scar in his palm. “Yep.”
“Oh my God!”
For the past year, Nicholas had been rather embarrassed about the scar, and even more embarrassed about how he got it — losing a fight with Father Christmas was still one of the most ridiculous things that had happened to him, second only to spending half a day chasing a swan and failing to catch it. But Danny was looking at the scar like it was the coolest thing he’d ever seen, and Nicholas felt almost proud of it. For a moment it was like when they’d first met, when Danny’s reaction to Nicholas had been one of continuous amazement, but since then Danny had learned what ‘proper action and shit’ was really like, and his face quickly switched to a look of concern. “That must’ve really hurt.”
“Yeah, it did,” said Nicholas. “Turns out there are a lot of nerves in your hands.” He glanced at Danny, who looked even more worried, and gave him a quick smile. “It’s okay now though.”
Danny folded his arms and shook his head like an exasperated parent, a gesture that didn’t suit him at all. “See, this is what happens when you go to work on Christmas day!”
Nicholas chuckled. “That’s only happened once.”
“Well.” Danny kept his arms folded but started to fidget with his sleeve, as if he thought maintaining the authoritative pose would give him confidence that he didn’t have. “D’you want to maybe take Christmas day off this year?”
Nicholas had been asked a lot of questions like that. His answer had always been the same. I’m afraid I’ll be at work.
“‘Cause I’d like to spend it with you,” Danny continued with a shy smile.
The answer was there on the tip of his tongue, as it had been every year since he first became a police officer, but now it tasted unpleasantly bitter. He remembered the equally bitter disappointment on Janine’s face, a look he’d seen many times. The Ghost of Christmas Past was clearly trying to tell him something.
“Okay,” said Nicholas, and as he watched Danny’s whole face light up, bright as the fairy lights in the shop windows, he wondered what possessed him to even think about rejecting his invitation.
The wind picked up as they circled back round to the car. They got in and before Danny had even closed his door he kissed Nicholas on the cheek. “I think we’re gonna have a good Christmas,” he said.
“So do I.” Nicholas tried to stop a stupid grin spreading across his face. “Hey, can I put in a request for another film to watch?”
Danny’s eyebrows jumped halfway up his forehead. As far as he was aware, Nicholas had never seen a film before they met. “Yeah! What do you wanna watch?”
“The Muppet Christmas Carol.”