why can't we have both: christmas edition

So having now pitched a keoghead i-need-a-wedding-date fic, and a keoghead fake boyfriend for christmas fic, it occurred to me today that perhaps these two should be combined, and also we can have tom in a christmas sweater? because it's CHRISTMAS and I want an ugly sweater party and harry styles ice skating and harry and tom having a disgustingly lovely small town winter wedding and barry and fionn getting drunk in a disreputable small town tavern. LET'S GO:


Fionn dumps the mail on the table, determined to ignore the thick navy blue envelope in the middle of the stack. A glimpse of a flowered stamp and his address in gold ink was enough to convince him that he might not open it ever, or at least not until his mom calls to ask what he's going to do about it.

But as soon as Fionn turns his back to put the six-pack in the fridge, Barry's rifling through the stack like a scavenger dog. "Fancy," he comments, and Fionn turns around to see him balancing the blue envelope on his fingertips.

"Pretentious." Fionn cracks a beer. It's not actually pretentious. It's perfectly tasteful. Just like the rest of the wedding will be.

"Who's getting married?" Barry asks.

Fionn takes a gulp of beer, and then another, because this warrants it. "My ex."

Barry whistles and flips the envelope over, looking for the return address. "Which is your ex, Harry or Tom?"

So they're living together. Fine, whatever. They're getting married. That's not a surprise. "Tom."

"How long ago did you break up?"

"Two, three years." Long enough that a wedding invitation shouldn't make Fionn want to scream and throw his beer across the room. "Before I moved here." He'd had to move, to get out of the city where Tom was, to put half the country between him and his hometown and everyone who remembered Tom and Fionn singing solos in church and competing for the lead in the high school musical and getting voted cutest couple in their graduating class. Fionn had always thought of them as a split ticket for that election: Tom, the prom king, and Fionn, the average guy brought along to appeal to the base.

"And you're not over it." It's a statement, not a question.

"Doesn't matter either way." Barry had been in the next cubicle over the week Fionn started his new job. The first friend he made out here, the first friend who'd never known Tom. Who'd never known Fionn as half of Fionn and Tom.

"But he sends you a wedding invite?" Barry reaches around Fionn to grab a beer from the fridge. "Seems like kind of a dick move."

"Not really." Fionn leans back against the counter. "It's kind of a family thing. Our folks are friends. Everybody I grew up with will be there."

"Are you gonna go?"

"Fuck." Fionn rubs his eyes. "I don't know. It'll be weird if I don't." It was nice, Barry not knowing any of this shit. Fionn's going to miss that.

"Hey, you get a plus-one." Barry holds the envelope up. Fionn Whitehead and guest, it says.

"Lot of good that does me." It may actually be the worst part, knowing that Tom made the address list, probably called his folks to confirm that there's not any name he should put next to Fionn's. And then he stamped his and Harry's names on the back side of the envelope.

Fionn takes the invitation from Barry and flips it over. He hasn't seen the name Harry Styles in print since six months after the breakup, when Tom started liking things on Harry's instagram and Fionn cut himself off social media for the sake of his own sanity.

Now it's stacked on top of Tom's name on the envelope flap, above a Chicago address. It's a cool name. Fionn tortures himself for a moment by wondering whether they'll hyphenate. Tom Glynn-Styles sounds better than Tom Glynn-Whitehead ever did.

"I'll go with you," Barry says suddenly. He's hoisted himself up to sit on the opposite counter in Fionn's tiny galley kitchen, heels kicking against the cabinet below him.

"You don't have to do that." Fionn sticks the toe of his sneaker between Barry's foot and the cabinet, interrupting his rhythm. "I'll be fine." It might be nice to have Barry there, though. Somebody else to make fun of their small-town country club. Somebody to sneak out of the reception with him to go drink at whatever tavern Fionn’s high school friends don’t go to.

"You will obviously not be fine." Barry kicks Fionn's toe out of the way and goes back to battering the cabinet door with his heels. "You look like you're going to drown yourself in the chocolate fountain."

"You don't even know when it is." Fionn slides a finger under the envelope flap and pulls out several thick squares of paper, separated by layers of tissue. He ignores the map and the lodging advice, useless to him in his hometown, and looks for the date on the invitation. It's letterpressed in gold on eggnog-colored paper. "There's no way," Fionn tells Barry. "It's December 23." Fuck, he realizes, this means he’s going to have to go home for Christmas.

Barry's unfazed. "It's not like I've got other plans."

Fionn immediately feels guilty. His own reluctance to talk about anything connected with Tom – necessarily including his hometown and his family -- means he hasn't asked Barry too much about his own background. But he does know Barry's parents aren't in the picture and the grandmother who raised him is gone. “Well, you can spend Christmas with us, if you’re up for it.”

“Sure,” Barry says. He’s got a strange expression on his face. “If you’re up for it.”

Fionn half-laughs. “Oh, you have no fucking idea what you’re in for.”