#this is spiritually a sequel to 'it's the great pumpkin simon snow'

[onepintobean]

you are so right but counterpoint: baz deserves a little extra sibling angst. as a treat.

here, from one eldest sibling to another, having been so tragically and rudely outgrown by all my younger siblings, let me paint you a picture:

Christmas 2031.

Baz.

We’re heading back to Hampshire for Christmas this year. Everybody is. The three of us, Mordelia and the twins, even Fiona and Nico. Swithin will be home from Watford.

He’s sixteen, now, midway through sixth year. It’s the year things get serious at Watford. (The year the boater hats come off.)

I haven’t been back to Hampshire for sixteen years. Not since—

But when I park the car, I can feel that what my father says is true. The magic’s really coming back.

Doesn’t make the place feel less haunted. (Literally. Figuratively.)

I almost want to turn around and go home. I let Simon get out and retrieve Heathcliff from the backseat before I even consider undoing my seatbelt. And I let Simon open my door for me even though he has his hands full of baby and the sparkling non-alcoholic wine he insisted we bring for my parents.

Considerate.

I take the baby, but I make him carry the “wine”. He drums his ring against the glass of the bottle and I consider asking him to swap. But Heathcliff is mostly asleep in my arms and his suit (which is criminally tiny) is rumpled enough from the ride over.

He’s just about one now, and I still don’t feel old enough to be bringing a baby with us to Christmas dinner, even at 34. Everyone acts like it’s normal. Daphne even said she still has Swithin’s old highchair.

“Ready?” Simon rests his free hand on the small of my back.

Sixteen years. They’ve been a good sixteen years. Not perfect. But better than I expected. Maybe better than I deserved. With Simon by my side. With Dev and Niall, once they came back around. With Penny and Shepard and the baby Bunces. With flats and houses shared with Fiona and Nico and Mordelia, and even Sophie and Petra for a while there.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready,” I say.

Simon shakes his head. “I wasn’t either, the first time I came here. Remember?”

He laughs. Like I could forget.

“The only time,” I say.

“Not anymore.”

Mordelia answers the door when we knock and then screams loud enough to wake Heathcliff when she sees us. He fusses into my shoulder. Crowley. The older I get, the less I understand how she isn’t related to Fiona. She’s even put a purple streak in her hair.

I get the baby calmed before my parents and Swithin all file in. No doubt alerted by Mordelia. Who needs an alarm system when you have a sister?

“Swithin!” Simon calls. To my baby brother, who is hardly a baby anymore at all, is he? “Come meet your nephew.”

Swithin shuffles over, hunched and drawn in in the way only teenagers seem to manage. Even he looks out of place in this house, too dark and old for life to go on here. It feels wrong to pass a baby to him. He shouldn’t be old enough to hold one.

Which makes that all-too-familiar guilt pinprick at the back of my throat, since I’ve spent the better part of the past sixteen years trying to make a home anywhere other than here or Oxford. Avoiding my father’s attitude. (Avoiding Daphne's as well.) Not trying to avoid him. He was always just a baby.

But he was always at home, there with them. Until he wasn’t. And then it was just Christmases and summers, and weren’t we always busy during Christmases and summers?

Time keeps passing. I can’t keep up.

I clap Swithin on the back because I’m not sure what else to do.

He stands up straighter.

Mordelia gasps.

“What?”

“He is!” She’s practically giddy. “Circe. He’s taller than Baz now.”

“He is not,” I say.

She takes Heathcliff, who coos like this isn’t shaping up to be the worst moment of my year.

“Take off your shoes,” she demands. “Stand back-to-back.”

“Is that really necessary?” I’m already doing it, lining up against him next to the wall.

“Stop stretching,” Swithin insists.

“You stop.” I put a hand on his shoulder and press down. He squirms away.

Snow levels a hand over our heads. Kisses my cheek. “Sorry, babe.”

“Don’t lie,” I say.

“I’m not lying,” he laughs. And then gets out his wallet and gives Mordelia 20 pounds.

“Simon, what the fuck,” I whisper.

He laughs again. “Why are you upset? I was betting on you.”

“He’s not supposed to be taller,” I say. I sound near-despondent.

“That’s what I was saying, too,” he says. “Don’t worry. It’s just an inch or two.”

“Or two?”

“Babe,” he says. “It’s fine.”

It’s really not. Because how am I supposed to live the rest of my life looking up at my little brother? When I’ve changed his nappies and sat in the bleachers at his football matches and started him on violin myself. I was there for his first magic words.

And now—

And now I have to act like it’s normal. Because it is, I guess. Because I ought to be glad for it. That I even got to see him grow up. That I’ll get to see my baby grow up, too.

So it’s fine. I put Heathcliff in Swithin’s old highchair. And when Fiona and Nico finally get here, they take one look between Swithin and myself and line us up against the wall to check again.

And it’s fine. I don’t even stop to remind Fiona that I’m still taller than she is.

I just hope Swithin ends up taller than Baz. I know it'll take him a while but I can be patient.