Chapter Text
Humphrey placed one foot on the trolly’s metal bar, scooting around B&M like a child but, really, who was going to tell him to stop? He loaded up on baubles and tinsel, string lights, and an LED Christmas tree that he couldn’t really afford but bought on the justification that it’d look pretty outside, probably.
And that was the point, as it were, because the decorations weren’t for him so much as his pretty French neighbour; the one who he’d been trying to get the attention of for years but had thus far never gotten more than a halfhearted smile when she’d returned from work or put the bins out.
“Come on then,” he strained to lift a six foot reign-deer “you’re-coming with me, dear.”
Maybe he’d got a few odd looks as he lugged enough lights for trafalgar square around the shop, and maybe he’d almost taken a kid out with an iridescent candy cane. Humphrey felt accomplished when he’d refused the cashier’s lackadaisical offer to send ‘a guy’ over to instal his bounty.
“Can’t be that difficult,” he shrugged, grabbing some rainbow fizzy belts from that little shelf of things you didn’t think you needed “I’ll be fine, mate. Don’t you worry.”
The items were scanned with an expression that wholly declared ‘I’m not payed enough to care if you electrocute yourself,’ and so the matter was dropped. Humphrey wheeled the creaky trolley to his car, wrestled with the boot, and drove home with an air of prosperity - plan A was complete.
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Snow was coming down thick and fast by the tune Humphrey had got up the ladder, it collected in his hood like icing sugar as he clutched the instruction manual - not that it helped.
“So, you’re blue-?” He read to himself through chattering teeth “wait - where’s the green then?”
He glanced down, infuriated, as Rudolph had blown over in the wind and collided with the candy cane - both now lopsided on his driveway sporting a sort-of drunken lean. He’d done the wiring wrong, too - screwed the green bulbs onto blue lights so that his bottom window shone a horrid brown colour. The ladder was slippery, he knew that, but this had to be perfect.
“‘Please ensure your incandescents operate on an alternative power supply?’ What? So I plug the sods into somebody else’s mains?” He sighed a heavy sigh, continuing to place the string lights haphazardly on the edge of the roof.
It was dark now - the short winter nights did that - and even surrounded by LEDs Humphrey couldn’t see in-front of him. He had ten minutes give or take until Sophie came home from work, and still the other panel of the house was sans illumination. Humphrey leaned, stretching to reach the edge of the gutter before a car pulled up behind him.
“Sophie?” Humphrey called down “Sophie!”
She glanced up apathetically “ah, bonsoir… Humphrey?”
“How are you? Oh-wait, hold there a second,” he began his decent down the ladder “you’ll like this-Ah!”
Sophie watched as the man lost his footing, falling into the snow in a near-perfect angel shape. She appeared in his line of blurred vision. His dazed eyes fixed on her best they could.
“D-you-“ Humphrey slurred “do you see the lights? You like em’?”
His neighbour shook her head “Tu cretin.”