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Henry is four, and he loves Halloween. By the Queen’s orders the Royal Family isn’t allowed to celebrate the holiday, at least not publically. But there is nothing to stop his parents from dressing him and his siblings up in silly little costumes to sit around and watch films and eat candy until the night turns into morning. That year, Bea and Philip are Alice and the Mad Hatter, while little Henry is the cutest Cheshire Cat the world has ever seen. The shirt may be itchy, but he really likes the hat.
Henry is six, and he picked his own costume this year - he is, proudly, a bright green lizard. No one questions it. This year is spent with his dad’s family, and his grandparents and his cousins and everyone else too throw a party so lively that Henry doesn’t even think for a moment about asking to go out into the street. All evening he runs and he plays and he eats so much candy he’s entirely convinced his head is going to explode. By the time the actual dessert is served Henry is half-asleep on his mother’s lap, head lulling and face sore from smiling.
Henry is eleven, and he has decided he is too old for Halloween. At fifteen and sixteen, his siblings stopped dressing up years ago, so he has decided to do the “mature grown-up" thing and follow suit. Catherine tries to coax him into embracing the tail end of his childhood, saying that if she still likes to wear fun costumes at forty-something he can as well, and that she and his dad sure wouldn’t like to be the odd ones out at dinner. Henry holds fast to his decision regardless. Meanwhile, Arthur, equally stubborn, blows out his birthday candles looking like he just stepped out of a Renaissance fair.
Henry is seventeen, and none of them dress up for Halloween anymore. But even if the holiday has faded into memory, October 31st is still Arthur's birthday. This year it’s just Henry and his parents - Philip is off wherever the RAF has sent him, and Bea’s stuck in Glasgow, failing to escape the clutches of her last year at uni. They celebrate regardless, inviting Catherine’s sisters and eating more candy than cake, laughing as Henry’s younger cousins run around their legs and pretend to cast spells on each other. Afterward, the three of them sit around the fire and talk for hours, lazily reviewing the day, smiling and hypothesizing and planning, wondering what the future will hold, and if they’ll manage to get everyone in town next year.
None of them had any idea that it would be Arthur’s last birthday. And in this case, their ignorance was bliss.
Henry is eighteen, and he had ignored Halloween until he had no choice but to accept that it was upon him. It was just his luck that the holiday fell on a Saturday, so all of Oxford halted normal operations in order to, well, party. Pez suggested sticking around their room, even offering to put aside his very strong opinions in favor of whatever sad romance film Henry undoubtedly would want to watch, but Henry insisted on going out. So the pair crossed town to a house full of recent graduates, and Henry drank and danced amongst them all, anonymous in the crowd, letting gorgeous men and plain men and men he will never see again touch him all night long.
He falls into bed with one of the latter, a stocky ginger far from his usual type, kissing and gasping and shivering until he forgets his own name and what brought him to this party in the first place. The NDA is barely signed before the boy is back out the door.
Henry is twenty-four, and this is the first Halloween he properly has Alex. They were together last year, but with the election being so soon Henry had barely paid more than a passing thought to the formal reason for celebration, all but brushing Alex off when he noticed something was wrong. But this year they are properly out, living together in Brooklyn and fulfilling the dream Henry had never dared to imagine could become reality. October 31st comes around and Henry feels like he ought to do something fun for once - he almost wants Alex to lead him out of his comfort zone one more time, he doesn’t want to drag down their newfound joy with his sour mood - but Alex must know.
He must have a list, Henry thinks haphazardly, lying with his head on Alex’s leg as they watch a movie and share too-sweet candy. Alex must have a list of days when Henry is likely to be more barbed than his typical self. Henry has never told him but he must know, because Alex doesn’t push: he cards his fingers into Henry’s hair, kisses his forehead once, twice, and gives him room to grieve.
Henry is twenty-seven and for reasons he can’t even begin to fathom, he is in London on Halloween, without Alex. Intellectually, he knows why he’s been summoned - they have a lot of paperwork to do, a lot of changes happening in the upcoming year - but it’s late and the moonlight is piercing through the sheer curtains and Henry can’t help but be pulled back to where he was ten years ago right now, sitting in the kitchen of the apartment next door, celebrating what none of them knew would be his dad’s last birthday. He would have been sixty-six today; a decade more than he got and still less than he deserved.
But instead of a celebration today - or in place of what could have been, Alex’s comforting touch - Henry had a jumble of meetings before retiring to an empty bed. He curls up into his pillows, and makes himself a promise. Three more days. Three days, then he’s home for good.
Henry is twenty-eight, and maybe, just maybe, Halloween is beginning to turn into something good once more. He’d spent the afternoon running around the youth shelter like a madman to get everything set up for the carnival they’re putting on for the kids, and ultimately stuck around to make sure everything was functional before his HR manager nearly forced him to tap out and go home. By the time he walks in the house and puts his bag on the table, he’d nearly forgotten that Halloween is an actual holiday outside of the bubble he’d been operating in all day.
That changes when he goes upstairs; on the sofa is a casual Alex, half watching the movie on the television, half minding the baby in his lap. Henry rounds the sofa, his mood lifting instantly as he finds upon further inspection that Alex has dressed their daughter as what appears to be an Ewok. She even has a hood and little ears.
At the sight, Henry makes a sound he doesn’t quite register, but it’s somewhere between “awe” and “ohmygod.” Alex turns around and grins like an idiot, baby Emma starts to babble and make grabby hands up at him, and for the first time in as long as Henry can remember, he’s laughing on Halloween.
Henry is thirty-four, and he’s going trick-or-treating. Alex had put up a whole fuss whenever he realized Henry had never been before and now that they had three kids of valid trick-or-treating ages, he was determined to right the apparent wrong. They’d planned to go two years ago but the timing hadn’t worked with how little the twins were, then last year it had poured rain all weekend long, so finally, finally, at three and three and six and thirty-four, four of the five of them were trick-or-treating for the first time in their lives.
Strictly speaking the walk wasn’t too far - just up the street and back down the other side, maybe fifteen stops in total - but for the kids the length didn’t make a single difference: they were loving every minute of it. Hyped up on adrenaline and joy and having already had far, far too much candy, their kids continued to bounce along down the sidewalk just a few paces ahead. Charlie and Emma chattered away about absolutely nothing, and every now and then tiny bits of fluff from their matching dresses floated to the ground as they go. Between his sisters, Arthur was equally excited, but less so about the colors and the people and more about pointing out every single pumpkin they walk past, turning back each time to make sure Henry and Alex see them too.
Under the yellow trees and in the light of the setting sun, Henry reaches out to take Alex’s hand. They do, they see it all. And it’s absolutely perfect.
Henry is forty-one, and his daughter is sick on Halloween. Yesterday she had woken up with a mild fever and they hoped against hope that it would fade, but it didn’t, and now while Alex took Arthur trick-or-treating and Emma is at an event with her school, Charlie is bundled up on the opposite end of the couch with a chunky blanket and a cup of tea. The tears from earlier have diminished to muted snuffles. Henry, equally cozy in a direct attempt to make her feel less miserable by proxy, is tabbing through TV channels in search of a Halloween movie interesting for him and suitable for a nine-year-old.
They flip through a dark horror movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and three sets of candy commercials, before much to both of their shock a young Arthur Fox appears on the screen, sweaty and breathing heavily as he peers around the side of a building at the unseen villain, looking to make a clean getaway.
Charlie’s red eyebrows knit. “Why are they showing James Bond on Halloween?”
Deep breath. Henry can’t believe he’s never talked about this. “The last day of October is your grandad’s birthday,” he explains, watching Charlie carefully as he does. “When he was around, we used to do Halloween parties along with his birthday dinner.”
“That’s kinda sweet,” Charlie says, a tiny smile playing on her lips.
Henry almost wishes he’d brought it up sooner - his dad’s birthday was Halloween, the twins's birthday is Christmas Eve. Maybe in another life, they could have bonded over the joyous curse of having a holiday birthday.
“He would have been… eighty, right?”
Wow. Yeah. “That’s right.”
Charlie leans over and takes the remote, setting it on the coffee table. Bond it is.
Henry is forty-nine, and no one in their house really does Halloween anymore. They set out decorations out front - pumpkins on the steps and fairy lights in the bushes - and have a constantly-replenished bowl of candy on the counter, but the holiday doesn’t call for the same scale or fanfare that it did when their kids were little.
That being said, halfway through the chosen movie of the night, Henry’s phone lights up with a text from the family group chat. It’s Arthur - he’d been the only one of them to actually go out tonight - with three of his friends, all dressed to the nines in colored suits. NYU was throwing a formal on Halloween for reasons none of them could fathom, but no one was questioning it.
Emma and Charlie respond immediately with ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!’ and ‘low bar, Em. have fun!’ respectively.
Decades ago, Henry spent his eighteenth Halloween off on a bender that he would barely remember in the morning. Now, his son is eighteen, and it’s Halloween, and he’s happy. Henry could never have said the same about himself at that age, and would have laughed in the face of anyone who dared to tell him he’d find peace again.
But here he is. Here they are. Sure, life isn’t perfect, but it’s good. And really, isn’t that what’s important? That they at least try to make things better with time?
Henry sends a positive message and sets the phone down, settling back into Alex’s side to continue the film.