the hollands ; reader imagines

Friendmas || P.H.

Pairing: Paddy Holland x reader

Warnings: just fluff :)

~

"More eggnog?"

You looked over your shoulder at Paddy, who was holding out a glass of the stuff to you. "Depends" you said, "What'd you spike it with?"

His eyes widened and he gasped, looking affronted, "How dare you" he said, "I would never even dream of it. I can't believe this" When you merely raised your eyebrows, he said, "Rum and bourbon"

"Thought so" you said, accepting the glass regardless and clinking it against his. If there was any way you were going to survive this party, it was going to be by getting insanely drunk.

You felt bad for thinking that, but it was the truth. This was the fourth year in a row that Louis and Paddy insisted on having "Friendsmas" aka an excuse to have a huge house party, invite a ton of your friends over and get blackout drunk.

It wasn't that you didn't like parties, and it wasn't that you didn't like seeing your friends. For some reason, Friendsmas was always just when the most drama happened: every year, at least several people would hook up unexpectedly. Someone always threw up, and last year a relationship had even ended.

The mornings after the party were even worse, spent either knelt over the toilet or unable to get out of bed. But by the time the next Friendsmas was approaching, everyone seemed to forget how bad the last one had been.

Except you, of course.

Now, you squeezed your arms tighter towards your body, trying to avoid being bumped by the crowd. Tom grinned at your annoyed expression, "You're doing that thing again" he said.

"What thing?" you asked, "The thing where you don't have fun"

"Excuse yo," you retorted, "I'm having loads of fun"

"You're literally wearing a light-up sweater with a reindeer on it and you still look miserable" Paddy said teasingly.

That was one of the few (but dumb) rules about Friendsmas: everyone who attended had to wear some kind of holiday sweater. It could be Christmas, Hanukkah, or even just winter. It just had to be festive.

"I'm not miserable" you said lamely. "Just... not feeling very holly jolly yet."

If you were really being honest with yourself, the worst part of Friendsmas wasn't the morning after, or having to deal with all the drama, or the pounding headache the music always gave you.

It was the fact that you just so happened to be in love with Paddy.

The two of you had met in your first year of 6th form and got along from the word go. For a while he was just your best friend, but somewhere between all the late nights spent studying and the mornings spent sleeping off hangovers, you realized you'd started to think of him as something more than that.

He had no idea, of course. And although your friends were always bugging you to tell him, you refused. There was just no way he'd ever see you in any other light, and there was no way your friendship could recover from a confession like that.

So that made parties like Friendsmas especially hard. You had no claim to Paddy, and therefore he could flirt and hook up with anyone he wanted. You weren't sure if you could witness it for the fourth year in a row, though.

He was still looking at you, his smile fading a little. You took him in: in true Paddy fashion, he was wearing an ugly red, black and green sweater that said ON THE NAUGHTY LIST in big white letters, a backwards baseball cap on his head. Somehow, he managed to make it good.