“Have a good time tonight, won’t you, sweetheart?” You cooed softly, cupping Alfie’s cheeks in your palms and running your thumbs beneath his eyes, his skin soft and smooth beneath your pads. His figure was standing tall and almost towering over you – much like Harry’s stature used to do when he was 18, his legs long and lanky and making his figure tower tall above you. “Don’t let your Uncle Niall get you too drunk. I’ve already warned your dad about it, so, we can only hope he’ll listen,” you laughed, bringing his head down and pressing a kiss to his forehead. The smell of his shampoo still lingering upon his forehead as well as the strands of hair falling from the bandana he had tied around his hand, to stop the loose curls from falling into his vision.
“I promise I won’t go too overboard,” Alfie admitted with a smile, his arms snaking around your waist and pulling you into a hug. “Thank you for today. It’s been great.”
With his eighteenth birthday being at the beginning of the summer, the first of August, you had opted and prepared to go full out with celebrating his birthday. Inviting everyone who he had grown up with; varying from the boys and their families, to Gemma and Michal and their family, to Anne and Robin and Des as well as your own mother and father. A little party you felt the need of doing to make sure he celebrated his birthday in a way he wanted and had asked for – with everyone he knew to be there with him as well as those who he grew up around and with Niall and Louis and Liam as well as their families being sent invites months prior to Alfie’s birthday, they hadn’t any reason to turn down the idea of getting back to London to celebrate his special day – a day they had never forgotten about and had always managed to turn up or send something to your address and ensure that you got it by texting later that day.
Throughout the day, you had been assigning each child, excluding Alfie to let him enjoy his day with Ellie – with Persephone being the only exception, whom was still enduing her last university exams and essays and hadn’t been able to make it to London for Alfie’s birthday – with little errands for the day and you had made Harry set the barbeque up in the back garden; with much delegation and frustration between the two of you with his complaints being about the fact that it was ‘too hot and muggy to be doing any hard work in the garden’, as well as having him set up tables and chairs around the garden for everyone to sit down upon as they mingled and caught up with on another.
And it went well.
With laughter and chatter filling the garden from the early afternoon to the late afternoon to the point where Harry had suggested he and the boys took Alfie out for his first legal drink.
And Alfie had seemed to have enjoyed himself, as well as yourself and Harry, catching up with his Uncle Louis and Uncle Liam and Uncle Niall as well as kicking a football around with Freddie and Theo before the barbeque had been started, as well as munching away on burgers and lounging on the grass with his twin sisters and Aoife and Lily once everyone had picked what they had wanted to eat, with Spencer having a sleep upon Louis’ chest nearer the mid-afternoon. He had been a chuckling mess through the day, with stories being exchanged and cheeky sips of beer being given to him – and he felt powerful now that he was of legal age to enjoy when someone would offer him something that would bring him to a tipsy state.
And you wanted him to have a good day, feeling blessed that he had become thankful and had enjoyed what you had planned for his big day – a day that was all about him.
“I’m glad you had a good birthday. You deserved the best,” you cooed, rubbing his back with your palm and sighing softly. “I just want you to slow down growing up a little, you know? I remember when you were born. You were a tiny little thing,” you said, a hint of sadness yet admiration lacing within your words – sadness because he was no longer your little man; who could have fit sweetly and almost fragile looking in the crook of your arm, off doing his own thing and running his own life without the need for you nor Harry to be by his side the entire time to help him when times got tough, yet admiration because he had turned into a respectful, kind and generous young soul who became the mirror image to his father; a man you had loved for almost 30 years, with 25 of those years being married life.
“I’m not going to ever stop growing, mum. But, you know I’m always going to be your little man,” Alfie whispered, his voice deep and soft as he spoke against your ear. “I love you, mum.”
“I love you too, sweetheart. Have a good night and make sure your dad doesn’t go too overboard with everything. You know what he’s like,” you stated with a smirk, Harry’s figure appearing in the doorway of the kitchen, his hand full with his wallet and his car keys and house keys hanging from his fingers. A smirk on his face as he leant against the doorway and focused upon the sight in front of him; your arms wrapped around his frame as his chin rested upon your shoulder.
“I won’t drink too much, I promise. I’m driving anyway,” Harry pointed out, holding his hand up to show the keys hanging and shining beneath the kitchen light. “Are you ready to go, buddy? Uncle Niall and Uncle Louis are getting restless in the car,” he chuckled, watching as Alfie untangled himself from your hold and adjusted the bandana tied around his head.
A look he had once seen Harry sport and had immediately insisted he tried it one time to see how he felt, earning compliments from not only you but Anne and Gemma just as well – and they were baffled at just how much of a replica he was of Harry, with his curls and his green eyes as well as the towering height that had definitely been inherited from the Styles side of the family.
He did look like his father, and Harry felt like he had been looking in a mirror that took him back to his teenage years.
“I’m ready, yeah,” Alfie smiled, pressing his lips to your cheek before shuffling past Harry, who gave his son a pat on the shoulder and a soft nudge towards the kitchen entrance. “See you later, mum.”
“I’ll see you later, sweetheart. Have a drink for me,” you called out, your bare feet carrying you over to where Harry was standing with a grin. “And you, Peaches, don’t do anything reckless. Show Alfie a good example, please, and don’t let him get too carried away with drinking pint after pint after pint,” you warned, with a pointed finger pressed against his chest. A smirk on his face as his green eyes stared down at you. “I mean it, Harry.”
“Hey, when have I ever done my son wrong, hm?”
In the eighteen years that Alfie had been gracing your lives, he had made sure that he hadn’t done him wrong and he had always set a good example to all of his children – Persephone had grown up to be respectable and understand those who lacked in opportunities that others could pursue, and Alfie had grown into a man who was very charitable and willing to help whenever he could, and the two of you were watching as Rose and Darcy grew into beautiful young girls who stayed true to who they were; who never changed because someone had expected them too, who had never become someone they weren’t because they wanted to fit in, and who had made they didn’t set their heart out too quickly to have it broken. He had never once lead them into a lifestyle that made them seem like they never cared about themselves, let alone the care and the kindness to other people, and Harry felt like he had accomplished in life by having children raised in a way that he and his sister had been raised through their younger life.
He had never done them wrong and he had never shown them a lifestyle that deemed unacceptable in society, and he had only hope in his body that his children would raise their own in a way he was raised and in a way that they were raised.
“Never. You’ve been a wonderful dad to all four of our children, and you know that. But, I need you to keep an eye on him, okay? Especially now that alcohol is involved,” you stated, your hands setting against his hips. “I love you.”
“I love you too. Have a good night with the girls and the twins, won’t you?”
“Of course I will. We’re going to eat the left over cake from today and order some pizza from Dominos. I promised them I’d get whatever they want, so, we’ll probably have left over pizza to last us for a week,” you laughed, pressing up on your toes and setting your lips against his own. “Go have some fun. I’ll save a couple of slices for you.”
“Might have it for breakfast tomorrow,” Harry grinned, your nose scrunching in displeasure. “What? S’nothin’ better than havin’ leftover pizza for breakfast, ‘specially when you’re hungover with a bangin’ headache. I’ve had many hangovers which I cured with left over pizza or Chinese,” he chuckled.
“I remember. You stunk the kitchen out when you microwaved your chow mein,” you teased, pinching at his t-shirt covered hips. “I’m pretty sure you burnt it one time, didn’t you? You cooked it for too long and it smelt so bad in here we had to leave the windows open and we ended up going to Hyde Park for a picnic because the smell was that bad,” you laughed, his deep chuckle sounding around the kitchen.
It was a smell you were reminded of every time you had a Chinese take away; the sudden memory of a frantic Harry running around the kitchen, with a tea-towel in his hand as he tried to waft the smell from the kitchen. His boxer-clad body standing by the open back-door, as he continued to use the towel as a fan to remove the aroma lingering in the large atmosphere. A sudden memory that almost made you giggle at the thought and reminding you of yourself rousing from sleep and immediately coming face-to-face with a kitchen that had a man who still looked drunken and tipsy from his night out the night before with a pair of crumpled boxers upon his waist and tousled and knotted hair hanging down his head, the curls sticking up at their ends.
A night out where he had gone full out with the drinks, in taking any concoction he crossed his eyes upon as well as downing the drinks Louis and the boys had brought from him each time they went to the bar.
“That was when I got proper bladdered the night before, wasn’t it?” Harry wondered, a smirk on his lips. “I came back covered in sick, smelling of beer and cigarette smoke with cuts and bruises up my arms from falling over,” he reminisced, his chest rumbling as he let out deep chuckles from his throat.
“Louis still finds the kick in telling that story. It gets everyone every time,” you reminded him, stepping away from his body and shuffling across the kitchen floor to the drawer beneath the sink where the takeaway menus for different restaurants were folded neatly and pushed into the drawer. “And speaking of Louis, you should get going. He’s been excited all day to take Alfie out for his first legal drink. He was exactly like this when we took Persephone for her first,” you giggled, rummaging through the menus collected with each mail delivery through the mail slot of the front door.
“Right, yes. I should be off. I won’t stay out with him for too long, I promise. We’ll be back by ten o’clock,” Harry smiled, the keys on his fingers jingling together with a swift movement as he spun on his heels. “Save me some pizza, and tell the girls I love them. I can hear them upstairs, but, I don’t want to interrupt whatever they’re doing. I can only presume its boyfriend things,” he stated with a smile.
Boyfriend things that he felt very unknowledgeable in.
It had only been recently where he had given them both the talk, with the whole conversation ending in fit of giggles as well as embarrassed groans and moans about how they shouldn’t be having the conversation with their father when they’ve been educated in lessons just recently in school.
“Quite possibly. Rose was saying how she misses Connor and Darcy was saying how her and Sam needed to have a date when he comes off of his week away with the school,” you smiled, reaching for the phone sitting in the middle of the breakfast island in the middle of the kitchen. “Which reminds me, they’ve asked if we could have a barbeque one weekend to bring them all over again. But, I’ll talk to you later on about that. You really need to go, Peaches. I’ll see you later.”
“See you later, Gorgeous.”
* *
“Eighteen already, eh? How are you feelin’ about that then, buddy? It’s a pretty odd yet great feeling, isn’t it?” Liam questioned beside Harry, his forearms leaning upon the sticky and beer-covered and splattered bar set along the opposite wall to which you walk in, empty beer glasses and bottles littering the counter top as the bartender made his way back and forth to get whatever said person was ordering.
“It’s bloody crazy. I mean, P’s already gone through the eighteen stage so we’ve experienced this feeling before, much like you have with Lily. But, he’s my only son and he’s growing up and making me an old man and I just can’t believe I’ve got two more kids turning eighteen,” Harry sighed, smiling as the bartender stood in front of him. A wondering smile on his lips as he awaited Harry’s order. “Can we get 5 bottles of Budweiser, please.”
“Of course. Anything else or just the beers?”
“Just the beers, thank you,” Harry smiled, as he handed the money in his hand over to the bartender, his awaiting hands taking and opening the cash register to set the money inside. Turning his attention back to Liam, he gave him a hearty smile and continued with the conversation. “I’m going to be fifty years old when my girls turn eighteen. I’ll be too old for them to be seen with,” he chuckled.
“Nonsense. Lily’s eighteen now and she still asks me if I want to go and have a dinner with her and whatnot,” Liam smiled, patting Harry’s back softly. “It’s not all bad, I promise. I’ve got my lad turning eighteen in just four or so years, and then Tommo’s little one is the only one left to turn eighteen,” Liam stated, looking over his shoulder and out the open doors at the back of the pub, looking at Louis who was throwing peanuts in the air and catching them in his mouth with a laughing Niall sat beside him. “You’d not think he’s in his fifties, would you?”
A gentle thank you left his lips as the bartender set the five beers on the top of the bar, a swift and thankful nod being given as Liam reached for three of the cold beers, leaving two behind for Harry to take.
“He’s still got that child streak in him, for sure,” Harry laughed, reaching for a couple of bottles set upon the bar. “It’s pretty crazy how we’ve all got our own families now. We’re not as young and fit as we used to be, and my back has been playing up like crazy ever since we’ve had the girls,” Harry sighed, his boot-clad feet taking him back to his seat outside, beside Alfie on the rickety and wooden picnic table at the end of the pub garden, away from the hustle and the bustle of the inside of the pub where everyone crowded to get a look at the football game playing on the TV.
It was a pub that became busy when it hit the summer months with families and males mingling together to catch up at the weekends after a busy week of work or trips out or even to just relieve themselves from the stress of being stressed out about something on their mind. Yourself and Harry had spent many a weekend – or weeknight – in the exact same pub back when you were in your younger years, and it was a date spot for the two of you when you felt like going out to spend time with one another, outside the walls of your home – a home that was new back then and needy in being christened with your lifestyle as well as your interior decorations and furniture.
Perching himself down next to Alfie, Harry set the beers in his hands down upon the table top and began to worm his way into the conversation that the three of them were already enticed into.
“Dad, you missed it. Uncle Louis threw about 30 something peanuts in a streak in his mouth,” Alfie laughed, his head rolling back in amusement as he clapped his hands together. “I swear, biggest streak ever.”
“Your dad used to do more though, lad. He was quite possibly the champion at that, with pretty much anything edible,” Niall explained, reaching for the second bottle of beer – of many – he would consume that evening. “He was pretty great at your age.”
“No matter what it was either. He threw it in his mouth and made a competition about it,” Louis smirked, “didn’t you, Styles?”
Whether it was grapes set out backstage before a performance, peanuts in a pub that they would stop off at when they were travelling and constantly on the road all the time, or pieces of bread that he would steal from the loaf of bread sat in the breadbin of the house, Harry was always seen making a game and playing with his food. Getting people to join in his little games and cheering whenever he would beat and gather himself a continuous streak over time – with Niall being his usual competition buddy, with the two of them always being seen challenging one another to a dual whenever they felt bored and in needed of entertaining themselves before they went out on stage.
“I maybe did, yes. I was just a typical eighteen-year-old back then,” Harry smirked, setting a beer in front of Alfie. “Get that down your neck, buddy.”
“You weren’t really a typical teen where you, mate?” Niall chuckled, taking a swig from the neck of the bottle and setting it upon a cracked and ripped and beer-soaked beer mat upon the table. “A typical teenager would be one that stayed at home, under his covers all day, masturbating to porn on his computer and going to parties. You, my friend, were on a second tour with your band, were you not?”
“I was, yes. I was,” Harry smiled, holding the condensed bottle of beer in his hand and lifting the neck to his lips.
“I mean, you pretty much were a typical teen in that first tour bus we had though,” Liam warned, a smirk on his lips as he reached forward to the bowl of peanuts set in the middle of the table as complimentary snacks. “He slept all day, stayed huddled under his covers and refused to get up until an hour or so before the show, went to a couple of bar and clubs when we asked him to after a show and he most definitely got caught masturbating a couple of times in his bunk,” Liam laughed, raucous laughter and chuckles leaving the three others sitting around Harry.
There was no word of a lie about him being caught, and it was difficult to count on one hand the number of times Harry had been seen by the boys, with his hands in his boxers or a pumping action being seen beneath his blanket with his laptop showing a rather erotic movie that he would use as some sort of stimulation to get him to the edge – a compromise he was willing to take to make sure he felt pleasured enough whilst he was away from you, or away from the contact of a female he felt attracted too.
With much embarrassment and slurs and tired grumbles being thrown at him, it had never seemed to stop him from carrying out such a task; and being given a hotel room to himself on their second world tour made him feel like he was the master of carrying out the tasks that he wanted.
“Shut up. My son does not need to know about my life 30 something years ago,” Harry murmured, his cheeks blushing pink as he gulped down a mouthful of the sweet yet sour tasting beer. “I could crack open my stories about the number of times I’ve walked in on the three of you,” Harry smirked, raising his eyebrows in amusement as he set the bottle down upon the table with a soft bang.
“Yeah, don’t bother. This is the time we get to tease the fuck out of you, Harry. We’re getting your son in on this early,” Louis teased, reaching across and hi-fiving Alfie with a smirk. “How are you feeling though, lad? Are you enjoying this?”
“I really am. Yeah, I am. I can’t wait to do this more often with my mates and stuff,” Alfie admitted, his nails picking at the label of the beer bottle sat in front of him. “I’m sure Freddie will want to come out and stuff, and Sophie and Ellie can actually meet properly,” Alfie grinned, looking up at Louis.
Freddie had been one guy he had bonded with from an early age, and being just a year younger than him, they pretty much went through everything together. With Louis living just a street away, they were always seen playing football together or going out to school together in the mornings, as well as going to football games at stadiums or small fields for teams that weren’t exactly the most well-known. Freddie had always been there for Alfie, and vice versa, and between the four of you – Harry and yourself as well as Louis and his wife – you were expecting a budding friendship to form between the two of them.
Sleepovers were always common between the two of them as well as joint parties when they had done achievements of a similar something – football somethings more than likely with the two of them engrossed in the sport. Ending up on the same teams and partaking in games together, on the same team, working as a duo to make sure their team came out on top.
And with the two of them now being in their legal teens, you and Harry both knew you would be lending Alfie money for taxis home or for buying bottles of beer and cans from the supermarket for garden parties that he would be invited too during the summer months and you knew that you would be waking up to knocks on the door in the early hours in the near future, with an excitable Alfie and a tired and drunken-looking Freddie on his arm, with your son insisting Freddie stay the night for reasons his father couldn’t know, that you knew were but he was too nervous to say.
And it excited Louis just as much as Harry that the two continued a budding friendship even though they were separated miles for university. And it was always a special something when the two of them reunited at the weekends when Freddie decided on coming home.
“Freddie would love that, for sure, lad.”
“And speaking of Ellie, how is that going for you, eh? How long have you two been together now?” Niall wondered, nudging his arm against Alfie’s. “Give us the rundown of this. We don’t see you as often as we’d like too.”
“No, we’re good, yeah. We have our 2-year anniversary coming up so we’re in the middle of planning something romantic to do and stuff,” Alfie grinned, his cheeks pinking up as he nodded softly, his hands pushing up the bandana covering his head. “I mean, we’ll probably end up spending the day together and going out for dinner or something.”
For their one-year anniversary, Alfie had pulled out all of the stops and made Ellie the top priority for the day. Doing what she wanted to do and treating her to what she wanted; a morning full of shopping, followed by a picnic lunch in Hyde Park which then turned into hours of lounging in the sun and exchanging kisses before a sweet dinner in her favourite restaurant that evening.
And he needed to top that for their second-year anniversary.
“What about the you-know-what?” Louis smirked, watching as Alfie’s eyes widened and his gaze turned to his hands, his fingers twiddling and playing with the rings upon his fingers beneath the table. Of course he’d done it – he was eighteen and a handsome lad with a girlfriend of which he loved with his entire being – and those sat at the table clocked on as soon as the question was set upon the table, smirks all around as they awaited the answer. “Oh, you dirty dog, you. When did you do it, lad?”
“Please do not bring it up,” Alfie grumbled, gulping nervously. The memory painstaking and embarrassing whenever something or someone striked up the event. “You should ask my dad. He caught me almost hitting home base,” he added, looking up and watching as Harry’s lips curved into a smirk with his cheeks dusting pink. “Dad actually caught me and Ellie in the act and I couldn’t be more embarrassed.”
“Oh, Harry! I thought you would have learnt by now to knock or make it known you’re there,” Niall laughed, bellowing out around the almost quiet pub garden. “Mate, you never learn, hm?”
Being on a tour bus and living nine months with three other horny men without the touch and the gentle caresses of women, there was more than a 75% chance of walking into the tour bus bathroom to someone giving themselves pleasure or being given the room next to one who was having a particular time where nothing seemed to work and watching a movie had taken to suffice that relief. He had had his fair share of seeing people at their highs, yet he felt the experience of seeing his son doing such an intimate activity felt more humiliating for not only himself but for Alfie and Ellie as well.
“In my defense, I had no idea he was home with Ellie,” Harry admitted, holding his hands up in defense, “I was in the garden when he came in, and when I came back inside after doing up the garden, I thought I’d give the missus a night off of laundry and I went around the house picking up the dirty clothes and stuff. And without even thinking, I walked into Alfie’s room and caught them and I have never felt so embarrassed in my life, for sure. And Liam pulled my trousers down in front of fifteen thousand people.”
“Oh, my god. That was iconic,” Louis laughed, standing from his seat. “I’m just going for a wee and then I’ll get some more drinks. What do you say we go and get more adventurous with the drinks and get some shots in? To let Alfie, here, have some experience.”
“Louis, I said to my missus I wouldn’t get him too drunk. Please, nothing too adventurous, yeah?” Harry warned, his eyebrows raised and his fore finger pointing at the man who had a smirk on his face and his hands upon his hips. “I mean it. Maybe a couple of shots, but, nothing too extreme, please. I don’t want to be cleaning sick from my car nor do I want to arrive home with a completely drunken son.”
A laugh left Louis’ mouth as he disappeared in the crowd inside the pub, his short figure engulfed by those taller and much broader than himself as he pushed his way through to the bathroom. Leaving the four of them back at the table to finish off the beers the were halfway through finishing as well as continuing the conversation he had left midway.
“I won’t be sick, dad. I promise,” Alfie grinned. “I want to try some shots.”
“If you’re anything like your dad, you’ll end up puking up what your mum cooked for dinner. Trust me, your dad has such a weak stomach and one of you Styles children has inherited that gene, unfortunately,” Liam chuckled, patting Harry on the back, reminding him of the weak stomach that had unfortunately ran through his family over generations.
Sickness and hangovers being something Harry could never handle well, with the alcohol coursing through his veins making him worse for wear and giving him a feeling of unsettlement and discomfort. Something you took the brunt of in the mornings when he woke from a sleep that he felt just wasn’t enough to take away the night before. His body covered in a thin layer of sweat as he spent the majority of the morning, before breakfast and occasionally before you even woke yourself, with his head in the toilet bowl as he brought the contents of his stomach up.
A gene his mother had and a gene Gemma had surprisingly missed out upon. And it was only a matter of time before he found out which one of his own had inherited the weaker stomach gene.
“I have a feeling Persephone may have inherited that gene, but, I’m not risking it with Alfie, alright, lad?” Harry smiled, squeezing Alfie’s knee. “I mean it, buddy. It’s not a great feeling and I advise you to not drink so much on a night out,” he stated, a smile on his lips. “You don’t want to spend the whole of the next day grumpy and aching and feeling sick because it’s never fun.”
He was right. He had experience and it wasn’t something he enjoyed.
“I’m not planning on it, I promise.”
“You should have seen me when I knocked a few pints back. I was terrible. When we were on tour, and we used to be young and free and had a few nights where we partied, I used to knock a few pints back and I was always grumpy and nauseous the next day. Luckily for us, we had a free day to just relax but it’s never a good feeling,” Niall admitted, “and don’t let ‘em tell you that the Irish can handle their liquor. Some can’t,” he added.
“Let’s just let him enjoy his first night of legal drinks, yeah? He deserves this,” Liam smiled, sending a wink towards Alfie.
“Of course. And when Tommo gets back with the shots, we can give you a birthday toast and natter amongst us. Maybe plan another night out for us to have when we’re all back in London,” Niall suggested, a smile on his lips as he gulped down the last of the beer in his beer bottle.
With Liam and his wife moving back to Wolverhampton to be closer to his family, and with Niall choosing to settle down with his family in the South West of England, it was difficult to get time to travel back to London and see the ones that they used to see regularly back in their twenties. And getting any opportunity that they could, they never passed out on getting back to London, seeing the roots of where they spent many years of their life in, seeing those that they never saw much of anymore, and taking their children to where they spent more than enough time with those the children would have been introduced too once or twice in their lives; the pubs and the parks and the cinemas and even the shops they were asked to visit for meet and greets as well as signings.
And coming back for one of the boys’ family was something that was never even considered being passed up.
“We’re coming back for Persephone’s graduation ceremony in two weeks though, aren’t we? Down in Southampton?” Liam reminded the three of the ones sat around with him, the breeze in the catching under the umbrella and rattling the pole held securely in the weight below. “Me and the missus are definitely planning on coming up to see her leave.”
Harry’s face dropped as he was reminded that his daughter – his Persephone – was just weeks away from entering the real word, with a degree in medicine and a set way for medical school where she would train to be one in the medic world; something she had had her heart set upon ever since she took interest in the science world. At 23 years old, she was living her life to the best of her ability and Harry couldn’t have been any prouder of her – with his first born off to university for something she was determined to do well in, he could have been any more thankful for having kids who were after something good in life. He had been there for her through whatever she needed, and in just two-weeks time, he would be there for her to watch as she gathered her diploma and walked across the stage as a graduate from Southampton University; a place that had been her home for 5 years, as well as the place she had accustomed herself too for 5 years, as well as a place she had met those – as well as her boyfriend – who would more than likely be in her life for the many years to come.
It was a sore topic for Harry to talk about, knowing his daughter was just one more step away from becoming a woman who he would share with the one boy who had brought her happiness in life – she would be set to be wed in a little less than three years, and Harry knew that with the blink of an eye, he would be walking her down the aisle on her wedding day as he passed her over to the man who would take care of her. To the man who would take over Harry’s job as her protector. To the man who would become her shoulder to cry on when life got too rough. To the man of which Harry adored just as much as his daughter did. And to the man who Harry accepted as another son and had welcomed to the family after the first time they had met.
“Don’t remind me. She’s 23 already,” Harry gushed in shock, his head shaking in bewilderment. “23 and leaving university as a medical student. I’m so unbelievably proud of her, it’s just amazing. I’m proud of all my kids. I’ve got one finished university, one who’s just finished college and two who have just finished their A-levels. I’ve not got any little babies left anymore,” he sighed and looked to Alfie. “Your sister needs to pop a baby Styles or Hudson out soon so I can dote on a little one.”
And he wasn’t going to lie when he said to those that he wanted a baby to dote over – the next baby being brought into the family being a grandchild, making him one of those grandfathers that doted and loved and cared and looked after his grandchildren. Watching from the best when his father or when Robin looked after Persephone and Alfie and Rose and Darcy when they were younger.
“Are you sure you mean that, Styles? You’ve just gone all sentimental that your kids are growing up,” Niall smirked, his eyes catching Louis’ walking figure with a tray of almost 15 or more shots circled on the black plastic. Making his way across the grass, the sky behind him painted with pinks and blues and oranges as well as greys forming as the night drew closer, he set the tray upon the table with a grin, perching upon the edge of the seat and kicking his ankles out in front of him, crossing his feet over and digging his heels into the grass growing green beneath him.
“I want to retract my statement there,” he smirked. “I’m not ready for my little girl to have a baby just yet. It’s bad enough all of my girls have boyfriends right now,” Harry sighed, admittedly. “And my little man is growin’ up as well, like, you’re off to Manchester for university in September and then my little girls will be off soon and I’m losing you all,” Harry sighed, his chin dropping to his chest.
But he knew he wasn’t losing them for good. And they reminded him when he had the doubts.
“Dad, I’m still going to come and visit. Just like Persephone used to do. Plus, this sports management course I’m taking is three years long and it isn’t five years like P’s,” Alfie reasoned, looking at Louis as he sat down. “But, let’s not talk about leaving right now. I don’t want to think of it, so, let’s just talk more about something else.”
“Of course. I like that idea,” Harry grinned, patting Alfie’s leg. “But first, let’s give you a toast, shall we?”
With each of them reaching over for a shot glass of a clear liquid – which Harry could only presume was vodka and knew would make Alfie crave just more and more and leading to headaches and hangovers in the morning – they awaited for Louis to begin a toast to the birthday boy. A grin on his lips as he turned to the boy who had an anticipated look in his green eyes.
“To Alfie, the newly turned eighteen-year old ready to fuck shit up and run the clubs dry,” Louis smirked with a snort, as Harry scoffed and shook his head.
“To Alfie,” the four of them said in unison, their shot glass clinking together before the five of them brought the rims of their shot glasses to their lips and downed the burning liquid. Grunts and mewls of disgust coming from their lips as they dropped their little plastic glasses to the table top.
“Happy birthday, son,” Harry smiled, pressing his lips to Alfie’s head and sighing. “I hope you’ve had a good day.”
“I have, thank you, dad. It’s been the best. Thank you for being so great. Both you and mum. I love you both.”
“We love you too, Alfie. We love you too.”
* *

@ello_elliexo: It’s my loves 18th birthday today. I love you. x #Alfie #boyfriend #eighteen #birthday
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@harrystyles: We took him for his first legal beer. We think he liked it. #HappyBirthdayAlfie #birthdayboy #son #eighteen
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@Alfie_JackStyles: Birthday boy, innit. #eighteen #Elliescreenshotted #thankslove #bestgirlfriend #birthdayboy #icanfinallydrinklegally
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@PAnne_Styles: Happy Birthday, brother. Throwing this back to a year ago when you thought you were ‘cool as a cucumber’. #iloveyou #happybirthday #imsorryicouldntbetherewithyou #seeyousoon #eighteen
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@DarcyGemma: Birthday bumps are coming your way, big brother. Be prepared for double the bruises from me and Rose. #thedownsidetohavingtwinsisters #weloveyou #rudebutwedontcare #Rosehasnophotosofyou #soconsiderthisasajointmessage
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@hi-im-connor: The time has finally arrived for us to go to pubs together and drink disgusting beer and chat about football like the other men. #finally #happybirthday #girlfriendsbrother #bestfriend #birthdayboy #eighteen #thepubsbetterwatchout

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