One Direction Preferences✔️

Birthday • Harry

"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."