Disclaimer: Love Actually does not belong to me. I do however take full responsibility for the following plot.

Rating: T, because this is a story about adults. Language, situations, etc.

Note: I just saw Love Actually for the first time two weeks ago, and you know what? "Fluff" pieces can be really inspiring. Harry and Karen, for example, are two masterfully painted (if woefully underdeveloped) characters in a bright parade of a film. They intrigued me, they amused me, and their "maybe they're okay, maybe they're not" ending annoyed me to the point where I had to write this. All comments are very welcome.

COLORS

Prologue

Christmas Lights.

- 2 WEEKS TO CHRISTMAS -

Harry wiped his face and pulled the last nail from his pocket. He hammered it in carefully, not interested upsetting his balance. After all, it would do no good to drive it home, only to fall off the ladder and kill himself. He was currently perched precariously in front of his house, wrestling with his least favorite Christmastime activity – putting up lights. He'd gotten a late start this year, but that was okay. The kids were fully convinced that as long as they were up by Christmas Eve, Santa would find the house. Harry was in the clear.

"Come on, you little bugger, get in there!" he coaxed the nail. It slid neatly into its groove and he tapped it into place.

The wiring on the lights was frayed all over the place, and the whole apparatus had quite frankly seen better days. But the lights had worked faithfully for many years, so there had been no need to replace them.

"Right, Bernie, flip the switch!"

Bernard, who had been waiting on the porch for exactly this instruction, did as his father asked. The lights came on in an array of dazzling colors – cheerful reds, pleasant blues, vibrant greens and oranges, the occasional pink and golden yellow. They reflected off Harry's glasses, momentarily blinding him, and he squinted into the glare. It was amazing. This ridiculously old set of Christmas lights was still hanging on. Sort of like him and Karen.

"Bloody Christmas miracle," he muttered. "Thank God that's done."

He clambered down off the ladder and looked up at his work. Bernard ignored the front steps in favor of hopping straight off the porch into the snowy front yard. He walked over and joined his dad in looking up at the lights. Harry felt rather proud of himself. The little line of Christmas lights across the top of the porch was neat, if unimpressive.

"Hey Mum! Daisy! Dad put up the lights! Come out and have a look!" Bernard yelled.

Karen and Daisy came out at the noise, throwing on their coats. Harry smiled.

"Well, what do you think?" he asked, once they'd joined him in the yard.

Karen swept her gaze to the right, where the neighbors had done a festive winter wonderland scene, and to the left, where the other neighbors had managed to outline their entire house in Christmas lights. Harry's effort looked rather pathetic by comparison.

"It's… erm…" She was trying to be diplomatic.

Then one of the bulbs – a red one – exploded, startling Daisy. She backed into her mum. Harry's eyebrows went up. That wasn't supposed to happen. Then a green bulb burst. Keeping both eyes on the display, Harry herded the kids and Karen back a few paces.

Then a blue bulb burst and the whole family could only look on helplessly as the resulting spark alit on the frayed wire. In a second the entire line was ablaze, threatening to spread to the roof.

"Jesus!" Harry yelled, shocked into action. He sprinted into the house for a fire extinguisher, and raced back out just in time to get on the ladder and spray like a maniac until the flames were out. Breathing hard, he stumbled off the ladder and took another look.

"Oh my," Karen said.

"Oh Dad," Daisy sighed.

"Wicked! Can you do that again?" Bernard asked.

Harry looked back at them all in annoyance, gritted his teeth, and turned back to the house. All the extinguisher goop dripping off the steaming roof looked like cheap flock on a Christmas tree. He sighed.

"Well, I suppose we'll have to get new Christmas lights."

"I suppose we will," Karen said quietly. "Come on you two, back inside. Dad's going to clean up his mess and then we'll all have dinner."

With a meaningful look at Harry, she shooed the children ahead of her into the house. Harry was left alone in the snowy front yard, holding the fire extinguisher, staring dolefully at the dripping roof. He stood there for a moment as the door closed, taking in the sad remains of something that had worked for years and had suddenly broken down.

Dropping the extinguisher into the snow, he trudged out round back to get a shovel and a rubbish bag for goop-clearing purposes and walked back out front dragging the shovel behind him. It was times like this that made it rather hard to pretend everything was okay. It had been nearly a year since the Christmas necklace disaster, or the CND, as he mentally referred to it. When he'd returned in January from a three-week business trip to the States, the children and Karen had greeted him at the airport. The kids were enthusiastic; Karen was shy and polite. Daisy had insisted on leaping into his arms and Bernie had even made him a little sign, but all he'd gotten from his wife was a peck on the cheek.

"How are you?" he'd asked.

"Fine," she'd said, with that tight Mona Lisa smile. "I'm fine."

Karen was not fine. Harry discovered this when he found her crying in the bedroom a few afternoons later, but he'd just hid round the corner and listened to her muffled sobbing and called himself a coward in his head, rather than go in and talk to her. He couldn't handle it.

So he and Karen had mutually decided to pretend, rather than fix things. They stayed ridiculously busy and out of each other's way, and told themselves it was for the best. They put on happy faces and had spirited conversations at the dinner table, and told themselves it was for the sake of the children. And over the course of the spring and summer and fall, they'd gotten so good at pretending that they had even started to pretend with each other. Slowly but surely they smoothed over the disturbance in their marriage, the way road workers pave over a pothole. Except that they hadn't used the best materials – the asphalt was starting to crack.

"This is nonsense," Harry mumbled, scraping burnt wire and white glop off the roof and onto the snowy lawn below.

With the holiday that had caused so much trouble looming, Harry knew that he needed to sit Karen down and talk to her, maybe even get her something to make up for his utter stupidity last year. With their busy schedules a discussion like that was nigh on impossible, but he knew he needed to try. They just couldn't go on like this – their perfunctory if pleasant conversations, her recent obsessive exercising (Was she trying to disappear? Honestly!), his working late, and most odiously, her using those "devices" and his taking care of his needs in the shower rather than touching each other in bed. It depressed him beyond anything. It was just wrong. They were husband and wife, damn it, not roommates.

"Bloody hell," he snarled, overtaken by pique.

He took his rage out on the roof and smacked off the last of the clumpy, broken Christmas light display as hard as he could. Unfortunately, he didn't have that good a grip on the shovel. It sailed out of his hand, hitting their post box with a clang and knocking it askew, and he nearly fell off the ladder. Arms flailing, heart going a mile a minute, he scrabbled for the porch post and clung onto it until he could breathe properly again. Then he carefully found his way down to the ground, where he set about shoveling all the rubbish into the bag and straightening the box.

"Harry, supper!" Karen was in the doorway, shivering a little.

"Coming!" he called back, and dumped the results of the last hour in the rubbish bin out front in the street.

He dusted off his cold hands and crunched through the ankle-deep snow in the yard toward the fire extinguisher. Karen's famously fragrant chicken kebabs had him by the nose ten feet from the house, and he wondered for the millionth time how he could ever have been so stupid as to take his wife for granted. With a sigh he scooped up the fire extinguisher and made the porch steps, where he paused only to knock the snow from his boots. Catlike, he slipped into the house and shut the door.