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Alex is the first thing Henry sees when he opens his eyes.
It is everything, and it is devastating.
If Henry had the ability to travel back in time and catch himself from a year ago, he would present himself with the exact image he is looking at right now, just to see the look on his own face. Back then, he would have considered waking up to a sight like this as nothing more than a stolen image from a fool’s paradise. Such a far cry from reality that the only explanation would have been that he was still dreaming.
Henry closes his eyes, and waits for the after-image to fade away from the back of his eyelids.
It doesn’t.
He opens his eyes. Alex is still there.
And that must be it, Henry thinks to himself, why it hurts so much. Why it feels like his heart has been carved out of his body and flung into the Thames, even though his heart is merely lying a few breaths away, snoring softly into his pillow. The chasm in his chest is there precisely because it isn’t a dream.
Because Alex is really, truly lying there beside him: unassuming and unknowing, a quiet blaze burning even in his sleep. The air in Henry’s bedroom is chilly but Alex is warm beside him, is always warm. Has always been warm.
Henry knows that about him and more. He knows Alex from the rounded curve at the tip of his nose to his striking eyebrows, to the curls on his head and his square jaw. He knows if he pulled the blanket a bit lower he’d see the freckle just above Alex’s hip. Henry knows him from the off-center crease between his eyebrows that appear when Alex is in the middle of sorting through thoughts in his head at the speed of light, knows him from the resilient and strong hands that now know Henry’s body better than himself, the same hands that can go from pulling the finger on him to gently cradling Henry’s face in a matter of moments.
It hurts so much, because Henry is allowed to know the unadulterated happiness of what it means to know Alex Claremont-Diaz, to have Alex love him back, but Henry is not allowed to keep it.
On the bed, Alex's hand lies between them, as if reaching for Henry. Henry so badly wants to reach back.
He should. He can’t.
He wants to. He isn’t allowed.
Instead, he grits his teeth and closes his eyes again. Takes a few breaths, and tries to ask himself if this is the last time he’ll ever get to wake up like this.
He opens his eyes.
Henry doubts there is a sight lovelier in the world than the way Alex looks now, asleep in the gentle gray light of dawn. Eyelashes. Smooth brown skin, still sun-kissed from their weekend at the lake house. Dark hair, just barely long enough to show the emergence of curls, spread across the pillow like a halo. As if he were a work of art, transported straight from a painting and directly into Henry's bed, a cruel but beautiful hell devised specifically to torture him. Though Henry can't say he minds the torture all that much.
A wobbly breath slips out of his mouth.
How in God’s name is he meant to keep walking away from this? How could anyone?
Doing so last weekend had taken everything he'd had, had meant ripping away the emotions that had been tearing at his insides and scrabbling to lock them away somewhere deeper, far deeper, only to find that he was running out of space to lock things up in. Henry doesn't think he will have the strength to manage it again.
The past week had been...abysmal, to be generous. He hadn’t been able to truly grasp how much of his life he’d restructured with Alex as its cornerstone until it had all come crumbling away in his absence. He had experienced his fair share of pain in life and more, but the feeling of watching Alex’s messages come in and being utterly powerless to reply was a particular type of agony Henry had yet to experience.
Worse was when the messages stopped coming at all.
There had been the crux of it: lying awake in bed at ungodly hours of the night and trying to find ways to quiet the torment in his head. Cradling his phone over his heart and resolutely ignoring all the answers at his fingertips. His sleeping habits had always been far from exemplary, but never this disastrous in ages. He could likely count all the hours of restless sleep he’d managed in the past week combined on both his hands.
It had been a comfort, before, when at least he knew that even over thousands of miles away Alex was awake, too. Henry would ring him and Alex would answer and know just from the sound of Henry’s voice to chatter away about his day or arbitrary, historical American scandals or trivial facts about policy and procedure until Henry’s eyes drifted shut and his breaths evened out.
He can’t fathom it. How Alex is a person that exists, that looks like he does and smiles like he does and kisses like he does and can discern Henry’s every mood from an ocean away just by the sound of his voice. Someone who knows when to keep talking to reel Henry out of the depths of his own thoughts, or when to listen and say just enough to draw the words from Henry's mouth instead.
Someone who loves him.
Alex can’t possibly be real, and Henry should be a man lost to the flames by being loved by someone who burned as brilliantly as he did.
And, yet: they are both here.
The only fire that had been burning in the room had gone out ages ago. And Alex’s quiet blaze isn’t the type that burns; it simply keeps them both warm.
Alex would go, if Henry said the word. Henry knows that. He had seen it in the resolute finality in the way Alex had looked him square in the eye and said, tell me to leave. Or the touch of cool wetness on Henry’s temple when they were tangled in bed last night, when Henry realized he hadn’t been the only one with tears in his eyes. The irony of the situation isn't lost on him—all those years of mooning after Alex from afar, dreading the day Alex would cut things off, only to have Alex turn up on his doorstep with open arms, put a blade in Henry's hands and tell Henry he’s got to be the one to do it.
And Henry could never do such a thing.
He's tried for as long as he can remember, but he could never completely lock his heart away. His first time, his father's death, every wretched photography stint set up for him, all bolted shut and the key done away with. But Alex isn't someone who belongs in a room. Henry doesn't even think it is possible—a sun is not something meant to be confined. Henry is powerless to do anything but let it shine, absorb its warmth, shield himself from the flames and pray he does not burn alive.
A doomed undertaking from the start, as his armour has never been thoroughly faultless. There is a crack in it, running right over where his heart is, and there is a particular pair of playful brown eyes that is the perfectly sized chisel and hammer that will always be able to break it out.
He releases a breath, and it hisses as it escapes through his teeth.
He thinks that a very small part of him knows that his choice has already been made. An even smaller part thinks that maybe it is a choice that he made ages ago, since the first time Henry was pressed against a historical painting and kissed within an inch of his life. Perhaps even earlier, in a quiet garden under a wintry night sky. A choice cemented in history by willingly showing up at Alex's bedroom door that first night and allowing himself to be pulled inside. He had never stood a chance.
The choice is made, has been made, but it is far too tangled within all his other thoughts for him to make any sense of it. There are repercussions, not just for him, but for Alex, too. Their families. Their countries. Their careers. Their futures...
His limbs are buzzing, filled with the same nervous scrambled cluster of emotions swirling about in his head. It’s too much to process at once.
He needs…he needs—
Henry needs a run. He’ll never get anything sorted while he’s in this state.
He slides out of bed as silently as possible. His heart gives a pang when he sees Alex’s hand between where they both lay on the bed, still reaching for Henry’s side. It’s a rare moment that he gets to see Alex like this, asleep and soft. Between the two of them Henry is typically the one to first fall asleep and wake last. It is a phenomenon that has never transpired in his life with his erratic sleeping habits until he’d met Alex. A part of him is terrified that when he leaves this room he won’t have the strength to come back. That part wants him to stay, to lie here and drink in as much as he can of this sight before it is taken away from him.
Another part of him soothes the fear with the idea that perhaps, that fear of losing Alex is precisely what proves that he will come back. That part wants Henry to fight.
Henry steels himself with the latter, the thought that he’ll be back as soon as he’s had some time to clear his head, and slips out of bed to grab his joggers and trainers. He looks and looks and looks into his own eyes in the mirror above his sink as he brushes his teeth and tries, for the first time, to see a prince that deserves a happy ending.
-
It’s barely dawn when he makes it outside. The sky is cloudy and only permits a grey, pale light through, and the air around him is heavy with the warning of an impending downpour. It’s likely he’ll be caught in it if he chooses to go out now, but he lets the door fall shut behind him and pushes forward nevertheless.
There's a small path that takes him up behind the staff's quarters. It's surrounded by foliage: towering English oaks and elms, smaller Norway maples, sweet chestnut trees, and wildflowers everywhere in between. It isn’t very lengthy in distance, and it’s far less groomed like the rest of the gardens, but it is private. The path finishes off at the end with an unending spanse of laurel hedges that his parents had put in ages ago to procure a bit of privacy for all of them. Mum used to take him, Philip, and Bea for walks along it when they were little, in the small stretch of time that they were all free following afternoon tea and before their music lessons.
Octobers and Novembers had been the most fun: it was when the chestnuts would begin falling from the trees. When they were little, all three of them would race to outdo one another in gathering as many chestnuts as they possibly could, and see who could get the most. It had driven mum mad, as the event perpetually ended with their clothes and hands properly soiled, but she never made a proper effort to stop them past half-hearted grumblings. Henry, being the youngest, always lost. But both Bea and Philip had always shared their own lots with him at the end, emptying their handfuls into Henry’s smaller palms until they were overflowing, and there was no other choice but to declare Henry the de facto winner.
Now, Henry thinks he's the only one who ever bothers coming back to walk along the path when he needs to clear his mind. These days his mum spends more time shut away in her room than she did out of it. Bea prefers to seek comfort in music—it happens less frequently now than it did a few years back, but every now and then Henry can count on finding her in some deserted crook of the house or other when she’s in a mood, sulking and plucking away at the strings of her guitar. Philip...Henry doubts Philip has ever taken a moment to spare a thought for himself in the last five years, far too preoccupied with the task of thinking for a family that is seemingly incapable of thinking for themselves.
Henry starts off at a walking pace but he’s scarcely a few steps in when he realizes it won’t do. He picks up into a jog. He tries to focus on his breaths, on what needs to be tackled first, but he doesn’t know where to begin.
Alex has a penchant for lists, Henry knows, and he’s good at them. He rattles them off mid-rant during phone calls, or Henry will find crumpled sticky notes falling out of his pockets with hastily scrawled and numbered half-thoughts. Whether it’s a list of which classes he needs to study to pass with a decent grade and which classes he doesn’t need to study for at all, or of which of the Presidents was the least likely to be straight, or personally texting Henry to discuss the pros and cons of admitting to either June or Nora that they may have been right in whatever groupchat debate they were having that day—Alex lived by lists.
Henry doesn’t know how he does it—how Alex manages to easily sort ideas and problems that are massive and complex into a few succinct bullet points. Henry can hardly sort his head into a single cohesive feeling on any given day, much less a list. He doesn’t know how to separate thoughts into lists when all the concepts are tangled together, caused by one and affecting three or four others.
But he hasn’t got any better ideas. So he tries, anyway.
One, he thinks, and grapples for a thought that is sound enough to start with.
One.
He counts with his breathing as he jogs. One breath in, one breath out.
Two breaths in, out. Three. Four.
One, whatever choice he makes for his future, he wants Alex to be a part of it. He does. That much at least he knows. It’s a choice that comes with more clarity with every step he takes, with every icy breath drawn in and out. However, it’s also the extent of all he knows, wherein lies the problem.
A future with Alex would mean...telling the rest of his family. The rest of the world. Somehow, it’s the former that makes his heart skip a beat.
Bea would stand by him no matter what he decided to do, Henry knows that. She would go to war for him. He could never ask her to, but there’s an anxious gnawing in his chest that fears that that war is precisely what he’ll get if he dares speak the truth.
There’s his mum, though he’s less apprehensive about her than he is about Philip.
And then there’s Gran.
The last thought sends his nerves into madness, and he picks up the pace until the only thing he can concentrate on is each subsequent footfall on the ground and the heavy breaths that staccato them. He pushes himself, pushes himself, pushes himself, and tries to drown his thoughts with the burning in his legs and the heaving from his lungs. It doesn’t last, though. Before long he’s forced to stumble to an abrupt stop at the end of the short path, faced with laurel hedges towering up in front of him.
He closes his eyes, breathing hard. Each gust of air that leaves him sears through his throat on its way out, but it’s still not enough to distract his mind.
Above, the sky gives an almighty, threatening rumble. Henry sighs, and turns weightily back around on the path, at a walking pace instead.
That was just his side of it all. Alex had flown here on a whim prepared to risk it all—for Henry, of all people—but Henry knows: Alex has dreams. Alex wants to be a senator before thirty. He isn’t like Henry, who has survived off sheer self-preservation alone, who hasn’t dared to do more than wish for dreams he could never pursue. Alex is a trailblazer, brave and determined and passionate, ready to face whatever obstacle it was that dared stand in his path. He’s got all the intensity and spirit that Pez has, but with a laser-sharp focus and bottomless ambition.
Watching him, Henry thinks that there’s nothing Alex couldn’t do if he tried. Watching him, Henry feels inspired. A passion like that is not just exhilarating, but it is also infectious—it makes Henry want to do more than just dream.
Alex would be affected, too, if they were to do this properly. In this moment, he is at the most ideal place to pursue the career that he wants, especially if his mother were to follow into her second term. Nothing could stop him. If what he had with Henry were to ever come to light, it could ruin everything he’s worked for.
And, yet.
Alex is here now. Lying in Henry’s room, in his bed, despite it all.
Henry doesn’t know what his own future would hold for him. Both Gran and Philip have been pestering him about enlisting from before he had even completed his degree, and Henry is no closer to giving them an answer than he was over a year ago. In what is becoming a bleak pattern for all the decisions he’s required to make in life, he knows his answer, but for all that, he hasn’t the faintest idea of how to mention it without giving Philip an aneurysm.
Out of instinct he reaches with his thumb to run over the ring that sits at the base of his little finger, and his stomach dips when he finds the skin bare. It takes him another second to remember taking it off last night in the heat of everything. He slows to a complete stop and presses his thumb into the base of his fingers with his other hand. The emptiness had been jarring at first, but after the initial shock had subsided, he had to admit that his hand felt oddly...light.
Dad had worn a similar ring of his own. Henry remembers the image with crystal clarity: his father’s hands, long fingers and knobby knuckles, the same features echoed in Henry’s own hands. A wedding band on the ring finger of his left, and silver signet ring snug on the little finger of his right. It had the same family crest engraved into the same ovate face as Henry’s, handed down over generations of ancestors, the only difference being that Henry’s was gold.
He had been well into his adolescence before he came to realize that what he had always unquestionably believed to be his father’s ring had firstly been his mother’s. He doesn’t know why it took him so long to put the pieces together—the ring was, after all, a family heirloom. Gran had never quite approved of his parents’ marriage and would have considered passing on an antique of such royal merit to someone without a birthright as an act a mere step away from outright treason.
Henry had pestered his father until he had given up the details behind it. By the same tradition in which Philip, Bea and Henry had all received theirs, the ring had been originally given to Mum from Gran as a sixteenth birthday gift. And at the end of their first night together, after having spent hours dancing into the light of dawn, Dad had asked if he would ever get to see Mum again, and in a moment of deference the rebellious, enamoured Princess Catherine slipped the heirloom right off her finger and into Arthur Fox’s palm as a promise.
“She’d despised that ring, she did,” Dad had said, laughing. “Told me she thought it was cumbersome and that it looked horrid against her skin tone, and that in any case, her hand was far too small for a ring that size.”
Back then Henry had thought of it as nothing more than a sweeping romantic gesture, something that perhaps belonged in his father’s films. But he thinks he knows better, now. That maybe Catherine was sick of wearing it, of how it endlessly reminded her of everything she had to uphold. As if she could easily forget before.
He and his mum are similar in more ways than they ever acknowledge. There’s their shared love for English literature, the arts and the classics, but it goes deeper, still. When he was gifted the ring, Henry had accepted it with the grace and gratitude that such an endowment called for, but he also remembers the overwhelming feeling of being shackled to the responsibilities that came with his birthright the first time he’d worn it. The way it was always there when he looked down at his hands, the way he could always feel its heavy weight on his fingers even if he couldn’t see it, the way photographers would try and get it in their shots, and could he cross his arms the other way, if he please, so that they could get a better angle of his lovely ring?
Eventually he began to use it as an anchoring point, of sorts. Every time he felt himself slipping, felt himself wanting to run in the opposite direction, felt himself wanting to think of a different, happier future for himself, he would reach over with his thumb and run it over the smooth, unwieldy band at the base of his finger. Remind himself of who he was, and who he would always have to be.
Every so often though, he would take it off. It usually happened most frequently in the dead of the night—with the last night being no exception—when the ring and its burdens and responsibilities would grow too heavy on his finger, and Henry would swallow down the sickening bile in his throat and pry off the blasted thing, and set it on the bedside table beside him. In the morning, he would put the ring back on. He always put it back on.
But he hadn't today.
He stares down at his hands now, bare hands, and he considers. Without the ring, they could be the hands of any other man in the world. Not an heir to the throne. Not a prince.
Mum had been right about one thing—the ring had looked much better on his father’s fingers. It hadn’t looked like shackles on his hands.
On Dad’s hands, the ring had looked like a promise.
-
He makes three full rounds up and down the path, but he’s no closer to an answer by the end of the third. He stands there where he began, and looks off into the distance to his left, southwards, to where all the museums are. Henry wonders if he’ll ever leave a legacy worthy enough, sincere enough, to go into one of those museums. A large number of the relics inside them stem from tragedies. For the longest time he'd always thought that leaving a genuine legacy for himself would mean an ending of tragedy, but for the first time Henry wonders if that has to be the case.
A quiet memory flickers at the far end of his mind. He hasn’t thought about the V&A for ages. He’d used to go back alone quite often after Dad passed to get his mind off things, until it began to do more harm than good. Too many of his memories there were happy, and so consequently, a barely-healed wound that was still too sore and tender to revisit. Another chest of memories locked away.
But what he’d forgotten amongst those memories was a whimsical, childish fantasy he used to have: one with a faceless, gentle boy; a slow dance within a sanctuary that belonged solely to Henry in the veiled hours of secrecy that fell in the dead of night. He was surprised to find that even after all these years, that fantasy had somehow remained intact through it all.
The difference was that now, the boy had a face.
A drop of rain hits his temple.
The core of the fantasy has shifted, too—it’s no longer about the dream of just having someone to love at all, but now it is of sharing Henry's favourite place on earth with him.
The more he thinks on it, the less it feels like a fantasy at all, and more like something much more real. Something he could almost reach out and hold, if he let himself.
God, there is so much, so much, that he wants to show Alex. So much he wants to tell him about. The thought of being the one person in the world privileged enough to get to see Alex’s face the first time he would see the Medieval and Renaissance wing makes Henry's heart ache in the happiest of ways.
And there is so much of Alex that Henry wants to learn. His old house in Austin. Alex only speaks of it in rare occasions, but Henry knows it is a part of his past that is held dear: Alex still wears the key to it over his heart to this day.
There was also coming to learn the unexpected. Alex could cook—Henry hadn’t known that. Perhaps Alex had casually made vague threats with meals scattered throughout their conversations every now and then—“Don’t think I won't make the best goddamn sopapillas your royal mouth will have ever fucking dined upon the next time we see each other. I'll blow your mind in more ways than one, sweetheart.”—but Henry’s brain had somehow failed to truly grasp it until he walked into a kitchen with a full breakfast laid out by Alex’s hands alone.
It’s those small, rare parts of Alex that shine through at the most unexpected of moments, like the first time Henry saw Alex in glasses, that keep drawing Henry back in again and again. He wants to learn all there is to learn about Alex, wants to keep learning for as long as he lives. How could he give up an opportunity as precious as that?
We can figure out a way to do it together, Alex had said last night. Henry had wanted to believe him then, but he ultimately couldn’t bring himself to—he simply couldn’t see how it would work. As far as he could see, there was no clear way out at all.
Maybe that was the problem, Henry thinks. Maybe he should stop trying to find a way out alone. Plunging into the dark unknown was a feat that was vastly less harrowing in retrospect knowing that he had had the sun at his back all along.
Henry blinks water out of his eyes. What had started as a gentle mist has progressed into a steady drizzle now, but it hardly bothers him. The cool drops of water almost help clear his mind.
He abandons the task of attempting to find a solution for every foreseeable complication in the future altogether. There's no point. It's too much uncertainty to decide at once and it would be madness to try. Instead he tries for an easier undertaking: simply deciding his next step.
The answer to that hits him without hesitation, just as quick as the drops of water bespattering him. His choice means nothing without telling the one person who deserves to hear it first, the person who has deserved to hear it from the very beginning. The person who refused to let Henry go without a fight. Henry wants to fight for him, too.
He loves Alex. From his brilliant grin to his spitfire tongue, from the sound of his laugh to the way he is so brave despite everything, Henry loves him with every fibre in his being. He does, he has, he always will. The thought sits warm and snug in his heart, finally having been granted a dwelling to reside in.
The rain comes down now without restraint, and it’s enough to finally start Henry out of his stillstand. He breaks back into a jog to make it inside before he’s thoroughly drenched.
As he runs, he reaches out of muscle memory once again with his thumb over to the base of his little finger, feels the freed skin there where his ring once sat. Frankly speaking, he doesn’t know a single bloody thing about what the future will bring, or the slightest idea of how he’ll face it.
But he can make a promise.
-
He's shivering a bit from the dampness in his clothes once he's made it inside, and his stomach is beginning to protest against having gone empty for so long since he's been awake, so he goes to make something warm. The hallways are empty and quiet—the ancient pendulum clock on the wall tells him it's still relatively early, so the kitchen staff won't be coming in for a bit longer.
Henry is lost to his thoughts as he works on the drinks: a blistering tea for himself, to soothe the nervous beating of his heart and bring warmth to his bones, and a coffee for Alex. With cinnamon, because Alex has a partiality for everything he consumes to have a bit of a kick to it. And in the case of coffee, which he drinks with the dedication that a professional athlete would drink water, a kick on top of the regularly scheduled kick.
“Alright, then?”
Henry just barely resists flinching in surprise. He turns to see Philip, fully dressed but looking not yet quite awake, ambling into the kitchen.
"Morning," Henry answers, fighting to keep his voice light.
Philip. He'd completely forgotten that Philip had arrived yesterday morning to stay here while the renovations at Anmer Hall were being done this week. Henry watches him carefully for any signs that he'd heard Alex's entrance last night—the whole affair hadn't been a very discreet series of events—but it doesn't seem to be the case. Instead Philip is distracted this morning, flipping through some papers with half-interest.
"You're up early," Philip adds after a few moments, sparing Henry a glance. He sets his papers aside and heads towards the cupboards on the opposite end of the kitchen.
"Woke up and felt like a run," Henry says. "You?"
It's all it takes to get Philip talking, and it appears he's got quite a lot to say on it. Philip's got some grand opening of some new exhibit. And if he's honest, he tells Henry, he strongly believes it is time much better spent on other things, he's completely engulfed in work after all, but it is something that must be done regardless, as it is a necessary obligation—there is a pointed glance cast in Henry's direction at this—but in any case his week is stuffed with numerous other duties, he's been working out the logistics of land holdings for the estate now that Martha's in the picture, and it's a nightmare, and it’s not helping that Martha's parents are likely the most disagreeable persons to exist in this country, though he supposes it'll all be better once Martha's had their heirs to officiate things, which is another obligation that's giving him a headache…
Henry shifts uncomfortably as he listens, pouring his tea. Philip has never been enthusiastic about having children in the slightest. Henry knows he's heard Philip say on numerous occasions in the past that he despises them, but he's also terribly awkward with them, which is the main reason why Henry and Bea are always the ones to make appearances at children's charity events instead. It puts an uneasy twist in Henry's stomach now, to hear Philip speak about them now with the detached air of the whole affair being nothing more than an order of business. He hadn't even called them his own children—he'd called them heirs.
Philip drones on and on and eventually Henry finds his train of thought drifting instead, to how Philip distractedly selects a piece of toast, plainer than their Gran's sense of humor, and takes a sizeable bite out of it. It's...a bit unsettling.
Henry holds himself back for two more harrowing bites before he can't any longer. "You're just going to eat it like that?"
Philip breaks off and blinks at him, looking slightly miffed at the abrupt change in topic. He chews and swallows. "Eat it like what?"
"Your toast," Henry says, gesturing at it. "You're just going to eat it plain?"
Philip regards the toast in his hand, now more than half-finished, and then shrugs. "You know I've never been one to enjoy eating before sunrise. And I suppose this gets the job done well enough."
"But…" Henry struggles to find a way to explain the problem. Pez would have found the act criminal. "Plain toast is so...plain."
Philip stares at him like Henry's gone mad. "It's just toast, Henry," he says slowly. "What's it matter if it's eaten plain or not? It tastes fine just as."
Fine, the word echoes in Henry's head. Fine, fine, fine. No life or joy to it, nothing more than a step along the path for Philip to move towards his business for the day.
Alex's words from last night flash like lightning in his memories. You can live here in your tower and be miserable forever...
Henry thinks about his future, the two options he’d had last night. He could have chosen otherwise: he could have chosen to go upstairs right this moment and send Alex on his way back to America, break off things for good. He could be just like Philip, moving through his life in a series of expected, traditional landmarks befitting an heir. Nothing scandalous, nothing remarkable, nothing his own. He could continue to let everything happen to him without ever fighting back, never allowing himself the chance to choose. A life spent talking about having children like they were merely tasks to be crossed off a checklist. Leaving an utter fraud of a legacy behind, none of it truly his.
Eating plain toast for the rest of his life because it gets the job done well enough.
And it would all just be bloody fucking fine, wouldn't it?
And Henry is so tired of just fine. No, he's not just tired—he's rather done with it, in fact. He wants more than that. He wants Alex. And despite it all, Alex wants him.
And Henry will be damned if he’ll settle for anything less.
“Right," Henry interrupts again, briskly sweeping both cups into his hands as a baffled Philip stares. "I should be off then, before this gets too cold—have to, er, make a call soon and all…hope the exhibition opening goes well, though."
He sees Philip’s eyes flicker downwards, to the two separate cups in his hands, and the question that appears in his eyes.
"It's for Bea," Henry answers before Philip can ask, and sweeps out of the room before his words can settle. In truth, Bea has been away at a fundraiser in Italy, and won't be back until later this afternoon. But Philip is typically unaware of their whereabouts unless it directly concerns himself or the crown, so Henry hopes Philip takes him at his word.
His heart is in his throat as he climbs the stairs. There's anticipation of what he'll meet when he opens his bedroom door, but he's also somehow at the most peace he's been with himself in a week. Each step bolsters him, and makes him feel surer of himself, of what he's choosing.
He wonders if Alex is still asleep, or has woken by now. Henry wonders which he'd prefer, before he decides it doesn't matter which, so as long as he was still there at all.
He tries to open the door quietly, in case Alex does happen to still be asleep.
But Alex is awake. He's sitting up, but has got his eyes screwed shut, two forefingers lightly pressed against the key on the chain that hangs over his heart. The sight of him moves something inside Henry, and he feels the last wobbly piece of his own heart finally settle into place. He can’t help but smile.
Alex is everything, and Alex is here.
Really, truly here. Eyes open now, and blinking at Henry from his own bed. It’s not a figment of a fever dream. It’s not a fairy-tale. It’s Alex, the same boy Henry had fallen for all those years ago at Rio, and the same boy whom he loves now, awake and watching Henry under a mop of dishevelled curls and careful brown eyes.
For the first time, Alex doesn't speak first to break the silence. His expression is reserved, cautious. It's quite unusual for him, and Henry knows the uncertainty is because of him.
Henry thinks it's high time that he changed that.
“Your hair in the mornings is truly a wonder to behold,” he says.
And he steps towards Alex.
_________________
From John Tasker to Colin Spencer, 1957
I never doubted what happened last week. I simply couldn't stop wondering if it had affected you as it had me. I was afraid to say – I want to be with you – see, here I'm shying, because I really want to say, I love you. And that is true. I want us to find time to explore that because we would be very happy very often.
Last week, for the first time for many months I gained confidence in myself. That was your work. You did it in many ways.