Work Text:
It's been a long, long time since I've memorized your face
It's been four hours now since I've wandered through your place
And when I sleep on your couch, I feel very safe
And when you bring the blankets, I cover up my face
“A racecar driver,” Henry says.
Alex looks momentarily stunned. He blinks twice and then smiles. “Shut the fuck up.”
Henry can’t help but laugh at the expected response to his unexpected answer. “It’s true.”
“A racecar driver?”
“Yes.
“You; tiny, adorable, eight-year-old-future-prince-of-England wanted to be a fucking racecar driver when you grew up?”
“Yep,” Henry responds.
Alex makes a sound. An attempt at a word. Then he makes another. “Explain,” he finally manages to say.
Through the open window, they can hear the soft sound of small waves cresting against the dock next to the lake house. The same dock Alex had pinned Henry to earlier that day to kiss what little sense Henry had left straight out of his body. They’d both been looking forward to this second trip to the lake house for months. They would return again at the end of the summer with the rest of Alex’s family, but for now, it was only the two of them. As much as Henry loved Alex’s family, he couldn’t deny that he preferred the house the way it was now. In fact, he preferred all of his life this way: No cameras, no outside pressures, just Alex and Henry alone together.
“That was the summer my father took me for a drive in his green Aston Marten,” Henry says, with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
There’s a pause. Henry can tell Alex wants to say something, but he doesn’t. He’s learned, somehow, what Henry needs in these moments, even when he doesn’t always know it himself. Alex knows Henry isn’t fully with him right now. He is, but he isn’t. Part of Henry is lying in the bed with him, but the other part is in the memory of that day almost fifteen years ago. He’s left with one foot in the present, one in the past. Henry is here in this darkened room with the love of his life. But he is also back on that winding country road with his father. Henry can still remember every moment of that day. Every detail. The way his father’s eyes crinkled when he smiled. The sound of his laugh. The way he casually reached over and dropped the sunshade down for Henry. The way the leather of his driving gloves strained when he gripped the wheel. That first breathtaking view of the ocean when the car rode around that bend.
“Your dad had James Bond’s car,” Alex says finally. It is neither a statement nor a question. It sounds almost like an accusation.
“My dad was James Bond,” Henry responds evenly, his smile feeling more real again.
Alex shifts around, somehow getting even closer to Henry. His head is resting on Henry’s shoulder, and his free hand is moving slowly and ceaselessly over Henry’s body as they continue talking; A light finger runs along the ridge of his bicep, across an eyebrow, down the length of his nose. Alex traces patterns on his skin, connects the constellations of freckles and moles across his bare chest.
“I know, but still,” Alex says, tracing.
Henry lifts Alex’s hand and kisses the knuckles. Alex tilts his head up and Henry isn’t about to deny him that. Their lips connect briefly. Then Alex’s head resettles on his shoulder and Henry continues his story:
“He wasn’t supposed to take me out, exactly. I was still too small to ride in the front seat of any car, let alone that one. To this day I don’t think Mum knows about it, but he took me out for a drive through the countryside and the feeling of the wind in my hair… There was nothing in the world like it. I felt… alive. Truly alive for the first time in my little life. Hmm. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve been searching for that feeling ever since.”
“I never thought of you as a risk taker before, but I guess I stand corrected.”
“I take risks!” Henry lets out a little huff, making it as indigent as he possibly could.
“Henry, I love you, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but you absolutely do not take risks. You are, without a doubt, an absolute nerd.”
Henry could not help the proud little smile that spread across his face. “Nerds have wild sides too, you know.”
“Says the man who brought three different kinds of sunscreen on this week-long trip.”
“After the awful sunburn I got here last year, I’m not taking any chances.”
“You’re kinda proving my point here, sweetheart,” Alex says. “You always pick the safe choice.”
“Not always,” Henry counters, “I could have settled for a loveless marriage with some heiress of something-or-other. That would certainly have been the ‘safe’ choice. But instead, I opted for the far riskier path of falling head over heels in love with the blasted First Son of the United States.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t the smartest thing you’ve ever done.”
And when you play guitar, I listen to the strings buzz
The metal vibrates underneath your fingers
And when you crochet, I feel mesmerized and proud
Conversation between them ebbs and flows for a while after that. They trade kisses and lighthearted jabs as the moonlight slowly moves across the floor beside the bed. It’s the kind of perfect night Henry longed for, all those many years he was shut up inside that stuffy palace. He spent years wanting nothing more than to have this. And now that he’s here, he feels himself growing frustrated that he can’t really, fully be here.
Henry wishes more than anything that his brain would allow him to enjoy a moment for once. He wants to be fully present in this moment with Alex, but relentless thoughts and memories keep intervening. Like last summer. Almost exactly one year ago. The location was the same. The outcome was different. He wishes he could go back in time and tell that Henry not to leave. He wishes he could have known then, how good his life was about to get.
It feels magical, lying in this bed next to Alex. It has always felt magical with Alex, especially during their first trip out here. And that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? This is somehow still too good to be true. There’s no way this is really his life. No way at all. Isn’t that why he ran away last time? Because there was no way a Prince would ever be allowed to have this. Yet somehow, against every odd, here he was.
Because of Alex. He was here lying half-naked in this bed in a lake house in Texas, solely because of Alex Claremont-Diaz. Because Alex wouldn’t let him hide or run away or spend his life in the shadows. Sometimes it felt scary, to exist as fully as he does now. But it was worth it.
Henry turns and hides his face in Alex’s curls. They smell like Alex. He focuses on that sensation, letting it ground him. He needs to stay grounded. Otherwise he might float away entirely. His heart feels light enough to.
Henry loves his life now. As hard as it was initially, Henry loves that he and Alex are out. He loves that he can take his boyfriend to dinner and kiss him on the streets of Brooklyn, even though he knows photos of that moment (just like photos of every moment that passes between them outside of their brownstone) will be shared across the world by the next morning. He loves that he doesn’t have to hide who he is or who they are to each other anymore. It’s incredible.
But this? The little privacy they manage to have here in the lake house?
It’s everything.
In the mornings at the lake house, Alex cooks breakfast and Henry prepares his coffee with cream and a dash of cinnamon. Just the way he likes it. They do indeed swim all day, just like Alex said they would. Or sometimes Henry lays out in the hammock reading while Alex throws ribs on the grill. In the evenings, they take each other apart in the bedroom. And the kitchen. And the shower. And once on the living room rug. They move around each other and the house like a long string of taffy; pulled out and back in again.
And I would say I love you, but saying it out loud is hard
So, I won't say it at all
This is new, somehow, what they have. It’s different. Some sort of shift happened between them in the last three days. It’s love, yes. But it isn’t. It’s something else. Something… more. Here In this brightly colored home far away from the rest of the world, Henry feels more than loved. He feels… treasured. Like something precious. Something that might not exactly need protection but deserves it anyway. Alex has already proven time and again that he will go to war for Henry. It’s a fact that he refuses to take for granted. The love of this man is not something he ever wants to take for granted.
Alex’s finger pauses against Henry’s bicep. His expression changes into something distant. Henry watches his eyes slide between two points, as though he’s back in the stands of Wimbledon. Henry is familiar with this sudden shift in his boyfriend, and he knows exactly what it means. Alex’s world has turned inward. Entire conversations are happening that Henry isn’t privy to yet, and that’s okay. Alex squints his eyes as they continue to bounce back and forth. Then his hand movements start up again, and this time they become almost frantic. He’s tracing a finger across Henry’s many moles and freckles repeatedly, like he’s stuck in a loop. Henry is about to ask but, as usual, Alex beats him to it.
“You can leave, you know,” Alex says suddenly. “If you want. Any time.”
It feels like when his dad had to slam on the breaks to avoid hitting that flock of geese that appeared out of nowhere. However, it’s not dread that Henry feels. It’s not fear. The non-sequitur combined with the erratic hand movements and the concentrated expression on his face, tell Henry exactly what’s going on here.
“What are you talking about?” Henry asks calmly.
“I mean, yeah, I know we love each other,” Alex continues. Henry listens, patiently waiting for enough context to thread together enough of the pieces of this conversation to understand it fully. Talking to Alex sometimes felt like taking an English exam. Henry has learned: context clues are crucial.
“Yes, we love each other, but it’s also been an insane fucking year. We were outed last fall, and then I basically professed my undying love to you on national television a few weeks later, in a speech that will forever be housed in record halls, by the way.”
“I remember,” Henry says gently. Alex doesn’t hear him. He can’t, in his state. Not yet.
“-Not to mention the hundreds of articles and literally millions of online comments and threads dissecting each tiny moment of our relationship over the course of the past year, and all the years of well-documented interactions before that-”
“Alex.”
“And yeah, I know last time you left me I fucking chased you down to the other side of the world but.”
He’s getting close to his point now. Henry can sense it. Alex’s finger is tapping on Henry’s arm. It’s almost aggressive, but Henry doesn’t take it that way. He sees it for what it is: too strong emotions to be contained in one body. He knows something about that.
“I’m just saying, if you ever wanted to leave me, you could.”
“I don’t want to leave you,” Henry says evenly.
“Yeah, I know, that’s not the point,” Alex says, a note of frustration in his voice now.
Alex pushes off the mattress and sits up on the bed next to Henry. He runs a hand through his curls and god. There isn’t a single word in any of the languages Henry knows that could describe how mesmerizing this man truly is.
“No matter what has happened between us, no matter how much the entire world has invested in our relationship, no matter how complicated a split like ours would be, if there is ever a time in the future that you don’t want to be with me, I want you to leave, okay? I want you to know you can go. I want you…” He runs his hands through his hair again. He’s not looking at Henry. “I don’t want you to feel stuck with me. I don’t want you to ever feel like… like you’re trapped here in this weird fucking circus with me. I would fucking hate that. So. So if you ever decide to leave me, just go. Okay?”
And god, how the hell did he ever deserve this man?
Henry props himself up on his elbow, and waits for Alex to look him directly in the eye. Henry wants to kiss him and shake him and promise him that he’s not going anywhere. He’s here to stay. Forever. There is no going back, not for Henry. He wants to tell this beautiful, brilliant, stubborn man that they will be together until they are no longer on this earth, if not beyond. Henry wants to tell Alex that he is written on his soul, entwined in his DNA. There is no Henry without Alex.
But he doesn’t. He takes a deep breath. Exhales. And says:
“Okay.”
“I’m serious, Henry.”
“So am I.”
“I know this week has been romantic as hell and we’re super in love right now, but if there’s ever a time in the future you decide you’re done with me-”
It takes everything within Henry not to snicker at the very thought.
“- You’ll leave me, okay?”
“Okay, Alex.”
“Promise?”
He needs to kiss Alex right now. But he knows this is more important, “I promise. If there is ever a time, as unlikely as that is ever to happen, that I don’t want to be with you, I will leave.”
“Because I don’t want you to stick around just for me, or for the kids.”
From the floor beside them, David lets out a snore.
“I won’t, Alex. I promise. If I ever want to leave you, I will.”
“Okay.”
“Now will you please come here and let me kiss you?”
He does so. Happily.
Alex is quiet after that, which suits Henry just fine. He needs time to sit with that conversation, and as he does, he starts to see all the logic behind it. Alex has seen (haven’t they both) relationships last far longer than they should, because one or both parties refused to walk away. And they both have had external pressures affect the decisions in their own lives. Alex didn’t want that, for either of them. Alex wanted to be sure, to be explicitly sure, that they each had their own agency in this relationship. Alex knows how little control Henry has had over his own life in the past (and in some ways, even now). He never wanted to be a part of that.
Henry’s heart feels like it’s going to explode. This is not love, what he’s feeling. It can’t be. Love isn’t strong enough of a word to describe this. And unlike the man beside him, that’s okay with him. Henry has learned long ago that not everything can be labeled. Not every feeling can be quantified. In fact, sometimes, like right now, he quite likes it that way.
And words are futile devices