Chapter Text
Epilogue
time after time
There’s a man in Henry’s bedroom. Morning light dances across the sheets as Henry begins to blink into wakefulness. He’s lying on his side, one arm pillowed beneath his head, the other held in place by long fingers that are banded about his wrist. Keeping him from disappearing again. Keeping him from slipping away.
Keeping him.
His bare feet are tangled with those of his bed partner, who’s pressed against him from the backs of his knees to his shoulders. Alex’s breath fans, warm and even with sleep, over the nape of Henry’s neck and across his upper back. They’re naked together beneath the sheets; one of Alex’s bare thighs is tucked between his own from behind, and Henry’s arse is cradled by Alex’s hips.
Alex’s morning erection is nudging him insistently in the small of his back, and Henry snuggles back against him indulgently for a sweet moment, feeling his mouth turn up into the sort of smile he’d never expected would grace his face. It’s the sort of smile that speaks of a love requited, a heartache soothed, and the promise, perhaps, of happily ever after.
The sort of smile that Henry’s romanticized since boyhood.
He closes his eyes, smile still in place. When he wakes again, the clock on the bedside table reads half-eleven, and Alex has relinquished his grip on Henry’s forearm. A glance over his shoulder reveals Alex sprawled on his back on the bed, one leg kicked free of the bedding, which has slipped down to his waist. He’s beautiful and open and Henry’s. And that’s perhaps the greatest miracle of all.
Henry eases from the bed and stretches, his back arching as he reaches for the ceiling. He slips on a pair of joggers and a tee shirt at random, then pauses at the chair to run his fingertips over the well-loved, nubbly wool of his dad’s cardigan. He shrugs into it, sliding the buttons into place one by one, and tiptoes into the sitting room. The scraggly Tesco flower bouquet is still lying on the floor next to the couch where he’d dropped it the previous night, its contents now well beyond saving, but no less appreciated for it.
He touches the paper delicately, and as it crinkles beneath his fingertips, David lifts his head from his paws where he lies in his dog bed. He’s not likely been outside yet today, and Henry retrieves his lead and clips it to his collar, his tags jingling quietly as he trots to the door next to Henry’s legs.
In the corridor, the security is rotating posts, night shift to morning rounds. There’s the shuffle of palace staff arriving and beginning their first tasks of the day. Henry nods and smiles to them, vaguely self conscious about his state of undress; the rumpled state of his hair.
Another morning, he might’ve wondered or worried over whether they could see the night before on him. If they knew from the wrinkle of his shirt or the square of his shoulders that he’d been kissed, had, and held. If they could see, if they would tell, if the next family meeting called would be about the Henry Problem or, perhaps, perhaps, about an answer to a question that’s been lingering in the backs of all their minds for years.
Will Henry ever be content with his lot in life? Yes. Deliriously, blissfully, unbelievably so.
Henry wanders through the halls to the garden paths without that particular weight on his mind. Anxiety doesn’t cloak his shoulders in the cool morning. The interminable sadness that’s been wrapped around his chest for a week feels as though it’s lifting, like the greyness in clouds after a rainstorm. Not quite bright, sunshiney, or cheery, but something better. Something lighter. Something fresh.
David takes his time, sniffing the pea gravel and each plant as though he hadn’t sniffed the very same spots the morning before. Henry smiles and lets him. There’s no rush, no urgency. He isn’t dragging his feet, waiting until he can cocoon under the bedcovers once more. He walks slowly with his dog, the cool, late summer breeze brushing his nose and head filled with happy blouse.
Same as years before, Alex is in his bedroom, waiting for him.
This time, he’s staying. He’s real. Morning has come, as it always has, and this time, Alex hasn’t slipped through Henry’s fingers.
He isn’t a figment. Alex is a romance — a grand gesture the likes of which Henry has spent years daydreaming, but never believed he would find himself at the center of.
I love you.
Just thinking about it fills Henry’s chest with liquid honey; it’s warm and sweet, turning his expression into that of a besotted, simpering fool. He doesn’t mind it. It feels right, love struck all over his face. He’s never let it live in his face before. It has never grown roots in his body.
David sits down on the path, staring intently into a bush where finches nest and bunnies burrow. His ears perk as the leaves rustle in the breeze. Henry is content to let him play sentinel for a long moment. There aren’t tourists to catch him. The gardeners are starting on another portion of the grounds today, preparing beds for the end of summer. Days ago, Shaan had cleared his schedule for the rest of the week, so Henry has no place to be except for in bed with Alex. At breakfast with Alex. The rest of the day, perhaps, with Alex.
His heart flutters under his ribs.
Over and over, words of bygone wedding rites turn over in Henry’s head. Words memorized from hearing them so often for cousins, friends, and then his brother. Words he’s never let himself dwell too deeply on. Love is patient, love is kind…
Rose scents the air as they walk on. Tall stalks of veronica and delphinium point towards the pearl clouds. Between the trees, buildings, and fencing, the sun begins to force itself through the grey in buttery yellow shafts of light.
Alex is patient, Henry determines. Alex is patient and kind; occasionally, he has boasted or envied, but those are not pieces welded into him. They’ve been cast away as easily as he has grasped them. The record of wrongs between them is being slowly broken down, but Henry’s heart is certain. The man in his bed — the man in his bedroom — has proven time and time again what’s nestled at the center of his heart.
Alex has always been patient and kind. He has protected Henry as best he could, trusted him, and persevered despite Henry’s messier younger iterations. Alex has been the most hopeful person Henry knows. Alex has been everything love was promised to be.
And Alex has loved him.
Loves him.
Henry loves Alex, too. With his whole chest, so expansively that he finds it easier to breathe. So strongly it tingles in his limbs as he holds the lead. He feels it in his face, pulsing in the cup of his palm, and buzzing in his head. Love that he’s kept for so long at arm’s length now floods his senses, washes over his brain and nerves, and Henry can’t imagine ever trying to root it out.
Alex loves him. Loves Henry. Loves him back fiercely and brilliantly enough to cross an ocean, to scale a wall, to play his lowest moments’ shadow for nearly a decade.
I forgive you. I forgave you years ago.
Years for Alex, but a mere week for Henry. There’s an itching in Henry’s wrists to write about it as he and David approach the door back into the residence.
In one of his poetry books, there are simple words written: am I as old as I am? / maybe not. Time is a mystery / that can tip us upside down.
In each of his many copies of Austen’s Emma, Henry can find the single page where his favorite authoress had laid the words if I loved you less I may be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am.
Henry loves Alex past the point of words. Alex knows him. Has known him then as he does now; knows what Henry has come from and what he needs. Alex knows him.
Henry knows Alex, too.
He unclips David’s lead just inside the door of his rooms. The beagle scampers off towards his food bowl, now filled and the water refreshed. Henry hangs the lead up on its hook and toes out of his shoes.
There’s a man in Henry’s bedroom. He’s shirtless and mussed from sleep, dark curls a halo on the pillow and a riot sitting up. He’s staring at his phone with a frown and only glances up when he hears Henry’s sock feet tread closer on the ancient wood floors. The crease in his brow releases and smooths. Lightness falls over his handsome features and his dark eyes turn soft, inviting.
Hello.
I love you.
I’m happy to see you.
There is no apprehension in Henry’s body as he moves closer. As he lifts a hand to the man’s cheek to cradle his jaw. As he presses a kiss to the center of the man’s forehead and pulls away to watch his eyelashes flutter and his cheeks flush.
“Good morning, love,” Henry murmurs. “Sleep well?”