Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

words are very unnecessary

they can only do harm

Depeche mode, Enjoy the Silence (1990)

The open casket was Mary's idea. Who doesn’t want to look at the waxy complexion of a man who drank enough to keep his cheeks permanently red?

Henry, apparently. That must be why he’s leaning against the church wall, smiling tightly at those stopping to give their respects. 

These are his so-called relatives. People he hasn’t seen since his father died. Those who haven’t bothered sticking their heads inside the manor in the last ten years. God forbid they’d enter with their stiff upper lips to find a hair out of place on the Mountchristen-Windsor children. That would involve taking a stand, and Lord knows looking the other way has always been the preferred way to deal with adversity in this family.

Which is why no one stops to greet Bea the way they do Henry. 

Her hair, usually the bright auburn of fall, hangs in thick clumps down her back. This despite Mary’s attempt at getting her to comb it on the car ride over. Philip had thrown a fit, shouting himself hoarse as he spat obscenities onto their sister’s face until his saliva looked like tears spilling from her red-rimmed eyes. 

Henry had looked out the window. He is a Mountchristen-Windsor after all. Doesn’t do to stray off the beaten path.

He shakes another clammy hand. Whose he doesn’t know. Doesn’t care. Holds onto the tight quiver of his cheeks as his smile grows cold and doll-like. The kind of smile that had his teachers holding him back after class, worried gazes behind too-large spectacles. 

“I’m fine,” he tells the woman in front of him now, as he’s told dozens of people before. The school nurse arching a brow during a routine vaccination. His fellow gym class students giving him odd looks in the showers. “Thank you for your concern.”

His hand is squeezed and he squeezes in return. A reflex. Like closing your eyes and relaxing your muscles as a fist folds before you, knowing tensing up will only make it hurt worse. 

“Henry.”

Eyes taking a moment to adjust, he looks away from the small woman puttering past him. Mary is by the casket, a wrinkled hand curled proprietarily around the wooden edge. A last sign of ownership before her husband goes six-feet-under. Philip is beside her, edging Henry towards them with the lazy curl of his fingers. Called like a dog, like David where he’s ashes in the sky, thrown into some veterinarian’s crematorium without a second glance to Henry and Bea who had wanted him buried in the earth. 

Henry doesn’t mind so much anymore. Doesn’t want David to share the same ground as his grandfather.

Bea sniffles next to him, a half-curled smile hanging effortlessly onto her face. Had he been a different man, with different plans, he might grab her bony wrist and drag her into the toilets, demand a sniff of whatever batch of cocaine she’s been snorting. 

But he’s not. A different man with different plans. Where he’s going they won’t tolerate hazy eyes and dopey smiles, and it’s not like he has any other prospects.

His feet lead him on. The thick soles clunking heavily down the aisle until he’s faced with his brother’s permanently pinched expression. His grandmother’s watery eyes. 

Not that she’s been crying. He always thought her incapable of that.

“Yes?” he croaks, voice hoarse from pleasantries. 

And they’re not even at the tea and biscuit stage of the funeral yet.  

“We should take a picture,” Mary says, camphor on her breath. Her attempt at hiding the creeping edge of age in her voice, the candy a round outline on the inside of her cheek. Like a thick boil, threatening to burst in a sky of dust and mothballs.

“A picture,” Henry repeats, eyes steadfast on the watery browns before him, ignoring the long legs and dark suit in his peripheral vision. 

“Yes,” Mary says, smacking her thin lips. “To commemorate this day.”

Commemorate. What a funny word. So often used to acknowledge the dead, yet also a phrase of celebration. 

“Alright,” Henry says, eyes flicking to his brother’s. Blue, like his, prematurely lined with a breath of wrinkles that shouldn’t belong on a twenty-four year old face. A small reminder that Philip has lived the same life as he has. Lost the same people. Faced the same wrath.

And yet there he stands, with his arm linked through their grandmother’s, the only defiance in his gaze the one facing Henry. 

Suck it up, it says. It’s just another day.

There’s been too many days. Henry is tired. 

Someone faces them with a camera. A long-lost uncle, moustache quivering delightedly behind the lens, as if it’s the scoop of the year, Mary Mountchristen-Windsor standing side by side with her grandchildren. If it bothers Bea not to be included, it doesn’t show where she’s sitting on a bench now, giggling into her scarf. Oblivious to the glares sent her way, the carefully held distance. 

“One more,” the uncle-turned-photographer says, eyes darting up behind the camera. “Look at the casket.”

Henry keeps his gaze on the lens, blinking through another flash.

“Henry.”

He ignores the long finger sticking into his waistline, meeting little but skin and bone.

“Henry.” Another hiss. “Look down, you git.”

As he forces his gaze down, pain radiates through his temples, down his neck, his arms. A steady beat lingering in his left wrist where the bone sticks out oddly, broken beyond repair despite the A&E doctor’s best attempt at healing it. It’s hard to forget. The agony of it. Bea skipping on her heels beside him, biting down her nails. Stolen car keys making a solemn song where she tapped them with red-painted nails, ready to run back to their grandfather’s Jaguar XJ, illegally parked at the hospital’s front entrance. She was only seventeen then. Didn’t have a licence. 

Philip did of course, not that it mattered. He’d long moved out by then.

His grandfather looks about the same as he’s done for the last couple of years. Grey and wrinkled, buttoned up tight in whatever old-fashioned suit Mary had laid out for him in the morning. This black one doesn’t look much different from the one Henry is wearing now, somehow strangling his throat despite clearly being a number or two too large for his tall, slim frame.

It’s not the suit that holds Henry’s eye, though. Not the tight collar, or the unruly brows. The painted cheeks or intentionally curled mouth. 

All Henry sees is the cane.

Sleek and black and sharper than a butcher’s knife. His grandfather’s faithful companion since a grenade shattered his leg during his short-lived stint in Germany. 

Henry’s wrist aches.

“Wonderful!” the camera man yells, grin splitting his face. “A last family gathering.” 

The sound of Philip yelling after him drowns in the commotion of Henry’s own pulse, threatening to burst his skull to nothing but blood and brain matter. Preferential, possibly, to the anger building like bricks in his throat, making themself a shiny new chimney to the house that’s been steadily growing inside him.

He barely notices the lift of an auburn-haired head, leaving his sister like she’s already left him. Grabbing his trenchcoat, he runs out into the street to find the nearest rubbish bin. 

Bile lingers in his mouth, but he doesn’t barf. Simply kicks his foot as hard as he can against the plastic and sends the bin flying and, pulse thrumming through his toes as wetness spreads between them, scuff-marks white on the shiny tip.

“Fuck.”

He spits it. The word that would have his grandfather’s stubby finger pushing back his chin if he were still there to hear it.

Wind whips at his bare skin. He ignores it as he pulls off the suit jacket. Lets the tie follow, the buttons of his shirt spilling onto the icy ground as he rips off his button-up, and then he’s standing there, in the late March cold, wearing nothing but a thin undershirt and his too-large suit pants. 

Looking down at the mess of clothes among banana peels and crumpled up napkins, he scrubs a hand over his mouth. His skin is smooth beneath his touch, free from the usual morning stubble Mary would’ve killed him to sport on a day like this. 

He wonders what the blazer could have cost. The shiny black tie.

Doesn’t care. 

Henry won’t wear another suit in his life. 

Even as he pulls the blue trenchcoat on, he’s already walking, his legs long and sure and nothing like his grandfather’s halting steps. He relishes in that now, that he has something the old man hadn’t. Strength and mobility and the plan to use it for something good, something worthwhile. Something that will rid him off this ever-present feeling of grime clinging to his skin. 

Those legs, those strides, take him away from the church, through the streets, walking, walking, walking until he stops outside a familiar old pub. One he’s picked up his grandfather at plenty of times. Bea too, on occasion, when the owner called him with his lazy Cockney drawl and smacking lips.

He’s never stopped for a drink before. 

It’s full for a Sunday afternoon. Or maybe it’s not. Henry doesn’t pretend to know what constitutes a crowd with the way he’s been actively avoiding them all his life. Bailing out of school events. Calling in sick on presentation days. Never one to stand up in front of a group of people, never one to have much to say. 

Nick Cave plays over the speakers, shrill and noisy and loud enough for the patrons sitting in booths to bend across the table to be heard. It can hardly be good for business.

Somehow he doubts Basil minds. 

Digging his hands deep into the pockets of his trenchcoat, Henry makes his way over to one of the bar stools. Lets the dark interior of the pub swallow him whole, cigarette smoke curling around the air like a well-oiled hinge. It breaks down Henry’s bricks one by one until his throat is clear enough to cough for attention.

Basil, as always, looks like he’d rather be anywhere than tending his own bar. Henry thinks that’s why Basil gives him the stink eye. 

That Basil used to be Philip’s friend around ten years ago probably doesn’t help.

“ID?” Basil asks, his nasally voice sounding like he’s got two tampons stuck up his nostrils.

“You know who I am.”

One of Basil’s pale, bony shoulders dip up in the barest effort at a shrug. “Dunno how old you are, do I?”

He does. But again. 

Henry is tired.

His driver’s licence hits the cheap wood with a clack, his own, surly face looking back at him. His chin too pointy, cheekbones high enough to give him a vague, birdlike look. No one’s mocked him for his appearance, but then no one has complimented him for it either. Not since Catherine stroked her hands through his flaxen hair at the age of nine and called him handsome, lips trembling as they walked into the hospital room where his father somehow both was and wasn’t at the same time.

Basil’s lips twitch to the side, head tilted as he studies the picture. “All grown-up.”

Henry bites the inside of his cheek. “I’ll have a Coke.”

“A Coke?” Basil questions, one nearly white brow arching. “You could’ve led with that.”

“You didn’t ask,” Henry counters, swallowing through the stacking bricks. “A Coke. Please.”

Basil blinks, slow like molasses where his see-through lashes curl all spiderlike. Clicking his tongue, he gives Henry his licence back, the white letters spelling out “Ye Old Cheshire Cheese” harsh against the black material of his t-shirt. Bottles clink together, too loudly for someone who should care about their inventory, and then there’s a Coke on the counter, a cheery red in the otherwise brown establishment. 

“Glass?” 

“No,” Henry says, taking the bottle and knocking the cap straight off the counter. “I’m good.”

Nose scrunching up, Basil watches as Henry takes a first, long sip, the ice cold liquid drenching the lingering anger inside.

“Clearly,” Basil drawls. “Not every day you get to bury your grandfather, is it?” He flecks his teeth, crooked and far too yellow for his age. “Closest you got to an old man, the fellow. S’okay if you want to have a cry about it.” With an eerie smile, he picks up a bunch of flimsy white napkins and puts them on the counter. “Maybe I’ll watch.”

Keeping his lips firmly around the bottle keeps Henry quiet. 

He’s good at that. Staying quiet. 

He tips his head back once more, holding Basil’s gaze until his manic grin tempers to something more sedated.

“Well,” the bartender says, tapping the counter with nails in urgent need of a good cut. “Sue me for not being maudlin about it. Old Barty left quite a trail in this place, but then again –” he pulls at his lower-lip, showing off sickly white flesh “– you already know that.”

Henry lets go of the Coke with a pop. Puts it gently down on the counter. He’s already halfway through, the sugary substance a film over his mostly neat row of teeth. They would be whiter if he didn’t have to down several cups of coffee to get himself out of bed in the morning, only to put running shoes on and sprint through the five o’clock streets of London. 

“He left a tab behind too,” Basil goes on. “But I suppose you’re good for it?”

Doubtful.

“How much?”

“An oner,” Basil says and holds out a hand, dirt beneath his fingernails as he flexes the long digits. “Two fifties will do.”

Withholding a grimace, Henry reaches for his wallet again. Even with the twenty note some senile old lady at the funeral gave him, smiling without teeth and telling him to buy himself a candy bar, he’ll be broke if he gives Basil the fifties. 

He could always call Philip later, tell him to come down and settle it. His grabby hands are still deep in the family’s piggy bank, the one Bea is banned from and Henry won’t touch with a bargepole.

Henry smacks the bills on the counter, lips thin as he looks up at Basil. “We done?”

“Sure, though –” Basil purses his lips “– you’re missing the 70p for the Coke, unless you want to do like your old man? Start a tab?”

Basil would look great with a purple bruise blooming onto his pale complexion. 

“I’m not planning on returning,” Henry says as he drops the coins on the counter. They clatter on the wood, knocked to silence by Basil’s palm. He puts it in the till with a ding and a bang.

“Good lad,” he says, boguses threatening to spill from his nose as he sniffles and gestures to the drink. “Let me know if you want another one of those.”

Henry doesn’t want another. Waving Basil off, he takes a swing of the bottle and holds the liquid in his mouth until it fizzes out and all he tastes is sugar. He swivels the glass in his hand, stares at the remaining drink, the sediments gathering at the bottom. 

He’s about to rise from his stool when someone clears his throat behind him. 

At once, Henry can tell the boy isn’t British. Not because of his warm complexion, or the dark curls spilling like waves onto his forehead. Not because of the lengthy lashes or the brown eyes beneath them. Certainly not because of the soft, citrusy scent that follows as the man sits next to him, slim legs splaying apart dressed in their faded Levi’s as thick boots find their place on the footstools. 

It’s in the way he holds a driver’s licence between his fingers like someone will snatch it from his hands.

The boy whistles at Basil as if he’s a dog awaiting his owner’s command. 

Henry barely withholds a flinch as Basil’s brow cuts deep, making his way over from where one of the regulars has been given one pint too many. 

“Yes?” the bartender drawls, more poisonous than any snake could fathom.

“I’ll have whatever you have on tap,” the boy says in the kind of American accent that reeks of oil and guns and not-paying-your-taxes. 

Basil’s pale temples pulses with the music screeching over tinny speakers. Without a word, he crosses over to the five taps, each a darker version of the former, and does, unsurprisingly, go for the fifth. What appears in the glass is more tar than beer, but the boy doesn’t notice where he’s busy flecking a set of bright, white teeth Henry’s way.

“You’re about to bear witness to a formative experience.”

This is where Henry would usually get up and leave, unwilling to put himself through the ordeal that is small talk with the drunkards patrolling Basil’s pub. 

“How so?” he asks.

“Well,” the boy says, grinning wider, “you’re lookin’ at a man about to have his first drink.” He cocks his head. “First legal one, anyway.”

Beer sloshes over the sides as Basil slams it down on the counter, sending drops of the oil-like substance slipping onto the floor. Henry surreptitiously spreads his legs to avoid the spill, avoiding Basil’s gaze when he sees the man glancing at him. 

“Do you want to see my licence?” the American says, waving the plastic card in his hands.

“No,” Basil grunts. “I assume you’re starting a tab?”

The man’s grin dims, dissolving into something small and unsure. “Should I?”

Basil gives him a narrowed-eyed glare, and then he’s off, moving out of the bar and into the kitchens with a dishrag so dirty Henry hopes for the American’s sake it hasn’t been used on the glasses. 

Thankful for his own glass bottle, he tips it to his lips and swallows the last dregs. When he puts it back down, the boy’s smile is back in place, too large for his slim face. 

“I just turned eighteen,” he says proudly, grabbing the pint between both his hands like a toddler. “I’ve never ordered a beer in a bar before.”

Henry could have guessed. “You should close the tab before you go, or he’ll make you pay interest next time.”

The boy stops with the glass close to his mouth, eyes wide as he blinks into the dark brown sea before him. “Really?”

“Really.”

Scrunching up his nose, the boy shrugs, a brown collarbone peeking out from his suede jacket. “Huh. Math isn’t my strong suit.”

And then he dips into the beer, foam clinging to his nose as he comes up for air with an expression that does little to dispel his youthful features. 

“What the fuck is that?” he whines after swallowing hard.

Henry, despite himself, feels his lips curling. “A stout, I think. A ten percent, probably.”

“Ten?!” the boy squeals, setting the beer down with another slam and liquid trickling over the glass. “I’ve only had Miller.”

“Then you should go slow,” Henry says, vaguely recalling his grandfather ordering a Miller once on one of their trips across the pond. 

“That won’t be a problem,” the boy huffs, sticking out his tongue as if he wants to claw it off. “God, is this really you Brits’ version of a beer?”

Lifting his empty Coke, Henry mirrors the boy’s previous shrug. “I wouldn’t know.”

He does, of course. Enough to know that plenty of Brits adore the pint Alex now shoves across the counter as if it’s personally offended him. Enough to know the different scents of wheat and barley when it pushes its way out of someone’s esophagus, when it needs to be scrubbed out of the wall-to-wall carpet. 

“No,” the boy says, eyeing Henry’s coke with suspicion. “I suppose you wouldn’t. You not old enough to drink?”

“I’m nineteen,” Henry says. 

“Huh.” The boy tilts his head, curls dipping onto his skin. “A health nut or somethin’?”

It’s not even three o’clock, Henry wants to say, but that’s never stopped anyone, has it? 

“Something like that,” he says, dismissive enough for most socially intelligent people to nod and look away and possibly find an excuse to not continue the somewhat awkward conversation with the constipated-looking boy with the faded bruises reading a book during lunch.

Of course, the American can’t be one of those people. 

“There’s a story there,” he says, holding out a finger and curling it in a come-hither motion that would probably work wonders in a night club with those doe-eyes on display. “Wanna share?”

Henry can think of little he wants less.

“I’m not really the sharing kind,” he says.

Grinning, the boy leans forward, sending a wave of beer and citrus and long-gone cigarette smoke Henry’s way. “Only one way to change that.”

Well. Half-truths have gotten him far before.

“I’m going into basic training this summer.”

The boy might as well have been sucker-punched with the way he reels back so fast he almost takes the stool with him. Henry grabs onto the boy’s forearms before he’s able to stop himself and then Henry is sitting there, long fingers draped around the surprisingly soft suede jacket and almost nose to nose with a wide-eyed American. 

It can’t last more than two seconds, and yet Henry’s chest is on fire as he releases his grip, pushing himself back and almost toppling over himself. “Sorry.”

“No,” the boy says, both hands coming up to drag roughly through the curls, revealing a few scattered zits on his forehead before the hair once again tumbles over it. “Thanks. I just –” he blinks “– basic training? Like the military?”

Henry has had a lot of responses to his decision. Derision, on Philip’s part. Confusion, on Bea’s. Unsurprisingly, Mary had been the least combative at Henry’s impromptu speech at his grandfather’s bedside, her “at least you’ll be good for something” about as blunt as a hammer to the head, though decisively less hurtful. 

This is different though. The curled lip, the wide eyes. The familiar tensing jaw of grinding teeth.

“Yes,” Henry says. “The military.” 

He doesn’t expect the scoff, harsh as it is. Loud enough to attract the attention of Basil where he’s creeping back behind the bar with the dishrag looking like he’s dipped it in mud.

“Are you serious?” the boy says, hands flailing in the air. “And then what’s your plan? Become a tool for the government?” He narrows his eyes, those warm browns turning distinctly cold in the dim pub lights. “You know it’s not all Die Hard –” he makes fingerguns with his hands “– pew pew, everybody lives and you’re the hero, right? Are you really willing to kill someone?” Jaw tightening further, the boy leans forward again, spit glistening his lips. “Or die?”

They both jump at the slam of a hand on the counter.

“Hey, sod off, will ya?”

If the boy is wide-eyed, Basil’s eyes look like they’re about to escape his skull with how hard they’re bulging after his shrill outburst. He’s sporting a constellation of fiery red blotches, spreading like wildfire over his gaunt face. 

Henry hasn't seen the bartender this angry since he stormed out of their house after Philip’s snotty “I can’t hang out with you anymore” conversation.

The boy’s brows furrow. “I just meant –”

“I know what you bloody meant, wanker,” Basil hisses, fingers whiteknuckled on the counter. “Now shut the fuck up or get out of my pub.”

Brown cheeks go inexplicably darker. “I –”

“It’s okay, Basil,” Henry says, cutting them both off where the bartender is showing all his distinctly yellow teeth in what will likely be another round of curses in Henry’s favor. Even though Henry is oddly touched by this surprising turn of events, he is, and will always be, first and foremost a peacemaker. 

Or just incredibly conflict-avoidant. Same same, really. 

“He’s allowed to have an opinion,” Henry continues.

The boy glares at him, though he comes off as a sweet little chihuahua compared to the sable-toothed tiger standing behind the bar. Henry wouldn’t be surprised if spit started trickling from Basil’s mouth any minute. 

But then he huffs, quickly turning away with wraith-like limbs and a “bloody Americans” spoken just loud enough to be intentionally heard. 

The boy’s lips curl downwards as he turns to Henry, twitching as if they’re fighting a grimace. His dark brows are following his mouth’s trajectory, all trying to move as close to his chin as possible. “Most people would get pissed for what I just said.”

“Which part?” Henry asks.

The boy grimaces. “The ‘fuck the military’ bit.”

“You didn’t say ‘fuck the military.’”

Another twitch of the boy’s mouth. “It was implied.”

It certainly was.

“Like I said,” Henry goes on, “you’re entitled to your opinion.”

“But you don’t have to like it,” the boy counters as his index fingers come up to press at his lower lip, causing a white indention in the rosy flesh. “Like, I’m anti-war right –” he throws up a half-hearted peace sign “– like any American with any sense after the shitshow that was Vietnam, and I’m from Texas, right? I’m used to rednecks throwing insults at me, you don’t have to be all –” he grimaces “– dainty with my feelings. I’m not frail.” A petulant scowl clings to his features. “You can tell me to fuck off.”

Henry has the distinct impression that it’s not the first time the boy has been treated as frail. 

“I don’t have to tell you to fuck off,” Henry says. “Basil did that for me.”

The boy’s mouth twitches. Like a lopsided smile on a stuffed animal, endearing and somehow distinctly unreal. He gets it under control quickly, and then he’s raising his chin and narrowing his eyes.

The effect is rather ruined by how he slouches in his chair, looking every way like an adolescent denied another piece of cake at his birthday party. 

“My parents are politicians, you know? I’m used to people talking back and I’m –” a faint laugh, defeated almost “– God knows I’ve been around enough confrontation.”

Confrontation has never gone well for Henry.

“I prefer listening.”

The boy’s face morphs, from a petulant teenager to a curious man, lashes fluttering over the widened brown eyes as he seems to take Henry in. 

“Alright,” he says slowly. “You really want to hear what I have to say?”

It’s a good question. Henry’s not particularly interested in listening to a leftist American spew on about the consequences of war as if those consequences haven’t haunted Henry’s life in the form of a sleek black cane and a wooden casket. It won’t change his mind. 

It will, however, give him a reason not to return to a manor inhabited by ghosts both alive and dead. 

And to keep staring at those bloody eyelashes. 

“Yes,” Henry says, standing at what he’s certain is at a normal speed for someone with a sudden urge to find the nearest bathroom, “I just need to use the loo first.”

Henry sees the words, the loo, silently repeated on the boy’s lips where they end in a rounded o, similar to what Henry has seen in the dozen magazines that are neatly tucked under his mattress. 

And then, because he has some sense of decorum, he sticks out his hand. 

“I’m Henry.”

The boy blinks down at Henry’s hand as he extracts his own. Time seems to skip over itself as their fingers, Henry’s long and pale, the boy’s stubby and brown, interlock with a burst of heat and more dampness than the cold weather should allow.

By the time the boy gives him a bewildered “Alex” in return, Henry has already dropped his hand to hover awkwardly in the air. 

“I’ll be right back, Alex.”

Henry doesn’t wait for a response. Takes himself and his battering ram of a heart through the pub, towards the back where a group of girls are playing darts and chugging red wine like it’s the antidote to the same poison pulsing through Henry’s veins. 

One of the girls looks up, her plain, brown suit melting with her skin, the curly hair tumbling like autumn leaves over her exposed collarbones. Dark eyes do a quick sweep of Henry’s frame as he pushes past her, apologizing under his breath and barely noticing the “no worries, sweetheart” in a refined American accent. 

The scent of old piss hits him like a blow to the head as he enters the bathroom, dissolving his sinuses and somehow helping him breathe all at once. He gasps for it, tasting ammonia on his tongue as he makes his way over to the cracked sink and wraps his hands around the edge. 

Bloodshot eyes look back at him in the mirror, making him cringe. He hasn’t been sleeping much lately, always up too early, asleep too late. Unwilling to spend the time in bed, tossing and turning with the underlying current slipping through his veins, the consistent beat of wrongness. Easier to sit awake, tucked in a chair, book in his lap. Finally make his way through the volumes on volumes that reside in his father’s old collection, tucked in boxes and hidden away in the attic. Left as a reminder for a woman who’ll never look at them again. 

The sink splutters, water spraying everywhere as he dips his head down, lets a swimming pool gather in his palms before throwing it in his face. It cools the ruddy apples that’ve taken over his pale cheeks. Gives his expression a semblance of its usual stoic calm as he pats himself dry. Stands up tall. 

Setting his jaw, he turns off the tap and takes a deep breath. Shuts his eyes and dispels the image of dark curls and white teeth and the delicate notes of citrus strumming along the fresh sweat and old cigarettes.

He’s just a boy, Henry reminds himself. 

Just a boy. 

As he makes his way back into the pub, the music, changed into one of the darker, sultrier songs on Basil’s one-band playlist, does little to relieve him of the thrum of his chest, the fluttering heartbeat.

Until he looks over at the bar and it stops. 

Basil is cleaning a glass, dirty dishrag in hand. Scrubbing it like his life depends on it, or more likely given the empty seat before him, rubbing off any lingering scent of an American. 

The bartender looks up when Henry comes over, arching his pale brow. 

“I don’t want filth like him in my pub.”

“I didn’t bring him here,” Henry says, sounding more defensive than he’d like. “If I did, he wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, would he?”

Basil shrugs, knuckles whitening as he moves his hands faster over the glass. “He liked you enough to leave a note.” He nods to a crumpled napkin on the counter, ripped at the corner. “Took a woman with him too. At two in the afternoon.” Scoffing, he shakes his head. “What kind of codswap is that, pulling at this time of day. It’s bloody church time.”

The paper is flimsy between Henry’s fingers as he grabs the napkin, as if the note could disintegrate in his hand and then he’d never know what the American found important enough to leave as his parting words. 

“He didn’t seem like a church goer,” Henry says, studying the black font where it bleeds through the folded paper, when Basil taps the counter with an insistent finger, rust-colored dirt stuck beneath the nail. 

“Three pounds.”

Henry blinks up at him, napkin momentarily forgotten. “I already paid.”

The same dirty nail clicks against the glass. “Your boy didn’t.” 

Glancing at the taps, Henry frowns. “A pint can’t cost more than 1,50.”

“Does when you’re American,” Basil says with a grunt, holding out his filthy palm. 

Henry rolls his eyes, digging through his wallet. “And here I thought you were being nice for once.”

Basil snorts, snapping the five pound note from Henry’s hand. “Don’t get used to it.” 

Henry won’t. 

He never does. 

Waiting until Basil is out of the way and manhandling one of the regulars into their dozenth pint, Henry unfurls the note. Takes in the messy handwriting, black ink splaying across the thin paper.

And reads. 

Henry stares up at the ceiling. Dawn is filtering in through the small, quadratic windows, making the stains on the paint visible. As if someone was smoking a cigarette, only to throw it to the sky in some attempt at stuffing it out, leaving traces of soot and ash lining the once pristine white. He follows the patterns now, makes constellations in his mind to drown out the sounds around him. Snores and sniffles. That one person pulling himself off beneath the covers, trying to get one in while the rest are asleep. 

Henry won’t be the one to rob him of the illusion. Most of them are still in their teens. Waking with a stiffy is considered healthy.

Shutting his eyes, Henry ignores his own cock where it’s nestled snuggly against his thigh, responding to the dry sound of skin against skin just a few beds over.

He’s saved by the slam of a door, followed by the muffled curses of an interrupted wanking, and then he doesn’t have to pretend to be asleep anymore as the whole barrack comes awake with the systematic one-two-three knock of Sergeant Shaan Srivastava.

The grumble through the room is oddly reminiscent of Philip tumbling down the stairs in his prepubescent years, groaning about “shared breakfast” as the bane of his existence, not knowing it was something they’d never do again.

Bare feet slap against the floor as the eight men in Henry’s section start shuffling across the room, toiletries banging against metal frames as they bustle off to the toilets. Some go for the communal shower, whoever had been wanking hopefully among them, though most pass given the trails the drill sergeants will have them running in less than an hour. Henry spits toothpaste into the sink, squinting at his bleary-eyed expression. It’s nothing compared to the one on Spencer beside him, the eighteen-year-old’s nose red with a cold, making him look even younger where his hair is flopping awkwardly over an acne-ridden face. 

He coughs, loud and wet, sending spit onto the shared mirror.

“If I get sick, Hudson, I’ll cut off your wiener and have it for breakfast.”

“Kinky,” Percy says, his grin a blistering sun. “Didn’t know you had it in you, Ramos.”

“Fuck off, Okonjo,” Miguel Ramos grunts, throwing the can of shaving cream at him, which Percy neatly grabs in his large, calloused palms. “I’ll have yours next.”

Spencer sniffles. “Well, we all know Percy’s got the biggest dick anyway,” he says, voice cracking in its hoarseness. “You know, being black and all.”

Percy grabs his cock through his underpants, tugging the not-unsubstantial bulge to loud whistles from the rest of the men. 

Henry swishes water inside his mouth, blood spinning among it as he bites his cheek, and then he spits it out. Ignores the red lines twirling down the drain. He walks out without interacting with anyone, breathing in the sharp scent of cut fields as he blinks through the morning light of Pirbright, Surrey. 

He falls into step with Hunter Smith, the man’s posture the admittedly lacking of someone who grew too tall too soon and didn’t know how to handle it. They’re both silent as they return to the shared room, as they go through the process of making their beds to Srivastava ’s demanded precision and stand quietly next to them, bergens at their side, waiting for the rest of the recruits to follow. 

At six o’clock on the dot, Srivastava knocks again. One-two-three. Giving them just enough time to stand a little straighter, caps in their hands, before the sergeant comes walking in with his usual calm demeanor. 

“Bed check,” he says.

A few get told off for their shoddily tucked corners. It’s fascinating to Henry, two weeks into basic training that the most rudimentary chores still baffle his fellow recruits. There’s really just one option. Shut up and learn. No one’s opinion matters in this room but the Sergeant's, and that’s only when Lieutenant Richards isn’t around. It’s a hierarchy and Henry and the men around him are at the very bottom. 

Henry is rather acquainted with that spot. 

They do a 5km before breakfast, heavy boots slamming against the still wet ground from last night’s rainfall. There’s no competition. Just a bunch of men running close enough together for their shoulders to brush whenever someone stumbles over a root, sour morning breath mingled with minty toothpaste yawned into the air every few minutes. Spencer pants through it, yellow snot clinging to his nostrils despite his hand coming up to brush it off every few minutes. On returning to camp, one of the drill sergeants has them face down on the damp grass, licking the muddy earth on each descent of their push-ups. 

“Faster, you lazy sods!” the man shouts, a highly intentional boot knocking against Henry’s hip as the sergeant passes between the rows and rows of men gasping desperately for air. 

“Fuck me,” Percy grunts from his spot next to Henry, his large biceps flexing enticingly with each ascent, elbows locking like he’s loading a gun.

“Hunter volunteers,” Ramos says, to the front and right, his dark curls clinging to his forehead as his brows do a lewd dance in Hunter’s direction. 

Most of the men laugh, earning them another round of colorful swears from the drill sergeant. If anyone notices Hunter’s trembling arms, they don’t say, and the men continue on until breakfast in the mess hall. A lively affair, usually, not that Henry partakes in it as such. He mostly listens. Listens to the slurs and the jokes and makes sure to duck whenever someone deems their meager portions enough to waste on a neatly aimed spoon of food thrown across a table.

“What about you, Fox?” 

They’re in the middle of a classroom session, packs of limited first aid kits thrown out on the benches before them. Henry is just picking up a syringe, eyeing the liquid inside. 

There’s blood on his tongue. 

“What about me, Okonjo?” he asks, voice low as he twirls the morphine in his hand. Wonders if it’s as good at numbing the pain as they say it is. 

Wonders if he’ll ever need to find out.

The folding chair beneath him creaks as he sits up straighter. No one seems to pay attention to the corporal at the front, a wiry man with a cigarette rasp and a temper too soft for the posters of human bodies pinned on the walls. It smells like antiseptic, largely due to the instructor cleaning the Resus Annie between each recruit’s attempt at resuscitating her plastic frame.

“Percy, please,” Okonjo – Percy – says. “Okonjo is my old man, and I –” he grins, both hands coming up to slide over his closely cropped hair “– am not an old man.”

He’s most definitely not. 

Henry lets himself look. At the rounded pecs, visible beneath the standard issued grey tee. His thighs thick as tree trunks where they’re straddling the bench with ease. Remnants from his rugby days, apparently, which Henry only knows because Percy Okonjo is a walking, talking radio, constantly tuned in to the kind of happy-go-lucky pop-station that spews bangers like they’re an overabundance of cotton candy at a carnival. At this point, Henry knows more about the man than he does his own brother.

“We were talking about the weekend,” Percy says, making Henry look up and then quickly back to the syringe in his hand as he starts repacking the morphine. “Some of the boys were mentioning meeting up in London during our leave. You wanna join in?”

“You should,” Spencer says nasally, his nose gone redder after that morning’s run. “I’ve always wanted to go to Heaven, this West End nightclub beneath the railway at Charing Cross. Have you been?”

Henry has. 

“Clubs aren’t really my scene,” he says, moving the gauze out of the kit, material scratchy against his summer-sore skin. He glances up, sees Evan exchange places with Hunter, the corporal giving Evan a commiserating smile as he lets out a groan of misery getting up from his knees. No one calls him out on it. They’re all living in a current state of pain levels lounging around five on a scale from one to ten. 

Basic Training is brutal.

“Ugh, Fox, you’re such a swot,” Ramos drawls from the other side of the room, earning him a few chuckles from his nearby comrades. 

Henry bites his tongue, fingers whitening on the gauze. He doesn’t look at Ramos. Keeps his eyes on Hunter instead, the boy’s long, thin fingers tilting the plastic head as he bends to check its non-existent breathing. Eyes closing, his own chest moving in practiced lifts, as if he’s slowing down his own pulse to check for the doll’s. 

Percy leans back on the bench, abs rolling beneath his shirt as he bends to grin Ramos’ way. “Not everyone can have the intellectual capacity of a toad, Miguel.” 

Spencer snorts, resulting in another round of snot slipping from his nose. 

“That’s disgusting, Hudson,” Ramos remarks dryly before looking back at Percy with a shrug. “And what can I say? Brains won’t get you laid.”

“Clearly,” Percy says, teeth glinting. “Or you’d still be a virgin.”

Ramos hums, leaning back in his seat with his hands behind his neck. “Can you imagine? I’d kill myself. Might as well proposition Hunter.” He gestures to where Hunter is breathing into the doll’s mouth. “It’s not like he’d say no.”

Another round of laughter, Spencer’s ending in a coughing fit that has Evan going up to him to slam his palm into the boy’s kidneys in what’s likely intended to be helpful but only makes Spencer cough louder. At least that has the instructor realizing that none of them are paying attention and he tells them, not unkindly, to shut the fuck up. 

Hunter starts compressions on the doll, shoulders drawn up to his reddened ears. 

Henry stays where he is. 

As October comes rolling in, it’s getting chilly enough for Henry to be back in his old trenchcoat, the blue material a familiar weight on his shoulders as he walks the streets of West End. In Pirbright, frost has just begun to tickle the grass, leaves crunching beneath them on their daily trail runs. It hasn’t caught up in London yet, busy crowds keeping the cold at bay for now. 

It’s warm enough for the women to stroll around in their revealing mini skirts, goosebumps a permanent fixture on their bare stomachs where they enter and exit clubs like some distorted game of whack-a-mole as Henry searches for familiar red hair.

It was Mary who called him this time, making up some nonsense that deemed it important enough for Sergeant Srivastava  to let Henry take the call despite being in the middle of equipment drills. 

“Haven’t seen her in a while,” she mentioned, just an offhand comment between her plans for the garden and what she intends to do with his grandfather’s old Jaguar. “Said she’d come by for dinner.”

Not a hint of concern in her voice. Bea nothing but a faulty lightbulb that it would be nice if someone came around to fix at some point. 

“Have you asked Philip?” Henry said, twirling the chord between his fingers until it cut off his circulation, leaving his digits a milky white. 

“You know they don’t talk.”

Henry knows. Thinks it’s supposed to be the role of the middle child, this meddling thing. He’s a messenger dove flying back and forth and back and forth and Henry wishes someone would just shoot him down already. 

“I’ll look into it.”

Basil hasn’t seen her at Ye Old Cheshire in weeks. Her flatmates mentioned her being by, but they’re about as trustworthy in their recollection as Spencer is in his ability to piss inside the can. 

There’s a reason the young soldier is put on permanent bathroom duty. 

Spencer is probably here now, dancing away another grueling week of training with Percy and Ramos and the rest of them, drowning the aches and pains with enough liquor to have them barfing it up again by the time they’re back in the barrack come Monday. Srivastava  doesn’t comment on their partying, but their workouts are never as hard as they are at the start of the week. Percy is convinced the Sergeant gets off on seeing them puke their guts out during obstacle training.

Henry thinks he’s just doing his job.

Someone whistles, loud and shrill and it sounds close enough to a flute that Henry looks over his shoulder, expecting to be called to his knees for a round of jumping jacks.

Instead he finds Alex.

The American is leaning up against a wall, neon-sign above him claiming “good times” as if it’s not just another place to drink, to drown, a swimming pool among the dozens of them within walking distance. A cigarette hangs loose between his fingers. The butt sizzles orange in the dim green light, a similar hue shadowing Alex’s face into something almost sickly looking. 

Propriety is the only thing making Henry walk past the drunken smokers, a nod pulling at his neck in acknowledgement of the woman beneath Alex’s arm. It’s an effort, clearly, to hold her like he does, his shoulder oddly bent to accommodate for the inch or so she has on him despite being in sneakers.

“Didn’t think I’d see you again,” Alex says, voice the kind of scratchy that comes with just enough drinks to keep you in the realm of tipsy. 

“Didn’t think you’d care,” Henry counters, then turns to the woman. She looks vaguely familiar, her baggy jeans and leather jacket differentiating her from the other girls he’s seen trailing the street since he started looking for Bea. “I’m Henry.”

“I figured,” she says, American accent all clean and sophisticated compared to Alex’s southern drawl. “I’m Nora.”

She doesn’t give him a hand, occupied as they are with one on Alex’s waist, the other holding onto a glass of Guinness. A tomboy, then. 

“I’ll see you later,” Alex says, and Henry is about to take the dismissal for what it is when Alex leans in and kisses Nora’s temple. His lips glisten pink against her dark skin, her cheeks fluttering with whatever muffled words Alex whispers into her ear.

The cigarette falls to the ground, still sizzling as Alex steps over it to nudge Henry’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s walk.”

Henry doesn’t really want to walk with Alex. In fact, he kind of wants to go home, though home as in back to Pirbright and its hard metal-framed beds and morning blizzards. Certainly not home to his childhood bedroom at the manor where gran will be waiting up expecting some kind of news about Bea, only to lift her nose snidely in the air and act like she doesn’t care either way. 

He’s occupied doing mental arithmetics and coming up with a staggering eleven hour walk from West End to Surrey, when Alex clears his throat loudly. 

“Right,” Henry says, and then they’re walking. His eyes are on the ground, following each calamitous step of Alex’s Dr. Martens, a brand of shoes Henry only recognizes because Bea bought a similar pair once to Mary’s horrification. 

Black socks are visible where a pair of corduroy pants are rolled up to his ankles, a far cry from the Levi’s he’d been sporting the last time they met. 

“So,” Alex says, dragging out the word as he tips his index finger against his bottom lip. “You here to pull, or what?”

Henry has been accused of a lot of things in his life. This isn’t one of those. 

“I’m looking for my sister,” he says, more truthful than he intended, but the alternative was a bark of hysterical laughter that would probably lead to even more unwanted questions, so he’s mostly pleased with his decision. 

“Oh,” Alex says, for some reason sounding like he’s punctured a lung. Henry doesn’t look over to check. Assumes he’d let him know if that were the case, though his grandfather did go six weeks without having a shit before he bothered to mention it to his doctor, so he doesn’t really trust people’s ability to speak of their ailments before they’re tumbling into stage four cancer and in the midst of arranging their own funeral. “Do you want me to help look for her?”

The Romans had a good thing going with the strategy divide and conquer. Though Henry would appreciate the divide part of that whole gig, he’s not about to involve Alex in his twisted treasure hunt where the treasure is wasted, potentially high and willing to go to great lengths to avoid being caught.

“I think I’ll just go home.”

“Oh,” Alex says again as they continue to walk through West End. And truly. The vocabulary on this man. Staggering. No wonder why the Americans have such a great reputation in Europe for their eloquence. “Then I guess I’ll go home too.”

At times like these, Henry is amazed that people put their faith in some higher entity. Any God with a sense would prevent this. Any God with a trace of sympathy for Henry, anyway. 

Henry glances at Alex nonetheless. “What about your girlfriend?”

“Nora?” Alex says, all wide-eyed, as if Henry has suggested he’s dating his second cousin or something equally borderline incestual. “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s a –” he waves his hands in the air, flailing for some word to jump out of him from the dictionary “– friend.”

“Right.”

“Who I occasionally fuck.”

“Right,” Henry repeats, looking to the night sky. “I mostly gathered that.”

“It’s pretty neat, really.”

“I’m sure it’s lovely.”

The following silence isn’t. It’s not made any better by making their way out of the busy streets and onto the back roads where a cat screeches at them as if they’ve taken her tuna and thrown it back to sea.

There’s the barest hint of stubble on Alex’s cheeks. The desperate attempt of a boy still unable to grow an actual beard, not that Henry has any rights to comment. He can go a week without shaving and be left with nothing but an awkward peach fuzz inhabiting the space above his lower lip. 

Percy has already noticed, or at least that’s how Henry chose to interpret that one time they were in the bathroom alone together and Percy had poked the spot with his index finger and said “cute” in the same way you’d tell a four-year-old child that their drawing was “good.” 

“Henry –”

“Alex.”

And then he stops, of course. The bastard. Because they can’t just go home in this not-exactly-comfortable silence and take it for what is is – a resounding nail in the coffin, icing on the cake, whatever the fuck idiom you choose to use for this non-existent-friendship that withered away like a moth in the flame or –

“We really don’t have to do this,” Henry says on a sigh, cutting off another round of Alex attempting to magic up the right words with some kind of invisible wand. 

Alex whimpers in a distinctly wounded animal sort of way. “But –” he flails, again “– you never called.”

“No,” Henry corrects, facing Alex, “I didn’t call again, after I did call, and you answered, and we agreed to meet at Ye Old Cheshire which I did and you didn’t, which yes, was an experience I did not deem to entail a necessity for another call.”

And sure, that might be the longest sentence Henry has strung together in the better part of a decade, but he still finds Alex’s dropped jaw on the wrong side of unwarranted. 

“It’s fine,” Henry repeats, because it really is. He made an effort, one that took him a few weeks and just as many butchered attempts, and it didn’t pan out. It’s far from his biggest disappointment in life.

“But it’s not,” Alex says emphatically, pouting like a ten-year-old locked out of the cookie jar. “I wanted to see you, you know I was excited when you called –”

He was, embarrassingly so, given the yelp on the other side of the line and the evident desperation for something resembling a friend. Which Henry can’t relate to, obviously. At all. 

“– and I really wanted to show, I just…”

“Didn’t,” Henry finishes.

“I was sick,” Alex says, though his face does that twisty-thing that usually follows a lie, or at least a really shitty excuse. 

“Uh-huh,” Henry says, not bothering to hide his disbelief at this point, because really – the effort, “So sick you couldn’t call the pub and let me know?”

Alex’s face does another twisty-thing, this looking a little painful. “Yes?”

“Wonderful,” Henry says, and then he’s walking on, not bothering to wait for the tap tap tap of Alex’s Dr. Martens to follow. “Glad we cleared that all up.”

“I really am sorry,” Alex says, panting just a little as he catches up. And sure, Henry’s long legs have their advantages and yes, Henry is absolutely taking advantage of them right now. “I came by the pub the next day to find you, and –” he pauses, bites his lip “– a few days after that too, but Basil said you aren’t really a regular –” true “– that you only come by like once a year –” very much untrue “– and that you live somewhere called Chu –” a pause “– Chum –”

“Chum?” Henry questions, his feet having slowed down by their own accord as he takes in Alex’s crumpled expression. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Alex says, sounding a little helpless. “He wrote it down for me, I think it was C-H-O-L-M-O –”

“Cholmondeley,” Henry interrupts, his mouth twitching despite itself. 

Alex blinks. “What now?”

“Cholomondeley,” Henry repeats, and then enunciates slowly, “CHUM-lee. And no. I’m in Surrey, currently, though I was born two kilometers in that direction.” He points straight ahead. “Also, Cholomondeley is a four hour drive from here.”

“Oh,” Alex says, his head tilting. “And Basil knows this?”

“Basil has been to my house, yes.”

“Oh,” Alex repeats, his face scrunching up. “I don’t think he likes me very much.”

“You reckon?”

In Alex’s defense, his smile is of the sheepish kind, and Henry might, perhaps, maybe, feel the ice in his veins thaw just a little as one brown hand comes up to scratch an equally brown neck, though said neck is hidden by a turtleneck, which really just brings the whole outfit together into one big what-the-fuck compares to what he wore that time at the pub back in March. Then again, it has been more than six months, and Henry doesn’t have any right to judge people on their choice of clothing. He is, for his own part, currently sporting a pair of trackpants, sneakers and a hoodie beneath his trenchcoat, and really, Alex having the audacity to ask if he was there to “pull” now seems more like an attempt at mockery than anything. 

“Thank you,” Alex says, voice oddly choked. “For forgiving me.”

Henry inhales slowly. “Right. We need some rules.”

Alex blinks. “Rules as in I need to contact you if I cancel our plans?”

“Sure,” Henry relents, waving a dismissive hand. “But no.” He crosses his arms. “No thank yous. No sorrys. If we’re going to –” be friends “– hang out, I don’t want that. If you don’t want to meet me, that doesn’t require an apology –”

“But I did want to meet you,” Alex tries, brows furrowing.

Henry holds up a hand. “– and I certainly don’t want to be thanked for spending time with you. It’s not transactional. It’s not giving favors or cocking them up. You want to hang out with me and I with you, and when either of us no longer want that, we’re done.”

Alex’s eyes widen.

“So I repeat,” Henry goes on, heart thick in his chest, “no thank yous, no sorrys.” He nods. Once. Determined. “Anything to add?”

The wind whips at Alex’s curls, sending them to one side in some lousy attempt at mimicking what he might look like thirty, forty years from now, ambling around with his combover to hide his thinning hair. 

“No regrets,” Alex says, mimicking Henry’s nod. 

Henry snorts. “Alright, Edith. No thank yous, no sorrys, no regrets.”

He sticks out his hand. Alex looks down at it, lips parting momentarily, as if he’s surprised by the handshake. As if they didn’t share one in Ye Old Cheshire barely six months ago.

Like back then, Henry doesn’t let the hold linger, soft and warm as it is. Pumps their hands once, fast, firm. 

And let’s go.

As if Alex notices Henry’s abruptness, his hands sink into the pockets of his trousers. “I started studying philosophy this fall, at UCL?” He frowns. “That wasn’t a question, actually. I did. I am studying philosophy. I also talk a lot. I mean –” a grimace passes his face “– I’ve been told I talk a lot. You should know that, if we –” he nods between them “– hang out.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

He gestures for them to start moving again, shoulders sinking in relief when Alex follows his lead, their footsteps falling in line as they start walking. 

“Do you like it?” Henry asks. “Your studies.”

Alex nods feverishly. “Definitely, I mean –” his hands come up, trembling from their limited time in pocket-prison “– I’m learning so much, you know, and I’ve been reading a lot, which –” his nose twitches “– well, let’s just say I usually don’t, but now I’m devouring Descartes and Hume and Kant, and I’m reading about epistemology and metaphysics and the –” he taps his own head, the sound comically hollow given the topic at hand “– philosophy of mind, you know? Like, what is consciousness? What is personal identity?”

A silence follows, one where Alex stares at Henry with his hands splayed out like Henry is supposed to sit with the answers. 

“Of course,” Alex goes on, and Henry keeps his smile to himself, “there are courses on political thought too, like libertarianism vs. egalitarianism, and Marx, of course, who –” he glances quickly at Henry “– really has some excellent points on war, you know.”

There’s a brown leaf beneath Henry’s shoe. It crunches in agony as he steps over it.

“Is that so?” he asks, the epitome of politeness because he’s nothing if not of excellent breeding, or that’s what Mary says when she’s neck deep in the Port. 

“Well, they’re not really a result of –” Alex makes quotation marks with his fingers, which seems like it should be a federal offence for anyone under the age of fifty “– ‘evil rulers’ or anything. Unless we want to call capitalism an evil ruler, and I’m not necessarily opposed to that idea. I mean, it’s literally just a symptom of the economic struggle between ruling classes, not the people themselves, and yet the people are the victims, obviously, which is horrendous, and ridiculous, and it only hurts the working class which we know –” he looks at Henry like Henry should most definitely know “– are the ones we send to war. Marx calls it a false consciousness. The workers are tricked into fighting for a system that oppresses them.” 

He stops suddenly, both hands gripping the sleeves of Henry’s trenchcoat so hard Henry is almost amazed Alex doesn’t simply pull the thing off him.

“You don’t have to do it, Henry.” 

It takes Henry a moment of looking into those wide, brown doe eyes, shimmering like sunlight in the dim street lamps.

And God, he wants to laugh. He doesn’t, obviously, but he wants to. Feels it trying to punch out of him, stubby brown fingers clutching at his lungs and dragging it out as if it’s just been waiting there, hovering in some endless oblivion, lost to the void of lifelong loss. It’s painful, the way it pushes at his throat, his entire respiratory system seemingly struggling to accept this dormant bodily expression of emotion. 

For a second there, he almost feels good. 

“I really think he has a point,” Alex finishes, hands long gone from Henry’s sleeves to curl protectively around his own jacket. 

“I’m sure he does,” Henry says. 

God. 

In the cemetery, his grandfather is digging himself out of his grave right now, dirt shattering his fingernails as he claws himself all the way to West End to strangle Alex with his brittle hands for daring to call his grandson – the one he hated with a passion for whatever that’s worth – a part of the working class. 

Henry is not in a rush to contradict him. 

There’s a hint of a curl to Alex’s mouth. A little annoyed, perhaps, but a smile nonetheless. Some kind of amusement at least. It looks good on him. Makes him seem less like a boy, though the effect is somehow lessened with how it looks a bit like he walked into a thrift store and asked them to dress him as a philosophy student. 

“Whatever,” Alex says, rolling his eyes. 

There’s a tension to his shoulders that Henry thinks might be his fault. Not that he’ll know what to do about it, which is probably why he sticks his hands in his coat pockets and starts walking again, only glancing behind himself to check that Alex, if somewhat petulantly, is following. 

He is, gaze trained on Henry. “So what are you doing in Surrey?”

Henry considers saying something along the lines of “being manipulated by an oppressive system”, but he’s never been a combative person and he’s not about to start now. 

“Training.”

“Ah.” Alex drags a thumb over his lower lip, the pink flesh chapped with the change in temperatures. “And that’s going… well?”

“Do you care?”

A pebble clatters over the pavement, knocking into a nearby fence. Alex’s hands are deep in his corduroy trousers, the outline of his fingers stretching the fabric where they seem to twist and move within their confines.

“You’ve shaved your head,” Alex says, looking away.

Henry drags a hand over the closed-cropped hair, the sharpness of short strands tickling his palm. The mark of conformity, of removed individuality. Running through that track field, sweat down their necks, bile in their throat – they’re all the same. 

“Yeah,” Henry says, hand falling to his side. “I did.”

It smells like metal. Like cold. Like expectation, thick on the tongue, claiming the day before it’s even started. 

They’re out near Aldershot, at the Ash Ranges. Wind whips at their skin, would drag their hair with it if anyone had more than the faintest buzz on their heads. The soil is chalky beneath their feet, cordite and mud clinging to the air and speaking of the coming winter as the recruits huddle in their uniforms, shuffling like they want to stand close, to leech of each other’s warmth.

They don’t. Ahead of them are wooden targets, lined up against sand berms. Srivastava’s boots squelch as he does a last check of their equipment. Helmet, webbing, ear defenders. The SA80 rifle, newly issued to the British Army. It’s sleek in Henry’s gloved hands, his thumb sliding easy over the glossy metal. 

“Right,” Srivastava says as he hands Spencer his rifle back, the boy looking awfully young with his shaved head and acne, ears sticking out wide. “This isn’t a cowboy movie. Treat that rifle like it’s loaded, even when it’s not. Finger off the trigger unless you’re firing, muzzle downrange at all times.” His gaze is bored as he drags it across the lot of them, speaking from a script he’s acted a dozen times before, and still – he’s fucking frightening. Even Ramos is following the Sergeant’s every move, beetle eyes pinned to Srivastava’s frame. “If you point that at me, I’ll make sure it’s the last thing you ever do. Clear?”

“Yes, Sergeant!” Henry cries with the rest of them, a perfect unison. 

Srivastava doesn’t nod or smile. There’s a rumor he’s never done so at all, that he is, in fact, physically incapable of doing anything but that saucy lift of one eyebrow that Percy has been trying to perfect during their downtime in the evenings. He’s far from mastered it, but the effort is rather amusing to watch. Even Henry finds himself putting his book down, bracing one elbow on his bed as he watches the young man pouncing around the barrack with his brows in a constant state of arched. 

“You’ll get wrinkles,” Spencer said once, then ducked as Percy’s pillow flew across the room. 

“Nonsene!” Percy had shouted with all the dramatics of a high school production of Macbeth. “This face won’t see a single line!”

At this point, Evan had jerked his hips and said “I’ll give you a line”, and Henry had firmly gone back to his book as the men laughed on.

Srivastava stands to the side now, his face undeterred by the cold, the wind, the recruits holding a lethal weapon in their hands. 

They repeat safety drills. Chamber, safe position, load, unload. It’s easy. Henry does it again and again, silent and precise. 

He knows he is. Precise. Feels it in the way his fingers slide over the bolt, the same bolt Spencer fumbles with beside him, earning him an earful from Srivastava that has them all cowering.

“Again!” Srivastava  yells, and they all watch, over and over as Spencer is forced to get it right with them all looking on. A constant pressure cooker. But then, that is what they signed up for. A thorough round of public shaming and then a pat on the back and a “good lad” if you’re lucky.

“Breathe out,” Srivastava tells them all. “Hold. Squeeze, don’t yank it! You’ve cocked it up if your sights wobble.”

“What do we do if we cock it up, Sergeant?” Evan asks, his helmet sunk low on his forehead, but not low enough to hide his white blond brows where they’re scrunched over his eyes in concentration. 

Srivastava gives him one of his patented arches. Henry thinks this one rings of disappointment, or maybe just disgruntlement. It’s hard to tell. 

“Just don’t,” Srivastava says. 

And well. That’s really the gist of it all.

They fire. Even with the defenders, the sound barrels through Henry, cracks his chest open from the inside out and leaves his ears ringing, a constant high-pitched tune not unlike Percy singing in the showers. His shoulder aches with the recoil, a blazing shell casing bouncing off his sleeve and falling lackluster to the ground beside his shoe.

His first shot jerks wide. His stomach curls with it.

“Relax, Private,” Srivastava says behind him. 

Henry doesn’t turn to look. Lines the rifle up for a second round, letting the butt of it rest in that crook just between his shoulder and arm, skin already feeling bruised beneath his clothes.

“Exhale,” the Sergeant says, standing close enough to speak in low tones. “Work with it, not against it.” 

Henry blinks. Recenters himself on the ground, in his little square. Breathes in. Breathes out. 

“Fire!”

Cordite burns his sinuses as the second shot goes off, the crack of the weapon echoed on both sides of him. He stands tall this time, back foot solid on the ground despite the jerk of his upper body wanting to follow the movement of the rifle.

His heart thunders with adrenalin, screaming at him. Do it again, do it again. 

There are eyes on him, he knows. Can see it in his periphery vision. Hunter on his left, looking from Henry to the target, blonde brows raised. Percy on his right, swinging around an unloaded gun as he scratches the back of his head with a sheepish smile, looks from his own target to Henry’s. 

Henry is looking too. 

“Dead center,” he hears, vaguely, Srivastava say behind him, and then there’s a weight on his shoulder. 

It’s not the same hand, not the rough drag of nails digging into his skin and pushing him to the floor, knees first. Still, he flinches. Jerks away from the grip, strong and firm where fingers curl into the space just above his collarbone. 

Srivastava is looking at him when Henry turns around. The sergeant’s expression is blank, the definition of calm. He could be anywhere, everywhere. At a funeral, listening to a sermon. In a Tesco, buying milk. 

“Good shot, Private Fox.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

Shrivasta nods and then he’s off, lecturing Percy on his careless use of a lethal weapon and “it’s not a bloody hockey stick, Private”, and somehow Percy takes it all in stride when he should be falling to the ground, weeping at the onslaught of disappointment. Instead he comes marching over to Henry the moment the sergeant is gone, grin wide as he plants his hands on his hips, reminding Henry oddly of Philip. 

“You’re just good at everything, aren’t you?”

There’s a self-deprecating “hardly” on Henry’s tongue, one he swallows down with a tight roll of his throat. If Percy notices, it doesn’t show, the man straddling closer and narrowing his eyes at Henry’s target. 

“Ridicolous is what it is,” Percy goes on, still grinning as he looks towards Henry. “Nothing fazes you, huh? The drills. Ramos’ queer jokes. Spencer’s continuous attempts to get you to come out with us, and –” a chuckle “– don’t think you’re off the hook on that yet, by the way.” His smile sobers. “You’re like –” he purses his lips, searching “– unflappable."

The shrug takes hold of Henry’s shoulders before he can help it. “Maybe none of it matters.”

Percy’s brows twitch beneath his helmet, undecided between an arch or a frown. “Maybe it should,” he counters. “Maybe you need to open your wings and –”

With glittering eyes, he pulls his arms out to the side, one still holding the rifle. He lifts them up and down, looking a bit like he’s making some kind of deranged horizontal snow angle.

“– fly, fly, bird!”

Henry’s lips twitch tiredly, curling upwards despite themselves.

Percy grins. “Knew you were in there somewhere.”

They break for food at some point. Henry doesn’t eat much, finds that the potatoes sit heavily on his tongue, growing like mold in his mouth when he tries to chew through it. Ramos drones on about the rifle, the ease of it, how he’d hit ten or twelve or fifteen shots in a row, and he’ll “plow them all down” and Henry doesn’t ask who “them” are. He drinks two glasses of water until his stomach sloshes with it, shoving his uneaten food to Spencer when the boy hints for it.

Henry falls into a rhythm. Breathe, fire, reload. Rapid fire. 30 rounds in a row, a full magazine, shooting in short controlled bursts, the shots reverberating through his helmet, shaking his very brain.

“Strip it, clean it,” Srivastava says, back in the armory hours later. Henry’s body aches, his bruises developing their own bruises as he clumsily works at his rifle, breathing through the sweat, the oil, the iron. The heavy heat of men next to him, before him, behind him, moaning and grunting with their own sluggish movements. “If you don’t clean it, it’ll jam when you need it. And when it jams, you’re dead.”

“Do you hear that, Hunter?” Ramos says, teeth glinting in the sharp white lights. “Don’t want to clog up your pipes.”

Henry leans close to eye his rifle as laughter filters through the room, low and unbidden, aware of its own malplacement even before Srivastava shoots it down with some kind of reprimand Henry doesn’t bother listening to. He looks over his shoulder. Sees Hunter methodically wiping down his gleaming rifle, color tainting his cheeks, releasing him of the sickly hues of pale autumn skin. 

“What am I doing wrong?” 

Hunter looks up, rag black with grime. His eyes are a soft brown, too large for his face. Set close to his nose. They’re lined by pale lashes, brown like the orbs they’re protecting. A single lash is bent at an odd angle, leaving Henry’s fingers twitching with a need to straighten it.

“Nothing,” Hunter says, taking in Henry’s rifle as he puts his own down, the metal clanking against the bench. “You just need to be patient.”

Henry tries for a smile. “What if I can’t?” 

“Then you’ve chosen the wrong profession,” Hunter says. He turns the weapon in his wide, deft hands. Sticks the small brush into the rifle, rasping against the fabric around it. Oil lingers on his fingers as he steps closer to Henry, pointing to where the grime still sits like a layer on the metal, like dust on a long-forgotten plant. “It’s repetitive. Not hard.”

“Cleaning?” Henry asks, leaning in to see the metal slowly return to its own, shiny self under Hunter’s methodical movements. He can smell the other man’s sweat, just edging into the territory of thick and cloying after a full day of bathing in it. “Or the profession?”

Hunter looks up, his hunched shoulders leaving them at the same height. “Both, probably.”

“Why do it then?” 

A smile. Small. It transforms Hunter’s face, gives lines to his eyes that shouldn’t belong to a man his age, and Henry finds himself looking between them, tracing them like he’d done his target earlier, finding patterns in the groves.

“Ah, ça, pourquoi.”

Henry blinks. “Parlez-vous français?” 

The smile widens, lines growing exponentially with the movement. “My mother is French. What’s your excuse?”

Henry’s neck is damp as he scratches it, some odd mix of dried sweat and the clamminess of the room, of the conversation. All he can smell is leather chairs and old books, paper thin beneath his hands as he ruffled the pages, stumbling over sentences in both German and French as the tutor looked down at him with her steely grey eyes, as a cane clanked against the wooden floor downstairs. 

He clears his throat. “My grandmother made me take lessons as a child.”

“Ah,” Hunter says, looking back down. He’s still cleaning Henry’s rifle, his fingers sliding over the metal as if in a caress. “Forced learning, rarely a good way to teach a language, though –” he holds the weapon high, squints with one eye as he inspects it “– you don’t sound too bad.”

“I have an accent,” Henry says, the words falling with the ease of repetition. A complaint his tutor always made, one his grandfather repeated later in his own, volatile ways. 

Hunter shrugs. “So?”

So.

“You shouldn’t be doing that for me,” Henry says, hands flailing in the air in a way he hopes looks like he’s gesturing at the rifle and not avoiding the question. 

“I don’t mind,” Hunter says, though he gives it back nonetheless. 

“The Sergeant might.” 

Looking over his shoulder, Henry finds Srivastava’s eyes darting away, already jumping to some new destination in the form of where Spencer is pointing the rifle at his own feet. He bangs into it with his free hand, trying to get mud out of the barrel as Evan laughs beside him. 

“You’re a good shot,” Hunter says, drawing Henry’s attention back. “I bet you’ll get top marks. You and Ramos probably.” His eyes dart over to where the dark-haired man is showing his rifle off for inspection. “I certainly won’t.”

Henry doesn’t contradict him. He’d watched Hunter’s shooting, would call it average at best.

“If it helps,” Henry says, lowering his voice and leaning in again, braced for the smell of musk and man this time. “I heard a rumor Ramos almost failed the first-aid field exercise, which I know you aced.”

Hunter’s brown eyes are almost copper up close, glinting warmly as the lines curl around them. “That’s easy.”

“Not for Ramos,” Henry counters, swaying closer, close enough to look up to meet those eyes of his, to smell the undercurrent of soap beneath the layers of sweat and grime. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

Hunter’s lips twitch and Henry matches the movement, Hunter’s eyes dropping down as if to take it in and –

Henry pulls back, boots clacking together as if he’s been called to attention, ribs tightening beneath his uniform.

Hunter blinks. “Right. Well –” he coughs, picking up his own rifle and gesturing to Srivastava “– I should get this checked but, ehm –” a smile “– thank you. For what you said. Most of the guys don’t –” he grimaces “– say much.”

With the weapon in hand, he lifts it in a half-formed salute, smile thin and a little awkward, leaving Henry behind to ignore Srivastava’s gaze lingering on him from across the room. And Henry does. Ignore it. 

He scrubs and scrubs at the rifle until the oil and the dirt and the tremor beneath his skin withers away. 

“Wow.”

Alex’s jaw has dropped, lips parted where he’s bundled up in a large, knitted scarf. His teeth click together as he closes his mouth, buries his nose in the soft cream-colored fabric and looks over at Henry with his wide brown eyes and snow-covered lashes. 

Henry brushes a hand beneath his nose. Looks away. “It’s not that impressive.”

“It is,” Alex disagrees, his voice muffled by the scarf. “It really fucking is.”

Shrugging, Henry pulls at his jacket, thick and furlined now that the navy trenchcoat no longer suffices against the blistering cold. The snow crunches beneath his boots, dense on the fourth day of it tumbling down around them. His nose is frozen, likely pinkened in the breeze. “Let’s go inside before you get sick.”

“I won’t get sick,” Alex says, more a grunt than anything. 

It’s a lie, of course. Alex is sick all the time, at least half of their planned hangouts ending up cancelled within twenty-four hours of it actually happening. Henry takes each and every one as the rejection it is, then ends up surprised time and time again when Alex calls the next day, or the day after that, and finds some new date, some new plan, usually of the “right the fuck now” kind if Henry is home from training and available. And Henry is available. At least when it’s Alex calling. When he’s not dragging Bea home from the club, or forcing himself through Sunday Roast with Mary and Philip, or figuring out how to pay for a flat of his own without using a single of his grandfather’s pennies. 

He could always rent a hole in the wall, like Alex does. Except Henry thinks he’d rather sleep outside than share an apartment with the likes of Alex’s flatmate, a hairy bear of a man with the average hygiene of his animal counterpart and an uncanny ability to be watching porn whenever Henry stops by. 

“You get used to it,” Alex assured him once, taking him past the naked ladies on screen, up the stairs and into the cupboard of a bedroom where Alex keeps a mattress to sleep on. “Some of the movies are even pretty funny. There’s this kind of edgy one where a girl develops tentacles and –” 

Henry had thrown a pillow at him, which is one of the easier ways to get Alex to quiet when he starts on one of his tangents. Not that Henry doesn’t enjoy them, necessarily. It’s soothing, in its own way, the continuous southern drawl going on and on about the abomination that is the British judicial system, or American gun laws, or whether or not cereal should be considered appropriate breakfast food. 

It shouldn’t, but apparently Henry’s opinion is disqualified on account of his preferred morning routine involving beans on toast after running. 

Looking over his shoulder, Henry finds Alex still standing stock-still on the snow-covered gravel road, catching flakes on his pink tongue. His eyes are closed, beanie pulled off and resting between his gloved hands. Dark curls looking like someone has sprinkled them with fairy dust. 

Sighing, Henry turns away. Looks at the manor instead with its three storeys and accompanying attic. Pale Portland stone lining the outside walls, ivy creeping uncontrolled up the sides and looking rather frail with winter. Through the bay windows, he can see his grandmother, sitting beneath the twinkling chandelier with a glass of red. One in a long line, most likely. 

“Come on,” Alex says from beside him. “Don’t want you to get sick, do we?”

Alex grins, nudging Henry’s shoulder with all the childlike joy his face radiates. 

He’s pulled back by Henry’s hand on his shoulder, making him stumble back enough for Henry to hold him up. 

“Let’s use the back door,” Henry says, nodding in that direction before he releases Alex and begins stomping through the snow.

“Why?” he hears from behind him. “Afraid I’ll dirty up the floors?”

“Something like that.”

The oak door creaks as he unlocks it, making him wince. Alex doesn’t seem to notice, enthralled as he is by whatever his eyes have landed on, if anything at all. Perhaps it’s just the air, quiet but alive with the ticking clocks, the rustle of Mary filtering through the Telegraph. Music playing distantly in the background, a forgotten attempt at filling the space with more than the scent of polish and ancient pages.

Henry puts a finger to his lips. Alex’s eyes dart down to see it, then back up with mirth playing like it's the Steinway piano in the drawing room, twinkling out a joyous tune. Henry tries to make his own eyes stern, knows he fails when Alex’s smile grows wider, when he giggles into the crook of his elbow, hiding it like an unbidden sneeze. 

Rolling his eyes, Henry gestures for him to take off his shoes, and so they do. Henry’s boots, similar to the combat ones he left at the training depot, look large and menacing next to Alex’s worn Dr. Martens.

Henry grabs him by the wrist and pulls him past the library and up the stairs before Alex can do more than glance at the leather-bound volumes, not to mention the old woman sitting among them.

“Some of those books can’t have been opened since the 30s,” Alex whispers as they reach the landing, awed like the philosophy student he is. “You don’t happen to have a copy of Nietzsche’s –”

Henry hushes him. They tread lightly past the master suite, the garden room. Passes Bea’s old bedroom, still there for her once biweekly visits that have now dwindled to nothing with Henry off at training, Philip busy at Uni. He stops to let Alex look at the modernised bedrooms, 1980s marble and gilt fittings clashing with the Georgian elegance. 

“Here,” Henry says, opening the door to his own bedroom, hinges well-oiled from the last time he came by, right before beginning phase two of training. “Since you wanted to see it.”

Alex steps inside. His socks are wet, a dark line coloring the black cotton halfway up the ridge of his feet. They slap against the glossy hardwood floor, leaving damp marks that Henry follows in his own, perfectly dry white tennis socks. 

“You’ve seen my room,” Alex says, hands clasped at his back as he looks around the small space. He’s still wearing his coat, this big, brown thing with an abundance of pockets. Drops of melted snow shimmers along the hem. “I didn’t make nearly as much fuss about it.”

“It’s not your childhood room,” Henry counters, though this isn’t his either. Not really. 

His childhood room had a bright purple wallpaper, a border with jumping dolphins on top. A kind of whimsical that feels odd now, like a skin that doesn’t belong to him. Like the boy in that bed was someone else entirely. Someone removed from him, pulled out with pliers.

If he tries, he can still feel it. The wound from which that boy went. 

Alex barks a laugh. Loud, too loud for where Mary sits downstairs, though Henry has no illusions of getting out of here without the two of them being introduced. She’s a shark like that. Smells the blood in the air, simmering like soup beneath Alex’s skin, a constant storm at sea. 

Of course, it’s equally likely that Alex will beg off for the loo, and he’ll just magic his way downstairs and whoops, would you have it – there she is! 

“I’d die if you saw my childhood bedroom,” Alex says, both hands coming up to drag through his curls. It sticks that way, awkwardly pulled back. “You wouldn’t believe the posters. And the books. And –” another laugh, softer now as he picks up Henry’s alarm clock, thumbs the tiny bell on top with a gentle chime through the room “– the teddy bears.”

Henry leans against the doorframe. There are no teddy bears here. No posters. Books aplenty, of course, he is who he is. It’s far from all the books he’s read. Most of those are left behind in the places he found them, libraries and cafés and even school, on rare occasions. When one of the girls brought them with them, giggling at lunch over the dashing male character, only to throw a fit later when the book had mysteriously vanished from their backpacks.

He always put it back, in the end. He supposes that makes it okay. 

“What’s this?”

Glancing up from where he’s been studying the wet imprints of Alex’s feet on his floor, Henry sees Alex with a napkin in his hand. 

“Oh,” Henry says, stumbling into the room. “That’s –”

“Mine,” Alex says, sounding a little breathless as he unfolds the crumpled cheap material, paper rustling between his fingers. “You kept this?”

Henry wonders what would happen if he jumped out the window. “I need your number, don’t I?”

Alex laughs, eyes glittering as they dart across the letters, small and blocky and completely in lack of proper punctuation. Henry would know. He’s read it enough times. 

“You know that’s what they have address books for, right?” His lips quirk. “Actually, I think you should keep this indefinitely.”

Henry’s hands sink deep into the pocket of his coat, twitching against the damp fabric. “Is that so?”   

“Well, yeah,” Alex says, grinning wide now. “And then in five, ten, thirty years –” his eyes flare, as if he’s balking at the mere mention of what seems like an eternity away “– you’ll look back at this and go ‘Aaw. Alexander Clearmont-Diaz, that one sodding American that came into my life and changed it all.’”

Henry steps over to the desk. Carelessly spins the swiveling chair, back and forth, back and forth. “You think too highly of yourself.”

Alex hums, eyes back on the napkin. “Yeah. Probably.”

Something about his voice has Henry’s chest tightening. He coughs through it. Clears his throat. 

“Is this where I go out and buy a pair of those preteen friendship necklace things? Two halves to make a heart, claiming you as my –” he twists his tone into something sickly sweet “– best friend forever.”

It works. Alex barks out a laugh, the sound tumbling out of him with whatever mud and grime had stuck inside. 

“Please,” Alex says, rolling his eyes as he puts the napkin down, though not before refolding it first. “Who said anything about forever?”

Henry did. Foolishly so for someone who’s been shown time and time again that it’s a state that can’t exist. Alex is his to loan, something to have and hold and return with care whenever he deems himself done with the U.K., when he packs his life and charm and endless monologues back up and returns to the U.S. in a year or so.

An acquaintanceship like this, a friendship like this, a – whatever this is – won’t last forever.

“I can’t believe you were worried about me seeing your room. It’s very –” Alex waves his hand, staring at the napkin “– what is it you Brits say?” He looks over his shoulder, throwing a smile Henry’s way. “Quaint.”

He makes a graceless turn in the air, then flops back first onto the bed with a puff of air. The heavy drapes jump with the movement, frazzled as they slide back into place. 

Henry leans against his desk, wooden frame sticking into his lower back. He’s still sore from training. The endless runs, backpack in place, rifle in hand. He’s going to be an infantry man. Just another grunt. 

“Actually,” he says, folding his arms around himself. “The word quaint comes from old French and used to mean clever or skillful.”

Alex hums up at the ceiling, his eyes scanning the simple blue paint on the walls with a small curved tilt to his lips, as if he can see it. The dolphins. “Like you.”

Henry’s cheeks grow warm. “Says the student.”

Snorting, Alex flips onto his side. One arm curls beneath his head, the other draping out over the sheets. He kicks his legs until the comforter is wrapped between them, leaving them spread out at the knees. Wetness seeps into the cotton at his feet. “I’m not much of a student.” He pulls at the seam of Henry’s comforter. “You could join me, you know?”

It’s a good thing he’s already looking at Alex. Makes it easier not to stare at the bed as if it’s about to eat him alive. “Join you?”

“At university,” Alex says, picking at the sheets with his winter-brittle nails, chapped lips sinking between teeth. “You could study like –” he narrows his eyes “– languages or something.”

“Right,” Henry says, barely withholding a cough. “And what would I do with that?”

Alex frowns. Looks at the material between his fingers. “Dunno.” He exhales, sighs into the crook of his shoulder. “But like, that’s not the point. What you do with it. It’s not the point, the point is to –” his jaw tightens “– to do what you want to do right? Like –” he pushes himself up to his elbows, gaze sliding to the window where the snow barrels down outside. “I’m going to be a politician, but that’s –” he grimaces “– I mean, it’s a white man’s game, right?”

Henry arches a brow, but doesn’t say anything. Even as Alex looks at him, his cheeks pinched with whatever it is that has his hands tightening on his legs, his shoulders trembling where they’re hunched forward.

“I mean, my dad gets half the recognition he should because he’s Mexican, and that needs to change, and –” a short laugh “– I know it’s going to be an uphill battle, I know that.” 

His face hardens. As if it’s a conversation he’s had before. As if he’s been told not to bother. 

“But fuck that. Fuck all of that, because I –” he slams a hand into his chest “– I’m going to be the most influential person of color ever to work inside the White House.”

Optimistic. 

“Sounds tiring,” Henry says truthfully.

Alex’s chuckle is a bright, bright thing. “Hell yeah it does, but I can do it. I know I can do it. I just –” his lips pinch “– well, I didn’t get into law school right away like my parents did, but I can work around that, right? I mean, that’s why I’m here, doing a year abroad will look good on my application, and philosophy is like –” his eyes light up “– really interesting, Henry, and useful, because I need to understand the people before I can help the people, and then I’ll return to Austin after a year and I’ll get into law school and I’ll –” he claps his hands together “– slam those exams, and boom –” his hands reach towards the ceiling “– you’ll be sitting here, watching the telly and seeing yours truly speaking in the Senate.” 

He folds his hands around his neck, pushing it down. Eyes cast between the V of his legs, spread out on the bed. He’s shaking his head, though at what, Henry can’t say for certain. 

“And you think it’s worth it?” Henry asks. “All the work it’ll take you to get there?”

Alex looks up then, eyes clouded by his lashes. “It is if I want to change the world.” 

He smiles, a little wryly. Throws his legs out over the bed, coming to sit on the mattress like a normal person, folded over with his elbows on his knees. 

“Don’t you?” he asks. “Want to change the world?”

It’s such a romantic notion, it’s hard for Henry not to snort. Not to shake his head in derision. The words of a child, soft and delusional, said in the safety of a warm, comfortable bed on a winter morning, untouched by the cold outside. 

Not too far from here is a cemetery, one where his father is buried beneath a snowy blanket of earth and dirt and memories. 

Henry swallows tightly.

“I just want to save someone.” 

And Henry just stands there, staring at the twinkling eyes of an eighteen-year-old American, as Alex tilts his head and says – 

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

 

London, 1990

Written on a flimsy white napkin, clumsily folded.

 

Henry 

sorry to run off like this, but did you see that smokin hot girl with the curls by the dartboard? well, she saw me if you know what I mean 

I liked talking to you, even if your opinions are shit. maybe I can make them less shit, if you won’t mind seeing one of us ‘bloody Americans’ again. with what you’re doing with your life, you should probably get used to us

anyway, I think my landline should be 01 5749 2831. call me or something

 

- Alex

 

p.s. pay for the beer, will you?