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‘I’d like to make a complaint.’
Of course.
Alex schools a polite smile onto his face. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he says.
It’s the end of a nine hour flight that should have been seven – Lagos to London – and Alex is exhausted. It’s hardly the longest flight on his roster. Nowhere near the longest he’s got even this week, but they’d been delayed coming out of Paris in the morning, hit by delays coming into Lagos, then again getting out, then spent an hour circling suburban London while they waited for a slot to land at Heathrow. Long story short, Alex is tired . He’s been working with Brenda, a woman twice his age who he hates . It’s been a day and the last thing he wants to do is to deal with a buttoned up businessman who wants to speak to the manager. He’s spent the entire flight wearing distinct look of disapproval and disdain, like Alex – a flight attendant – is the cause of their delays rather than the fucking weather.
Alex is multitalented, but he’s not that powerful.
Anyway, this dude has been rubbing Alex up the wrong way since before they’d even left the runway. He’s in First Class. Alex always works first class. He’s got the charisma and quick wit for it. Normally, he loves it and if he flirts his way through his shift to make it a little easier for everyone involved, that’s between him and the stash of bills he gets in tips, but there’s always one or two… tricky customers. Today, it’s this guy. Blonde hair, blue eyes and so tall that Alex knows he must be wearing lifts. First, there had been a lipstick stain on the rim of the flute of his complimentary champagne. Then, somewhere over Algeria, a muttered complaint about the temperature. Given that Alex spent half his shift trying to appease frustrated passengers, and trying to avoid Brenda and her microaggressions, he’s at the end of his rope.
‘Everything alright?’ Brenda’s passive aggressive sing-song voice comes. ‘Is there a problem here? With Alex?’
She sounds almost hopeful. Alex hopes that she trips and falls from the stairs on the way out. Just enough to sprain an ankle. Just so he can have a break from her and her constant questioning about where he’s really from.
Alex sighs. ‘Excuse me,’ he says brushing past the guy. ‘I’ll leave you in Brenda’s capable hands.’
‘Well, Mrs Adams, if she looks anything like her grandmother then anyone would be lucky to date her.’
The blonde haired man in 2A exhales loudly. It’s the fourth time. Alex has been counting. He stretches his neck as Alex uses the silver tongs to drop another ice cube into Margery Adams’s glass. He stretches out his own neck and flashes Mrs Adams one of his best, most flirtatious smiles and slowly opens the bottle of seltzer.
Alex is good at his job. He’s not been employee-of-the-month for three months running for nothing. But they’re on the tail end of a 7 hour flight from London and he’s tired. And he fucking hates guys like this – the ones who flash their gold card and frequent flier status and gets upgraded every time they turn up at the gate because they’ve got the face of a movie star. They don’t appreciate it, not like Margery, who Alex had plucked from the back of economy when someone didn’t board in First Class at Heathrow. She’d been quietly knitting a scarf for her next grandchild when he offered her the seat. He’s not supposed to do it. But sometimes, when he’s the one in charge and he doesn’t have a snitch like Hunter on shift with him, he will. The risk of the reprimand is always worth it for the satisfaction of seeing the shock and gratitude on someone’s face. Someone like Margery, sitting with a half-knitted baby blanket on her lap and a glass of champagne in her hand, chuckling in disbelief as they fly over the English channel. She’s so fucking happy. Alex knows she’s going to be dining out on this story for years. He doesn’t always get to do all that much good in this job, especially not waiting hand and foot on guys who have been travelling First Class since before they could walk. It makes him feel good when he can do something. Lord Asshole the Third over there can wait.
Alex flashes his best smile. ‘Tell me all about Francesca’s dance recital.’
Alex hears a sharp, huffed exhale. In his periphery, he catches the corner of the man’s mouth pinch inwards.
‘I just think it’s entirely inappropriate,’ the blonde man is saying. He was one of the first to board, and he’s spent the entire time on the phone in his front row seat while the rest of the passengers stream down through the plane and into their seats.
Alex is showing a woman and her young son to their seats, wishing that light-up shoes were still socially acceptable for adults.
‘Well, maybe you should stick to doing your bloody job then, instead of sticking your nose into mine.’
Instinctively, Alex raises an eyebrow.
‘Yikes,’ the woman says under her breath. She settles the kid in the window seat and pulls out a load of colouring books for him – dinosaurs, diggers and superheroes, then rummages in her bag, presumably for pens.
Alex can’t help but hum in agreement.
‘Can’t you just tell— No. It’s none of your business.’ There’s a scoffed huff. Alex takes the brown-haired woman’s bag from her and places it in the overhead storage. ‘It’s definitely not any of hers.’
He clears his throat, his volume dropping. ‘No it’s— no. Don’t do that, it’s— No . This isn’t a discussion.’
Alex checks that the woman and kid don’t need anything else, and then slips back to the front of the aircraft. By the time he starts making his way back through the cabin for his final checks, the man is still on the phone, still ranting unhappily under his breath.
‘Sir,’ he says, ‘I’m going to need you to put your phone on flight mode now.’
He exhales and covers the mouthpiece. ‘Just a minute.’
And the thing is, Alex doesn’t necessarily need him to hang the phone up right this second. He could, if he were more inclined to be a nice person right now, carry on down the cabin and come back to this guy on his way back. But he’s not. He’s tired and he got thrown up on by a drunk man on their inbound flight from JFK, who then had to be escorted off the plane when they landed in LAX, and now they’re about to head back out to Austin. The only saving grace is that at the end of this is going to be his childhood bed and his stepdad’s chicken parm. Alex is hoping and praying that he’s managed to keep his mom well away from the kitchen.
‘No,’ Alex says. ‘Now, please.’
The man fixes his cold blue eyes on Alex and exhales. His voice softens as he says into the phone, ‘I have to go. Okay, yes. I’ll call you when I land. Fine. Bye.’
‘Just put it on flight mode and we’ll be all ready to go,’ he says with a grin, and delights at the frustrated eye roll he gets in response.
‘Chicken or beef?’ Alex asks.
He looks up from his laptop screen and blinks back at him. It’s him again. The blonde. Today he’s dressed in a crisp blue and white checkered shirt with a baby blue jumper wrapped around his shoulders – cashmere, probably.
‘Uh,’ he says. He’s looking at Alex like he has just asked him to calculate the square root of 34547 on the spot. As though ‘which meal option would you like?’ is an entirely unexpected question to be asked on a flight from Tokyo to New York. He looks away from Alex and back at the screen of his laptop at the word document on it like he might find the answer there.
Alex blinks back an eye roll. ‘Chicken or beef?’ he repeats, this time slower. It’s not exactly a difficult question. In economy, he gets it. A lot of people don’t want to take the chance on the food at all, but the food up here in First Class is actually halfway to decent. Most of the time. Okay, it’s hardly winning a Michelin star but it’s not bad.
‘Um. Well. Beef, I suppose.’ An email notification slides onto the screen of his laptop. He exhales, brings his fingers to the spot between his perfectly manicured eyebrows and presses. ‘And a gin and tonic.’
Alex waits for the word that usually accompanies a request. The one starting with p and ending in lease. He waits.
‘Was there something else?’ the man asks, looking back up at Alex.
Alex holds back his grimace. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Not at all.’
Jackass.
‘Shit ,’ Hunter says. ‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry. Shit.’
Alex generally has a mouth to rival a sailor, uses fuck like it’s an adjective, verb and noun that belongs in every sentence and has a filter about as thick as tissue. He gets it from both his parents but either one will generally blame the other. But even he has learned not to swear in front of customers, and especially not in first class.
His head snaps up from where he’s serving a businessman in a pinstripe suit a whiskey. Hunter is frantically dabbing at a blonde man’s shirt.
Alex has seen him a few more times. JFK to Singapore in September, Paris to JFK a few weeks later, out to Manchester the following month, and then to Chicago in November. And now he’s here, on his way to Vancouver, apparently.
Alex likes to imagine the lives of people he meets on these planes, where they’re going and who they’re meeting at the other end. Sometimes he’ll FaceTime his sister, June from his hotel room and tell her all about the characters from his day and listen as she colours in the lines of their empty shells, constructing stories for them all until he falls asleep while Nora sits beside her with her feet in June’s lap and occasionally interjects to throw a wrench into June’s carefully detailed narrative. He misses them both on nights like that, wonders if he should scale back his hours and spend more time in Brooklyn with them both, going for brunch and watching movies with them on the couch they bought from Goodwill that June then spent three days conducting a sage-burning ritual to cleanse.
He misses them both. But that’s not the point. The point is that he actually doesn’t need their help for this one. He doesn’t need them to assist him in generating a life for this guy, because he knows this guy. He’s seen him before. It happens sometimes, in a job like this, but not often. There’s no pattern to where Alex goes every month, he bids for whatever he wants and takes whatever he’s given. One month he might be stuck doing a familiar route of Austin to JFK, LAX and Bumfuck, Idaho and the next month, he might be spending 72 hours on a beach drinking caipirinhas in São Paulo, then 48 scoffing down thick smooth noodles in Shanghai, before a quick weekend wandering from museum to museum in Barcelona. He likes the variety. He’s always been restless, always itching to see more. What he doesn’t always love is working with the public. Sure, when it’s good and he’s making people’s dreams come true, it’s amazing. But when he has to deal with racists complaining about people not speaking English on a packed flight back from Argentina, or a drunk guy trying to feel up one of his colleagues, he wants to burn the whole world to the ground. Then there are the passengers who just get under his skin. The ones who don’t do anything overtly wrong, but there’s just something in their eyes and the way they carry themselves. Something about their disposition that just screams ‘I’m better than you’. People like this guy.
‘What’s the problem here?’ Alex asks, approaching them, cringing as he watches Hunter try and dab at the man’s shirt where liquid is rapidly seeping through the white fabric. ‘Hunter,’ Alex says, sharply. ‘Go… somewhere else.’
Hunter, the new guy, nods rapidly in response and stuttering out a thousand apologies, takes off in the direction of economy. Alex is going to have to ask never to be on a shift with that guy again. The last three times, he’s been nothing but a nightmare.
‘My apologies, Sir,’ Alex says.
The man scoffs. ‘I doubt that,’ he mutters.
‘Excuse me?’
In response, he gets an arched eyebrow. ‘Can you just—’ His hand swipes the napkin from Alex’s grip, and he starts to dab where his shirt has turned see through. Alex follows it down, right down to—
Right. His nipple. Which. Alex can see through his shirt.
Which he’s now staring at.
Cool.
‘Do you mind?’ he asks, gesturing for Alex to step back. ‘I need to… deal with this.’ He waves at his shirt.
Alex nods, the heat rushing to his cheeks. He very pointedly looks anywhere but his shirt.
He grabs his bag from the overhead locker, and rummages through it with a heavy, frustrated exhale. He pulls out a navy blue sweatshirt and holds it between his hands, then heads to the bathroom.
Christmas is a time of peace, joy and travelling . Generally, Alex loves Christmas. He loves the food, the gifts, the general vibe of it all. He loves the obnoxious sweaters. He also loves working Christmas, having an easy excuse to not having to deal with his parents at each other’s throats.
But he hates, all the way down to the marrow of his Texan bones, snow.
They’ve been in the air for two hours already, on their way back to JFK. But Alex already knows how this ends. He can feel it deep in his veins. He’s known since they took off from LA. June and Nora have been sending him pictures of the snow in the city all day – there’s no way they’re making it to JFK. ‘Ladies and gentleman,’ the pilot says. ‘I’m sorry to say we’re not getting to New York tonight. We’re being asked to land in Detriot—’
Alex feels the groan that ripples through the plane deeply in his soul. They slowly trudge back off the plane and through the airport and he spends the next couple of hours helping put everyone onto buses and out to hotels.
Alex likes working Christmas to be busy . He’s not exactly looking forward to spending Christmas Eve in his hotel room alone. And he’s not naive or inexperienced enough to think it’s going to be just that either. He can see how heavily it’s coming down. There’s no way they’re getting out of here tomorrow, either.
‘I don’t know,’ he hears a voice saying, just as he’s boarding the last bus. ‘I know, I don’t know. I’ll just watch a movie and order room service, I suppose.‘
Alex’s head whips up. This is the last bus. He knows this is the last bus, because he’s spent hours guiding people onto them and dealing with their special festive brand of anger, as though Alex is the one who personally decided they should all spend Christmas Day in a soulless glass wasteland of a hotel in Detroit of all places.
He’s hovering on the stairs, half ready to leave the guy. It’s his own fucking fault for not paying attention.
It’s just. He looks so… sad. And uncharacteristically soft, dressed in a tan wool coat and soft chunky blue scarf, with snowflakes falling on his hair and taking up home between the strands. There’s something that Alex can’t ignore. He can’t just leave him here on Christmas Eve.
‘Hey,’ he shouts from the stairs of the bus.
The man doesn’t move, he stays talking on the phone, his voice so much softer than Alex has ever heard it before.
‘Hey!’ he shouts, even louder this time.
The man looks up and right at him, big blue eyes like a startled baby bird. He’s standing under a streetlight, hair lit up by the glow of the lamp.
Across an empty parking lot through the ribbons of falling snow, Alex yells out, ‘You coming?’
‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
Alex is a good person. Imagining Brenda falling and injuring herself aside, he’s a good person. He is. He always plucks people from the back of economy and gives them an upgrade when they have spare seats in premium economy, even when he’s definitely not supposed to. He entertains little kids when their parents need to go to the bathroom. He covered for Sasha when she needed to visit her sick aunt. He’s a good person. He doesn’t deserve this.
He’s standing in the foyer of a soulless glass corporate hotel in the middle next to a convention Center 25 miles outside of Detroit. There’s a plastic Christmas tree in the corner. Half the decorations have fallen onto the floor and not even Mariah coming through the speakers can save this nightmare.
‘I’m sorry. There’s only one room left,’ the woman at the check in desk says, looking at them both. Alex and… blonde guy.
Blonde guy whose name he still doesn’t even know, despite the fact that he’s seen him more than he’s seen his own mother this year. He’s called him everything under the sun in his head and under his breath, but has no idea what his actual name is. He’s called him everything – James, fuckwit, Cuthbert, Lord Dickhead, asshole, Gerald. But he has no idea what his actual name is. Probably Reginald.
‘Right,’ probably-Reginald says. ‘That’s… a problem.‘
‘No shit.’
‘Are you quite sure?’ he asks, as though the woman, who looks as exhausted as Alex feels, might be able to pull another room out of her very large blowout.
‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘quite sure.’
Alex just wants to go to bed. And a raise. He’s pretty sure there are probably like, a thousand rules against this, but he’s cold and tired and hungry. He’s not actually sure when the last time he ate something was. He sighs, turns to probably-Reginald.
‘You better not snore.’
He looks startled. ‘Sorry?’
‘Look. Either we share this room or one of us has to find another, and let me tell you sweetheart, the reason we’re 25 miles from the city is because everyone and their dog is stuck here and this was all they could get.’ He turns to the woman. ‘No offense’–he looks down at her name tag–‘Stacey.’
She shrugs, snaps her gum. ‘None taken.’
Alex nods, unsurprised. ‘So. Either we suck it up, have a shitty night’s sleep and be on our way and you can be free to hate me in the skies again tomorrow, or you can sleep down here. Because either way, I’m taking that room.’
He blinks. ‘I don’t hate you.’
And Alex— ‘ That’s what you got from that?’
‘Alex, why do you think I hate you?’
‘How do you know my name?’
His cheeks, already rosy from the cold, flush an even darker shade. He points nervously at Alex’s breast, at the small scratched name tag. Four letters on show, the next five neatly covered up by a piece of tape – Alex.
Right. ‘Whatever. Well we can't share a room without me knowing yours.’
‘ That’s your objection to this?’
Alex stares at him. Waits.
‘Henry,’ he says. ‘My name is Henry.’
It fits him – something oddly all at once stiff and steeped in tradition but underneath, strangely soft.
Alex, being an idiot, just says, ‘not Reginald then?’
Henry’s brow furrows, but his mouth quirks up into a small smile at the corner. ‘That was the second choice, I believe.’
Stacey clears her throat. ‘Are you taking the room or? My shift ends in five so…’
They take the room. Of course they take the room. And of course, after all of that, the only room left in the whole goddamn building has only got one bed. One bed and another sad, tiny Christmas tree on the desk. Alex wants to throw it out the window.
Henry clears his throat. ‘You uh, you take the bed,’ he says. ‘I’ll just— sleep on the sofa.’ He eyes it suspiciously. Alex isn’t sure the guy has ever slept on a sofa in his life.
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Alex says, brushing past him and into the room. He dumps his bag on the bed and starts pulling his stuff out of it, hunting for some clothes and hoping he remembered to pack his favourite – a soft, faded sweatshirt from his days working on Rafael Luna’s senate campaign and old Georgetown sweats.
‘You’re not taking the sofa,’ Henry insists, eyeing Alex. He’s still standing hesitantly in the corner of the room, back ramrod straight.
‘You’re right,’ Alex says. ‘I’m not.’
Henry stares at him and gingerly puts his bag down.
Alex starts to shrug off his jacket and wrestle his tie from his neck.
‘We can share the bed, Henry. Just— it’ll be fine. I don’t bite.’
He slips his shirt buttons undone and slides it from his shoulders.
Under his breath, he swears Henry mutters, ‘that’s not what I’m worried about.’
Henry exhales and straightens his back. He blinks, like he’s bracing for something, then in a rush, he says, ‘Look, Alex. I’m gay.’
Alex tugs the sweatshirt over his head and blinks back at him. ‘Congratulations?’
Henry looks confused. He shakes his head, like Alex is the one being an idiot here. ‘So ,’ he says, as though anything he’s about to say is a reasonable explanation, ‘I would understand if, given the circumstances, you didn’t want to share a bed with me.’
‘The “circumstances” being… that you’re gay?’
‘Well, yes.’
Alex bundles up his clothes. Is this Henry’s way of asking him to stop undressing in front of him? He holds the sweats in his hands and decides to move to the bathroom for the second half.
‘Okay well, I’m not a complete asshole, Henry. I don’t think you’re gonna like, make a move on me or something. I’m not that conceited. Like, it’s hardly the first time I’ve slept with a dude. Just share the fucking bed with me, okay?’
‘Oh,’ Henry says, ‘right. I didn’t know you were…’ He looks at Alex pointedly, like he should be filling in the blank here.
‘That I’m…?’ Alex repeats, giving him the same look back.
‘Well, gay. Or bi! Or queer?’
Alex’s face scrunches. ‘I’m not.’
‘You’ve… slept with men. But you’re not queer?’
‘Not like that. I mean, well I guess kinda like that, like I used to get off with my best friend sometimes and we used to make out when we were drunk but that’s just…’ He shrugs. ‘Y’know, Texas.’
Henry blinks rapidly. ‘Right.’
‘Anyway,’ Alex says, holding up his sweatpants. ‘Don’t be weird about it. Just take the fucking bed, Henry. I’m gonna—’
He heads to the bathroom, leaving Henry standing there like a startled lemur.
When Alex returns from the bathroom, Henry has changed into a pair of soft grey sweatpants and a Oxford Rowing Club hoodie that has holes in the sleeves and covers his hands.
His hair, set in a stiff pomade earlier in the day, has relaxed into something soft and floppy like the boys on the posters June used to have on her bedroom wall when they were kids.
They order room service, and sit on the bed eating burgers while they watch old reruns of Chopped .
‘This really does explain so much about the differences between our countries,’ Henry says, plucking a fry from his plate.
Then, they’re quiet for a minute, Alex chewing happily on his burger watching the show. Henry is quiet next to him until he says, ‘I don’t hate you.’
‘Huh?’ Alex says through his mouthful. He feels the phantom ghost of June, slapping him on the arm and the echo of his mother, asking if he was raised in a goddamn barn.
Henry is unfazed. ‘Earlier. You said I hate you. I don’t hate you.’ He brings a hand to his hair and pushes it back. ‘Christ, I don’t even know you.’
Alex swallows, narrows his eyes. ‘You’re an asshole to me.’
Henry scoffs. ‘I’m the asshole?’ He pronounces it arsehole and Alex does not, in any way, find this endearing.
‘If the shoe fits, sweetheart.’
The tips of Henry’s ears turn an odd shade of pink.
‘You were the asshole first,’ Alex says. Alex might only be the youngest of two, and June might only be older by two years, but he is, to his core, a youngest child. An annoying, stubborn, petulant youngest child. He’s scrappy and defensive. It’s ingrained in him.
‘What?’ Henry looks baffled.
‘You said you wanted to make a complaint.’
Henry blinks. ‘Look, I’m sorry if she was a friend of yours, but—’
‘Huh?’
‘Sorry?’
‘You’re sorry if who was a friend of mine?’
‘The flight attendant with red hair. Older woman.’
‘ Brenda?’
‘Some of the things I overheard her saying… I don’t really want to repeat them. I had to say something.’
Well fuck. God. Alex is kinda intrigued though.
‘So you weren’t trying to complain about me?’
Henry’s face slides into a smile, something exasperated and almost fond that feels almost painfully familiar to Alex. ‘No Alex, I wasn’t complaining about you.’ He looks confused. ‘Why would I complain about you?’
‘What about the phone call though?’
‘Phone call?’
‘August. It was LAX to Austin, fucking boiling outside and you were being a dick on the phone. Loud too, half the cabin could hear you telling someone to keep their nose out of your business.’
‘Ah,’ Henry says, mouth turning downwards. ‘Yes. Not my finest moment.’
Alex feels smug.
‘Look, I’m sorry. I was having a bad day and my brother— We don’t exactly have the best relationship. He’s very good at getting under my skin and he was on top form that day. He’s— Henry sighs. ‘He’s trying to get me to come back and work for the family business. My mother isn’t well and my grandmother is getting older and he’s claiming it’s too much to do alone.’
‘Okay. So what’s so bad about that?’
‘Well,’ Henry says stretching out his fingers, ‘he and my grandmother keep trying to set me up with perfectly nice women that I’m not even slightly attracted to, and the family business is a property empire that builds extortionately expensive flats and houses that nobody local to that area can afford, thereby pushing out the people and communities that have built their lives there. Rather antithetical to almost everything I believe in.’
Alex blinks. ‘Huh.’
‘Huh,’ Henry repeats, a small, pleased smile on his face.
‘Just… wasn’t expecting that,’ he says.
Henry lets out a soft laugh.
‘So what do you do? Instead of y'know, aiding gentrification and destroying communities? Why do I see you everywhere from Salt Lake City to Seoul?’
‘I don’t think I’ve been to Salt Lake City,’ Henry says, confusion seeping into his voice.
‘Don’t bother,’ Alex tells him.
‘I run a charity. We run shelters for disenfranchised queer youth. Trying to help a lot of people in exactly the sorts of places my family are destroying, I suppose. I’m trying to find our next location.’
Alex is good at reading people. He is. He has to be in a job like this – people think his job is to stand there, look pretty and serve champagne in a tight, well cut suit, but it’s also to be alert and perceptive and to always have the safety and security of his passengers at the forefront of his mind. When you’re travelling at 40,000 feet in a tin can, tensions can get… heightened.
He thought he had a read on Henry. Now he’s not so sure.
‘What?’ Henry says. ‘Cat got your tongue? That’s unlike you.’
Alex scrunches up his face. Because, well, Henry’s right.
Again.
Wow, he really hates this.
Alex is a yapper. To his core. His mind runs at a mile a minute.
(In the back of his mind, he hears Nora’s voice helpfully supply, ‘More like 8.43 miles a minute when you’re in the air.’
The image of her that accompanies it is one of almost startling familiarity – her lounging in a pair of dungarees and a ratty old bralette that Alex is pretty sure she had when she was still sleeping with him instead of his sister, and licking her fingers of bright orange cheeto dust.)
And somehow, Henry already knows this about him.
‘Alex, I spend many hours a month in your presence,’ he says, a slight smile on his face.
‘Oh,’ he says, and then, because he can’t avoid it, because he’s spent his life being told to slow down, be quiet, that he’s too much, ‘sorry.’
Henry’s brow furrows. ‘For what?’
Alex shrugs in response. ‘Just, I don’t know. I don’t exactly have an off switch a lot of the time. I know I can be a lot. Probably not the relaxing first class experience you were hoping for. Or the Christmas.’
‘I like it,’ Henry tells him. ‘I like hearing you talk. And in all honesty, I would probably have just spent it at home by myself. My sister and best friend were meant to be flying in but, well, they’re having rather the same problem as us. Their flight got cancelled so, I think this is a far better Christmas than I’d be having otherwise.’
The blood rushes to Alex’s cheeks. He’s not sure what to do with all of this, how to rearrange the picture of Henry he had in his head with the guy in front of him.
‘You didn’t say please,’ he says. He doesn’t know where it comes from. It just slips from his lips in a rush, his last petty grievance.
‘Sorry?’
‘I asked you if you wanted chicken or beef and you said beef and then you asked for a gin and tonic, and you didn’t say please.’
The tips of Henry’s ears turn pink. ‘Oh Christ,’ he mutters. ‘Look, I really am sorry. I meant to, I just—’
He pauses, looks up to the ceiling.
‘It’s just you always looked so annoyed at me, and the tone in your voice and I knew you didn’t like me but you just—’
‘I just what?’
‘Well.’ Henry looks at him. He looks at him like Alex should really understand what he’s getting at. Alex does not get what he’s getting at. ‘Christ, Alex, you look like that. You’re attractive and I’m very, very gay. And sometimes I just...’ He exhales, all sad and pathetic and desperate and— Oh.
Alex blinks. ‘You’re telling me that you didn’t say please because… you think I’m hot?’
Henry’s ears flush an even deeper shade of red, and Alex watches as it spreads to his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose and fades into a pretty, rosy pink.
Which. Okay. Well. That’s new.
Or maybe not so new.
He doesn’t have time to dwell on that, because he doesn’t mean to. But he laughs.
Henry huffs and grabs the closest pillow. ‘Yes yes, laugh it up. Alert the media, pathetic gay gets stupid and can’t speak around a hot guy.’
Alex is fucking delighted. He’s never been so happy in all his life. Henry – an objectively attractive man with a face that looks like it was carved by Michalangelo and legs for days – thinks he’s hot.
Like, Alex knows this. But the fact that Henry thinks that is really doing things for his ego.
He feels bad about laughing, but Henry looks happy and relaxed, still slightly pink and beautiful and Alex wants to—
‘I need to go to the bathroom,’ Alex announces abruptly, scrambling off the bed with all the grace of a baby giraffe on ice skates.
‘Oh,’ Henry says. He’s pretty sure he says something else, or that he’s calling Alex’s name and asking if he’s alright but Alex doesn’t know or listen because he’s locking himself in the bathroom and gripping the sink, and staring at his own reflection in the mirror and wow. This lighting does nothing for him.
Okay. So. Here’s the thing.
Earlier he told Henry that he used to get off with his best friend. The first time it happened, they were seventeen and bored, and they’d found their way to watching porn on the couch in Liam’s room and getting themselves off, and Alex had just passed it off as guys being guys. He’s never let himself think about the time that Liam reached over, or how right it felt.
There are some nights when he’s alone in his hotel room that he remembers the times Liam would get drunk after a lacrosse party and fall into Liam’s tiny twin bed and everything would feel light and happy – Alex was in the safety and comfort of his best friend’s room and he was warm and so fucking happy, and they’d be laughing and Liam was just so— well. Pretty. And Alex’s best friend. All soft full cheeks, broad shoulders and sandy hair. So it made sense that under the cover of darkness and with a little too much whiskey, Alex would glance over at Liam and kiss him. And it made sense that Liam would let out a tiny gasp into Alex’s mouth and clutch at his shirt and that eventually they would end up shirtless, skin to skin in Liam’s tiny bed and that that they’d end up kissing for hours, both hard in their jeans, too drunk and too terrified to do anything about it.
And it made sense that they would both wake up the next morning and pretend that they didn’t remember a thing. And that it never happened again.
Alex has never told a soul about it. Until tonight. Until Henry.
He doesn’t know why he told Henry. But when he closes his eyes, he can see the hint of surprise on Henry’s face and the way he pursed his lips when Alex told him that it was just ‘Y’know Texas’.
And somewhere deep in Alex’s mind he’s thinking that none of this – Henry, Liam, the way he felt after the pilot slipped him his number after his shift last month – is particularly straight. In fact, he’s pretty sure, everything about the whole Liam situation was very, very not straight, and that thinking Henry, with his long legs and stupid pretty face and tight pants that hug his ass and thighs perfectly, is also pretty not straight. And neither was the way he’d have to pull his eyes off other guys in the locker room at school.
Fuck. Is Alex gay?
But.
Alex has always enjoyed sex with women. Like, he’s pretty sure he’s always enjoyed sex with women. He knows that some people don’t but he does. He likes their soft curves and their laughter and the breathy moans, their legs wrapped around his head when he’s on his knees and— Yeah. It’s not that he’s not into women. He’s sure of that. It's just… he’s pretty sure he’s also into men.
Henry, specifically. At this moment in time. And also Liam, back then and— Well, actually a lot of things are starting to make a lot more sense.
He pulls his phone from his pocket and pulls up his text thread with June and Nora.
He sighs and puts the phone down.
Okay so. Bisexual. That tracks.
‘Alex?’ There’s a soft knock on the bathroom door. ‘Alex I’m so sorry. I’m going to sleep downstairs in the foyer. I didn’t mean to—’
Alex launches for the door. ‘What the fuck?’
Henry looks startled, hair askew like he’s had his hands all over it.
Fuck. Alex wants his hands all over it.
‘I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me—’
‘Can I kiss you?’
Henry’s eyes widen. ‘Um. Oh I don’t know if—’
‘It’s just, what I said earlier about it being just a Texas thing, I’m not so sure that’s true. I’m pretty sure it’s not that at all. Like, I think you’re hot I think that’s why I was so mad at you because you’re like, stupid hot and I didn’t know what to do with that and—’
Alex is cut off by the feel of Henry’s lips on his, and his hand sliding up his jawline and into his hair and then Henry slides his fingers into Alex’s curls and
Oh.
Yeah.
So fucking bisexual.
He lets out a small noise, and Henry pulls back just slightly.
Alex grins. ‘Thought you liked hearing me talk?’
Henry smiles, sharp and soft, and his fingers continue to thread though Alex’s hair. ‘I do,’ he says. ‘But right now, I’d rather like to kiss you again.’
So, Alex does.
When he puts his mind to something, he does it with his whole heart. It’s burned him before – too often too much. He’s intense, he knows this. Too much for other people. He loves hard and fast and with so much fire that it burns and sometimes he’s the one who gets caught in the flames. But this time, he isn’t burning. All he feels is warmth, steady and safe.
Henry kisses him so politely, so gently, like a Disney fucking prince. But Alex wants more, so he slides a hand down to Henry’s hip and tugs him closer.
The kiss turns dirtier, heavier, hands slipping under sweaters and into hair, and Alex wants to touch and touch and touch. He wants to explore every single inch and corner and crevice of Henry’s body, wants to chart the freckles and memorise every mole and hear every single noise he can pull from his mouth. He kisses Henry with everything he has and in response, Henry whines into his mouth.
From there it’s a blur of skin and lips and ‘more’ and ‘please’. It’s nothing like Alex has ever felt before. Henry’s hands are all-encompassing and nimble and his mouth is hot and tight and wet and oh fuck, Alex isn’t going to survive this.
Henry is going to kill him. His gravestone is probably going to read: ‘Here lies Alex Claremont-Diaz. Beloved son, annoying brother. Cause of death: Henry’s tongue.’
He hopes June comes up with something more poetic.
Henry takes him to pieces, bit by bit, kiss by kiss until he’s broken down to messy constituent parts. Henry kisses his way down Alex’s stomach, takes Alex’s cock in his mouth and works until Alex has forgotten every word in both languages he knows. He's overwhelmed by the clean, almost grassy scent that lingers on his sweat-slicked bare skin and the way that Henry sucks cock like he lives for it, and fuck if Alex doesn’t want to see what all the fuss is about. But for now, he brings his hand to Henry’s hair and gently tugs; Henry lets out a moan and redoubles his efforts until Alex finds heaven, on Christmas Eve in the ceiling of a sterile hotel room.
‘And a gin and tonic,’ he says. He looks up and catches Alex’s eye, grins happily. ‘Please .’
Alex rolls his eyes. ‘Anything else, sweetheart? Jewel encrusted throw pillow?’
‘Just one of those eye masks with the diamonds stitched on it,’ Henry says flippantly.
‘You’re the worst and I hate you.’
The woman in the seat next to Henry shifts her body, eyes wide and resolutely does not make eye contact with Alex. Henry grins and laughs, loud and bright.
‘Love you too.’
Henry doesn’t fly so much these days now that they’ve settled on the new shelter location in Chicago, but neither does Alex. He’s cut back his hours to spend more time in New York, more time with Henry, June and Nora. He’s thinking about giving it up completely, maybe going to Law School or something. But occasionally, Henry needs to fly and Alex does everything he can to be working. For old time’s sake.
He looks good today. He always looks good, but it’s rude that he looks so good for a transatlantic flight, dressed in a thick Christmas sweater that Alex had thrust upon him the night before when they exchanged their own gifts. His blonde hair relaxed and loose. He’s got a worn old paperback on his lap and his journal on his tray table.
‘Anything else for His Majesty?’
‘I think that’s all,’ Henry says. ‘Thanks, love.’
Alex rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. He’s the worst. He’s Alex’s favourite person.
A year on and he’s still embarrassingly gone on Henry. Even if he is making Alex spend Christmas in London with his family. Truthfully, Alex thinks it’ll all be fine. He loves Henry’s sister, Bea, even though she has formed a fast and terrifying friendship with June, and Henry’s mom has found her way back into his life too. It’ll be fine. Nice, even. The food will be bland and under seasoned and it’ll be cold and wet, but he’ll be with Henry, and really that’s all he needs.
‘Merry Christmas,’ Alex says sarcastically, placing the gin and tonic down on Henry’s tray table.
Henry looks up at him, happy and utterly charming. He smiles so wide it crinkles the skin around his eyes.
‘Merry Christmas, love.’