Chapter Text
Late November, 2022
It’s Monday afternoon when Alex fishes out his phone from the pocket of his jeans and chooses HRH Prince Dickhead, completed with the poop emoji, from the contacts list and sends him a quick text.
very urgent question, how do you feel about Christmas
decorations?? 4.25 pm
He pets David, who is curled up against his side. He had immediately jumped to the couch and settled next to him when he had started slouching on it. He probably misses Henry just as much as he does, which is terribly.
David raises his head and licks his hand for a moment before closing his eyes again. His phone vibrates in his hand as he receives a new text.
they are nice, not a big fan of tinsel, though 4.36 pm
got it 4.36 pm
okay 4.37 pm
The text is immediately followed by another one.
as in you got tinsel or as you understood
that I want nothing to do with it? 4.37 pm
you shall wait and see 4.38 pm
Alex 4.38 pm
babe i cannot hear you, I’m too preoccupied with
covering every possible surface with silver tinsel 4.38 pm
I think I hate you a little 4.39 pm
I know, but you know what I think? That you also love
me a lot 4.40 pm
Alex looks up from his phone, but he doesn’t put it away. He scratches David’s neck and looks around the room, thoughtfully, trying to come up with the best plan to decorate their apartment for Christmas. Sure, it is only the last week of November, but he likes to be prepared and early. Also, he really loves the holiday season.
His phone vibrates again.
That too 4.42 pm
so the crucial question is whether your hatred
for tinsel or your love for me is stronger 4.42 pm
easy question 4.42 pm
okay but I need an answer 4.42 pm
I love you more
Do your thing with the decorations 4.42 pm
okay, great, I love you too
Certain changes can be done once you drag your ass back home
Side note: I miss you 4.43 pm
I’m glad you value my input
Miss you too 4.44 pm
Henry has been away for four days. He flew back to England, to attend two different sorts of charity events and to take care of his royal duties as a prince, which according to him includes a lot more paper work and speech writing than actually meeting people. He had been invited to the opening celebrations of a shelter for trans youth in London, and he was thrilled about it.
Alex knows that all he does is important, and he is so incredibly proud of him and over-joyed that he can use his fame and wealth for things that actually interest and mean something for him. Causes close to his heart, but he still loathes when he has to leave and fly to another continent.
Longing just gets worse every time and he has to come up with distractions for himself, hence the great decoration plan.
Alex puts his phone on his thighs for a moment and reaches for a small, red-and-white, plastic bag from the coffee table. He pulls out a tiny headband that has comically long, stuffed and soft, reindeer antlers on it. He swiftly puts it on David’s head and snaps a picture.
He laughs out loud as he sends the picture to Henry.
He looks equally betrayed and horrified
and definitely not thrilled
say hi to him from me 4.49 pm
“Your dad says hi,” he whispers to David, who has jumped off the couch and managed to get the antlers off. They lay abandoned underneath the coffee table.
I said
He already escaped from the antlers, not a big hit among small beagles
Back to more urgent questions, do you have a beard??? 4.50 pm
Alex had seen earlier today, during one of his quick study breaks, blurry set of paparazzi pictures of Henry leaving a restaurant with Pez, and it had definitely seemed like he had more than a stubble.
Yes
razor malfunction 4.51 pm
???
I had to find out through google alerts, I’m insulted and hurt 4.51 pm
He is not quite sure when he gets over the sheer insanity that so much of their lives is in the public sphere and how he keeps finding out things about Henry’s trips equally much from him and from the news.
I will never understand your morbid
curiosity with the gossip sites 4.52 pm
They are the sole source of your face when you are away 4.52 pm
It is not true. They facetime as often as they can when they are apart for longer than a couple of days, but sometimes the time zones and their own schedules clash too hard. This time, so far, they have only managed to facetime once and that was the same day he left their New York home.
Henry has sent him a selfie. It is just a bit blurry, probably taken in a hurry. He cannot make out his surroundings, but it looks as if he is in some sort of corridor. It looks white. It seems that he is wearing a dark blue suit jacket and soft-looking sweater underneath it.
Henry’s hair is a bit of a mess, like a fluffy cloud of hair above his head, and he is crunching his nose. That man is incapable of taking a normal selfie. And surely enough, his jaw and lower parts of his cheeks are covered in a neat, blondish beard.
He looks different, but it is still a good look on him. Alex misses him so much that he can feel a pang in his chest. He sends him a bunch of heart emojis in a text and adds a yet another text to the thread.
warms my heart 4.57 pm
He waits for a moment, but he doesn’t answer, and he hasn’t even read the latest messages. He guesses he actually has things to do, but so does he. He stands up and starts carrying the cardboard boxes full of Christmas decorations from the hallway to the living room.
Some of the decorations are his and some of them are Henry’s. Some of them they bought together last year from the sale after the New Year’s. They didn’t really have time to decorate last Christmas, even though it was their first Christmas together, but neither one of them had actually moved in to the brownstone yet.
Some of the decorations are just stuff Alex has bought this year.
He starts by hanging light curtains up to the curtain rod to both windows in living room. He puts a dark red paper star, with small lights on it, to the kitchen window. He puts small lanterns to the living room and bedroom stuffs them with fairy lights. He puts led candles and faux poinsettia flowers all over the house. He puts on a tiny glass angel on display to the living room because he knows it’s important to Henry as he got it from his dad.
He adds some elf decorations he has had since childhood to the kitchen shelves and windowsills. He puts some of the newer decorations to the hallway and to the living room surfaces wherever he can fit them. He even hangs up some mistletoes to every place he can think of and manages to get them stick there.
Just to mess with Henry, he flounces the hallway mirror with thick silver tinsel.
Maybe he has gone just a bit overboard with the decorations, but he is happy with the end result, and at least bathroom has stayed decorations-free-zone and he didn’t put up the Christmas tree yet. It could be a lot worse.
He collapses to the couch again. David is peacefully sleeping on the other end of it. He contemplates whether he should send a pic of the decorations to Henry, but he also wants to see his face when he sees the decorations for the first time. He ends up sending a selfie of him and sleeping David.
He doesn’t answer to that one either, but that’s fine.
He must have fallen asleep on the couch because the next time he opens his eyes, the room is already dark, only illuminated by the various seasonal lights around the room, which provide only the slightest of light and mostly just cast shadows.
He is a little perplexed and sleepy. He cannot remember falling asleep and he has no idea how long he has slept, but he feels instantly more awake and alert when he hears the front door opening.
Logically, he knows he has one of the best and tightest security team monitoring the building around the clock, but still, his heart jumps to his throat until David leaps off from the couch, tail wagging furiously and he squeaks a little bit out of happiness. That’s when Alex realises that the other person who also has the key to their home necessarily isn’t in the country he is supposed to be.
“Hey,” Henry says as he walks to the living room. David is circling around him, excitedly, and Henry crouches down to greet him. The sight makes Alex’s heart hurt out of happiness.
He has already taken off his shoes, but he still has his beige coat on. Alex can see the luggage leaning against the hallway wall. Henry looks up at him and grins. “Surprise.”
Alex mock-kicks him on the shoulder with his feet, but he is grinning brightly. “You asshole, you almost gave me a heart attack. And what are you doing here? I thought you would be gone for days.”
Henry stands up and takes off his coat, and tosses it to the coffee table. He sits next to him and kisses his cheek. “Sorry, love. I managed to do everything I needed and wanted to do, rescheduled some things and pulled some strings. I wanted to come home earlier,” his voice is soft, and he is still looking at him, his eyes full of love.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Alex whispers, cups his face with his left hand and kisses him. It’s soft and sweet kiss. There is no rush and Henry’s lips feel slightly cool against his own. He traces his cheekbone with his thumb and Henry has moved his hand to his back. It’s almost lazy, but it is still full of adoration, and most of all it’s just welcome home wordlessly expressed.
The beard definitely tickles his own face, but he says nothing about it.
Henry pulls slightly away. “Also, I felt the need to come and stop the tinsel invasion,” he deadpans, against his lips.
Alex lets out an amused but exasperated huff.
“There is no invasion,” he shots back, “just very tasteful and carefully chosen holiday decorations.”
Henry leans back onto the couch and tears his eyes away from him. He is probably exhausted because of the transatlantic flight, but it really seems as if he only now noticed that most of the free space in their apartment has been taken up by the decorations.
He blinks slowly as he lets his gaze wander around the living room. He gets up and peers to kitchen and bedroom before he returns to the couch, next to him.
“Be honest, do you hate them?” Alex asks, to break the silence that hangs around them. “If it’s too much—”
“It’s not. It’s perfect,” he reassures, quickly but softly. He points to the window still, “is that a mongoose wearing a Christmas hat and holding a lantern?”
Alex chuckles. He had instantly loved the small Christmas themed sculpture. It has one mongoose standing up, with the Christmas hat and lantern, and next to him there are three smaller mongooses. “Damn right it is.”
“Amazing,” he replies, seeming genuinely delighted by the mongooses, and a laugh erupts from him, “immaculate taste.”
“It might be my favourite,” he agrees, resting his head against his shoulder.
Henry doesn’t move, but his eyes keep examining the room. “Oh, we didn’t have those at the palace,” he says, nodding towards the mistletoe Alex had managed to hang to the lowest part of the ceiling in between the hallway and living room.
“I can imagine,” he laughs, thinking about how scandalized the queen would be at the prospect of kissing anyone because of a plant, “but it’s a tradition.”
Henry glances at him, softly. “Like you would need anymore excuses to kiss me.”
“Who says it’s you I’m trying to get under the mistletoe.”
Henry places his hand theatrically over his chest. “I’m shocked and betrayed.”
“Maybe it’s Pez,” he says, thoughtfully, with a shit-eating grin. “Of course it’s you,” he adds, pressing a kiss on his shoulder.
He takes his hand into his and merely holds it before he brings it onto his lips and plants a bunch of kisses on his knuckles. “Good luck trying to find all of them.”
“There are more than one?”
His voice is a bit coloured by disbelief and it makes Alex smile. He just nods for confirmation and Henry shakes his head in amusement.
“I know it’s stupid,” he admits with a sigh, “but me and June watched a bunch of Christmas movies every year and for some reason I really liked the idea of mistletoes.”
Obviously, not all of the Christmas movies were the pinnacle of romance. Some of them were pretty horrific romance-wise. The instant love and the sheer amount of miscommunication. The stories usually included exclusively straight romance, but despite their flaws, they were full of happiness and love. They were fluffy and everything always ended happily. Mistletoes usually played a big role in the process of getting to the happily ever after.
He knows it’s all fiction and unrealistic, but he needed that bit of movie magic when growing up, listening to his parents fight and when the inevitable, yet neat, divorce rolled around, he wanted to believe different sort of love existed.
“I always had this idea that once I lived with someone I love, I’d fill the place with mistletoes,” he adds, “and I felt a little sappy when you were away.”
“That’s not stupid,” Henry declares and gets up. They are still holding hands, so he pulls him up too and determinedly walks, dragging him with, underneath the mistletoe he just spotted. He even glances up to check that they are directly beneath it.
“I’m just happy that you deemed me worth to be part of that dream,” he says quietly, but it sounds as if he means it from the bottom of his heart, “and I solemnly swear I will kiss you every time we happen to be simultaneously under these poisonous plants you have hid,” he says, now with genuine and light laughter.
Alex feels as if he is just falling in love all over again. He has known for so long that he is in love with him and occasionally the force of his own love catches him by surprise. There are moments when he thinks that he possibly could not be more in love with him, but then he discovers new levels and depths of his love.
This is one of those moments.
“Sorry for making our lives like a b-class hallmark movie,” he attempts to joke, but his voice is strained with emotion.
“I will gladly live through re-enaction of a hallmark movie for a month if that makes you happy,” he says, cheerfully and effortlessly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
He is still holding his hand, and Alex cannot possibly do anything else expect kiss him again. He has his hands in his neck and his fingers are brushing against his scalp at the base of his skull. Henry has his arms tightly locked around him, and he can feel him tracing the edge of his shoulder blade. The kiss itself is a lot more enthusiastic than the previous one, and his lips don’t feel cold anymore. They are warm and soft, and Alex is getting a little breathless.
Henry eventually pulls away slightly, but he keeps resting his forehead against his.
“But I’m getting rid of that tinsel,” he whispers, and he can feel the breath on his skin.
He chuckles. “Please do. It’s fucking hideous.”