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Lucas isn’t the biggest fan of snow. It’s cold, it’s wet, and right now, it’s being picked up by plows and people and tires before it even has a chance to shine on the ground. It’s always been more bearable with a friend, though, which is why Lucas especially hates it this year, now that all his friends are visiting their families and Henrik’s doing some environmental awareness talk in Scotland, miles and miles away.
“How’s the snow there?” asks Henrik.
Worse without you, Lucas almost says, but that’s giving away too much. “It’s barely anything. How’s Scotland so far?”
“Well, actually,” says Henrik, voice muffled by the winter wind, “guess who I found.” His hair whips around him like he’s a protagonist in the climax of a coming-of-age movie. Lucas gazes fondly at his phone, wondering how long it’ll take for his eyes to turn into little cartoon hearts.
“I dunno,” he says aloud. “My mum.”
Henrik scrunches his eyebrows together. “What? Why would I — ” His face clears up. “Oh, you’re joking! No, look!” He pivots his phone wildly to the side, and it takes a moment to focus. When it does, Lucas’s smile freezes in place, one snide comment away from shattering.
“Um.” He clears his throat. “Hello, Bobby.”
Bobby looks equally uncomfortable, but after a moment he smiles back. “Hi, Lucas! I had no idea you and Henrik were dating now; you guys are cute.”
“What?” Henrik comes into frame and squints at him. “We’re not dating.”
“Oh, I just thought...” Bobby scratches the back of his neck. “You know, since you guys live together, and the way you talked about him — um, never mind. Still nice that you’re so close.”
“How’s Natalie?” Lucas asks, and Bobby sighs, relieved.
“She’s good, yeah. We’re thinking of adopting a dog.” He grins toothily at the camera. “She’s a corgi person, apparently. Who would’ve guessed?”
Lucas has no idea what a corgi looks or acts like. “I can see it,” he lies.
“The wind’s getting really bad,” yells Henrik. Lucas turns the volume down. “I’m gonna call back in a few hours once I find a hotel.”
“You didn’t book a hotel before going?” Lucas asks. Henrik stares at him, confused.
“No. Why would I?”
“You can stay with Natalie and I,” offers Bobby. “We haven’t set up the dog room yet, so it’s just a regular spare for now.” Something strange and hot and angry writhes in Lucas’s gut, threatening to tear him apart from the inside. He pushes it away as Henrik beams.
“Thank you so much,” Henrik says, and Lucas swears he’s started glowing, radiant and beautiful. He turns back to the camera. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Have fun.” Henrik hangs up, leaving Lucas staring at his reflection and wondering when he started looking so tired.
☾
It’s a day later and Henrik has posted around twenty times on his Instagram story — him and Bobby getting lunch (sandwiches, which is stupid; Lucas can get him better than sandwiches), him and Bobby outside the opera house (since when has he been able to sit still long enough to watch an opera), him and Bobby watching a movie (okay, technically Natalie’s in that one too, but still).
Lucas thinks he might be going a little insane. “Yeah, no shit you are,” Priya snorts. “Bobby’s, like, two steps away from getting married. If you think he’d choose to go gallivanting with Henrik of all people —”
“I can’t believe you just said gallivanting and you make fun of how I talk —”
“ — you’re an idiot,” Priya finishes smoothly. “Anyway, none of this would have happened in the first place if you’d just asked him on a date like you said you would in October.”
“Yeah, well,” Lucas slumps into his couch, wondering if he can spend his time mindlessly watching whatever show he finds first, “I didn’t. So.”
“Honestly, I thought your issue would’ve been that it was Bobby. You know, because of the whole thing with Natalie…”
Lucas rolls his eyes. “That was just everyone going mad in the villa. I don’t like him because he’s a prick, not because of a love triangle The Sun wants to bring up a year and a half later.”
“ You’re calling him a prick? Glass houses.” She sighs. “Anyway, Henrik isn’t into Bobby and Bobby certainly isn’t into Henrik, so you have nothing to worry about.”
“Are you sure about that, though?”
The silence seems to stretch on for ages. He can almost hear Priya wondering why she chose to stay friends with him. “I’m hanging up now,” she says finally, and then the phone clicks.
She always has been a woman of her word.
☾
Maybe, Lucas thinks, if he tries to take his mind off of things (Bobby and Henrik at an arcade, Bobby and Henrik building a snowman, Bobby and Henrik going on a jog), he’ll feel normal again. He asks a girl on a date — nothing serious, just someone he met at a bar once — and it’s a total bust.
“We should go out for karaoke,” she says after dinner, all bubbly and high-voiced and decidedly not Henrik. Lucas shakes his head.
“Sorry, I’ve, er, got an early shift tomorrow.” He’s on break for a week. She pouts at him, eyes going huge and shiny, and he’s reminded suddenly of Chelsea. He wonders how she’s doing.
“Call me some other time, then,” she chirps, leaning forward. “It was really fun spending time with you.” Her cheeks and nose are stained pink by the cold. Lucas distinctly remembers Henrik looking the same way sometime in early December. He’d wanted to kiss him, then, until they were both warm again, and instead he let Henrik borrow his jacket and thought about it for days on end.
He begins to walk away. “I will, yeah. See you around."
By the time he gets to his apartment, snow’s begun to fall: thick, endless white, weighing down power lines and resting on top of buildings. It’s the kind of snow Henrik would be entranced by, the snow that would get him talking about the time he climbed Matterhorn or something equally ridiculous and impressive. Lucas misses him enough that his heart aches, just a little.
God, he’s become such a fucking mess.
Just as he’s changed out of his clothes and flopped onto his bed, ready to go to sleep and do absolutely nothing tomorrow, Henrik video calls him. “Hi,” he says, eyes flickering up and down. Lucas suddenly feels exposed. “We usually call earlier,” Henrik explains, “so I thought I should check in.” Behind him, Bobby’s baking something ( probably cupcakes , thinks Lucas derisively, and that’s not even something to be angry about but now he is).
“Sorry.” Lucas sits up, fixing his hair. “I was on a date.”
Henrik pauses. There’s something in his eyes Lucas can’t quite read. “Oh,” he answers. “That’s, um. That’s cool. Was she nice?”
Lucas shrugs. “I guess.”
“Second date material?” His gaze shifts around like it does when he’s nervous. Lucas quietly revels in it.
“Maybe,” he lies. Henrik’s smile drops completely for a moment before coming back more artificial than before, like fluorescents replacing the sun.
Henrik taps his fingers against the counter. “I’m happy for you. See if she has a fit friend, will you?”
“I said maybe,” Lucas emphasizes, because even if he’s not hopeful enough to let himself guess why Henrik’s upset, he wants to stop it somehow. “I’m holding out for someone else anyway.” (Why the hell did he say that?)
Henrik’s gaze sharpens. “Who’s the girl?”
Ah, well , Lucas decides. Now’s as good a time as any.
“Guy, actually,” he corrects.
Henrik blinks at him, long and slow. “You’re not joking?” Lucas hears Bobby laugh from across the kitchen, the wanker.
“No.” Lucas blinks back. “I’m not.”
“Huh.” Henrik breaks into a grin. “Good for you, mate. Me too.”
“You… too?” Lucas asks, squinting at him. Henrik nods.
“Yeah. Remember Jakub?” he asks, and Bobby’s wheezing now, loud enough that it almost overshadows Henrik’s voice. The next time Lucas sees him, he’ll kill him, even if it’s at his and Natalie’s damn wedding.
“I didn’t know — how did I miss you and Jakub?”
“One time thing.” Henrik shrugs, and before Lucas has any time to process that bombshell, he says, “So yeah. Me too.” Bobby says something Lucas can’t make out (of course he’s choosing now to be quiet. Lucas hates him), and Henrik nods. “I have to go; talk tomorrow?”
“Sure, yeah,” says Lucas. Henrik throws him one last smile, small and soft, before hanging up.
For some reason, Lucas feels like he’s won.
☾
“Okay, listen,” says Priya. It’s one in the morning and they’re both well on their way to being messy drunk, the kind that gets tabloids speculating about them because Lucas gets touchy and Priya starts laughing all the time. “Why don’t you just, like, text him saying you like him? That way it doesn’t hurt that much if he says he doesn’t feel the same.”
Sober Lucas would say this is an awful idea: Henrik would almost definitely call instead of texting back, and it would hurt if he said it anyway, not to mention that sounds like a terrible thing to drop over text after one and a half years of friendship (a month of which was in that hell villa, so basically eight years of friendship).
Right now, though, Lucas is decidedly not sober, so it seems foolproof. “Wait.” He points at her. “You’re a fucking genius.”
“I know,” she replies, grinning conspiratorially.
“But,” Lucas pauses, downing another shot before he continues, “what if Bobby reads it? I don’t want him knowing before Henrik does.”
Priya has a way of looking at him that always makes him realize when he’s acting like an idiot. “Why,” she says, much slower than she has to, “would Bobby have access to Henrik’s phone.”
He opens and closes his mouth. “Good point.”
“Come on,” she eggs on, throwing an arm around him, “do it. The worst that’ll happen is he says he doesn’t feel the same and we can all move on. It’s better than…” She gestures at the empty glasses littered around them. “All this.”
He pulls out his phone in a silent gesture of acquiescence, clicking on Henrik’s name and fumbling until he gets the words out: I really like you. Not in a friend way. Text me back if you want.
Priya snatches his phone away, holding it inches away from her face to read the text. “This isn’t romantic at all.”
“Yeah, well, sorry if I’m not waxing poetic about his eyebrows or something,” Lucas replies. Priya laughs hard enough that she snorts. Even as they move on to talking about her new maybe-boyfriend, Lucas can’t shake the feeling that he’s done something irreversible.
☾
Lucas wakes up at two in the afternoon to someone banging on his apartment door. “It’s unlocked,” he calls, stumbling out of bed and quickly wrangling a shirt on. By the time he makes it to the front, the door’s open.
“I have a key,” says Henrik, cheeks still flushed from the cold. Lucas wants to say something snarky but his mouth suddenly isn’t working. “I just wanted to get you awake.”
“You could’ve called.” Lucas yawns, wondering if he can just pretend yesterday’s events didn’t happen and move on. “I thought you were staying in Glasgow until Wednesday — ”
“Did you mean it?” Henrik interrupts.
Lucas freezes.
“What you texted,” Henrik continues, as if Lucas needs the clarification.
He considers lying: he could say no, he was just drunk, or even worse, Priya stole his phone — as if they’re still in grade school — but in the end he just sighs. “Yeah.” He rubs his eyes. “I did.”
“Good,” Henrik says, and before Lucas can react , Henrik’s lips are on his, firm and gentle all at once. It’s chaste — soft like Lucas hasn’t been kissed in a while, and by the time he’s got it in him to kiss back, Henrik’s already pulling away. Lucas cups his jaw with one hand and curls the other around his waist, pulling him impossibly close, enough that he can feel the warmth in waves off Henrik’s body like the human radiator he’s always bragged about being. There’s something familiar about being kissed like this: something like a promise, like this is going to last.
Lucas finally steps back. “So I take it the text was good news?” he asks, letting a smirk fix itself on his face and knowing Henrik can see right through it into his fluttering heart.
“I drove home as soon as I saw it,” Henrik replies earnestly, and Lucas feels a swarm of butterflies erupt in his throat. “I like you. Everyone knew. Bobby teased me about it basically the whole time I was there.”
“Oh,” says Lucas, embarrassingly breathless. “Priya teased me, so we’re the same there.”
Henrik laughs, low and yet still somehow bright. “We’ve been a little stupid, haven’t we?”
“I think we’re okay.” Lucas fits their hands together tentatively, grinning when Henrik turns crimson. “We got it figured out in the end.”