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It was precisely 2:09 in the morning when Alex heard the ringing, soul sucking sound of metal clattering against the ground. His arm immediately went to where Henry usually is next to him in bed, but the spot was empty and cold. It was deadly quiet outside their bedroom, and Alex slowly rose from bed, about a million worst case scenarios running through his head.
One: Henry is not in bed.
Two: There could be a burglar outside.
Three: He is only wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and the closest thing to a weapon in the room is a polo mallet Henry had brought home.
With his pulse in his ears and mallet held over his head like a very threatening hammer, Alex quietly opens the door. He doesn’t risk calling out for Henry even though it’s the only thing he wants to do to check if he’s okay. The lights are all out around him, his only source of light being the dim moonlight coming from the bay window behind him at the end of the hallway.
Alex stealthily pads towards where he thinks the sound came from, and the closer he gets, the clearer a non-human humming sound becomes. There’s also a low light coming from the kitchen. He tightens his two-hand grip around the mallet and his whole body tenses as he moves forward into the kitchen doorway.
“Jesus Christ!” Alex jumps in fright at the sight of a towering figure in the kitchen, lowering the self-made weapon in his hands once he recognises who it is.
Henry is startled as well, because his ears turn deep pink at Alex’s sight and his posture changes into a not too composed one. Like a child who has just been caught red handed stealing cookies from the cabinet. Alex thinks it’s cute.
“Sorry, love,” Henry rubs the back of his neck. “Didn’t mean to wake you,” he smiles guiltily at him.
Alex takes in his surroundings. The kitchen counter is crammed with ingredients, some of them used, some of them looking brand new. Things Alex hasn’t seen before in their kitchen. Sprinkles in red, white and blue lie in small bottles, butter, lemon, flour, sugar, and there is a large glass bowl filled with a liquid that Alex is beginning to recognise.
“What on earth are you doing?” Alex asks as he leaves the mallet against the doorframe and walks into the kitchen.
“What are you doing with that ?” He regards the sports gadget with humor.
“I thought you were a fucking burglar or something.” Alex chuckles at how it sounds now.
“Why would you—you know what, I don’t wanna know.” Henry shakes his head, though he looked like he was trying not to smile.
“What about you, Prince Charming? What are you doing in the kitchen at two in the morning?” Alex leans back against the counter, crossing his arms over his bare chest.
“Can’t sleep.” He shrugs one shoulder.
“So you decided to start your own Bake Off season?” Alex smirks.
Henry’s cheeks turn pink, but his demeanor is no less snarky than Alex’s question.
“It looks like you’re forgetting something,” he says, eyes raking over Alex’s face.
Alex is not forgetting anything. He knows he isn’t. Or is he?
“Your long lost dream of wanting to retire being a prince and becoming a fulltime baker? Because I can’t wait to eat croissants and cakes for the rest of my life and get fat with you.” Alex wiggles his eyebrows, grinning at Henry.
“You forgot the scones,” Henry leans down to peck his cheek.
“Of course,” Alex rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling.
“Seriously, what are you doing babe?” Alex asks once again, turning to face Henry’s side.
He looked as equally hilarious as adorable with a Star Wars apron over his front and his golden hair standing out in different ways from tirelessly tossing and turning in bed earlier. Alex wants to kiss him.
“Darling, today is your birthday,” Henry says resignedly, but with a kind smile on his face.
Alex frowns.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is, Alex. We’re past midnight, so it’s technically today,” Henry says, whisking something into the bowl rather rapidly, causing his hair to bounce on his forehead.
“It’s technically tomorrow since I haven’t woken up yet,” Alex bites back, mimicking Henry’s tone and causing him to shake his head with a smile.
“So, you’re making me a birthday cake.” Alex beams like a six year old toddler after a moment of silence.
Henry, very clearly displeased that his not too discrete surprise is ruined, replies with a short yes.
“Can I help?”
“No.”
“Can I watch ?”
“Also, no.”
“ Come on, you don’t want to upset your boyfriend, that you love very much, on his birthday, do you?” Alex whines in an awful tone.
“So now it’s your birthday?” Henry raises an eyebrow. “Go away.” He playfully pushes Alex away, but he only laughs.
“You love me.” Alex croons his neck forward to plant a kiss on Henry who is grinning brighter than the sun.
“I do. But get the fuck out.”
“And miss my chance of watching a live episode of Bake Off up close? No way!” Alex jumps onto an empty spot towards the corner of the marble counter, his bare feet dangling inches away from the floor.
Henry sighs, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “Fine, but no comments whatsoever. It is lousy enough that you have found out already. I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“No comments.” Alex shakes his head, suppressing the dozens he has up his ass. He really thinks it’s sweet of Henry to attempt to do that for Alex though.
Alex’s dream had once been to wake up and make breakfast for Henry in the comfort of their own home. He had wanted to make him try every single Mexican food he knew and loved himself. And now Henry was standing in their kitchen in the middle of the night attempting to bake a cake from scratch for Alex.
Minutes of more whisking and sprinkling different ingredients and splitting batters between bowls pass, and Alex finds himself unable to stay silent. As usual.
“How did you even manage to find all this?” He gestures at the grocery items around him on the cream coloured marble.
“I, uh, sent Cash to get them.”
“ Cash? ” Alex gaped, a loud laugh escaping him. “You are one to have your way, Your Highness.”
“Shut up,” Henry says, lips spread over white teeth.
“Pass me the lemon zest.” Alex’s eyes skim over the table until he finds the small pile of yellow flakes.
“I love it when you talk dirty to me,” he teases, handing over the ingredient.
“You’re the worst.” Henry pours them into the white coloured batter and mixes again, and Alex doesn’t waste a chance to dip his finger in it.
His hand is swatted away almost immediately, of course, but he scurries away before Henry fully turns to him.
“This tastes so fucking good,” Alex says, sucking on the rest of the mix on his finger. “You’ve never done this before? Like, baking isn’t another one of your crazy good, hidden talents?”
“No,” Henry glances at him shortly. “But I sort of know the recipe.”
“From Bake Off?”
“For the love of God, Alex, no.” He takes a very small tube of food coloring and pours one drop, two, three. The color splashes deep red against the white mix and disappears into swirls of pink as Henry spins it with a spatula.
“Mother used to make us lemon cake when we were little,” Henry says. “Philip hated it.” He chuckles, probably at the memory. “But it was Dad’s favorite, so it was mine and Bea’s too.”
Alex smiles, imagining a family of five in a cozy kitchen in England, the three children giddily waiting for their mother to bring forth the sweet-tasting dessert their father loved. His heart swells at the image of a little Henry with bright blue eyes, a face that knows only mischievous smiles and merry laughter, not lines of stress or dark circles of insomnia.
“I’ve never tried it before,” Alex admits, which earns him a glare of disbelief from Henry. “But thanks to Chef Henry, I will soon.”
“If you call me that again, no birthday sex,” Henry points a finger at him, but it’s covered in flour, so Alex tries not to laugh. Again.
“Are you going to tell me what you will do with that?” Alex raises a transparent silicon-like bag with a narrow end to it. He assumes it has to do with decoration because there are tiny metal cones next to it, each of them a different shape.
Henry snatches it out of his hand, “No. You weren’t supposed to wake up now!” He points at him again. “Besides, have you never seen a fucking piping bag in your life?”
Alex scratches his head, trying to actually remember if he has, at least, ever seen any of his family members using it, but then he remembered that none of them were ever really cake people. Alex and June loved ice cream and doughnuts a little too much to miss the slightest chance of getting them any time they could. So, yes, he probably has never seen one before, and they have also once thrown June a family birthday party with a tower of doughnuts instead of cake.
“I really hate to disappoint this time.”
“Get out of my kitchen,” Henry shoos him.
“Hey! It’s our kitchen.” Alex places his hands over his heart in a mock-betrayed manner.
When Henry places his hands over his hips, his expression non-faltering, Alex rolls his eyes. “Fine, I’ll shut up.”
“No birthday sex my ass,” Alex mutters under his breath, making his way to the door.
“What’s that?”
“Love you, sweetheart!” Alex shouts with a smile on his face.
“Love you too,” he hears Henry saying after him, but in a more focused-on-getting-the-perfect-fucking-shade-of-blue-out-of-this-cake-mix tone of voice.
Alex’s stomach flutters at the gesture once again. Yes, he’s been giving his boyfriend shit since he caught him in the middle of preparing a surprise for him, but deep down Alex was melting down to his bitchy core. He reaches for the speakers and his phone and goes back to the kitchen. He places it on top of the fridge, connects his phone, and puts one of the playlists Nora had created for him when she found out about him and Henry on shuffle. Or he thinks that’s when she created it.
He plucks a wooden ladle out of their utensils holder and Henry cocks an eyebrow up at him.
“What? I’m going to entertain you,” he shrugs, stepping back from the counter to give himself some room. He’s still shirtless, the key and ring hooked into the chain around his neck cool against his chest.
A soft melody starts playing, one that brings goosebumps to Alex’s bare arms, because the first time he heard it, he thought he was still hovering over the hedge of figuring out if what he felt for Henry was forever. Nora had come up banging on his bedroom door, all bouncy and excited and ranting something about princes and America, gushing about how the first people that crossed her mind were him and Henry. And apparently, June was in on this too.
A female’s voice starts singing, and Alex twirls the fake mic in his hand, grinning and pointing at Henry. You know I adore you.
Henry’s head snaps up in his direction. “Is that—”
Alex nods, confirming that it’s Taylor Swift. “You know Nora and her are practically best friends, right?”
“That’s real ?” Henry gapes. “I thought Pez was making shit up. He has been giving me a headache about her refusing to let him meet Taylor.” He starts laughing by the time he’s done talking, and Alex chuckles.
“Trust me, I don’t put it beyond Nora to have leaked our love for Taylor Swift to write about it.” Alex shakes his head and starts the song again.
This time he’s not with Nora. This time he’s not confused. This time he’s in love, and his prince is standing right in front of him.
I’m crazier for you then I was at sixteen.
“Oh, you were down bad way before sixteen, love,” Henry says in a playful tone that makes Alex want to laugh, hit him over the head with something, and agree at the same time.
Alex is dancing, and Henry whips around and grabs his phone, pointing it at Alex who is half-singing half-reading the lyrics from the screen of his phone. “What are you doing?” Alex wants to shove the phone away because he knows he looks ridiculous, but if he’s not going to look ridiculous for Henry then for whom else would he?
“Catching your pageant smile, princess.”
“Oh fuck off!” Alex laughs, throwing his head back with it.
The chorus starts and Alex absolutely loses himself from then on.
It’s you and me , and he’s dramatically pointing at himself and Henry, who looks like he is having a hard time focusing on his sweet project. That’s my whole world, Alex watches Henry smile, and he knows it’s a genuine smile.
He also knows that he’s sappy, acting like a sixteen year old instead of a full on adult, and it’s three in the morning, but Alex doesn’t care.
Because, One: he’s with Henry, Two: they live together now, and someday not too far from now they will be married to one another, Three: Alex is in love, Four: fuck, this song is way better than he first gave it credit when Nora forced him to hear it.
It’s you and me, there’s nothing like this, Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince, Alex is shouting over the song at this point, and Henry laughs when he refers to him as Heartbreak Prince.
We’re so sad, we paint the town blue, voted most likely to run away with you, suddenly Alex is thrown back like a lifeless puppet into a memory as blue as the sadness that came with it. The security footage leaking to the press, their emails to each other, being forced to stay worlds apart while their separate worlds collapse over their heads, Alex worrying about his mother’s votes.
American stories, burning before me, I’m feeling helpless, they all came to him one after the other like dominoes.
Alex’s chest feels tight with the memory of not knowing how he could fix the lives of his family that he had ruined—of his mother’s, who could have easily lost the re-election campaign.
Darling, I’m scared.
Shared dreams between him and Henry of running away, of wanting to be anonymous, no one in the world for a day.
As if on cue, Henry appears in Alex’s vision, and he’s snaking an arm around Alex’s waist and pulling him towards his chest. It frightened Alex at times, how easily Henry read him. How instantly he knew what Alex was thinking and seemed to always know the response for it.
And now the storm is coming, this time it’s Henry who speaks.
“The storm has passed,” he gently smiles at Alex. The smile that anchors his mind that never seems to stop sailing on its own. “And it is you and me, Alex. Now and for as long as there’s life beating in that golden heart of yours.” He places a hand over Alex’s warm skin where his heart is hammering.
And I don’t want you to go, flashes of his fight with Henry in London that night threaten to invade his mind, but Alex pushes them away and goes back to making a fool of himself only to see the sickeningly sweet smile Henry does when he wants to say i-don’t-know-what-the-fuck-i’ve-got-myself-into-but-i’m-so-in-love-with-you-so-fuck-it.
And this time Alex doesn’t dance on his own.
Henry is, well at least he’s trying, and he shouts Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince, causing Alex to grin like an idiot.
They’re covered in powder sugar and flour, and the kitchen smells of vanilla and lemon, there are colours on the counter and Henry succeeds in baking a cake for Alex. Two layers of red and blue with white cream in the middle.
Alex watches with love pouring out of his eyes like a fucking lost puppy, and he eventually helps when Henry asks him to, which is little to nonexistent. He is hunched over the now covered in white buttercream cake, piping bag gripped tightly in his hands as they move skillfully over the cake. He looks so good Alex wants to mess the cake up, but he thinks Henry might murder him.
The sun had started rising outside, and Alex removes the blindings over the windows to allow them a view of the purple haze of dawn. Soft pinks and purples and oranges, everything Alex wishes to have in his life with Henry from now on. No more blues and greys.
“Okay, close your eyes.” Henry claps his hands together once.
Alex obliges and hears Henry’s footsteps get closer before the scent of sugar and cologne invade his senses. “Open them,” his boyfriend’s relaxed voice urges the corners of his lips to spread with a smile. It was good seeing Henry happy.
Alex opens his eyes and his jaw almost hits the ground. He hasn’t been peeking too much at the decoration, because he wanted to give Henry any sense of achievement of a surprise, and boy was it worth it. The round-shaped cake was sprinkled with red and blue pearl-like looking sprinkles, resting on whipped cream puffs round the edges of it. In the middle, in red and blue icing was written in Henry’s elegant handwriting: HBD MY AMERICAN GLORY XO .
And it was the sweetest thing ever that Alex grabs the fucking cake and sinks his teeth into it right away, taking a mouthul of one edge of it. His tastebuds explode with soul-liftingly good flavours of perfect lemon sourness and sugary buttercream that Alex closes his eyes momentarily indulging in the moment. When he opens them again, Henry is eyeing him curiously, but he’s grinning.
“Scrumptious?” He clicks his tongue.
Alex wraps his arms around Henry’s neck, pulling him closer to where he’s sat on the counter. “Not as much as you.”
Henry bursts into a fit of laughter, and Alex thinks it’s the best fucking birthday he has ever had.