Archive of Our Own ^beta

1. December 14, 2019, 7:37 PM

He’s got this.

Okay, yes – he’s late. Late, and leaning hard on the gas and slaloming around minivans and delivery trucks that don’t understand a speed limit is, like, a suggestion.

But he’s nearly at the bridge where I-95 hits the Beltway, so – it’s all good. Alex has got this.

He’s switching lanes as he passes a sign – its red dot-matrix letters blinking against a bruise-dark sky – so fast he barely registers what it says.

New Traff Pat

The fuck does that mean, he thinks. It takes him half a second too long to translate DOT into English:

New traffic pattern. Shit.

Alex swerves at the last moment past a line of orange cones and Jersey barriers into a lane that didn’t exist last week, nearly colliding with a long-haul trucker who leans on his horn for a full ten seconds to convey his ire.

“What part of new traff pat don’t you understand, asshole?” Alex yells back. Like the guy could hear him. The fuck is wrong with me today?

Alex knows the answer to that one. The bar exam is in his rearview and gaining on him, just like that semi with the pin-up mudflaps. He worries about it all the time, pushing at the anxious thought like he’s tonguing at a sore tooth.

Before that, though, there’s his Mom’s reelection campaign. This semester’s classes – and there are no guts at Georgetown Law. There’s his study group. And his workout – law school’s all sitting and reading and no more lacrosse, so his workout is a constant work in progress. He’s got his running miles logged in a spreadsheet, days for interval training and recovery and long runs color-coded.

Then there’s that other spreadsheet. The one in the corner of his desktop named “Thurs01032030.”

Inauguration Day – ten years and a couple weeks from now. His absolute, unmissable, self-imposed deadline for following Ellen Claremont into the House of Representatives.

Congress by 35 or bust.

All of which made this weekend’s jaunt – driving to Manhattan, a 24-hour marathon of glad-handing and debauchery, driving back for an appearance of the full Claremont family at the British embassy in D.C. – a terrible, terrible idea.

But he’s had plenty of those.

And no one else was free to show up at this event for Congresswoman Claremont’s New York City supporters – she has so many now; progressive politics plus a syrupy Texas accent and four-inch Louboutins go over a treat with the Upper West Side’s donor class – and Liam’s at NYU. And Alex hadn’t seen Liam to hang out for, god, it has to have been a year. So.

Alex went.

He wasn’t sure what he expected from seeing Liam again. Especially now that he and Nora called it quits. But whatever that reunion might have been got buried under the fundraiser running far too late and the two of them getting way too drunk at this surprisingly chi-chi place in Alphabet City. (“We could go someplace in Brooklyn, maybe?” Alex had asked, raising an eyebrow at the Edison bulbs and exposed brick. “Dude, Brooklyn’s worse,” Liam said, so they just sat down.)

They drank until last call, got brusque and tight-lipped about their absent fathers, ducked into a reassuringly grungy basement club for a few hours and then crashed in Liam’s crappy student-housing apartment. Passed out in the same bed, too trashed for it to have a chance to mean anything.

Alex had left as soon as he woke up and ran through the shower. If he could feel Liam watching him as he pawed through his duffel looking for socks with only a towel around his waist – well.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

The hug and the “Love you, man” he left Liam with had a range of possible interpretations.

It had been a terrible idea and maybe not even worth it, but here he was now: Stuck in creeping traffic on I-95, the adrenaline from almost missing that lane closure keeping his eyes open as effectively as the venti Blonde Roast and “Californication” cranked up until the windows vibrated.

He noses the Jeep from lane to lane. He’s already half an hour late. He hears his phone buzz with text messages and ignores them.

He’s got this. He’s got this.

When he arrives at the embassy, June’s waiting for him in the foyer, Audrey Hepburn updo trembling with annoyance, heels tapping on the black-and-white checkered marble.

“The fuck have you been?” she hisses at him, grabbing his wrist and pulling him farther into the building, past a museum’s worth of oil portraits and a platoon of yellow marble columns.

“I’m like half an hour late – breathe, Bug,” he says, pulling the cuffs of his dress shirt down past the sleeves of the jacket he’d thrown on as he jogged up the steps outside.

“Ma needs you here, you know that,” she says, nimbly darting around gray-suited clusters of Alex’s least favorite Washington natives – old white guys. They’re everywhere. Like lantern flies.

“The ambassador’s son was asking for you, she’s been stuck talking to him about – I don’t know, fucking polo ponies.”

“I’m sorry, you’re saying that’s my job now?”

“Lil Bit – Ma needs to talk to the actual ambassador about actually important things that impact actual Texans. So she needs you to keep the son entertained.” They pass underneath white crystal chandeliers that glitter above crowds in suits and cocktail dresses. A jazz band thrums in a corner.

“Feels like you’d be better at that, Bug,” Alex says.

June looks at him over her shoulder, eyebrows eloquent. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“There you are, sugar,” Ellen Claremont says, leaning in to kiss Alex’s cheek and grabbing his arm with a quick, strong squeeze that’s half affection, half “We will be talking about this later.”

“The Upper West Side sends its regards, Ma,” he says, kissing her back – she smells like pressed powder and L’Air du Temps and maybe half a cigarette sucked down surreptitiously in weak afternoon sunlight outside the Rayburn a few hours ago. “And a couple fat checks.”

“Henry, you remember my son, Alex Claremont-Diaz – my younger, slightly less-reliable child?”

Here we go, Alex thinks, turning toward an all-too-familiar face – Henry Fox Mountchristen, the poster boy of a dutiful politician’s son. Blond hair, blue eyes, unwrinkled from shoulder to wingtips. A DC Ken doll. On the list of Alex’s least-favorite people. If he had such a list. Which he doesn’t.

“Henry,” Alex says, holding out a hand to shake.

“Alex,” Henry says. “Well done. As a younger, slightly less-reliable child myself, I think you’ve executed your brief perfectly – ensuring your elder sibling appears to best advantage.” He nods at June, who smiles back.

“Cute. Thanks,” Alex says. Jesus Christ. Why does he always want to murder this guy? He’s not awful, he just… bothers Alex. “I heard we were talking polo?”

“Your mother was indulging me, yes – I do go on. You’ve – ah – never played, I don’t think?” Henry asks.

Alex is faintly aware of his mother and June making excuses and marching smartly toward a corner of the wood-paneled ballroom where the British ambassador herself is holding court. He’s on his own.

“Never had the chance. I play lacrosse. Well – played.”

“No longer?” Henry asks – and Alex could be wrong, but he thinks he sees Henry’s glance traveling briefly down to his shoulders, his waist. The suit Alex is wearing tonight is his Fuck All Y’All outfit, slim cut, tapered at the waist, in a navy darker than black. Alex always feels he’s one missed long run away from not being able to pull it off. But tonight it seems to be working.

“No. Unfortunately. Competitive athletics and law school aren’t a great mix.”

“Mm. I can imagine. Too bad – I mean,” Henry turns to look across the room, a slight flush appearing on his cheeks. “I understand you were – quite accomplished?”

“We did alright. Georgetown went to the nationals my senior year.”

“The year you were team captain,” Henry says this more or less to the drink in his hand. Alex realizes that it’s actually not a question.

“Yeah. Well. Co-captain. I can’t believe you remembered that,” Alex says. Wonders, a little, if maybe he appears on Henry’s Least-Favorite People list. “You’re still playing polo, then?”

“I’m taking a gap year, so – plenty of time to spend at the stables.”

Alex allows himself ten full seconds to really look at Henry – and it's no hardship. Infuriatingly long legs, broad shoulders, narrow waist just visible under the obligatory navy jacket. That blond hair spread across his forehead in a perfect golden fan like a bird’s wing, like it just fell there of its own accord. (Alex has absolutely no comment on the blue eyes. They’re actually blue-blue, like the sky at noon on a cloudless 70-degree day in May. If Alex thought about it. Which he's not doing.)

He thinks, and immediately wishes he hadn’t, that Henry looks not unlike Liam – if somebody cleaned Liam up, went over him with a fine-toothed comb, tossed his paint-splattered Levis and dressed him in Ralph Lauren and J. Press.

“Who’re you playing with, then, now you’ve graduated – Princeton, was it?” Alex asks. He really has been running into this guy for years now, and every time it’s the same: Give him a chance to name-check the school. Say something about sports. Alex doesn’t think they’ve ever had to resort to talking about the weather, but they might have – the conversations are always so boring, Alex can already feel this one slipping from his memory. Erased while it’s still happening so something even slightly more interesting can take its place in long-term storage.

“Yes. There’s a club in Maryland. But I’m mostly playing charity matches now. Fundraisers – there’s one in Greenwich in a few weeks. For, ah, medical research. Cancer.”

“Admirable,” Alex says. He tries to keep his face doing something polite. Can he get out of this conversation soon?

“Well, the research is, certainly. It’s a cause that means a great deal to me.”

And Alex knows, okay? He’s played this script a thousand times, and he knows he’s meant to inquire as to the source of Henry’s interest in this particular cause. But he’s losing the capacity to care. He’s dealt with one too many Generic Rich White People this weekend. He had a long drive and not enough sleep. He has too many feelings about Liam he doesn’t want to look too closely at. He needs a break. He needs a drink.

“Well, I’d love to see you play sometime, Henry,” Alex says, feeling his way towards wrapping things up. “Always seemed like a hell of a game. I can’t imagine playing with teammates I can’t talk to. Hard enough with midfielders who actually know what ‘Let’s fucking go’ means.”

“Oh, I talk to Louisa all the time,” Henry says. He’s looking down at his drink again, but he smiles as he says it. “That’s my – my pony. Louisa. I daresay she understands me well enough, but,” he shrugs, “she certainly doesn’t listen.”

“Louisa?” Alex asks.

“Mm. Louisa May. After Alcott.” And that’s honestly maybe the most interesting thing Henry’s ever said, Alex thinks. But he’s not the Claremont-Diaz who can go deep on “Little Women.”

“Oh my god, Henry – you and my sister really need to talk. She had a few years when she couldn’t shut up about Alcott and the Transcendentalists.”

Henry looks up, meeting Alex’s eye. Seriously blue-blue, what the fuck, Alex thinks again.

“I know. I mean – I have done. June’s wonderful. I’d like to think I can consider her a friend at this point.”

Ok. That’s interesting. So why exactly is Alex stuck in this conversation, then?

“Well, I’m sure you’ll run into each other again tonight, she’s just making the rounds with Ma,” Alex says. “I know I don’t have to tell you how important the U.K. is to Texas. She’ll be more than down for book recs once she’s done, though.”

“Indeed. Only state in the union that had its own embassy in London,” Henry smiles.

“I knew you’d know that,” Alex says, putting on his best smile-for-the-donors grin. He’s about to hit escape velocity on this conversation, he can feel it. “But at the moment, this particular Texan is parched. The bar is….that-aways?” He tilts his head toward an archway where the flow of traffic seems to pick up speed and power.

“Yes, of course – on your right, in the salon,” Henry says.

Salon. Alex doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a near thing.

Henry turns his head aside and breathes in deep, like he’s thought of something he needs to say. But then he stops. “Well. Have a good evening, Alex.”

“Great catching up with you, Henry. Have a good one.”

And he’s out.

Alex makes his way toward the double doorway, walking purposefully, in a straight line, just in case Henry remembers what he was going to say and tries to drag him back. Alex has bigger fish tonight – but first, a drink. The embassy usually pours Balvenie.

He’s at the bar in minutes, waiting for his glass, when he feels it. That same kind of eyes-on-his-shoulders prickle he felt in Liam’s apartment. But he left Liam a very safe, five-hours-driving-distance away in Manhattan.

Alex leans up against the bar so he can look back across the room.

Henry’s standing by the double doors now. His body is turned toward some woman in a blue dress, a glass of champagne in her hand. Henry’s head is tilted down, like he’s listening to her intently. But his gaze is to the side.

He’s looking right at Alex.

Alex cracks a smile, nods. Shrugs a shoulder towards the bar, flashes a thumbs up. Found it!

Henry nods back. Looks away.

Weirdo. My pony Louisa. Alex is going to give June such shit for not sharing that tidbit.

Alex scans the room and finds June, glimmering in chandelier-light – she’s under one of the half-dozen hanging even in this smaller room, speckled light reflecting on her dark hair, the sequins on her dress, the bright chain at her throat. She’s talking with Nora. Of course. They’ve been inseparable lately.

Alex watches her looking up at Nora – Nora’s got five inches on her, easy – and tracks the series of smiles that flicker across her face as Nora talks, every word punctuated by some gesture. That girl has her own sign language – she doesn’t talk so much as conduct a conversation. Unless she’s at her keyboard, every phrase gets acted out by those slender brown fingers.

Alex likes Nora so much. He really thought there was something there.

But the handful of dates they went on never reached that flash point – that moment when you realize you’ll never run out of something to say to this person, that you have a lifetime of catching up to do because you’re hungry for their every memory.

They’d been best friends. But when they’d agreed to call the time they spent together dating, it made them – awkward. Tongue-tied. Horrible. They’d end up making out just because they’d run out of things to say.

Doesn’t seem to be a problem for her and June. He watches as June grabs Nora’s wandering hand, gives it a little shake, and pushes up onto her toes to make some point, eyebrows raised, ponytail bobbing. Watches them sway into each other’s space as they laugh, shoulders shaking. He can’t remember the last time he saw June that happy. Actually giggling.

They really work together. He looks at them and hears a satisfying snap, like Legos. These two pieces go together – click.

He wonders what that feels like, when you’re the one whose strange and unlikely shape slots perfectly into someone else’s.

Knows he’s never felt it. Knows he wants to.

But there’s so much he wants.

“Sir?”

Alex turns back to the bar, grabs his drink, and slides a dollar to the guy across the glossy wood. He takes a sip and turns away from the girls, moves back towards the double doors that lead to the ballroom.

He needs to find hands to shake. Eleven months until Ma’s next election. A decade to build his own political machine, his own donor base. And the work starts here.

He takes one gulping swallow. Then he lifts his chin, puts on his most approachable smile, and walks straight into the brightly lit center of the room.

He’s got this.

***

2. December 14, 2019, 7:37 PM

Alex is tired – god, his eyes ache, they were out so late at that damn karaoke bar last night – but he’s laughing so hard it’s easy to stay awake.

“And then,” Nora says – as she gets into the story, her hands are dancing through the air, pointing and spinning and, now, palm forward in the universal sign for “stop” – “no, wait, seriously – then she says: ‘But not without the chihuahua!’”

June is cackling, perched smack in the middle of the Jeep’s back bench seat so she can lean forward over the console into the conversation.

There’s no one Alex’d rather be stuck in a car with for five hours than these two. From DC to New York and back again in less than 48 hours was murder, but they made it worth it. He’s so glad June changed her plans so she could come with them when he and his girlfriend Nora agreed to attend this Manhattan fundraiser for Ellen.

His girlfriend Nora. They’d had the conversation, like goddamn adults. He’s officially allowed to say it now. Nora’s started calling Ellen Mom.

“Congresswoman Mom,” when she thinks it’ll get a laugh.

The Armani-clad donors in the palatial apartment overlooking West End Avenue thought it was the cutest thing they’d ever heard. Especially when Nora could follow it up with a detailed breakdown of Congresswoman Mom’s position on renewable energy, and what her proposed legislation would mean for air quality in Riverside Park.

She had them eating out of her palm. Alex had never seen anything sexier.

God, they just work together, Alex thinks.

“Okay, so what did you do?” June asks from the backseat.

“I said, ‘Ma’am,’” – her fingers curl in like she’s beckoning someone closer – “‘Ma’am, I want you to know I completely understand. But Bruno Mars is deathly allergic to dogs, and he’s in the green room right now. The Kennedy Center’s going to be filled with a couple thousand terribly disappointed people if Alphonse here so much as sticks his twitchy little nose backstage.’”

Alex snorts. June puts her head down on the console, her shoulders shaking.

“Oh my god, Nor-a,” she almost moans. “You are the worst!”

Nora’s eyes crinkle as she grins. Her satisfied smirk is almost feline.

“You know it, babe,” she says – almost distractedly as she stares for a minute at the glowing face of her phone.

“Oh, Alex, hang on – okay, take this exit up here, 32.”

He frowns at her but dutifully merges right.

“Nora, we’re nowhere near the Beltway yet.”

“Yeah, I know, but we’re gonna cut through Silver Spring instead – they’re widening lanes on I-95, it’s a disaster scene,” she says, flashing her phone at him. The map is a swirl of curving lines blinking blood red. “We’ll still be late, but we will actually get there before the speeches start if we stay out of that mess.”

“You’re a genius, chaparrita – God bless you and your little iPhone Pro Max, too,” Alex says, looking over his shoulder as he aims for the exit.

“I am, aren’t I?” Nora says, fluffing the ringlets that reach almost to her shoulders.

Alex grabs Nora’s hand by her fingers and gives it a loud, smacking kiss. June makes gagging noises and throws herself against the back of the seat.

“Ugh, ixnay on the PDA, you two,” she yells.

Alex can’t remember being this happy.

.

It feels incredibly good to walk into the embassy with a gorgeous woman on each arm, both of them polished to high gloss, heels clicking as they cross the black and white marble floor.

He thinks about what they must look like as they enter the ballroom, and imagines a scene from a Fitzgerald novel, a Leyendecker drawing, his dark navy suit perfectly framing the girls in their sparkling dresses.

Even his Ma, spotting them across the ballroom, breaks into a proud smile as she sees them crossing the room.

“There you all are, at last,” she says, leaning forward to kiss June, then Nora. She reaches past them to ruffle Alex’s curls and smooth them off his forehead.

“Ma, please,” Alex says, rolling his eyes but pleased. Ellen’s satisfaction with them, with him, is rolling off of her in waves. He basks in her approval. Ellen turns back to the woman she’d been speaking with.

“Madam Ambassador, this is my own personal Texas delegation – my daughter June, my son Alex, and his girlfriend, Nora Holleran – Nora’s the Senator’s granddaughter.”

“A pleasure,” murmurs the ambassador, who’s wearing something spotless and white. “I think you know my son, Henry?”

“Of course. Hey, Henry – how’s Princeton?” Alex says, disentangling his arm from June to shake Henry’s hand. Alex always forgets how tall Henry is; how it’s disconcerting looking up to meet his eyes.

“I graduated in January, actually, but I understand Old Nassau still stands,” Henry wears a smile that Alex thinks is visibly practiced; he wonders how many times tonight he’s used that same smile, that same line.

Alex knows the feeling. He wishes, vaguely, that he liked Henry more. That they could talk about the experience of figuring out how to be the presentable sons of exceedingly powerful women. He imagines it might feel good to have that conversation, but there’s never a crack in Henry’s bland persona that suggests it might be possible to start it.

“You’re still at Georgetown, then?”

“Georgetown Law, now. Keeps me out of trouble,” he says. He turns to his mother. “Mostly,” he adds, nodding to her. Definitely a line he keeps in his back pocket. Follows it up with a grin. The ambassador and Congresswoman Mom smile back indulgently, and the whole conversation is a set piece, but still. Alex feels like he’s won something.

Half an hour later, Alex is leaning up against the front of a dark wooden bar in another room in the embassy, this one smaller and with dark paneled walls, but somehow just as many crystal chandeliers as the ballroom.

“Hey,” he nods at the bartender. “Whiskey, neat, and a soda with lime, and a dirty martini, thanks.” The bartender – emo hair, thick glasses; cute, if Alex was looking, which he isn’t – nods back.

“Actually –” Alex leans forward, drops his voice a little. “Can you do me a solid, man? My girlfriend’s crazy about olives, can you drop, like, three or four of ‘em in there? However many is too many, do that. And – sorry – Fords Gin? If you’ve got it? Bombay, if not. ‘Preciate it, man,” he says, sliding a bill across the bar top.

“Pretty specific drink order,” says a voice at his left shoulder.

Henry.

“Hey. Yeah, well. Nora knows what she likes, you know? She goes a little mad-scientist with the bar cart at home – actually, they both do,” he says, jutting his chin across the room where June and Nora are talking across a high-top, June grabbing Nora’s hand and shaking it for emphasis as she talks. He doesn’t know what story June’s telling, but Nora is staring intently at her face as she talks, listening and nodding as if impatient for every word.

“Both lovely and talented then,” Henry says, resting his forearms against the bar. “And discerning.”

“She is,” Alex agrees, still watching the girls across the room. “She’s incredible. This – us, we’re – it’s new. But she’s amazing.”

“Christ,” Henry says. “What on earth is she doing with you, then?”

“Oh, he’s got jokes,” Alex says, shooting a sideways glare at Henry. But then he drops it.

“I really don’t know – she fell and bumped her head, I guess, and I was the first thing she saw when she woke up? Like, I know she’s out of my league. I’m just along for the ride until she wakes up and realizes she used to be Princess Fiona, but I have always been Shrek,” he says.

And yes, he’s watched Nora eat a burrito so enthusiastically that she was left with blobs of guacamole on her chin and her fingers – but she managed to do so in a way that left her looking as elegant. A skill set he couldn’t aspire to.

“Alex,” Henry says – and for the first time, his tone of voice isn’t light and detached. He sounds – reproachful? “Alex, you know I was just taking the piss. You and Nora are perfectly matched, of course.”

Alex raises his eyebrows and looks at Henry. “You think?”

“Yes,” Henry says. “I mean, from where I’m standing, you two make perfect sense. You’re both smart, you’re both – exquisite.” He stops talking suddenly and looks down at the drink in his hands. A blotch of bright pink floods his cheeks and spreads across his face.

“Exquisite?” Alex says. He realizes he’s staring at Henry. But then, literally no one else has ever called him exquisite. And Henry has never said anything at all to him that was the least bit surprising. Or sincere. Or kind. “Wow. Um – well, thanks, man. That’s – very kind.”

“Think nothing of it. Please,” Henry says to his gin and tonic. He looks up to meet Alex’s eyes, and quickly looks down again. “If you’ll excuse me…”

And there’s a Henry-shaped gap in the crowd around the bar.

“Whiskey, seltzer, dirty with too many olives,” the bartender says behind Alex.

Alex shakes his head and turns, scoops the drinks up with both hands. He makes his way across the room to the table the girls are standing at. Halfway across, he looks in the direction Henry disappeared in, makes him out standing at parade rest next to his mother, shoulders thrown back, hands clasped behind his back. What a weird fucking night, Alex thinks, and shakes his head again. Like that’ll clear the confusion out.

“One seltzer, one dirty martini,” he says, setting them down carefully. “I blackmailed the bartender and made him give me all the olives, babydoll.” Babydoll? The fuck did that come from?

Nora tilts her head and looks at him, her face calculating something he can’t parse. He clocks the moment she decides to let it go.

“Well. My hero,” she says instead, leaning forward to kiss him. And Alex is nothing if not a little shit, so he pushes hard into the kiss, slings an arm around Nora’s waist and dips her.

“Ugh, Nora, what did I just say?” June groans, looking anywhere but at them. Alex and Nora let the kiss dissolve into laughter. He pulls her up, adjusts his arm around her narrow waist and thinks this has been a long, strange night. He’s clearly missing half the things that are going on around him. He’s really fucking tired.

But he has absolutely no complaints.

****

3. Dec 14, 2019. 10:44 PM

This law textbook is probably, ironically, in blatant violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Alex thinks.

It’s thick as a Manhattan phone book and printed in an impossibly tiny font across two columns. Alex pushes up the glasses he almost never wears, but still the letters are swimming in front of his eyes, unwilling to coalesce into words.

That could also have something to do with him grinding through on three hours of sleep. He’s still got days left to work on this essay. But checking and rechecking each sentence slows him down. This microscopic font isn’t helping.

He leans his head back against the couch cushion behind him and closes his eyes. Five seconds, he thinks. Or ten. Just ten seconds. His eyes hurt.

He’s sitting on the floor, which is just uncomfortable enough to keep him awake – he hopes – with books and stapled-together hard copies and a laptop fanned out around him on the floor. He’s got a legal notepad in that strangely reassuring yellow, and post-its in enough neon colors to decorate for a small rave. He’s got everything he needs.

Except the capacity to keep his eyes open.

He could never have fit in that party tonight. He can’t switch between on and juiced up enough to talk to people all night long and the focus he needs for this. He knows his mother was disappointed, and if there’s one thing he hates, it’s disappointing the Congresswoman on purpose.

He does it enough not even trying.

And it even sounded like fun. He’s been to the British embassy before; it’s swank like an old black and white movie, and the bar’s almost always stocked with Balvenie. And there were probably people there that it’d be good to know if he wants to be in Congress by 35.

Which is still the plan. He thinks.

But he needed this night. At 24, he’s starting to come to grips with the idea that he can’t say yes to everything. That even ducks have to stop sometimes, no matter how good they are at paddling under the water where no one can see.

He got away with that for years. As an undergrad, he’d kept his GPA sparkling mostly just by showing up for class and being his mother’s son. He could do that, and play lacrosse, and write for the school paper, and still make it to campaign events and find somebody to take home with him after. He got away with all of it. For years.

Law school is….a much bigger pond.

Okay, that was more than ten seconds.

He opens his eyes. Picks his head up. Looks back at the mostly-blank document on his laptop. Intellectual property rights, Spiderman vs Green Lantern: A case study. And….go. He thought picking the topic would at least be entertaining, but right now, he wants to smack Alex Of Three Weeks Ago for draining all the fun out of Spidey and friends for Alex Tonight.

He hears Nora and June come in, laughter and footsteps echoing in the hallway of his mother’s townhouse.

“Alex?” June calls. She knocks on the door.

“Yep, I’m up, come on in,” he says – and they erupt into his room like fireworks, breathless and giggling, dresses swirling around them as they climb onto the couch and collapse against each other.

“You missed a good night, loser,” June says, leaning down to ruffle his hair.

Nora leans against the side of the couch and swings her legs up into June’s lap. Her high heels dangle from her hands. “Way too many people, but you would have loved it,” she says. “Or anyway, Old Alex would have loved it.”

“Yeah, well, New Alex has to pass IP rights, so – sucks to be me,” he says, turning back to the laptop screen. He doesn’t particularly want to hear about the great party he missed. But it looks like he’s going to get the CliffNotes whether he wants it or not.

He’s also not entirely sure how he feels about June and Nora dating and being incredibly, openly couple-y. June, with Nora’s feet in her lap, is rubbing her thumb across Nora’s ankle bone so absently he thinks she probably isn’t even aware she’s doing it.

Alex is practicing being oh-so-very-cool about his sorta-ex dating his sister. He can see that they work together. In a way that somehow he and Nora never did the couple of times they went out by themselves, chasing the possibility that there was something between them.

“God, I couldn’t believe that Richards was even there. Such an asshole. But we got to talk to Liz Warren, and we talked with Cory Booker for a while, he was fantastic…”

“He’s still running?” Alex asks, looking up.

“I mean – technically,” Nora says. “But the numbers are brutal. Like, single digits. Even he knows it would take an endorsement from Santa Claus to move the needle at this point. I think he’s just fundraising for next time.”

“Oh, but Henry was there – you know, Henry Fox Mountchristen, the ambassador’s son? He asked about you, actually. He says hi.”

Which is not something Alex should be pleased about. He doesn’t even like Henry. But it’s nice someone remembers he still exists, locked away in his tower with his law books.

“And he had the most delicious friend with him – Pez something?” Nora adds.

“Pez Okonjo,” Alex supplies. “We’ve met."

“That’s right. Now, him, I liked,” Nora says. “There was some kind of mess on 95 and half the guests showed up late, so we got to talk to them for a while. We talked about maybe getting together in a couple weeks? And Pez was wearing this Versace bomber jacket that I really need to steal.”

“Oh I think he would have let you have it if you asked,” June says, making a face at her girlfriend. Nora sticks her tongue out at her.

“Maybe if you’d help me take it off him….very, very slowly….”

“Okay – and storytime’s over!” Alex says, clapping his textbook shut with a snap. “Go to bed, children. Go on – get. Some of us have homework to finish.”

“This is the thanks we get for stepping in as Ma’s plus-one, huh?”

“You have the thanks of a grateful nation. Law student. Whatever. Just – I really need to do this, okay?”

“We’re going, we’re going,” June says, standing up. She stretches one arm up over her head and yawns, and Nora watches as her dress strap slides down her other shoulder. Alex watches Nora watching, realizes he’s doing it. Turns away. Yeah, very cool, Alex. Jesus.

It’s late, and he’s tired, and as the girls collect their shoes and bags, he’s already a little lonely. And he wonders, too late, what difference it would have made if he’d gone. If he’d been the one to spend an hour or so drinking champagne, clocking D.C.-level celebs and chatting with Pez and Henry. He likes Pez a lot. He’s never really connected with Henry, but is weirdly touched to be remembered by him. He wonders if they are maybe friends by virtue of long association, by being almost the only people their age at any number of receptions and dinners and forums. Alex doesn’t really have friends, unless you count Liam. Or Nora. But both of those are…complicated.

Maybe an uncomplicated friendship would be nice. If Alex could be the kind of person who had those. He’s not sure when he stopped being capable of easy camaraderie, of grabbing a beer, of hanging out. He thinks about Peter Parker – whenever Spider Man’s story starts to run into a dead end, too complex and cumbersome to be fun anymore, there’s always a re-set. People’s memories get wiped, or Peter moves in with Iron Man.

Or the story just hops to a parallel universe where Peter’s still lighthearted, swinging from building to building like a kid on the monkey bars. Could there be a parallel universe where Alex wasn’t grimly, relentlessly gunning for the dean’s list every waking hour – one where he could happily escort Ma to a party, and run into Henry, his friend, and meet him at a bar afterward to talk about….whatever posh British boys talk about.

Beer? Soccer? Posh British girls, probably.

Would that Alex be happier? Would he feel hollow without the leaden lump of ambition stuck in his chest, its weight tilting every decision? Or would he just feel….lighter?

“You ever think about, like, parallel universes?” Alex asks – and realizes, as he’s saying it, that it’s a non sequitur to anyone who isn’t following along with the conversation he’s having silently with himself. “I mean, like – if you’d made one different choice, somewhere along the line, how it could have changed everything?”

June’s already at the door, but she turns back. She shares a look with Nora, then walks across the room to Alex.

“Maybe that’s enough law school for tonight, Lil Bit?” she says, leaning down to kiss the top of his head. “It’ll be here tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “But will I? Or will I have high-tailed it to a better universe next door?”

“You seriously need sleep,” she says, deftly threading a path between notebooks back to the door. “Maybe therapy.”

“I’ll consider it,” he said, pinching the top of his nose and closing his eyes. “Night, June.”

He hears the door click closed. June’s probably right.

And it doesn’t matter anyway. He is who he is. In this universe or any other. He can’t make friends. Has no love life. He’s a disappointment to his mother. A non-issue, apparently, to his father.

God damn it, he’s going to be one hell of a lawyer though, he decides.

He fishes another Adderall out of the jar rattling at the bottom of his bookbag and swallows it with coffee long since gone cold. Opens the laptop.

OK. Spider-Man.

Go, he thinks, and starts typing.

****

4. Dec 14, 2019. 7:45 pm

Alex pounds up the embassy steps like something’s chasing him, and cuts across the ballroom without even looking for his mother or June, heading straight to the bar.

He just came within inches of getting squashed like a bug on a trucker’s windshield on I-95, and even though he’s here, breathing, in one piece, it was a close thing – too fucking close. He’s pissed. He’s high as a fucking kite on adrenaline. If he had fucking breathed a little differently he’d be nothing but a highway safety statistic right now.

What might bother him most of all is how he can see, clear as day, what would happen: The press coverage, only because he’s his mother’s son. Someone from his study group on the 11 o’clock news. The legislation Ellen would get passed – regulations for truckers, hammered out in over-airconditioned rooms with union reps, one discreet reporter standing in the back, getting everything on deep background but still there to see the Texas congresswoman bravely holding it together to secure an agreement on mandatory overtime limits or tire inspections or whatever the fuck it would have taken to save her son if she’d done it six months earlier.

She’d definitely work Alex’s name into the title of the bill.

It would be the only thing he’d ever be remembered for.

It takes two whiskeys for Alex’s heartbeat to get back to its normal rhythm. By the time he notices it has, a third one’s already in his hand.

Drinking it still feels like a good idea.

So when he finally turns away from the bar, there’s a stutter in his step. He trips over the edge of an Oriental rug that probably was actually made in the Orient back when people called it that. Probably hand-stitched by indentured children. A fucking tragedy disguised as good taste, like this whole fucking building.

He trips, recovers, turns into the ballroom.

And the first person he spots is Henry.

God, he’s never liked that guy – his cocktail-party perfect charm, his navy blazers, his smile. He's infuriating. Through the buzz and the whiskey’s warmth, poking at somebody that irritating feels like the best idea he’s had all day. Alex launches himself across the room.

“HENrrry!” he slurs, too loud but not caring. He sees Henry turn toward him. His hair is perfect.

Seriously, fuck this guy.

Fifteen minutes later, Alex is on the ground in a puddle of melted chocolate, where he backed Henry into a fondue table as they bickered, and for a minute, he wishes that trucker had actually hit his car, just a little, just enough to drive him off the road and keep him from ever getting here.

“Fucking Christ,” Henry says, sitting up with drops of chocolate in his hair, pooling on his perfect navy blazer. “You absolute bellend.”

Henry gets up and walks off, not even offering Alex a hand to help him up.

5. December 14, 2019, 7:37 pm.

The funny thing was, he’d been thinking about Henry on the drive down.

If he’d be there, if they’d get to talk. If it would be all the usual, automatic yammering about schools and sports, or if they might be able to talk about something real. If that was even possible at one of these events, the kind of thing that looked like a party but was really just another kind of work.

Talking to Liam – even with all their unacknowledged history, their unacknowledged present, even with all the booze – had reminded him what an actual conversation felt like. How rarely he has one.

It was a long drive home alone, but he was nearly there when he passed a sign, blinking red lights in the almost-dark spelling out a message: New traff pat.

He was so deep in his own thoughts he didn’t even realize the sign was aimed at him. Trying to tell him something.. Something important. Like: We’re taking away that lane you’re driving in.

It’s only when the orange cones lining the shoulder start to move into his space that he realizes what’s happening, and he starts merging right at the same moment as he twists to check his mirrors, to see if there’s space to merge into.

And there almost is.

It’s just that there’s a semi in the middle lane aiming for it too, which he only sees as the Jeep is halfway across the line of yellow dashes, and for a second he freezes. It’s the worst possible moment to do nothing, but there are too many inputs coming at him – the semi, its driver leaning on the horn, the van right behind him, the orange cones showing him the lane he was in, thinned down to almost nothing.

The semi guns it and pulls past him, irritated foghorn blasts Dopplering out as it speeds away. Alex peels back into his disappearing lane and just as he’s about to exhale the van that was on his tailpipe decides to pull ahead.

It speeds past Alex but miscalculates the width of the not-quite-a-lane. Alex is so close to the guy driving that he can see the whites of his eyes as he panics and hits the gas. He almost makes it. But at the last second the van shimmies and with a sound like thunder clap directly overhead it shears off the Jeep’s side-view mirror.

It flies forward, ricochets back on a tether of rainbow wires and slams into the window, which spiderwebs into cracks that go halfway across the pane of glass.

Alex isn’t sure how he gets there but minutes later he’s pulled behind the line of cones on what’s left of the shoulder, panting like he’d just sprinted a mile.

“Fuck!” He slams a hand against the steering wheel so hard it aches. “Jesus fucking Christ, you asshole!” He’s not sure if he’s yelling at the guy in the van or himself.

Still gripping the steering wheel, he rests his forehead on the fake leather and tries to remember how to breathe.

Of course. Of fucking course. He’d made it almost all the way through this ridiculous weekend and now this. He should’ve known. The disastrous part was just waiting until he let down his guard.

Nothing – nothing – works out the way it should anymore. He can feel it somewhere deep, next to his spine, the wrongness in everything he touches lately. The dates he’d gone on with Nora that ended someplace awkward and half-hearted, Alex suddenly realizing mid-rant that he was monologuing about The West Wing to cover up the silence creeping in between them. The way he’d tried to hash that out with June, only for her to insist she was too tired for a proper post-mortem and creep back to her room, dropping a kiss on the top of his head as she left.

She hadn’t wanted to talk about it the next day, either, and Alex might be an obtuse fucking asshole but give him enough time and he can take a hint. He’s barely spoken to June in a couple weeks now and he’s miserable without her. He still can’t figure out what he did wrong.

Just like he can’t figure out what’s wrong with him and Liam. Why they’re just as tight as they always were, right up until the minute Alex threw his arm across Liam’s still-sculpted shoulders and caught Liam flashing him this dark look, a glare of something like anger. Then it was gone again, submerged under Li’s placid, good-ole-boy, yes-ma’am public face.

Alex wants, more than anything right now, to drive straight back to Ma’s townhouse and crawl under the duvet in his room and stay there until someone comes looking for him. Which might be a while, honestly. But his mother had insisted on his being at the embassy shindig tonight and no matter how shitty his life was right now, she could make it so much worse if she was crossed.

And he can’t bear to think about talking to his father right now. Oscar had had this Jeep for years; washed it by hand, babied it so it still purred at highway speeds well into automotive middle age. Oscar loved the stupid thing. When he’d left it in Texas after he’d moved to California while Alex was away at camp – well. Even at twelve, Alex knew an apology when he saw one.

Knew it was the only one he’d get, too.

He realizes he’s crying, there are actual tears falling on the steering wheel. The Jeep shakes every time another car passes; he’s having a breakdown maybe five inches away from the left-hand lane of an interstate. Alex remembers how he used to imagine living in D.C. would be glamorous and exciting. But it's this. This has got to be, he thinks, the worst of all possible worlds. Fuck Candide.

It doesn’t feel like this day, this week, could get worse. But then another semi passes and as the air currents jostles the Jeep until it sways, Alex thinks: Oh, you wanna bet?

Pulling up to the valet outside the embassy with the window down so he can hold the side view in one hand while he drives with the other is a unique kind of humiliating. Alex would’ve cared a lot more if he wasn’t still using everything he had to keep his face and voice in some rough approximation of normal.

He gets all the way into the ballroom before he realizes he left his jacket in the car.

He can’t see June or his Ma anywhere in this crowd of old white guys in suits, a sea of faces copy-pasted from the oil portraits clustered on the walls.

“Alex?”

Of course. Alex tries not to visibly wince. The first person he’d run into would be Henry. Who probably looks as pristine and unbothered as always, while Alex can feel his fingernails biting little red half-moons into the skin of his palms.

“Hey, Henry. How’s it going, man?” Alex tries, faking relaxed calm as hard as he can. He can feel his whole body tense up as he looks up to meet Henry’s eyes.

He watches Henry’s face and what it does makes him wonder what his own looks like: The Henry expression he’s used to, a sort of bored bonhomie, melts away and is replaced by a wide-awake stare and then – eyebrows furrowed, a pinched wrinkle at one corner of his mouth – becomes startled concern.

“Alex, are you alright?”

“Yeah, no – fine, I’m fine,” Alex says, rubbing a hand across his brow quickly, wondering how tragic he must look after his moment on the side of the road. There’s a band playing and even from the far side of the room, the squeal of the clarinet suddenly makes him feel queasy. It’s loud in here, way too loud….

“Alex, you’re shaking – I can see your hands trembling. What happened?”

Alex wants to slink into a corner somewhere, flinch away from Henry’s suddenly-focused blue gaze. But he’s also a little bit – relieved? Because something did happen. And someone’s finally noticed.

He jams his hands into his pockets anyway.

“Just car trouble,” he says. “I drove here straight from a campaign event in Manhattan, and there were lane closures on 95? It got a little – chaotic – anyway some asshole drove into the side of my Jeep. Mirror’s gone, window’s busted. Really thought I’d bought it for a second there.” Alex laughs, and he can hear that it comes out a little too loud, a little strangled. But he can’t seem to tone it down to cocktail-party decibels.

“Christ, no wonder you look – well, a little shocky. That must have been terrifying,” Henry says. And Alex is listening hard for it but he doesn’t hear a sneer in that voice at all. Just warmth. Sympathy. He’s appalled by how grateful he is for it.

“It’s my Dad’s Jeep,” Alex says, and to his horror, he hears the waver in his own voice, the choked-up stutter of someone trying not to cry. “Stupid-ass car is basically a shoebox with wheels – but it’s kind of the only thing of his I’ve got?”

Henry’s face flickers from concerned to sorrowful to resolved.

“You know what, let’s – let’s find a better place to talk, shall we? There are entirely too many people here tonight. I can’t hear myself think, can you?” Henry puts a hand on the back of Alex’s arm and starts to steer him toward the side of the room.

“No, sorry, no – I have to find my mother, let her know I’m here – she’s been blowing up my phone since I crossed into Maryland….”

“I can help with that, actually,” Henry says, manipulating Alex in front of him to the side of the ballroom. “Let’s get out of here and I’ll text June, alright? I’ll explain we ran into each other and are just catching up. She can handle your mother from ther, can’t she?”

“You’ve got June’s number?” Alex feels like he’s falling down a rabbit hole; this isn’t the Henry he thought he knew at all.

“June and I talk quite a bit, now, actually,” Henry says. “She's lovely. Completely wrong about John Donne, but a lovely girl nonetheless. Right, just through here now,” Henry says, and he propels Alex through an archway at the back corner of the ballroom, into a hallway lit with fluorescents instead of chandelier glow.

The hallway floor is tiled brick red, its white walls bare. Henry marches them down the hallway towards a kitchen full of clanging pans and shouting, and waiters in black vests stacking trays. They pass through its noise and bustle and push through a swinging door into a shadowed outdoor alcove, lit only by the kitchen’s windows. It’s suddenly almost silent. Alex can make out raised beds still crowded with greenery despite the cold and hedges boxing them in at the garden's edges.

“It’s just the kitchen gardens,” Henry says, crossing to a low wooden bench and pushing Alex down onto it. He leans against the brick wall beside it. “Hardly glamorous, but we’ll be left alone for a bit until it quiets down and the chefs come out for a fag.”

“This’s your hide-away?” Alex asks, wrapping his hands around his arms. “Thank you. This is better. I’m – I'm just over-reacting, sorry about – “

“Alex, it sounds like it was terrifying. I can’t believe you even came here after that,” Henry says. “And yes, this is my bolt-hole. I’m sure you could tell me where in the Capital to try if you want to not be found.”

Alex smiles.

“Photo room off the Senate press gallery,” he says. “Most days.”

Henry nods. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He watches Alex for a minute, then pulls off his blazer and drapes it over Alex’s shoulders. “I’m sure it's a bit warmer than this, too.”

“Oh, Jesus, Henry, you don’t have to…”

“I’m a London boy, Alex, D.C. is bloody balmy compared to what we’re used to,” Henry cuts him off. “And you’re still a bit wobbly there. Just keep it until you’re over the shakes, alright?”

Alex nods. He’s staring. He feels a little bit dazzled by this version of Henry – chatty, decisive, thoughtful. Actually fucking chivalrous. It would be a lot to take in even on a normal day. Which this hasn’t been.

Henry’s watching him right back.

“You said that Jeep was the only thing you had of your father’s,” he says, finally. “I didn’t know – did he pass? I didn’t realize…”

“Ah. No, um – he’s alive. Last I heard,” Alex says. He looks down, stretches his feet out into the pebbled pathway. “Been a while since we talked though. A couple years? He and my mom split when I was twelve. We haven’t spent much time together since. But he left the Jeep behind when he took off, told me it was mine when I turned sixteen. So. My inheritance. Such as it is.”

“I see,” Henry says. “So. More than just a car, then.”

“Yeah. Probably.” He kicks at a pebble with the toe of his shoe. They’re quiet for a minute but the silence doesn’t feel weighted.

“My father passed when I was 18,” Henry says eventually. “And I know it’s not quite the same thing. My father didn’t choose to leave us, I have nothing to reproach him for. But I still have some of his books and things that I have ….well. All sorts of complicated feelings about.”

“Jesus, Henry. I’m sorry. I didn’t know that,” Alex says.

“No, it’s alright. How could you? We’ve never really talked, not properly,” Henry says. “We just run into each other at these horrible things” – he juts his chin at the kitchen windows, the muted clamor seeping out the propped-open doorway – “and then don’t see each other for months. I feel like I know you because I’ve seen you around since you had braces on, but I don’t, do I?”

“God, Henry – please, please try to forget what I looked like with braces. I’d like all evidence that I ever had anything less than a devastatingly perfect smile stricken from the record.”

Henry smiles. “Not a chance, counselor. You were cute at 13 – braces, beat up Air Jordans with proper trousers, wouldn’t shut up about Sea World, as I recall. I’d never met anyone like you.”

“Fuck, okay. You know, you had me confused for a second, being all considerate – but this is starting to feel a lot more familiar now.”

Alex shuffles down the bench.

“C’mon, sit down,” he says. “You’re looming over me, Sasquatch, it’s getting weird. If you’re gonna mock my teenage fashion choices, do it to my face. What’re you, six foot?”

Henry settles onto the bench, a careful few inches from Alex, and kicks his legs out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. “Six-two.”

Alex huffs out a sharp breath. It’s almost a laugh. “Jesus. Six-two and hair like that? Unfair.”

Henry keeps his eyes down but he’s still smiling. “Well, thanks,” he says. “I think.”

“I think you know it’s working for you, Henry. You must know what you look like.”

Henry turns to look at him, something challenging in his glance. “Mmm. Must I? Do you?”

“‘Course,” Alex says, leaning back against the brick wall behind them. “Basically the second coming of Ricky Martin – but with Harry Styles curls and that baby face. I know it’s a lot, the hair, the bod – “

“Wait – Moana? Seriously, Alex?”

Alex giggles. He feels untethered by his whole day, like he’s floating three feet above this conversation, watching as it unspools in fits and starts, no longer surprised by anything. It just doesn’t feel real at all.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says. “Been kind of a day.”

“I know. I’m glad you’re feeling better, Alex,” Henry says. He leans back against the brick wall too, like he’s just now relaxing.

Alex looks at Henry’s fingers curved around the rough wooden edge of the bench and thinks if they both took a few more deep breaths, they’d relax enough that their fingers would touch.

They don’t return to the party. Henry shoots a text to June and reports that Alex’s mother has been mollified. Later he offers Alex a ride home, then makes a phone call and has the Jeep towed from the embassy lot to a body shop.

Later still – after a conversation that’s ranged from formative novels to teenage dalliances (“You spent all of junior year getting each other off, and you still haven’t talked about it? To this day?” “Look, Texas can be a confusing place to grow up queer, okay? It’s like saying Macbeth in a theater – you just don’t say it.”), from favored team sports to beloved pets (“Louisa May? Really? Please tell me June gave you so much shit for that.” “Obviously.”), when Henry looks straight at Alex and asks “Can I kiss you?” – Alex could swear he feels a bolt of electricity shoot through his arm from the spot where their fingers finally touch.

And when they’ve kissed for a while and Henry says “Look, I can drive you home – or I could bring you back to mine?” Alex isn’t at all surprised. He’s stopped shivering. Henry’s lips are the warmest thing he’s ever felt.

+1. Dec 15, 2019, 6:48 am

Alex wakes up, warm and comfortable and rested – that’s new – and in a room he has to take a beat to recognize. There’s something warm and solid at his back. He rolls over, sees a tuft of Henry’s butter-yellow hair poking out from under the snow-white duvet. The events of the previous evening cascade into his consciousness like a deck of cards being shuffled. He waits to feel… panicked, or regretful, or awkward.

He doesn’t.

He just feels… pleased. Giddy. Hopeful. He’s reaching up and running his fingers through Henry’s hair (soft like lake water, he thinks) before he realizes he’s moved. Henry lifts his head from his pillow and opens one eye to glare at him a little.

“Why’re you awake?”

“I’m usually awake now? Fuck, I’m usually, uh,” Alex lifts his head to peek at the alarm clock over Henry’s shoulder. “....about four miles into my run by now.”

Henry’s head falls back to the pillow with an inarticulate grunt that feels like a commentary on running. Or mornings. Maybe both.

They’re watching each other over the top of a bunched-up duvet. They’re waiting to see what the morning after is going to look like. Right now, it looks like Henry is cracking a small, fond smile that grows wider as Alex watches.

“So maybe I should…get going? Catch up on that run. Wouldn’t want my legs to atrophy…”

“Mmm,” Henry says. “That is a concern. You did seem both weak and inflexible last night.”

“Okay. Fuck off.” Alex looks down at the bed, his face warming.

Henry leans forward into Alex’s space. Under the whipped cream billows of the duvet, he shifts and slides his leg between Alex’s.

“Allow me to propose an alternative plan?" Henry kisses Alex's shoulder. "Stay here. We might be able to come up with some other form of exercise. And we could walk to this donut shop on K Street. They do a chocolate one with a marmalade glaze that I promise you is life-changing.”

“Not sure a walk to the donut shop is a good substitute for a five-mile run, sweetheart.”

“The walk is not the alternate form of exercise I meant to suggest,” Henry says, rolling completely on top of Alex, the weight of his thigh – Jesus Christ, those thighs – spreading Alex’s legs apart.

Alex hesitates, thinking about all the color-coded blocks in his calendar marked off with today’s tasks and obligations. Study group. Bar exam prep. A sliver of a half hour set aside for the long-range plans Excel sheet. Those rainbow blocks pave a path into the future he’s been following for years.

Then he looks up at Henry, who has a smirk on his lips but something like hope in his eyes.

New traffic pattern, Alex thinks.

“Alright,” he says. And he leans up to kiss Henry again.

+1 more. Dec 14, 2019, 7:37 PM

He doesn’t see it.

There are too many things happening in his head. The bar exam, the campaign, the professor who’s such a hard-ass Alex is carrying a B in that class, the stupid thing Nora said last night that’s still bothering him. And why the fuck this song is still on his driving playlist. He grapples for the phone he had thrown onto the passenger seat all the way back in Jersey.

So he doesn’t see it at all. The only part of the sign he registers is one red flashing word:

New.

He’s half bent over the Jeep’s console when the blast of a semi’s horn pulls his eyes to the rearview, already filled by the truck’s silver grill. Adrenaline pours cold down his spine as he swerves.

The sound of tearing steel is so high-pitched and loud he hears nothing else.

***

Dec 20, 2044, 4:56 PM

There’s an umbrella stuck in the hinge of the hotel’s revolving door, and for a second, there’s that unearthly squeal of metal against metal, and Alex flinches. Still his least favorite sound.

It’s a bitch to get through a revolving door with the quad, anyway, although after years in New York City he’s had plenty of practice – slowing down to let the thing spin around him, being careful not to knock against the panes, and then hustling forward on the far side when it opens up.

He moves pretty fast with it at this point; fast enough that he’s always reminding himself to slow down. Nothing’s worth the days a wipeout could steal from him.

He gets across the lobby and turns at the sign for the Okonjo Foundation, into a room that screams “private club” from every barrel-shaped leather chair and glossy curve of carved walnut. Sees the crowd of people with heels and oversized handbags three deep at the bar and turns away, scanning the low-lit tables for June and Nora.

There. He sees Nora’s silver curls and oversized readers – “They’re giving Iris Apfel, sweetie,” she’d said, the first time she’d gone out with them on and he’d stared at her with raised eyebrows – before he hears her alto laugh, June’s soprano giggle following like a descant. They’re perched around a low table halfway back toward the door.

He changes course and starts toward them.

“Alex! Alex, over here!” June calls out as he gets near. She and Nora are settled on either side of a man in a suit that’s designed to be noticed, its long mustard-yellow jacket thickly belted over a buttoned-up lime-green polo shirt. The tips of his locs are dip-dyed green to match his shirt.

Nora’s up and kissing Alex’s cheek before he gets there, an arm slung around his shoulders as they get nearer. “I’m so glad you came after all. Come and meet Pez, darling – it’s his party, you’ll like him.”

“I already like his clothes,” Alex says.

“Isn’t he fun? June’s enamored.”

“Mr. Okonjo, I presume?” Alex says as he walks up to the table and sinks heavily into Nora’s seat as she perches on its arm. “Alex Claremont-Diaz. Great to meet you in person at last.”

“Mr. Claremont-Diaz,” Pez says, a Cheshire Cat grin blooming across his face. “The very man! That audit of the plans for the new shelter – exactly what we had hoped for. Our general counsel thinks you’re completely starkers, you know, but we wanted everything and by god, you let us have it. A building literally anyone can enter and navigate by themselves.”

Percy’s act was even more charming up close than on the phone, Alex thought. He’d been thrown when first started talking to Pez about the Foundation’s new shelter; the theatrical noblesse oblige was a lot to swallow, until you realized that Pez might be over-dramatic, but he was also sincere.

And really – who gave a shit how he behaved when he was throwing his family’s millions into building homes for Black and brown queer kids who’d lost theirs? Not just shoebox apartments on the shitty side of town, either; ADA-compliant little communes on tree-lined streets, with kitchens and nurses and career-counselors and waist-height raised beds in the garden.

And foosball tables anchored into the floor in a spot where there was enough room for kids in wheelchairs to get all the way around them.

“It’s been nice, working with an organization interested in advancing accessibility, not just avoiding litigation,” Alex allowed.

He was using his court voice, the one Nora called LegalBot 3000. Low timbre, absolutely no emotion. Because lawyers who get emotional in front of judges do not win cases. Lawyers who pile up case law in snowy white drifts do – and their clients get to go home with mechanized chairs and trained companion dogs and enough money to build ramps from their doorways to the sidewalk.

LegalBot comes in handy in other places too.

He didn’t say his first pass through the specs for the new Okonjo shelter had nearly brought him to tears. Or that he spent a long time that night standing in front of a dark window, looking out at the city below but seeing only his own blurry reflection. The fucking foosball table.

“You know, I’ve been meaning to mention it, but we did meet once, many moons ago,” Pez said. And Alex wants to say that couldn’t possibly be true, that Pez wasn’t the kind of person a person could forget. But he knows, in his own case, that almost anything from before the accident might be gone now, swept away on a tide of cortisol and adrenaline and just plain bad juju.

“Ages and ages hence, I’m not surprised you don’t remember. But you did make quite an impression – on me, of course, but also on…”

“Alex?”

“....my dear friend Hazza here. May I present the foundation’s executive director and my partner in crime, Henry Fox?”

Alex knows that voice. He turns in the big leather chair as slowly as he can, but he knows who that is. He knows exactly. Not even the toxic chemical soup his brain had marinated in for so long after the accident could burn all those memories away.

“Henry?”

“Christ, it is you. What are you doing here, of all places, Alex? Pez, did you know that…”

Henry looks almost the same. The blue eyes, the golden hair, the ridiculous shoulders. Twenty-some-odd years on, Alex is now perfectly aware of why he’d complained nonstop to June and Nora about Henry – a soupcon of self-knowledge is one of the only prizes you get for living so long – and everything he’d once bitched about is still there. There’s a sunburst of fine lines around those blue eyes now; they only draw more attention to their icy sparkle. That voice – the accent, the baritone warmth of it – is the same. Just genuinely fucking unfair, Alex thinks.

Henry and Pez are locked in a kind of staring contest across the table. Pez is making a wide-eyed face – a show of innocence, unjustly accused that a three-year-old could have seen through.

“The lawyer,” Henry says finally. “Of course you knew he’d be here, Pez. Because Alex is the lawyer. Who wrote the spectacular ADA brief. The one whose name was somehow never mentioned. At least, to me.”

“Got it in one, Haz!” Pez is grinning. June in the next chair over has a hand over her mouth, but her eyes are tracking the conversation like it’s a tennis match.

It’s as transparent a set-up as Alex has ever seen, but it almost doesn’t matter. If June and Nora had told him, Alex would have come anyway. He’s not thrown by inconvenient crushes anymore. Especially not twenty-year-old ones. Sometimes it’s good to see who people turned out to be, even if they did all that becoming without you.

He’s not sure Henry feels the same. The look he’s shooting Pez right now borders on murderous. But then he turns away from his friend and settles that blue star-beam gaze on Alex.

“Alex, it’s so good to see you.” Henry stands there awkwardly for moment, a bunch of printouts in one hand, a drink in the other. He puts them on the table, pulls over a chair, sits himself down right next to Alex. “I guess I don’t need to ask you what you’re doing, or doing here, now – but how are you? You look – you look good, Alex. Healthy, I mean.”

“I try,” Alex says. “Some days work better than others. You look pretty good yourself, Henry.”

Henry, Alex is delighted to see, still blushes with his whole face, deep rose-pink.

Alex had planned to drop by the fundraiser, meet Pez, visit with Nora and June, studiously ignore the electric charge swirling around the girls and his newest client – because there are things about his sister and his best friend he has absolutely no need to know – have a drink and write a check. He figured he’d be in and out in an hour, then start the long trek downtown on the M train, because there’s a chance the elevator at Lafayette’s still working. The one at Washington Square Park hasn’t for years.

But after an hour, he’s still sitting here, talking to Henry.

It’s easy. There’s nothing to gain here, and nothing to lose. He likes hearing about the shelter, about how hard Henry and Pez are working to make it not just passable but actively good. A resource even for kids who don’t move in. A blueprint for a new approach, replicable in other cities, propped up with economies of scale. It’s pie-in-the-sky in the best way, like listening to a fairytale – but if they get even half of what they want done, they’ll have done good for a bunch of kids with no one else in their corner.

Alex is charmed. The Pez-and-Henry show is a finely-tuned act, by now; they’ve done this little performance about the shelters -- first one in Brooklyn, then more across the five boroughs, across the country -- for donors for years. It’s got heart and hope and the jokes land just right.

Sitting and talking to Henry alone is better. Alex has a second drink.

When he stands up to go to the mens room, he grabs the quad from where it’s waiting next to his chair. From the corner of his eye, he watches Henry watch him cross the room with it.

He doesn’t expect Henry to say anything but when he gets back Henry nods at it and says: “The four feet keep it stable, then? Better than the single kind?”

“Yeah – that, and you don’t have to bend down to grab it. It’s for balance as much as support. And it’s pretty visible, which helps – less likely someone’s going to knock it out from under you because they just don’t see it, because it’s New York and nobody’s watching where they’re going.”

They sit and look at the quad for a minute.

“You never came back. After that night, it was like you were just gone – you, your mom, June. We knew about the accident but I didn’t know if you’d, you know, want to see us. See me. And then you were gone,” Henry says.

“We went back to Texas. Mom didn't run again, she gave up her seat.” Alex keeps his eyes on the quad. “And I didn’t. Want to see anyone. Not for a long time.”

Henry sips his drink. It’s still G&T’s. “Yet here you are. Moving mountains, Percy says. What changed?”

Alex turns to fully face Henry and smiles with all his teeth – a grin that's dazzling, broad and predatory.

“I got pissed off,” he says.

“June sent me this article about ADA compliance – which sounds like such a snooze, right? The kind of shit they talk about on the 2 p.m. Tuesday slot on NPR when there ain’t nobody listening. It’s boring, alright – right up until the moment it’s you that can’t get the door open at the Walmart, and the Walmart’s the only place in 100 miles that sells the medicine your kid needs, and by the way, this is in Texas, and it’s something like 95,000 degrees out in that parking lot. Or when you have to roll ten crosstown blocks in the snow before you can get on the subway, because two out of three subway stops don’t have fucking elevators. Every day, all winter long. Just for the priviledge of holding down a job. Then, it’s not boring. Then it’s life-altering. It’s infuriating. It’s unbelievably unfair and it makes me want to throw rocks at people.”

He pauses to catch his breath. Henry’s watching him with a small smile like this is the best show he’s seen in years.

“Throwing rocks feels good but it doesn't do jack. You know what makes governments and corporations actually fucking do something, Henry?”

“Litigation?”

“Bingo. I was back in law school so fast, Ma almost decided to run for her old seat again. But by then she was pretty much running Austin and didn’t think the place could survive without her, so she’s still down there. Law school made so much more sense when I knew why I was there.”

“And did you slay any dragons yet, St. George?”

“A couple. Plenty more where they came from.”

Henry leans forward across the low wooden table and puts his hand over Alex’s. His fingers are warm and dry. Alex looks at their hands touching and thinks: Oh. Oh.

“I had the most mortifying crush on you, you know,” Henry says. He looks at Alex calmly, blue eyes crinkled around the edges, but not at all nervous. “For years. I could hardly talk to you. Every time we met, I’d forget how to speak in full sentences.”

“I remember nothing of the kind.” Alex doesn’t move his hand. “I remember that you looked like you’d just retired from the kind of boy band that has a number in its name. But you talked like Oscar Wilde. And you were so unimpressed by this entire continent, I swear….”

“A number in its name? What – 3D? 4H?”

“Oh, fuck off.” Alex can feel that his grin is a little too wide. But fuck it. This is fun.

And Henry is grinning back.

And it’s so nice to talk to someone who knew him back then. Remembers him young and whole and unbroken. Who might always see the phantom of that glossier, more perfect Alex overlaid on his current, worn and perpetually tired self.

It’s what he sees first when he looks at Henry – the impossibly pretty face he remembers, cheeks boy-soft and flushed pink, superimposed on the man’s weathered skin.

Alex takes his hand back but leans forward in his seat towards Henry, puts his hand on Henry’s arm in a way that telegraphs that he’s speaking in confidence now – but also lets him feel Henry’s arm, warm and solid, beneath thin wool.

“You know,” Alex says, looking down at the glossy wooden table and lowering his voice as if sharing a secret. He exults as Henry leans in a bit to hear him. “There’s this place in Hell’s Kitchen that makes insane chile rellenos? Like, criminally good. I’ve had actual dreams about them. And I’m almost never this far uptown. It’s maybe ten blocks?”

He looks up slightly. He’s not sure he can pull it off anymore, but he peers up at Henry through his eyelashes.

For a while, a long time ago, that had been his best move.

“You feel like taking a walk?”

There’s a pause, and Alex thinks: Well, I tried. But Henry hunches his shoulders and leans further in toward Alex.

“Ten blocks. Alex,” he says, softening his voice until it can barely be heard above the ambient chatter filling the room. “Are you flirting with me?”

“Depends,” Alex says, voice just as soft. “Is it working?”

A smile breaks through the smirk that’s been hovering on Henry’s lips.

Henry leans back in his chair, gives Alex a quick, assessing glance, stands, and holds a hand out. “Right, then. Let’s go.”

Later, when they’re standing outside the four-by-eight-foot store front where Henry just had the best Mexican food he ever tasted, which left his lips burning with salt and spices, it’s dark and it’s cold and the conversation that’s been percolating between them for hours suddenly falters.

The sodium street lamp washes them both in shades of gold and gray. Midtown at night smells like diesel and pot and garbage bags. There’s probably not a less-romantic spot in the world, Alex thinks.

He stops walking and turns to Henry.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey, listen. I don’t know – I’m not sure I know how to do this part anymore? It’s been a long time. Like, a really long fucking time.”

Henry looks at him, rubs a thumb across his bottom lip like he’s thinking.

“Well, I think I remember,” Henry says. “Maybe, if I kiss you, it’ll come back to you?”

“Maybe,” Alex allows. “Henry, I like you, you know that -- I always have. But I mean -- haven’t we left it too late for – anything like this? I mean. Dinner is one thing. But it feels like we're walking into something more than dinner here and I don't know how to do that. I've been by myself a long time. I don't know if I still can do -- this. Whatever it is.”

Henry looks down at him, his eyes hooded in shadow, sodium-glare golden on his lips.

"Look, tonight can be just dinner. Or it can be just tonight. That's fine." Henry turns to look into the dark and empty streets.

"But I don’t think it’s too late for anything. We’re here. So long as we're here together, it's not too late. I might have never seen you again. You could have stayed in Texas, or taken up immigration law. Or died in that crash. But you didn't. You're here. I'm here. And I like you too. How often do we get a do-over?"

Henry reached out to take Alex's hand.

"In a million parallel universes, some tiny little thing went wrong somewhere and I never got to stand on this smelly mid-town sidewalk and tell you that for more than twenty years I never stopped thinking about the sound of your laugh. It was spectacularly unlikely, but we've got this chance. We've got this. Why not try?"

Alex hesitates. Then steps back into Henry's space and pushes up on his toes to kiss him.

Alright, he thinks. Alright.

He's got this.