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Alex realises he should have thought to play this when he lived in the White House, with it’s many many rooms, and unknown nooks and crannies, that Alex had discovered whilst he was bouncing around it bored. But then the White House had not been his. That house belonged to America.
This house though, this house belongs to Alex and Henry. Alex, in the dark, grins at the thought. It is Henry’s house really, it is his name on the deed, but it was never a thought to either of them that this house was not Alex’s too. It wasn’t even that it was Alex or Henry’s, it was Alex & Henry’s. Their home.
Alex loves thinking of them as a unit, has become one of those people who says ‘we’ all the time when asked questions, one half of a smug happy couple. But he can’t help it, he wants to stand on the steps of the brownstone each morning, and tell every person that passes that he and Henry love each other, even if they already know. But Alex would have liked if they had been the ones to tell them that; tell them how in love they were, rather than have had their love splayed against the tabloids like it was a sordid little secret.
‘100! Ready or not, here I come!’
Alex has to bite his lip to stop from laughing. He had taken ages to find Henry—hiding in one of the cardboard boxes sitting unpacked in their guests rooms— and is determined to stay still and silent and not be discovered for ages. He kinda wishes he had brought his phone with him; he’s not used to just sitting and waiting.
Alex does what he does best in the absence of technological distractions, and mentally starts to write some lists. He starts with an easy one, one of the ones he does when he can’t sleep: the states. Alabama, Alaska, Arizona…
He hears Henry’s footsteps on the stairs, and the clack of David’s paws beside him.
‘Where he is, Davey, hey? Do you think you can sniff him out?’
Alex wants to shout that that’s an unfair advantage, but that would defeat the purpose of the game. Arkansas, California, Colorado…
Alex hadn’t even thought to use David. He’d left him happily in the kitchen, gnawing on some chicken left over from his and Henry’s lunch; it got him fast into David’s favour if he associated his new dad with food.
Their collective treads edge closer and Alex focuses on trying to breathe as quietly as possible. Connecticut, Delaware, Florida…
Henry walks straight past him and Alex would do a fist pump if he could, not that he has the room to do so.
He listens to Henry and David proceed to the next floor, and gets back to his list. He manages to finish the states, the Presidents, every track on every Killers album. His left foot has gone completely dead, and his thigh is starting to cramp, but he bites his lip and thinks of something else to list. Things he wants to teach Henry to cook, or just things he wants to do with Henry, oh well that’s definitely an exciting list.
Alex’s mind drifts, his fingers absentmindedly scratching at his leg, and then much to his chagrin, in his current position, he suddenly realises he really needs to think of a different list.
Fuck, ok, people he hates: Henry’s grandmother is high on that list, and fucking Richards, and—
‘Found you!’
Alex screams, and is met immediately with Henry’s laugh, the proper hearty one. He had been too caught up in distracting himself with lists, to distract himself from other lists, that he hadn’t heard his boyfriend return.
‘You win’ Henry says, putting his hand out to help Alex out ‘I think you beat me by a good twenty minutes.’
Alex grabs Henry’s warm hand and realises at once that he cannot get up.
‘Ah’ Henry says, dipping his voice into a Bond villain accent ‘I see we have a problem.’
Alex giggles, actually giggles, fuck he’s so in love it’s ridiculous. Look at him and his boyfriend, in their home, playing hide and seek, reclaiming their childhood. They’re fucking adorable, they’re absolutely sickening.
Henry nudges the laundry basket sideways and Alex puts his hands out to cushion his fall, David coming to lick his face immediately.
‘Hi boy’ Alex grimaces with a grin ‘you’re so good at the finding.’
Alex manages to crawl out of the basket in the midst of David’s ministrations and hooks his legs through Henry’s. Henry falls on his side far too elegantly, wraps his arms around Alex at once, and buries his face in his neck.
Alex breathes Henry in, rubbing his hands up and down his back, more than happy to lie on the floor of their hallway, and cuddle. David, abandons them and trots back down the stairs, as Alex propels them both until he is straddling Henry’s hips.
Henry’s smile quirks along with his eyebrow and Alex grins impishly down at him.
‘So I had a lot of time to think while I was hiding, of how to indulge our adulthood, as well as reclaim our childhood.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Henry grins, putting his hands on Alex’s hips and squeezing ‘do tell.’
David’s scratching at their bedroom door an hour later, lets them know that he is very very done with playing hide and seek.
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One thing that Alex had quickly learnt when it came to parenting, is that research could only get you so far. He knew the benefits of tummy time and sensory toys and responding to their babbling with babbling. He knew all the things they should be doing, but that didn’t mean the girls always got the memo.
Like right now, where he’s trying to get the girls to pull a muslin off their own faces. Victoria was grabbing it off within seconds, but Eleanor just kept crying.
Alex swipes the muslin from her face and bends to blow raspberries into her neck until she’s gurgling with laughter. Victoria beside him, rolls onto her back, and starts trying to eat her foot.
‘Mija’ he says gently to Eleanor ‘it’s a survival skill, baby girl. So that you get it off your own face, if you need to.’
Eleanor chews her fist in response and Alex bends to kiss her head, before he gently lays the muslin back over her face, and removes it himself.
‘Peekaboo!’
Eleanor laughs, her eyes lighting up and Alex beams, and drops it over her face again.
‘Peekaboo!’
Alex does this a couple more times, before Victoria decides she wants to join in and rolls onto her front again, reaching for her sister’s foot, and then the muslin.
‘Here, darling’ Alex says, picking her up and lying her beside Eleanor, before he grabs the muslin again, drops it over their faces, and removes it before Victoria can.
‘Peekaboo!’
Both of the girls laugh, Victoria waving her arms and legs with excitement and Alex beams, his heart as is always the case, feeling exceedingly full.
‘Guess who finally went?’ Henry says as he comes in through the door from the kitchen, David trotting ahead of him to check on the girls.
‘Good job, Davey’ Alex says, rubbing his head, David leaning into his touch.
Henry sits beside Alex, and lays his head on his shoulder.
‘That can’t be comfortable’ Alex says to him as Henry squeezes Eleanor’s foot gently.
‘Not particularly, no. What are we doing, are we playing peep?’
‘Trying to, anyway’ Alex says ‘I was trying to get them to take the muslin off their faces themselves, but Eleanor is not having it.’
Henry lifts his head off Alex’s shoulder, kissing his temple as he does so, and lays the muslin over the girls’ faces again. Victoria, having turned her head to where David is lying beside her, is indignant about it this time, and she rolls over in protest.
Eleanor, waves one tiny hand against the cloth before Henry lifts it off her and proclaims ‘peep!’. Eleanor laughs for a second, but then starts to cry.
‘Oh, sweet girl,’ Henry says gently as he picks her up ‘you’re ok, it’s ok.’
Henry rocks her, rubbing his hand on her back, and turns to Alex
‘Well at least we know she cries if she can’t get the blanket off, that’s one way to survive.’
Alex chuckles and kisses Eleanor’s head. Even though she may not have got the memo, they’d keep trying; but she’d figured it out nonetheless, she knew her daddies would pick her up if she cried, of course they would.
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‘100, I’m coming to get you!’
Alex removes his hands from his eyes, where he is standing in the hallway, and heads for their living room to start looking, though he doesn’t have very far to go.
He has to bite his lip to stop himself from laughing. He’s used to the inept ‘hiding’ the girls do, the constant ‘Where is Victoria gone?’ or ‘Where did Eleanor go?’ as the girls hid under tables, or faced towards a wall and then when they ‘revealed’ themselves exclaiming ‘there she is!’. With the girls now two and a half, there has been months of ‘there she is!’, with neither of their daughters ever tiring of it.
But this is next level adorable: Eleanor standing in the middle of the living room with her hands over her face.
‘Where has Eleanor gone?’ Alex muses alone as he walks into the room, and she giggles ‘oh where could she be? Has anyone seen my daughter? Mija? Eleanor? Where are you, sweetie?’
As Alex lifts up the piano lid, Eleanor removes her hands and proclaims ‘Papa!’
‘Oh’ Alex gasps, clutching his hand to his chest ‘there you are!’
Eleanor giggles and runs off to stand behind their sofa that faces the window.
‘Oh no, she’s gone again! Where could she be?’
Eleanor runs out from behind the sofa, laughing and Alex picks her up and tickles her, as she giggles and squirms in his arms.
‘I found you’ he says, kissing her head.
This continues for a few minutes, where Eleanor ‘hides’ with a cushion in front of her, standing behind a kitchen chair, and standing behind the curtains with her arms wrapped around them. While Alex is ‘looking’ for her when she is trying to hide behind David in his doggy bed, Henry and Victoria return from the grocery store, and Victoria exclaims ‘I play!’
She stands in the kitchen, with her hands on her hips before she runs back into the hallway and shouts ‘Found you, Daddy!’, and then within a moment runs back into the kitchen, and declares ‘Found you, Papa!’ to Alex, who has not moved.
‘Well done, mija’ he grins, biting his lip ‘such good finding.’
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Henry has been hiding in Eleanor’s wardrobe for five minutes, when his phone starts to ring. Upon seeing that it’s his grandmother, he ignores the call, but she rings again immediately. Henry answers with a whispered ‘hello’.
‘Why are you whispering?’ she snaps at once.
Henry has long since stopped caring about what his grandmother thinks. He feels free every time he fails to care, every time he manages to enrage her purely by living his happy life so he replies, still whispering
‘I’m playing hide and seek.’
‘What?’ his grandmother spits ‘well stop, I need to talk to you and I can’t when you won’t speak at a normal volume.’
‘I can’t stop, I haven’t been found yet, and Victoria is still looking.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake.’
Henry has to stop himself laughing down the line at her. He can’t imagine his grandmother ever played hide and seek when her daughters were little. She wouldn’t understand the seriousness of which four-year-olds took games.
Henry misses when the girls would simply close their eyes and presume they could not be seen, but he loves this too, actually playing properly with them. They were so fun, their daughters, it’s the most fun he’s ever known, hanging out with them and Alex.
Henry doesn’t understand parents who try and mould their kids how they want them to be, when it’s the best thing in the world learning who they are, and how unique and special they are as their own people.
So, if Victoria wants to find him of her own merit, and have Henry stay hidden until she does so, then he is staying in this wardrobe until told otherwise.
‘You can call me back, if you want’ Henry tells his grandmother.
He really hopes she doesn’t want to, and is rewarded with a ‘for goodness sake’ again before she hangs up without saying goodbye. Henry expects a sternly worded e-mail from her private secretary later; he’ll get to it when he gets to it.
Henry puts his phone back in his pocket and runs his fingers over Victoria’s clothes, the bright and fun patterns, clothes made for play, rather than prestige.
He hears Eleanor be found, hiding in his and Alex’s bathtub, and the two of them chattering before they come into Eleanor’s room. Victoria beams when she pulls open her wardrobe door, and throws her arms out in victory, declaring ‘I found you, Daddy!’
‘Yes, you did, well done’ Henry smiles as he extracts himself somewhat clumsily out of the wardrobe and falls to the floor in the process. He’s reminded vividly of falling out half naked in front of Zahra, the panic that had rushed through him; how far away that feeling is now.
‘Are you ok, Daddy?’ Eleanor asks as he stands up.
‘I’m fine, thank you sweetie, should we go find Papa?’
‘Uhuh’ they say together and the girls run out of the room.
Henry tries not to help too much as they keep looking, but after a while he’s not sure he’d be much help anyway. There’s surely only so many places Alex can fit? Not that that has stopped him before.
Victoria eventually finds him in the cupboard under the sink, and Henry has to physically reach in and pull him out, whereupon Alex lies panting on the floor, moving his arms and legs as if he is making snow angels.
‘I win’ he says breathlessly, and the girls laugh as Henry rolls his eyes with exasperated affection. Alex smells of bleach for the rest of the afternoon, claiming it is worth it. Henry knows he’s means it, it makes his heart warm, how they can act like big kids, and reclaim a bit of joy every time they do.