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He could’ve sworn he’d left her right here. Had patted her on her shoulder, looked her dead in the eye and even said, “Stay here.”
And yet here she was not.
How did one lose a human child anyway? They made incessant amounts of noise all the time - somehow they made every squeak imaginable when you were trying to convince people that yes, your child was capable of being quiet, actually, but then kept decidedly quiet when you needed them most.
Bea would laugh at him and tell him that she wasn’t ever planning on getting knocked up again so she won’t be giving birth to another one for him - not that he even wanted another one. At least, not right now. And especially not as a replacement for the one he already had, thank you very much.
His mother wouldn’t be any help either. She’d wave a hand dismissively and say airily that all of her children had gotten lost at least once in their lives at one point or another, and they’d all been found eventually, hadn’t they? Not very reassuring.
Pez would probably be slightly more helpful - he’d be at the forefront of the search party, calling out his favourite endearments and using all manners of tricks to uncover her from where she’d snuck off to. But Pez was back in London, as was the rest of his family. They couldn’t help him now, here, at the Met in New York, one of the busiest cities in the world.
Henry began to wring his hands together. Fuck. What if she’d gotten kidnapped? What if some serial killer had lured her into their van, promising the new Wimpy Kid? Henry’d taught her well enough to not be easily tempted by sweets, but he’d unfortunately passed down his love of reading. He’d seen firsthand the way she would walk straight into a bookstore if it had books on the display outside, confident and without any hesitation. If someone had waved a copy of Geronimo Stilton at her face, he was fucked.
He quickened his pace and ducked into the American Wing. He couldn't even begin to imagine where she could have gone. He had difficulty anticipating what flavour of juice she wanted - mind you, she only liked three - so an entire museum’s worth of things to look at was certainly not in his favour. His eyes fixated on every blonde girl shorter than his hip, darting from one child to the other. He had to force himself to stop feeling like a predator for doing it - his daughter was missing.
It was Henry’s fault, of course it was. One didn't just tell a six-year-old girl to stay put and then be entirely unblamed when said six-year-old girl chose not to heed the instruction. But to his defence, he hadn't even been that far. He hadn't even left the exhibit. All he did was turn his back to her, walk two steps forward to take a picture of the Head of King David, and when he turned back around, she was gone.
He was about to turn on his heel and risk the judgement of the front desk by asking them to make an announcement on the loudspeaker before he saw a familiar set of pigtails in the far distance and stopped dead in his tracks. As he stepped closer, he could see that yes, that was her, thank God, in her yellow dress and everything. She was standing in front of a large painting of a man in what looked like a field of wheat. She was in deep conversation with a man in a green polo who had his back to the room.
Henry tensed and quickened his pace, all the while his brain was screaming, unhelpfully, serial killer! Serial killer! Serial killer!
When he was in earshot, though, it was clear that perhaps his assessment of “deep conversation” was too presumptuous - what Henry found instead was the man floundering and his daughter looking at him blankly.
“—uh, your mama? Or papa—”
“Papa, oui.”
“Oui,” He could hear the man muttering. “Your papa… ici? In the… musée?”
“Oui, il est là-bas.”
“Uh…”
It was at that moment that her eyes lifted and locked with his own. She beamed. “Daddy!”
Elise ran up to him and stopped at his legs, looking up at him with a guileless smile, the perfect picture of innocence. Henry held her by the shoulders, feeling the weight of the stress and panic fall off his shoulders. “Now, I don’t know about you, but I distinctly remember telling you to stay.”
“Sorry,” she said, not sounding very sorry at all. Henry made a mental note to teach her how to at least pretend to be contrite.
“You’re… she - you can speak English?”
Henry looked up. The man was turned towards him now. His eyes were the first thing Henry noticed. Wide and a deep brown, with impossibly long and dark eyelashes that seemed to touch his cheeks every time he blinked. And his mouth - it was open now in surprise and disbelief, but it was perfectly curved and bitten pink, and Henry had no problem picturing it curled into a smirk. A handsome serial killer, then.
“Well, I am English, so it’d be rather embarrassing if I couldn’t,” Henry said dryly.
“Well, your daughter only ever responded to me in French, so I’m sorry for assuming the little white British girl was actually a little white French girl.”
“Ah,” Henry said. “She tends to speak French to people she doesn't know. Or doesn't particularly like.”
The corner of his lip curled. He placed a hand on his heart and staggered back slightly. “Ouch. And where do I stand?”
Henry turned to Elise, who was already looking at him. He raised an eyebrow. She stared at him for a few beats, before turning to the man and shrugging. Henry stifled a snort.
“50/50, got it,” The man said solemnly.
“Thank you for watching her,” Henry said haltingly, holding out a hand for Elise. “And sorry, for having to watch her - I swear she usually listens to me.”
The man raised both his hands. “Hey, man, I get it - I can’t count the number of times I’ve lost my sister’s kid, and the little shit’s pushing twelve. Don’t tell her I said that, though.”
“That you’ve lost her child an alarming number of times or that you’ve just called them a little shit?”
“Oh, she already knows Isaac’s an asshole,” he waved a hand dismissively. “However, he only eats the grilled cheese that I make and thinks I’m the best uncle in the world - his words, not mine - and I’d very much like to keep my babysitting privileges, so. What she doesn't know won’t hurt her.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
“I’m glad,” There was that smirk - and yep, it was exactly as devastating as Henry imagined. Perhaps not a serial killer, then, but something far more dangerous.
“Well, thank you, again, for looking out for Elise,” Henry started, tugging on Elise’s hand now. “I’m afraid we have to go now -”
“What?” Elise cried out. “We just got here. You haven't even seen The Dance Class yet.”
“I could have if someone listened to instructions,” Henry raised an eyebrow challengingly. “I can’t have you running away from me every time I look away, Elise.”
“Daddy -”
“I could be overstepping here,” The man interrupted, his tone slightly hesitant. “But it would be a shame if you left early without having properly seen the museum yet. I could look after your daughter while you look around. I mean, as in, I tag along and keep an eye out on her.”
Henry blinked at him. “I…”
“Obviously, you’re absolutely not obliged to if you don’t want to. Stranger danger and all that, but you’d be there the entire time. And, hey, uncle of the year, remember?”
Henry raised an eyebrow. “Forgive me if I have reservations, when not five minutes ago you mentioned having regularly lost your nephew.”
“Yeah, but I have a feeling it’s gonna be a different situation with your daughter.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because she won’t let me get away with anything, for one,” The man snorted. As if to agree, Elise nodded her head gravely.
Henry began to smile, but quickly smothered it and replaced it with an expression as if to say Well, what can you do? “That’s very kind of you, but we wouldn't want to bother your visit.”
“Nah, are you kidding? I’ve been here a million times already, you wouldn’t be bothering me at all.” The man waved his hand dismissively. “I’m an artist, I come here to draw all the time. Which also means that I’m probably the perfect person to show you around.”
Henry hesitated. The man looked at him expectantly, expression open and kind. Henry didn’t know why, but he believed he had good intentions. He was polite, charming, and had a dry, sarcastic humour that complemented his own. Elise was fine with him, too, which spoke volumes - she had the best radar for arseholes. She’d never approved any of his boyfriends, and every single one of them turned out to be horrid. There was nothing more humbling than being dumped by your boyfriend and having your toddler daughter say, “I told you so,” when you got home.
And, fine, maybe it was the looks, too - Henry hadn't had sex in well over eight months, so could you blame him? This move to New York had been too stressful for him to even think of getting himself off, let alone put in the effort to actually find someone to sleep with. New York was busy streets and flashing lights and people constantly rushing for something; and sure, there were beautiful people here, but nobody else slowed down the rush of the city quite like this man did.
When Henry hesitated for too long, Elise looked up at him and frowned. “Papa, allez-y,” She said impatiently. Daddy, come on.
“T’es sûr?” A subtle point of the chin towards the man. Are you sure?
“Ouuuuuui,” She dragged out, rolling her eyes dramatically. That was that, then.
“Alright, uh…”
“Alex,” The man said, and was Henry hallucinating or did he hear a slight Southern twang in his voice?
“Alex,” Henry repeated firmly, if only to test the sound of the name in his mouth. “Lead the way, then.”
The grin that spread across Alex’s lips then was nothing short of lethal. All at once, Henry became acutely aware that this had the potential to be the best or worst decision he would ever make in his entire life. He was leaning more towards the latter.
“The Dance Class, right?” Alex said as he weaved his way through the throngs of people, Henry and Elise at his tail. Once they were out of the exhibit and in the hallway, Alex fell into step with them. Elise was in front of them now, looking down and following the diagonal lines of the hardwood floors, occasionally glancing back at him.
“You said you were an artist?”
Alex glanced at him, and the corner of his mouth quirked upwards. “I did. I am. I do mostly landscapes, though. And I paint, usually, but I live nearby, and I like to come in every other week to sketch.” He unearthed something from his back pocket: a black sketchbook, folded in half.
Henry glanced at the book a beat too long, a detail Alex clocked almost immediately. He flipped it open and handed it to Henry. “Here.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t -”
“Please,” Alex nodded. Henry stared at him for a beat, before taking the sketchbook from him hesitantly. He flipped through the pages and blinked.
“Oh, fuck,” he said inelegantly. Alex let out a surprised snort. “You okay there?”
Inside the sketchbook were pages and pages of portraits. Some in pen, some in pencil. They were rough sketches, so most of them weren’t particularly detailed, but it was the pure humanity in them that stole Henry’s breath away. Alex managed to capture the most beautiful moments - things that must have happened in a split second. Two girls with their heads leaning against each other. A man staring wide-eyed at a sculpture. A small boy kneeling on the floor, tying a young girl’s shoelaces. A mother and her baby looking at a painting, the baby’s hand stretching towards it.
He felt a hand on his elbow and startled. Alex was gently guiding him forward; he hadn’t noticed that he’d stopped walking. Elise, now flapping her arms up and down like a bird in front of them, was still completely oblivious.
“Alex,” Henry began seriously. “This is incredible.”
“Well,” Alex began to shrug, but Henry shook his head insistently. “No, Alex. Truly. You have a gift.”
Alex looked at him for a beat, intense brown eyes gazing into his. He nodded his head once, twice. “Thank you.”
Henry looked away and kept his gaze forward. The comfortable silence between them didn’t last for long; Henry saw it before Alex pointed it out - or rather, Elise did. “The Dance Class!”
She grabbed Henry’s hand and dragged him forward. Alex looked on, amused, as Henry huffed out a laugh and quickened his pace. They stopped in front of the painting and just looked. It truly was a remarkable painting. From the colours to the delicate way it was painted - he’d seen the brushstrokes from pictures on the internet, but here, they looked almost recent, as though Degas only just finished painting seconds ago.
In the issuing silence, Alex murmured, “So why The Dance Class?”
“Hm?” Henry’s hands were on Elise’s shoulders; they were both staring at the painting, as if trying to commit every colour to memory.
“You look like a fan of art, so it could just be a general interest, but somehow I doubt it. I think there’s a story.”
“You do, do you?” Henry was still looking at the painting, and he hoped it meant that Alex couldn’t see the corner of his lip curving upwards. “We lived in Paris before we moved here. Had a small apartment near the Musée d’Orsay and, much like you, we went in to visit every weekend or so. And, of course, as you might have already known, the companion piece is displayed there. And Elise always gravitated towards it, for some reason. So, we’d come in about every Sunday, walk around, sit on the benches, but we’d always, always visit the painting last, right before we left. I don’t know why, it’s just… sentimental.”
“That’s sweet,” Alex said in a low murmur.
A comfortable lull washed over them then, before Elise snapped out of her trance and tugged Henry’s hand. “Daddy. Phone.”
Henry rolled his eyes and took it out of his pocket. After unlocking it, he handed it to her, and she immediately stepped closer to the painting to snap pictures. From the corner of his eye, he could see Alex looking on at the scene in amusement.
“Elise insists on being the one to take pictures because, according to her, I can’t be trusted anywhere near a camera,” Henry explained, long-suffering. “She needs to constantly be doing something. I reckon it’s how I lost her in the first place - I’d turned around to take a photo of the Head of King David myself, and when I turned around she was gone; suppose she walked away because she got bored. She can’t sit still otherwise, so she’s the one who takes the pictures, usually.”
“But she’s…”
“Short? Yes,” They watched as Elise, whose head reached a good three feet below the bottom of the frame, stretched her arms out high above her head, snapping dozens of photos every two seconds. He didn’t have to go through them to know they would be blurry and cropped.
"So, her mom’s French, huh?”
Henry tore his eyes away from Elise and finally turned towards Alex.
“Elise?”
Henry had to suppress the urge to laugh. It was a reasonable assumption to make, obviously; they’d lived in France for a few years and were both fluent in French. And at that point a French woman might as well have been his partner and the mother of his child, what with the amount of times the government had accidentally generated him one. But Henry found himself desperate to correct Alex now; somehow, he couldn’t bear the thought of Alex thinking he was in a relationship or, God forbid, heterosexual.
“She is your daughter, right, and not your alarmingly younger sister or anything? I mean, judging by the way she’s called you Daddy multiple times already, I feel like I’ve hit it straight out of the park. Plus, she looks exactly like you.”
Another reason why people thought Elise was biologically his - while Henry hadn’t been at all involved in Elise’s conception, she did look alarmingly like him. It had all been a complete coincidence when Elise ended up having Danny’s blonde hair and Bea’s bone structure.
“Well, yes. But I’m not… her mother is actually my sister.”
Alex’s eyebrows flew into his hairline. Henry’s eyes widened, and his cheeks burned fiery and hot as he realised too late the way he phrased it. “Oh, God - no! Not - not in that way, at all. She - I’m gay. And my sister’s asexual.” Alex only looked more confused, though there was a hint of amusement now. “She had a boyfriend a few years ago before she realised she was asexual, but by the time she realised it she’d gotten pregnant. And I’d always wanted children, so I thought why not and asked her if I could adopt her, and she was alright with it and carried the pregnancy to term. So, you know. My sister’s, if we’re being technical. Which explains the, uh… face. And all that. But legally, I’m her father. So.”
Alex let out a laugh - the kind of loud, genuine laughter that attracted the attention of Elise and the people around them but was so full of joy nobody seemed bothered. But even if they did, Henry wouldn’t have cared. He’d have gladly embarrassed himself in front of this man as many times as he needed to if it meant he’d laugh like that again.
“Got it,” Alex said after a while, his eyes twinkling. Henry flushed.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“Am I not allowed to?”
“I happen to think it’s bad manners, actually, to let someone new to the city suffer in embarrassment by themselves while a local looks on."
“Bad manners, huh?” Alex was grinning, looking at Henry like he was a puzzle to solve, or a sunrise he was itching to paint.
“Hm,” Henry hummed, affirmative. “Exceptionally rude, too. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“And what would you suggest I do, then?”
“Share an embarrassing story as well, for one. Preferably something worse, so that it takes the heat off me, of course.”
“Of course,” Alex echoed. “And was my terrible babysitting confession not embarrassing enough for you?”
“Considering you called yourself the world’s greatest uncle - no, not really.”
“Jesus, you're strict,” Alex cast his eyes briefly towards the high ceiling. He met Henry’s eyes again. “Okay, I got one. How about the time I went to the Met on a Saturday morning and a little girl stood next to me while I was looking at a painting, and I was worried she’d lost her parents, so I tried talking to her… and then learned that she only spoke French. I spent five minutes embarrassing myself by speaking broken French to this girl only to find out she could speak in English the whole time… and then found out she had a super hot single dad, and I’d ruined everything. That embarrassing enough for you?”
Henry’s throat went dry. Alex was still looking at him expectantly, softly, and Henry had to hold his breath to keep from shuddering. “No,” Henry breathed. The moment between them was so tense, so delicate, Henry felt as though one small breath could shatter it completely. “That’s not embarrassing at all, actually. And you didn’t… ruin anything.”
“I didn’t?” So, so soft.
“No,” Elise spoke up. Henry hadn’t even realised she’d stopped taking pictures and was back by his side. She was looking up at Alex shrewdly.
Alex smiled. “No?” He hesitated, and then, “In that case, I -”
Before he could continue, his phone started blaring in his pocket. After shooting apologetic looks at the other museum goers, he answered the call and stepped away after holding up one finger at Henry and Elise and mouthing, “Sorry, one minute.”
When Alex was out of earshot, Elise turned to him. “Are you going to date Alex now?”
Henry’s cheeks flushed crimson. “My God. Darling. I don’t know.”
“He likes you,” Elise pointed out, as easy as anything. “And you like him, don’t you?”
“We just moved here, Elise.” Henry ran a hand over his face. “I don’t have time for romance.”
“Yes, you do," Elise said indignantly, and, okay, he really needed to stop letting her spend so much time with Pez.
Before Henry could say anything in response, Alex started walking back towards them. “My sister,” Alex offered, unprompted, as he pocketed his phone. “Crazy coincidence, but she’s actually pregnant with my baby, too.”
“Fuck off,” Henry rolled his eyes. Beside him, Elise gave a disapproving tut.
Alex laughed, and fuck, Henry really needed to figure out how he could make him do that over and over again forever. “My sister actually is pregnant, though, I wasn't lying about that - she needs me to pick something up, which means I unfortunately have to leave.”
“Oh,” Henry said. “Oh, wow.”
Henry cursed himself for feeling disappointed. He’d met the man not thirty minutes ago. This was ridiculous. Henry was a grown man. He had a stable job. A daughter. An apartment that didn’t have black mould on the ceiling.
But Alex was something else. Something different. He’d never met anyone quite like him before; had never met anyone able to disarm him that quickly, who could match his wit without a second’s hesitation, who his daughter approved of. Could they work? They both lived in New York. And Henry worked mostly from home anyway, so he wouldn’t mind doing most of the travelling if he needed to. They could work. Henry very much wanted to try.
“Yeah, I have to go now but,” Alex ripped off a page from his sketchbook and scribbled something on the back. “Here,” He pressed it into Henry’s hand, and there was so much intention in the heat of his touch that it had Henry inhaling sharply as he looked up into Alex’s impossibly brown eyes. Alex gave him a crooked smirk. “Welcome to New York, sweetheart.”
He gave him a wink and turned on his heel, disappearing out of the hall and out of sight. Henry gaped at the spot he left for an embarrassingly long time before he recovered enough to look down at the paper Alex left him.
It was a sketch of him and Elise in front of The Dance Class. Henry didn’t even know when Alex would have had the time to draw them without him noticing. It was done in blue pen, their bodies made up of nothing but scribbles, but their faces detailed and animated. In the sketch, Henry’s hands were on Elise’s shoulders, and they both had matching looks of amazement and contentment on their faces as they gazed at the painting. On the other side of the sketch was a set of numbers, and an inscription that said, I think you’re stupidly hot and I like you a crazy amount and would love to invite you out for dinner sometime. Embarrassing enough for you?