Work Text:
There’s a heavy pause after Alex’s last question.
They’ve never spoken about this before, Henry realizes suddenly. They have never strayed this far into the uncharted territory of Henry’s personal life - the one locked away in the abandoned mess of what’s left of his heart.
Alex knows, of course - everyone in the world knows - but it’s the first time it’s come from Henry.
Have you ever had your heart broken?
He doesn’t even have to think about his answer. He only pauses because it comes back to him in such a rush, taking the remaining air out of his lungs, stopping his heart devastatingly, just as it did that night - and the night after, and the night after - and every moment he’s spent thinking about that day since it happened.
No. It wasn’t hard to think about his answer at all.
“The day my dad died,” he says, voice measured, even. Practiced.
He doesn’t look at Alex as he says it, dreading to see the light in his eyes fade and pity take over - a facade of care. A mask, though even that is giving the bland and rehearsed look of remorse Henry has seen a million times over too much credit.
Henry knew that look - dreaded it.
He doesn’t know if he can stand Alex - Alex , so full of care and life and love - looking at him the way everyone else did whenever his father was mentioned.
But Alex Claremont Diaz would never fail to surprise him, it seems. Even now.
Even now, as he reaches a gentle hand down to Henry’s thigh. And the touch is neither sensual nor electrifying, but lingering.
Grounding.
There is a soft look in Alex’s eyes when Henry meets them - because how on earth can he not? - as he runs his thumb against the skin of Henry’s leg. It is sadness and grief and not quite understanding but trying all wrapped into one and Henry can do nothing but push it all down, down, down, like he always does.
He offers Alex a tight lipped smile before looking down, too afraid that if he bares witness to this fucking marvelous person beside him, he’ll give too much of himself away. Alex is worth more than that.
The silence stretches on. Alex’s hand stays on his thigh, warm and steady and -
Henry clears his throat.
“Any more questions?” he asks, his voice high in an attempt to keep the light there. They were fine only a moment ago, joking and laughing and happy, and now there was this - a darkness shrouding the room because Henry doesn’t seem to know how to keep his bloody mouth shut for once.
He can feel his chest tighten in his regret, feeling - knowing - this is his fault, as it always is, as it always will be, my fault, my fault, my -
“Can you tell me about him?”
The question is so sudden, so unlike anything Henry was imagining would come next, that it practically jolts him back into this moment. He almost finds it ironic how that is what saves him from spiraling any further.
Alex’s eyes are wide when Henry finds them again. He looks as shocked as Henry feels, if not more so. His lips are parted slightly, like he’s waiting for the words to magically tumble back into his mouth.
“Shit,” Alex says, under his breath, after more than thirty seconds of silence passing between them. Then, louder, “Shit, I didn’t mean to - I mean, I did, but I didn’t realize - ”
“Alex,” Henry starts, not entirely sure what to say next, though he gets no choice as Alex continues. His hand is tight around his glass, condensation dripping between his fingers.
“Fuck, I am such an asshole,” Alex swears, running a hand through his hair. He looks over at Henry, so apologetic it’s endearing. Henry feels something warm settle in his chest, a feeling he has only recently begun to describe as, simply, Alex. A small smile threatens to spread across Henry’s cheeks.
“Alex - ”
“You don’t have to tell me anything. I’m sorry, just forget I - ”
“Alex.”
Wide, warm, brown eyes lock with his when Henry places cold fingers against the other boy’s jaw, effectively shutting him up. He looks like he’s bracing himself, and Henry realizes suddenly this is the most nervous he’s ever seen him.
“Christ, you’re almost as bad as I am,” he says, brushing his thumb once, twice against the line of Alex’s cheekbone, selfishly, before pulling away. “It’s alright, love. There’s no need for you to apologize. None, you hear?”
Alex’s taut posture lessens, eases, and Henry doesn’t know whether it’s from the slip of calling him love or the reassurance that everything is alright.
“I didn’t mean to be… insensitive?” Alex tries, grimacing, and Henry laughs quietly.
“You weren’t. I promise.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything, if you don’t want to. You really don’t.”
“No, no, it’s…” Henry trails off, looking away, the ice cream in his lap completely forgotten.
Whenever Henry was asked about his dad - back when people still felt obligated to ask about him - he’d deflect their practiced concern. He would tell them what he thought they wanted to hear. He wouldn’t answer at all.
He has never, in all his life since his father’s death, felt comfortable enough to tell the truth.
Never until now.
“Did you know he was originally trained for stage acting?”
Alex’s brows lift slightly in his surprise.
“Really?”
Henry hums, leaning down to place his glass on the floor, waiting for Alex to do the same before continuing.
“He studied Shakespeare in school, worked his way up for a few years until he starred in Henry V for the Royal Shakespeare Company,” he admits. Then, with another twinge plucking at the strings of his heart, he says, “It’s where he met my mum.”
Alex’s eyes light up immediately. “Henry V?”
Henry grins. “It’s better than being named after Macbeth.”
“True. Continue.”
Henry laughs, leaning farther back into the cushions of the settee. There’s something he hasn’t felt in years taking over every nerve in his body, memories coming back that don’t hurt, only ache. But not in a bad way. Not anymore.
“She saw him in one of the shows, and snuck past everyone one of her personal guards to meet him backstage. They must have hit it off or else I wouldn’t be here.”
Alex smiles, leaning in closer beside him, his hand finding Henry’s thigh again. Grounding.
“My grandfather was against it, of course,” Henry says, and he can’t really help it if something bitter and resentful seeps into his tone. “He wasn’t a duke or anything that he deemed worthy of the spouse of a princess. They didn’t care, though.”
Henry always got excited when he told this part. It made him happy to know his parents found a way to each other. It gives him hope that one day he might find a way, too.
“The crown forbade their marriage under their supervision, so they left Buckingham, eloped in a small chapel near Brighton,” Henry waxes, and he knows his voice goes soft as he says it, but how can it not? “And he married her anyway.”
He can feel Alex’s eyes on him, can see the warmth of them, through his periphery.
“That’s so romantic,” is what Alex responds with and Henry’s smile only grows.
“They loved each other so much,” he whispers, and there’s pain in the statement, to know they had so little time, but beauty in it, too. To know that they did have time, no matter how little. “They never let anyone doubt that.”
Henry breathes. Alex’s hand stays on his leg.
“What was he like,” Alex asks, voice small, afraid he’s stepping too far, but when Henry looks back at him, he continues, undeterred, “when you were growing up?”
And no one has ever asked him that.
It was always What was it like, being the son of James Bond? and What was your favorite of his films? and What did you inherit after he died?
Like he was only the characters he portrayed on screen. Like he was never real.
Warmth settles in his chest, all too familiar, along with the aching. It’s a juxtaposition of feelings all wrapped in one, godforsaken mess, and Henry is almost afraid he won’t be able to answer.
But he does.
“He was, undoubtedly, the best person I’ve ever known,” Henry says, truths tumbling free without a second of hesitation.
It’s frightening, terrifying, how comfortable he is, telling Alex this. How right it feels that he is the one Henry is laying himself bare for. But then Alex looks at him like that, smiles at him like that, and. Well. It isn’t so scary anymore.
“You know,” Henry goes on, too far gone to stop, but willing all the same, “he hated watching reruns of his movies. Despised them, even.”
Alex laughs, eyes crinkling beautifully, leaning his head back against the cushions, brushing against Henry’s shoulder. “No way.”
“Crazy, I know,” he shrugs, still truly bewildered at his father’s disdain toward his own hard work. “Anytime they’d come on, he’d say to me, ‘Henry, if you really wanted to see me act, you’d ask me to compliment your mother’s cooking. Watch something that is actually worth your time.’”
Henry shakes his head at the memory, remembering the way his mother glowered until his father pressed a million and one kisses to her nose, her cheeks, her eyelids.
Alex is grinning now, biting his lip to hold in another laugh.
“I never listened, obviously,” Henry states, tilting his head so it rested alongside Alex’s. “My dad was James Bond. I was there when they filmed the third one, by the way.”
“It’s the best one.”
“Exactly,” Henry agrees, feeling himself sink into the memories he stowed away deep in his mind, within all the little rooms he’s kept locked, no key to reopen them. And here he was, kicking the doors down.
“He hated drinking tea - I’m convinced he was the only person in all of Britain who didn’t - but he wasn’t a fan of coffee, either,” he continues, his hand dropping down to where Alex’s is, trailing his fingers across the veins, gently. “He liked hot chocolate, though. The old, packaged ones that you can buy anywhere. He said they reminded him of late night rehearsals before shows.
“He liked watching old movies - Gone with the Wind, Singin’ in the Rain, anything like that. God, I swear I can recite the entirety of Casablanca by memory , if I really tried,” Henry chuckles, shaking his head in exasperation. “His favorite record was a used copy of Ricky Nelson he bought the first time he visited the states. His first car was this old, red - Christ, I can't even remember what kind of car it was - that he taught me how to drive in one summer on vacation at his old house in Brighton. He was devastated when it finally broke down.
“He taught me how to play the piano, and he taught Bea how to play the guitar. He always said that if the whole being heirs to the throne thing never worked out, we’d make a good band. He did have, and I mean this with all the love in the world, the worst singing voice you have ever heard,” Henry states, delighting in the familiar sound of Alex’s laugh. “Second to mine, probably.”
He’s never told anyone this much about his father before. No one has ever been this willing to listen.
No one but Alex.
“When I turned seven,” Henry starts, quietly, feeling something tug within him at the need to tell Alex this particular memory, “he gave me a telescope, and he taught me how to find Orion. And he told me that stars are the one thing we can count on to never change. They’re always there. He said that if I ever needed a reminder that I wasn’t alone, I only needed to look up.”
Alex’s palm glides along his, fingers lining up, Alex’s just a little longer than his, Henry’s just a little thinner.
“I didn’t know any of that,” Alex says quietly, lips tugged upward, soft and real.
“They're not the kind of things that make headlines,” Henry shrugs. “The fact that he was a whole human being before anything else. It’s not the kind of thing that sells papers.”
Alex waits for him to say more, and Henry wants to - even though this memory hurts the most, he wants to tell Alex. If there’s anyone he can trust this part of himself with, it’s Alex.
And isn’t that a terrifying though?
“He died five months after he was diagnosed,” Henry admits, and in his periphery, he sees Alex shut his eyes as if in pain. He wonders, distantly, what his own face must look like. “The cancer had spread too far too fast. They tried treating it but they knew it wouldn’t work.
“It was… bizarre,” Henry continues, pressing his hand into Alex’s, grounding, grounding, grounding, “how fast it happened. He was just gone.”
It doesn’t make him cry, thinking about it. Not really. Not anymore. He doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. He thinks it's somewhere in between, in that space where the good and bad things can coexist.
“You know,” Henry says, and he smiles, and there’s a sadness to it, but a fondness there too. Love and loss and longing all wrapped into one. “You could give me anything in the world - anything. Love from every person on earth. Wealth and fame and companionship. Anything. And I’d hand it all back to you in a second if it meant I got just one more minute with him.”
And it’s sad. It’s grief. It’s heartbreak.
But it’s also relief. It’s remembrance. It’s love - love that Henry hasn’t expressed in years.
And it’s all okay.
It really is.
“I’m so sorry,” Alex says eventually, so quietly Henry wouldn’t have been able to hear if they weren’t as close as they are. “I know that’s the worst thing to say, after that. I just want you to know.”
“You don’t have to be,” Henry tries reassuring him, finally letting his fingers glide through Alex’s, intertwining, knuckle against knuckle, skin against skin. “I haven’t talked about him in a long time. I guess I just thought it was easier not to.”
He looks up into Alex’s warm, unyielding eyes and he knows. He knows, just like he knows that the stars never change, that he will never be alone as long as he looks up, that he is going to love Alex Claremont-Diaz for the rest of his life.
Henry thinks that should terrify him.
It doesn’t. It doesn’t.
“Thank you,” he whispers, turning over to face him fully. “For asking about him.”
“Thank you for telling me about him,” Alex responds, running his thumb across the back of Henry’s hand, bringing it up to his lips to press a long, lingering kiss to his pinky, right above his signet ring.
“I’m sorry,” Henry apologizes, suddenly, “if I was too much - ”
“You will never, ever be too much for me, Henry,” Alex tells him, his other hand coming up to cup Henry’s face, holding him still, like he’s trying to make sure his words register. They do. “Ever.”
Henry’s chest unravels and he doesn’t stop himself from leaning forward and placing his forehead against Alex’s.
“I’m sorry, that I don’t completely understand,” Alex tries, looking almost frustrated as he says it. “I’m sorry that it’s not enough, coming from me.”
Henry shakes his head, gripping Alex’s hand. Grounding.
“You’re trying,” he tells him. “You’re here. That’s more than enough.”
Alex kisses him and it feels like looking up at the stars.
Later, much later, after they’re both laid bare in other ways - ways that let them touch and gasp and arch - Henry lies down with his head on Alex’s chest, his cheek pressed against warm skin as he maps constellations on Alex’s hipbone.
Alex holds him close with a hand curled in his hair, running through it, a million and one kisses pressed to Henry’s temple, his jaw, his eyelids.
And maybe it’s because it’s late. Maybe it’s because Henry is tired, so thoroughly sated he can’t quite keep his mouth shut. Maybe it’s because they are so far past casual Henry can’t even remember how he ever thought it could stay that way.
It’s probably because Henry loves him.
Because later, much later, Henry tells him, “He would have liked you.”
Alex’s hand stills for a second in his hair, and he doesn’t have to ask who Henry is talking about.
“You think so?”
“I do,” Henry says, pressing a kiss above Alex’s heart before looking up at him. Alex’s smile is unlike anything Henry has ever seen before. And it’s all directed at him.
“I would have liked him, too,” Alex confirms.
“I know,” Henry says and Alex presses his lips to his forehead.
“Go to sleep, baby,” he hears, distantly, as he feels his eyes slide shut, sinking into this warmth. “I’ll still be here in the morning.”
There’s not much else Henry can do.
He doesn’t remember much of his dreams, only knows that love is there, under it all.
As unchanging as the stars.