Chapter Text
Ten months later.
The Los Angeles premiere of the ‘White, Pink and Minty Green’ movie is a truly glamorous occasion.
June had gone back and forth at least fifteen times about whether she actually wanted to attend. As the author of the book, she couldn’t even imagine not going, but that would directly interfere with her personal decision to not make any photographed appearances as Catalina Bluebonnet. In the end, Nora had pointed out that June didn’t actually have to show up shouting her name from the rooftops — what if they went as a group, under the guise of having been invited by someone else? And so, after a series of overseas phone calls, June had finally managed to settle on a plan.
A plan that involved stepping out of a white limousine along with Nora, Alex, Henry and Pez, just after Rafael Luna arrived.
The cameras are already flashing at Raf. “Mr Luna, over here! Hey! Raf, the other way!”
Raf looks perfectly at ease, smiling widely for the cameras in his black tux. Alex gives him a little wave as their group shuffles past. This is all a part of the plan; Raf is the big star of the movie, which makes him a very effective distraction. June, hidden in plain sight in their little group of relative nobodies, should be able to fade into the background and make it past the photographers and the reporters without anyone really paying attention to her. No one is going to think that the unknown woman in the mint green dress is, in fact, the author of the novel. It’s kind of a fool proof strategy, seeing as there’s no logical reason for anyone to pay any attention to their little gang-
“Hey!” a photographer yells. “You there — Gabriel and James! Bomber jacket!”
Alex freezes.
He is, in fact, wearing a very distinct bomber jacket; it’s midnight blue and sparkly and undeniably eye-catching. It’s not every day one gets to walk a red carpet, okay, and when else is he supposed to bring out his glittery, Gucci impulse purchase? But it shouldn’t exactly cause red carpet photographers to yell after him.
“Hey!” the same guy calls again. Alex makes the mistake of glancing over, finding that this photographer is definitely staring at him. Or perhaps he’s staring at someone right next to Alex? “James, Gabriel! Fantastic cosplay, guys! Over here!”
Alex almost flinches when the realisation hits him, as unbelievable as it is. Next to him, Henry huffs out a startled laugh. “Oh, God,” he says faintly. “This can not be happening.”
“Well,” Alex says. He grins briefly at Henry. “You have admitted you look pretty much exactly like-”
“Oi! Over here!” Man, that photographer is persistent.
Alex chances a glance at June, who looks gleefully amused by the situation. He shrugs helplessly at her but she only makes an impatient gesture towards the photographer.
“This has fifteen minutes of fame written all over it, and it’s going to make me laugh for decades,” she tells him resolutely. “Go!”
So they go. Henry takes Alex’s hand, and together they turn so that they’re facing the photographers a little more fully. They both stare in mild confusion as roughly twenty cameras start flashing them at once; it’s not a very coordinated effort on their part, but it’s not like they’ve had any chance whatsoever to plan this. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
“Alright,” Henry says next to Alex, teeth gritted. “That should be somewhat more dignified than whatever sneaky paparazzi shots they got a moment ago, but I think we should perhaps move on.”
“Agreed.” Alex waves awkwardly at the photographers, and then they hurry after their group who have already moved on to the area where reporters mingle.
Pez is grinning widely at them once they catch up. “You’re making the rounds on Twitter.” He shoves his phone at them, his screen lit up with a tweet that has the photograph of them attached. It’s been up for less than two minutes, but it’s already got more than a hundred retweets, and counting. “One of the big fan accounts picked you up. They think you’re adorable, and there’s some speculation on how two cosplayers ever made it into the gala premiere.”
“Christ,” Henry says succinctly.
Alex glances at the tweet again — three hundred retweets. Okay, then. This is definitely happening. “Henry, baby, we should probably set our socials to private for a hot minute.”
“Good call,” Pez agrees. He pulls back his phone and starts typing furiously. “It looks very okay, though — the Internet fucking loves you.”
“To think we hid behind Raf so we could sneak June in here unnoticed,” Nora says, grinning. “All we needed was you two accidentally showing up in Jabriel cosplay. Go figure.”
“We don’t look that much like them,” Henry argues weakly. He’s already got his phone out and is changing the settings on his Twitter account, and then his Instagram. Alex grabs his own phone and follows Henry’s example.
“Yes, you do,” June says smugly. “And you can’t argue with me on that one.”
Henry instantly perks up. “Actually-”
Alex rolls his eyes, but keeps smiling as his boyfriend bickers amicably with his sister about whether James Charming would actually wear a tie featuring a blink-and-you-miss-it pattern of beagles. It’s hardly the first time they’ve gone head to head on a conundrum concerning June’s characters. And actually, more often than not, June ends up admitting defeat.
The movie is amazing.
Alex has had very high hopes for it ever since the casting of Raf and Oliver. The book is brilliant, but that’s never any guarantee for the story to translate well to another medium, and a lot of things can go wrong during a production to make a movie fall apart at the seams. However, it’s actually absolutely incredible. It’s just the right amount of romantic, and hilarious, and endearing, and there’s something truly sizzling about the way Raf and Oliver look at each other on screen. After it’s over, Alex can’t stop himself from catching Raf on the way out and pulling him into an impulsive hug.
“Fuck,” he says empathically. “If that doesn’t win you all the awards-”
Raf laughs and disentangles himself from Alex, ruffling his hair like he’s still a little kid. “Thanks, man. I’ve got to say, I’m proud of it.”
“Better than those fucking juice commercials.”
“Shush,” Raf says, grinning. “No disrespect to our OJ history. What would Liam say?”
Alex laughs. “I miss Liam. Have you been in touch with him lately?”
“Not lately. He’s been on tour for ages, hasn’t he?”
“Oh, that’s right. I guess that comes with being a superstar musician.”
“What superstar musician?” Pez asks behind Alex.
Alex turns around so quickly, he almost walks right into Pez. “Okay,” he says giddily. “Okay. You are not going to believe this.”
By the time Alex has finished explaining to Pez that the Liam he did commercials with once upon a time is, in fact, Liam Austin, the queer country musician, they’re all back in the limousine and Pez is holding his head in his hands.
“You sure you don’t want an introduction sometime?” Alex teases Pez, not for the first time. “I could hook you up. Liam and I go way-”
“I need you to stop talking,” Pez says frantically. “Right now. Let me have my breakdown in peace.”
Henry is patting Pez’s shoulder soothingly. “There, there. This is a good thing, right? You might actually get to meet Liam Austin sometime. You only talk about him-”
“Stop. Talking,” Pez repeats, his voice wounded. “Give me a minute to process. A week. Probably a year.”
Alex stifles a laugh and digs his phone out of his pocket, sending a text to Henry about the possibility of getting Pez tickets to one of Liam’s concerts — as well as a very exclusive backstage pass — for Pez’s birthday. That might be also a good way to get Pez to come and visit them again; New Zealand is so far away, and Henry doesn’t get to see his best friend nearly as often as he’d like to. Pez has actually talked a little bit about the possibility of moving, although New York seems significantly higher up on his list than dreary old London.
Still, that wouldn’t be so bad. Alex and Henry go to New York from time to time, to visit June and Nora. And actually, come to think of it, Liam lives there too. Which is probably actually something to consider. Liam is single, right?
Alex opens Twitter to take a peek at Liam’s recent social activity — and immediately freezes. There, at the top of his feed, is a piece of fanart. A drawing someone has made.
It’s of himself and Henry.
It has way, way too many retweets.
“Henry, baby?” Alex says faintly. “I think we need to catch up on what the Internet has been up to while we all watched a movie.”
—
You’d think the whole thing would’ve blown over by the time they get back to London.
It has not.
When Alex and Henry walk into the office on Monday morning, there’s a large group of their colleagues gathered by the water cooler. There are phones being passed around, accompanied by a mixture of confused and thoroughly entertained voices.
“Alex!” Amy shouts. “Alex, get over here! I’m at least one hour behind on making fun of you!”
“Oh, Jesus,” Alex mutters. “Here we go.”
Henry is quick to search Alex’s expression. All things considered — and perhaps especially considering the fact that this isn’t the first time Alex has found himself one half of an AO3 relationship tag — it’s completely possible that this will be more uncomfortable for Alex than it is for Henry. Except… Alex doesn’t look uncomfortable. He’s actually smiling a little, and his hold on Henry’s hand feels perfectly steady.
Huh.
“I can get you an autograph, Amy!” Alex calls cheerfully.
Amy sets off towards them, the rest of the water cooler gang at her heels. Henry steels himself. This will be fine. The two of them can just laugh about this, same as everyone else. It’s not like Alex or Henry are personally responsible for the fact that the fandom side of the Internet is in heartfelt agreement that the adorable cosplay couple from the WPAMG movie premiere is everyone’s new OTP.
“There are four coffee shops AUs about you,” Amy says once she reaches them. She’s grinning somewhat wildly. “It’s been, what, three days since you two blew up? I’m taking bets on how soon your tag is gonna hit one hundred works.”
Henry blinks slowly at her. This… is not a level of AO3 familiarity he expected.
“I don’t get it,” Kevin from customer relations chimes in. He truly does look confused, although that is sort of a permanent state for Kevin. “What’s an AU? And what’s a ship? How come you all know about this shit?”
“I’m not sure the whole office does,” Henry says carefully. He’s not even claiming that for Kevin’s benefit — there is simply no way that all of their colleagues-
“I find a classic coffee shop AU quite relaxing,” Shaan states, his tone ambiguously deadpan.
“Oh, I binged two this weekend,” Martha says eagerly. “Mutual pining, and so heavy on the fluff. You can’t beat that.”
“Fluff? What, like milk foam?” Kevin’s confused frown deepens. “Have we been talking about coffee this whole time?”
Shaan’s mouth stretches into a barely there smile. “I wouldn’t say fluff is my cup of tea, usually.”
Amy cackles, delighted. “I bet you eat angst for breakfast.”
Shaan shrugs lightly. “I could send you some recs? If you read Jabriel, that is?”
“Oh my God,” Henry groans. He puts his face in his hands. None of this can be happening — this is all a completely impossible, entirely unfortunate fever dream. “I think I need to go lie down.”
Alex, meanwhile, is grinning like a madman. “I can’t tell y’all how pleased I am that we’re having this conversation. I’ve got a ton of Jabriel recs, let me get my phone-”
Henry drags Alex away from there before he can get another word out.
—
One week later, Kevin still hasn’t even begun to understand why everyone keeps talking about boats.
—
Five weeks later, the craze surrounding the WPAMG red carpet pictures of Alex and Henry has actually died down. Their relationship tag on AO3 only ever hit two hundred works. Henry is even thinking of turning his Instagram account to public again.
Fifteen minutes of fame only lasts for so long. And thank God for that.
“You still working on the epilogue, baby?”
Henry smiles down at his keyboard. Alex has just joined him on the couch, setting a cup of Earl Grey down for Henry on the table and leaning up to give Henry a quick kiss. Except it doesn’t turn out to be all that quick — Henry indulgently hooks his hands behind Alex’s elbows, pulling him much, much closer.
It’s been a very long time since Henry last spent an evening writing alone on his couch. These days, he’s practically always joined by Alex. That’s kind of what happens when your boyfriend says yes to moving in with you.
After a little while, Henry pulls back slightly. “I finished it,” he murmurs against Alex’s lips. “The epilogue. I finished ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’.”
Alex’s smile lights up his whole face. “You finished it! Oh my God. Can I read it?”
“Not yet,” Henry says firmly — Alex immediately pouts. “Pez needs to go through it first, love. And besides, I may have written something else for you.”
“That’s sweet,” Alex admits begrudgingly. He’s still pouting, though. “It kind of doesn’t beat the idea of finally getting the conclusion to your longest multi-chapter to date, but-”
“Alex, the story I wrote for you isn’t about Gabriel and James. I hear there’s another ship similar to them, one that was all the rage a month ago. Something about an adorable cosplay couple?"
Alex blinks at him, only to draw in a sharp breath a moment later. “Oh.”
“I want you to read it now.” Henry picks up his laptop from the table, sliding it into Alex’s lap. It’s already open on the first page. “Meet me in the bedroom after you’re done. Okay?”
Alex swallows, then nods eagerly. Henry has rarely ever seen his eyes look this hazy. “Sure, yep, I’ll do that. Good plan.”
Henry grins, leaning in for one more kiss. Then he gets up and crosses the room. He pauses for a moment in the doorway to their bedroom, his eyes lingering on Alex, who already seems completely captivated by the screen in front of him. He’s biting his lower lip, and there’s an excited gleam in his eyes that Henry has come to love so much. God. To think that Henry gets to have all of this. That this was the endgame for him — to be endlessly in love with Alex, and to have Alex love him just as completely in return. It’s unbelievable, exactly like something out of one of Henry’s favourite romance stories.
Except, this love story doesn’t just exist on the page.
Henry shakes his head a little, recomposing himself. Then he steps into their bedroom.
—
Out on the couch, Alex’s face breaks into a charmed smile. He’s at a crucial point in Henry’s narrative, one that he’s fairly certain is one of Henry’s favourites. He’ll have to ask Henry about that later — definitely after Alex has completed his task of turning Henry’s meticulously detailed fantasy into something that is very much real.
Alex takes his time reading the rest of Henry’s story, paying very close attention to every part of Henry’s descriptions. Then he gets to his feet. He’s never before crossed the distance from the couch to the bedroom door so fast.
—
Despite Alex’s multiple attempts at persuasion, Henry refuses to upload that story to AO3. So, the next morning, Alex leaves a printed ‘Kudos’ button next to Henry’s cup of Earl Grey, along with a screeching comment that takes up six whole pages, front and back.
Months later, Alex finds those pages neatly folded and tucked into Henry’s worn copy of ‘White, Pink and Minty Green’.