Work Text:
Henry enjoys the routine he’s set for himself these past few weeks.
Every day, he wakes up around 9 am, walks David so he can relieve himself, returns to make a very small breakfast that is difficult to burn, showers and prepares his style for the day, then heads off to complete errands in the beautiful neighbourhood of Flatbush, Brooklyn.
And at around noon, he’ll always find himself walking through the doors of Le Nénuphar Cafe. He’ll order his Earl Grey, sometimes with a poppyseed muffin on the side, sometimes with a dog-friendly brownie for David, and grab a seat at the third table from the entrance, with a clear view through the window into the street. He never forgets to bring his leather-bound journal with the special ink pen Bea gifted him for his twenty-fifth birthday.
He’ll open up the book to the first blank page he can find, smooth and clear of any indents and smudges of ink.
And he’ll write.
Sometimes, he continues writing the outline for his newest novel idea, a wild romance between a timid archaeology professor and a handsomely rugged tour guide in the mountains of the Andes. It’s in its very beginning stages, as his last published book has finally started to dwindle in popularity and his life has finally begun to settle down from the accompanying promotional tour and interviews. Henry knew he wanted his next book to be fictional, and he knew he wanted to incorporate his love for Austen and Dickinson into his own established writing style and experiment with interweaving each author’s motifs into his own. So he’ll work on the chapter outlines sometimes, sitting in the cafe.
But most of the time—he’ll look up from the blank page, scan his eyes across the small, quiet cafe, and settle his gaze upon a stranger.
He’ll observe them for the first few minutes and take note of their superficial features. Their attire, their choice of food and drink, their bag, and accompanying material. Then his gaze will settle upon their face, the way their eyebrows settle above their eyes, the shape of their mouth as they go on about their own private moment to themselves. It takes a few minutes of studying for him to finally position his hand above the first line on his blank page and let the words spill out of his pen.
He considers this as one of his favourite pastimes.
Henry absolutely loves people watching. To catch others as they’re completely immersed in their own lives and their inner workings of relationships and struggles and accomplishments. There’s something immensely satisfying in being able to note the case on a person’s phone, the different rings they wear on their fingers, or the faded streaks of dye in their hair and form complete biographies out of these limited details.
There’s a middle-aged woman he sees every Saturday who pulls out a stack of papers from her bag and a red pen. Henry’s written three full pages about her, about Priscilla, and her life as a year seven history teacher. There’s always a small smudge on her red-stained lips that makes Henry write paragraphs about the husband at home, who always insists on kissing her goodbye before she heads off.
There’s a page dedicated to a small girl he encountered the day before. She bounced into the cafe with a tiny brown labradoodle at her side, and her daisy-shaped purse, matching her daisy-shaped brooches, inspired the detailed, expansive garden tended to by her mother.
And today.
Henry feels a cramp settle into his hand as he’s already finishing his second page in 15 minutes after lifting his head and immediately settling his eyes upon the most beautiful man he’s ever seen.
He’s sitting a few tables over, on the other side of the room, with his own black leather book and mug placed on the table. His brown curls settle delicately around his frame, thick dark eyebrows slightly furrowed above big brown eyes. There’s a hint of a blush dusted on his tan cheeks that match the shade of pink on his slightly parted lips. He’s hunched over the book; a sketching pencil gripped tight in his hand as it glides quickly over the page he’s currently drawing on.
Henry’s heart races as his own hand quickens its pace, filled with a sudden fit of passion as his pen carves out wax poetic about the beautiful stranger. He tries to sneak glances every few minutes, feeling his cheeks warm every time he does so, with fear that he might get caught and have to banish himself from the premises to save himself from the embarrassment of confrontation for his creepy behaviour.
After finishing the third page detailing the man’s imagined extensive art education at Tisch ten miles away, he gives himself a millisecond of courage to look up again.
The man is gone.
Henry looks back down, skirts his eyes over the three pages filled with messier-than-usual handwriting, and realises he hasn’t given the man a name.
The look of concentration embedded on the stranger’s ethereal face comes forward to Henry’s mind once more, and he decides: I need to know his real name. I need to know who this man is.
By the following week, Henry decides his name starts with an A.
He’d pretend he’s some sort of psychic medium who uses the astral realm of homosexual pining to gauge this piece of information, but the plain etch of A.C.D across all of the man’s belongings wouldn’t let him get away with it.
He also decides that A is a caffeine addict, considering the man has gotten up twice within the last two hours to refill the hot drink inside his mug and has gotten considerably more antsy with every sip. His leg won’t stop bouncing below the table, and his left hand taps against the wooden surface, all while his right hand switches between a charcoal pencil and a worn out eraser.
His hand movement isn’t as fast as the first day Henry noticed him, long fingers smoothly gliding along the paper as he draws and erases. But his face continues to be beautifully concentrated on the notebook before him. A smudge of charcoal stained across A’s jawline has kept Henry distracted for the last 20 minutes.
Henry imagines A’s preferred material is watercolour on canvas since he once saw a tin container peak through A’s bag, which was covered in coloured droplets. But he thinks A seeks comfort in having his leather notebook handy at all times, if he ever feels inspired at a park or a coffee shop and needs to quickly bring his idea to life before the urge burns out or the image fades away from his mind.
There are other things Henry envisions in the life of A that are completely inspired by his selfish attraction towards the man with no physical evidence presented.
(A smells like pine cones and burning wood. He has an extensive 9-step night routine to keep his face as distractingly smooth and clear as possible. He shaves his face but doesn’t bother to shave his chest hair—Henry always goes warm in the face when he remembers this concocted detail. He’s single and into men, into authors with a dog and an addiction to tea.)
Henry has written over ten pages by the time two weeks have passed since this mystery man has planted himself into Henry’s life.
It’s incredibly embarrassing and Henry would rather die than admit to Bea or Percy or David that a man he’s never spoken to has inspired his mind and heart more than any other person has in a very long time.
Even as he sits at his desk in his apartment, some nights, and he’s rambling in his working draft about certain plot scenes he wants to bring to life in his romance novel, he’ll find himself rambling and rambling and rambling. Rambling until he looks back at his work and realises the professor is starting to sound a little too much like himself, and the tour guide is starting to look a little too much like A.
So, yeah. Maybe Henry needs to chill a bit.
He doesn’t, though.
Because the next week, when he comes into the cafe, orders his tea, and sits down at his usual table, he looks up and sees A with one pencil behind his ear, another being nibbled between his teeth, and another in his right hand as he draws on a sheet of loose paper.
From the angle he’s sitting in, Henry can’t see the full scope of what’s been drawn. But he can faintly see bubble letters on the top with shapes filling the bottom of the paper. It’s hard for Henry to decipher what he’s looking at while also trying not to stare like a creep and get caught.
His hand spasms and almost knocks over his mug when A suddenly exchanges the pencil in his hand for his phone and faces the camera toward the table. He muffles out against the pencil between his teeth, and Henry melts.
“Okay, how about this, Bug?”
Henry is too far away to hear anyone respond.
“Yes, I’ll use all the glitter pens you want,” he teases out.
A rolls his eyes after a pause and takes the pencil out of his mouth to speak again.
“Sorry, I had my 7B in my mouth—it’s not an innuendo, stop—But seriously, this is what it will look like. You can choose the colors, and I’ll use a jumbo sharpie for the outlines. By when do you need this?”
He nods and tips his phone towards his face.
“Okay, I can make that work.”
A soft laugh leaves his lips, his eyelashes fluttering against his skin in the soft light of the cafe. Henry can’t seem to look away, even though his mind is begging to write an entire page worth of what it would be like to wake up in bed, open his eyes and see the morning light settle against A’s soft brown skin as he whispers good morning to him.
Another chuckle breaks through and brings Henry’s attention back to the real version of Adonis.
“Right, because everyone swoons over a man that burns through coffee like it’s water.”
Henry thinks he can channel Lord Byron himself from the way he’s itching to write about that man’s curls bouncing lightly as he shakes his head.
“If he did, then I—” A looks up from the phone and immediately meets Henry’s gaze. They comically widen at the same time Henry’s does.
Oh fucking fuck.
Henry manages to bite down the squeal that raises to his throat and sticks his head into his notebook, pretending he did not just get caught staring at A’s stupidly gorgeous smile. He doesn’t even want to think about how insanely red his cheeks have become if the warmth rising from his neck is anything to go by.
“U-uh, I—I gotta go.” Henry hears A stutter.
“No, no. I’m not—okay, fine. I won’t hang up on you. Just—let’s talk about something else…Please, June.”
Henry’s heart races for the next 10 minutes as he tries to act nonchalant and not on the brink of dying from embarrassment. His page is full of chicken scratch now, failing to write a single sentence about something else. He doesn’t see it but he assumes A has switched the FaceTime to a regular phone call as he’s speaking at a much lower volume. Once he finally hears the words bye and love you too from the man, the fluttering sound of a bag zip and fabric movement brings Henry back to the present.
Subtly raising his eyes away from the notebook and towards the table in front of him, Henry is able to catch A’s fleeting form leaving the cafe. He takes a breath of relief.
Henry gives himself a minute, breathing out steadily to calm his heart. He gets up to order another piping hot Earl Grey and pup brownie for David.
He allows time to compose himself at his table again before he lets his brain annoy him with the memory of A saying I love you to someone else.
If he decides to add a plot twist in his novel of the tour guide leaving his fiance for the professor, he won’t tell a soul what inspired the idea.
Henry has a problem.
It’s been a month, and he hasn’t been able to write about a single bloody person other than A.
Every time he sits down at the cafe, at his desk, at the park, he’s instantly bombarded with images of A’s smile and laugh. Every time his pen hits the page, he’s plagued with the thought of what A’s hand must feel like against his own, what his lips might feel like when they’re not pursed in concentration. What his eyes might look like if they stared back at Henry with the same level of adoration that he gives.
He tries to limit himself to the number of days he visits the cafe.
He ends up visiting almost every day, just in the hope that he sees A at his usual table, with his godly curls sweeping across his forehead and his practised hands manoeuvring across his notebook.
Henry’s able to figure out A’s schedule.
He comes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays around noon time. It's a little less predictable on Saturdays, but it’s always for at least 2 hours. He always orders at least two drinks, and Henry has the great assumption that it is always a black coffee, maybe a medium roast. He’ll order a cheese danish only when he’s feeling antsy if the sporadic movement of his leg and arms as he creates a new drawing is anything to go by.
He always situates himself at the same place, five tables away from Henry’s own established spot. And he’ll draw and draw and draw until he suddenly blinks his eyes rapidly and relaxes back into his chair.
Sometimes, he’ll stretch, and Henry notices a slight wince every time his right shoulder extends too far. Henry imagines a sports injury from high school that never really went away—maybe swimming or football. Henry wants to introduce him to rugby.
Most importantly, though, Henry notices the way A’s eyelashes flutter towards his notebook every time Henry sneaks a glance at the man. It’s a swift and small movement. Small enough to be easily dismissed by any other person who isn’t absolutely obsessed with the man (Henry can’t imagine anyone not being so).
But Henry can see that A’s eyes barely settle before him every time Henry brings his gaze upward. Like as if…as if A is quickly training his own gaze down milliseconds before Henry can catch him looking at something else beforehand.
There’s a skip in Henry’s heartbeat when he indulges himself in writing a single sentence one day, detailing the sneaking doting glances A gives him when he’s not looking back.
A week later, Henry enters the cafe and sees A ordering at the front counter.
And—okay. Here’s the thing.
It’s not like Henry is a very confident person.
He’s always been more on the reserved side. Starting a conversation with a stranger has never been easy for him, much less when that stranger is the subject of all his late night fantasies and early morning daydreaming.
And it’s not like he really has any concrete reasoning to believe the man he’s obsessed with might have any sort of feelings for him back. Really, it’s the opposite—Henry has quite literally heard A say I love you to someone else (June is a beautiful name, and Henry is absolutely not devastated whenever he ponders what she might look like or how long they’ve been together).
But Henry is a romantic.
Growing up with the prose of Austen and the Brontes will make a young gay man hopeful that the brown-skinned man who wears soft cotton shirts, delicately holds ink pens and graphite pencils in between long fingers, swipes his soft-looking curls from his eyes, and curves his lush lips around his cup of coffee, is kind enough to give Henry at least an ounce of his attention.
So, with as much confidence as he can muster, Henry takes a deep breath and takes the few steps to stand behind A at the counter.
When he arrives, he catches the tail end of the barista’s sentence.
“—lightly toasted. And the total will be nine fifty.”
Henry feels pathetic, already swooning at seeing the back of the other man’s neck stretch as he nods his head. His mouth becomes dry at the thought of leaning in and kissing the skin.
His eyes skirt down the tall man’s neckline and expansive back to fall upon the movement of A’s right hand to his back pocket. Henry can see there’s nothing there—well. There’s definitely something there. But not a wallet.
A’s hand pauses for a second before the left one moves to pat the other pocket, which is also empty. There is another pause as Henry, A, and the barista all come to a simultaneous realisation.
A curse leaves the man’s lips.
“Shit—” he hisses out. His hands move more frantically as he repeats his tapping against his jeans.
“Uh, I think…I think I forgot my wallet. Do you use Apple Pay?”
The barista shakes her head.
Before A can groan in frustration, Henry’s heartbeat stutters and his mouth opens to blurt out, “I can pay for you.”
Henry tries to keep his panic swallowed as A turns around quickly and parts his lips in surprise. Henry gives him an awkward smile in return.
“Oh—uh. You don’t have to,” the man says.
Henry shakes his head and manages to relax his smile into a more natural form.
“It’s no problem. I’ll just add an Earl Grey to that order, please,” he says, adding the last bit as he focuses his attention on the barista in front of them. She simply nods and smiles at the act of kindness, accepting the debit card he passes over before returning it. Henry wonders if she can see through him and his deceiving motive.
The man in front of him clears his throat and nods once.
“Uh, t-thanks. Thank you. I appreciate it.”
Henry shrugs and blushes, taking a second to build up the courage to meet his gaze. The soft flutter of A’s beautiful eyelashes against his skin as he not-so-subtly perceives the blush makes Henry scramble to stick his hand out.
“I’m Henry—by the way.”
A spark runs through his body as his hand is grasped.
“…Alex.”
Alex.
AlexAlexAlexAlexAlex—
“You’re British.”
A startled laugh leaves Henry’s mouth. His blush deepens.
“Yes, I quite am.”
A timid smile begins to creep onto Alex’s lips.
“I never would have guessed,” he says.
He was trying to guess? Henry indulges, maintaining a girlish squeal at bay.
Henry shrugs again with an air of nonchalance, “I’m a man of mystery.”
This finally breaks Alex’s shyness as he grins. A soft blush on his cheeks matches the one on Henry’s. His eyes shine a vivid hazel, now that Henry is two feet away from him to notice. It brings an equally broad grin on Henry’s face—he’s so going home and writing an entire soliloquy about this man’s eyes.
They stand in silence for a few seconds, undoubtedly looking like maniacs, as they block the front counter from any incoming customers.
It’s easy for Henry to find the courage to speak again.
“Would—”
“Here you go.”
Their small bubble of privacy bursts as both turn to the barista. She gives them a polite smile and motions to the food before her.
“Uh, thank you.” Henry awkwardly says, giving her a civil smile as he accepts the items. He passes a lidded cup and bagged croissant to Alex, who says his own quiet thanks.
Now, with them standing opposite each other again but with their hands occupied with their purchases, Henry suddenly feels all confidence being swept away. He’s back to his throat feeling immensely dry and his heart beating exceedingly fast as he tries to figure out the best way to ask Alex to sit with him without bursting into a declaration of love and a marriage proposal.
“Would—“
The blaring sound of a phone alarm startles him and Alex in their places.
Alex curses as he winces, looking down at his satchel bag in annoyance. He brings his head back up with an apologetic smile and a deeper shade of blush. There’s a small moment of hesitation before he slightly inches the hand with the croissant towards Henry.
“Sorry—do you mind holding this?” he motions to Henry.
“Oh! Yes, of course,” Henry replies politely. He doesn’t show his disappointment when he grabs the bag and misses grazing Alex’s fingers by a few millimetres.
Alex mumbles out a thanks again as he uses his free hand to open the satchel and dig around.
“Jesus fuck, how is it so buried—” he exasperatedly mutters to himself, digging his hand impossibly further inside. The sound of clanking tins and wooden materials accompanies the shrill of his alarm.
Finally, two things happen in rapid succession.
First, Alex’s face lights up at the same time his hand finally stops moving, presumably grabbing hold of his phone. He gives Henry a look of abashed relief.
Second, his arm moves out of the bag at lightning speed, bringing the phone into sight. But he also manages to knock his black journal out of the bag and onto the floor between them.
It makes a loud thud as it hits the ground and opens to a page.
Henry and Alex look down.
They’re met with Henry staring back at them.
Well—in Henry’s defence, this Henry doesn’t have his signature eyebags. It’s a version of Henry he hasn’t seen in many years, possibly since he first started uni and learned the true effects of writer's block on his sleep and rest. Alex probably would have noticed if he sat a little closer.
Oh.
Right.
Alex drew him.
At some point, during one of these days when Henry was in the midst of spilling his heart through his ink pen into his journal about the gorgeous unnamed man whose brown curls shined under the afternoon sun peaking through the cafe window—one of these days, that man was busy bringing Henry to life on his own page.
Henry wants to know what day.
He wants to flip through his paragraphs and find the exact words he wrote while Alex recreated his likeness. Wants to know what part of Alex’s life his heart was set on imagining while Alex studied him through his own eyes.
Oh, Christ, Alex studied him. He studied him long enough to get his eyebrows just perfect, the fallen waves of hair settled perfectly against his forehead and temple. The mole above his upper lip is perfectly aligned. Alex stared at him for possibly hours on end, and Henry had no clue (an inkling, yes, but nothing solid).
Henry feels like fainting.
Maybe he should say something to Alex first.
While still keeping his eyes locked on the journal below them, his lips part in an effort to speak.
But his words are not given a chance to escape as Alex frantically sweeps the journal up and shoves it back into his bag. Henry’s eyes flick up as they track the movement. He’s met with an absolutely terrified Alex, staring back at him with wide eyes and an open mouth.
Henry’s eyebrows furrow. He doesn’t want Alex to freak out. He just wants to kiss the man now, really.
“Alex—” he carefully starts.
“I—I’m,” Alex interrupts. “I’m so sorry. I just—you—.”
His grip on his cup looks dangerously tight. Henry lifts an eyebrow and tries to warn him about the imminent second-degree burn.
“I’m sorry,” Alex finishes, cutting him off again.
He gives out one short, stifled whine and turns. He’s out of the cafe and Henry’s sight in seconds.
It takes a few seconds for Henry to move his attention away from the space previously occupied by the other man. The barista looks away when he glances at her, a small blush on her cheeks. Henry’s too flabbergasted to feel embarrassed over the clear evidence that she witnessed this entire scenario. It takes another second for Henry to also realise Alex’s croissant is still in his hand, slightly crushed in its bag now that Henry’s hand threatens to curl into a pent up fist.
A whole minute later, Henry finally finds the willpower to bring one foot in front of the other and tread towards his table.
The croissant is left uneaten on the tabletop for the next two hours. Henry writes the first chapter of his book.
He no longer pretends he isn’t thinking of Alex the entire time.
Okay, so.
Here’s the thing.
Henry is well aware of what social anxiety can do to hinder your ability to go about your day to day business. He’s all too familiar with the pit of dread that fills your stomach and heart when you realise you have to go out and interact with the world when you need to get shit done. He knows what it’s like to take a mental health day to recover from a particularly gruelling conversation or stressful situation.
But Alex doesn’t show up the next scheduled day he should have.
Or the next.
Or the other.
By the end of the week, Henry is properly fussed in his third-table-from-the-door position.
On the one hand, he’s never felt more inspired than in the last few days. He’s begun to bring his laptop along with his usual supplies since his hand starts cramping up after the third or fourth page of his chapters. He’s burning through the story quickly, and it’s a bit scary how much he doesn’t care that his muse has now officially, unapologetically, become Alex.
On the other hand, however, he’s never felt more frustrated over his love life than ever before. It figures that the first time Henry truly feels like he’s living out a fairytale story of a meet-cute in a coffee shop between an artist and a writer is also the time when said artist refuses to come back and acknowledge the fact that he might be as intrigued by Henry as Henry is absolutely obsessed with him.
It feels like Jane Austen decided to resurrect and write one last romance but drops dead again one-third through the story, leaving Henry bereft and downright miserable.
But, whatever.
He has nothing better to do.
He’ll continue to return, continue to write, continue to drink this stupid tea, three tables from the door, and wait for Alex to return.
It takes two weeks of buying more tea and brownies than he can really afford before Alex returns.
Really, it’s kind of Henry’s fault for not letting things click in his brain.
It’s not until those two weeks pass that Henry finally returns on a Saturday, just to pause in his tracks and stand in front of his designated table.
The one that’s three tables from the door. The one that is directly next to the front window of the cafe. The one that allows anyone walking within a 20-meter distance to clearly see Henry sitting inside the building. The one that would allow Alex to avoid Henry just by using his two God-given eyes.
A huff leaves his mouth as he turns and treads over to sit at a table tucked into the shop's back corner, well hidden from anyone who simply skims the area in front of them. If this works, he’s going to be very annoyed at himself and Alex and the entire universe for making him wait so long for his damn happy ending.
It does.
Thirty minutes later, Alex walks in through the door with a wary expression and a timid pace in his steps. His eyes immediately zero in on the table Henry usually sits at, then glances over at the front counter to see it empty of customers. This seems to satisfy him as he finally turns to his own preferred table and carefully sets his belongings down.
Henry’s leg bounces as he watches the other man settle into his seat. Henry eyes the slightly diluted iced coffee and cold croissant that sit on his table. He did contemplate buying a new round a few minutes beforehand so that his peace offering would be well received (or at least enough to give him a chance to speak). But if he gets up now and attempts to order, Alex will probably see him and scurry out before Henry even finishes paying.
So he pushes through, collecting his belongings with a deep breath in and out, and approaches Alex.
The look of terror on Alex’s face when Henry places the coffee and croissant in front of him is almost amusing enough to bring a smile to Henry’s face.
“If you even think of bolting again, I will scream,” Henry deadpans. His eyebrow arches with a challenge, meeting Alex’s wide eyes with an authoritative look.
Alex gulps.
“Okay,” he whispers out, clearing his throat. “I won’t.”
Henry takes this as permission and situates himself into the seat across from Alex, removing his bag from his shoulder and placing it beside him. The urge to reach over and smooth out the small frown on Alex’s face almost overrules his self-control. Instead, he reaches into his bag and pulls out his journal, worn and torn from the countless pages filled to the brim with artificial lives. He glances around the shop and spots Priscilla across, her signature red pen sitting between her teeth as she flips through a school packet. Henry smiles to himself before flipping through the pages to find her story.
He slides the journal over to Alex, careful not to bump the cup of coffee over. His index finger taps against the starting line of the journal entry.
“This is Priscilla. Well—that’s the name I’ve designated for her. I don’t actually know what her name is, nor do I know if she’s actually a history teacher. She could be a science teacher, or even a professor, or maybe just a tutor. And I gave her a husband to come home to—she could be going home to a wife instead.”
Alex flicks his eyes between the page in front of him and Henry’s eyes. The tentative look on his face doesn’t ease up.
Henry pushes on, shrugging his shoulders.
“All I know is that she always comes on Saturdays, she always brings a stack of papers to mark, and she always sits at the table nearest the counter.”
Instead of looking back down at the page, Alex brings his attention to the woman past Henry’s shoulder, presumably zeroing in on her figure. Henry doesn’t need to follow his gaze to know he’s spotted her, Alex’s eyebrow twitching in interest.
His attention is brought back to Henry once he clears his throat.
“I don’t know if you noticed, but the barista who usually serves us works every single day. The hours vary, but she never works a shift less than 4 hours. And she always clocks out before 4 p.m.”
Henry flips to her entry, remembering how he accidentally spilt some of his tea that day and left the corner of that particular page dry and crusted over. Alex scans the words as Henry narrates out loud.
“I imagine she has someone at home she needs to take care of. A little boy. Maybe six or seven years old. She works as much as she can while he’s in school. And as much as she seems to like this job, and as many shifts as it seems she picks up, she never allows herself to work a minute after 4 so she can pick him up and bring him home. I think she’s one of the most resilient women I’ve come to know.”
Alex allows himself to raise an eyebrow at the last statement. It makes Henry giddy at the challenge. He rolls his eyes.
“Yes, I know. This is probably all wrong. But that’s not the point.”
Henry takes a second to pause and gather his thoughts. His finger traces over the words on the page, becoming slightly entranced by the movement—touching the life he created with just his mind and his fingers. Looking back up at Alex, he finds a look of wonder and intrigue settled in his eyes.
God, this man is so beautiful.
“The point is, Alex…creative minds like you and me, we…have a way of seeing the world. We have this pull, this—urge to express how we see the people, and the buildings, and the atmosphere around us. For me, it’s in writing elaborate stories about strangers in parks, and coffee shops, and grocery stores. For you…it’s drawing. Sketching, painting, sculpting—whatever you can get your hands on. On whatever you can land your eyes on.”
He shrugs again and feels a slight flush creep into his neck.
“You chose me as a subject one day. So what? I’m not freaking out over it. I don’t think you’re a secret stalker who’s been planning to kill me.” His lips tug into a soft smile. “I’m flattered, really. That you found me as an interesting enough specimen that day, to inspire your creative mind.”
He finishes there with a soft smile of adoration for the man in front of him, who is blushing so sweetly and staring back at him with hazel eyes that seem to beg Henry to tell the truth. Henry nods his head reassuringly to give Alex confirmation that he means every word. Alex continues to stare at him, refusing to break eye contact. Henry feels like he’s on fire.
Alex finally relents.
He brings his hand forward towards Henry’s. Henry feels his heart stutter and his breath hitch at the thought of Alex holding his hand. He swallows down the disappointment when Alex’s hand reaches its target, Henry’s journal, instead.
The journal is closed and pushed back towards Henry. He isn’t given any time to panic and be filled with regret over his words as Alex reaches for his own notebook and slides it towards the centre of the table.
He motions towards it with his hand. There’s a slight tremble in it.
“Open it.”
Henry feels a small wave of fear course through him as he reaches over and does as he’s told.
It opens to a page in the middle. It doesn’t really matter where it initially opened, though, because as Henry feels his heart drop and his lungs sharply inhale coffee-infused air as he flips through the following few pages, all he sees is the same subject, over and over and over.
Some are literal sketches, quick and easy—the lines sculpting his face are simplistic yet effective in construing his facial structure. Others are…insanely detailed. Like genuinely fucking beautiful works of art. Like—he could see these on display at an exhibition.
His eyes are always drawn so perfectly accurate in each one, whether his portrait is looking down, straight forward, or to the side. His hair varies, and Henry can recall which days each drawing corresponds to since he remembers the times he would roll out of bed before heading over and the times he would put in a little extra effort in his hairstyle.
An odd few have him standing, either at the front counter or in an entirely different environment. Henry gets stuck on a quick doodle of him with a frisbee, a grin on his face as he tugs it away from the mouth of a small dog.
Alex clears his throat after a few seconds of Henry staring down at the sketch.
“I noticed sometimes…you buy the doggie brownies here. So I started imagining you with a Jack Russell.”
Henry raises his head and smiles wide.
“A beagle, actually,” he says. “His name is David.”
Alex smiles and nods as his blush reappears.
“David. Okay.”
Henry’s heart pounds as he finds himself staring back at Alex once more. This time, though, he feels more secure, his heart beating loud but steady.
“So, I guess maybe you are a stalker who’s been planning out my murder.”
Alex snorts and blushes deeper. Henry wants to write sonnets.
“Shut up,” Alex mumbles, taking a second to look down at himself before bringing his eyes back towards Henry.
“I…I haven’t sketched anyone else since the first day I saw you,” Alex confesses.
Oh.
“Oh,” Henry says out loud.
Alex turns sheepish, and Henry hurries to wipe the look off his face.
“I’m—in the same boat,” he rushes out. “These are all…all before I saw you. That day. Weeks ago. I—” he cuts himself off.
He quickly brings his hands back towards his own journal and flips it open to that first page, the fateful one written all those weeks ago when he first glanced over and lost his breath at the unbelievable beauty of the man before him.
It’s daunting, now that Henry is the one showing Alex how obsessed he’s been with him as well. It kind of feels like he’s lending his heart out to Alex right now, removing the armour he’s built around it in order to show Alex how much he wants this, how much he wants him.
It takes a second for Alex to fully absorb the words on the page, the furrow in his eyebrows deepening as he reads along. Henry’s attempt to read along with him while upside down is futile, but it’s the best he can do so he doesn’t stare at Alex like a psychopath.
“This is from the first time you saw me?” Alex asked softly.
Henry nods.
“And ever since. It’s—it’s just been you, ever since.”
Alex blinks at the honest words. He looks back down at the journal, using delicate fingers to turn the pages of his fairytale life. There’s a pause when he turns to the third page.
“I went to school in Austin, actually.”
It’s Henry’s turn to blink.
Alex lifts his eyes back to Henry.
“I’m from Texas. I moved here six months ago with my sister, June.”
Henry feels his cheeks flame. Okay, so June is not Alex’s fiancé. Henry will not be a homewrecker.
“Oh. Okay,” he lets out pathetically. There’s a small glint of amusement in Alex’s eyes.
“Yeah, she thought the move would be a great idea to start clean from my previous relationship. It was hard to ignore him since we lived across the street from one another.”
Him. Oh.
“Oh. Right.”
Alex lets out a small snort again, a grin falling easy on his lips.
“Right,” he parrots.
It’s annoying how much Henry wants Alex to continue teasing him.
Instead, he interrupts the light bullying and motions towards the coffee and croissant. The iced coffee isn’t even iced anymore, completely melted down to a lukewarm Americano.
“Can I buy you another drink so I can tell you how terribly single I am afterwards?”
The grin on Alex’s face widens as a blush creeps back in.
“Yeah, yes—please.”
Henry lightly taps on the table rhythmically before standing. He takes one step as Alex takes a breath again.
“A dash of cinnamon as well, if you can.”
Henry feels warm at the detail. He can already tell his brain will not let him rest tonight until he somehow incorporates this new fact into the Adonis of a man he’s created out of the Alex-esque tour guide. The professor in his book will not survive falling for this man.
Henry will not survive falling for this man.
The smile on Alex’s face when he returns with a cinnamon-infused coffee is blinding.
There’s a fond smile on Henry’s lips as he walks through the door of Le Nénuphar Cafe two weeks later with his hand wrapped around David’s leash. He watches as his dog sniffs the ground and wags his tail ferociously at the bombardment of foreign scents and noises.
It’s a bit wild he’s never thought about bringing David along on his errand runs before. The amount of joy the day has brought him from strangers beaming at his companion—as a result, beaming at him—has Henry rethinking ever leaving David at home again. His dog certainly doesn’t mind either, his tail wagging permanently throughout the morning.
Henry has to tug David along to the front counter. He smiles at a small toddler gaping widely at the furry creature as they pass a table nearby.
“Oh, hello there.”
His attention is turned to the barista, who’s peeking over the counter to grin at David.
“So this is who you’re spoiling rotten with our brownies,” she coos.
Henry’s eyebrows raise.
“Oh! You noticed,” he remarks.
She gives him a soft look of amusement.
“Of course I did. You order a medium Earl Grey, sometimes a poppyseed muffin, and almost always a pup brownie.”
Henry tilts his head in wonder.
Huh. It’s easy to pay attention to the details, I guess.
He wonders if she noticed Alex as well. If she can recognise his face and know exactly how much cinnamon he enjoys in his coffee. If she can read the change in facial expression when he’s craving breakfast to pair with it. He wonders if everyone else who has ever interacted with Alex considers him someone worth paying attention to.
“Can I also add an iced coffee to that order? With cinnamon.”
She smiles widely at him with a knowing look.
“Treating someone else today?”
His cheeks burn, but he feels nothing except pride as he replies, “Yeah, my boyfriend.”
It’s a bit hard to juggle the two drinks and baked goods in one hand once he receives them while David tugs on his leash with a sudden burst of energy, since he mistakenly said the word park out loud when the barista asked what plans he had for the day. But he manages to keep everything intact in the 10 minutes it takes to walk over to the dog park, immediately releasing the leash from David’s collar once they enter. Henry rolls his eyes as David leaps into action at a squirrel dashing nearby.
“Do you think he’ll actually catch the poor critter?”
Henry’s mouth warps into a warm smile as he approaches the bench a few paces away, greeted with the sight of Alex in a white button-up shirt and sinful above-knee black shorts. His pearly white teeth shine back at Henry in greeting.
Henry shakes his head as he settles down on the bench next to him, handing him his coffee.
“No, he rarely does. He prefers the chase over the catch, anyway. He’ll bark at them but never bite or claw,” he explains.
Alex hums around the straw of his cup and nods. His eyes light up as he drinks. Henry feels pride swell inside him at the thought of getting the cinnamon flavour right. His face warms as Alex leans in and plants a gentle kiss on his cheek.
“Thank you, baby. You really do pay attention,” Alex says.
Henry shrugs with a dopey smile.
“Hard not to.”
Alex shakes his head with his own bashful smile and looks away. He takes a beat before settling the coffee down and brings his sketchbook back into his hands. Grabbing the pen hidden behind his ear, he resumes the light tracing over a detailed tree a few metres away.
Henry finds it hard to look away from the movement of Alex’s soft hand. The sudden desire to reach over and grab that hand, bring it to his lips, and whisper promises of eternity into the palm is swallowed down.
Instead, he sets his belongings down and reaches into his bag, opening a brand new journal into his lap.
He runs his fingers across the blank first page and caresses the rough cut edges of the paper. A brand new book, a universe not yet formed within its contents. A world waiting to be brought to life by the methodical escape of ink from Henry’s pen.
He takes a pause and brings his eyes centred back to Alex beside him, who is squinting down at his notebook in concentration. The slight furrow of his eyebrows makes Henry smile. The light breeze running through his curls makes Henry’s heart constrict for a second. The image of his boyfriend sitting next to him on a bench in a dog park makes Henry feel something he’s only ever read in books before.
He takes a deep breath, looks down at his page, and writes.