Chapter Text
The invitation arrives in the mail in mid-July, addressed to “Mr. Alexander Hamilton and Guest.”
Together with their families
Adrienne Françoise de Noailles
and
Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette
invite you to celebrate their marriage
Saturday, the twenty-third of September at six o’clock
The Plaza Hotel
New York City
Black tie
Alex can’t hold back a snort of laughter as he runs his thumb over the thick cotton paper, feeling the heft of it, the fine gold engraving. Heh. Marie-Joseph. No wonder the guy just goes by Lafayette. Immediately, then, he picks up the phone and calls Washington.
“So,” he says. “Office field trip to the du Motier-Noailles wedding, then?”
Washington chuckles. “I see you got your invitation as well, then.”
“His first name is Marie,” Alex snickers.
He hasn’t been back to New York since he and John packed up their entire lives and moved to D.C. two and a half years prior. Everything and nothing has changed. Funny, he thinks. Chases become Starbuckses and Starbuckses become Chases and yet New York itself stays the same, fundamentally untouchable, a city built on aspirations. A city built on the central concept that no one individual will ever be good enough, smart enough, successful enough, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from trying.
This used to be his Duane Reade, back when he worked for the public advocate’s office. He wanders in through the sliding automated doors and for some reason, Hoobastank is playing on the radio, because for some reason it’s always 2003 in this particular Duane Reade near City Hall. Literally nothing has changed in this drugstore since the last time he was here, and it’s the most satisfying part about this entire trip — the knowledge that even though he’s a totally different person now than he was the last time he stood in this aisle, mentally calculating whether he had enough cash left in his checking account to buy a box of Hot Pockets to keep in the office freezer for the week’s lunches, the aisle containing the Hot Pockets itself has not changed a bit.
“As much as I’m enjoying this in-depth tour of the freezer section,” Washington says sotto voce, “I’m a bit curious as to the significance.”
Alex sighs plaintively, turns to him with a faint smile. “You wanted the Alexander Hamilton walking tour of New York City.”
“I did,” Washington agrees.
“Well,” says Alex, “you’re getting it. Starting here. The Duane Reade where I used to buy my lunches when I interned for the public advocate.”
“Ah,” says Washington, nodding deeply. “Right. Shall I perhaps buy us a couple coconut waters so as to stay hydrated on this Tolkien-esque pilgrimage?”
The look on Washington’s face is knowing, facetious, and Alex sighs dramatically and nods. “Fine,” he says as Washington grabs two coconut waters from the refrigerated case. “I only like the pineapple flavor, by the way.”
“Don’t be picky, princess,” comes the response, and Alex bites down on his lip with a grin as they head for the register.
It’s one of those perfect New York September days, where the sun is bright and the air is just warm enough to necessitate short sleeves, but still cut with enough of a breeze to make it comfortable. They start in lower Manhattan, grab a cab up to the East Village and jump out near St. Mark’s. “I used to hang out in that bookshop all the time,” Alex says, pointing. “Or — oh, no. Well, it used to be a bookshop, anyway. Now it’s a bubble tea place.”
“Was that the one you worked at?” Washington asks. Alex is briefly taken aback, surprised that he remembers.
“No,” he says. “That was the Strand, up at Union Square. That place will never close. We’ll walk by, but we can’t go in.”
“Traumatic flashbacks?” Washington teases, and Alex closes his eyes, sighing.
“It’s a whole thing,” he says, as they stop on the corner, waiting for the light to change. “Retail is hell. Sartre lied. Hell isn’t other people, hell is the holiday season working retail in a bookstore.”
Washington laughs out loud, slides a hand over his shoulder as the crosswalk light changes.
The tour had been Washington’s idea, true, but he wanted it to be Alex’s little project — a walk through all the places in the city significant to him. Except. Except! How the hell was he supposed to quantify that? When he thinks of places significant to him here, he comes up blank. He’s not taking Washington all the way up to the Baychester Houses to see the room where his mom died. That’s dark as shit, first of all, and he’s not so naive as to think that he can still just waltz into the NYCHA houses in the Bronx wearing his Ted Baker and Burberry tie to wave at all the places he used to scrounge around for bottles to collect the deposit at ShopRite. Nah. He’s not into poverty tourism, even if it’s personal poverty tourism. Not today. But on the other hand — significant, still, that word sticks in his craw. He could probably fill an entire afternoon with stories of bad first dates at all the various bars and coffee shops adjacent to Columbia, but that’s not really something you tell your, ah…
Boyfriend. Fine. His boss is his boyfriend now, and he’s just going to have to accept it, he thinks, as they cross Third Avenue and then keep heading uptown.
“Hey,” he says to Washington. “Uh, so, as much as I’m really into this whole sordid-stories-from-my-haunted-past walking tour, you want to do something that I somehow never got around to doing back when I lived here, instead?”
Washington looks at him over the tops of his sunglasses. “What’s that?”
Alex sighs. “I always kept telling the people I dated that I wanted to do the whole ‘picnic in the park’ thing. Never got around to it. Is that super cheesy? Or is it something you’d be into? I mean, we are here for a wedding and all, it’s okay to be kind of romantic, I know that’s dumb, but…”
There’s a hand on the small of his back and Alex glances over at Washington to see that he’s wearing the expression he’s come to know as the Shut up, Alexander expression. He’s rambling. He should stop rambling. “I would love to do that,” Washington says, and smiles slightly. Encouragingly. “Yes. Let’s go.”
An hour later they’re walking into Central Park, laden down with bags from Whole Foods. Alex takes the lead, pulls Washington through the Ramble and up to a clearing he knows to be very private. It’s close to the lake, close to the boathouse and Tavern on the Green, but surrounded by trees on one side and a surprisingly steep cliff on the other, at least as far as the park is concerned. It’s quiet. Late-summer cicadas are buzzing in the trees, but the cars and rumble of the city are muffled by the rest of the park, and for the first time since they’ve arrived in the city, they can’t hear any other voices.
Alex sits down on a wide, flat rock and opens up one of the bags he’s got with him. Pulls out a bottle of chilled prosecco and grins. “First things first,” he says, and pops the cork. It flies off into the trees, toward the ravine side of the rock, and he dissolves in laughter.
Washington is looking down into the two paper bags in front of him. “Do you think we bought too much food?”
“Whatever. We’ll take it back to the hotel,” Alex says. “We’re making up for lost time. Gimme some of that salmon.”
They divide it up between the two of them, opening boxes and plates, sharing silverware and eating from each others’ makeshift flatware openly. Washington gestures for the wine, and Alex passes it over; they take turns passing it back and forth, like college kids with a joint, he thinks, laughing again to himself. “This is technically illegal,” he comments. “Although I don’t know who’s gonna bust a sitting United States Senator for violating open container laws on a Saturday in Central Park…”
Washington laughs. “I never did this. Not when I was younger.”
“Never broke any laws at all?” Alex waggles his eyebrows suggestively, and Washington chuckles again, shaking his head.
“Nope. Honest to a fault. Some might call it a guilty conscience.” He takes a swig of the prosecco and falls thoughtfully silent. “You weren’t raised religious, were you?”
Alex shrugs. “Catholic, kind of. It didn’t really stick. I didn’t get confirmed or anything.”
“You’re probably lucky,” Washington says. “I didn’t… I think of faith as a private matter, and you know I’m still… but it instilled in me some qualities I’m still actively trying to unlearn.”
“Such as?” Alex can’t resist the question. It still strikes him as a novel surprise when Washington chooses to be so forthcoming.
“Such as seeing asceticism and denial as inherently virtuous,” Washington muses. “You know, I spent quite a bit of my life resisting the impulse to pursue the things I wanted. I thought that giving into any sort of temptation made me a weaker man.”
Alex hums as he lies back on the rock, folding both hands behind his head as he looks up at the cloudless blue sky, obscured by a picturesque frame of trees. “That’s too bad,” he says. “I think I speak for the rest of humanity when I say that giving into temptation is pretty much the best thing in the world.”
Washington laughs. “I think we both know I’m well acquainted with that notion by now.” Alex watches from the corner of his eye as he leans back on his hands. He’s looking at Alex, fond and a little bit hungry, and Alex sighs, licking his lips, practically begging him with body language to just lean over and kiss him already.
For his credit, Washington doesn’t waste time; he pushes himself off his hands and does exactly that, looming into Alex’s field of view until he consumes it and kissing him with a sort of sweet intensity that rivals the bakery-fresh macarons they’d just shared. There’s nothing but the sounds of cicadas and, somewhere in the distance, a siren wailing on a street, and the cool breeze and warm sun and the smell of the stone and grass. Nothing between them. The moment warm and bare and intimate.
Alex opens his eyes a little, remembering. He coughs slightly, and Washington pulls away.
“Not to, uh, kill the moment,” Alex says. Seizing it, instead. “But I had to get tested last week for that insurance physical, and, well. Clean bill of health. So I was thinking, y’know, maybe later tonight…” He trails off, grinning sheepishly up at Washington. “Skip the condom? Maybe?”
Washington runs a thumb over the plane of Alex’s cheekbone. “Your sense of romance, as always, astounds me, princess.”
“God, I can’t believe how you talk sometimes,” Alex laughs. “You need a copy editor, like, in your brain. Some sort of angel on your shoulder to warn you about ritual comma abuse before the words come out of your mouth.”
“We can’t all write poetry with a hundred-degree fever, my dear boy,” Washington says agreeably as he joins Alex on his back, folding his own hands behind his head as Alex flushes at the memory. Their knees knock together comfortably as they shift a little closer on the rock, Alex staring up at the bright blue sky. For once, he’s not preoccupied. For once, his mind is letting him be in the moment. Be here. Relaxed.
“What time is it?” he asks out of nowhere, because he can’t be that relaxed.
Washington holds his wrist up in front of his face, checking the time on his bulky, luxe wristwatch. “About four.”
“We should probably go back to the hotel soon,” Alex grumbles. “Get ready and all. I feel like I need a Silkwood shower after wandering around all day.” He’d forgotten how sweaty just getting from place to place in the city leaves you. If it’s not the thing he misses least about living here, it’s at least in the top ten.
Washington sits up and Alex follows suit. He’s a little dizzy as he picks himself up. Oh, right. Half a bottle of prosecco. Just enough to give him a decent buzz, make him laugh a little more freely and grip Washington around the wrist as they make their way back down the path, back down the Ramble and cutting through Sheep Meadow to the Mall. They talk idly of the news, of current goings-on in D.C., dancing around the subject of Jefferson’s recent resignation and the investigation into Madison’s PAC with sly smiles and knowing phrasing. It’s something they don’t need to speak directly about; not yet. Not unless they think they might need an alibi. It doesn’t look as though they will.
The elevator at the Plaza is as ornate as the rest of the place, a warm box of gold and mirrors, and Alex studies their reflections as they ride up to their room. They look good together, he decides. Not that he hasn’t thought so before, looked at pictures snapped during the ramp-up to the midterms and seen himself whispering in Washington’s ear, standing behind him at rallies and fundraisers. But those, he thinks, you’d have to squint. You’d have to know the backstory before the subtext in those photos would read like text. Here, in a shiny gold elevator with mirrors on three walls, they are an infinite them, an infinite us, a thousand little Alex-and-Washingtons from a thousand angles all reflected in this tiny little gold box.
They don’t touch in the elevator, like they don’t touch anywhere there might be cameras. Which is kind of the fun part, even still. Living with a secret is hard until it becomes second nature, at which point it just became How They Live. He kind of loves it. He’s into this idea, the more he thinks it over, of a public and a private self, of how Washington compartmentalizes and preserves so much of himself for his inner circle only. “You have to do it,” Washington had explained to him once, “or else you lose who you actually are by commodifying it. Everyone in D.C., that’s a persona. You have to develop one of your own to preserve yourself.”
So yeah. He’s more than fine with this, he thinks, as they head for the shower in their hotel suite. They don’t touch too much there, either, save for Washington washing his hair as per their usual routine. Washington seems preoccupied, his gaze occasionally drifting into space and his words trailing off mid-sentence. Alex doesn’t push it. The whole brooding thing isn’t necessarily a bad sign. He’s come to realize that as well. It’s just a part of the whole package, how Washington deals with things.
Alex is sprawled on the bed, scrolling through Twitter and considering the repercussions of engaging with some asshole in his mentions, when he hears Washington calling him from the bathroom. “Can you reach into my bag and bring me my aftershave, princess?”
“Sure,” he calls back, and unzips Washington’s carry-on. Rifles through it, trying not to wrinkle anything. He’s looking for a travel-sized bottle in a plastic bag but he’s first met with a small, heavy box wrapped in nice green paper, a thin silver ribbon tied around it in a neat bow. He cocks a brow. That’s their color. Interesting.
He locates the aftershave and brings both with him into the bathroom, leaning on the doorjamb in his t-shirt and boxer briefs, looking at Washington with interest. “Here y’go,” he says, tossing the bag with the aftershave in his direction, and then holds up the little box. “Wedding present?”
Washington looks a little flustered as he rinses the last bits of shaving cream off his neck. “I was going to wait,” he says. “No. Go ahead. Open it now.”
“Oh, shit, really?” Alex says, then shakes his head. “No, I don’t want to spoil your surprise. I’ll wait.”
Washington smiles fondly at him. “Are you just saying that to make me happy?”
“Maybe. Maybe I’m just into the anticipation.” Alex grins, pushing himself up on the balls of his feet to meet Washington’s lips. “We should get dressed.”
The wedding itself is beautiful, obviously. The reception — that part’s just fun.
He’s seated next to Eliza at a round table dripping with flowers, Martha and Washington beside them, John and his latest plus-one on the other side, Angelica and her new fiancé filling out the rest of the table. They’re playing it up as though they’re the couple, because, Eliza says, pulling him aside as they glance at their escort cards, “Angelica doesn’t know, and I don’t really want to make this a thing tonight.” So Alex is more than willing to play ball, leaning in to whisper in her ear, the two of them dissolving into laughter every so often as they trade fruit salad appetizers, her artfully-sliced mango for his pineapple and berries.
She does look lovely in navy as always, a strapless blue gown sprinkled with silver that gives Alex the impression that he’s sitting next to Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The gold chain at her throat sparkles in the low light of the reception hall, and he sees her hand drift to it on occasion, all through dinner and cake, playing with it almost absentmindedly, her eyes flicking back over to Martha when she thinks no one else is watching.
He knows what that means. Alex wasn’t born yesterday. And part of him admits it’s pretty damn hot, but another part of him aches, just a little bit — the part of him that still doesn’t mind feeling like a possession, that still revels in the moments when Washington makes him feel well and thoroughly owned. “C’mon,” he murmurs in her ear as he leans in. “You’re about to out yourself to the whole table. Let’s do some shots.”
Eliza follows him to the open bar, her high gold heels no impediment to her long stride. He orders shots of tequila and the bartender passes them over knowingly, looking at them like he knows their story, their vibe. He has no idea, he laughs, but hands the shot and the lime to Eliza and grins as they both raise them high.
“To dirty little secrets,” he says over the music, and she grins back.
“To being a dirty little secret,” she says.
“And loving it.”
“Always.”
They knock them back, suck the juice from the lime slices. He’s immediately tempted to order another, but Eliza shakes her head. “We should dance,” she says. “Tequila makes me dance-y.”
“This is the loosest I’ve ever seen you,” he comments as they head for the crowded dance floor, and she shrugs, laughing as they lose themselves in the crowd. She’s a good dancer, even in a floor-length dress and heels; she has a sort of awareness of her body that Alex finds intimidating even as he rolls his hips and moves his shoulders with the beat. He’s a good dancer, too. He’s under no ill illusions there.
One song turns into two, and two turns into four. He always forgets how much he likes this, being swept away and losing himself on a crowded dance floor. He finds John, dances up on him for a while, laughing and touching as they move with the music. He glances across the room, sees Washington watching him, sipping a bourbon and nodding as they make brief eye contact. His lips quirk up into a smile and Alex feels his face get a little warmer, and he bumps John with his shoulder, jerks his head in Washington’s direction.
“I’ll catch you later,” he yells over the Drake song playing, and John gives him a knowing grin, face splitting open all freckled and flushed as he turns back to dance with Angelica and Peggy.
Washington catches him by the wrist as he makes his way to the table. “I think,” he says quietly into Alex’s ear, “that we should call it a night.”
Alex cocks a brow, pops the last bite of cake on Washington’s plate into his own mouth. “You getting tired, Daddy?” he teases quietly, and his hand slides down his chest to unbutton the middle button on his jacket, letting it fall open over his shirt and vest. It’s the same suit he wore to the gala, all the way back when. Still makes Washington look at him the same way, like he wants to eat him alive.
“Perhaps,” Washington says, cocking his head. He stands up from the table, inclines his head to Martha, who is sipping her champagne and chatting with a woman Alex doesn’t know. “I’m going up to the room, darling.”
Martha smiles. Her eyes flit, almost imperceptibly, to where Eliza is still dancing surrounded by her boys on the floor. “I may be a while,” she says. “Don’t wait up for me.”
Washington walks off and Alex follows him by a few steps. It was Alex’s idea to book a suite in the hotel itself. No reason to waste time on travel, they’d rationalized it. He’s thanking himself for his own forethought as they step into the elevator together, the air between them crackling with energy both potential and kinetic. He’s got the itch under his skin good and solid now, he can’t stop staring, quite openly, at Washington’s hands and the way his arms fill out the jacket of his suit. He wants to be used, played with, wrecked.
“Hey,” he murmurs as he hits Washington’s shoulder with his own, between floors seventeen and eighteen. “Uh, anything goes, okay? I’ll say if it’s too much. But. Do your thing.”
Washington raises both eyebrows. “Really now,” he says. “Let’s play ball, then.”
Alex shivers a little.
As soon as they step into the room, he’s caught off-guard and breathless; Washington pushes him against the door, pulls his hair from its ponytail and yanks on it hard. “Anything goes, huh, princess?” he growls in his ear, and Alex keens a little, tilting his head up to offer his lips up to a bruising kiss.
Washington bites down on his lips, sucks his tongue into his mouth, all the while undoing the buttons on his vest with a sort of practiced, frenzied fury. They stumble toward the bed, shedding their clothing piece by piece, and he wants — he wants fucking everything, wants to be taken apart like his three-piece suit, and as Washington pushes him back onto the bed he hesitates, grappling for the lube in his carry-on bag, looking down at him like —
“Please,” Alex breathes without thinking about it, “Daddy, please—”
And then Washington is licking a stripe down his cock, taking the head in his mouth and tonguing the underside in the way he knows Alex loves, and he’s staring up at him from under his heavy brows like he can’t tear his eyes away, and Alex’s fingers scrabble on the expensive gold-taupe comforter as he tries to grab onto something, anything —
“You don’t need to talk,” Washington says roughly as he pulls off, his voice hoarse and fucked-sounding, and Alex gasps because he doesn’t have real words anyway but if he stops touching him long enough to look for the gag he’s gonna actually die, so he shuts up and just feels —
— feels himself being spread open and Washington is playing with his balls, licking him softly, that brilliant fucking tongue and Jesus Christ he shouldn’t be this good, Alex digs his fingers into the bedclothes, chants Daddydaddydaddy in his head and maybe out loud but he wouldn’t fucking know either way at this point —
— feels Washington biting at his inner thighs, sucking kisses into the places his teeth scrapes over, and two slick fingers pushing into him up to the knuckle, and Alex gasps —
— feels two fingers turn into three and Washington is biting his neck, the hollow of his throat, his collarbone as he bears down on those thick, brilliant fingers, feeling himself yield to them, stretching around them as that other clever hand works his cock, and —
“Fuck,” Alex gasps as his hips snap up sharply, “Daddy, please, enough, I’m ready —” and oh God, his mouth is back on Alex’s, hot and hungry and perfect, and Alex closes his eyes as he waits, as Washington pulls away for the moment and then the head of his cock is brushing against his entrance —
Alex cants his hips up, wraps his legs around Washington’s ass as he takes him in. Just him. Just skin on skin and their mouths bump together. Their lips are slack, it’s not a real kiss, but Alex sucks in the breath that Washington exhales, his whole body trembling. He presses him in further, guiding with his legs, and it’s so perfect, and he needs him to fucking move before his entire body unravels.
“Like that,” Alex gasps, and Washington nods, rocking his hips a few times. He pulls back, drives deep inside Alex, and they both gasp. Washington is holding himself up on his thick, defined arms and he’s everything Alex can see, his entire plane of view, just his solid chest and arms caging him in. He’s getting rougher, a little sloppier, and it’s amazing —
Alex moans hard, thrusting his head back against the pillow, his eyes slitted open. He’s panting some sort of filthy litany as Washington pounds into him fast and hard, fuck Daddy yes please good more fuck me like that, hit me Daddy hit me please —
A hard crack as Washington smacks him across the face, and Alex’s groan in response is almost a shout, coming from someplace deep and guttural inside him as his cock jumps in time, and it’s great, and it’s fucking incredible, and his voice comes out choked and needy when he twists his face to the other side and braces himself and begs for more but Washington, to his surprise, matches his tone —
“Fuck, princess, Alex, you’re too much, I’m so close—”
“Please, Daddy,” he begs, the words escaping him in a hiss, and that’s it, he comes, buried deep inside Alex, stilling and shaking and slipping out of him, and then he trails his mouth down Alex’s body, agonizingly slow for the fever that’s got them both like a vise. Washington licks over the knob of his hipbone and bites at his thighs again, and he’s begging again, saying words he didn’t know he could conjure under these circumstances, all of them coming out in God knows what language.
Washington takes him into his mouth, buries three fingers deep inside him where he’s dripping with lube and come, and Alex’s orgasm is almost instantaneous. He comes down Washington’s throat with a whine, and he’s certain an I love you comes out as he does.
There’s a shared gasp and a sigh, a slackening of muscles and tightening of arms, and as Alex regains his uneasy metaphorical footing, gets used to the whole corporeal-body-in-the-world thing, he’s nestled in Washington’s arms, face pressed against his chest where he smells like sandalwood oil and sweat. It’s comfortable. It’s home.
“Good,” he says decisively, and then, as his verbal capacity more steadily returns to him, he adds, “That was good. Really good.”
“Mm.” Washington tilts his head down. His eyes are warm and dark and smiling.
The idle thought occurs to him as the haze of his orgasm clears. “What was in the box?”
Washington groans. “Oh, that,” he says. “I should wash my hands, then. Hold on.”
“Don’t go,” Alex whines dramatically, but Washington is already calmly extricating himself from their spot on the bed, padding toward the bathroom and running the sink. Alex sighs and reaches for the first item of clothing he sees, Washington’s tuxedo shirt. He smirks a little at the idea of it, and pulls it on. The whole rom-com girlfriend thing works for him.
Washington comes back into the room, now wearing one of the plush ivory bathrobes, and rolls his eyes good-naturedly as he sees Alex. But reserves comment. He takes the green wrapped box from where Alex had set it on a coffee table and holds it out.
“I wasn’t sure,” he says, and then shakes his head. “Well. If you don’t like it — take a look, we can always —”
“Oh, stop,” Alex says, shaking his head, exasperated. He pulls at one end of the ribbon, then the other, letting it fall onto the bed, and slowly slides one finger beneath the tape, trying not to rip the paper. Washington watches him with a faint smile as he unwraps the gift, revealing a dark blue box with silver lettering on top: Rolex.
“Shit,” Alex murmurs under his breath, and then amends it. “Un-shit. Sorry. Language. But…” He lifts the top, revealing a stunning wristwatch, all silver with a gunmetal grey face. “This is…”
He looks up to see Washington, smiling at him with pride. “I didn’t know if you’d actually like it,” he says. “I noticed you don’t wear a watch, I wasn’t certain—”
“I used to wear a Swatch that my foster family got me when I graduated high school,” Alex admits sheepishly, “but the leather on the strap kinda fell apart and I never got around to taking it to get fixed. It’s not that…” He lifts it out of the box, lets Washington clasp it around his right wrist. “This is incredible. I…”
Washington smiles again. He hasn’t stopped smiling. His fingers trail over Alex’s wrist, tracing the silver steel links of the band. “Think of this as an item of significance,” he says quietly. “Discreet, but of the utmost significance to both of us. Much like yourself to me.”
Alex’s lips quirk up into a smile of his own and there’s a stuttering warmth where his heart should be, growing hotter and hotter and filling his ribcage and lungs with something bright red and gold and real. “Jesus,” he says, “that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You don’t have to patronize me,” Washington says, rolling his eyes, and Alex turns his hand over, catching him by the wrist.
“Not patronizing,” he says, looking up to meet those dark, earnest eyes, “not joking. I love you. Thank you.”
Washington reaches out, tucks a piece of stray hair behind his ear. “I love you,” he says. “You’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” Alex repeats, and then they’re kissing, falling back onto the hotel bed and kissing and kissing forever, and the watch on his wrist feels heavy, and real, and he’s spinning and dizzy, and safe, and home.