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Once A King, Always

Summary:

He doesn’t look like a tourist, he hopes, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a jacket with only a backpack slung over one shoulder, but he still tries to keep a steady pace, tries to look like he knows where he’s going, like he hasn’t spent the last 6 years google-mapping the same address every day, staring at the windows on the street view, hoping for a glimpse of him.
85 Margaretta Terrace.
Henry had told him 31 years, or 6 years, or a lifetime ago.


Alex travels to London, looking for a long-lost King.

Notes:

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Joyeux Noël! ¡Feliz Navidad!

I was inspired by a recent rewatch of 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe', while I was trying to get myself into a Christmas-y mindset. But, of course, I had to add a sprinkling of yearning.

I hope you enjoy!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

85 Margaretta Terrace.

Alex repeats the address to himself as the plane takes off, at cruising altitude, over lukewarm airplane food, through turbulence, during landing, on the metro (or the underground, or the tube…), as he walks from Sloane Square station, passing Chelsea Old Town Hall with it’s Christmas garland framing the large transom window, and finally as he turns on to one of the quieter sideroads, tourists and the bustle of London falling away sharply once he leaves the main thoroughfare.

He doesn’t look like a tourist, he hopes, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a jacket with only a backpack slung over one shoulder, but he still tries to keep a steady pace, tries to look like he knows where he’s going, like he hasn’t spent the last 6 years google-mapping the same address every day, staring at the windows on the street view, hoping for a glimpse of him.

85 Margaretta Terrace.

Henry had told him 31 years, or 6 years, or a lifetime ago.

They hadn’t found Aslan’s camp yet, and they were cold and tired, huddled together under the shelter of a great oak tree, and Henry had said,

“I live at 85 Margaretta Terrace, London. Don’t let me forget.”

Alex hadn’t forgotten either.

He has no idea if Henry even still lives here. Whatever surname Henry had entered Narnia with, Alex had never learned it, and it had soon fallen away to the Wise, as Aslan had named him. Alex had been the Bold.

The houses are tall and pressed together in this part of London, red-bricked with white framed windows and wrought iron gates surrounding checkerboard tiles. The street is wide and lined with tall old-fashioned lampposts, and Alex’s stomach gives a jolt that he ignores when he looks up at one. The whole street is genteel, and if Alex hadn’t lived in an actual castle for over 30 years, he’d be awed. As it stands, he still looks around the street, if only to check the numbers on every building.

81… 83… there!

85 Margaretta Terrace has a red door, standing out amongst the other black-doored homes around it, a holly and ivy wreath hanging from the top. The knocker is a rabbit head cast in brass, and Alex hides a grimace as he takes hold of it, remembering Pa Hare and his chittering laugh.

He drops the knocker once, twice, against the, as he now knows from wondering the streets of London, postbox red door and then takes a step back, glancing down the road. A white-haired man with a Miniature Schnauzer trots by, but otherwise the street is quiet. So quiet that Alex can hear the lock and chain as they are disengaged from the door.

It cracks open and a young woman, probably only a couple of years older than he is, peers through the gap.

“Can I help you?” she asks, and Alex internally panics, his heart dropping to somewhere near his knees. The entire flight over, he’d been rehearsing what he would say once he got here and Henry opened the door to 85 Margaretta Terrace, and Alex got to see him for the first time in 6 years. He’d call Henry ‘my love, my darling, my star, the very air in my lungs’. He had not expected the door to be opened by anyone else.

“Um, hi. Is Henry here?” he asks this stranger instead, and she frowns at him, but the door opens a bit more.

“No,” she says and Alex - well, he deflates. There’s no other word for it. His shoulders slump and his head droops and his heart plummets the rest of the way to the floor.

“Oh… Oh, okay, sorry to bother you, I’ll just-,” he manages to stammer out, taking a step backwards, away, but the young woman stops him, stepping further into the open doorway, letting a glimpse of a long beige hallway and warm lighting show behind her shoulder.

“He lives here!” she throws out in answer to his rising panic, and Alex stops in his tracks. “Sorry, he does live here. He’s just out at the moment,” she explains and Alex can breathe once more.

He got the address right. Henry will come back here, to him.

He doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He runs a hand through his hair instead, tugging at the curls, and the young woman tilts her head at him.

“Sorry, what’s your name?” she asks and Alex realises that he must look like he’s completely lost it, swept up in a tumult of emotion on her doorstep.

“Alex. I’m - I’m Alex,” he tells her, offering his hand. She takes it and they shake. Her grip is firm, sure, and he can feel calluses on her fingertips.

“Beatrice,” she replies and Alex could slap himself. Of course, of course, this is Beatrice! Henry’s older sister; warm, witty, his fiercest protector. Henry had spoken about her a lot in their early days in Narnia, and to an extent Alex feels like he already knows her, but to see her in the flesh is another matter entirely. She looks like him, like Henry, Alex realises. There is a similarity there, in the sweep of her cheekbone, the slope of her nose.

Here in London, she settles one hip on the doorframe and leans against it, her arms crossing over her chest, surveying him with curiosity. “So you’re Alex. You know, Mum thought you were imaginary. Bit odd for a 13-year-old to have an imaginary friend, but-,” she shrugs one shoulder and Alex can feel himself flush pink.

“Yeah, I bet…”

The silence stretches between them for a second.

“Do you want to come in and wait for him? The BBC said it was going to snow this afternoon,” Beatrice offers, tilting one shoulder back into the house. Alex looks up - the sky is white and heavy, cotton-like, but he shakes his head when he looks back down.

“No, thanks. Can I just - wait out here?” he asks. Beatrice gives him a quizzical look, one eyebrow quirking up, her eyes flicking to the sky once more.

“You’re not worried about the aforementioned snow? It’s bloody freezing!”

“No, I’m okay, honestly. I’ll just wait out here for him,” he tells her. She thinks for a second and then nods.

“Alright. Knock if you need anything. If the curtains across the road start twitching, it’s Mrs Richards, just give her a wave.” and with that sage advice, she shuts the door with a smile.

Alex settles himself on the stoop. The checkerboard tiles are cold under his ass, but he can tough it out. He shrugs off his backpack and sets it by the door, before fishing his phone out of his jacket pocket and turning it on.

He’s surprised it doesn’t instantly burst into flames.

A hundred messages chime through, the phone buzzes with increasing urgency as the number of missed calls he has ticks up every second. June’s frantic “WHERE ARE YOU??”, his Mom’s increasingly concerned “Just let us know you’re safe, please!”. A message from Nora dings through last.

nora-bo-bora

I hope this is worth it.

He calls June, because she won’t immediately eviscerate him over the phone. She picks up before the line even rings once.

“Where are you?” she asks, already sounding tearful. Alex picks at the knee of his jeans, the denim scratchy under his thumbnail.

“London.”

“Alex, what the fuck,” she responds. She sounds exhausted, her nose stuffy, her throat clogged.

“Sorry, Bug. If I tried to explain, you’d think I was crazy,” he tells her, because it’s the truth.

6 years ago he’d climbed out of his middle school pool at 12-years-old, shivering and dripping water, and cried because a man, who was now a boy again, was nowhere to be found, and he’s been handled with kid gloves ever since. At the time, he’d worked himself up so badly he’d had to be taken to hospital and sedated, and to everyone else, it looked like he’d had some sort of mental break. They theorised that he’d hit his head on the side of the pool after he’d been pushed in, and it had caused a concussion, but Alex knew the truth.

He’d lived for 30 years in another realm, had left and found himself back where he’d started, just with a gaping hole beside him where Henry should be. There was no concussion, just a depth of grief none of them could fathom.

Bradley Hoffman had been suspended anyway.

And so he’d tampered it all down, tucked it all away even though his skin itched with the effort, and then he’d saved all his birthday and graduation and holiday money, bought himself a one way flight to Heathrow on the first day of Christmas break and walked onto that plane without a moment of hesitation. Because he’s been living without half his soul for 6 years, and he’s so tired.

“When are you coming home?” June asks, sniffing.

“I’m not sure,” he admits., which is the truth. He isn’t sure. If Henry doesn’t want anything to do with him, he’ll head straight back to the airport and catch the next flight back to Dulles. If Henry does… he’s not sure if he could ever leave his side again.

“Jesus Alex, you can’t just do this!” June snaps down the phone, and Alex winces. The warp and weft of his jeans has begun to fray, so he stops picking and clenches his hand in his lap instead. “Mom’s worried sick, Dad’s furious, I’m -,” she lets out of a sharp huff, as if there aren’t words enough to capture how she feels. His heart hurts at the sound. “You scared us, Alex.”

“I know. I’m sorry. But I had to, Bug. I can’t explain it now, but there’s something I have to do in London. I’ll come home once I’ve done that.”

“You keep your phone on, okay?? You answer it within 3 rings, day or night, or I’m calling Scotland Yard, I swear.” June still sounds tearful, but a little less so.

“I will. And -” June interrupts him before he can finish his sentence.

“I’ll talk to Mom and Dad. You owe me so much, Alex. I love you, you are so stupid.”

“I know,” he smiles down the phone and he hopes she can hear it in his voice. “I love you too. Bye, Bug,”

“Bye, asshole.”

He puts his phone back into his pocket after she hangs up.

It is cold outside, but not unbearable. He has a jacket on, and a sweater underneath. It’s more bearable than their first Narnian winter.

There’d been a big difference between winter and Winter in Narnia, they’d learned. A lot of Narnians had family tales told of the Long Winter, as it was known. A hundred years of deprivation and never-ending cold. So when the temperatures dropped and fires were lit around Cair Paravel, Badger and Beaver and Hare would give Henry and Alex small indulgent smiles when they shivered and remind them that things could always be worse. Alex had taken to reminding them that he didn’t have fur, and could he please have more wood for the fire?

They hadn’t been living at Cair Paravel originally.

They’d arrived in the spring. Henry tripping between trees and dimensions, Alex falling into one body of water and surfacing in another. He’d heard Henry’s shouts from the forest pool he’d found himself in, and somehow, they’d found each other.

“Who’re you?” Alex had asked, peering through the dappled sunlight at the long-limbed, coltish boy with blond hair and blue eyes. He’d been soaking wet, his sneakers squelching with every step, sticky with pond water, and this other boy looked picture perfect, in neat black trousers with a polo shirt and knitted blue sweater over the top. Alex would soon learn that it was Henry’s school uniform - he’d been walking home from school, decided to take a stroll through Hyde Park, and had fallen through the narrow gap between two trees, and between two worlds.

“Henry. And you are?”

“Alex.”

“... You’re American,” Henry had said, a bit redundantly. Alex had nodded.

“And you’re English.”

“... I don’t think we’re in Hyde Park.”

They’d stuck together. They’d heard Aslan’s camp on their third day stumbling through the Western Woods, and when they broke through the tree line, a great Lion waited for them in a clearing, his eyes amber and his mane looking like it had been spun with gold.

“Ah, there you are. The trees said you were on your way,” Aslan had said in his deep, warm voice, and Alex had nearly cried. Out of relief or fear, he hadn’t been sure. “Come, Sons of Adam. You shall have food and rest.”

It had been six months later when they had been proclaimed Kings of Narnia. They’d proven themselves in battle against the Underland army, Alex leading the charge following battleplans of High King Peter the Magnificent; Henry deciding the strategy, pouring over journals left by King Edmund the Just. They’d been so young, to be covered in so much blood.

King Alexander the Bold.

King Henry the Wise.

“Once a King or Queen of Narnia, always a King or Queen of Narnia,” Aslan had told them at their coronation, a crown of gold on Henry’s head.

Alex had kissed Henry for the first time when he was 15. Stole into his bed when he was 17 and never slept a night alone again. At 20, they’d exchanged golden rings made of gold plucked from the shoreline by river nymphs.

They couldn’t be husbands in any legal sense in Narnia, but they lived as them. For 31 years, they’d grown together, hair streaking silver and white, laughter lines on their faces and battle scars on their bodies. Ma Hare had fussed and tutted over every knife wound, every arrow puncture, and centaurs had taught them how to nock their arrows and strike true with a blade. But despite the danger, Narnia was magic, and they would always be safe, or so they believed.

Henry had found the lamppost. He’d read about it in papers left by a faun, Tumnus, and had decided to go looking for it, taking Alex with him. Something had called to them from the forest, and they had followed, and somewhere along the way they’d been separated.

Alex had surfaced in a pool in Texas, shouting Henry’s name, 12-years-old once more. And he’d been searching ever since.

London is a different cold to Narnia. Narnia had a crisp, dry cold, whereas London cold is damp and seeping. He already can’t feel his ass on the tiled step, and his fingertips are cold, but Alex tucks his hands into his armpits and puts up with it.

He has to see Henry. He needs to see Henry.

Snow is beginning to fall from the cottony sky overhead. Small flakes at first, then larger ones. Alex can feel the soft touch of it on his hair, and the snowflakes melt onto his knees where they land. The air doesn’t get any colder, and so Alex waits.

He’s waited 6 years, he can wait another hour or so.

If he had been warned of the horror that being shoved back into his 12-year-old body would be, he would’ve stayed put in Narnia. He had all the thoughts and feelings of a grown man with the muscle tone of a prepubescent boy, who, speaking of, had to go through puberty again, which Alex thought was deeply unfair on a cosmic level.

And he couldn’t tell anyone the truth because then he’d be medicated into a stupor. He remembered them sedating him after he’d returned, how the sedative had felt ice cold in his arm. He can’t lose that fight again.

So he waits. He’s waited for so long anyway, and he’d wait a lifetime more, if it meant he got to see Henry one more time.

It takes nearly an hour. Alex feels him before he sees him. It’s like the snow shudders in the air, and he looks over to the end of the road before he’s even conscious of doing so.

Henry’s just turned down the street.

He hasn’t noticed Alex yet. His eyes are down, focused on the cellphone in his hand. He has a canvas tote over one shoulder, a thick burgundy scarf wound around his neck, and his hair is shorter than it had been the last time they’d been this age, but he looks - good. Healthy. “Hale,” Mrs Beaver would have said.

Alex stands from the stoop, breathless, fingers flexing by his sides, his heart thudding loudly in his chest. He feels that familiar clawing feeling again, the desperation, the yearning, the hope that he’d carried with him across dimensions and through the years. It’s trying to come out. It takes the form of tears burning behind his eyes, and he wills Henry to look up, just look up, I’m here!

Henry looks up.

Oh.

It’s like the whole world falls away. It’s only them and the softly falling snow.

Henry’s expression changes rapidly from confusion to realisation to joy, and then it crumples into something that might be overwhelming relief, his eyebrows sloping down, the corners of his mouth pinched and tight. He takes off running up the street as Alex steps out onto the pavement, numb ass forgotten, and he is there to catch Henry, to pull him close, as they crash together.

“Oh my god, oh god,” Henry sobs into his neck, his arms around Alex’s neck, trying to pull him closer as Alex holds him tight around the middle, closing his eyes and pressing his lips together to stop the first sob escaping.

He feels the same, in Alex’s arms.

He feels the same.

Thank Aslan.

His cheeks are wet and it might be the snow, but it also just might be the tears he can’t hold back. Henry is sobbing too, and when he leans back, his cheeks are pink and blotchy. Alex can’t help but reach out and touch them, stroke across his cheekbones and wipe away his tears. Henry gives him a wobbly smile.

“You’re here, how are you here?” Henry asks, his breath hitching. Aslan, he sounds the same too. He raises his own hands, smoothing up from Alex’s shoulders briefly into his hair before cupping his cheeks. Alex’s eyelids flutter closed as he sighs - he feels like he can breathe again, like he’s not been able to inhale lungfuls of air until now.

“Got on a plane,” he says in a murmur and Henry makes an incredulous noise.

“But my address, how - how did you know where to find me?”

“You told me. First day in Narnia. I remembered, I wrote it all down,” Alex explains, and he knows that if he goes digging in the backpack he brought with him, which contains his passport, a toothbrush, a spare pair of shorts and underneath all that, a ratty, battered notebook, in which he could find the exact page with Henry’s address on, scribbled down in a stream of consciousness when he’d woken up in the middle of the night and one world had blended into the other.

Henry’s gaze softens, his eyes the blue of the Great Eastern Ocean, and he leans in to press their mouths together.

It’s perfect. It’s earth-shattering. It is transcendent.

It’s right.

They break apart but don’t step away from each other. Alex smiles when Henry leans forward to rub their noses together.

“Come inside?” Henry asks, and his eyes narrow when Alex opens his mouth to reply. “Don’t answer that, actually,” he says before Alex can speak, and Alex grins. They step apart at the same time, but Henry’s hand drops to link his fingers with Alex’s, so they aren’t really separated. Alex allows himself to be lead back to the checkerboard tile, the red door with the rabbit head knocker, and he bends down to snatch up his backpack as Henry fishes his keys from his coat pocket.

“Did you wait outside?” Henry asks, slotting the key into the lock one-handed. Alex catches his eye when he looks over briefly.

“I didn’t want to miss you,” he explains. Henry doesn’t answer, just pushing the door open instead.

The house is warm, glaringly so after spending so much time outside. Beatrice pokes her head out from a door halfway down the long hallway, and smiles.

“I see you found your street urchin,” it’s not unkind, though it might be a bit chiding. Alex gives her a small smile regardless.

“We’re going upstairs,” Henry tells her and she raises an eyebrow but slips back into the room without argument, disappearing from view.

“I feel like I should make an effort to know her,” Alex says, a little guilty, but Henry glances over his shoulder as he leads Alex up the narrow staircase with it’s scrolled handrail.

“Mrs Beaver won’t tell you off for forgetting your manners here,” he says and it’s enough to draw Alex up short. He’s still turning the comment over in his mind when Henry leads him up another flight of stairs and then to a room at the front of the house, shutting the door behind them as Alex drops his backpack to the floor.

It’s a neat room, the bed made, the curtains pulled back to let in the weak winter sunlight. Bookcases, stuffed to the brim with paperbacks and hardbacks and textbooks, line half of one wall, the queen-sized bed pushed up against the wall near the two square windows that look out over the road outside.

The room just… feels like Henry. The neatness isn’t cold, unfeeling, but a reflection of how careful he is, how intentionally he goes about his life. He used to make their bed every morning, before the staff could get to it, fluffing up goose down pillows and straightening the thick, tapestry-like bed coverings. He claimed it set them up for the day, got their minds in the right place to rule.

Henry motions for Alex to sit on the edge of the bed, shrugging off his own coat as he goes, pushing at Alex’s shoulders until he’s also draped his jacket over the back of the small desk chair opposite the bookcases. He toes off his sneaker as Henry kicks off his shoes, and then they’re curled together, on top of the sheets of Henry’d bed, their hands clasped together between them.

“I still can’t believe you’re here,” Henry murmurs and Alex nods.

“I know what you mean.”

They lie in silence for a while. Alex studies Henry’s face, just as intently as Henry is scrutinising his, trying to spot the differences between the faces they knew and the ones they have now. Henry is missing an eyebrow scar, earned from when a training fight went awry, and a small scar on his bottom lip, from where he’d taken an elbow to the face during the battle with the Underlanders. His hands are soft and smooth, not ink-stained or callused from holding a quill for long hours. He isn’t squinting from hours reading by candlelight, his eyes clear and bright.

Alex knows he’s changed as well. In this world, he has never been burned by fire, cut by a blade, or punctured by an arrow. His hands are free from scarring caused by the claws of wild beasts, who had not known Aslan’s wisdom, and there is no long thin scar on his throat because there was no assassin creeping into their encampment in the dead of night, killed by Henry’s quick blade but not before he drew first blood.

They have changed, but deep down, Alex knows they are the same.

“I missed you,” he murmurs and Henry’s lower lip trembles.

“I thought for a long time that I’d made you up. Half convinced myself of it, actually,” he says in a tone reminiscent of a confession. Alex leans forward to press a kiss to his cheek, catching a tear on his lips. It tastes of salt and of Henry.

“I’m real. So are you. So was Narnia,”

“How can you be sure?” Henry whispers, sounding a little terrified. Alex lets go of his hand to brush his fingers through Henry’s hair, soothing him, and Henry closes his eyes and lets out a shuddering breath.

“I know you. That’s how I know it was real. I couldn’t have dreamed you up if I tried, you’re too perfect,” Alex says and Henry gives a short, weak laugh.

“A flatterer, still.”

They lapse into silence once more, and Alex turns onto his back and pulls Henry with him, tucking him close against his side, until Henry’s head is pillowed on his shoulder, his hand resting over Alex’s heart, where it beats in his chest for Henry alone.

The snow is muffling all the sound outside, and Alex can see it begin to build up on the window casing. The sky is beginning to dim as well, daylight a scarce thing in England in December. He doesn’t mind. Henry was always his sun anyway.

Henry is the first to break the silence.

“We can get married here. Now.”

Alex smiles and turns to press his lips to Henry’s hair, uses his free hand to stroke along Henry’s arm until he shivers and presses in closer.

“And we will. I just don’t think my Mom will be too pleased if I go home engaged to a guy I’ve known for all of an hour, at least from her perspective.”

They go quiet again, and he can feel Henry’s breath hitch, can feel the way his fingers press into Alex’s chest, as if trying to find their way to his heart. His next words make Alex’s breath catch, his heartbeat shudder.

“... I just want to be yours again,” Henry admits in that same, confessional tone he used earlier.

“You’re already mine. My husband. My King. I can’t find river nymph gold here, but I can love you all the same,” Alex says into the small space between them and Henry nods. Alex holds him tighter. “Would you have stayed? If you had known what would happen when we went looking for the lamppost, would you have stayed in Cair Paravel and grown old with me?”

“... My Dad died, six months ago,” Henry tells him and Alex reflexively pulls him closer again. He feels a surge of grief for Henry, for the loss he had endured without Alex at his side. Henry continues, “I was there, for that. I don’t know what would have happened if we’d grown old and died in Narnia. Would we have died here too? Or would we have been dropped back into our lives again, like we’d never left? Either way - I was here for my Dad. I asked Aslan to come for him, to lead him to His Country, where he could wait for us. And as much as I regret leaving Narnia, leaving you, I can’t ever regret being here for the last years of my Dad’s life. I got to hold his hand as he left us.”

“I’m glad you got to say goodbye. Even if it means we were apart, at least for a little while,” Alex says after a pause, and Henry nods, his hair brushing along Alex’s jaw. “Tell me about your Dad?” he asks and Henry leans back, tilts his face up to smile at Alex, and Alex soaks it up like sunshine.

“Oh, what can I tell you about Arthur Fox?” Henry asks and Alex stares at him for a second before barking out a laugh.

Fox?! Your surname is Fox?!” he asks and Henry frowns.

“Did I not tell you that?” he replies and Alex shakes his head.

“No! I would’ve remembered! And I’m sure Mrs Badger would have never let you forget if you had mentioned it!” he says, remembering the way Mrs Badger would tut and scold the Foxes when they came to Cair Paravel with their boisterous kits.

“I always thought she was rather unfair to them,” Henry huffs and Alex smiles.

Less than a day ago, he had left his dorm at Georgetown, unsure if he would return, unsure if Henry would even want to see him, hell, if they even lived in the same time period.

As far as Alex understood it, time in Narnia was non-linear in their world. High King Peter, High Queen Susan, King Edmund and Queen Lucy had ruled Narnia and disappeared over a hundred years before he and Henry had even set foot in the Western Woods. There were archives of their stories, of their life before coming to Narnia, and Henry had once dropped a leather bound tome on the foot of their bed and looked at Alex with pained eyes.

“It’s the blitz. They’d lived through the blitz,” he’d said, tapping paragraphs describing bombs and shelters and shattered photos of a father lost to some distant no man’s land.

A knock on the door jolts them out of their respective reminiscences, and Henry sits up as the door cracks open. An older woman with auburn hair pokes her head around the door as she pushes it open, and surveys them with a polite interest.

“Bea said you had a friend over, Hen,” she says pleasantly, and despite the receding light, Alex can see the tips of Henry’s ears go pink, the way they always had whenever he’d been embarrassed. Alex swings his legs off the bed and crosses the room in a few strides, offering his hand.

“I’m Alex, ma’am,” he says, pulling on all of his Texan charm and Kingly presence. She looks momentarily surprised before she smiles and takes his hand, giving it a shake.

“Catherine, Henry’s Mum,” she replies, and Alex nods. She lets go of Alex’s hand to look over his shoulder at Henry. “Will Alex be joining us for tea?” she asks and Henry looks down at his knees briefly before he speaks.

“Um, actually-,” he says, and Alex remembers the way he looked when he’d shattered a stained glass panel in the Great Hall of Cair Paravel with an apple they’d been tossing between them. He’d overshot his throw to Alex and it had sailed high over Alex’s head and through the invaluable window. He’d looked at Ma Hare much the same, when she came to see what had happened. “- Alex is visiting from America. Do you mind if he stays for a few days?” he asks instead.

Even Alex feels heat rising in his cheeks. His own Mom would’ve been furious if he’d turned up with a guest at their home, uninvited, a few days before Christmas, though she would’ve made accommodations. As it is, Catherine Fox’s eyebrows raise but then she nods her head.

“Of course. You won’t be offended if we have a traditional turkey dinner, will you, Alex?” she asks, turning her sharp gaze over to him. Despite her pleasantness, Alex gets the impression that she doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

“No ma’am, not at all. This is very kind of you, I’m sorry for the short notice” he nearly trips over himself to be polite and gracious and she gives him a smile in return.

“I’ll be out tomorrow picking up your Great Aunt Sue, maybe you can show Alex the sights of London while I’m gone?” she suggests and Henry nods as if he’s considering it. Alex, though he doesn’t want to push anything, would rather spend the day becoming, ahem, reacquainted with Henry - but, admittedly, he also wouldn’t mind seeing the Tower of London.

“Sure,” Henry concedes. Catherine nods and smiles.

“Well, we’ll be having tea soon. I’ll give you a shout when it’s ready?”

“If you need a hand ma’am, I’m happy to come help?” Alex says and Catherine smiles at him.

“That’s kind of you Alex, thank you. I’d love some help. You coming down too, Henry?” she says and her son picks himself up off the bed and joins them at the door, lacing his fingers through Alex’s, determined never to be parted again.

“We’ll be just a minute,” he says and Catherine nods and leaves them to it, pulling the door too behind her.

“Are you sure I can stay?” Alex asks and Henry nods, tugging him close again, kissing him softly.

“I don’t know where we go from here, truly. But I know that right now, I can’t bear the idea of you being out of my sight for a second longer than necessary,” he admits when they break apart.

“Meeting Great Aunt Sue sounds serious,” Alex teases. Henry’s nose wrinkles in response.

“She’s a bit of a battleaxe, our Sue. Has some marvellous stories about life in London post-World War II. You’ll like her.”

“I’m sure I will,” they linger for a second in the doorway and one more question plays on Alex’s mind. “Have you seen him? Since you came back? Aslan?” he asks and with one sad look, Henry shakes his head.

“No, I haven’t.”

Alex pulls Henry in for one more kiss before they part, and then with a smile, he opens the bedroom door and they slip downstairs, into the warmth of Henry’s family home, where Bea narrates along to reruns of Downton Abbey and Catherine chatters to Alex about Shakespeare, about her husbands dream of being on the stage before a life in Theatre production called to him instead.

But upstairs, if they’d taken a second to check in that moment before they’d left Henry’s room, they’d have seen one of the lampposts on the snow-smothered street outside flicker on, long before all the rest.

{The End}

Notes:

Thank you for reading! If you like what you've read, please leave a kudos, a bookmark or a comment, it soothes my poor People Pleaser heart.

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Happy holidays, 2024! - dwell x