rwrb quotes that make me go feral:
Alex throws his head back and laughs handsomely, loud and false. "Go fuck yourself"
"Hardly enough time", Henry says
"I had a magazine with his face on it at my desk, once, because I was in it and he happened to be on the cover."
"You stared at it for an hour"
He stares at the screen, at his own message, for a few seconds too long, suddenly afraid it was a stupid thing to say. He shakes his head, puts the phone down. Locks it. Changes his mind, picks it up again. Unlocks it. Sees the little typing bubble on Henry's side of the conversation. Puts the phone down. Looks away. Looks back. [...]
He would really appreciate it if Henry would stop proving him wrong.
"Christ, you are as thick as it gets", he says, and he grabs Alex's face in both hands and kisses him
In his head, he tries to cobble a list together in a panic, gets as far as, One, Henry's lips are soft, and short-circuits
and texts Alex at weird hours of the night: You're a mad, spiteful, unmitigated demon, and I'm going to kiss you until you forget how to talk
Alex's heart goes so fucking weird that he has to put his head in his hands for a full minute
He rolls onto his stomach, considers, and very deliberately says "Baby".
It's become a thing: baby. He knows it's become a thing. He's slipped up and accidentally said it a few times, and each time Henry positively melts and Alex pretends not to notice, but he's not above playing dirty here.
There's a slow hiss of an exhale across the line, like air escaping through a crack in the windows.
"I miss you", Alex says before he can stop himself.
He instantly regrets it, but Henry says, "I miss you too"
And through it all, Alex realizes with a start: He has friends now
I'll be damned but I miss you
"And you are good. Most things are awful most of the time, but you're good"
Henry kisses his mouth over and over again and says quietly, "You are good"
"Oh my God, I thought you were getting into international relations or something"
"If you finish that sentence, I'm gonna spend tonight in jail"
"Would it make any difference at all if I told you not to see him again?"
History, huh? Bet we could make some
Should I tell you that when we're apart, your body comes back to me in dreams? That when I sleep, I see you, the dip of your waist, the freckle above your hip, and when I wake up in the morning, it feels like I've just been with you, the phantom touch of your hand on the back of my neck fresh and not imagined? That I can feel your skin against mine, and it makes every bone in my body ache? That, for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all?
Goddamn, I love him. It keeps coming back to him, and it's getting harder to look into Henry's soft smiles and not say it.
"So glad you flew here to insult me-"
"I fucking love you, okay?", Alex half yells, finally, irreversibly
He tells his too-fast brain: Don't miss it this time. He's too important
When Alex was a kid, before anyone knew his name, he dreamed of love like it was a fairy tale, as if it would come sweeping into his life on the back of a dragon one day. When he got older, he learned about love as a strange thing that could fall apart no matter how badly you wanted it, a choice you make anyway. He never imagined it'd turn out he was right both times
At cruising altitude, he takes the chain off his neck and slides the ring next to the old house key. They clink together gently as he tucks them both under his shirt, two homes side by side
I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire
"You and me and history, remember? I'm never gonna love anybody in the world like I love you. So, I promise you, one day we'll be able to just be"
on the map of you, my fingers can always find the green hills, wales. cool waters and a shore of white chalk. the ancient part of you carved out of stone in a prayerful circle, sacrosanct. your spine's a ridge i'd die climbing
He takes a breath. "But the thing is, jumping off cliffs is kinda my thing. That's the choice. I love him, with all that, because of all that. On purpose. I love him on purpose"
He called Henry the North Star once. That wasn't bright enough
He would have taken Henry's face in both hands and kissed him hard and deep and on purpose and said, "Take anything you want and know you deserve to have it"
Henry's smiling so wide and bright that Alex thinks his heart's going to break trying to hold the size of this entire moment, the completeness of it, a thousand years of history swelling inside his rib cage
gummygunk
jbbartram-illu
prguitarman
pixelskylines
theartofmadeline
