#my fic:rwrb

[hms-chill]

Coming Home

It's been years since either Alex or Henry has had a place that they can really settle into and call 'home'. Luckily, Henry has just bought the perfect one.

Kensington has never felt much like a place Henry lives. It feels like a hotel, a beautifully impersonal place to stay for a few nights before moving on. When Alex visits, he sees more of himself in the warren of rooms than he ever sees of Henry (though that may be due to their differing levels of cleanliness). Henry appears in the little things, in his journals and books and that damn copy of Le Monde that makes Alex feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but even the bedroom still feels like a hotel until Alex plops a bag into an ancient chair and lets his shoes fall haphazardly on the antique rug. He leaves things scattered around the room, and Henry asks if he's trying to spread his manifest destiny to his former ruler.

Alex doesn't say anything, and he certainly doesn't tell Henry that Bea occasionally sends him pictures of Henry wearing the sweatshirts and pajama pants he leaves behind. Those are saved in a special folder on his phone, and the way Henry looks in his clothes, everything a bit too short, is one of the best things he can imagine. Kensington may not look or feel like Henry's home, but it is still a place he can relax. It's a place where he can wear clothes that don't fit quite right but remind him that he's loved, wholly and unconditionally.

Alex especially doesn't tell Henry that he's printed a photo from Bea of Henry and David curled up in an antique chair, Henry wearing Alex's old lacrosse t-shirt and reading his copy of The Prisoner of Azkaban, or that the photo is framed on his desk. He just keeps leaving dirty clothes and battered paperbacks and color coded notes around Henry's rooms as if to scream that someone lives there. Someone lives in these staged rooms, and someone uses this museum furniture, and that someone is dating a queer brown American. Centuries of racist, homophobic monarchy can deal.

The White House bedroom is a bit more Alex's than Kensington is Henry's, but it's not really his, either. The White House is, after all, America's house. His family are essentially long-term renters, and no matter how much he tries to settle in, it's still a borrowed space. In four years, some other first child will come along. They'll find the message behind the wallpaper and the few unsealed windows, and maybe they'll paint over his walls like he painted over Sasha's. Hopefully they'll replace the ugly dog painting in the hallway.

He doesn't have quite the warren Henry does, and Henry doesn't settle into spaces the way Alex does in Kensington, but that doesn't mean he doesn't show up in the White House bedroom. He's in the V&A map hanging beside the congressional schedule and in the stacks of classics beside the Hamilton biography on Alex's bookshelf. When he visits, he doesn't stay in Alex's room, but Alex accumulates more and more little pieces of Henry every time. There's the Smithsonian guide book Henry bought and left, the tickets from their trip up the Washington Monument, and the 'emergency jumper' that Henry stores in Alex's closet and Alex absolutely does not study in. He is far too dignified to cozy up in his boyfriend's sweater and let the too-big sleeves flop over his hands (he doesn't know it, but Henry has a framed photo of him working in the jumper and his glasses, courtesy of June). Still, every time Alex hangs something on a wall or moves something in, it's with the knowledge that he will have to move it out in a few years.

The bedroom in the house in Texas that he'd move it to, though, isn't really Alex's anymore, either. It's the bedroom of the person Alex used to be, before he met the love of his life, found out he was bi, caused an international sex scandal, and learned to stop living ten years down the road. It's the bedroom of a boy who refused to look anywhere but dead ahead, and it shows. For years, there was a family photo on the desk, but he'd shoved it into the back of a drawer sometime during the divorce and never bothered to unearth it. There is a photo of him with June and Nora hanging on a bulletin board, but it's surrounded by old to do lists, tutoring schedules, an out of date calendar, and plans for 2016 campaign stops. The walls are decorated with memorabilia from Ravael Luna's and his mom's first campaigns, nearly covering a lacrosse team poster. It's the bedroom of a boy whose only goal was politics, now foreign and slightly dusty from disuse, and a part of Alex cringes every time he sees it. He wasn't happy when he lived in the room as it is now, not really.

Henry says it's good he doesn't fit the room anymore; it means he's grown in the four years since he lived there. That doesn't mean it's not strange to go home to a place that raised him, but no longer feels like home.

His dad's house out in California is the same way, though it never felt like home. Alex has a room there, but it's never really been his, no matter how many campaign posters he hung on the wall or lists he hid between the matress and the box spring. The lake house is the only place from his childhood that remains unchanged, and it's somewhere indescribably special to him, but it was never fully home. It's a place to relax and recharge, a great vacation home, but it's not somewhere he ever fully moved into.

In short, when Ellen Claremont-Diaz is re-elected, neither Alex nor Henry have a place that truly feels like home. Luckily, Henry's bought one. He's bought a four-bedroom Brooklyn brownstone where they can live together, and when he shows Alex the listing, Alex nearly smothers him in affection. They spend election night curled up in a bed that used to be Alex's, looking through floor plans and photos until they fall asleep.

-

When he crosses the threshold of the brownstone for the first time, Henry's hand in his, Alex can't help but imagine what it will be. They'll paint the walls and furnish it themselves, and everything in it will be theirs, al theirs. No more beds bought by dead people, no ugly paintings as political gestures, no jumping through hoops to put a nail in the wall and hang one picture. Henry tugs him forward, leading the way through the house they get to settle into together. Sure, another family may have lived here before, but it feels refreshingly new after their old homes. There are no ghosts in these walls, no centuries of previous owners to contend with. It's a new place for their new life together.

Hand in hand, they explore the living room, deciding where to put the TV and how big of a sectional they can fit in the space. They decide which bedroom to share, and Alex calls dibs on an office, and they plan out a decorating scheme for the guest bedroom that all of their friends and family will be comfortable with. They pick paint colors and enlist the help of June, Nora, and as many secret service and PPOs as they can, and by the end of the day, they're sleeping on the floor of a well-painted house.

The next morning, they take their regular fleet of security vans and spend the morning at Ikea, making final furniture decisions over meatballs and enlisting Cash and Amy to help carry boxes. The photo Henry takes of the living room two hours later shows Amy sitting on the couch she's built and Nora leaning against a bookshelf she put together while Alex and Cash are surrounded by a pile of boards and screws that should be an entertainment center. Eventually, a pizza dinner happens on the coffee table, with paper plates, the first card games in the new house, and lots of laughter. That night, they've moved their sleeping bags to a mattress that should go on a bed they haven't built yet.

They take the building and move in process slowly, interspersing it with walks around their new neighborhood and coffee runs to new shops nearby. They've dedicated the second day to their individual offices, but by noon, Alex has spent as much time in Henry's office as he has in his own, and the same is true for Henry. Which means that after lunch, they're dragging Henry's desk and bookshelf into Alex's office, re-organizing a bit, and planning another trip to Ikea to furnish a second guest room in what used to be Henry's office. By the third night, they're sleeping in a bed (though it doesn't have sheets yet), and when the moving van arrives on day four, the furniture is finished and it's beginning to feel like a home.

Day four is dedicated to all of the personal belongings left in their respective former homes. Cash and Amy help with the heavy lifting as Henry fills most of their bookshelves, leaving an anthology of queer fairy tales on the coffee table. Alex settles into the kitchen, hanging pots and pans from a rack on the ceiling and adding a command hook for his apron near his beloved coffee machine. Henry hangs a framed, pressed green carnation from Bea beside two of Alex's framed photos: one of a gay couple holding a sign that says "STAY OUT OF MY OUR BEDROOM" and another of a man whose jacket says "IF I DIE OF AIDS- FORGET BURIAL- JUST DROP MY BODY ON THE STEPS OF THE FDA". Nora stops by with a plant and a pair of pride flags for them, and June brings them a photo book of supportive street art from around the world. Shaan buys Henry an 'out of the closet' mug with queer figures from history on it, and Zahra gets Alex one that says 'Dumbest Creature on Earth' as housewarming gifts, and they find a home between the coffee maker and the electric kettle.

David finds his beds scattered around the house, one in nearly every room so he has a place to go if he needs it. By the fifth night in their new home, Alex walks into the bedroom to find Henry cuddled up and reading under the framed issue of Le Monde, wearing one of Alex's t-shirts with David dozing at his feet. He looks content and settled, and it is the most wonderful sight Alex can imagine.

Notes:

Ya girl's back to working in theatre, and since I got into theatre through set that means I'm back to thinking about physical space. I always feel weird writing about settings in prose, because I love the little details but I feel like describing them detracts from the overall mood and plot. Last time I was struggling with something I wrote up a little firstprince study, and y'all were great, so I'd love any feedback on how space is working for you in this. Is there enough of a balance between little details and bigger plot points? Does the space feel real/like it helps develop character? Let me know!

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