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“We really have to go, Alex,” Henry impatiently calls up the stairs.
“Coming, babe.” He speedwalks down the hallway, yelling into each kid’s bedroom and clapping his hands. “Let’s go. Everybody downstairs in the car, now now now. Move!”
The boys hurry down the stairs in their slippery, rarely worn dress shoes. “Slow down but hurry up,” Alex yells after them. Max turns briefly to grin at him.
Alex boomerangs back to Ellie’s room. “El, come on, we have to leave or we’re gonna be late.”
He finds Ellie sitting cross-legged on the end of her bed.
“Elizabeth, this does not look like you hurrying up,” he says, gesturing broadly at her current pose.
Ellie shrugs without looking up. “Can’t find my shoes.”
Alex glances sideways to the door to Ellie’s closet. He knows for a fact she has way too many shoes for a kid her age. She has too many shoes for a goddamn shoe store. He heads for the closet, grabs a pair of silver flats, and tosses them onto the floor in front of her. “Wear these, then, just move it.”
“Those don’t match my dress,” she says, a little too calmly.
“Alex!” Henry calls again. “We need to be in the car already.”
Alex squats down in front of her and takes her hands. He speaks in the slow, calm, yet mildly threatening tone of an experienced parent. “Sweetie, pick a pair of shoes. I don’t care if they’re snow boots. Just put them on so we can go.” He stands up and heads toward the doorway. “Your daddy’s gonna lose his damn mind if we don’t leave in the next two seconds,” he mutters.
“Of course he is,” she tells him in a petulant monotone. “He loves those kids more than me.”
Alex spins around and looks at his daughter’s face. He can immediately see she’s not joking. He plants his hands on his hips, in what Henry likes to call his “lawyer stance.”
“El, you know that’s not true,” he says carefully.
She just shrugs.
She has been in a bit of a funk lately. He’d tried to get to the bottom of it, but couldn't get her to tell him anything. He’d even had June and Nora facetime her, but she didn’t tell her aunts anything useful either.
“Is this what’s been bugging you?” Alex asks quietly.
She shrugs again, and one little tear rolls down her cheek. Alex can actually hear his heart shatter into a million fucking pieces.
“Gimme two seconds, okay?” Alex bolts downstairs where Henry is standing at the door, looking like he might actually vibrate out of his body. At the curb, where Henry’s PPO is holding the door open, Alex can see the boys bouncing like monkeys in the back of the car.
“Where’s Ellie?” Henry looks at his watch. “Alex, we really--”
“Baby, listen. First, I need you to trust me. Second, I need you and the boys to go ahead of us and ask them to have another car ready. We’ll be five minutes behind you, okay?” He runs a hand through Henry’s hair and gives him a kiss, hoping it will head off questions.
It does not.
“Why? What’s wrong? Is she sick?” Henry starts for the stairs but Alex grabs his necktie.
“Babe. What's our rule about the kids?”
Henry’s eyes flick between Alex’s face and the staircase. He finally sighs. “We don’t lie or keep secrets about the kids.”
“Exactly.” Alex smooths his husband’s necktie back down. He speaks slowly and clearly, while also gently, subtly pushing Henry toward the door. “I promise you, she is fine. I'll fill you in later but right now, you need to go, because they’re expecting you. And we’ll be there in just a few minutes.” He looks back up into Henry’s anxious face. “Everything is fine.”
Henry takes a deep breath and nods slowly. “Okay. I…” His eyes dart toward the stairs one more time, then behind him to the car. “Okay.” He leans down for a kiss. “See you soon. Love you.”
“Absolutely. Love you, too.” Alex pokes Henry’s chest gently. “Now go.”
With one more deep breath, Henry turns and walks out the door. Alex is insanely impressed that he doesn’t come back in one more time, just to check.
“One down, one to go,” he says to himself and jogs back upstairs.
Ellie is still sitting on the end of her bed. Alex plops down next to her and pulls her toward him. “This okay?” he asks.
She nods and rests her head against his chest.
“Wanna tell me what’s wrong?”
She heaves out a shaky sigh. “Daddy only cares about the kids at the shelter. He loves them more than he loves me.”
Alex tightens his arm around her little shoulders. Between the parenting classes they took to become foster parents, and the counseling techniques he’s picked up from Henry, he knows better than to dismiss Ellie’s feelings.
“What makes you think that?” he asks instead.
“He hasn’t played with me or watched movies with me in forever,” she tells him.
Alex rests his cheek on her head. “Yeah, Daddy’s usually around more, isn’t he?” A bunch of the shelter kids joined a community theater group and Henry volunteered to help with rehearsals almost every night for the last few weeks. Tonight is the opening night of Romeo & Juliet.
“You know, I’ve missed him too,” he confides to her, “but I knew this was important to him so I tried not to get upset about it." It’s true, but at least Alex could wake up at 3am and snuggle up to Henry sleeping beside him. Ellie hasn’t really seen him much at all. He presses a kiss to her temple. “He’s gotten home after your bedtime almost every night, huh?”
Ellie nods and sniffs a little. He hadn’t realized how much this was affecting her, so Henry must not know either. This is gonna kill him. Alex considers not telling him for a few seconds, but he knows he’ll have to. They never keep secrets about the kids.
“Hey,” Alex says, using two fingers to turn her face toward him. “You’re right. He does love those kids, and he cares about what happens to them very much. And he might give them some extra attention because he knows most of them don’t have parents who love them.” She looks away and he hears her sniffle again.
His voice softens. “But you have to remember, those kids only get to share your daddy for a little while. Me and you and your brothers, we get to keep him forever. No matter what, he’s always gonna be my husband, and he’s always gonna be your dad.”
When she looks up at him, he has the same victorious feeling he gets when he knows he’s won over a stubborn juror.
Staring into her trusting face, he thinks about how lucky he and Henry have been since the beginning. “Did you know,” he asks quietly, “that when me and Daddy fell in love we weren’t even sure we’d be able to have kids?”
“Because you’re both boys?” she asks. Alex’s brain conjures up a hilarious image of the two of them trying to work out the mechanics of pregnancy between two men. He presses his lips together to keep from laughing.
“Well, that was one reason.” He runs his hand up and down Ellie’s arm. “But there were...other reasons.”
“What other reasons?” she asks.
He thinks about the Queen’s attitude toward their relationship, how Philip had freaked out about the possibility of them having kids from the very first moment Alex had mentioned it. The fucking line of succession, which will one day give Alex an ulcer. How they had talked about adopting instead of having biological kids, because the money could be used for so many other things...
He also decides that his nine year old daughter doesn’t need to know any of that.
“Grownup things,” he says. He glances at his watch. He needs to move this along. “They’re not important right now. What is important, is that when we found out we were gonna have you, your daddy’s love filled up the whole house. It followed him around like a big, giant cloud.” He throws his arms out to demonstrate. “He couldn’t concentrate on work or anything, because he just kept daydreaming about you. And he hadn’t even met you yet.”
Ellie looks up at him, the skeptical look that weirdly reminds Alex of Bea.
Alex glances over at the picture on Ellie’s dresser, of Henry holding her in the delivery room, Alex’s arms wrapped around his shoulders. He lowers his voice to a whisper again. “But when he actually met you, and got to hold you in his arms, his love exploded all the way out of the roof of the hospital.” Alex throws in a sound effect for good measure. “It busted through the ceiling and into the sky and right up into the... universe.” Alex knows more about the law than he does about astronomy, but he thinks that makes sense in this context.
She looks up at him again, fighting the pleased little smile that’s starting to creep across her face. “Nuh-uh.”
“Oh yeah,” Alex insists. “And when we had Jamie, his love exploded out of the house again. And when Max came to live with us, boom! More love! It just went everywhere!” He leans in like he’s sharing an important secret. “You know how daddy loves to talk about all the stars and the planets when y’all look through the telescope?” She nods. “If you look carefully next time, you might see all that love floating around up there in space.”
Ellie rolls her eyes. “You’re silly, Papa.”
“Hey!" he looks offended. "Fine, don’t believe me, then.” He winks at her. “But I promise you, his love for you is bigger than all the galaxies.”
Alex stands and faces her. “Now, do you want to go to this thing? You don’t have to, I can get a sitter.”
She tilts her head thoughtfully. “No, I’ll go.” She reaches under her bed and grabs the shoes she was planning to wear the whole time. Alex shakes his head. He holds her hand as they walk down the stairs, past all the family pictures on the wall.
“You know what else?”
Ellie looks up at him questioningly as they walk outside to the waiting car.
“A long time ago, when we were dating, I told your daddy that he had so much love in his heart, he needed to give more of it away.” He squeezes Ellie’s hand. “Trust me, honey, he has enough for all of us.”
They slide into the backseat of the car. Once they’re on their way, Alex pulls out his phone to send a text.
They make it to the community center with a few minutes to spare. Alex sends Ellie down the row to sit next to her brothers. As she scoots past Henry, he stops her and whispers something in her ear. She nods eagerly and squeezes him around the neck in a tight hug.
As the lights in the auditorium dim, Alex takes Henry’s hand and gives him a quick peck on the cheek.
“Thanks for the text,” Henry whispers into Alex’s ear. “I made a date to take her out for ice cream.”
Alex nods, his gaze fixed on the curtained stage. “Tomorrow night?”
“No, tomorrow afternoon.” Henry strokes Alex’s cheek with one finger, causing Alex to turn and really look at him. “Tomorrow night, I’d like to take my husband out to dinner.”
Alex bites his bottom lip. He didn’t realize how much he’s fucking missed Henry, until just now. His emotions sneak up on him and he feels betrayed by the hoarse quiver in his voice. He’s glad it’s dark, so no one can see the stupid tears in his eyes. “Really?”
Henry leans in for a real kiss. “Really. I’m sorry I haven’t been home much lately.”
Alex shakes his head, almost embarrassed at how easily Henry can see through him. He shouldn’t still be surprised. “It’s okay. I understand.” He gestures toward the stage, where the curtain is rising. “This is important.”
Henry tilts his head and smiles in a way that still gives Alex goosebumps, even after all these years. “So are you, love.”
********************************
Afterward, they take the shelter residents who were in the show out for pizza. They end up taking over the back room of a neighborhood restaurant he and Alex love, a place where the staff is used to them and their security needs.
When most of the pizza is gone, Alex sits back and props his feet on the chair next to him. He looks across the room, where Jamie and Max are learning to swordfight from the kid who played Tybalt. They’re using the prop swords Henry loaned them for the show, ones that belonged to Arthur. Max is really focused on the technique, while Jamie is just dramatically and loudly dying on the floor every couple of minutes. He has what Alex hopes is pizza sauce smeared on his shirt, right over his heart.
In the other corner of the room, Henry is sitting in a chair with Ellie seated on the table beside him. She’s doing the balcony scene with the actor who played Romeo. Alex grins when he realizes Ellie isn’t reading her lines from the book on the table, she has them memorized. She should, Henry reads the kids enough Shakespeare before bedtime.
Alex finds Henry’s eyes across the room. He waves his bottle in the air, encompassing the scene in front of him, and shakes his head in wonder. “Love you,” he mouths.
“Love you,” Henry mouths back.
Alex takes a swig of his Coke and just kicks back to watch his family...his crazy, loud, messy, wonderful, absolutely perfect family.