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Henry hated to admit it, but he liked the lake house back in Texas far more than the Brownstone. It wasn't anything to do with aesthetics, he loved the Brownstone with all he had in him. It was his first home. It was where he and Alex belonged. Together finally, not apart. But the lake house itself felt like an anchor. A bridge that Henry almost didn't cross. It could all have ended here. Right now he could be spending summer at the palace, eternally gloomy and remaining for the rest of his life a tortured thing in his gilded cage, and Alex surely would have been over him by now. Would've cursed his name so much that it would have driven his voice raw, would have slipped back into that spiteful, cruel form their relationship took in their earlier years. But Henry knew that Alex would've picked himself up eventually. He would have found someone more free, more willing to take Henry's place. They could have never had this at all.
But now the lake glimmers wildly in the places where it meets the harsh Texan sun and Henry is laid back in the spot he was last year, back against the plywood, Alex's head on his chest, the two of them breathing in sync. Chests falling and rising at the same pace, eyes flitting briefly over one another, fingers intertwined. If Alex was to lean over and whisper those three fatal words no panic will rise in his chest. Instead, his heart just races as he presses their lips together, soft and lazy and wanting. And they lay there like they had never left at all.