ALEX
The roof tiles are slick beneath him, and above Alex, the entire universe stretches; lettered out in glinting stars and blinking plane lights and the occasional hum of helicopter blades.
A fat stack of files is perched in his lap, shielded from the ever growing drizzle by a resigned hand.
He'd been trying to sleep, but Alex had given up sometime around midnight, and now he's trying to work. Only... that isn't really happening either. The house is too stuffy, too silent, too empty- and that's why he's up here. Everywhere else reminds him too much of the friends he's left back home, in Washington.
On the roof, he's transported back to the White House- to the inscription scraped into the tiles there. The one he found within the first week of living there. Sure, Nora helped a bit- mainly providing the height he sorely lacked- but it's still a victory he'll flaunt for the rest of time.
Speaking of Nora... by his side, Alex's phone lights up with an incoming call.
Pressing the cool screen to his ear, he idly flicks over a page of cramped text, and begins to skim read it by the light of a single fake, plastic candle leftover from Halloween last year that somehow found its way into his suitcase. Alex somehow only discovered it last week- and he's been here three months now.
"Hey dumbass." Nora voice filters through the speakers, edged with static, and Alex grins despite himself.
"Hello dickhead."
"Ugh," Nora mimes outrage. He can almost imagine her- hundreds of miles away, sitting on her stained carpet surrounded by a private army of pot plants, and a sea of laptops and tablets and paperwork. "A few months in 'jolly old England' and y'all have gone all superior on me."
She takes a dramatic sip of something, and Alex adds an industrial-strength mug of coffee to his mental image.
"There's just something about the constant torrential rain here that just screams 'I am better than you,'" He quips, and right on cue, the trickle of water turns into a flood. "Shit- just a sec, N."
Squeezing his phone securely between his ear and shoulder, Alex grabs the sodden remains of his files, slots them under one arm, and makes a frantic dash for the skylight.
Safely inside his loft apartment, with the rain now hammering down cosily on the windows, he wrings out the papers and slaps them down on his neatly organised desk, amongst a pool of damp.
Switching the phone onto speaker, Alex sets it down atop the pile; making a beeline for the wardrobe at the end of the room. As he strips off his shirt and tugs a fresh one over his head, Nora stage-whispers insistently at him.
"Are you even alive? I have work to do, you know... I could just end the call, and leave you all alone, and-"
"Wait, wait I'm here now!" Shoving his second arm through the fabric, Alex bounds hastily across scuffed floorboards and regains the phone. "Hi," He pants, slightly breathless. "Please don't go."
He's missed Nora so much.
She balances him out- his headstrong, impulsive actions against her careful, calculated calm.
Alex misses screwing with the press back home, spreading false rumours about their relationship.
He misses late night talks in June's ever-changing bedroom, then texting them both through the black of his own, consistently chaotic one.
But... England is supposed to be this huge opportunity- a chance for him to get out into the world and gain some real international experience in the city of rain and tea itself.
That's another thing he misses about home- the coffee.
He can just about forgive the weather, but bad caffeine... that's a lifelong grudge, there.
He'll never forget it.
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A/N- Another quite short chapter! Hope you enjoyed it!
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Runaway||RWRB AU
FanfictionIn which Henry is a runaway royal, Alex is himself, and London is the new City of Love... Instead of putting up with his family's constant torments over his sexuality, Henry runs away from home. By chance, Alex is also in London, on work experience...
