Work Text:
An email from Henry, to Alex:
A,
It’s three in the morning, we’ve been living together for two months and I could probably just wake you up and tell you how much I love you, but you’re actually sleeping soundly for a change – soundly being the key word. You’re lucky I love you, because you snore like an ogre. A very cute ogre. I suddenly kind of get what Princess Fiona saw in Shrek.
Besides, I miss writing to you. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I’m not quite sure I agree because every time we were so cruelly separated, my heart already felt so full it could have burst. Had I been forced to wait weeks for your letters, and not merely hours for a reply to my email, my eventual cardiac arrest might have been an inexorable royal tragedy. Though, at least in Britain we have the NHS.
In those early days, when we were both stupidly, utterly in love but not yet ready to admit it, there were things I was courageous enough to put in emails, but not yet ready to say to you in person. Now, I lack not for the courage to tell you, but some metaphors sound ridiculous when said out loud. Alex, you have allowed me to put down roots in the ground and stretch upwards towards the sky, believing that I deserve to feel the sun shining down upon me, to drink it its warmth. Nothing is as real as the earth beneath my feet and the feeling of your body pressed up against mine.
You do not complete me – nor would I tell if you if you did, so I might spare myself from your insufferable ego– but you make me feel as though I can find completeness, deep within myself. You anchor me, and so I feel I might just be able to fly.
Yours always,
H
P.S. Virginia Woolf to Virginia Sackville-West, 1927:
“Look here Vita — throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads — They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river.”
*
A series of post-it-notes on the fridge:
- Gone out for a run, back by 9 – A.
P.S. I didn’t know how much longer you’d sleep for, so I put a teabag in your mug for you to fill yourself, so it didn’t go cold. Consider it a grand gesture.
- My forebearers didn’t rape and plunder the subcontinent so you could disrespect the art of tea making in this way. When did you even find time to purchase tea bags, anyway? -H
- They were in a gift basket someone gave Zahra at their wedding. Far be it for me to deny her the pleasure of getting rid of them, when she could put my dick in one of the food processors they were gifted at any moment. – A.
- Must you always be so obscenely graphic? – H.
- [a post-it-note featuring several drawings of dicks]
- You’re insufferable. – H.
P.S. For someone who only realised their bisexuality in their early 20s, you seem to have spent a lot of time perfecting the anatomical study of penises.
- Are you complimenting my dick pics? – A
- I come round to drop off some leftover pizza from the newsroom and this is how you make me suffer? – B
*
A shopping list:
- Coffee beans
- Bread
- Tortillas
- Beans
- BLACK beans, none of that soggy ketchup-y shit you think passes for culture in England
- I’ll have you know that Heinz was founded in Pennsylvania, thank you very much
- Fuck you
- How very saucy
- Ice cream
- Dog food
- When you paid thousands of pounds to have David flown over from London, you neglected to mention that he eats like a fucking horse.
*
A dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice, propped open on the coffee table and opened to the following quote:
“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
H,
I’ve finally succumbed to your demands that I read more Jane Austen (it’s not my fault I went to high school in Texas, okay?) and damn if Jane didn’t capture how much of a blind idiot I was, once upon a time. The more I think about it, however, the more I’m okay with where we started, all those years ago. Though I do wish we’d started having sex so, so much sooner.
Fairy tale romances always have a happy ending, but no one never talks about the now, Falling in love with you was like a dream, but nothing beats getting to wake up every morning knowing that I’m in love with you. Nothing beats knowing we put in the hard work of learning each other’s bodies and hearts, of chipping away all those layers of marble and stone and fear and anger at the world, of learning to see what lay underneath. And nothing beats knowing that I’ll find new reasons to fall in love with you tomorrow, and the next day – new ridiculous facts you learn just to share with me, new ways to make you laugh so your eyes do that crinkly thing at the corners that I love, new constellations to trace on your back and thighs with my mouth.
Neither of us are morning people, but here’s to thousands more of them, made tolerable only by the fact that I get to wake up next to you.
Forever ever after,
A
P.S. I’m glad you own at least a dozen copies of Pride and Predjudice (maybe more? Your family doesn’t own the British Library, do they?), since I might have spilled my coffee on this one.
*
A series of messages, written in the steam in the bathroom mirror:
- Stop stealing my shampoo, you strawberry-scented jackass - H
- We live together, it’s OUR shampoo - A
- Also, stop stealing my toothpaste, you minty-tongued dick -A
*
An email from Alex, to Henry:
H,
I wish this could be an email for the ages, but I missed your call and then my phone died when I was trying to call you back and I swore so loud that the librarian is glaring at me like having the First Son enrolled at this university isn’t doing wonders for its reputation and like my bodyguard couldn’t send her sprawling into the stacks without breaking a sweat.
Finals fucking suck. They fucking suck even worse when you are in London and I’m in the library and you can’t be here to reward me with shoulder rubs and fresh coffee and blowjobs when I get a practice quiz answer right. (Let’s try that. Though maybe during a low-stakes game of Trivial Pursuit or something, because I wouldn’t want to be too fucked out to actually take my finals).
I love and miss you. Say hi to Bea for me. x
Love,
A
P.S. This is an old one, but today it’s particularly true.
Alexander Hamilton to John Laurens, 1779:
“I wish, my Dear Laurens, it might be in my power, by action rather than words, to convince you that I love you. I shall only tell you that ’till you bade us Adieu, I hardly knew the value you had taught my heart to set upon you. Indeed, my friend, it was not well done. You know the opinion I entertain of mankind, and how much it is my desire to preserve myself free from particular attachments, and to keep my happiness independent on the caprice of others You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent. But as you have done it and as we are generally indulgent to those we love, I shall not scruple to pardon the fraud you have committed, on condition that for my sake, if not for your own, you will always continue to merit the partiality, which you have so artfully instilled into me.”
*
A series of text messages:
A: I can’t believe we can’t even get mail delivered to our own residence. Cash took my parcel to White House security for checking and re-checking because it rattled when he shook it.
A: So then I had to pretend you’ve got a board game fetish and insisted on sending home this English special edition because you couldn’t wait for me to see it. So now Cash thinks I also have a board game fetish.
A: And of course Nora was there when I finally collected it and now she’s invited herself over to play Trivial Pursuit with us.
A: I’m not even mad about the blow jobs.
A: Though of course I am! But mostly I'm just mad because I know she’ll beat me at the science questions and never let me forget about it.
H: Have I ever told you about the royal family Monopoly edition? My face is – with absolutely no sense of irony – plastered all over Regent Street.
A: Ugh. I can’t believe they took a game made by a woman made to critique the worst tendencies of capitalism and turned into a game that teaches kids how to hoard wealth and make each other cry.
H: And here I was, about to say that you’re worth even more than a hotel on Mayfair to me.
*
A post-it note, stuck to Alex's laptop:
- It seems rather a crime that I haven't had a chance to tell you how fine your ass is today, so. Well. Now you know. - H
*
Carved into their new bed, right above where Alex’s pillow sits:
AGCD + HGEJFMW
“I love you.” “I know.”