Someone else's choice doesn't change who you are. - Casey McQuiston

There are no fireworks out here, no music, no confetti. Just sleeping, single-family homes, TVs switched off. Just a house where Alex grew up, where he saw Henry's picture in a magazine and felt a flicker of something, a start. "Hey," Alex says. Henry turns back to him, his eyes silver in the wash of the streetlight. "We won." Henry takes his hand, one corner of his mouth tugging gently upward. "Yeah. We won." Alex reaches down into the front of his dress shirt and finds the chain with his fingers, pulls it out carefully. The ring, the key. Under winter clouds, victorious, he unlocks the door.

Outside Kensington Palace, Alex takes Henry's phone out of his hand and swiftly opens a blank contact page before he can protest or sic a PPO on him for violating royal property. The car is waiting to take him back to the royals' private airstrip. "Here," Alex says. "That's my number. If we're gonna keep this up, it's going to get annoying to keep going through handlers. Just text me. We'll figure it out." Henry stares at him, expression blankly bewildered, and Alex wonders how this guy has any friends. "Right," Henry says. "Thank you." "No booty calls," Alex tells him, and Henry chokes on a laugh.

Today, Henry goes back to London. Today, Alex goes back to the campaign trail. They have to figure out how to do this for real now, how to love each other in plain sight. Alex thinks they're up for it.