Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Henry made the decision to pursue polo professionally, he had assumed, naively, that not much would change about his day-to-day life. After all, he already spent the vast majority of his time in the stables or on the pitch. However, being a professional polo player meant sometimes a groom exercised your horses while you were off hobnobbing with sponsors for the club. It meant flying around the world—sometimes with your horses, and sometimes without—to play a single match. And sometimes it meant spending all day on a photoshoot.

Henry’s not a model. He’s not built for this kind of thing—except, he apparently is, based on the number of inquiries he gets. Over the years, he’s become more comfortable in front of the camera, but still, they’re not his favourite part of his career. Boarding and feed and supplements are expensive, though, so when Ariat comes calling with ideas for a new ad campaign, he packs his custom riding boots, gets on a plane, and flies to a sprawling horse farm in California.

They’d told him ahead of time that this would be a joint campaign—a contrast of polo and rodeo to emphasise their product range, or some such marketing nonsense. Henry hadn’t really paid attention. He also hadn’t gotten around to looking up the other person involved, which might have been a mistake. Because now he’s stood in the middle of a paddock and faced with quite possibly the most beautiful man he’s ever encountered. He’d still be in the same situation regardless, of course, but at least he could have been prepared.

“Hey, I’m Alex,” the beautiful man says in a deep and honey-smooth voice, the hint of a southern drawl clinging to the edges of it. He’s wearing a western-style burnt orange button down shirt, a pair of beaten-up jeans, the requisite pair of Ariat cowboy boots, and a black Stetson, which he plucks off his head to reveal a mess of gorgeous dark brown curls before he offers a callused hand to Henry.

Unfortunately, all of Henry’s manners and good sense desert him in the face of those rich brown eyes, and he stares at Alex’s hand for precisely fifteen seconds longer than is reasonable. Alex’s smile falters, like the sun going behind a cloud, which is unconscionable. Henry has to fix this.

“I’m sorry,” he says quickly, taking Alex’s drooping hand. His skin is warm and rough and Henry’s brain helpfully suggests what those hands might feel like on other parts of his skin. “Henry. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Alex. Apologies for going blank, there. You just, er— reminded me of someone.”

The smile curls back onto Alex’s face and tugs into a mischievous smirk that is certain to be Henry’s undoing. “Hopefully not any ex-boyfriends.”

Even though Henry made the decision to come out publicly two years ago—even though there’s a pride flag on his Instagram bio and posts from the last London Pride on his grid, even though he’s currently wearing custom Ariat boots with a tiny rainbow embroidered on the top of the shank—it still takes him by surprise whenever someone brings it up casually. Alex saying those words nearly makes him blue screen again. Not in the least because it implies he spent some time on Henry’s social media before he got here.

“Ah, no, nothing like that,” Henry replies with a soft chuckle, feeling his cheeks flush. He forces himself to let go of Alex’s hand and reminds himself that they’re both here to do a job, and the chances that this rodeo rider is flirting with him are extremely low. But then his fool mouth continues, on its own accord, “I should have been so lucky.”

Alex’s eyebrows shoot up, and Henry wants to bite his own tongue off. Fortunately, Alex seems inclined to let that one slide. “Thanks, I think,” he laughs as he replaces his hat. “So, polo,” he says, looking Henry up and down. The contrast between their appearances—with Henry in his clean white breeches and pale blue Ariat-branded polo shirt—is stark. “That’s the one that’s like croquet on horseback, right?”

Henry is so relieved that they’re not dwelling on his accidental come-on that he can’t even be that offended. Alex delivers the barb with that same teasing smirk, and Henry is forced to laugh as he scoffs. “Not exactly.”

“I mean, how hard is it to hit a ball with a mallet? It’s not even alive.”

“No, but the other players certainly are,” Henry counters. “And you do rodeo, which means… what? You hang onto a bull for a few seconds?”

Alex grins at the jab. “I’m not a bull rider. Those people are crazy. I ride broncos and compete in team roping.”

“So you rope…?”

“Cattle,” Alex says. “Now, imagine that polo ball doing its darnedest to get away from you.”

“A considerably larger target, though,” Henry points out. “Is there another team trying to rope it first?”

“Nope. Just two guys against the steer.”

“Well that hardly seems fair,” Henry says. “For the steer, that is.”

Alex’s answering laugh, low and rich, makes Henry feel entirely too warm.

Alex, it turns out, is a natural charmer. He chats with everyone he meets like an old friend—unlike Henry, who has never been very good at small talk with strangers—asking about the farm and the shoot and how they like working for Ariat, and more than once getting playfully scolded for distracting people from their jobs. For better or for worse, Henry is the one who gets the brunt of it, though. Everyone else is busy fussing over their clothes or camera equipment or lighting, leaving the two of them standing around and waiting between takes for much of the time.

“You do a lot of these kinds of things?” Alex asks, nodding to the hustle and bustle a short distance away. He’s sitting on the top of a wooden fence, while Henry stands below him and slightly to the side with one foot up on the lowest board, squinting up at him in the bright California sunlight.

“A fair amount,” Henry allows. “Ariat is new for me, though.”

“Yeah, I thought all y’all were sponsored by people like Cartier,” Alex says, that teasing smirk back on his face.

“I am,” Henry admits. “Just branching out.”

Alex snorts and shakes his head, looking off across the field. “Because diamond jewellery and horses go so well together.”

“For the people who attend polo matches? They absolutely do.”

“I guess that’s why I end up doing a lot of whiskey ads,” Alex muses. “What d’you think, could I pull Cartier as a sponsor?”

Henry wants to say that they’d be idiots to pass on a face like Alex’s. Instead, he arranges his expression in mock-serious consideration of this, then suggests, “Perhaps they could make you one of those very large belt buckles.”

“Fuck off, I wear normal belt buckles,” Alex laughs. His boot is resting about level with Henry’s shoulder, and he kicks it out to nudge Henry backward. It leaves a smudge on Henry’s shirt and sends Henry into a fit of laughter, both of which summon one of the stylists to come scold them.

“Cute, but can we try not to get Henry all mussed?” she says as she wipes at the dirt on his shoulder.

“Aww, but he’s so tempting,” Alex replies to her with a wicked grin, though he’s staring right at Henry as he says it. “No one should be that clean on a farm.”

Focused as she is on Henry’s shirt, she takes this as a serious discussion on aesthetics instead of Alex taking the piss. “It’s about the contrast. Rough and tumble rodeo, elegant and proper polo. So you,” she adds, pointing at Alex, “keep your grimy hands and feet off of him.”

“Killjoy,” Alex calls after her. He looks back at Henry. “I don’t know how y’all stay clean wearing white breeches all the time.”

He doesn’t stay clean, in fact, because it’s impossible around horses, but for that matter he very much wouldn’t mind if Alex’s grimy hands wanted to dirty him up—

Right. Enough of that.

“I make my personal grooms do all the dirty work,” Henry says, as haughtily as he can manage, just to see the horrified look on Alex’s face.

It works. “Really?” Alex says, his nose crinkling up in adorable disgust.

“No, Alex,” Henry laughs. “I just use a lot of stain remover.”

Once the photographer is satisfied with the shots she got of them staring moodily into the middle distance, she directs them into other positions. Both sitting in the back of a pickup truck. Standing back to back, Henry’s arms crossed over his chest and Alex with his thumbs hooked into his jeans pockets. They’re not doing riding shots today—Henry will have an individual shoot in London, and he assumes Alex will have his own—but they take photos of the two of them with one of the horses in the stable. Watching Alex whisper endearments to a gorgeous grey mare does nothing to help Henry’s rapidly-developing crush.

Then there’s the final pose, which involves Alex lounging on top of a rectangular hay bale as Henry stands by his feet with one foot propped up on the bale. They’ve given them props for this one: Henry, a riding crop to rest on his shoulder, and Alex, a coil of rope. Henry has spent nearly the entire day in Alex’s company, so it’s not a surprise when Alex—reclining seductively back on one elbow and gazing up at Henry through his obscenely long eyelashes—smirks and says, “You look like you know how to handle that thing, Fox.”

Christ. Henry is becoming increasingly convinced that Alex Claremont-Diaz was put on this earth just to test him.

Fine. Two can play that game. They’re still being photographed, so he holds his face carefully neutral. “Well, perhaps that’s because I do,” he says blandly. Then: “After all, I’m sure you’re rather adept with that rope.” A beat, in which Alex’s eyes go wide and the corner of Henry’s mouth twitches. “Aren’t you?”

“Fuck,” Alex swears under his breath. His cheeks darken.

“Oh, that’s an idea,” the photographer says, suddenly close by, abruptly and uncomfortably reminding Henry that they are not, in fact, alone. She looks between them and gestures to the slack line in Alex’s hands. “Alex, why don’t you pretend to rope him? Like you do in competition.”

Given his overall demeanour today, Henry expects some kind of suggestive joke from Alex. Instead, a distinctly uncomfortable expression settles onto his face. “Kinda corny, don’t you think?” he asks the photographer, nudging his hat up to scratch at his hairline. “I didn’t think that was the vibe y’all were going for.”

The photographer—a petite woman with an asymmetrical brunette bob who looks like the kind of person who is used to getting what she wants—is undeterred. “Just try it out for me?” she prods, flashing him a quick smile.

Alex sits up enough to tie a lasso, his nimble fingers making quick work of the knot, which he hands to Henry. Who then stands there, because he has no bloody clue what to do with it.

“Around your waist,” the photographer helpfully suggests.

It was different when it was just the two of them teasing each other—except, it was never just the two of them. It had been easy to forget himself in Alex’s warm eyes and teasing smile, but the fact of the matter is that they’re here doing a job, and maybe Alex was flirting or maybe he was just entertaining himself to pass the time. All Henry knows is that Alex holding a rope that’s wrapped around his waist is considerably less sexy when ten people are watching and Alex looks like he’d rather be doing anything else.

He’s not the only one who notices.

“Alex, you seem kinda stiff. Can you hold the rope a little more naturally?” the photographer asks.

“This isn’t a very natural pose to be roping from, ma’am,” Alex replies tightly. Then he adds, under his breath and only for Henry, “This is so fucking dumb.”

“I can pretend to be a steer, if you like,” Henry murmurs in response. “Put up a fight. It might even be fair this time, though I can’t guarantee it.”

The corners of Alex’s eyes crinkle and his mouth twitches. Henry cocks an eyebrow, and Alex ducks his head and presses his lips together as he tries to fight back a smile. Then, after another beat, he succumbs, tossing his head back and squeezing his eyes closed as a grin breaks out across his face.

“Perfect!” the photographer calls out. “We’re done here. Thanks, guys. I think we’ve got some great shots.”

“Are you heading home soon?” Henry asks, in what he hopes is a sufficiently casual manner, as everyone else bustles around them breaking down equipment and packing up. Alex, in the middle of coiling the rope, raises his eyebrows. “I only thought… perhaps we could get a drink.”

“Sadly, I have a flight to catch,” Alex says. Henry tries, and largely fails, not to feel too disappointed. Before he can figure out a response, though, Alex tosses the rope to the side and sticks out his hand, palm up. “You got a phone?”

This requires walking over to where Henry’s bags are currently being housed in the tack room, because there’s not a single place on his person he can keep a phone in his full polo getup. When he does unlock it and hand it over, Alex pulls up a blank contact and enters his phone number under the elaborate contact name of ‘this IS your first rodeo 🤠’.

“Gimme a call if you’re ever in Texas,” he says as he types. When he finishes, he holds the phone out toward Henry and smirks. “I’ll show you what real riding is.”

Henry only narrowly keeps from swallowing his tongue.

Months pass before Henry thinks to use that phone number.

Which is not to say he doesn’t think of Alex. In the immediate aftermath of the photoshoot, Henry spends an obscene amount of time digging up every article, every video, every ad campaign he can find. He scrolls and scrolls on Alex’s Instagram, smiling at the cute posts of him and his horse, and sweating at the thirst traps that Alex is prone to posting. In a moment of courage, he clicks the follow button and gets a follow in return mere minutes later. That’s as far as it goes, though. It’s incredibly unlikely that their paths will cross again, at least organically, so Henry writes the whole thing off as a pleasant ripple in the stream of his life.

Then, the ads featuring them go live and quickly become Ariat’s most-viral campaign ever. Henry can understand why, when he sees Alex in those photos. Alright, he has to concede that a not-insignificant amount of comments are about him, too. Particularly one shot that quite prominently features him from behind in those white breeches—the one where Henry almost convinces himself that Alex is checking out his arse, before he decides he’s imagining things.

There’s behind-the-scenes video that goes along with the campaign, too, which he hadn’t been expecting. Thank god there’s no audio of their conversations, but the camera catches a number of little moments between them. Alex nudging Henry with his boot from on top of the fence. Alex doing those little fidgety dances as they waited for the next setup, the ones Henry found impossibly endearing. Henry making Alex laugh as they pose with the ridiculous rope around Henry’s waist. And as nuts as people go about the photos, it’s reactions to that video that really launch the campaign into the stratosphere.

It starts out typically enough—Henry’s used to thirsting fans in his comments after he posts a photoshoot like this on his page (yes, even professional polo players have thirsty fans), which are always nice for an ego boost. He’s not expecting the other commentary, though.

[Instagram post featuring a photo of Alex sitting on a fence and Henry standing next to him]
ariatinternational: From the rodeo pen to the polo pitch, Ariat is the choice of the best horsemen. Check out how @rodeoalex and @henryfox found common footing in their custom boots in the link in our bio.
| luvrodeo99: holy shit is it NOT legal to have that much hotness in one place
| roopdeo: my life will forever be incomplete because i’ll never be crushed by those thighs
| rodeonationrise: @roopdeo but whose thighs
| roopdeo: @rodeonationrise obviously both of them together???

hen @polopony04
get you a man who looks at you like henry looks at alex
[quote retweet of a photo of Henry and Alex standing on either side of a horse with its head hanging out of a stall]
| cee 🐴 acd horse whisperer @acdsthighs: get you a man who looks at you like alex looks at that horse

sierra @rodeyolo
wtf why didn’t anyone tell me these two were together
[screenshot from the video of the two of them laughing]
| cricket @rodeonationrise: equestrian power couple of the century
| becca ✝️ trust in jesus @countrygirl95: Y’all are delusional, Alex isn’t like that
| nina @horsegirl335: oh they’re definitely fucking

cricket @rodeonationrise
ACD I know what you are
[repost tweet of the photo of Alex staring at Henry’s arse]
| hen @polopony04: who could blame him
| em @foxhound: even the straightest man alive can’t resist that henry fox cake

roop @roopdeo
you’re telling me you took photos like this and DIDN’T make them the star of the campaign 🥵
[screenshot from the video of the rope pose]
| cee 🐴 acd horse whisperer @acdsthighs: release the hq photos cowards!!

hen @polopony04
henry fox can ride me any time
[repost tweet of a photo of them in the back of a pickup truck]
| sierra @rodeoyolo: sorry he’s clearly too busy riding acd

“Did you see—”

“Yes, Pez,” Henry sighs, glaring at his best friend through the computer screen. Pez, however, remains oblivious to the glaring, because he’s too busy pulling everything out of his suitcase and holding it up in front of the mirror. The connection stutters and pixellates for a moment, likely due to whatever shoddy wifi Pez is connecting to in Lagos, where he’s attending some family event. “Whatever it was, I’m sure I saw it. Because you won’t stop sending them to me.”

“I just think it’s important for you to understand that there are several thousand people out there who would be extremely disappointed that you haven’t used that poor boy’s phone number,” Pez says tartly with a look over his shoulder at the camera.

“Oh, well then, heaven forbid I disappoint the people.”

“Exactly!”

Henry groans. “That was sarcasm, Pez.”

“I simply don’t understand it,” Pez continues blithely. “I’ve never known you to be shy when an attractive man gives you his phone number. And now you spend all day flirting with this man and then don’t call him? Make it make sense, Haz.”

Because this is different, Henry doesn’t say. For one, it’s not like Alex lives down the road. Henry’s not going to be ringing him for a quick shag. Even if he could, he’s not certain he’d want to. The connection they’d had that day… it felt unique. And Henry is loath to risk finding out that it wasn’t what he thought, or to have it falter over the distance.

He can barely admit all of that to himself, though. He’s certainly not going to tell Pez. “He told me to call him if I were ever in Texas,” he argues instead. “And I have not, as you may be aware, been near Texas lately.”

“Please,” Pez scoffs, rolling his eyes. He throws both of the shirts he was considering on the bed and walks back over to the desk to sit in front of the computer. “He was making an excuse to give you his number and you know it.”

“I don’t know anything,” Henry insists. “In any case, it’s been months now. I’m sure he’s forgotten all about me.”

Pez’s eyebrows shoot up toward his hairline—dyed a relatively sedate burnt umber for the festivities. “So you haven’t seen it, then.”

“Seen what?”

On the screen, Pez theatrically raises his phone and jabs at the screen, and a second later Henry’s phone buzzes with an incoming text. Yet another screenshot from Instagram, but this one isn’t of a fan comment.

[Instagram post featuring a photo of Alex smiling down at Henry as he sits on top of the fence]
rodeoalex: had an absolute blast shooting this campaign with @henryfox, even if he doesn’t ride the right way (western)

Henry’s not sure how long he gets lost staring at the post, his chest just a little too tight with memories of that day. He has to admit, Alex does look awfully fond in that photo. And for that to be the one he chose to put on his grid…

“I think he remembers you, pet,” Pez says, his tone more gentle than it had been. Henry kind of wishes he’d go back to the scolding. On the screen, he tosses his phone to the side and claps his hands down on his knees. “Now go text him before I book you a flight to Texas just so you no longer have an excuse.”

Maybe he should. Maybe it’s worth the risk.

“I will,” Henry promises, which seems to satisfy Pez.

He doesn’t do it right away, though.

The main issue is that he has no idea what to say, or if Alex is even still interested in talking to him, no matter what Pez might argue. Instagram, however… Alex did tag him in the post. A reply would be only natural. Henry hems and haws for far too long over the comment, trying to capture the playful ribbing tone they had without going overboard. When he finally hits post, he tells himself to close the app and hide his phone so he doesn’t torture himself waiting for a reply, but one comes in before he can manage it.

henryfox: I’d argue the definition of what is proper riding, but the fact of the matter is you’ve no idea what I’m capable of
| rodeoalex: @henryfox whose fault is that? the invite to texas still stands
| rodeonationrise: @henryfox @rodeoalex omg stop flirting on main

this IS your first rodeo 🤠
Aug 23, 6:17PM

You must know that there is very little reason for me to end up in Texas
This is Henry by the way

ouch :(
first you don’t text me for two months
then you tell me you don’t wanna visit me

That is not what I said
Anyway you’re the one who put conditions on texting you

🙄
i didn’t realize you were gonna be so painfully literal

Well I suppose we all learned something today

so are you gonna come see me

It’s the middle of tournament season for me
So I’m afraid not any time soon

boooo
i guess i’ll allow it

You truly have a most generous spirit

stfu and tell me how you’ve been

????
Unsure of how to do both

i hate you

 

He never should have listened to Pez.

Texting with Alex, as it turns out, is frighteningly easy. Henry almost wishes that Alex had turned out to be a boor, that the time difference would prove too difficult, that they wouldn’t actually get along that well once they spent more time talking. Unfortunately, Henry and Alex get along like a house on fire. Unfortunately, it turns out there are few people who can make him laugh and smile like Alex can. Unfortunately, Henry gets such a rush whenever his phone lights up with a message that he’s practically glued to it whenever he’s not on horseback, and he’s unreasonably disappointed when it’s not from Alex.

It’s unfortunate because Henry doesn’t need to be falling for someone who lives five thousand miles away and who he can’t even be sure would be interested in him like that. Alex might have flirted with him during the photoshoot—might continue to flirt over text, if he’s honest—but Henry has searched through Alex’s entire Instagram for a sign that he’s anything less than one hundred percent straight and come up with nothing. Not that he’s particularly surprised, given Alex’s profession. Being an out queer polo player is one thing, and certainly hasn’t always been a picnic. The red-blooded, deeply conservative world of rodeo is entirely another. Which is yet another reason that this would never work.

Nevertheless, falling for him is exactly what Henry’s doing. He falls a little more whenever Alex sends him countless photos of his horses, or his donkey—sorry, burro—or his chickens. When he goes on long rants about the treatment of migrant workers on Texan ranches. When he listens patiently as Henry complains about Phillip, who keeps asking when Henry’s going to get a ‘real job’. Henry can feel it—the giddiness that fizzes under his skin like champagne, the way his heart thuds too hard against his ribs, the ache in his cheeks because he’s been grinning too much.

It’s bloody awful, frankly, and he refuses to do anything to forestall it.

Henry has become used to coming back to his phone after a match to find numerous unread texts waiting for him, but one day near the end of the season, he returns to find nearly fifty in his messages app. He smiles fondly, assuming Alex has gone off on another rant, but when he scrolls back to the first one, he finds:

managed to find a stream of your game
i’d live tweet this but my followers would think i’ve gone nuts
so instead i’m sending them directly to you
enjoy

What follows is a series of play-by-play reaction messages that are, admittedly, a little difficult to follow at times. Partly because Alex doesn’t know the rules of polo, and partly because matches are always kind of a blur after the fact. Henry does recall what prompted wtf he just ran into you????—the bump from Donaldson to try to ride Henry off the ball—and of course the goals Henry scored, which resulted in a lot of exclamation points and celebratory gifs on Alex’s part. In between his commentary on the match, though, Alex sends increasingly thirsty messages like your ass in those breeches is a crime and if this cameraperson zooms in on your fucking arms one more time i’m gonna lose it and one that’s just a blurry photo of Alex’s computer screen that appears to show Henry scrubbing a hand through his disgusting, sweaty hair at halftime and is accompanied by the caption how do they just show this obscenity on tv over there, which make Henry’s poor gay heart flutter entirely too enthusiastically in his chest.

He only reads about half of them before Darcy, his still-tacked horse, bumps into him impatiently and he’s forced to set the rest aside until his post-match routine has been completed. It takes him longer than it should because he’s so distracted thinking about Alex’s comments that he ends up staring into space until Darcy or Emma remind him of what he should be doing. It’s starting to seem more and more likely that Alex does want him.

That night, he sits down with his calendar and starts making a plan.

Alex (this IS your first rodeo 🤠)
Sept 30 at 9:43PM

It turns out I’ll be in Florida for a special tournament in March, which I acknowledge is not particularly close to Texas. However, it’s likely the closest I’ll ever get without intentionally travelling there
I’m given to understand that there’s a fairly large event for you around then, so I understand if you can’t spare much time, but it would be nice to see you

 

ok, first of all
if you think you’re coming to texas and i’m not gonna show you around you’re crazy
admittedly shit will be nuts during the rodeo but after we can go to my ranch
a word of warning my dad’s gonna be visiting too
and june and nora will be around
but you gotta come bc then i’ll have an excuse to get away for a while
i love them but they can be a LOT
pls pls pls say you’ll come

I’ll book my flights now

YES

Chapter Text

When Henry made his travel arrangements, March seemed like an interminable length of time away, but the trip comes up much sooner than he expects. More than once he almost talks himself out of going—it’s mad, flying halfway around the world to visit a man he’s met in person only once, especially considering Alex’s family will be visiting at the same time. It’s only the thought of disappointing Alex, and Pez’s constant cajoling, that keeps him from canceling his flight to Texas.

Soon enough, he’s walking through the gates at the Rodeo Austin fairgrounds and wondering what the hell he got himself into. Rodeos, as it turns out, are more than half a festival in which it seems the goal for most participants is to eat the most obscene foods possible and then go on carnival rides that are designed to make you surrender that meal immediately. An unholy aromatic combination of livestock barns, fried food, and smoked meats wafts along on the hot breeze as Henry stares down at the map he’d acquired and tries to figure out how to find his way through the throngs of people to the arena where the rodeo events will happen.

“Excuse me, are you Henry?” a melodious female voice asks, and Henry looks up to find a pretty woman close to his own age standing next to him. Hers is a face that he’s familiar with, both because her features echo her brother’s, and also because Henry has seen more than a few photos of her by now on Alex’s Instagram. Her nose is more upturned and her jaw less square, but those brown eyes—Henry would know those anywhere. She’s wearing a floral sundress and her long, dark hair spills from under a broad straw hat in waves down her shoulders as she looks up at him with a questioning expression.

“Am I that obviously out of place?” Henry asks, huffing a laugh and knowing the answer. Not a single other person in attendance is wearing pressed trousers and a polo shirt.

June Claremont-Diaz grins at him and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “A little. But I also recognised you. Those Ariat ads were everywhere.”

“Oh, right,” he says. “That makes sense.”

“I’m June, Alex’s sister,” she says, sticking out her hand, which Henry shakes. “Alex sent us to come meet you because, and I quote, ‘he’s too fucking British for all of this’.”

Henry laughs, glancing around at his surroundings. “I suspect he’s probably correct. Thank you, I appreciate the assistance.” He doesn’t get a chance to ask who the ‘us’ in that sentence is before another woman with dark, curly hair approaches them holding a truly massive hunk of meat by the bone in one hand.

“Wow, you’re even hotter in person,” she says, regarding him from behind large sunglasses. She’s less familiar, but Henry can guess who she is given her proximity to June and Alex’s general descriptions.

“Nora, I presume?”

Her eyebrows rise and she glances over at June. “Yeah, that’s right.” Juggling her food, she wipes her palm on the thigh of her jeans and takes his offered hand. “Nice to meet you, Henry. Sorry about the beef rib.”

“Not to worry,” Henry laughs. “It’s a pleasure.”

“Come on, the arena is this way,” June says with a nod of her head, and they set off deeper into the fairgrounds, weaving between suburban families and bow-legged ranchers.

“Alex said you flew in from Fort Lauderdale for this?” Nora asks, eyeing him shrewdly as she chews on the beef rib.

“Yes,” Henry confirms, well aware of what it sounds like. He shrugs, a little helplessly. “It was closer than London.”

“I didn’t realise y’all kept in touch,” June puts in, which is—

Well. Let’s just say that Bea has heard plenty about Alex, and Henry knows Alex is close with his sister, so the implications of Alex not telling her or his best friend that they’ve been talking, much less that they’re friends…

Henry’s not thinking about it. Alex invited him, asked him to come even though he knew his family was going to be here, and that’s all that matters.

The sun has nearly met the horizon when they enter Luedecke Arena, which is already packed. The polo tournament had overlapped with the first part of the rodeo, rendering Henry’s earliest chance to arrive on the last day of the semifinals, but he’d been assured that he wouldn’t miss the chance to see Alex compete—Alex’s well-earned confidence that he’d absolutely be riding in the finals was, tragically, yet another deeply sexy thing about him. Apparently, seats for the last two days were already sold out by the time Henry made his plans, but fortunately for him, competitors get a certain number of reserved spots, and competitors as famous as Alex get those seats in the prime sections.

Inside the arena, the air is slightly hazy with dust and full of the scent of dirt and leather and horse, oddly familiar considering how very far Henry is from everything he’s ever known. They make their way to a collection of three open seats in the front row, where, at the far end, a ruggedly handsome man with dark curls shot through with silver looks up at them. He’s got a familiar chiseled jawline and brown eyes, and Henry has a rather arresting vision of what Alex might look like in thirty years.

“There you are,” the man says, a chiding note in his voice. “They’re about to start.”

“Alex won’t be up for a while, dad,”  June returns with an eye roll. “This is Henry.”

To Henry’s distress, she gestures that he should file in first; he’d rather been hoping that he might sit on the end and they’d forget he was here, but instead he finds himself sandwiched between Alex’s sister and father, who, he cannot help but be reminded, have heard nothing about him.

Alex’s father gets to his feet and sticks out his hand, grinning as he looks Henry up and down. “Oscar Diaz. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Henry.” He crushes Henry’s hand in his, and Henry tries not to wince. “So, what brings you all the way to Texas?”

Oh, Christ. How does he answer that with anything that’s not simply Alex? He considers lying—making up some fictional meeting with a sponsor based in Dallas, perhaps—but in the end he can’t come up with anything plausible fast enough. He really should have better prepared for this.

“Alex invited me at the Ariat shoot, and I thought I’d finally take him up on it,” Henry explains. Simple. True. Perhaps Oscar will just think him eccentric and wealthy enough to fly long distances on a whim. He wouldn’t be that far off.

In any case, Oscar seems satisfied by this explanation, perhaps because he’s more willing to accept that he might not know about all of his son’s friends. June and Nora, however, are exchanging a look that Henry cannot read, nor does he want to try.

Fortunately, the speakers crackle to life and the announcer begins introducing the events for the night, and the conversation turns instead to rodeo. From their many conversations, Henry already knew that Alex’s parents were politicians and that Alex had thought he’d follow in their footsteps until he went to a rodeo camp one summer and he fell in love with the sport. How his mother had objected to him pursuing it as a career on the grounds of it being too dangerous, and Oscar’s support had gone a long way to heal the wounds inflicted when he left.

Now, Oscar laughs and says, “How could I complain? He got the adrenaline junkie tendencies from me,” and patiently explains every rule and strategy to Henry. By this point, Henry has watched plenty of videos of Alex’s events, but he’s never ventured into others, and he’s entranced by the horsemanship on display. 

Alex’s events, of course, have him on the edge of his seat. In the team roping competition, Alex and his partner Liam have a perfect showing—Liam gets his rope around the steer’s horns first, then mere seconds later Alex executes a hairpin turn on his horse as he slings the rope forward and neatly catches both of the steer’s hind legs in one loop. There’s a certain parallel to polo, with the way the rider has to communicate with his horse almost entirely through his legs since the hands are occupied with other tasks, and Alex makes it look effortless. In the end, Alex and Liam’s time holds up as the second fastest of the night, securing them a place in the finals the next day.

Then there’s the saddle bronc semifinals. Alex is the only cowboy who qualified in two events, and the crowd goes wild when he climbs into the chute. He’s riding a huge black colt named Hellraiser, and the pair of them certainly put on a show. Several of the cowboys before Alex have become unseated by the horse’s bucking, and others were jolted wildly around in the saddle. Alex’s movements are fluid, though, his legs swinging in perfect sync with the horse, who kicks high and strong. Henry learns that the horse’s performance is also judged, and Hellraiser is one of the best.

“He comes from excellent bucking stock,” Oscar tells him, clearly pleased to impart more rodeo wisdom. “Alex was happy with the draw.”

“They… breed horses specifically to buck?” Henry asks. On one hand, it makes a certain amount of sense, given the sport, but he also cannot fathom wanting that trait in a horse.

Oscar grins at him, as if following Henry’s line of thought. “Sure do. Not a sought-after skill in polo ponies, I take it.”

“No, not as such,” Henry laughs.

Alex’s ride comes halfway through the list, but Nora informs them that he’s all but guaranteed to take first. “Statistically, none of the remaining riders can hit his score,” she explains. “Cash could get more points in his own performance, but the horse he drew consistently scores lower than Hellraiser. And Buckle Bunny is a better horse, but Rusty doesn’t have the skills to get a top performance out of him.”

In the end, Nora’s prediction proves correct and Alex finishes the night in the top spot. They meet him by the trailers after the last events are done, where they find him laughing with a handsome man with dark blond hair curling out from under his black cowboy hat. Liam, Henry realises; he hadn’t been able to see much of his face when they were roping, but the line of his stubble-covered jaw gives him away, as does Alex’s obvious fondness for him. As they approach, Liam glances over at them—at Henry, unmistakably—then grins and says something under his breath that makes Alex glare at him and shove him sideways.

“Fuck off,” he growls, which Henry has come to learn are practically words of affection in Alex’s parlance. “Go find Spence. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You’re not going to introduce us?” Liam asks, his voice a deep, syrupy drawl.

“No,” Alex huffs. He’s still glaring, and his cheeks are dark. “You can meet him tomorrow after we win.”

“Ah, an incentive,” Liam says, then winks at Henry. “Then I’ll take my leave. Ladies, gentlemen.” He tips his head and lifts a hand to the brim of his hat, then saunters off.

Alex watches him go for a handful of seconds before he turns toward Henry and a smile takes over his face that’s so bright Henry can barely look directly at him. He had not forgotten how gorgeous Alex is, but experiencing him in person is something else altogether. There’s hay stuck in his curls and dirt smudged on his cheek, and Henry has never wanted to kiss anyone more. Unfortunately, Alex’s family is standing right next to him, though you wouldn’t know it from how Alex ignores them.

“You made it,” he says, a little breathlessly. “Enjoy the show?”

“I did,” Henry confirms. “The barrel racing in particular. Those women are impressive.”

Alex laughs, looking absolutely delighted by this slight. “Oh, fuck off. I saw you leaning forward when I was out there.”

“You were incredible, love,” Henry says without thinking, though it’s hard to regret the words when they put that kind of smile on Alex’s face.

At least, not until someone clears their throat.

Henry looks away, abashed, and catches Alex’s exasperated expression out of the corner of his eye.

“Sorry, am I not allowed to say hi to my friend first when y’all have been here all week?” Alex grouses, but he hugs June, Nora, and Oscar in turn.

“You’re allowed, lil bit,” June says as they embrace.

“Just wanted to make sure you hadn’t forgotten about us,” Nora puts in.

“Congrats, mijo,” Oscar says as he claps Alex heartily on the back. “You looked great out there. Just one more day.”

“Have they announced the draw for the horses tomorrow yet?”

Oscar shakes his head. “Not yet. You up for a drink before turning in?”

“Absolutely,” Alex says. He looks over at the others. “What about y’all?”

“I think I’ll retire to my hotel for the evening. Jet lag,” Henry demurs, even though he’s been on this side of the Atlantic long enough to acclimatise. Once the rodeo is over, though, they’ll all be heading to Alex’s ranch. Which will no doubt be lovely, but also likely a lot to handle considering Henry doesn’t know most of these people. Tonight’s his last chance to be alone for a while, and he’s pretty sure he needs it.

The rationalisation doesn’t make it easier to bear Alex’s disappointed expression. But it passes quickly, replaced by an easy smile. “Alright, I guess I’ll allow it. But I’m taking you around the fairgrounds tomorrow.”

That, Henry didn’t expect. “Don’t you have to prepare for the finals?”

“Honestly, you’ll be doing me a favour by taking my mind off of it,” Alex says, waving off his concern. “And I’ve got to see you experience a real Texas fair.”

“Oh, well, alright then,” Henry agrees, trying not to look too pleased by this development. “I suppose I can manage that.”

“You better manage to be by the main gates at noon, Fox,” Alex tells him, punctuating it with a pointed finger. “Don’t break my heart.”

Henry ducks his head. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

At noon, Henry finds Alex standing by the fairground entrance, wearing pretty much the same thing he has every time Henry’s seen him—beat-up jeans, a shirt that appears to close with snaps rather than buttons, cowboy boots, and a Stetson hat. Today’s shirt is a step up, though—it’s a deep ruby red with exquisite embroidered golden flowers on the lapels and across the fronts of his shoulders, and gold piping along the edges. Henry had worried about being overdressed, given his observations of the crowds yesterday, but now his plain button down and trousers feels distinctly boring in comparison.

Alex is also, he cannot help but notice, alone.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he says as Henry approaches, a pleased, lopsided grin on his face that Henry feels absolutely nothing about. “You made it.”

“Of course. I admit, my curiosity was piqued by my brief look around yesterday evening,” Henry says.

Alex’s grin widens. “I’ll make sure you get the full experience.”

“June and Nora aren’t joining us?”

“Are you kidding me?” Alex says. “They’re over it by now. Plus, this way I get you all to myself without anyone’s commentary.”

Henry doesn’t ask after the nature of said commentary. To do so seems like it would be inviting trouble.

The glimpse that Henry had gotten the previous afternoon failed to truly prepare him for ‘the full experience.’ Partly because he’s never been to any event quite like this before, but also because the full experience includes so much time with Alex. Their constant texting may have acclimated him somewhat to Alex’s verbosity, but it couldn’t compare to having the real thing chattering away by his side explaining everything about the rodeo with seemingly endless enthusiasm.

Henry adores every second of it. Occasionally, Alex would become abruptly self-conscious of how much he’s been talking and apologise, only to light up like the sun when Henry assures him it isn’t too much and that he’s enjoying himself. And he very much is, despite how odd all of it is to him. They visit the show barn, where Alex explains the youth programs that compete here and makes the kids’ day by asking about their prize heifers. They watch a charro cowboy do a trick rope show, and Henry bites down on his too-large grin when Alex pretends to be unimpressed (“Oh, I can do that.”) every time Henry catches him looking awed. Christ, they even attend a pig race, and Henry’s sure he’s never had so much fun.

In between the events—and, to be honest, during them—they eat a truly inadvisable amount of fair food. There are tacos and towers of cheese-covered chips and Nutella-filled churros. They get a massive funnel cake, and Alex laughs when Henry ends up wearing half of the thick blanket of icing sugar that covers it. The corn dog is a bit of a trial, at least for Henry’s sanity, when Alex shoves half of it in his mouth in one go. And there’s always more to try—Henry’s not sure where he keeps finding the will to eat it all, only that all it takes is Alex excitedly dragging him to the next food stall for him to agree that yes, those ribs do look like a good idea.

Said ribs acquired, they share them sitting side-by-side at a picnic table, their knees and shoulders pressed together. Henry keeps catching Alex watching him with a pleased little smile curving his lips as they eat, which also means Alex keeps catching him sneaking glances. Until one time Henry looks over as he’s licking the sticky-tangy-sweet sauce from his fingers to find Alex staring at him with an odd look on his face, his eyes wide and his full lips slightly parted.

“What?” Henry says with a slightly awkward, self-deprecating laugh. “Am I absolutely covered?”

Alex swallows, something heated in his eyes as they drop to Henry’s mouth. If Henry didn’t know better, he’d say Alex was about ten seconds away from kissing the sauce off his lips.

He does know better, though. Because they’re in public and, what’s more, amongst crowds that know Alex—he’s been recognised many times already, has signed several hats and accepted countless well-wishes for the finals tonight. More than once, women clad in low-cut fringed bustiers and micro cut-off jean shorts have brazenly offered a good luck kiss, which Alex has always graciously declined. If the rodeo fans notice the odd, tall, pale British man in his company, they politely say nothing.

So even if Alex wanted to kiss him—which is assuming quite a lot about his intentions—it would never happen here. In any case, whatever odd reverie Alex had found himself in passes, and he shakes his head as an increasingly-familiar smirk settles onto his lips.

“You’re starting to look a little pink there, Fox,” he teases as he polishes off the last of his own ribs. “Texas sun too much for you?”

Henry feels his face get hotter, and knows it’s not the sun that’s been darkening his cheeks. “I’m wearing plenty of sun cream, I assure you.”

Alex hums doubtfully. By the look in his eye, he’s already devised his next plan for the afternoon. “What you need is a good hat.”

Half an hour later, Henry’s in possession of a brand new Stetson that’s been properly hand-shaped with steam and fitted to his head, because it’s becoming rapidly clear that he will deny Alex nothing. Even if he suspects he looks rather silly, given the rest of his attire.

(“You look great,” Alex had insisted, when Henry had voiced these reservations. “Like you need to loosen up a little, maybe.” Then he’d grinned like a demon and reached up to deftly unfasten the top button of Henry’s shirt. “There,” he’d continued, satisfied and apparently oblivious to Henry’s abject suffering. “That’s better.”)

The afternoon is sliding steadily towards evening, so they take their leave from the fairgrounds and head back to the field full of horse trailers housing the rodeo horses and their riders for the duration of the event. Some of the spaces are empty, vacated by competitors who were eliminated in earlier rounds, but plenty of them have remained behind to watch the finals. Alex leads him through the maze of vehicles until they find a large, top-of-the-line silver trailer with ‘Claremont-Diaz Ranch’ emblazoned on the side in black text. A makeshift animal pen made of metal piping is set up in the shade next to it, where two horses munch on hay as they lazily swat at flies with swinging tails. Henry recognises the chestnut mare with the blaze as Alex’s mount from the previous day, and she’s joined by a bay with four white stockings and grey hairs collecting around her muzzle. They both nicker softly and walk over as Alex approaches, reaching their heads over the temporary fence. Henry hangs back—not everyone’s horses are comfortable with strangers—while Alex fishes a couple of treats out of his pockets and offers one to each horse, murmuring in the chestnut’s ear as she rubs her face against his chest.

“C’mon over,” Alex gestures. He deposits two small brown rectangles in Henry’s hand, which Henry immediately relinquishes to the interested horses. “This is Josie,” Alex tells him, scrubbing the chestnut between the ears. “She’s my star. And that’s Clem. She used to compete with me, but now she’s mostly here for moral support. Aren’t ya?”

Clem snorts as if in agreement and nibbles at Henry’s shirt, looking for more treats. When none are forthcoming, she turns back to the net of hay hanging from the side of the trailer.

“They’re lovely,” Henry says. “Do their names have any special meaning?”

Alex huffs a laugh. “How much do you know about Quarter Horse naming conventions?”

“Not much,” Henry admits.

“Well, it’s not required, but it’s traditional that their registered name contains elements of the sire or dam’s name, or both. So, Josie’s show name is actually Dancin Josephine Baker. Her dam was a horse named Champion Baker, and her sire was Dancin at the Gay Bar.”

Henry blinks at him. “You’re having me on.”

“Not at all,” Alex says, grinning at him. “His sire was a horse named Gay Bar King, by Three Bars and Gay Widow. People get creative.”

“Apparently so,” Henry says. “I had no idea Quarter Horse breeders were so open-minded.”

Alex shrugs, a small frown pinching his face. “About horse names, maybe. Anyway, obviously Josie was destined to be a star.”

“That she was,” Henry agrees, patting her neck. “I should let you two prepare for this evening. I’d wish you luck, but I don’t think you need it.”

“Aw, and I was hoping you were gonna offer a good luck kiss,” Alex jokes.

Because that’s surely all it is, a reference to all the offers he got earlier. Purely a jest. Alex can’t mean it, not here and now, not after all but confirming that his circumstances are far from tolerant, horse names notwithstanding. The shit-eating smirk that has taken over his face seems to confirm this assessment, not that Henry’s heart is paying attention. It thuds too hard against his ribs as he forces an answering smile, willing himself not to look at Alex’s lips. Instead, he leans in and presses a kiss to Josie’s broad cheek.

“Good luck,” he tells the horse. “You’ll need it, dealing with this one.”

“Hey!” Alex protests, laughing. “Fuck you very much, Fox.”

“Like I said, you don’t need it,” Henry says. And then, because he can’t stop himself from a fit of too much honesty: “You’re far too talented to rely on luck.”

Alex’s answering smile is worth it.

Henry officially meets Alex’s roping partner and best friend at the afterparty.

Perhaps ‘afterparty’ is putting it too strongly—it’s a small gathering made up of friends and family at a local Austin bar far enough from the rodeo grounds that there won’t be many hardcore fans in attendance. Based on the flags in the window, it’s LGBTQ+ friendly, which Henry supposes makes sense given Alex’s sister.

And, apparently, his rodeo partner.

“This is my husband, Spencer,” Liam says, introducing the dark-haired man next to him. Alex has wandered off somewhere across the bar and is currently being toasted by a collection of drunk college students who have only just learned that he won two events at the rodeo tonight, so Henry can’t even look to him to confirm he’s heard this right. But Liam is standing with his arm looped around Spencer’s waist, and Spencer has been glancing fondly at Liam like it’s an impulse he can’t control all evening, and there’s no other interpretation of that statement.

“It’s a pleasure,” Henry says as he shakes Spencer’s hand.

“We watched one of your matches with Alex,” Spencer offers, which almost makes Henry drop his hand. “You were impressive out there.”

“Oh. Well. Thank you,” Henry manages, feeling unaccountably flustered. “I wasn’t aware he’d seen more than one, actually.”

“Once he figured out where he could find them streaming, it was all over,” Liam says, a knowing smirk on his face. “Never thought Alex, of all people, would turn into a polo fan, but.” He shrugs and takes a swig of his beer. “I guess something about it got him hooked.”

The tone of Liam’s voice suggests he knows exactly what got Alex hooked, and that insinuation is honestly far too much for Henry to take. Especially when Alex comes careening over like a pinball and hooks an arm around Henry’s neck, nearly tugging him off balance in the process.

“Henryyyyy,” Alex slurs, shoving his face too close to Henry’s. His lips are wet and pink and more tempting than any forbidden fruit. “Whatev’r they’re tellin’ you, ’s lies.”

“So you haven’t been watching any more of my matches, then?” Henry teases.

Alex opens his mouth and closes it again, looking like nothing so much as a particularly attractive fish. “Well, I’ve— I did do that.” He turns toward Liam, squinting suspiciously. “That’s all y’said?”

“What else should there be?” Liam returns placidly.

A thick rope of tension weaves through the air between them, twisting tighter as the two men stare at each other. Finally, Alex’s expression cracks and he smiles like nothing’s happened. “Hey, how ‘bout ‘nother drink?”

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough for tonight, love?” Henry asks quietly. His fingers itch to push an unruly curl off Alex’s forehead, but he’s acutely aware that they’re being watched.

“Pfft, ‘m fine.” Alex huffs, then sways precariously on his feet for no particular reason. Henry catches him by the waist, trying desperately to ignore how perfect it feels under his palms. “Kay, maybe not jus’ yet. But you need ‘nother.”

“Or,” Henry counters, “you could let me take you back to your trailer so you can sleep this off and be ready to drive home tomorrow.”

Alex considers this for a moment, his brow furrowed as if in deep thought. “Y’make a compellin’ point.”

They make the rounds, Alex leaning heavily against him for support, to say goodbye to those still lingering at the bar before they leave. That includes June and Nora, who share another one of those mysterious looks, but kiss Alex on the cheek before sending them off. As Alex argues with the bartender about his non-existent tab—Alex is apparently of the opinion that he should be buying everyone else drinks with his winnings, even though the bar’s other occupants have already paid for their own and his drinks—Liam snags Henry by the arm, drawing him to the side.

“Hey, take care of him, ok?” he says, too quiet for Alex to notice the exchange.

It’d be easy to interpret that as merely referring to tonight, given Alex’s current state, but Henry has already spent enough time with Liam tonight to know that he might not be verbose, but that doesn’t mean he’s not saying a lot. Liam knows—more than Nora and June, more than Henry, and maybe even more than Alex. And while it would be a mistake to read too much into his serious expression, it’s obvious that his words are as much a warning as a request.

Alex finally yields his battle with the bartender and stumbles over into Henry again, who catches him—who thinks he could spend a lifetime catching him, though maybe that’s the liquor talking—and gives Liam a little nod. “I will.”

At the rodeo grounds the next morning, he finds Alex in the living room area of his luxury horse trailer, hunched over where he sits on the sofa with sunglasses covering his eyes and his head cradled in his hands. Despite his current state, he’s clearly been up and about this morning: the temporary pen has been broken down and the horses already loaded into the trailer. The door between the living area and the horses’ area is standing open, and Josie whickers when Henry steps inside.

Alex doesn’t react. Perhaps he’s fallen asleep.

“I see the morning is treating you well,” Henry says.

Alex looks up at him too fast and winces. “Fuck. Why’d you let me drink that much?”

“If you think I had any ability to stop you, then you’re mad,” Henry tells him. He holds out the extra large coffee he picked up on the way here. “I brought reinforcements.”

“Oh my god, I love you,” Alex says to the coffee as he snatches it from Henry and cradles it like a precious object. His eyelashes flutter shut as he takes a long drink from the cup and exhales dreamily, a blissed-out smile on his face.

“Should I leave you two alone?” Henry offers.

“Fuck off,” Alex says automatically, but immediately adds, “not actually,” like he’s afraid Henry might take him at his word. “Seriously, thank you for this. I ran out of the stuff I brought.”

“A grave miscalculation,” Henry says solemnly. “Is your family not around?”

“Dad left already. Nora and June are sleeping in, I guess. I haven’t heard from them. They’ve got their own car, anyway, so I’m not expecting them until late.”

It’s obvious that Alex isn’t moving any time soon either, so Henry takes the only other seat available in the room—on the couch next to him. His attempts at leaving an appropriate amount of space between are immediately obliterated when Alex slumps against his side, smashing his face into Henry’s shoulder.

“That can’t be comfortable,” Henry remarks, looking down at him. With little else to do, he settles back into the couch and shifts Alex a little, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. 

“Don’t sell yourself short, sweetheart,” Alex mumbles into the side of his chest.

This is my life now, Henry thinks, a little hysterically, as Alex makes himself comfortable. “Do you need some time before we leave?”

“Just gimme ten minutes,” Alex says through a yawn. 

Normally, Alex’s father would be riding with him in the truck to and from the rodeo, but Alex had assured Henry that he wouldn’t be imposing by taking Oscar’s seat. Today is a short trip, anyway, at least by Texas standards; Alex’s ranch is a couple of hours from Austin. True to his word, Alex starts rousting himself about ten minutes later, looking considerably more alert. He declines Henry’s offer to drive—“You’ll end up on the wrong side of the road, Fox”—and they get on the road by mid-morning, only a little later than their planned departure time.

All Henry knows of Texas is what he’s seen in movies, or Alex’s photos, but none of them adequately prepare him for the vastness of it. The suburbs of Austin fall away quickly, giving way to endless rolling hills dotted with low, scrubby trees and tufts of hardy grasses eking out a living in the rocky soil. In places, the slopes are bright green and covered in blankets of indigo flowers, and above them the sky seems to stretch forever, the endless blue only broken by the wispy cotton of a few high clouds. As they drive, Alex tells him about the history of the area and how it shaped the land today, about the ranches and the people who work them, and about the bluebonnets—Henry’s lucky, he says, that it rained last week so they’d be in bloom.

Luck, Henry thinks, is a funny thing. He’s lucky to have gotten that sponsorship that put Alex in his life. Lucky that Pez convinced him to text Alex and come on this trip. And even luckier just to be sitting here in this absurdly large pickup truck, next to Alex, taking it all in.

Chapter Text

“Ok, I’ve got a plan,” Alex says as he sprawls on the porch swing next to Henry. He plucks his hat off and ruffles his sweat-dampened hair, sending his curls into disarray and Henry’s heart into an erratic rhythm. “Tomorrow, we’re going riding.”

It’s late in the afternoon on the day after they returned to the ranch. Yesterday had been a day for recovery; after they’d arrived, Alex had let the horses loose in their pasture and promptly collapsed, only rousing himself around dinnertime when Nora and June arrived. Today, he’d mostly spent unpacking the trailer and taking care of farm chores and little things that had come up over the last week. Alex had apologised more than once to Henry for not being a better host, but Henry hadn’t minded. It was hardly a trial, spending most of his day reading in the hammock with a cold glass of lemonade by his side. And it wasn’t like he was alone, either—he’d also spent a while talking with June about their shared reading interests, passed time keeping Oscar company as he worked in the kitchen, and even helped out in the barn when Alex allowed it.

In fact, he could use a little more time alone. Or to be more accurate and slightly paradoxical, time alone with Alex. Henry was aware that his family would be around, of course, but he hadn’t really considered how that would actually impact his visit. The ranch is large, but the farmstead isn’t that large. And even though Henry genuinely likes Oscar and June and Nora, he’s barely had time for a single one-on-one conversation with Alex since they got back.

“Is this to be a group outing?” he asks, setting his notebook and pen to the side.

That’s another thing he’s been doing: writing. It’s been quite some time since he’s had the inspiration or inclination, but now the words are pouring out of him. Alex had teasingly called him Shakespeare, then asked to read some of it, which Henry flatly refused. He’s not ashamed of his writing, but some of that inspiration… Well. It’s best that Alex not be aware of any of that.

“Just you and me,” Alex says with a wicked grin that sends a thrill of anticipation down Henry’s spine. “Time for you to put your money where your mouth is, sweetheart. You ever do any other kind of riding besides polo?”

There’s no way he doesn’t know exactly what the question sounds like, especially delivering it as he does with a lazy smirk and his gaze raking down Henry’s body, but Henry refuses to let himself be flustered. Frankly, he’s becoming somewhat inured to Alex’s suggestive comments, considering how casually Alex deploys them. Not that the question doesn’t bring certain vivid images to mind that he immediately shoves away.

“My grandmother insisted on dressage lessons when I was younger, but otherwise, no,” he answers primly. “I can’t see how it would be that different, though.”

Alex hums doubtfully. “If you’re so confident, you can take Jasper out for me, hotshot.”

Henry’s come to know the other horses in Alex’s barn over the last couple of days—besides Josie and Clem, there’s Ruthie, a sweet dun-coloured mare; Biscuit, a red roan gelding who’s Alex’s other main competition horse; and Jasper, a young, high-tempered dappled grey colt that Alex recently acquired for training. Jasper is tall and skittish and not very friendly to anyone of any species, but Henry has known plenty of horses like him, and he is confident of his skills. Sue him.

“I don’t mind,” he replies. “He’s a little large for you, so I understand it’s hard to handle him.”

“You’re such a dick,” Alex laughs and shoves Henry sideways. “I hope he dumps you on a cactus.”

Henry grins as he plucks his glass of lemonade off the table next to him and takes a sip. “I don’t believe you. I seem to remember you being very concerned about me wandering around by myself.”

“Yeah, because knowing your posh ass, you’d get bitten by a rattlesnake or eaten by a javelina.”

“There are no javelinas on your ranch.”

“Oh yeah? How’d you know that, smarty pants?”

“Because Nora already told me about every potentially dangerous wild animal here. Along with the statistical likelihood of encounter or injury.”

“Of course she did,” Alex huffs. He leans across Henry’s front to steal his lemonade from the table on the other side of the swing, and Henry helplessly watches his throat work as he drains the glass.

“Christ,” Henry mutters, tearing his gaze away. When he looks back, Alex’s eyebrows are raised in a silent question. “Are you quite refreshed?”

Alex grins brightly. “I am, thanks.”

Then he leans back across Henry’s lap to put the glass back down, shoving into Henry’s personal space in a way that’s too much and not enough all at once. The proximity must short out Henry’s brain, because as Alex starts to pull back, Henry’s hand darts out and grabs Alex’s wrist before he can fully withdraw.

“I beg your pardon. I think you should fetch me another of those,” Henry says when Alex stares at him in surprise. It’s a fair reaction. Henry is surprised at his own temerity, too.

A slow grin tugs on the corners of Alex’s too-tempting mouth. “Is that what you think, your highness? Used to having people wait on you hand and foot?”

“More like, you owe me, seeing as how you drank the rest of it.”

“Oh, I owe you now, do I?”

Henry cannot keep himself from looking at Alex’s lips. He swallows hard. “Mm.”

Alex tugs his wrist out of Henry’s grasp and leans in, closer than before, to pluck the glass back off the table. He doesn’t pull away right away, though; instead, he lingers in front of Henry, his face close enough to count every one of those ridiculous eyelashes. Enough that if one of them swayed forward, their lips would meet. 

“I guess that’s fair,” Alex murmurs. His eyelashes fan across his cheekbones as his gaze drops.

“Is Alex being a dirty lemonade thief again?” Nora asks, stepping out of the house on to the porch.

The steadily building tension shatters like glass. Alex closes his eyes and pulls away, getting to his feet. The empty space he leaves behind on the bench tugs on Henry like a vacuum, at least until Nora seizes the yielded territory. She ignores Alex’s pointed glare, seemingly unaware of what she interrupted. Not that anything was necessarily going to happen. For all Henry knows, Alex was about to leave anyway.

“I am not a dirty lemonade thief,” Alex protests. “This is my lemonade, anyway. You’re all visitors. Who I’m strongly considering ejecting from my property.”

“Don’t pretend like Dad didn’t bring the groceries with him,” June puts in as she joins them. She’s holding a pitcher and two glasses, which she sets on the table next to Nora. “Anyway, I brought the rest of the lemonade out. But I don’t have a glass for you, Alex. I didn’t realise y’all were out here.”

“It’s fine, I have more stuff to take care of before dinner,” Alex says with a put upon sigh.

“Do you need any help?” Henry offers. Just to be helpful, is all. Not because he desperately wants to be alone with Alex again.

“Nah, I’m good,” Alex says with a tight smile. “Just enjoy the rest of your evening.”

Henry doesn’t point out he’d enjoy it far more by spending it with Alex.

The plan was to head out early, before the heat of the day sets in, and the house is still quiet when Henry makes his way downstairs. He finds the expected pot of coffee in the kitchen, but also thermos with a note sitting next to it that simply says ‘bring me’ in Alex’s distinctive scrawl. Curiosity piqued, Henry twists off the lid and is immediately hit by the aroma of bergamot. There’s also a leftover concha from last night sitting out, so Henry pours a bit of the tea into the lid and takes a moment to savour it as he eats. He’s surprised to find it’s perfectly steeped, but then again, Alex has proven repeatedly that he’s got an incredible attention to detail. Henry is just polishing off the concha when the stairs creak at someone’s descent, and a moment later Oscar appears wearing a loose, patterned button down he hasn’t bothered tucking in.

“I have to admit, the tea was a surprise when I got here,” Oscar says with a nod toward the thermos, scratching at several days’ worth of salt-and-pepper stubble on his jaw. “Thought he might have taken a hit to the head last time he got thrown.”

“I tried to tell him it was unnecessary,” Henry says. “He insisted.”

Henry had brought it up originally as a joke, teasing Alex about not being able to get a proper cup of tea while he was in the States. He hadn’t actually expected Alex to take it to heart, but the tin of loose leaf Earl Grey had been sitting out on the counter when they arrived, along with a shiny new steeping basket and a little jar of mesquite honey—because his tea needed a bit of Texas, Alex had said. Henry’d had to pretend like he wasn’t completely overwhelmed by the thoughtfulness of it. 

“That’s our Alex,” Oscar says, smiling fondly. “He likes taking care of people. Horses. Most living things, really.”

Henry lets out a little huff of laughter. “I’m learning that.”

Oscar crosses through the kitchen and pours himself a cup of coffee, then leans sideways against the counter. “Where are you two heading today?”

“I haven’t the faintest clue,” Henry admits.

“Knowing him, he’s got the whole day planned out,” Oscar says as he snags a concha of his own. “I’ve never seen him so worked up about everything being perfect for this visit.”

“Oh,” Henry says, trying desperately not to read too much into that statement. Frankly, he doesn’t quite know what to say except, “Well. It has been.”

Oscar smiles knowingly into his coffee. “Good. Now, you better get out there. Wouldn’t want to throw off the schedule.”

“Certainly not,” Henry agrees. He caps the thermos again and brushes a finger along the note—it’s nothing special, but he pockets it anyway, giving Oscar a smile before he heads out.

Alex already has both horses tacked up and nearly ready to go by the time Henry approaches the barn, his footsteps crunching softly on the gravel drive. He follows the sound of whistling and soft conversation inside, only to find Alex is alone. Except for the horses, that is.

“You’re gonna be good for him, ok?” Alex says as he adjusts the straps on Jasper’s bridle. “Do not mess this up for me.”

The grey colt snorts and stamps a front foot. Whether it’s in agreement or protest, Henry can’t tell. Alex is still distracted, running his hands over Jasper’s flanks and down his legs to check for soreness, so Henry finds a spot leaning against a stall door and watches. Jasper dances around a bit, restless in his confinement to the cross-ties, but he doesn’t lash out. Despite the aloof front he puts up, Jasper clearly adores Alex. Whenever Alex whistles, he’s the first one at the fence. He refuses to be won over by treats when anyone but Alex offers them—though he did deign to take one from Henry. Half the time when he acts out, Henry’s fairly certain Jasper is just trying to get Alex’s attention. Now, he strains against the ties when Alex steps around to check his front legs, trying to nip at Alex’s shirt.

“Hey, now,” Alex scolds, putting his hands on hips as he straightens up. “There’ll be no nibbling, mister.”

“You can hardly blame him,” Henry says, smiling when Alex jerks around to look at him. A big, beautiful smile blooms on his face, only to falter a moment later.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“Just a few moments,” Henry tells him, and Alex’s shoulders relax. “How is Jasper this morning?”

“He’s good,” Alex says, reaching up to give the horse a pat on the neck. “Not too feisty today, I don’t think.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“You sure you want to take him out? It’s not too late to tack up Ruthie.”

At dinner last night, June had tried to insist that Henry take Ruthie, the horse she usually rides on outings like these. A sweetheart and absolutely bomb-proof. A horse even a beginner could handle.

Henry’s not a beginner. He has years of experience handling horses of every temperament. He prides himself on being able to work with horses he’s never met before and horses that others deem too difficult. And if you accused him of wanting to prove that to Alex—to show off a bit—well, you’d be right.

Henry shoves off the wall and walks over to stand next to Alex in front of Jasper, reaching up to let Jasper nuzzle in his open palm before he smooths a hand over his soft nose. “I’m sure,” he says. “Jasper and I have an understanding.”

Alex cocks an eyebrow at him. “Oh, do you?”

Jasper’s ears flick around, then he makes an attempt to nibble Alex again.

“Yes,” Henry answers. We both find you irresistible.

“Hey, so, just wondering—what the fuck are you wearing?” Alex asks, taking a step back as if he needs space to take in Henry’s attire.

Henry looks down at himself. Breeches, boots, a polo shirt. Nothing out of the ordinary. “… Riding clothes?”

Alex scoffs like he’s said something absurd. “Jesus Christ, don’t you have a pair of jeans or something?”

“No,” Henry answers. Frankly, the idea of riding in blue jeans sounds horribly uncomfortable, though he knows that’s what Alex wears. “I’m not sure how you ride in those things, to be quite honest. Aren’t they terribly… stiff?”

“Not with the right jeans.”

“Well, I don’t have anything else that’s suitable, so these will have to do,” Henry says loftily.

“Thank fuck no one else will be around,” Alex huffs, as he shakes his head. “Embarrassed to be seen with you.”

“I didn’t realise that my breeches were so offensive to your delicate sensibilities.”

“They’re obscene, is what they are,” Alex complains. “Won’t someone think of the children?”

“The only child around here is you, you miscreant,” Henry returns.

Alex reaches up to try to block Jasper’s eyes, though the horse throws his head to rid himself of the obstruction immediately. “Excuse you, Jasper’s only two years old!”

“I’m certain he can handle it.”

“Hmph,” Alex says. He turns away and starts heading toward where Biscuit has been patiently waiting, adding, “Speak for yourself,” in a grumble that Henry isn’t sure he was meant to hear.

Henry unclips Jasper from his ties and leads him out of the barn into the bright morning sunlight, Alex following with Biscuit close behind him. He waits as Alex uses a sawed-off stump near the barn as a mounting block and settles himself into Biscuit’s saddle, then leads Jasper over to it. No sooner does Henry get one foot in the stirrup then Jasper dances sideways away from the block, pulling Henry with him. It’s only because he already has both hands on the saddle that he manages to keep his balance enough to swing his other leg over Jasper’s back as the horse spins in a circle under him, instead of being dragged through the dirt.

When he finally gets his seat, Alex is definitely fighting back laughter.

“Your sympathy is truly appreciated,” Henry says dryly.

“Hey man, I gave you the out, but you insisted,” Alex says, finally giving up on the pretence of not laughing. “That was impressive, though.”

Henry tries not to look too pleased by the compliment, but he feels the warmth of it spark in his chest. Jasper has continued to squirrel around sideways and backwards, though, so Henry’s forced to put a little more attention into getting him to settle down. Unfortunately, the Western saddle is throwing him off—the stirrups are too long, the seat doesn’t hug his body, there’s no pad for his knees, and the horn is in the way of where he naturally wants to put his hands. Not that he would ever admit any of that to Alex.

“How’s it feel up there?” Alex asks, as if he can sense Henry’s discomfort.

“Perfectly fine,” Henry lies. “It’s not that different, really.”

Alex laughs at this for the absurd statement it is. “Talk about stiff. You’d probably feel better if you got that stick out of your ass, darlin’.”

“I have a proper seat, thank you,” Henry replies primly. “I don’t just… slouch about.”

“‘Slouch about’,” Alex scoffs. “Well my slouching about just won two events, so I think it suits me pretty well.”

“I suppose if you’re satisfied with that,” Henry says as he urges Jasper forward. He doesn’t even know where they’re going, but leaving Alex to trail behind him is worth it. A moment later, Alex coaxes Biscuit into a brief trot, and Henry bites down on his grin when Alex reins up beside him. “So,” he prompts as they ride side-by-side, “where are we headed?”

“Wherever the spirit moves us,” Alex says. Henry gives him an incredulous look. “I might have a lunch spot picked out. But I’ll let Biscuit and Jasper decide how we get there.”

The crisp spring morning quickly warms under the intense Texas sun, and Henry becomes grateful for the Stetson that Alex forced him to buy at the rodeo. After about half an hour, Jasper calms down a bit and stops shying away at every half-perceived rustle in the brush, so Henry can finally relax some as well. It’s a novel experience, riding without an aim and letting the horses choose their path across the landscape, though Henry is fairly certain Alex is providing at least a small amount of input. Particularly when they pick their way out of a dry creek bed to find a stunning field full of bluebonnets extending off almost as far as the eye can see, and Alex can’t hide how pleased he looks when Henry gasps.

“I hoped they’d be in full bloom,” Alex says. “This is my favourite spot on the ranch.”

“It’s incredible, Alex,” Henry breathes, unable to tear his eyes away from the sight. If he could, maybe he’d have caught the look on Alex’s face as he watched Henry take it all in. But perhaps it’s better that he didn’t.

By midday, their winding path has brought them to a lazy river—the first sign of water that they’ve seen since they left the homestead. They ride along it for a little ways until they come to a small copse of trees surrounding a patch of green grass growing on the riverbank. Alex knots the reins of the horses’ bitless bridles around the saddle horns so they won’t get tangled, but otherwise lets them loose to wade in the river and crop the grass nearby. From Biscuit’s saddle bags, he pulls out a blanket, two butcher-paper wrapped parcels—which turn out to be leftover brisket slices on crusty bread with cheese, tangy pickles, and barbecue sauce—a pair of shiny apples, and two bottles of Mexican Coke.

The sandwiches are a little squished, the apples a touch bruised, and the Cokes warm, but it’s still one of the best meals Henry’s ever had. Maybe it’s just the scenery, and the company. Alex is warm and radiant at his side, sitting just a little closer than could be considered purely friendly, laughing at Henry’s attempts to eat the messy sandwich with any kind of dignity. Alex, of course, makes no such pretence, and afterward he reclines on the blanket, the long line of his neck arcing temptingly as he tips his head back and basks in the sun like a lizard. For his part, Henry sticks to the meagre shade, given how hot his face already feels from being out in the sun all morning.

Alex’s eyes are closed, and Henry allows himself a lingering, hungry look along Alex’s body. Perhaps it’s not only the sun making him overheat, after all.

It’d be so easy to roll onto his side and close the narrow gap between them. Trail a hand along Alex’s arm, from his wrist to his clavicle. Slide that hand to cup his jaw and tilt his head. Lean in and gently press their lips together, more of question than a declaration. Perhaps Alex would welcome it, parting his lips to let Henry deepen the kiss. Maybe he’d even slide his hand into the dip of Henry’s waist and pull their bodies together. Or perhaps he’d push Henry backward in surprise, only to scramble on top of him, strong thighs pressed to either side of Henry’s hips as he leans down to capture his lips in a claiming kiss.

“H? What do you think?”

Henry comes back to himself with the uncomfortable realisation that Alex has been speaking while he’s been lost in his fantasies.

“Er, yes?”

Alex grins. “You have no idea what I just said, do you?”

Henry opens his mouth to protest, then closes it again. “Well. No. Sorry, I think the sun must be getting to me.”

“Mm, you are looking a little red,” Alex murmurs. He frowns as he reaches out to swipe a thumb lightly over Henry’s cheekbone, and Henry’s breath catches in his throat. He lies there frozen as his heart stutters in his chest once, twice—and then Alex pulls away and smirks like it was nothing out of the ordinary. “Guess we better get you back before you turn into a lobster.”

“I’m sure that’s not necessary,” Henry demurs, knowing that a solid half of the redness on his cheeks has nothing to do with the sun. “Please don’t feel like you have to cut the outing short on my account.”

“Nah, these fellas would probably appreciate starting to head back home,” Alex says with a nod toward the horses. “Too bad it’s a little too early in the season for swimming. The river’d be freezing, though.”

“I didn’t bring anything to swim in, anyway.”

Alex laughs. “There’s no one around for miles, H. You don’t have to swim in anything.”

“Oh,” Henry blinks. Surely Alex isn’t suggesting that they’d take a dip in the nude if only it were a bit warmer—

“Ah, well,” Alex sighs as he sits up. He stares at the horses for a beat, then scrambles the rest of the way to standing and holds out a hand for Henry. “Next time you visit.”

Determinedly not thinking about it, Henry takes Alex’s hand and lets himself be pulled to his feet. “I’m not sure I’d survive any hotter weather.”

“That’s why you go swimming, to cool down,” Alex argues. Unfortunately, he also lets go of Henry’s hand. “My dad used to have this lake house nearby when we were growing up. That place was incredible.”

“He sold it?”

Alex nods and goes to collect Biscuit and Jasper. “To help me buy this place, when I was just getting started. Which I’ve paid him back for by now. I told him he should look into getting another place since he comes to visit so frequently, but he says he’s just gonna build a cabin down here by the river when he retires.”

“It’s nice that he’s around so much,” Henry says perhaps a bit too wistfully, if the soft look on Alex’s face is anything to go by. The topic of fathers—complex as it is for both of them—is one they’ve covered in some depth at this point.

“Yeah,” Alex says with a gentle smile as he hands Jasper’s reins to Henry. “It is.”

They take a slightly different route back, and Jasper only spooks once when they flush a jackrabbit that goes skittering like lightning across their path. Henry’s gotten wise to his habits, though, so they don’t get far before Henry’s managed to get him under control again with a firm hand and a litany of soft, soothing words. Alex is watching him with a kind of strange smile on his face when they return to his and Biscuit’s side, but he just shakes his head when Henry asks.

By the time they make it back to the homestead it’s late in the afternoon, and Henry is indeed feeling more than a little overcooked despite his generous applications of heavy duty sun cream. The cool, dark interior of the barn is a welcome relief as they both fall into the routine of untacking and rubbing down the horses. Henry is still scrubbing little circles into the damp hair on Jasper’s back with a curry comb when Alex returns from turning Biscuit out in the pasture. He grabs a brush and stands close to Henry, their shoulders brushing, because apparently personal space is a foreign concept to him. Not that Henry’s complaining.

“You’re good with him,” Alex says.

“Some people look at horses like Jasper and think they’re hard to handle, that they won’t listen,” Henry says. “But they’re the ones who aren’t listening. Those horses, they’re not acting out for no reason, and they’ll tell you if you bother paying attention.” He runs a hand down Jasper’s flank. “I just listened to what he was saying.”

Alex doesn’t respond immediately, and when Henry looks over he finds Alex staring up at him with a hard-to-read look on his face, the brush in his hand all but forgotten. “How are you even real?”

Henry frowns. “What?”

“Nothing,” Alex says with a soft huff as he shakes his head. He lifts the brush and smooths it over Jasper’s withers. “You’re right, by the way. The people I bought him from told me he would never be a rodeo horse. Too energetic, too unfocused. Too anxious. But that’s what they said about me, too.” He delivers this statement without inflection, almost as an aside, and Henry would very much like to know more—who they were, and how they could be so wrong—but Alex forges on without leaving even the smallest pause. “Most people don’t understand him. I’ll admit, I was curious how you would do.”

Fine. If they’re going to pretend they’re still talking about Jasper, Henry can play that game. “So it was a test,” he says, letting one corner of his mouth tug upward.

Alex grins back at him. “More or less.”

“Did I pass?”

“Top scores on horsemanship and communication. Points deducted for your stiff-ass seat and torturing me with these ridiculous breeches all day,” Alex says. He hooks a finger in one of Henry’s belt loops and gives a little tug, pulling them somehow closer together. He’s staring at Henry’s mouth when he murmurs, “But yeah, you passed.”

“Alex—” Henry breathes as he sways forward, drawn inexorably closer by the magnetic pull of Alex’s lips.

The sound of footsteps crunching on the gravel filters into the barn only seconds before Oscar appears in the doorway. “There you two are,” he says as they spring apart. “CJ said she saw you come back a while ago.”

“It hasn’t been a while,” Alex groans, rolling his eyes. “We’re just taking care of the horses.”

“Well, pick up the pace,” Oscar shoots back. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

“We’ll get there when we get there,” Alex calls to his already retreating back. He shakes his head and looks up at Henry. “Sorry about him.”

Henry has to clear his throat before he trusts his voice. “It’s fine. I think Jasper’s about done.”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s good,” Alex agrees as he takes another step backward. The tension that had hummed between them before is uncomfortably tight now, like a guitar string tuned to the wrong key. “I’ll make sure everything’s put away in here if you want to go ahead and turn him out?”

“Sure,” Henry says, nodding awkwardly. He unclips Jasper’s ties and gestures over his shoulder. “I’ll just—”

“Yup.” Now Alex is nodding too, at least until he turns on his heel and flees toward the tack room.

Henry watches him go for a second, until Jasper nudges him as if wondering why they’re still standing there. Then he closes his eyes and whispers, “Fuck.”

They’re not alone again until Alex is driving him to the airport the next morning. It’s not awkward, thank Christ—that had faded quickly, replaced by the comfortable familiarity that’s grown between them. Henry listens contently as Alex rambles about the rest of his rodeo season and his uncertainties about the future. Apparently, Liam is talking about stepping back after the national finals this year, so it might be the last time Alex could easily qualify for All-Around Cowboy category—a title he’s already won five times. He talks about how his family keeps getting on his case to take more breaks, to slow down, even though those aren’t words that Alex really understands the meaning of.

Then Alex starts talking about when he might find the time to visit London, and how he’s never been, and Henry tries not to feel entirely too much about that.

The drive back to Austin isn’t short, and yet it’s not nearly long enough. Alex follows him out of the car when they arrive at the drop off area at the airport and fidgets as Henry gets his bags out of the back. 

“Well, I guess this is it,” he says when Henry turns toward him. “Glad you came to visit?”

“Very much so,” Henry says. “I had a wonderful time, Alex.”

Alex takes a deep breath like he’s steeling himself for something and steps forward, until he’s close enough that he has to tip his head to meet Henry’s eyes. He doesn’t look away as he reaches a hand forward, his fingertips ghosting across the tender skin on the inside of Henry’s wrist, pressing lightly against the rabbiting pulse there.

“Good,” Alex says, his low voice barely more than a murmur. “Glad to hear it.”

The breath that Henry tries to let out sticks in his throat. “Alex…”

“I enjoyed having you here,” Alex continues.

He stares up at Henry through those impossible eyelashes, which is a patently unfair move, and his lips part invitingly as he shifts millimetres closer. He’s practically begging to be kissed, and Henry…

Henry takes a step backward, pulling his wrist out of Alex’s grasp. Unconsciously, he presses his own fingers to the places where Alex’s fingertips have left burning brands on his skin.

It’d be easy to come up with good reasons for why he does it. They’re in public again, though Alex is a lot less likely to be recognised here, on the pavement in front of the departures at the Austin airport, than he is at a rodeo. If Henry’s misread this somehow, he doesn’t want that to be the thing they part on. And it’s a frankly terrible place and time for their very first kiss.

But the fact of the matter is that Henry’s about to get on a plane and fly thousands of miles away without any idea of when they might be able to see each other again. If they’re just friends, then the distance is merely unbearable. Walking away once he knows the taste of Alex’s lips might actually kill him.

“I’ll text you when I land,” Henry says.

“You better text me before then,” Alex counters. “I need regular updates on your trip.”

Henry smiles through the ache in his chest. “I will.”

“And we can’t let another six months go by before we do something like this again.”

“It’ll be six months before polo season in the UK is over,” Henry reminds him.

“Yeah, well, maybe I’ll come visit you,” Alex says.

Henry juts out his chin. “Maybe you should.”

Then Alex is moving, closing the space between them again and Henry nearly panics until he finds himself wrapped in a crushing hug with Alex’s face tucked into the crook of his neck. With a sigh that feels suspiciously like relief, he loops his arms tight around Alex’s shoulders and presses his face into Alex’s hair. He drinks it in like a man dying of thirst—the sensation of Alex’s body pressed against his, of Alex’s warm breath on the skin of his neck, of the tickle of Alex’s curls on his nose—and forgets that he’s actually drowning.

“I’m gonna miss you, H,” Alex mumbles into the collar of his shirt.

“I’ll miss you too, love,” Henry murmurs back.

Alex’s shoulders rise as he takes a deep breath, then his grip loosens and he steps back, pausing only once, briefly, with his palms pressed against Henry’s waist, before he finally pulls away.

Henry walks through the airport’s sliding glass doors, and he doesn’t let himself look back.

Chapter Text

April

sierra @rodeyolo
Someone tell me I’m totally crazy and that is NOT Henry Fox sitting in the front row at ACD’s bronc final last weekend
[A blurry screenshot from the Saddle Bronc finals at Rodeo Austin, zoomed and cropped on the people sitting in the stands]
| hen @polopony04: sorry you’re not crazy i’d know those cheekbones anywhere
| jake @br0ncfan: acd was hanging out with this dude at the fairgrounds the day of the finals, friend of mine got her hat signed
| cee 🐴 see you in san angelo! @acdsthighs: was no one going to tell me that these two are actual besties irl

Pez Okonjo
April 3 at 9:52AM

[Calendar Invite: Welcome Back Debrief]

Is this really necessary?

I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about
I just want to catch up with my mate who’s been away
And hear every last thing about his trip to visit the boy he fancies

Do we have to call it a debrief
It sounds like I was on a mission

I’d argue you were
A mission to get into his pants
Was it a success?
No, wait—don’t spoil it

Prepare to be disappointed

HAZ
I said no spoilers
Oh well
At least now I know to bring extra wine

PRCA ProRodeo @PRCA_ProRodeo
Alex Claremont-Diaz goes 89 on Tator Tot for the San Angelo lead! #WeAreProRodeo
[Video of Alex’s ride]
| nina @horsegirl335: was henry fox there

[Instagram post featuring a tacked-up chestnut horse]
rodeoalex: josie’s always happy to be close to home for the #sanangelorodeo
| henryfox: Is that Jasper I spy in the background?
| rodeoalex: @henryfox he’s learning to behave himself on the road
| luvrodeo99: are we gonna talk about how henry can identify blurry photos of horses alex has never competed with before
| chiknnbiscuits: @luvrodeo99 duh they’re friends ofc he knows alex’s horses

cee 🐴 jasper photos pls @acdsthighs
ACD’S COMPETITION HORSES: A THREAD
| Josie: show name Dancin Josephine Baker. aka our best girl, current primary roping horse
|
| Biscuit: show name Chicken N Biscuits. cutie patootie, secondary roping horse
|
| Clem: show name Darling Clementine. the grand dame, alex’s former roping horse, retired but sometimes shows up at rodeos for support
|
| Jasper: show name unknown. alex’s newest, spotted for the first time at san angelo. id’d by henry fox in an instagram comment. someone get me a better photo stat!!
|

Alex (not your first rodeo 🤠)
Apr 20 at 2:08PM

How was Jasper’s first road trip?

ups and downs
overall he did well
but i think sometimes everything got a little overwhelming

I can certainly relate to that

yeah
you know i think he misses you

I highly doubt that

no he told me himself
when we talk about you

I don’t want to know
I think he’d get along with Wentworth

is that… your butler

He’s a horse, Alex
One of my polo ponies
I’m sure I told you about him

right right sorry
they all have hoity-toity names
i can’t keep them straight

They’re from classic novels, you heathen

i changed my mind i don’t want you around actually
i already get too much of this from june
two of you are gonna drive me nuts

You’re very welcome

June Claremont-Diaz
Apr 24 at 6:46PM

Hi Henry!
I just wanted to pass on the discord link for the online book club I mentioned
[link]
No pressure to join but we’d love to have you
We’re voting for next month’s book now

Thank you, I’ll be joining shortly
I’m looking forward to it
It’s been too long since I’ve had a good literary discussion
The lads down at the polo club aren’t always the best conversationalists

Well I might have mentioned you to the group
And they’re excited
It’s been a while since we had any fresh blood
Oh! Did you see the casting news about the P&P series

I did
I must say I’m not mad about Jack Lowden

FELT

[Instagram post featuring a photo of Henry dressed in polo gear, a pale grey horse standing beside him as he leans back against the rear of a red sports car. A polo mallet also rests against the bumper of the car.]
guardspoloclub: Guards Polo Club is delighted to announce an exciting new partnership with @astonmartin. This iconic, British ultra-luxury brand will become the Club’s official car partner in 2025. In addition to the role of official car partner at Guards Polo Club, Aston Martin will also be the headline sponsor of The Prince of Wales’s Championship Cup in 2025. This high-goal tournament features some of the sport’s top players, with finals day on Sunday 10 August bringing together the very best in dynamic performance.
| foxhound: is anyone else getting emotional about arthur fox or just me

Alex (not your first rodeo 🤠)
Apr 29 at 3:08PM

another luxury sponsor i see
did you get to keep the car

I didn’t even get to drive the car

lame

Indeed
I’m not sure it would have been the best idea, though
My dad had an Aston Martin

just like james bond
was he the james bond of polo

Yes, that was the common joke
People said he looked like the actor at the time
I don’t really see it

hold please
checking something
yeah ok the people were right
your dad was a total babe

Is it too late to block your number?

May

Bea Fox
May 4 at 9:40AM

This your boy?
[Screenshot from a tabloid, showing a photo of Alex in a seersucker suit and a tie covered in yellow roses, standing next to a brunette woman wearing a floral cocktail dress and a large hat. The caption reads: Romance among the roses? Country star Amber Forrester attends the Kentucky Derby with 5-time All-Around national rodeo champion Alex Claremont-Diaz. The two have been rumored to be romantically linked in the past, but the relationship has never been officially confirmed.]

He’s not ‘my boy’
But yes
I hadn’t realised he was attending this

I thought you said he wasn’t seeing anyone

If he is, he hasn’t said anything to me about it

:/

It’s fine, Bea
We’re just friends
He can see whoever he likes

Pez Okonjo
May 4 at 9:52AM

How early is too early to start drinking?

You must know my answer is there’s no such thing as too early
Mimosas exist for a reason
But you also must know that I will inquire the reason for this dramatic departure from routine
Don’t you have polo practice today?

[screenshot]

Right, sod the practice
On my way over with a bottle of the good brandy

 

Alex (not your first rodeo 🤠)
May 5 at 12:52AM

How was the Kentucky Derby?

fine
i’d complain about all this fuss for 2 minutes
but my rides only last 8 seconds
so i can’t really talk

That must be a shame for Amber

????
idk i think she had a good time
she loves this shit
anything for a big fucking hat

How long have you two been together

i mean we’re not
together
like that
well we did sleep together once
but it’s been like 8 years
she’s just a friend
sometimes she calls me up when she needs a date to an event
especially if she wants to fuck with the tabloids

Oh

wait what’s this all about

Nothing

hold on
you saw a photo or something
thought i was dating amber
and now you’re texting me at like 1am your time

May 5 at 1:10AM

henry
henry
henryyyyy
i’m not seeing anyone jsyk
june says i’m married to my horses
she’s probably not wrong

Is it possible that we can forget this conversation happened

sure

Alex (not your first rodeo 🤠)
May 15 at 9:21PM

so bad news
my schedule won’t really be as open as usual this summer
since it’s liam’s last year we decided to hit a bunch more rodeos on the wilderness and mountain states circuits
and probably some others

Makes sense
I take it that means a trip to the UK is unlikely

probably not 😔
gonna see what i can do

It’s alright, I understand
I’ll be cheering you on to your next championship from across the pond

honestly that means a lot
maybe you should send me a token

Pardon?

you know
in medieval times
how the ladies would give a knight their token for luck
before the joust

Right
Does that make me the lady in this scenario?

you’re the fancypants noble in this scenario

You do realise that most knights were also nobility, correct?

i feel like you’re missing the point
intentionally
it’s about the good luck charm

Fine
What kind of token were you imagining?

idk like a handkerchief or something
you probably have something posh and monogrammed lying around don’t you

What is it you Americans say?
I plead the fifth
But I suppose I could see what I can turn up

May 22 at 3:15PM

do you have any idea how hard it is to watch your matches
there is zero coverage for most of them
even in the uk
and that’s not even taking into account the time difference

I’m not surprised
I don’t think many people follow polo like they do other sports
It’s more about the event of attending the match

yeah well that sucks for me

You could always visit and attend one
Oh wait

ouch
i guess i deserved that

Our trainer usually has someone film the matches
I could see if they’re willing to share the footage
There wouldn’t be a commentator though

seriously?
yes if it’s not too much trouble
i’ll just pretend i know what’s going on

So no different than usual then

…
ok i get it you’re still upset about the visit

I don’t know what gave you that idea

May 29 at 8:37PM

[photo of a silk handkerchief in sky blue with an ornate monogrammed ‘HGEJFM’ embroidered in one corner]
are you fucking kidding me with this

Is that not what you asked for?

ok but i was half joking
please tell me you didn’t have this done just for me

Sadly, no
My grandmother gifted me and my siblings a box of these for our tenth birthdays
I don’t use them and frankly forgot they existed until you said something

TENTH??
jesus christ
but also
wtf are all those letters

Ah
Well, that’s my entire name

you’re fucking shitting me

I’m afraid not

are you gonna tell me or do i have to guess each one
henry
gerhardt
edwin
joseph
fox
mystery?????

You got close on one to be honest
Henry George Edward James Fox-Mountchristen
Technically Mountchristen is not part of my legal name
But my gran very much refuses to acknowledge that

wow
i’m speechless

That’s a first
You’re not going to actually carry it, are you?

you bet your boots i will
gonna tie it around my wrist
hope you don’t want it back
gonna be kinda gross by the end of the season

No, no
It’s yours

PRCA ProRodeo @PRCA_ProRodeo
Congratulations to Alex Claremont-Diaz for taking the saddle bronc title at Rodeo Celina this weekend! #WeAreProRodeo
[Photo of Alex mid-ride as the brown bronco under him bucks. On his raised arm, a bit of sky blue fabric peeks out from under the cuff of his black shirt.]

June

[Instagram post featuring a portrait photo of Alex reclining backwards in a white tank top, a black cowboy hat, and a diamond pendant draped over his collarbones]
onlynaturaldiamonds: A beacon of light in the vast desert, @rodeoalex shines bright in natural diamonds. Get to know the Diamond Cowboy and his personal connection to natural diamonds at the link in bio.
| roopdeo: I FELL TO MY KNEES HELLOOOO
| chiknnbiscuits: How can one man be so pretty??
| luvrodeo99: Alex is a the perfect ambassador for your brand, he’s a real class act.
| rodeoyolo: please I need to be that horse
| alexslittlepony: Daddy? Sorry. Daddy? Sorry. Daddy?
| rodeonationrise: COLLARBONES. FUCK.
| foxhound: i know somewhere henry fox is absolutely losing it

Pez Okonjo
June 11 at 3:03PM

So

I don’t want to talk about it

Because you’re too busy having a wank?

Piss off, Pez

I’m going to take that as a yes
Christ, they certainly oiled him up, didn’t they?
How on earth did you resist jumping his bones in Texas

I have no bloody clue
Is it terrible narcissistic to say I think he did this purely to torture me?

Not if you’re right
Which I strongly suspect is the case
Did you see the video?

Did I see the video, he asks
How am I meant to live like this?

Well
You could always call him up and let him know exactly how inspired you are
Better yet
FaceTime

Absolutely not

Come on old chap, what’s the worst that could happen?

We’re not there yet

Christ, Haz, I’ve seen treacle in winter move faster

I don’t care
This means too much to me to muck up by rushing it

Alex (not your first rodeo 🤠)
June 11 at 3:32PM

I can’t believe you
After all the grief you gave me about Cartier
You’re out there dripping in diamonds

so you saw the campaign

Saw it?
I can’t escape it
Like the plague

don’t be jealous baby
just because the people love me

I can assure you that was not my primary grievance

??
seriously tho
it’s not like
too corny
right?
they kept on giving me these directions
“stare moodily at the horizon”
and i am no actor
i keep worrying i come off as a tool

You most certainly do not
Everything about that shoot is breathtaking
Including you

oh
sweet

Guards Polo Club @guardspoloclub
We have our two @Cartier Queen’s Cup Finalists 🏆 Great Oaks and Talandracas. Watch the action via Guards TV or we still have a few grandstand tickets left on our website

Guards Polo Club @guardspoloclub
‘Wentworth’ and ‘Kumquat’ the two @Cartier Best Playing ponies from the Semi-Finals of the Queen’s Cup 🐎🏆

Guards Polo Club @guardspoloclub
Congratulations to our 2025 @Cartier Queen’s Cup champions Great Oaks 🏆 The team were presented with the trophy by His Majesty The King on Smith’s Lawn.

Alex (not your first rodeo 🤠)
June 16 at 4:50PM

[screenshot]
did you meet the fucking king???

Well, yes
Since I am indeed in that photo with His Majesty
It wasn’t the first time
Honestly it’s not that exciting
He’s kind of a knob

still
i’ve never met any royalty

Actually

HENRY
you are not about to tell me that you’re secretly royalty

Only distantly
Though you wouldn’t know it to hear my gran talk about it

brb changing your name in my phone to ‘the prince of polo’

I’m regretting all of my life choices

we don’t get royalty at the rodeo
unless you count the corn queen

I suspect she is far more interesting than ours

July

Alex (not your first rodeo 🤠)
July 2 at 2:03PM

[photo of Jasper sticking his nose in the camera]
someone’s making his rodeo debut this weekend
just a small one so if he dumps me on my ass no one will know

I’m assuming there’s unlikely to be a stream of your events then

definitely not

Too bad, I’d have liked to see him put you on your arse

god you’re such a dick

I seem to recall you hoping that he’d throw me on a cactus

but he DIDN’T

Because he’s never done anything wrong in his life
Unlike some people I know

😒

Sending Jasper a good luck kiss

only jasper?

No
Josie can have one too

oh i see how it is

July 5 at 4:50AM

[photo of a team roping first prize belt buckle]

July 5 at 6:19AM

Congratulations on your win, love
That was for Jasper, by the way

i don’t know why i talk to you

[Instagram post featuring a selfie of Alex throwing a peace sign with a row of four horses in his trailer. In the background, a thin man with dirty blond hair stands petting one of the horses on the nose, oblivious to the camera.]
rodeoalex: with the texas circuit on break until the fall, @liamthecowboy and i are hitting the road with josie, biscuit, badger, and charlie. catch us in co/ut/wy/mt/id this summer!

PRCA ProRodeo @PRCA_ProRodeo
It’s the “Daddy of ‘Em All”: Cheyenne Frontier Days is here and coming to you live on the @WranglerNetwork! Watch @CheFrontierDays on http://WranglerNetwork.com at 12:15pm (MT).

Alex (not your first rodeo 🤠)
July 27 at 2:41AM

That run was incredible

still on a crazy high tbh
sorry but wtf are you doing awake
don’t you have a big tournament match tomorrow
today for you i guess

Couldn’t sleep
So I’m watching the livestream of the rodeo instead

everything ok?

It’ll be fine

henry
you know you don’t have to be fine right
not with me

Yesterday was a bad day
I suppose it's still ongoing
Nothing in particular set it off
I just woke up and knew it would be a rough one
Unfortunately, when they hit during tournament season it compounds the effects
I played like rubbish
My teammates at least picked up the slack and kept us in
But now I feel like shit for letting them down and not doing my job

do your teammates know about the bad days

Yes
To be clear they’re not making me feel bad
I’m doing that all by myself

ok here’s what we’re going to do
have you showered today

…No

ok please go have a long hot shower for me
then make yourself a cup of herbal tea
and call me
or call me before you make the tea idc
and i will talk to you about the rodeo while i take care of biscuit
and you can just listen and maybe fall asleep
ok?

You don’t have another ride coming up?

not tonight
i’m all yours sweetheart

Alright
I can do that
Thank you, Alex

anytime
and i seriously mean that

PRCA ProRodeo @PRCA_ProRodeo
Alex Claremont-Diaz and Liam Davis broke the 16-year-old team roping record by two-tenths of a second with a 3.1 second run at @CheFrontierDays
See what they had to say about their run ➤ [link]

Cheyenne Frontier Days @CheFrontierDays
There was no shortage of memorable bronc rides at Frontier Days this year, which was your favorite?
| cee 🐴 met biscuit!! @acdsthighs: no one does it like acd

roop @roopdeo
Has anyone else noticed the blue cloth band ACD is wearing on his left wrist? Does anyone know what it means?
[quote retweet of @PRCA_ProRodeo post]
| cee 🐴 met biscuit!! @acdsthighs: no clue but he’s been wearing it every competition since celina
| sierra @rodeyolo: google says light blue is prostate cancer awareness?
| roop @roopdeo: he’s never spoken about that before tho
| cricket @rodeonationrise: @acdsthighs next time you see him you gotta ask

August

Alex (not your first rodeo 🤠)
Aug 7 at 1:24PM

fuck i’m exhausted

Where are you off to this weekend?

logan, utah
then 5 days before idaho
but i’m considering flying to oregon to do saddle in between

Please don’t take this the wrong way
But I don’t think that’s a good idea
You need a break, love

you sound like liam
or june

Then I’m in good company
We care about you and want you to take care of yourself
I happen to know that you’re well ahead in the earnings race for All-Around Cowboy

i guess that’s true
i could break a record this year though

Or you could get injured because your body needs rest
And take yourself out of the running entirely

fine
i’ll consider it
i couldn’t watch your match today
can i call you and you give me a play by play
don’t laugh but it’s really soothing

I’d be happy to

June Claremont-Diaz
Aug 8 at 4:46PM

How on earth did you convince him not to do Oregon?

I didn’t really do that much convincing
I just suggested he could use a break and he needed to take care of himself

Huh

 

Gentleman’s Journal, August 16, 2025
From Small Acorns: Meet the Players Behind Great Oaks’ Spectacular Season [excerpt]

… Like many polo teams, they draw from a range of backgrounds and experiences, but Great Oaks is pushing boundaries in that regard. The team is led by the young polo phenom, Poroto Cambiaso—son of an Argentinian polo legend and widely regarded as one of the best polo players in the world. But he brushes off that pedigree, instead giving due credit to his teammates. To be fair, they deserve it. Shaan Srivastava is a polo legend in his own right, with a stunning number of cups to his name over a sterling twenty-two year career. Charlie Dufour, the Frenchman, is a newcomer on the UK polo circuit, but has been the solid rear guard that the team depends on. But the season’s star is unquestionably Henry Fox, the English polo legacy who currently sits at the top of the leaderboard for goals scored, and has saved more than one game for the team.

“I think our strength is in our diversity,” says Fox. “In some ways, polo has become more cliquish and compartmentalised in recent years. There were always rivalries, of course, but now they seem more entrenched. Poroto built a team that reaches across those lines, and the results speak for themselves.”

“But we keep the traditional England-Argentina rivalry going within the team,” Cambiaso says with a wink, clapping Fox on the shoulder. Currently, he trails Fox by only two goals in the standings—an arrangement he’d like to change during the upcoming tournament.

Those rivalries may be intact, but they haven’t dampened polo’s notorious party atmosphere. “There’s a good social scene,” says Srivastava, citing the Sotogrande in Spain as the pinnacle of the season in this regard. “But you’d have to ask the younger guys about that. It’s been quite a few years since I was out there.”

“There are polo girls who follow the scene around, yes,” laughs Dufour. “But it is not always easy to catch their eye with Poroto and Fox around.” 

That’s Dufour being modest. The team has drawn attention on social media for reasons beyond their incredible playing; some industry insiders have cited their raw sex appeal for bringing an increased interest in the sport among younger audiences. Those fires were stoked earlier this year, when an Ariat campaign co-starring Fox went viral…

Alex (not your first rodeo 🤠)
Aug 16 at 8:49PM

[screenshot of article text]
didn’t you say that tournament in spain was coming up soon

Next week in fact
Why, are you worried about the polo girls?

sounds harrowing
they might eat you alive

You must know they’re not a concern for me

polo boys then
c’mon fox
you trying to tell me you never hooked up with a polo groupie

I have in the past
What about you?
I seem to recall no shortage of interested young ladies at the rodeo

sure i have
it’s been a while tho
there are guys too
but that’s a dicier proposition
or so i’ve been told
liam used to hook up with them before he met spence
i only recently figured out i’m bisexual so

Is it weird to say congratulations?

no :)
it’s like i know myself better now
and that feels good

I’m really happy to hear that, Alex

so you gonna find yourself a polo boy next week

I hadn’t been planning on it, no

good
i mean
not that you shouldn’t
get that hot spanish ass
if that’s what you want

To be honest with you I’m not really interested in that sort of thing at the moment
It’s an unnecessary distraction

oh
yeah same here

Aug 23 at 5:31AM

hey h
you awake?
wait fuck you’re in the middle of a tournament

It’s ok
I was already awake anyway
And unlikely to get back to sleep

sorry i just
needed someone to talk to

Well I’m here
Is everything ok?

not really
i had a bad interaction with a fan at the rodeo today
some asshole wearing a maga shirt
i mean there are so many of them at rodeos anyway
i usually try to tune them out
because otherwise i’d go crazy
but this guy was loudly talking shit about this other dude wearing a shirt that said ‘rodeo is for everyone’ with like pride rainbow colors
which is like
that motherfucker is braver than all the bull riders and rodeo clowns there
but that’s beside the point
anyway maga dude wanted his hat signed
and i said no
i told him that rodeo IS for everyone and if he didn’t want people like that around then he needed to find someone else to be a fan of
and he got mad and said he wasn’t talking about me
and i said yes he was
which
is the closest i’ve come to coming out publicly
and it was terrifying but i wasn’t gonna back down
took me fucking forever to stop shaking afterward
liam had to talk me off a ledge

Christ, Alex
I’m so sorry that happened
I wish I could give you a hug

yeah i wish you could too
it’s so fucking hard
i love rodeo
but rodeo doesn’t love me
at least it doesn’t love people like me
i spend so much time around people who’d want to deport my grandparents and make it illegal to love who i want to love
some days it makes me want to fight to change things for the better
but most days it just feels fucking hopeless
sorry i didn’t mean to dump all of this on you

I meant what I said
I’m here for you
I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for you
But I’m listening

thank you
it means a lot

September

Alex (not your first rodeo 🤠)
Sept 2 at 1:38PM

so i got this today
[screenshot of an email invitation to a charity polo match in Windsor, CT]
i assume you had something to do with it

Sorry it’s a bit last minute
The club there is hosting an annual charity match and they asked if we had any suggestions for players
Unless I’m mistaken, I don’t think you have a rodeo this weekend?

you do know i don’t know how to play polo right
i mean
i’ve watched a lot of your matches
but i’m not stupid enough to think that’s the same thing

That’s kind of the point of this match
They invite top equestrians from other areas and pair them with pro polo players
There are always quite a few Olympians and eventers
Once we had a man who did riding stunts in Hollywood
I don’t think they’ve ever had someone who does rodeo

hmm
intriguing

It’s alright if you don’t think you can handle it

excuse me???

Well, you seemed to believe my type of riding wasn’t ‘real’
I thought you could put your money where your mouth is
Unless you’ve changed your mind and think polo is too difficult for you

fuck all the way off
i’ll ride the shit out of a polo game
you’re on fox
see you in connecticut

Chapter Text

Henry shouldn’t be nervous.

They’ve been talking nearly nonstop for the past five months—the long text conversations becoming more frequently interspersed with phone calls and even FaceTime sessions—to say nothing of the months before Henry’s visit to Texas. Alex is unquestionably one of his closest friends at this point. He knows Henry, far better than most of Henry’s own family.

He doesn’t know everything, though. Doesn’t know the depth that Henry’s feelings have carved out inside of him, the way he’s fallen so utterly, hopelessly hard that he’s not sure how he’ll ever come back from this. Doesn’t know that Henry’s been counting down the days until their reunion Connecticut as much with dread as with breathless excitement.

They have one day, and one night. Not even twenty-four hours, in sum. It’s all either of them could spare. Tomorrow they both fly back to their respective corners of the globe, and Henry’s not sure how he’s going to make himself walk away this time.

Henry’s been here for a day already, adjusting to the time difference and getting to know the polo ponies he’ll be riding during the match. It’s always a little strange working with borrowed horses, ones that don’t know every minute twitch of his leg, but Henry’s good at communicating with them. He also looks over the horses Alex will ride as well—all steady, reliable mounts. It wouldn’t do to have one of the guests unhorsed during the game. The thought of telling Alex that—imagining the cocky indignation it would elicit—brings a smile to his face.

Because Henry’s at the stables all morning, he doesn’t see Alex at the airport, or at the hotel where they’re being put up, or even when Alex first arrives on the polo grounds and gets a tour that he probably doesn’t care about from the well-meaning club owner. No, the first time he sees Alex in five months is when he comes rushing too eagerly out of the tack room, having heard that achingly familiar tenor echoing through the barn aisles, and finds Alex casually wearing a full polo getup like he was born in it.

Henry may have gravely miscalculated. Seeing Alex in person again was always going to be trying for his heart. But seeing Alex like this—with white breeches clinging to his thighs, tall black riding boots curving over his calves, and his biceps bulging out from the tight sleeves of his polo shirt—is cataclysmic. Especially with the smirk that Alex is wearing on top of all of the rest of it, like he knows exactly how good he looks and is ready to wield that knowledge with deadly precision.

“Ah, Henry. I was just showing Alex here around our facilities,” the club owner says. “But perhaps you like to—”

“I can get him set up here,” Henry interrupts without meaning to. Christ, he’s being rude. He doesn’t really care. He tries for an apologetic smile. “I was just getting ready to take a warm up ride, myself.”

Thankfully, the club owner seems oblivious to how Henry and Alex are staring at each other like he doesn’t exist. From the corner of his eye, Henry sees the owner smile broadly. “Splendid. We’re all very much looking forward to today’s match.”

“Mm,” Henry agrees.

“Thanks again so much for having me,” Alex says as he shakes the man’s hand, all southern charm and the syrupy drawl that he only pulls out when he’s ingratiating himself, proving once again that he’s far better at this kind of hobnobbing than Henry is.

The club owner probably says something before he leaves. Henry doesn’t hear it. He’s too busy staring at the glimpse of Alex’s collarbones through the unbuttoned collar of his shirt.

“This place is really… something,” Alex says wryly when the last of the owner’s footsteps have faded away.

Henry cocks an eyebrow at him. “Having seen some of those ranches in Texas, I don’t think you have any room to talk about ostentatious displays of wealth, love.”

Alex grins broadly, crossing the space between them and pulling Henry into a hug. “Fuck, I missed you,” he mutters into Henry’s shoulder.

For a moment, Henry allows himself to sink into Alex’s arms, to drink in the smell and the warmth of him and the way they seem to fit perfectly together. Only for a moment, though. Then he makes himself step back, carefully restoring a respectable amount of space between them as he looks Alex up and down.

“Where on earth did you get these things?” Henry asks, gesturing to Alex’s clothes. He’s not sure what he expected Alex to ride in today, frankly. Perhaps his jeans and cowboy boots—most of the other guest riders wear their regular gear along with the team-issued polo shirt provided by the club.

“You like ‘em?” Alex says with a shit-eating grin as he—lord help Henry—turns sideways to show off the breeches and boots. Just the side profile of his arse is ruinous. “I got Ariat to send me a pair of boots. Told them I’d post about it on Instagram. Dunno when else I’ll ever wear them, but maybe I’ll go as a jockey for Halloween this year.”

“You’re short enough for it,” Henry returns automatically.

“Hey,” Alex chokes out on a laugh and socks him in the shoulder. “I take it back, I didn’t miss you.”

“You did, though.”

“Unfortunately. But you missed me too,” Alex says over his shoulder as he starts walking past Henry deeper into the barn. “Don’t try to deny it.”

Henry watches him go for a beat, letting himself appreciate that criminally perfect arse, then shakes his head and mutters, “Wouldn’t dream of it, love,” before he follows.

They have a couple of hours before the match is due to start, during which time Henry needs to teach Alex everything he doesn’t already know about playing polo. Which, as it turns out, is less than he expected. Henry knew Alex watched his matches regularly, but there’s casual watching, and then there’s knowing the details of the line-of-ball and right-of-way rules.

“You already know this, don’t you?” Henry asks, interrupting himself as he’s explaining about field positions. Alex has been listening politely, but the expression on his face quite clearly says none of this is new to him.

Alex scratches behind his neck and bites down on a sheepish smile. “I mean, yeah. I did my homework, H. You of all people should know how competitive I am. But I don’t mind,” he adds as he looks through his eyelashes at Henry. “I like listening to you talk.”

Christ almighty. Henry takes a deep breath, fighting for some shred of composure, and shakes his head. “Let’s just get on the horses, shall we?”

The barns at this club are sprawling, and they wander past stall after stall of polo ponies waiting to be tacked up for the match. Grooms bustle about, largely ignoring the two men as they go over the extensive plans for the day. Polo matches operate a little like car racing, in a way, with a dedicated crew necessary to coordinate all of the horses and riders involved. 

“You’ll ride three different horses over the course of the match—each for two seven-minute chukkas, trading off at the breaks,” Henry explains as they stop in front of one of the stalls. Behind the bars, a bay mare named Arwen snorts softly at their presence.

Alex lets out a low whistle. “Three horses per player, four players per team… that’s a lot of horses.”

“In a professional game, it can be as many as six per player. Gameplay gets intense, and we don’t want to fatigue them too much.”

“You know, I discovered there’s something called ‘cowboy polo’ that they play in Montana. They use one horse for the whole match.”

“You’ll have to excuse me for sounding snobbish, but I doubt they play like we do,” Henry says wryly.

Alex lets out a soft huff of laughter, shaking his head. “No, I don’t think they do.”

Their first mounts have already been tacked up for them—something that Alex has plenty to say about—so they head to a small dirt riding ring next to the barns to warm up and get Alex used to wielding a polo mallet while riding. Honestly, it’s a good thing he doesn’t have to teach Alex much, because Alex on horseback is terribly distracting in the worst way. If Henry thought he might gain some ammunition to get back at Alex for making fun of his western riding, he’s sorely mistaken—Alex is a natural at this, entirely at ease in the English saddle. Many of their guest riders in the past struggled with having to control the reins with only one hand, leaving the other free for the mallet, but Alex’s roping experience dovetails perfectly with this skill, as does his ability to guide his horse’s movements with small shifts of his legs and thighs. It’s almost infuriating how good he is at this, or would be if Henry wasn’t so incredibly turned on by such a display of competence.

For today’s match, each team of four players includes two professional polo players and two guests—Henry’s teamed up with a chap from a US polo team called Brookshire, Alex, and a tall woman with a bright smile who’s an Olympic medalist in dressage. It becomes clear early on that the American polo player, Collins, fancies himself the strategist, which is fine by Henry. Collins assigns the Olympian to position four, the rear guard, and proposes Henry take position one, the main offensive scorer, leaving Alex as the attacker support in position two. It makes sense on paper, giving the less experienced players a more supporting role, but something tells Henry that’s not the right arrangement.

“I think Alex should take position one,” Henry says. “It’ll be simpler to have him focus on just getting the ball through the goal posts. I’ll make sure everyone stays out of his way.”

“You calling me dumb, Fox?” Alex drawls with a grin that the other two players clearly don’t quite know how to interpret.

“No. I think the other team will underestimate you, because they’ve got no bloody clue how incredible you are, and position one is the best place to take advantage of that.”

Alex’s smile falters a little, and he swallows. “Oh.”

“Sounds like a good strategy to me,” Collins puts in cheerfully. 

Henry drags his gaze back to Collins, and pretends he can’t feel Alex’s eyes boring into him. “Right, then. Shall we?”

This is the fourth year that Henry has taken part in this charity polo match, and he always enjoys it. The play is sloppy and a bit silly, but always good fun. This year’s match is not exactly that. Oh, it’s largely the same, but once the first chukka starts, Alex’s laser-focused intensity shifts the mood of the game. That’s further helped by one of the guests on the opposing team—a hockey star who apparently grew up on a horse farm in upstate New York, who hits the ball with such force that they lose it entirely more than once. It turns into a breathless match, more hard-fought than Henry expected. Alex, for his part, seems to thrive under these conditions, and Henry catches him grinning ear to ear more than once.

“You seem to be enjoying yourself,” Henry comments at half time, as they stand by the sidelines and watch the spectators all tromp out onto the field to stomp divots of grass raised by the horses’ hooves—a time-honoured polo tradition around the world.

Alex has pulled his helmet off and is shaking out his curls, sweaty and flushed and so impossibly gorgeous that it’s all Henry can do not to pounce on him. “It’s not bad,” he answers, smirking. “Seems pretty easy to me, actually.”

Henry can’t help the scoff that escapes him. “That’s because I’ve been working double time, riding down defenders and setting up all your shots, you arse.”

“Like I said,” Alex shrugs as his grin widens. “Easy peasy.”

The second half starts out much like the first, and the first seven-minute chukka passes without much fanfare. Henry’s rapidly losing steam, though. The game is taking more effort than he expected, and that in combination with the jet lag means his own play is getting sloppy. Normally, it wouldn’t matter much. Normally, there’s not an enormous hulk of a man on the opposing team hitting the ball like he’s taking slap shots. In the aftermath, Henry will come to realise there was nothing he could do, but in the moment, it feels like the game he’s been fighting so hard to control gets yanked out of his hands.

He’s just wrested control of the ball from the other team and sent it over to Alex, who’s now riding hard down the expansive field toward the opponent’s goal. It should be an easy score, because the opposing team is scattered, leaving their end exposed, and none of them are in the right position to legally take the ball from him. Except, there’s another player approaching him anyway, from the wrong angle, because he’s a hockey player and doesn’t understand the concept of right-of-way, and before the umpire can call a foul the man is clipping the ball away from practically underneath the horse’s hooves.

As the umpire whistles, the hockey player’s mallet connects with the ball and sends it flying high into the air—and directly at Alex. There’s a split second of silence and then a sickening crunch as the ball hits Alex in the face, sending fragments of plastic from his shattered sunglasses flying across the field.

Henry isn’t sure entirely how he gets from mounted on his own horse to Alex’s side, only that he’s there before anyone else. He grabs at Alex’s knee and helps him slide off his horse, catching him as he stumbles when his feet hit the ground. Bright red blood paints Alex’s white glove where he’s got it pressed over his left eye, enough of it that it’s oozing out between his fingers and soaking the back of his hand, and Henry entirely forgets how to breathe.

“Oh, Christ, no, you’ve been hurt, and that’s— that’s a lot of blood,” he babbles as he clings to Alex’s arms in an attempt to hold him steady—though whether he’s holding Alex up or keeping himself from keeling over, he’s not entirely sure.

“I’m fine, H, I’m fine,” Alex insists, one brown eye looking beseechingly into Henry’s. “Looks worse than it is, promise.”

Henry’s seen plenty of polo injuries—has had his fair share over the years—and deep down, he knows that it’s a good sign that Alex is still standing under his own power, that he’s talking lucidly, but that doesn’t stop the panic from bubbling over in his chest. His thoughts have been reduced to a rapid repetition of Alex, blood, and no, so he doesn’t manage to say anything else before the medic is pushing him out of the way and starts asking questions of Alex.

“Can you walk off the field?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Alex says. “Look, I’m pretty sure it’s just a cut—”

“That may be the case, but we’re gonna take you back for a concussion protocol,” the medic tells him.

He grabs Alex by the elbow and turns his back on Henry, directing Alex to the sidelines, and Henry is already following them when Collins rides up next to him with Henry’s horse in tow. “C’mon. We’ll get an alternate to take his place for the last chukka.”

Henry stares at him for a beat, momentarily unable to comprehend simply going back to play, before he realises that’s exactly what everyone’s expecting him to do. Your teammate gets injured, you go on. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, and he’s never had a problem returning to a match before.

It’s never been Alex.

The last chukka is the longest seven minutes of Henry’s life. He plays on autopilot, so it’s a damned good thing that Alex’s injury has left everyone so rattled that the play turns slow and careful. Collins does an admirable job of rallying their fractured team, laying out strategies that Henry can follow without thinking. If he notices Henry’s distraction, he’s kind enough not to say anything.

When the time finally ticks down, Henry’s off his horse in a flash, leaving him with a club groom before practically sprinting away. The paramedics had set up a tent near the field, and it’s there he finds Alex sprawled in a folding chair with his head tipped back against one of the tent poles. There’s an ice pack resting on his left eye, and his other flutters open when Henry comes bursting through the tent flaps. The weak, rueful smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth makes Henry’s heart stutter in his chest.

“Hey, H.”

Ignoring the other folding chairs in the tent, Henry hurries over to him and kneels at Alex’s feet, tucking himself between his spread knees. He puts his hands on the tops of Alex’s thighs, just above the upper lip of the polo knee pads. Splotches of blood stain the white breeches on his left leg, and Henry only barely manages to tear his eyes away from them when Alex shifts, pushing himself into a more upright position and bringing them closer together.

“How are you?” Henry asks, nearly in a murmur.

“I’m fine. Just a few stitches, and I’m gonna have a wicked shiner,” Alex tells him wryly.

He pulls the ice pack away from his eye. Dark purple blood is already pooling in a semicircle under his lower lid, and a bandage arcs across his brow line, but it’s not as bad as Henry feared. He lets out a shaky breath. Without really planning to, he reaches up and cups Alex’s jaw with one hand, letting his thumb ghost across his cheekbone, just under the bruised skin.

“I’ve had way worse coming off a bronc,” Alex tells him. “This one time, I landed on the fence, and you shoulda seen—” He breaks off, frowning at whatever too-revealing expression Henry can’t keep off face. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“I was terrified,” Henry admits. He sucks in another deep breath that catches in his chest. “I thought— Christ, I thought I’d ruined everything.”

“It wasn’t your fault, H.”

“But I’m the one who invited you,” Henry insists. “Who goaded you into coming. And what if it had been worse? What if I’d singlehandedly ruined the rest of your rodeo season?”

Alex covers Henry’s hand with his. His skin is cold and clammy from holding the ice pack. “Sweetheart,” he murmurs, “none of this is on you, I promise. Wild horses couldn’t have kept me away from this match.”

A tremulous smile twitches on Henry’s lips, but there’s too much emotion clogging his throat, a sticky mess of relief and guilt. “But—” he chokes out.

“Shh,” Alex hushes him. He leans in, until their foreheads meet. “It’s ok, Henry. I’m fine. And you’re not allowed to beat yourself up over this, ok?” Henry manages a small nod, and feels Alex’s cheek bunch into a smile under his palm. “Good.”

Alex shifts again, and then, so light Henry almost thinks he imagined it, his lips brush Henry’s.

There’s something almost casual and thoughtless about it, like this is something they do all the time. A simple gesture of comfort. But that easiness doesn’t last long. Alex freezes, his nose is mere centimetres from Henry’s, like he’s only just realised what he’s done. His hand rests on Henry’s neck, fingertips pressing against his racing pulse. Neither of them are breathing.

The second kiss is firmer, but no less brief. When Alex leans in for a third, Henry meets him eagerly, pressing up into it. On the fourth, the dam breaks. 

Alex takes Henry’s face in both hands and captures his lips in a kiss that doesn’t end, one that sucks all the air from his lungs and leaves him lightheaded and reeling. Or maybe it’s just that Alex kisses him in a way that’s somehow both desperate and unhurried, like he can’t get enough and yet is determined not to rush this. Alex pushes closer, the folding chair creaking alarmingly under him and the ice pack slumping off his thigh, and closer, until he’s sliding off the chair entirely and into Henry’s lap. Henry collapses backward onto the ground, keeping himself upright with one arm around Alex’s waist and the other propped out behind him as Alex straddles his thighs, knees folded on either side of his hips.

Somehow, they never break the kiss. Never part for more than the briefest instant, when the need for oxygen becomes too great. It’s been a year of waiting and wanting, of telling himself this was impossible, but now, here, with Alex’s tongue in his mouth and his hips grinding forward, Henry can no longer remember a single reason why he’d been so convinced that this was a bad idea.

He shifts so he can get both arms around Alex, grips his arse and drags him closer, desperate to eliminate even the barest sliver of space between them. Alex’s trapped cock pushes against his stomach, and Henry encourages him to chase the pressure, ignoring the heat building in his own groin in favour of watching raptly as Alex throws his head back with a low groan. The exposed line of his neck is far too tempting, and Henry leans in to lick and suck and nip his way down the long column of muscle, chasing the salt of Alex’s sweat on his tongue.

“Fuck, Henry,” Alex moans as Henry tugs the collar of the polo shirt out of the way and applies his mouth to Alex’s collarbone, sucking a mark that will linger into the delicate skin there. With a full-body shudder, his hips still and he pulls fractionally away. “Hold on, we can’t—”

But Henry doesn’t want to hear about can’t or shouldn’t; he’s hurtling head-first off this cliff without a parachute and, despite his words, Alex seems to be right there with him. He responds hungrily when Henry cuts him off with another kiss, sinking his teeth into Henry’s lower lip as his fingers clench in Henry’s collar.

“Need you,” Henry hears himself say, breathlessly, his voice a desperate whinge he barely recognises.

Alex grins, impossibly pleased as he kisses the pout off Henry’s lips. “And I need you too, baby, but the medic is gonna come back any minute now. So—” he punctuates this with another kiss “—we’re gonna go out there, make our excuses to the hosts, and then we’re hightailing it back to the hotel. Ok?”

That, finally, breaks through the miasma of want that’s been clouding Henry’s mind. The rush of blood in his ear fades, and over their panting breaths, the sound of people talking and horses snorting just outside the medical tent trickles into his consciousness.

“You’re being very reasonable,” Henry complains, even though he knows Alex is right. Anyone could walk in. Better they put the brakes on now, than risk being found in a more compromising position.

“I know, I hate it too,” Alex laughs. With obvious reluctance, he clambers off of Henry’s thighs, collapsing onto the ground next to him for a minute before he finally struggles to his feet.

In the end, it takes longer than Henry would like to get away. Although he isn’t technically responsible for taking care of the borrowed horses, he still helps out with rubbing down and turning out all of his mounts. He gets caught talking with some of the other players, and then the club owner, and by the time he emerges from the barn he expects Alex—who’d tried to help himself, only to be told he should rest—to be long gone.

Instead, he finds Alex sitting by a flower pot in front of the club, chatting with a middle aged woman with greying blonde hair and a pink sundress. Alex is obviously trapped, his face set in the rictus of a polite smile, though the woman clearly hasn’t noticed, so Henry strides purposefully up to his side.

“What are you still doing out here? You really ought to be resting somewhere dark,” Henry chides, the worry in his voice not difficult to sell. Without leaving space for an answer, he pulls Alex to his feet and presses his lips into a tight smile at the woman. “Apologies for whisking him away, but we really do have to be careful with head injuries.”

“Oh, of course,” she says, bringing one hand up to her chest as she gives Alex a sympathetic look. “I hope you recover quickly.”

“Thanks,” Alex replies, but Henry’s already walking him toward the waiting cars, one hand pressed to his lower back. When they’re a few steps away, he frowns at Henry. “I told you I was fine. I don’t have any concussion symptoms.”

“Yes, but she doesn’t know that, love.”

“Oh. Right.”

Henry could let go—Alex certainly doesn’t need his assistance walking across the pavement—but he doesn’t. Nor does Alex attempt to pull away. Even when they climb into the back of one of the cars provided for their transport, they sit close together on the bench seat, Alex leaning against his side as Henry rests a hand on the top of his thigh. Every point of contact between them is scorching, but they don’t move, don’t look at each other, don’t even speak. The tension winds a little tighter with every passing minute, through the duration of the short ride and the walk through the hotel lobby, until they’re standing outside of Alex’s room.

“I suppose I’ll see you in a few minutes?” Henry asks.

“Why?” Alex asks. Henry looks at him, frowning. “I mean, you could just come in now.”

“I was going to shower, seeing as I smell like sweat and horse,” Henry explains, a little wryly.

Alex smirks as he leans up against the door, letting his gaze rake down Henry’s body. “That’s not as much of a deterrent as you’d think.” Henry huffs a laugh and shakes his head, and Alex hooks a finger into his belt loops. “Besides, the showers are pretty big in this place. You should join me.”

“Is that a good idea?” Henry asks, but he lets Alex tug him closer, all but obliterating the space between them.

Alex tips his head up and brushes his nose against Henry’s. “I think it’s a fantastic idea, actually.”

Henry closes his eyes and lets out a shaky breath. “Christ, you’re a menace.”

“Your menace.”

That’s— a lot. Henry’s chest is too tight, his heart beating too erratically. He can’t let himself think about that, so he kisses Alex instead, far too hungrily for a hotel hallway.

He almost doesn’t notice Alex swiping his card in the door lock, or how he tugs Henry inside. Somehow, Alex manages to navigate them to the bathroom without pulling out of kiss for longer than a few seconds at a time, and Henry follows, unable and unwilling to break free from Alex’s inexorable orbit. In the bathroom, Alex grins against Henry’s lips as he fumbles to turn the shower on, then sets to work on Henry’s clothing while the room begins to fill with steam. Every centimetre of skin revealed means something new to touch, a sensory overload of Alex’s hands leaving fiery trails across his torso as Henry drinks in the sensation of warm, supple skin beneath his palms. There’s a sense of desperation to it, of a frantic hunger after so long holding back, and yet they’re content to leave it at that, at least at first. They’re both still only half hard and laughing giddily when Alex pushes Henry into the spray and steps in after him. He doesn’t hesitate before closing the distance between them, wrapping his arms around Henry’s waist and pressing their bodies together, staring up at him as the water sluices down around them.

“Your bandage, love,” Henry says as he brushes a damp curl back from Alex’s forehead. “Probably shouldn’t get that wet.”

“Then I guess you’ll have to help me with my hair.” Alex grins at him like he planned this part as he presses a shampoo bottle into Henry’s hands. “It’s a multi-step process.”

“Of course it is,” Henry sighs, doing his best to sound aggrieved and not like he’s just won the lottery. He doesn’t succeed. Alex’s smile is entirely too knowing.

“These curls don’t take care of themselves, baby.”

This is too much, Henry thinks as he massages shampoo carefully into Alex’s hair. It’s not a blowjob in a tack room or a quick fuck in the shower. This is Alex letting out little pleased hums at Henry’s ministrations, it’s him giving instructions and trusting Henry to follow them to the letter, it’s the act of caretaking that’s not leading immediately to a release of physical pleasure. It’s too much, and yet Henry wouldn’t trade this moment for anything.

After he finishes the last step, he presses a kiss to the clean, wet skin of Alex’s neck. “All done, love.”

Alex sighs contentedly and leans back against his chest. “I just wanna stay like this forever.” Before Henry can fully process that statement, though, he pulls away and looks over his shoulder. “You want me to do your hair?”

Henry attempts to swallow around the knot in his throat. “Think you’re too short,” he manages, a little thickly.

“Oh, fuck off,” Alex laughs, then smacks him in the chest with a washing flannel.

It goes messy and a bit silly after that, soap-slick fingers teasing into sensitive spaces in the name of ‘cleaning’ that turns into a competition of who can elicit the sharpest gasps and loudest moans. Henry also discovers where Alex is ticklish, unable to hold back his own laughter when Alex squeals and tries to twist away from him. There’s nowhere to go in the shower, though, and Henry catches him again, drawing Alex’s back firmly against his front. The position pushes Henry’s now fully hard cock just under the curve of Alex’s arse, and Alex surprises him by moaning and shoving back against the pressure. Experimentally, Henry rocks his hips forward, rubbing the head of his cock between Alex’s thighs, and is rewarded by another moan and Alex tightening his on Henry’s arm where it’s wrapped around his waist.

“Fuck, yes,” Alex groans at the slow drag of Henry’s cock along his taint, tipping his head back against Henry’s shoulder. He’s an absolute vision like this—thick eyelashes fanned over his cheekbones, pink lips parted, and his chest rising and falling rapidly as he pants. Henry slides a hand up from his taut abdomen to card through the wet curls of hair covering his chest, until his fingers find a pebbled nipple, and Alex shudders.

“You like that?” Henry murmurs in his ear. Still slowly rocking his hips forward, he scrapes his teeth along the sharp angle of Alex’s jaw and nuzzles as the column of muscle just behind it, revelling in the sandpaper scratch of Alex’s stubble against his lips.

Alex nods, almost frantically. “Feels so good. Don’t stop.”

Dropping his other hand to the side of Alex’s thigh, Henry gives him a light pat and murmurs, “Closer together, love.” Alex complies immediately, the muscles of his thighs clenching as he presses them tight, and Henry groans at the increase in pressure around his cock. “Christ, I’ve been dreaming about these thighs.”

“Yeah?” Alex breathes, a smirk tugging onto his lips. His eyelashes flutter and he looks out of the corner of his eyes at Henry. “How long?”

“Since the photoshoot,” Henry admits. He picks up a rhythm, driving his cock between Alex’s thighs, chasing the press of the head against the back of Alex’s balls, the friction of Alex’s body hair that’s only partly mitigated by the slickness of the soap.

“Shut the fuck up,” Alex huffs.

“You asked.”

“You wanted me then.”

It’s not a question, but Henry growls, “Yes, you demon,” anyway, and punctuates it by biting down on Alex’s earlobe.

Alex hisses and reaches back, gets a hand in Henry’s hair and yanks, twists his own head enough to capture Henry’s mouth again in a messy, disjointed kiss that nevertheless only further stokes the fire building in Henry’s gut. His thrusts pick up tempo and force, egged on by the little punched out sounds of pleasure Alex keeps making every time he bottoms out, like it’s not only his thighs that are being fucked. One of Henry’s hands is splayed over Alex’s lower abdomen, and he slides it down, following the trail of hair from his navel to where Alex’s cock is bobbing, still untouched, and leaking a fresh bead of precome with nearly every thrust. It’s gorgeous, and Henry wants it inside him desperately, but for now he’ll settle for feeling the softness of the skin underneath his fingers, for drawing shuddering gasps out of Alex’s throat as he twists his hand around it in time with his own thrusts.

“What do you want, love?”

“More,” Alex pants into his mouth. His other hand drops to Henry’s hip and digs into the meat of his arse, urging him forward. “Just like this. Harder. C’mon, baby. Want to feel you come.”

Far be it for Henry to deny him that. He swears and grinds more firmly against Alex’s perineum, one arm wrapped tight around Alex’s waist as he chases his pleasure in the tight clench of those thighs. His other hand works Alex’s cock with embarrassingly little finesse—Henry’s too fucking out of his mind with the desperate need for relief to attempt anything fancy—but the sounds Alex is making suggest that he’s far from bothered, and it doesn’t take much longer before Henry’s orgasm crests and breaks, flooding sizzling heat through his body as a breathless laugh stutters out of his throat. He’s still coming down from the rush of it when he feels Alex tense up in his arms, cock jerking as his release splatters hot through Henry’s fingers.

Afterward, the bathroom is filled with only the patter of the shower and the sounds of their ragged breaths. Then Alex groans, “Fuck me,” so loud it seems to vibrate the tiles, as he lets his body slump back against Henry’s.

“Perhaps another time, love, but right now I’m feeling rather spent,” Henry replies.

Alex snorts like he’s trying to hold back laughter, then his shoulders twitch, then he gives in, dissolving into contagious giggles that set Henry off too. They laugh until Alex turns in his arms, pushing up on his tiptoes, and drags him into another kiss. Their matching smiles fade away into the slow, hypnotic slide of it, more addicting than any drug. Even when Alex pulls away, he doesn’t; he leaves his arms curled behind Henry’s neck, presses their foreheads together, shifts his head just enough so that their noses brush.

“Hey,” Alex murmurs into the narrow space between them, “stay here tonight?”

On one hand, it’s a terrible idea. Henry shouldn’t let himself get used to this—spending the night, curling up together, holding Alex in his arms—because it’ll only make giving it up more difficult. It will only hurt more when he has to walk away and back to a life that wasn’t built for relationships. When he has to let Alex go tomorrow, or a month from now, or a year, because this was never meant to last.

On the other hand, he was never going to say no.

The room is dark when Henry wakes, but there’s a sliver of light peeking through the gap between the blackout curtains and the clock on the bedside table reads 9:28AM.

He slept through the night.

He honestly hadn’t expected to. It seemed inevitable that the potential ramifications of the previous evening would keep him up, to have him staring up at the ceiling, wondering what comes next.

Instead, they’d ordered room service and gorged themselves on greasy burgers and fries while they watched American cooking shows—far more stressful than Bake Off, but still suitably mindless—on the hotel telly, then curled together beneath the covers, Alex warm and solid pressed against his side. Alex had gone out like a light, and Henry had drifted off soon afterward, exhausted after everything that had transpired that day. 

Still, a full night’s sleep, under the circumstances? Inconceivable.

They’d rolled apart in the night, but now, before Henry can even turn over in search of him, Alex rolls over and latches onto Henry’s back like a limpet, one arm tucking around Henry’s waist and tugging their bodies together. The move also presses Alex’s morning wood against Henry’s bum, and Henry feels his own cock stir at the thought of what they might get up to. They have a couple of hours before either of them have to depart. Would it be an arsehole move to disturb Alex’s sleep to make the most of it?

As he’s considering this question, Alex shifts again. His arm tightens around Henry’s waist, face nuzzling against the back of Henry’s neck. And then—the slow drag of his cock against Henry’s arse as Alex’s hips rock tentatively forward.

“You’re incorrigible,” Henry rumbles quietly, and feels Alex smile against his skin. He presses a kiss to the back of Henry’s neck and moves with more intention.

“Could practically hear you thinking about it.”

Henry lets out a quiet scoff. “Liar.”

“Well, I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” Alex mumbles into Henry’s shoulder. His hand slips slowly over Henry’s stomach, trailing downward to tease Henry’s now extremely interested cock. “I mean, not necessarily this,” he amends, even as his own presses between Henry’s arse cheeks. “Could be anything you want.”

In one, fluid move, Henry rolls them over, shoving Alex onto his back and straddling his stomach as he captures Alex’s wrists in both hands and presses them to the pillows on either side of his head. Alex yelps at the sudden change in position, but he doesn’t put up any resistance, and when Henry leans close, his eyes are dark and smouldering in the low light.

“Anything I want?” Henry murmurs, leaning in to brush his lips against Alex’s ear.

Alex swallows with an audible click, then croaks, “Anything.”

Henry pulls back enough to stare down into his eyes again. “What I want… is for you to fuck me. And I was thinking”—he shifts his hips back, until Alex’s cock presses into the cleft of his arse again—“I could ride you.”

Alex’s teeth glint as a sharp grin steals onto his face. “Isn’t that a bit cliched, sweetheart? Ride a cowboy?”

“Well, if you don’t want to—”

Alex yanks his hands out of Henry’s loose grip and clamps them around his hips instead, holding Henry in place before he can even start moving. “No. Fuck, I want that. But…” He sighs. “I didn’t pack condoms.”

Henry lifts an eyebrow. “A significant oversight.”

“Sorry if I wasn’t expecting to get laid on this trip,” Alex says, rolling his eyes.

“Lube?”

“Well, yeah.”

“So you were expecting to have a wank, then.”

Alex snorts. “After spending all day around you in that polo gear? Of course I was, baby.”

“Fucking hell,” Henry breathes, closing his eyes. Alex’s hips have been shifting minutely under him the entire time, almost unconsciously, like he can’t help it, and the faint drag of Alex’s cock against his hole is slowly driving Henry mad. “I have condoms in my room,” he says tightly. It’s just down the hall. But it still feels like an insurmountable distance. He weighs his options. “Or… we could go without.”

Alex’s eyes go wide, and he lets out a nervous laugh. “You know, I only tried bareback a couple of times. Broncs, I mean. Wasn’t for me. But this…”

“I think you’ll find I’ll be the one doing the bareback riding, love,” Henry teases. Then he schools his expression. “Absolutely no pressure. But I’m clean. And if you are as well… I’m very much not opposed to the idea of you bare inside me.”

“Fuck,” Alex groans. “You can’t just say things like that.”

“Shall I go get a condom?”

Alex stares up at him as he runs his hands over the tops of Henry’s thighs, pushing his thumbs into the creases of his hips. His grip tightens. He shakes his head.

One of them does have to get up anyway to get the lube, but it’s a much shorter jaunt to Alex’s bathroom, and Henry gets to recline on the bed like some kind of bygone prince, stroking himself languidly as he watches Alex walk naked across the room. Henry’d seen it all yesterday, in the shower, but that doesn’t mean Alex isn’t still a revelation—his compact yet lithe form, muscles rippling beneath brown skin that glows in the warm lamplight, cock bobbing heavily between his legs.

He smirks when he sees Henry watching him and gives his hips a little wiggle. “Like what you see, baby?”

Henry rolls his eyes, too fondly. “As if you don’t know how bloody gorgeous you are.”

Alex climbs onto the bed and crawls on all fours over Henry’s body, caging him in and capturing his mouth in a fierce kiss that he grins into. “Maybe I just like hearing you say it.”

“Stunning,” Henry breathes as he runs a hand down Alex’s flank. “You’re the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen in my life.”

An annoyed look flits across Alex’s face. “Ok, now you’re over-selling it.”

“I mean it, love. Every word.” He lifts a hand to Alex’s face and rubs away the wrinkle between his brows, then pulls him into another kiss, one that’s soft and maybe a little too honest. “Do you want to get me ready?”

“Fuck yeah.”

In a way, sex with Alex isn’t so different from all the rest of the time they’ve spent together. At times it’s silly and playful, teasing barbs passed back and forth in a bid to make each other laugh, and at others almost painfully earnest and vulnerable. That feeling of safety—that he doesn’t have to hide any part of himself, that he’ll always be accepted and cared for—pervades in this, too. He knows Alex feels it as well, not because of anything he says or does, just because Henry can feel the certainty of it in his gut, in his veins, etched onto his bones.

In a way, this feels like the next natural step between them, that having shared so much of themselves with each other, they’d share this too. It shouldn’t be all that special, shouldn’t mean more than two friends finding pleasure in each other’s arms, and yet, as Henry sinks down and Alex makes a home in his body—it is. This isn’t the desperate release of a pressure valve that the shower had been. It’s not a casual fuck he can walk away from unchanged. It’s something that reaches into him and knits together rents in the fabric of him, a thread of Alex that will remain tied up in his soul forever. It’s too much, and not enough, and he can’t hold anything back in the face of such an onslaught.

He sees it in Alex’s face, too, the way it takes him by surprise. The way the moment overwhelms him—tears glittering on those long lashes, ragged breaths shuddering in his chest. He stares up at Henry like he’s seeing him for the first time and knows every part of him all at once, and Henry knows, deep down, that this was a wonderful, terrible, inevitable mistake.

They’re both quiet in the aftermath. After all that release, a thread of tension remains. The unanswered question that neither of them wants to address.

What now?

Chapter Text

They’d kissed each other goodbye at the hotel, before Alex had to catch his midday flight back to Texas. Promised that they’d text when they got home safely. Which they both did—Alex’s text coming in before Henry had even departed, and Henry’s sent in the middle of the night Alex’s time. Alex had replied with a heart emoji.

And then…

Nothing.

What had come as easy as breathing before now felt impossible. Henry didn’t know what to say, how to get back to that easy back and forth before they’d carved out their hearts and exchanged them. It was as if they couldn’t have any conversation without having the conversation—how to have a real romantic relationship when they lived five thousand miles apart, when simply moving to another place was out of the question given their respective careers, when Henry had six horses housed in England and Alex an entire ranch in Texas to take care of.

Henry didn’t have the answers to those questions, didn’t even know that there were satisfactory answers to those questions, so instead he said nothing. Better that than having to admit that it couldn’t work out between them. Knowing Alex, Henry could guess he was wrestling with the same intractable problem and coming to the same conclusions. It was almost comforting—the idea that neither of them knew how to navigate things after everything that had happened. At least Henry wasn’t alone.

Except, he was. Desperately.

The British polo season was over. Before the charity match, Poroto had tried to get Henry to go to Argentina with him and Dufour to compete in their season—and some of the premiere polo tournaments in the world—but he’d declined. Hadn’t wanted to lose the chance to visit Alex over the winter. Plus, even then he’d already had plane tickets to go to Vegas in December for the National Finals Rodeo. Of course, in the face of their mutual silence he was no longer sure Alex even wanted him there, but the decision to stay behind in London had already been made. The polo scene there was quiet of the winter, but he trained in indoor riding arenas with Shaan and a few other players who were still around. That kept him busy, and he had Bea and Pez, but the space in his life that Alex had left behind couldn’t be filled.

September passed into October, and Alex clinched his position as All-Around Cowboy by breaking the previous record for yearly earnings and putting himself so far ahead of the other competitors that he couldn’t be caught. Henry’d wanted to text him, but couldn’t bring himself to open their empty message thread. Instead, he’d commented some bland congratulations on Alex’s Instagram post about the achievement and immediately felt awful. Worse, when Alex liked the comment within seconds and replied, i couldn’t have done it without your support.

The invitation had arrived in mid-October. Ariat was hosting an event on their farm in California to celebrate the launch of next year’s collection and wanted their ambassadors there. Henry hadn’t been inclined to go, was sure he couldn’t bear the reminder of that farm and the photoshoot that started it all, but he didn’t have much of an excuse, and it was important to keep your sponsors happy. He’d assumed Alex would be too busy with the lead-up to the National Finals to attend. Hadn’t texted to find out one way or another before he confirmed his own attendance.

That might have been a mistake.

The day of the event is bright and sunny, moderate temperature, not a cloud in the almost painfully blue sky. A perfect central California day. They’d sent Henry some items from their new collection to wear—a navy polo shirt and a hunter green English show jacket, along with a pair of suede Chelsea boots. There are a few other English equestrians in similar outfits around, but most other attendees are clad in Ariat’s western collection, and the familiarity of those patterned button downs and ornately embroidered cowboy boots makes Henry’s chest ache.

It’s fine. He just has to get through the day, then he can flee back across the ocean and not think about any of it.

All in all, it’s a nice event. The food is good. Henry drinks perhaps a bit more champagne than he should. He talks to a variety of different riders and looks at a lot of photos of horses on phones. Shows his own off, too. One guy surprises him by congratulating him on his polo team’s cup wins this season. It takes Henry far too long to realise the man is flirting with him.

In every single moment of it, he misses Alex.

Alex is the one he should be swapping stories with about horses shying during competitions. Alex is the one he should be laughing with at photos of their horses doing silly things. Alex is the one he should be trading teasing banter with about English versus Western riding.

He even takes out his phone and opens the messages app. Considers taking a photo and sending it. Wish you were here. The worst idea, or merely terrible?

Then, he hears it. A laugh he would know anywhere. A voice that haunts his dreams. A whiskey-warm drawl that intones, “Apologies for my tardiness, I just got in from the Wilderness Circuit Finals in Utah.”

Alex.

Henry turns automatically and weaves his way through the crowd, following the sound of his voice like a siren’s song. He finds Alex chatting with Ariat’s CEO—a petite woman with glasses and a brown bob—as he sips on a bottle of beer. Christ, he looks incredible, wearing a simple blue button down with ARIAT emblazoned in white block letters down one sleeve, a pair of dark jeans that hug his arse, shiny brown boots, and his trademark black Stetson. He doesn’t notice Henry at first, but that soon changes—though Henry stopped a fair distance away, not wanting to intrude, he’s not standing there for more than a couple of breaths before Alex’s eyes find him in the crowd.

Beth, the CEO, notices his distraction. Her face lights up when she turns and sees Henry lurking and, so caught, Henry has no choice but to join them.

“There’s my other star,” she beams. “The guys in marketing have been saying we need to do another shoot with you two for next spring’s collection.”

“Oh,” Henry says as he fidgets awkwardly with his champagne flute. “That would be lovely.”

“You two kept in touch, right? Sheila mentioned you played in a charity polo match together a couple months ago?”

“That’s right, ma’am,” Alex puts in with a tight smile. His eyes have barely left Henry. “Henry invited me, and I thought I’d give it a try.”

“And? How was it?”

Alex grins. “I think I’ll stick with rodeo.”

Beth laughs at that, and Henry forces out a chuckle. Christ, this was a mistake, thinking he could stand here across from Alex and hold himself together. Perhaps if he can excuse himself from this conversation, he can slip away from the party without anyone noticing.

Before he can even start to put that plan into motion, Beth looks at her watch and says, “If you’ll excuse me, I should probably say hi to a few more people before my staff grabs me for some kind of awful speech. It was good to see you both, and we’ll definitely be in touch.”

Then she’s gone, leaving the two of them standing there together on the lawn with a painful, yawning silence stretching between them. Alex sips his beer. Henry grabs another glass of champagne off a passing waiter.

“It’s good to see you,” he ventures eventually, unable to stand it any longer. “I didn’t realise you’d be here.”

“I’m an ambassador, same as you,” Alex points out, his expression inscrutable.

“Of course. I just… thought you’d be busy.”

Alex snorts humourlessly. “You’re not wrong there. Barely had a chance to sit down if it’s not on a horse.”

“You must be exhausted,” Henry says before he can stop himself. It’s obvious he is, at least to Henry. He looks thinner, overstretched, bags under his eyes and a permanent furrow in his brow.

Alex just shrugs. “I’m fine.” He stares away into the crowd of attendees. Henry wonders if he’s looking for an exit. Then his eyes flick back to Henry. “What about you? You doing well?”

“Well enough,” Henry lies. “It’s quiet back home, now that the season is done.”

“That must be nice.”

It’s excruciating, actually, given the absence of Alex in his life now, but Henry’s not going to say that. He hums noncommittally as he takes a sip of champagne, and they lapse into silence again. Somehow, that’s better than the stilted small talk.

“I wanted to ask,” Henry ventures finally, once he’s screwed up the courage. “I still have those tickets for the finals in Vegas, and I was going to come if—” He takes another gulp of champagne, painfully aware of Alex staring at him but unable to meet his eye. “If you still want me there.”

There’s a beat where Alex says nothing, a pinched expression that Henry can’t read on his face. Then he shakes his head and says, low, “I can’t do this anymore.”

After all this time, all that silence between them, Henry hadn’t expected it to hurt this much. Didn’t realise that he’d still been clinging to a thread of hope that they’d find their way back to each other—even if only as friends—until it was cut, and he found himself sliding backward into an abyss.

He closes his eyes and lets out a long breath in a desperate attempt to steady himself. He cannot cry at this sponsor party. “Right,” he manages, only a little shakily. “I understand. I’ll… cancel the trip.”

He’s not expecting Alex to snap, “No— fuck. Just—” Henry opens his eyes to see Alex apparently storming away from him. But he stops again, and gestures impatiently. “Come on.”

Uncertain, wary, and beyond confused, Henry follows him as Alex leads them away from the party and toward the barn where they’d done that first photoshoot more than a year ago. It’s deserted inside, apart from a few horses who shuffle over and hang their heads out of their stalls, hoping for food. Alex keeps going, until they’re deep in the sprawling building and the only light filters in from the stall windows and leaves abstract rectangles of illumination in the dust of the aisle. Then, he stops and spins on his heel, so abruptly that Henry almost crashes into him.

“I can’t do this,” Alex hisses up at him with an expansive gesture that does nothing to clarify his statement. “This thing where we pretend like what happened doesn’t mean anything. That we’re both ok with how things turned out. I know you’re not ok, Henry. I’m not fucking ok.”

That’s… not what Henry was expecting. “I’m not,” he confirms bluntly. “These past months have been utterly miserable. I miss you like a limb, Alex, but our lives… they’re not compatible. Neither of us can just up and move to be together. We have careers. Obligations. Horses.”

“I know, I know,” Alex nearly growls, pulling off his hat and digging a frustrated hand into his curls. “I’ve spent so much time thinking about it. I was going to figure it out, you know? Come back with a plan. I even started thinking—” He breaks off and looks at Henry with something desperate in his eyes. “Maybe this season would be my last hurrah. Maybe I’d retire.”

“Alex, no,” Henry says immediately. The very thought of it is unconscionable. “I know you. I know how much rodeo means to you. And the ranch?” He shakes his head. “No. I could never ask you to give that up for me. I could never allow you to.”

“And I’d never ask you to give up polo. You’re at the top of your fucking game, years in your prime ahead of you, and US polo is a joke,” Alex returns with no shortage of derision. He’s not wrong. “So where does that leave us?”

Nowhere. It’s an impossible conundrum. “Perhaps we need a cleaner break,” Henry forces himself to say, voice catching in his throat. “Letting this linger—”

“No, no. I can’t. I won’t,” Alex interrupts sharply. “These past two months nearly killed me, and seeing you again… I can’t just walk away. I don’t know how this works, but I do know that I need you in my life. I know that I love you, Henry. I’ve been in love with you for a while. And I can’t pretend anymore that I don’t.”

There they are—the words that Henry didn’t want to hear, and yet so desperately needed to at the same time. They shouldn’t make a difference, because the world doesn’t work that way. Cold, hard reality doesn’t care if you’re in love, it keeps grinding on the same way it always does, until it takes that tender, precious thing and pulverises it into nothing but pain.

But those words do matter. They kindle a little spark of foolish hope, one that Henry can’t possibly bring himself to smother. Maybe it will all end in misery. Maybe the strain of trying to work it out will break them. But could Henry ever forgive himself if he didn’t try?

“Please say something, baby,” Alex pleads as he reaches out and takes Henry’s hand in one of his. Presses his familiar calloused fingers to Henry’s and holds tight. “Tell me I’m not chasing after a fantasy, here. That you want this, too.”

“Christ, Alex,” Henry breathes unsteadily, squeezing his eyes closed against the tears stinging them. “Of course I love you. I love you so much I don’t know what to do with it. And I do want this. More than I can say. It’s just… difficult to let myself believe it’s possible.”

“That’s ok, because I’ll believe enough for the both of us,” Alex says fervently. “We can figure it out together. I know we can. And it might not be easy or simple, but I don’t care. I don’t need easy. I just need you.”

“You say that like it is that easy,” Henry says through a wet, miserable laugh. “You’re not frightened of what might happen?”

“Of course I am,” Alex says. “I’ve seen the stress it puts on Liam and Spencer. And no offence to Liam, because he’s an amazing cowboy, but he’s not…”

“America’s favourite all-around cowboy,” Henry finishes.

Alex smiles ruefully. “Yeah, that. I don’t know when or if I’ll be able to come out, and honestly that’s kept me up as much as anything. I know it’s not fair to ask you to keep it a secret. I guess I’m just hoping you’ll think it’s worth it anyway.”

He might have known that was tying Alex in knots, even if it had hardly crossed Henry’s mind. He reaches up and presses a hand to Alex’s cheek, brushing a thumb along his cheekbone. “I might be out, but in case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t share much about my personal life. Keeping this to myself is no hardship for me. The long stretches apart, however…”

“We can fix those,” Alex says, with more confidence than Henry feels. But it helps to hear it in Alex’s voice, anyway. He stares searchingly into Henry’s eyes, chewing on his lip. “So you’re saying… you’re in?”

“I’m saying I’m in,” Henry laughs wetly again, but this time there’s joy in it. This time there’s hope.

Maybe they don’t have any answers yet, but in this moment it doesn’t matter. In this moment, he lets Alex seal it with a smiling kiss, arms wrapped around each other, their too-tight grips putting wrinkles in the clothes they’re supposed to be showing off because they can’t bear to let go.

“We should probably get back out there before someone comes looking for us,” Alex sighs when they finally part.

“Christ,” Henry hiccups, dragging a hand over his face. “Are you sure we can’t just sneak away? I’m sure I look a fright.”

Alex gently swipes a thumb under Henry’s eye, rubbing away the tear tracks there. “You look gorgeous, baby. You always do. And I’m pretty sure we’re obligated to be here for another couple of hours.”

“Fine,” Henry agrees reluctantly. He forces himself to take a step back and tugs his jacket back into some semblance of order. His hair might be a lost cause. At least Alex has a hat. “But you better not be planning to leave for another rodeo immediately afterward.”

“I mean…”

“Alex.”

“I’m not going anywhere, baby,” Alex promises, stretching up on his toes to press a kiss to Henry’s frown. “Not until we have a plan. Deal?”

Henry weaves their fingers together and squeezes. “Deal.”

“You’re moving to Texas.”

The deep skepticism in his team captain’s voice is obvious even over the phone. Henry supposes he can’t really be surprised by this reaction. It is a pretty unlikely decision for a professional polo player.

“I’m spending the off season in Texas, actually,” he corrects primly. 

Poroto makes a noise like this is a distinction that doesn’t matter. “And you are sure this is best idea?”

No. Yes. On one hand, it’s the off season—if there’s any stretch of time he can reasonably spend away from London, it’s now. On the other, he can’t afford to fly his horses halfway around the globe just to spend time with his boyfriend, which complicates his training regimen.

“It’s no different than you spending the winter in Argentina.”

“Henry. Darling. I am here to compete. And no one does polo better than Argentines. Not even the Brits.” He’s not wrong, national pride notwithstanding. “Texas, though…”

“I found a place to train. A club in Austin.”

“Amateurs,” Poroto sniffs dismissively.

“There’s… a range of skill levels,” Henry allows. It’s true that no one there will come close to Henry, but that’s ok. He just needs to keep active. “It’ll be fine. And I’ll be back in May, same as you.”

Hopefully, with Alex in tow. When they’d finally sat down to discuss their schedules, this was the compromise they’d arrived at: they’d split the year, half in England, half in Texas. This was theoretically possible because their ‘off’ seasons were roughly opposite times of year—but only if Alex cut back on rodeos. He’d insisted that he’d be happy to do so if it meant spending time with Henry, and furthermore had grudgingly admitted that he probably should slow down anyway after the toll this year had taken on him. There would be some overlap in the spring and fall, but that would mean a matter of weeks apart, not months.

The biggest impact would be the time spent away from their horses, but they’d even figured that out. Alex already had people he could trust who’d been looking after the ranch while he was away competing this past summer, and Henry had arranged things in London as well. All that was left now was telling people about this frankly somewhat mad scheme. Poroto’s reaction was par for the course at this point.

“You know, for me, I cannot imagine loving anything more than polo. It has always been like this. Girls, boys—none of them interest me. My one great love is this game. So, I do not understand. But I try, for you.” Poroto pauses, but the silence is pregnant, like he’s not done. “You must love him a lot. Your gaucho.”

“He’s not a gaucho,” Henry says with a huff of laughter.

“Close enough,” Poroto says. Henry can hear the grin in his voice. “Good luck, Henry. And do not go soft, or I will kick you off my team.”

Henry can’t help but smile. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

It’s a miserable November day in London—grey, cold, absolutely pissing down rain. The kind of day best spent curled up in front of the hearth with a good book. And yet, Henry’d insisted on taking Wentworth out for exercise.

In two days, he’d be flying to Austin, return date uncertain. It was likely he’d come back to London for a brief visit in January, but equally as unlikely that he’d have any time to go riding while he was here. He’s made sure that his polo ponies will have all the care they might need in his absence, but that hasn’t kept the guilt at bay. He wanted to spend time with them before he left, hence today’s ride.

Wentworth, however, was not having it. He’d been acting up the entire time, even though they were riding in a covered arena, and so Henry’d been forced to cut the outing short. Now he’d been returned to his warm, dry stall, but he was still acting antsy.

“I don’t know what you want,” Henry sighs as Wentworth knocks against the wooden walls of his stall. Fetching some fresh hay, he chucks most of it into the hay net and holds the rest out, which Wentworth accepts gratefully. Then he tries to nip at Henry’s palm. Henry sighs again.

“Misbehaving again?” comes a familiar voice. Henry turns to find Shaan leaning against the barn door, watching him with an amused smile on his face.

“I swear he knows I’m leaving and is trying to make me feel bad,” Henry says wryly. Like as not, he was just grumpy because of the weather, but try to convince Henry of that. “I’m also afraid it’s working. Poroto would say I’m being too sentimental.”

“Poroto keeps separate stables of horses in London and Argentina so he doesn’t have to ship them back and forth,” Shaan points out.

“See? Sentimental.”

Shaan gives a low chuckle, shaking his head. “You know, he does have a point. They’ll be fine without you, promise. Probably hardly know you’re gone.”

That was most likely true, if Henry was honest with himself. The real question was how Henry was going to survive without them. It was easy to joke, but his horses were like his children, and he hated feeling like he was abandoning them, even to Shaan’s capable hands.

“I’ll expect regular reports,” Henry replies, his voice thicker than it should be.

Shaan politely ignores that part, thankfully. “Daily, if you like,” he promises. “I’ll make sure they’re well-looked after.”

“You’ll spoil them rotten,” Henry accuses fondly. Shaan laughs, but doesn’t deny it. “Thank you again for this. You’re the only reason I feel even remotely ok about leaving them.”

“And I shall endeavour to live up to that trust,” Shaan says seriously. From anyone else, Henry would think he was being made fun of, but not from Shaan. His smile is almost painfully kind, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re making the right decision. And I think he would agree.”

Henry doesn’t have to ask who the ‘he’ in question is. Shaan knew his father well—played on a team with him, back when Arthur was in his prime and Shaan was just starting out in the world of polo. It was Shaan who understood that Henry throwing himself into the sport with a kind of bloody single-mindedness was what he needed in those dark years after Arthur passed. Shaan who supported him and made sure he took care of himself at the same time, that he didn’t push himself too hard when it was too easy to fall into those habits in the effort to forget his pain. Shaan who was there when so many of his family were not. And now it’s Shaan who’s here for him again at this turning point in his life.

He casts his stinging eyes to the roof as he blinks back tears. “Christ, Shaan, you can’t just say things like that without any warning.”

“My apologies,” Shaan says, but he looks unrepentant, and he lets Henry pull him into a hug.

“Thank you, Shaan,” Henry murmurs, and knows Shaan understands all the other things he can’t quite bring himself to say.

The birds are all different.

It’s not a thing Henry ever expected to notice, honestly. He’s never paid a lot of attention to the birds, but he often wakes up early, and their songs had apparently sunk into his psyche whether he knew it or not. Now, he wakes to strange melodies that he doesn’t recognise, and far more of them than he ever heard on the outskirts of London. It’s a constant, undeniable reminder of how much his life has changed in the past month.

He also wakes to a warm, solid body in his arms every morning. That’s still pretty new, too.

This morning, Alex lies half-draped over top of him, his face pressed against Henry’s shoulder, one arm thrown over his waist, and a thigh tucked between Henry’s. He might have drooled a little on Henry’s chest. Henry wouldn’t change a thing. He intends to let him sleep for a little while longer at least, but the morning light is still weak when Alex stirs, the interruption of the regular rhythm of his breathing giving him away before the rest of his body does. Nearly the first thing he does—before he’s even opened his eyes—is press a sleepy kiss to Henry’s skin.

“Morning, love,” Henry murmurs.

Those long eyelashes flutter open and Alex tips his head, staring up at Henry through half-lidded eyes. “Mornin’.”

“You ready for today?”

“Jesus, give a guy a minute to wake up,” Alex says through a yawn as he stretches against Henry’s side.

“It’s early, still,” Henry assures him. He sinks a hand into Alex’s hair and tangles his fingers in the curls.

“Mm,” Alex hums, rubbing his eyes. “Shouldn’t take too long to get going, though. Long drive today.”

Today, they’ll load Josie and Biscuit into Alex’s trailer and begin the drive to Vegas for the National Finals. They only have to get as far as a ranch in New Mexico, where they’ll stay overnight with a couple of women that they’ve come to know recently. Turns out, there’s a whole underground support network of queer rodeo riders who keep each other’s secrets. Some are still very active in the sport, like Alex, while others have retired or stepped away for various reasons. Alex had been aware of them tangentially before, via Liam, but now he and Henry have been adopted into the small, tight-knit family.

Ironically, Henry feels a stronger sense of community with them than he ever has as an out athlete in the world of polo, where most other players just pretend that part of him doesn’t exist.

“What time are Liam and Spencer getting here?” Henry asks. 

Alex yawns again. “Nine. Urgh, I should probably get up.”

He starts trying to push himself up, but Henry tightens his arms around him. “It’s only just six,” he protests. “And the trailer is already packed.”

“I know, but—”

“You’re just going to pace yourself into knots waiting.” Alex makes a face, but he doesn’t deny it. “Stay in bed with me a while longer?”

“I guess,” Alex huffs, like this is a trial, grumbling as he lets Henry pull him close again.

“Hey,” Henry says as he pushes a curl back from Alex’s forehead. Alex looks up at him. “I love you.”

It still works like a magic charm—a painfully smitten smile fights its way onto Alex’s face, no matter how hard he might try to resist, and he leans in to kiss Henry. This one is slow and deep, with drowsiness still clinging to its edges, the kind of ridiculous indulgence that Henry still can’t believe he gets to have.

When Alex pulls back, his grin has turned wicked. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Do you?” Henry asks, cocking an eyebrow at him even though he knows precisely where Alex’s thoughts have gone.

Alex pushes his hips forward, grinding his morning wood—which has rapidly been filling out—into Henry’s thigh. One of his hands starts sliding down Henry’s abdomen, and the heat that has been slowly pooling in Henry’s gut kindles into something fiercer.

“So you don’t have time for a lie in, but you do have time for that?” Henry teases, even as his own eyelids flutter when Alex’s hand finds his cock.

“If we’re”—Alex interrupts himself to kiss him deeply again—“efficient.”

“Such romance.”

“Do you wanna fuck me or not?”

Henry slides a hand down and palms Alex’s arse, giving the firm muscle a fierce knead before he presses on. “Is that what you want?”

“Maybe I wanna practice,” Alex grunts as Henry’s fingers tease his hole, “riding—fuck—a bucking bronco.”

“That was terrible,” Henry groans, pulling his hand away.

Alex looks stricken, and he makes a desperate grab for Henry’s wrist, “Wait, baby please,” he says, though in truth, Henry was just reaching for the lube. “No ‘save a horse’ jokes, promise.”

“Considering you’re the cowboy, I should think not.”

“So, you gonna let this cowboy ride you?” Alex purrs, leaning in to kiss Henry deeply again. His tongue presses into Henry’s mouth and his teeth sink into his lower lip, and then he murmurs, lips curving against Henry’s ear, “I’ll even wear the hat.”

Henry’s not proud of what that does to him. The sight of Alex sitting on his cock, moving his hips like he was born to it, one hand lifted to that black Stetson as if the force of Henry fucking into him might dislodge it?

He yanks Alex into another kiss, pushing his fingers against Alex in a way that has him gasping into Henry’s mouth, and growls, “Go get the bloody hat.”

In the lead up to Nationals, Henry had attended a decent number of rodeos with Alex, gotten to see everything from the first rounds to the finals. If anything, every rodeo only makes him more nervous for the next. The roping competition is relatively painless, but those bronc rides—watching Alex get tossed around, the times when he almost gets thrown off the horse—those, he doesn’t breathe for. Good thing they’re only eight seconds long.

At least he’s not alone. For Nationals, Alex’s box is packed—with June and Nora and Oscar, of course, but also his mother and step-dad, whom Henry is meeting for the first time. Bea and Pez even flew in for the occasion and quickly festooned themselves in the most absurd, rhinestone-and-fringe-covered western wear they could find for sale among the vendors, much to Henry’s chagrin.

Although, honestly? They don’t stand out. Not here, at rodeo’s biggest party of the year.

Every round Alex rides, Henry sits tightly wedged between June on one side and Bea on the other, his hands tightly gripped in theirs. He watches Alex saunter up to the bucking chute, all steely resolve even though Henry now knows the turmoil that goes on below the surface. Watches Alex give a wave to the roaring fans before he climbs the metal bars and seats himself in the saddle. Watches the horse burst from the gate and leap into the air as if it had wings, kicking its hind feet out high above its head. Watches Alex move fluidly in the saddle, like it’s easy, watches him ride the time out and practically leap off the bronco, land square on his feet, and let out a scream of triumph because he knows that he killed it.

All of this Henry watches, and doesn’t breathe, and doesn’t blink, not even when June’s sharp nails dig into his hands. And every round, the scores come back with Alex at or near the top of the leaderboard. Eighty-six points. Eighty-nine. Ninety-one.

Things have been going well. Better than well. So Henry isn’t quite sure why, on the morning of the last round, he comes back from a coffee run to find Alex frantically tearing apart the trailer.

“I can’t find it,” Alex snaps when Henry asks what he’s doing, barely glancing away from where he’s strewing the contents of a tack chest all over the floor.

“Can’t find what, love?”

“The handkerchief. The token. I can’t— I can’t find it.”

Alex has been wearing the blue handkerchief at every competition since Henry sent it to him. He also refuses to wash it—(it’ll wash the luck away, Henry)—so it’s no longer really blue anymore. And now, he’s mislaid it, which has apparently triggered a crisis.

“You were wearing it yesterday, right?” Henry asks.

“Of course I was.”

“It’s not in the pocket you usually keep it?”

“No it fucking isn’t! You don’t think I checked there first?!” Alex nearly shouts at him.

Henry doesn’t like being yelled at, but he doesn’t take it personally. Alex’s panic is palpable. He does reach out and grab Alex’s wrist, only for him to wrench it free to keep tearing the trailer apart. So he tries again, and this time he holds fast, drawing Alex toward him.

“Let go, I don’t have time for this,” Alex demands, trying to squirm out of his grip.

“Love, stop,” Henry soothes.

“I can’t—”

“Alex, it’s all right.”

“It’s not,” Alex insists, his voice cracking. All at once, the fight goes out of him, and he sags in Henry’s arms. Tears glitter in his lashes as he stares miserably up at Henry. “You don’t understand, I need it. It’s my lucky charm. I’ve worn it the whole second half of the season.”

“You were doing perfectly well without it before,” Henry points out. “You don’t need it, love. You’re too talented for luck, remember?”

“But—”

“No buts,” Henry interrupts. “None of what you’ve accomplished this season is because of a handkerchief. It’s all you. You’ve been in the top three riders seven rounds out of nine. All you need in this round is top five. But you’re going to be number one again, because you can’t resist going out with a bang.” At this, Alex lets out a wet hiccup of a laugh, and Henry presses a kiss to his forehead. “You’ve got this, darling, with or without the handkerchief. I promise. Alright?”

Alex takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re right. I know you’re right. Everything’s just come down to this one ride, and I…”

“Became extraordinarily superstitious and panicked?”

“Yeah, that,” Alex huffs. He carefully extracts himself from Henry’s arms and swipes at his eyes, and he’s just about gotten himself put back together when a knock comes on the trailer door. Unfortunately, the person behind it doesn’t wait before they start coming in.

“Fuck, wait—Mom?” Alex says as Ellen appears in the open door, her eyes going wide as she surveys the destruction. “What are you doing here?”

“What on earth happened?”

“Er, nothing,” Alex says, kicking some of the mess behind him like that will do anything. “Just— looking for something. It’s not a big deal.”

To Henry’s surprise, she pulls a grimy piece of blue cloth out of her bag. “It wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with this, would it?”

Alex nearly trips over himself in his rush to get to her, looking rapidly between her and the handkerchief. “Where did you find it?”

“In the living area of the suite,” Ellen tells him. She’d booked some massive, multi-room hotel suite for Alex’s entire family, including Oscar, and though Henry and Alex are sleeping in the competition trailer, they’ve frequently visited the suite to unwind after the evening’s competitions. “You must have taken it off at some point last night, then forgot it there.”

The way Alex takes the cloth from her is almost reverent. He stares at it a moment, thumbs smoothing over the silk, then frowns up at her. “But how did you know I’d be looking for it?”

A familiar smirk tugs at the corner of Ellen’s mouth—it’s a little disconcerting to see it there, given how frequently Henry’s seen its mirror on Alex’s face. “Call it a hunch. You haven’t competed without this in months.”

“You’ve seen all of those?”

Now it’s Ellen’s turn to frown. “Of course I have, sugar. Why wouldn’t I have? I might not be able to get away from Washington often, but I watch every one of your rides.”

“I kind of assumed you just looked up the results afterwards,” Alex admits, obviously uncomfortable. “You never wanted me to go into rodeo.”

“Oh, Alex, come here,” she sighs, not waiting before she draws him into her arms. He looks so small and vulnerable there that Henry can’t help but feel like he’s intruding, but he also can’t really go anywhere without making things more awkward. “I was worried about you, sugar. No mother is thrilled when her son tells her he wants to make a living risking his life all the time.”

“It’s not that dangerous,” Alex mumbles into her shoulder.

“It’s dangerous enough,” Ellen says firmly, but then she softens. “I’m sorry that I made you feel like I didn’t support you, or didn’t care. Fact is, I talk about you so much, I’m fairly certain my fellow House committee members are sick of me.” She pulls back a little to look at him in the eye, holding him by the shoulders with both hands. “I’m so proud of you, honey. And no matter what happens tonight, I’ll still be proud,” she declares before wrapping him in another hug. “My incredible all-around cowboy.”

“Thanks, mom,” Alex says thickly.

“I should go, let you get prepared for the day,” she says, stepping back again. “You go show ‘em how it’s done in Texas tonight, ok?”

Alex huffs a wet laugh. “Will do.”

Then she’s gone, and Alex stares at the door for a long moment before he looks down at the handkerchief in his hands again, his throat working.

“Shall I give you a moment?” Henry asks, only half teasing.

“Fuck off,” Alex sniffs as he rubs at his eyes again. Instead, Henry crosses the trailer and pulls him into a hug, pressing a kiss to his curls. “After all this time, I didn’t think I needed her approval…”

“But it means a lot,” Henry finishes.

“Yeah.”

Henry lets him hold on for as long as he wants, which turns out to be so long that the coffee he brought goes cold. Alex drinks it with a smile, anyway.

Henry’s getting ready to head over to the arena to take his place in the stands when Alex stops him and presses a piece of fabric into his hand. The handkerchief.

“What’s wrong?” Henry asks. Could it somehow be the wrong one? But those are his initials, and anyway, Alex is smiling at him.

“Nothing’s wrong. I want you to keep it for me tonight.”

Henry’s eyebrows go shooting up. “Really.”

“It’s like you said,” Alex explains as he curls Henry’s fingers around the cloth. “I don’t need it. I let myself get too hung up on the idea that it was luck carrying me through, but it’s not luck. It’s all me. And I’ve got you there watching me, my family—that’s all I need.”

“You’re sure?”

Alex nods. “Yeah. I’m sure. But I want that back afterward,” he adds. “Keep it safe for me?”

Henry smiles and kisses him. “Always, love.”

Eight seconds.

Eight seconds is all that’s left between heartache and glory. Eight seconds and a massive sorrel bronco named All or Nothin—this year’s Saddle Bronc Horse of the Year.

Alex takes to the chute, and this time, the entire arena holds their breath.

Eight seconds later he throws his hat into the sky and drops to his knees in the dirt with a yell that you can’t hear over the roar of the crowd.

“Ninety-four points!” Oscar yells when the judge’s score lights up the board. The entire lot of them are yelling, screaming, jumping and hugging each other. Pez lets out a whoop that somehow carries across the arena. “Ninety-four fucking points!”

Alex’s smile during the awards ceremony shines more brilliantly than the gold belt buckle that he holds up in triumph.

It takes a day of recovery before they even think about heading out. The celebrations had gone on late into the night, and then there’d been Alex and Henry’s private celebrations, and safe to say no one was driving anywhere the day after, especially not with a trailer of horses. Instead they’d slept in—thank god for the temporary stable hands Alex had hired to make sure the horses were fed in the morning—and spent the day drying out in the Nevada sun, all their friends coming to camp out by the trailer with them before they’d go scattering back across the globe.

But now they’ve bid farewell to everyone, packed everything up and loaded up the horses, taken their places in Alex’s giant truck. They’re heading home—the ranch that’s already become just as much Henry’s home as Alex’s. 

“Ok, I’m ready,” Alex announces after he’s buckled his seatbelt, smiling as he stares out the windshield.

It seems like an odd statement to make, considering Alex is the one sitting behind the wheel. What’s more, there’s something almost expectant about the way he’s looking at Henry, like this is some kind of bit that Henry isn’t privy to.

Alright, then. He’ll play along.

“For?” Henry prompts as he buckles his own seatbelt.

Alex grins brilliantly. “What else, baby? The rest of our lives.”

Oh. Well. If that’s all.

Henry swallows thickly and smiles back.

“Me too, love.”

Chapter Text

Five Years Later

Henry doesn’t even realise what he’s done at first.

In his defence, he’s exhausted after a hard-fought win and all the stress of the tournament that led up to it. All he’s really thinking about is going home—not to his flat on the outskirts of London, but to the ranch in Texas and his boyfriend’s arms. Alex hadn’t been able to stay for the conclusion of this tournament because it partly overlapped with one of the first major rodeos of his season, and even though it’s only been two weeks, Henry misses him.

So yeah, he’s a little distracted. And when a reporter at the press conference after their final cup win of the season asks him if he thinks Great Oaks can pull off a record seventh win of this cup next season, he answers, “I think they have a good shot, but unfortunately I won’t be here to see it.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then the press room starts buzzing.

“Sorry,” the reporter says over the din, even though it’s no longer her turn, “does that mean you’re retiring from polo?”

Well. He hadn’t intended on announcing that today—hadn’t wanted to take attention away from the rest of the team and had wanted to sort a few other things before he made an official announcement—but he supposes the cat’s out of the bag.

“I am,” he confirms, leaning in close to the mic again. “I’d say the decision to step back wasn’t an easy one, but it actually was.” A smattering of polite laughter at that. “I’ve had an amazing twenty seasons of professional polo, the last eight of them with Great Oaks, and I’ll always be incredibly grateful for that. But it’s time for me to move on to a new phase in my life.”

“And what will that entail? If you don’t mind sharing,” the reporter adds with a bold smile. These reporters know very well Henry doesn’t talk about his personal life. That doesn’t mean they don’t still ask sometimes.

This time, Henry can throw them a bone to keep attention off the very personal reasons for his decision. What the hell, he’s just won his last cup and he’s feeling magnanimous.

“I’ve accepted a position as a coach and tournament director with the Texas Arena League in Austin. I know, it’s not what you think of when you think of polo,” he says to the press corps’ surprised murmurs, “but it’s a growing area for the sport. I’ve actually been working with them on a volunteer basis for several years now, and the League’s goals to create an inclusive and welcoming environment that support new polo players from diverse backgrounds strongly aligns with my own values. I’m beyond excited to step into a more substantial leadership role with the organisation.”

“So—”

“Sorry, I’ve taken over a bit, haven’t I?” Henry says before she can ask another question, a self-deprecating smile on his face. “This cup win belongs to all of us. I’ll let my teammates take some questions now.”

That’s that, Henry thinks as he sits back and half-listens to his teammates answer questions about their plans for the next year. When he finally gets out of the press conference, he checks his phone and finds it blown up with notifications. Texts and calls from friends and family, tags on Twitter and Instagram, but surprisingly, nothing from Alex. He’s probably busy with rodeo stuff, is all. Henry sets his phone to Do Not Disturb apart from a handful of whitelisted contacts, then returns calls from Bea and Pez.

Hours later, when he still hasn’t heard anything from Alex, he starts to worry. What if he’d been injured at the rodeo? What if he were in hospital even now, and Henry isn’t there—

The fact that he knows Liam would contact him right away if that had happened, plus nothing unusual turns up when he searches for news about the rodeo, does little to mollify him. He tries to call Alex, and it goes to voicemail like his phone is off. His texts go unanswered. Desperate, he calls Liam, who answers on the second ring.

“Hey Henry, what’s up?” Liam says in his easy drawl. He certainly doesn’t sound concerned about anything.

“Oh, ah, it’s nothing really,” Henry replies, abruptly feeling like he’s grossly overreacted. “Only, I haven’t been able to get in touch with Alex, and I was worried.”

“Huh,” Liam says. Henry can hear his frown. “He’s been working with Jasper all morning, far as I know. Maybe he left his phone somewhere and forgot about it.”

“Right, that makes sense,” Henry allows, though it doesn’t quite ring true to him. Alex knew his last cup match was today. There’s no way he wouldn’t have been watching.

“I’ll go rustle him up for you, tell ‘im to give you a call,” Liam offers.

“If it’s not too much trouble?”

“Nah, I need to talk to him anyway.”

“Thank you, Liam. I appreciate it.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Liam says. “Hey, congrats, by the way. I hear you’ll be spending a lot more time around these parts soon.”

“Oh, thank you. News travels fast,” Henry says, surprised.

“You’re the one who turned my husband into a polo fan,” Liam accuses with a laugh. “He’s very conflicted about your retirement. Excited to see more of you, but mad to lose the chance to watch his favourite polo player in action.”

Henry can’t help but be touched by that. “Well, tell him I appreciate the sentiment.”

“Sure thing. Alright, I better go find Alex, but I’ll see you soon?”

“Absolutely,” Henry says. “Good luck tonight.”

He waits twenty minutes, during which time he nearly paces a trench in the barn floor, before his phone finally lights up with Alex’s contact info. Snatching it up, he jabs the answer button and immediately feels something unknot in his chest at Alex’s familiar, “Hey, baby.”

“Alex,” Henry sighs, uncaring of what he sounds like. “I couldn’t reach you, and I was worried.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Alex says sheepishly. “Just been busy this morning. Guess my phone went dead and I didn’t realise.”

“Oh, alright,” Henry says. Something still feels off, though. It’s not that he thinks Alex is lying, per se, but after this many years, he can practically feel that there’s something left being left unsaid. “Did you manage to watch the last match?”

“Yeah, of course. I knew y’all would win.”

Henry huffs a laugh. “Then I think you were the only one who did.”

“Nah. They’re gonna be in rough shape without you next year, though.”

“Alex, about the press conference—”

“Hey, look, I gotta run, ok?” Alex interrupts before he can finish, and Henry knows he’s messed up.

Here’s the thing—he hadn’t told Alex about his decision to retire yet. To be fair, he’d only become certain that he would retire very recently, and that wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have over the phone. The plan had been to finish up this season, come home, and bring up the topic in an organic way. Then Henry and his big mouth cocked everything up.

“Is everything alright, love?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer.

“Yeah, of course,” Alex replies breezily. Henry also already knew that he’d say that. “Just got a lot of stuff to take care of before tonight. You’re still flying home tomorrow, right?”

Henry closes his eyes, feeling miserable. “Yes.”

“Good. We can talk more then.”

“Alright. I love you.”

“Love you too, babe. See you soon.”

Not nearly soon enough.

Alex’s unhappiness eats at Henry, but he forces himself not to spiral about it. There’s not much he can do from five thousand miles away. He’s set to fly in on the day after the rodeo—the same day Alex is due to drive back—so he gets a ride from the airport from one of their regular ranch hands and arrives home before Alex does. There are still hours before any of this will be resolved, so he drinks too much tea in an attempt to fight off the jet lag and tries to distract himself from his anxiety by working on logistics for transporting his polo ponies to Texas.

Eventually, Alex’s trailer comes rumbling down the driveway and stops in front of the barn. Henry expects, based on previous experience, that Alex will come to see him first, then they’ll both go take care of the horses, but that’s not what happens. Alex remains out at the barn even though he knows Henry’s already home, working longer than should be necessary to put the horses away, and this, even more than his silences, weighs on Henry.

Steeling himself, he makes his way out to the barn and finds Alex apparently turning over a stall, despite there should be no need to do such a thing. He’s got his sleeves rolled to the elbows as he digs the pitchfork into the wood shavings covering the floor, loosening up the compacted bedding. He doesn’t look up at Henry’s approach, despite the crunch of Henry’s boots on the grit of the barn aisle.

“Hello, love,” Henry says, drawing his attention.

Alex spares him a glance and an unconvincing smile. “Oh, hey. You’re home.”

“I’m home,” Henry agrees. As he’d texted Alex earlier. “Did you not have Luis prepare the stalls?”

“No, he did,” Alex says as he returns to his work. “But then I thought—Jasper always prefers this one, you know? Better to keep him happy.”

“Mm,” Henry hums, watching him. It’s a weak excuse, and Alex knows it. “So it’s not that you’re avoiding me, then.”

Alex pauses, only for a few seconds, then keeps digging without looking at Henry. “What makes you say that?”

“Because that’s what you’ve been doing since the press conference,” Henry says bluntly. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“What do you think?” Alex returns without pausing, stabbing the pitchfork into the bedding with more force.

Now Henry’s getting annoyed. “I’d rather you just told me how you’re feeling and not played these games, actually.”

Finally, Alex leaves off from his digging, jabbing the fork into a bale of straw as he turns fully toward Henry. “Maybe I was surprised that the man I consider my partner has been making major life decisions without me,” he says, his expression stormy. “Why didn’t you tell me you were thinking about retiring?”

“I think I’m entitled to make decisions about my career on my own,” Henry retorts before he can think better of it. He forces himself to take a breath, to uncross his arms, to stay level-headed and not let Alex’s anger with him make him get defensive. Still, he had reasons. “There were a lot of uncertainties, and I didn’t want to worry you about it until I was sure.”

“But why?” Alex demands, taking a few steps toward him. “Why keep it from me at all? We tell each other everything, H. Big and small. And this is a pretty fucking big thing.”

Alex is right, of course. They’re usually much better at communicating than this. They have to be, given the chaos of juggling two careers and two residences.

“Because…” Henry sighs. “Because I knew you’d try to talk me out of it.”

“Damn right I would have,” Alex says firmly. “What we have now is working fine. You don’t have to do this.”

This is exactly the argument Henry didn’t want to have. Silly of him to think he could avoid it. “I know I don’t have to. I want to.”

“But you’re still at the top of your game!” Alex argues, throwing his hands in the air. “And there are plenty of guys who are older than you out there. Just look at Shaan. You could have another ten years playing, easy.”

“I don’t want ten more years of this, Alex,” Henry says with maybe a little too much force. Alex’s eyes go wide and he takes a small step backwards. “I’m exhausted. Ten more years of injuries I don’t bounce back as quickly from, ten more years of flying back and forth, ten more years of splitting our time? I don’t want it, and I don’t think you do either.”

Alex still looks conflicted about this, but he doesn’t argue the point, and Henry can no longer stand to have this discussion on opposite sides of a stall. He crosses the space in a few strides and takes both of Alex’s hands in his, squeezing his palms.

“I know you hate feeling like the reason I’m leaving professional polo, but you are part of it, and that’s ok,” Henry assures him. “I love you, and I love our home here. I know you would never ask me to make this choice, but I’m making it anyway, and I choose you. Us. The life we might build here. The family we might build here, given the chance.”

For a beat, Alex says nothing, staring up at him with wide, astonished eyes. “You… want a family? With me?”

“I want to have that conversation, if you do,” Henry says, amazed at the steadiness of his own voice. “I want it to be a possibility.”

“Oh,” Alex breathes. He still looks a little flabbergasted. “How long have you been thinking about this?”

“Consciously? Since I shattered my patella two years ago,” Henry admits. “I considered calling it then, but I kept going because I thought that’s what I should do. Then this position with the arena league opened up, and I applied on a whim. I didn’t actually think I’d get it—”

“Please,” Alex huffs, rolling his eyes, “they’d have been complete idiots not to snatch you up.”

“Even so. It was all still very theoretical,” Henry says. “I wasn’t even sure I was ready to retire from competition. Until I got the position, and then I realised how much I wanted it. I was working out how to tell you, and then the press conference happened and I went and mucked it all up.” He pulls Alex into a hug, and Alex goes readily, burying his face in Henry’s neck and wrapping his arms tight around Henry’s waist. Henry presses a kiss to his curls. “I’m sorry, love. I didn’t mean for it to be like this.”

“I’m sorry for freaking out,” Alex mumbles into his skin. “I just want you to be happy.”

“I am. I could hardly be any happier,” Henry assures him. Then a wild thought strikes him. Completely, utterly mad, but— “Actually, there is one thing you could do.”

Alex pulls back, untangling himself from Henry’s embrace, and stares earnestly up at him. “Anything.”

Still holding onto one of Alex’s hands, Henry drops to one knee.

He doesn’t have a big speech planned. Doesn’t have anything planned, except for a simple request: “Let me call you my husband.”

Alex gapes at him. Which is probably fair. “Are you fucking serious right now?”

Henry’s never felt more serious about anything in his entire life. “I am. I’m afraid I don’t have a ring, but—” He plucks a piece of tender hay out of a nearby pile and wraps it around Alex’s ring finger, finishing it off with a little knot. “I suppose that will do. Until I can get one from Cartier, of course.”

“Fuck off,” Alex chokes out on a laugh. “I can’t believe you.”

“Is that a yes, or…?”

“Of course it’s a fucking yes. Fuck,” Alex swears with feeling, dragging him to his feet. He pulls Henry into a messy kiss, and they’re both smiling too big to make it work but it doesn’t matter. It’s perfect anyway. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too, darling,” Henry says, and yeah, he was right.

Now he couldn’t be any happier.

They get married on the ranch in the spring, amongst their close friends and family and a riot of bluebonnets. And, oh yes—their horses, which they ride together down the aisle.

Jasper only tries to nibble on Alex a little during the ceremony.