Chapter Text
ONE YEAR EARLIER
(2022)
“Next up we’ve got Beatrice! Give it up for m’lady, she’s giving us Shania tonight!”
The bar erupts into something between a cheer and a war cry.
Henry stays seated in his corner of the booth as his sister weaves her way through the crowd and toward the little raised platform at the back of the room, arms already lifted above her head like she’s accepting a medal before she’s even touched the microphone. Someone hands it to her, and Bea wraps her fingers around it as the opening notes of Man! I Feel Like A Woman! spill out of the speakers.
Beside him, Pez lets out a sound of pure, unhinged delight. “Oh, she’s going to be marvellous. I like her.”
“You’ve met her all of three times,” Henry says.
“And every time I meet her she gets better.”
Henry can’t really argue with that. Just last week, he was standing in a much larger bar on the North side of Birmingham, surrounded by a crowd of three hundred people who spent their hard-earned money to hear Bea play the guitar in her tribute band. It was the band’s one-year anniversary and naturally, Henry went to support his sister.
He takes a sip of his drink and watches her command the room. He is here, technically, for networking. That was the word Bea used when she called him two days ago, voice bright and unhelpfully vague. Come out for my birthday, Henry, it’ll be fun, and there are going to be some people there who are in the industry and it would be good for you to meet them. Henry said he’d think about it. Then Bea mentioned there will also be an open bar, and Henry agreed.
And so here he is in Shoreditch, in another bar with sticky floors, in a booth that’s slightly too small and where the cushions have seen better decades, nursing a whisky sour and witnessing Bea absolutely demolish the first two verses while a table of women near the front lose their collective minds about it. It is, against all odds, a reasonably enjoyable evening.
Bea sails into the chorus, and the room sings along. Well, the parts of the room that know the words do, and the parts that don’t simply clap and sway, because that’s the kind of song this one is. It invites you in whether you want it or not. Henry taps a finger against the side of his glass, following the beat. In his twenty-five years of life, he has developed a genuine appreciation for a well-executed karaoke performance, which is decidedly not the same thing as participating in one, and Bea knows him better than she knows herself, so she understands.
Or so he thought.
Bea is pointing in his direction.
Henry frowns, heat creeping up the back of his neck. Bea is absolutely, unambiguously pointing in his general direction, one hand still holding the microphone while the other is extended toward his corner of the bar. Henry shakes his head, but Bea’s eyes don’t leave him. She waves her hand as if to say come on and points again, more insistently this time, eyebrows raised in a way that means she is going to win this and she knows it and she wants him to know it too.
Henry opens his mouth to form the word no, and that’s when he becomes aware of movement in his vicinity. He cranes his neck to take a glance, and—
Right. Of course.
In the booth behind him, half-stood already with a grin cracking across his face, is the great Alex Claremont-Diaz.
Henry had clocked him earlier, but merely because he’s impossible not to notice. From the moment he stepped foot into Bea’s band as the lead singer, Alex’s flames have been so bright and so high that Henry briefly worried Bea would burn herself on them. She hasn’t, but that doesn’t mean Henry can just sit back and wait for it to happen anyway.
Alex jogs up to the DJ, who materialises a second microphone from nowhere and thrusts it at him, and as soon as Alex has his hand on it, he picks up the song mid-verse without missing a beat. His voice drawls the lyrics, wrapping around the words like gravel coated in sun-warmed honey, and the crowd roars.
He’s good. That’s the irritating thing. Henry had hoped, privately and somewhat pettily, that it might not translate outside of a proper studio, or that the amount of alcohol Alex has consumed tonight would at least dim his talent, but no. He’s standing next to Bea, shoulder to shoulder under the grimy bar lights, and he’s magnetic. Bea gives him a whole chorus and he takes it like a gift, works the room like this is what he was put on this earth to do. The table of women near the stage have their phones out, recording and cheering on.
Bea’s smile reaches her temples. She loves this, Henry can tell.
“—just say you want to sit on his face.”
Pez's voice cuts through the music, and Henry chokes on his whisky sour. He presses a palm to his sternum and whips his head to the side, where Pez is regarding him with an expression of profound serenity.
“I don’t— what—?”
“It’s called a joke, darling,” Pez yells into his ear. “I’m just pulling your leg.”
Henry finishes coughing and wipes at his eyes. “You’re the worst person I know.”
“You know very few people.”
“By choice—”
Pez starts laughing, that big unguarded chuckle of his, and Henry finds, against his better judgement, that he’s laughing too.
By the final chorus, the whole room is a single organism, swaying and shouting along, and Alex has one arm slung around Bea’s waist. They finish the song together, heads tipped close, Bea’s giggles swallowed by the last note, and the applause is immediate and enormous and probably audible from the street. And then, while people are still clapping and the noise is still rolling, Alex turns and kisses her. Henry can’t tell if it’s her cheek or her lips; he looks away before he can find out, running his fingertip around the top of his glass in a slow circle. The condensation feels cold under his skin.
Bea and Alex tumble back to the table flushed and breathless, pulling a comet trail of compliments behind them. Bea drops into the seat across from Henry, snatching his drink in the process, and Alex slides in beside her. He drapes one arm over the back of the booth, the fabric of his burgundy button-up stretching over muscle.
“You’re not gonna go?”
Henry blinks. “Sorry?”
The dark curls falling over Alex’s forehead are slightly damp with sweat, and the scent of his cologne crawls up Henry’s nose as he leans forward to hear Alex better.
Alex nods toward the stage. “You’ve been watching all night. You’re not gonna go up?”
Henry lifts his chin and says, with as much conviction as he can muster, “Not for all the tea in China.”
Alex tilts his head. His gaze flicks briefly toward Pez before landing on Henry again, and there’s something that might be amusement in the corner of his mouth. “Not even a duet? I’m sure Pez wouldn’t mind if I stole you for a few minutes.”
Pez’s palm smacks against Henry’s knee under the table, and he’s already smirking insufferably when Henry shoots him a glance. Christ.
“I’m perfectly alright where I am,” Henry assures Alex. “Unlike some people, I don’t require a room full of strangers staring at me to feel like the evening was worthwhile.”
Alex’s mouth does that thing again, that near-smile. “Careful, that almost sounded like a compliment.”
“It really wasn’t.”
“Sure.” Alex reaches out and picks up an abandoned cocktail straw from the table, twirls it once between his fingers, and lets it go. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
Henry says nothing.
He steals his glass back from Bea, takes a sip, and lets the noise of the bar fold back around him — a new song starting up, someone else brave enough to take the stage. Bea is already in conversation with the person on her other side, cackling at something Henry doesn’t catch, and across the table, Alex’s eyes are locked on the stage.
Henry’s eyes, for reasons he declines to interrogate, are locked on Alex.