TPASD 30

Alex had asked them to hold all questions until the end, before telling them anything. Telling them exactly how he told Henry. Henry had stayed true to his word. He had kept a grounding hand on Alex's leg and in his hand at all times. Alex had appreciated Henry keeping close and comforting and supporting him, as needed.

"That's it." Alex declared when he was done. He held eye contact with everyone and waited with bated breath for someone to say something. He was sure someone would say something.

Ellen was seething. Physically vibrating in her seat. Leo's hands holding her did not even register in head. Her hands were shaking. She also felt guilty that she had allowed Alex to leave the safety of her home and go to Oscar's in California. Her eyes were shooting Oscar harsh daggers. Ellen was really trying not to explode at her ex-husband. She really didn't want to start an argument, but she was really angry with Oscar and on angry at Oscar on her son's behalf. Most importantly, she was angry at herself, for not doing more to support him in more to push him to open up in the days afterwards.

June wanted to rush at Alex, scoop him up in her arms and take his pain away from him. But she wasn't sure how he would take her sudden assault onto him, so she restrained herself. She wanted to hold on to her baby brother so tight and never let him go. She wanted to wrap him up in her arms and never let go. She was angry at Miguel, she wanted blood. She was also angry at herself. That she hadn't been there for him in his time of need. That she hadn't pushed him harder to find out what was eating him. She had given him space, assuming that he would come to her, when he was ready. She never imagined that it was something of this caliber that had gone down.

Nora was anger. Vibrating with anger. She was also trying to keep June calm, and stop her from launching an all-out, full-scale attack on Alex. Nora was trying really hard not to do exactly what she was preventing June from doing, scooping him up in her arms and holding him close, so no one could get close enough to him again. A small piece of Nora was disappointed in herself. That she felt like she hadn't been emotionally available for Alex during that time. She had been caught up in her own head and it had only led to her letting Alex down. In her eyes, that didn't make her any better than Erica.

Leo felt shocked at first. Like he had slipped into an alternate reality. One where Alex wasn't usual cocky, smart-mouthed, effervescent self, but one where he was a scared, shy and timid young man who wasn't quite sure of himself. It wasn't something that he would usually associate with his stepson, even when he had lost Erica. He had to admit, when the reality and the seriousness of what Alex was saying had sunk in, he actively stopped listening. Knowing that it was going to blow up into an argument between Ellen and Oscar; he made the decision to calm himself and try to remain calm. He would only ever admit to himself, he had done that by focusing on Henry and Alex. Their clasped hands. The physical, as well as mental and emotional support that Henry was giving Alex. He was pleased to see that the prince hadn't run at the first sign of trouble. Not that he expected the prince to, but now knowing that Erica hadn't responded positively when Alex had opened up and trusted her, Alex had to have been scared. Leo could feel Ellen vibrating with anger beside him. He put a steady hand on her leg to try and calm her, but it only seemed to make his wife angrier. He slipped his arms around Ellen, trying to ground her, but it only seemed to make her irater.

Oscar looked down at his feet. He was angry. He was guilty. He was livid. And all at himself. He was stuck in a negative cycle of self-loathing himself for his actions so much. He hadn't even thought about how it would feel for Alex. How much Alex had put up with, hiding this from them for all these years. How Erica's harsh reaction would have terrified him. How he might be scared of his own reactions. Or how Ellen or Leo might be feeling. How June, who was so goddamn close with her brother, they were practically glued at the hip.

Henry was torn between holding onto Alex for dear life, and only looking at him, as well as keeping an eye on his family. He had seen the varying degrees of shock on their faces, when he'd risked a glance while Alex was telling them everything. But in that moment, he'd been more focused on Alex. He loved Alex. That was the point, in that very moment, he realised he loved the man who he was holding so fiercely and protectively. Henry was a prince, and knew as such, that he had access to an immense amount of wealth, contacts and resources. That he would be able to do almost anything he wanted to.

But he couldn't take Alex away from his pain. The pain of retelling it. The pain of reliving it. The pain of having made the choice to be with him, only to have this come back up.

Alex could feel Henry's love and warmth surrounding him. Henry's hand and grip had never faltered. Just like when they were in the bedroom and Alex was telling Henry. Alex could feel more tears threatening to fall. He had already broken down twice in the middle of telling his family. He had tried not to focus on their faces. He focused on the wall behind Leo's head, or the weight of Henry's hand in his, physically grounding him. During the more painful revelations of Alex's, he could feel Henry slip his other arm around him. Alex could sense Henry had been tempted to pull him even closer but didn't want to appear too needy in his family's eyes.

The silence was tense and laden with bated breaths. The silence was awkward and harsh. Alex had never done well with silence. He had always felt the need to fill most silences with something, even if it was just some inane chatter. However, never more than in this moment, did Alex feel like himself just existing was a burden for the rest of the room.

He had already spent a good two and a half years in therapy. Admitting to himself, and his therapist that he has abandonment issues. He has self-deprecating tendencies. He has an overinflated sense of self-worth in an effort to try to bury his trauma. He has issues regarding unrealistic expectations. Mostly the ones that he puts on himself. It was in therapy, that he finally found his diagnosis for ADHD, chronic anxiety, as well as a working theory that he has PTSD stemming from the sexual assault.

The harshest part of admitting this to himself and his therapist, was actually trusting the therapist enough to open up. He had been seeing his therapist for almost six months before Alex confessed that he was the fifth therapist he had seen. That he had been either inadvertently blamed for what happened to him, slut-shamed or that they simply had implied that he had made the whole thing up.

The subtext that men cannot be raped, or sexually assaulted had been more than enough for even Alex, one of the most obtuse people on the planet to pick up on.

He wouldn't be as ok as what he was today, if not for his therapist. Even if he was still a work in progress.

"Someone fucking say something." Alex seethed in a huff, while refusing to take his eyes off his clasped hands around Henry's hand.

"I think," Henry started, hoping someone would pick up the narrative from him. He was fine to get the ball rolling for them, but it shouldn't have been up to him. These people were Alex's family. "You are one of, if not, the bravest person I have ever met. I know it wasn't easy for you to tell us that. Thank you for trusting us."

Henry pressed his lips to Alex's. It was over, before it even began. But it was enough for Alex to look up and finally acknowledge the room, as a whole.

Oscar shot off to the bathroom, just off the main room and the sounds of vomiting and dry retching can be heard echoing around the room. June and Nora winced as the sounds echoed through the living area. There hadn't even been any time for Oscar to get the door closed behind him.

Leo winced as a second round began, but they sounded dry, and grating on Oscar's throat in Leo's ears. Alex winced too. He wanted nothing more in that moment to curl up and hide away. If Gabriella wasn't already so overtired and in desperate need of sleep, Alex would have been praying for her to wake up needing his attention in order to get away from it all.

Suddenly there was movement from where June and Nora had been sitting and both Henry and Alex had an armful of June. June was openly sobbing a weeping. Henry tried to back out of the embrace and let June console her brother, but June wasn't having any of it. It wasn't until Henry heard a 'thank you' being whispered in his ear, that he had realised June had been talking to him, and not Alex.

Alex was shaking slightly, under the weight of both June's comfort and attention, as well as June's emotions. He hadn't even taken into account the immense relief he had been feeling from the weight that had lifted from his chest. Finally feeling free of the burden, that keeping this secret was on him.

He had been expecting tears. Tears of disappointment. Not tears of sympathy and abject apologies.

He had been expecting a lecture. Lecture all of the ways he had fucked up his life so far.

He had been expecting their anger at him. For concealing his truth. Not anger at what had been done to him.

He had been expecting pity. Expected to feel their pity. All he felt was their hurt.

What about his hurt?

Oscar's dry retching had reached a third and final round, which had prompted Leo to leave the comfort of Ellen to Nora, while he went to check on Oscar. He was sure it was safer than letting Ellen check on her ex-husband.

That would inevitably lead to conflict. To a fight. Right now, that was the last thing that Alex needed.

Reluctantly, June released him and went and took up a seat in the seat Leo had vacated, while Henry had resumed his comfort of Alex (he never technically stopped.)

"I am proud of you." Ellen softly gave Alex a tentative smile. It was small, and maternal. "Thank you for trusting us with that. We know how hard it was."

It reminded Henry of the small, conspiratorial smiles he used to share with his own mother, when his father would be overbearing, or exasperating to Henry. Especially when Henry was a pre-teen and Arthur would make it his mission to poke fun at Henry, in an effort to get his son to open up more.

The only problem with Ellen's words, in Alex's eyes, was that was Senator Ellen Claremont talking. Not his mom. In this moment though, he wanted and needed his mom, not the senator.

Squeezing Henry's hand in quick succession three times, he hoped he could convey to Henry how much he appreciated everything Henry was doing for him. He appreciated the fact that Henry hadn't run off, at the first telling of what happened. Henry hadn't even run off, as Alex told his own family.

Henry had sat (stood) by him. His own stalwart, standing true. A knight in shining armor. Prince Charming!

Alex felt himself fall, just that bit further into the abyss of love.

He just prayed he wasn't alone.

"How the hell could you just ship him back to me without asking him what the fuck, Oscar? Ellen hissed at him. They were on the back patio alfresco area. Henry had yawned, and Alex had felt every bit of it, before reminding Henry that they had left London almost twenty hours ago and were tired.

Historically, Alex had never been a great sleeper. Gabriella had inherited Alex's sleep hygiene. It was abysmal.

However, after everything that had happened tonight with Alex telling his family the truth and Henry's strong, outward show of support, Alex was wired. Wired wasn't even the correct term. Vibrating, perhaps? Alex had all but begged Henry to take care of him but had rebuffed by the prince.

Even though they were boyfriends, Henry didn't want anyone to think he was taking advantage of Alex in his vulnerable state. Even if Nora had told Henry to 'suck Alex's brain out through his dick so he can't think about how shitty tonight was'. Henry couldn't do it. Even if he physically wanted to.

Henry had fallen asleep, almost as soon as his head hit the pillow, sleeping soundly and princely. As only he could do. But Alex had laid awake on remunerated over every little detail he had shared. How had he worded things? How he had presented it. Alex was questioning everything in his mind, as he deliberately avoided talking about the growing stack of evidence he had stored in his cloud, on his private server.

Tiptoeing out of his room, in search of water, was when he stumbled upon his parents. Doing what they do best. Argue!

"I didn't have time, Ellen." Oscar defended himself harshly. "I was trying to keep my fucking campaign from imploding."

"Yes, because the fucking politics of it all was the most important thing." Ellen retorted angrily. "Not the fucking safety and emotional safety of our child."

"For fuck sake's Ellen, I made a bad judgement call." Oscar replied, angrily. "You're not going to win any fucking parenting points for pointing that out to me."

Ellen huffed and paced to the edge of the patio, before turning on her heel, and stalking back to her ex-husband. Getting right up in Oscar's face, she lowered her voice. In the stillness of the house, and the silence outside, her voice travelled too well. "I know sometimes, I might be an inattentive parent, but our son got sexually fucking assaulted on my watch!"

"Fuck you!" Oscar hissed. "Alex was bored. He got drunk and made a poor choice to drink. He went with someone who he thought he could trust. I am not blaming him, but his poor decision making led him there."

Alex could barely keep a breath of air inside his lungs, they were burning with a need for air. He felt like they were getting too large for his body; or that the room was rapidly losing air. He felt like he was suffocating.

Without thinking, Alex shouted. "I was fucking having sexuality crisis." Defending himself. "I was angry and scared. Confused." The wind felt like it had been knocked right out of him. "I was fucking drunk, and I got raped. But all you two fucking care about is whose fault it is. It's MINE! I blame myself for what happened every damn day!"

With that Alex stalked past them, off the back patio and onto the pier. When he got to the edge of the pier, he let out an almighty scream into the darkness. Anger at his parents was coursing through his veins and he felt like physically vibrating.

Without thinking, Alex dove into the blackened lake, shimmering in the silver moonlight below. Thankful that he'd changed out of his jeans and shirt from earlier in the day, having slipped into some fresh shorts after a shower with Henry, only an hour before Henry passed out.

He pushed himself to put some more distance between himself and his parents. He could still feel the tension and the anger between them, when he reached the dock. So instead of hoisting himself up on the dock like he normally would, he kept swimming.

Letting his mind slip into nothing, Alex allowed himself tread water for a moment so he could process and think things through. Looking back towards the house, the pier was barely visible, and the dock was in the foreground. He had two options go back to the dock or keep going to the small sandbar. Either way, he was screwed.

His mind was whirling and racing. It was tense and he was tense. At any moment, he felt like he could snap.

This wasn't the first time he had swam in the lake after dark. It wasn't even the first time he had escaped his parent's fighting by swimming in the lake. But he usually ventured no further than the floating dock.

This was the first time he had ever ventured beyond the dock, in the dark. Thanked every deity he knew the name of that Lake LBJ wasn't a tidal lake.

Once the water was shallow enough to stand, he took himself up onto the sandy bank. There were a few overgrown trees on the bank, but no one ever ventured out here at night. During the day, people would kayak, or paddle out, row or bring their boats out. This was the site of picnics and summer frolicking. The site of volleyball games and touch football in the sand. This was the site of a memory bank full of summer memories, full of years gone by. A memory bank, he was eager to add to. To show Gabriella.

But right now, it dark, quiet, still. The full moon was bright and lit up the bank enough. His eyes had already adjusted to the light of the moon by the time he arrived. The trees swayed in the gentle breeze that always blew through at night. His body shivered slightly, cold from the wetness of the water and the breeze mingling on his skin. The sand had cooled from the heat of the day, but the humidity still lingered in the night's sky.

Of course it did. He was home in Texas. For the first time since he left here!

"Look at them stars. Ain't nothing prettier than a Texas sky." Dolly Parton's airy, soulful voice from his mom's favourite movie floats into his head. The gravel of it hits the perfect note against her southern lilt, as the delivered is recalled in her pitch perfect voice inside Alex's racing mind.

Right in that moment, he has never agreed with the woman more.

God, he missed this place.

Sitting himself down in the sand, Alex tried to slow his frantic mind down and think about nothing, as the stars twinkled in the night sky above him. Then his thoughts filled of Gabriella. His pride and joy. His daughter. His everything. About the promises he had made to her when they had been alone. His promises to do better and be better than his parents. His promises to always try to do right by her.

He thought of Henry, and how Henry had been true to his word and had stuck by him no matter what. How Henry had been there for him, in what had felt like, the darkest time of life. But in every dark moment since. How he had been there for Henry too.

He thought of Henry and Gabriella together. How they are together. How wonderful they are. How much Gabriella clearly adores Henry. He thought about how the sight of Gabriella excited and happy to see Henry made him feel. How they share a bond that is so similar, yet so different to the one he shares with her.

He realised, when thinking about Henry; just how much Leo and Henry are alike. Besides their shared interests of classic English literature, sad, romantic cinematic movies from the eighties and James Bond movies, their shared abysmal taste in Star Wars movies and their love of falafel. They're both people pleasers, although Alex noted to himself, that Henry was learning to use his backbone more every day. That they both love wholly and unconditionally.

He and Leo had an odd kind of relationship. Sure, they grew to like, and eventually love one another. But Leo had started seeing Ellen only a couple of months after his dad left their family home. For the longest time, Alex blamed himself. He refused to speak to Oscar, he gave Ellen the silent treatment, and when Leo started getting serious with Ellen, he treated Leo with hostility.

Truthfully (and yes, Alex has apologised for his appalling behaviour in the past) Alex didn't really blame Leo, he didn't really hate Leo either. He just didn't know him. Oh, and Alex was eleven when he went off to summer camp and came home to find his parents had split up and his dad had packed up his belongings and moved out. Moving not just out of the house, or out of Austin, but all the way to San Diego, California.

He thought about June, and then later about Nora. About how he would be lost without them. How they're the only women, besides his mom, he's ever really been able to count on. In the days, weeks and months after his dad had left, June had been his rock. When he was treating everyone with anger and hostility, and blaming no one but himself, shutting everyone and everything out, June was the only one he let in. June was everything to him.

In some ways, June saved him. June always makes him see rhyme and reason. June was the one who always made sure he did his homework, brushed his teeth. She would even remind him to wear clean underwear. She's also responsible for making Alex see that his addiction to politics was unhealthy.

Everything June has ever done for him, has come under the heading of: She's done it for his own good.

Now he has Henry. Henry takes that role on more than admirably and Alex guesses, that only time will tell if she will ever fully let Henry take over that job.

Thinking of his dad and his father's hissed words at his mom, Alex's heart breaks. It was like hearing himself be slut-shamed by that first therapist all over again. It felt like when he had built up the courage to tell Erica, only to have her metaphorically spit in his face.

Regret sat in the pit of his stomach. He had regrets about the actions of his younger self. His family have always been very open and very honest with one another. The facts were simply that they have always loved and respected and supported one another, even if his mom and dad wanted to kill each other ninety percent of the time. Leo is the most chill of the parental trio. June will referee the parental argument. Nora will always know the odds. And his role ...? He will always be the most sarcastic. But most of all, he will always be the one who will break their hearts.

He left with Erica to go to England to study and work, choosing not to return home until now.

He was the one who chose to put his own mental health before his love of politics.

He was the one who was idealistic, when the rest of them were realistic.

He was the one who could be counted on to screw something else up.

He was a screw up.

He didn't want them to be disappointed in him yet again.

That was why he never told his family the truth about Miguel and what happened in California.

His body letting out another shiver and he realised the winds had picked up and the humidity was dropping. There was a storm rolling in on those thunderheads in the distance and he would really rather be inside before it hit. Gracefully, he made his way back into the water. The temperature of the water much chillier than it was when he had swum out here. It was that point he realised he had lost track of time out here. That he had been stuck in his own head.

As he reached the dock at the halfway point, the rain that fell from the sky felt like shards of glass on his cold, wet skin. Each raindrop felt like shards slicing through his skin, like a hot knife slicing through cold butter. The sting of the rain as well as the guilt in the pit of his guts for storming out of the house and leaving his daughter behind, in Alex's mind, made twisted sort of sense.

Karma.

By the time he was hoisting himself up out of the water and onto the pier, the sky was lighting up with a flash of sheet lightning, illuminating the darkened sky more than the moonlight had. The rain was pelting down and to Alex, it didn't matter anymore. He was already wet, what more harm could a few raindrops do to him?

After Alex's story, and the shock wore off, no plans were really made. There was a lot of sharing the blame and finger pointing, even though Leo and June tried desperately to keep it all contained. There was hugs and discussions about therapy. There were discussions of diagnoses, and Alex had told them, that was something he wasn't ready to share with them yet.

No plans had been made and no course of actions had been decided. Alex assumed that at some point Shaan and Henry would consult Bea at KP, maybe even Catherine at Buckingham. Alex definitely knew without an infinitesimal shred of doubt that both Ellen and Oscar would be on the phone or in the emails of their respective teams. Getting them to scramble a team of their best and brightest on this.

Leo would be on the phone, cobbling through his list of contacts (and the list was very long) looking for the most viscous, shark hybrid bulldog of a lawyer that they knew of. Leo's contacts were ranged and varied in careers and eccentricity. From actual celebrity late night talk show hosts to politicians, to police officers, doctors, lawyers and everything in between. Even right down to the janitorial staff that worked at the local elementary school by the Lake House.

Perhaps the smartest of them all though, was Leo's sister, Erin. Erin and her husband owned a horse ranch on the outskirts of El Paso. She was a geologist and had lived and worked all over the world. They had deliberately chosen a life of no children and were immensely happy with their life.

However, they did love June and Alex, like they were Leo's flesh and blood. Erin and Peter would do anything for them. Even the time that June and Alex had decided to road trip from the lake house to their place in El Paso and had taken the scenic tour and broken down in some one-horse town, Peter had come to rescue them.

Erin was like Alex. A critical thinker. A strategist. She was shrew and she wasn't afraid to play hardball. He had always been close with Erin. She liked being outdoors and keeping active, like Alex. She had a coffee addiction and an ADHD addled brain, like Alex. They could relate to each other in a way that no one else related to them.

Alex knew something about Erin that only Peter knew about her. She was bisexual too.

She had been the one who had explained bisexuality to him. In a way that Nora had tried to before but had failed.

As the thunder roared once more and the lightning lit up the sky once more, Alex realised he had been latibulating long enough. It was time for him to let himself back inside the house.