Chapter 31

Once Samuel, Henry, Joshua and Penelope made it into Henry's apartment – which had ended up being a far more complicated ordeal than they had originally thought once they realised neither Henry nor Joshua could walk without full support – they were all extremely tired. The fatigue had hit the young teenager the hardest. Penelope was instructed to rest, only moving when she needed to as to not overexert herself, after all she was still healing from a bad burn. The girl, however, refused to not be part of the brunch and had managed to convince her family that she would be fine since they would just be sitting and eating. Her light pestering paired with too good puppy-dog-eyes was enough for her to convince them. Of course no one had predicted how exciting the brunch would end up, and while the girl was in no mood to go home yet, she was truly spent.

Henry and Samuel were fast to offer her a bed so she could have a nap. She tried to insist she was fine, but it was Joshua to have a final say.

"Have a nap, Penelope, otherwise you are not going to last the day. If you pass out, you are not going to be able to convince anyone to let you out again until you are completely healed." Even though his sister was keeping her face as respectable as possible, the older brother did not miss her bitterness. Joshua knew that if any of her elders told her to do something, she would follow out of respect, however that did not mean she would be happy about it.

The Reyes brothers found themselves a little confused as they watched the two siblings interact, it seemed the youngest two of the Lore family had a habit of staying formal even with the rest of their families. Henry decided not to interfere, he was not close with the Lore's, even if his parents were. Conversely, Samuel made a mental note to discuss it with Archer tonight once everyone went home.

Once the teenager reluctantly agrees to have a rest, knowing her brother was right but upset that she couldn't spend time with the two new additions to her family, Joshua let out a relieved sigh. Samuel offered the spare room.

"No, she should take my room."

Everyone turned at the unexpected exclamation from Henry. He went a little red as he noticed all attention was on his, something he did not usually do until having met Joshua.

"I-I mean, um, Gin keeps some of his stuff in the spare room."

Joshua quickly picked up what he meant, what little progress they had made on Monday in regards to their suicide mission of downing the Q Group had been put into the spare bedroom.

The man nodded before reaching forward, Henry immediately handing over his pair of crutches to the other man.

While Henry legs hadn't played up to the extent that they had recently in almost a decade, his overprotective family insisted he keeps a spare pair of crutches. On Monday he had gotten Joshua and Gin to grab them from the apartment storage unit. In the end they had become far more useful than anyone could have thought they would be.

Joshua stood up with the support of the crutches, pushing his hair out of his eyes – it was at the awkward length where the ends were at eye level. He nodded to his sister, indicated he wanted her to follow him.

Since the other man was going to his room anyway, Henry decided to put in a request. "Can you get my sweatshirt? It should be on the chair." After a second he added on, "And you can grab our things from the safe." After another moment. "And the charging pad. And my water bottle."

As the list grew, Joshua found himself biting back a smirk, it breaking free once Henry's voice becomes a little quieter; the younger man had realised he was being a little demanding and embarrassing himself. Joshua's sadistic streak once again came to the surface. "Anything else, your highness?" Henry turned away, his sandy hair falling to cover half of his quickly reddening face. Joshua snickered, not even needing to see the expression the other man was making to know exactly how he looked.

Henry wanted to throw himself into a pit and disappear. He couldn't understand why he was always the one stuck in embarrassing situations. All he needed was one chance so he could laugh in Joshua's face with no remorse.

"Shut up. Don't laugh at me," Henry mumbled. Joshua just laughed out loud. Giving up with a sour expression, he blew out an exasperated breath. "Fine, whatever. You can borrow a change of clothes while you're at it. There are clips on the desk if you want to pin your hair back too. Now hurry up and go."

Keeping his face turned away, Henry started to wonder how he was going to survive to the point where he would no longer be stuck in this lie; at this rate he was far more likely to die prematurely out of pure embarrassment.

Joshua had stopped laughing, his features going neutral. Despite the blank expression, he was scorning how nice Henry was, the man could even make his heart skip.

Not liking that he had even accepted the fact that another man had made his heart skip, especially since the man was Henry Reyes, Joshua moved from scorning Henry's kindness to how easily he was touched.

Samuel and Penelope both watched the scene unfold, feeling as if they were living inside some kind of sweet romantic comedy. Neither had seen their respective brothers act like that; even if Samuel had seen their good chemistry on a few occasions he still couldn't wrap his head around it. They act so awkwardly around their families but once it was just Joshua and Henry, it looked like they had progressed more than they would let on.

The two by-standers locked eyes, Samuel quickly pulling his phone out to send their account of this whole ordeal to their families.

After picking himself up, Joshua lead his younger sister to Henry's bedroom.

Samuel took it as a chance to finally talk to his younger brother about everything. They hadn't had much of a chance with how fast things had moved, the last chat between just the two of them being Monday morning as they rode in the elevator.

The man couldn't hold back the coyness in his voice as he spoke to his younger brother. "I thought the two of you weren't close."

"We aren't."

"You don't act it though. You two were even out together last night."

What Henry wanted to do was vehemently deny what his brother had said since the matter of fact was that, discounting last night, the two have only had a handful of conversations. However, he was starting to understand other people didn't see it that way. Although, he wasn't sure what gave off the idea that they were that close, other than few marks left from the night before which had led to an obvious misunderstanding.

All of that did not stop him wanting to deny everything.

However, a quick thought entered the man's head: perhaps he could use this.

In reality, Henry had barely spoken to Joshua, but his family did not think that was the case. They thought that his relationship with the other man was steadily growing – as much as the thought disgusted him, Henry decided to put the thought behind him for a moment – and the fact they thought that was not exactly as harmful as to the situation as it was to Henry's ego. The lie was to convince his family they were in a relationship but because of how off putting the situation was, neither of the men had discussed things since Monday, if it hadn't been for Gin, they would have let themselves push their plan to the back of their minds.

What should have happened was the men meeting up, pretending they were developing a romantic relationship to put their parents at ease. That obviously hadn't happened, but their streak of unfortunate situations had luckily led their families to come to the conclusion they wanted them to before the men could even bring themselves to try. And considering their parents had pencilled the marriage ceremony for six weeks' time, this talk with Samuel could be spun to the advantage of their lie.

He decided to go through with deepening the fake relationship, keeping in mind that once Joshua was back, they would most definitely need a chat. Whatever he told his brother would spread to their whole family immediately, their stories needed to correspond.

"I said it earlier, I hadn't even met the guy until last week. We hadn't seen each other since Monday either. The reason we went out so quickly was because we have a mutual friend. I mentioned him earlier, Gin. Since he knew both of us, he obviously knew the relationship was fake, he's the one making sure we talk. Apparently, we were being too uptight though, which meant he got us drunk to relax us which… well, went a little too well."

Samuel saw Henry blush as he spoke about the previous night, starting to realise his brother was not one to easily talk about romantic relationships. Obviously, the chemistry between Henry and Joshua were good, but if anyone heard Henry talk about it without having seen how the two acted together, they would have believed there was nothing between the men. Of course, at this point, a good portion of the world had already seen them, so they were at no threat of that particular misunderstanding. But the blush and sheepish expression at the end indicated there was probably deeper meaning to everything that had come from Henry's mouth.

In the end, Samuel came to the conclusion that Henry was embarrassed about talking about this sort of thing and so downplayed everything. He had no idea his little brother was so adorable.

This thought process was the exact outcome Henry wanted from his brother as he forced himself to remember the embarrassing shower situation from last night to make himself blush. He made sure to put extra emphasis on it being Gin making them talk. He had spoken in a way that sounded a little too prepared, a little too clean for someone talking about a relationship with their older brother. That is right up until the end, making himself 'lose composure'. Henry knew how his doting brother worked when it came to him, he'd read too much into small things. The knowing smile that showed on his brother's face confirmed it.

He didn't want to admit it to himself, but Henry was in fact extremely well suited for playing a con like this.

"Alright then," Samuel eventually said, a slight laugh in his voice, "I won't make you embarrass yourself by going deeper. You're a grown man, I'll leave your relationships to you." Even though Henry should be glad that his plan worked, the entire thing left a bitter aftertaste.