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Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Whatever is inescapable. In the worst way possible. He’s always fucking there. Alex turns up for his shift and Henry is there behind the coffee machine, apron tied around his waist and stupid, tight white T-shirt clinging to his biceps. Alex turns up for open-mic night at the cafe and there he is again, reading his fucking poetry. Alex goes to the grocery store, or the bookshop, or the fucking campus library, and who does he see? Henry. Always Henry.
Always Henry, always with a different guy.
The same guy rarely shows up more than once. Or rather, sometimes the same guy shows up at the cafe a few days after Henry has picked them up, taken them home and clearly left them in bed in the early hours of the morning, and asks if they can see him again. At which point Henry politely smiles and tells them that he had a very nice time, but he’s not interested in a repeat performance. In his stupid British accent, all rounded vowel sounds and clipped letters. Alex has watched it happen precisely twelve times. Not that he’s like, keeping track or anything.
There are a few who come back around: a tall Indian guy with slick black hair and immaculately pressed suits, a guy with dark skin and brightly coloured shirts, the guy who works at the dry cleaner’s over the road. They sweep in, exchange a few words with Henry and then he’ll either disappear with them for twenty minutes on his break, or they’ll reappear at the end of the shift and he’ll drift off into the night with them. Sometimes Alex will catch Henry talking to someone at an event, exchanging glances, smooth small talk and the occasional lingering touch, and then Henry will slip away with a phone number or, more often, with the guy in question.
Henry always has this smug look on his face after he disposes of his latest conquest. The corner of his mouth pinches into a smirk like he’s trying not to smile. Alex fucking hates it. He wants to wipe that stupid satisfied grin from his lips.
Henry shows up for his shift on Thursday afternoon looking just as he always does: like a pompous prick. He’s all blonde hair and blue eyes, like the caricature of a fucking Disney prince. Alex wonders how long he stands in front of the mirror in the morning to make his hair fall so there’s one curl that falls over his forehead. He’s wearing dark jeans and a tight, white T-shirt, which is a stupid fucking idea because they work in a coffeeshop and someone – probably Alex, probably deliberately – is going to spill something over him. Besides, it’s Christmas and he should be wearing a fucking Christmas sweater.
Henry slides behind the counter with an easy smile. ‘Good morning,’ he says to Alex’s sister, June, who is leaning over the counter waiting for Alex to make her an almond milk latte.
Henry grins at her, and she smiles back like a fucking traitor, and then rolls her eyes at Alex when he plonks her coffee cup in front of her with a glare. He watches as she sweeps back out to her office over the road in a tight pencil skirt and kitten heels while Henry converses easily with Nora, who runs the place because her flighty parents fucked off in a campervan to travel and smoke weed.
Alex hates working shifts with Henry. He’s entitled and smarmy and the customers all fawn over him, and he especially hates that Nora leaves Henry in charge when she leaves, as though Alex isn’t her fucking best friend. ‘Henry is actually on my payroll, Alex. Not just some leach who picks up shifts whenever he’s run out of money. Play nice, and don’t be a dick to him. I’m going to get a burrito, I’ll be back in a bit,’ she tells him and then she clips her bike helmet around her neck and leaves, Alex muttering under his breath about her being a traitor.
‘Oat milk flat white, please,’ a guy says to Alex. He rings it through with a vague eye roll. It’s not that he’s not grateful for this job, he is. He needs it. Law School is fucking torture, and he can barely keep up with the tuition and his rent, and Nora lets him pick up shifts whenever he needs them, which lately is a lot. But goddamn if these Brooklyn hipsters are going to be the death of the American dairy industry.
He passes the order to Henry without a word, and turns back to see the guy is still standing there. ‘You can wait at the other end of the counter,’ he tells him.
The guy pauses and watches Henry, towel hanging out of his back pocket, wipe his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Your colleague…’ he says. ‘He, you know, single?’
Alex very visibly rolls his eyes this time. ‘Pretty fucking sure,’ he mutters under his breath. The guy waits. ‘I’m sure if you ask nicely, you’ll find out,’ he tells the guy. ‘Next?’ he says to the woman behind him in the queue.
The guy moves to the end of the counter and talks easily with Henry, and then Alex watches from the corner of his eyes as Henry’s lips press together, and the guy leaves with his drink and without Henry scribbling down his number on a napkin.
Alex watches as Henry makes the woman’s cappuccino and cleans the milk nozzle with his cloth.
He hands it to her with a smooth grin, and tells her to ‘have a lovely day,’ in that nauseating accent.
‘What, he wasn’t your type?’ Alex says to him once the woman has left, and there’s no queue left.
Henry’s tongue darts out to wet his lips. ‘You know what, you’re extremely fixated on who I sleep with.’
‘I’m not sure I’d call it sleeping—’ Alex says with a slight scoff, and Henry taps the jug down hard on the counter.
He turns to Alex. ‘You’ve made your feelings very clear, Alex. I get that you don’t “approve” of how I live my life, but to be quite honest with you, I couldn’t really give a fuck what you think, and I’m not going to stand here and listen to your little digs. Yes, I have a lot of sex, and I’m really, really not ashamed of that, and I’m not going to let you make me feel like I should be. Can you go and make yourself useful and set up the chairs for the open mic night, please?’ Henry’s voice is clipped and stern and there’s something about it that makes Alex feel weird, like he wants to apologise. Except Alex absolutely does not want to do that. Henry turns away from Alex and pours his milk into the cup.
Alex rolls his eyes. He fucking hates that Henry can tell him what to do, but he also has no desire to be around him. So he grumbles, throws his cloth down on the counter, and goes to get the chairs out from the back room while Henry makes a start on setting up the bar.
It’s not that Alex doesn’t support everyone’s right to sleep with whoever they want however much they want, because he does. God knows he’s had enough casual sex in his time. There’s just something about Henry that really rubs him up the wrong way. The way he thinks that he’s just so above everything and everyone else, how he flaunts it. How Alex has to watch the parade of guys that fawn over him.
Alex moves the tables out of the room and starts to set the chairs up in rows. He pulls the microphone and the sound equipment out of the back room and starts setting them up, and he notices Henry at the counter talking to yet another guy. These open mic nights were Henry’s idea technically – probably because he wants a platform for his poetry. They always seem to draw a good crowd which Alex supposes is probably good news considering they’re supposed to be fundraising events for a local LGBTQ shelter. This evening’s open mic is Christmas-themed. Nora, June, and Alex had spent the night before setting up string lights around the room and decorating the tree with tinsel and a mishmash of ornaments acquired over the years by Nora’s parents.
‘Wanna tell me why you’re scowling and scaring off all my customers?’ Nora asks him as he sets up a chair for the reader, having returned from her burrito trip. She didn’t even get him one.
‘I’m not scowling,’ Alex replies.
‘Uh huh,’ Nora says, like she absolutely doesn’t believe him.
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Are you still pissed at Henry because that guy last week that you thought was flirting with you was actually trying to ask for his number, not yours?’
‘What? No. Shut up.’
Nora smirks, and Alex rolls his eyes. ‘You still got a date out of it,’ she says, leaning back against the wall. ‘That girl was hot, why aren’t you seeing her again?’
Alex shrugs. She had been hot: tall and blonde with sharp features, wickedly funny and smart as fuck, but the sex had been weird. He’d been in this weird headspace that he just couldn’t shake. Unable to get rid of this weird feeling that there was something all wrong about it.
‘Just didn’t click,’ Alex tells her.
‘Bad sex?’ Nora asks.
‘No,’ Alex replies, too quickly.
‘You’re so weird about this stuff. I’ve literally had sex with you. Multiple times. Why are you so fucking weird about talking about it?’
‘Yeah, and now you have sex with my sister, so forgive me if I don’t want to be reminded of that.’
Nora rolls his eyes. ‘You’re such a prude. Come on, what was wrong with it?’
‘Nothing! Nothing, it was just… I don’t know, it just didn’t feel right.’
Nora looks at him and appraises him for a second. ‘Interesting.’
‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean? “Interesting”?’
‘Nothing. Come on, go help Henry behind the bar. He needs a hand.’
***
Alex sees Henry next on Tuesday, when he’s picking up another shift making eggnog lattes and peppermint mochas for Brooklyn’s freelancers, all of whom will buy a single coffee and then camp out for an entire afternoon like they live here or something. Nora has done a good job making Holleran’s cosy – there are several soft leather couches and a tree that wafts the smell of pine through the air, mixing gently with the scent of roasted coffee beans.
He’s alone with Henry again. Alex hasn’t seen him since the open mic night. Which was fine; Henry was fine. But he’s a poet by trade, of course he’s better than everyone else. He’s doing a fucking PhD in English Literature. He writes his own poetry and has had little pamphlets of it published that they sell at Holleran’s, on the counter right next to bags of beans and chocolate bars. Henry can recite Keats like it’s engraved in his bones and Alex definitely felt absolutely nothing that time he got drunk with June and Nora and Henry was there, and started reciting Bright Star. He’s such a fucking show off.
June and Nora have skipped out for some Christmas shopping and Alex is still fucking grouchy because his dad can’t get the time off to come and visit them for Christmas. Alex knows he works hard and that he’s dealing with a massive case right now but he’s not seen him in months and Alex can’t afford the plane ticket back home to Texas, and his mom is off on a cruise with her new husband. So it’s just going to be him, June and Nora on Christmas, and maybe he’s taking that out on Henry, just a little.
By the time Hunter – who is possibly the only person Alex finds more irritating than Henry – comes to relieve them from their shift, ten fucking minutes late, Alex is on the verge of bubbling over. Then, a guy comes up to the counter and smiles at Henry.
‘You ready to go?’ he asks. He’s got sharp green eyes and even sharper cheekbones and the two of them look as though they’re heading off to some sort of fucking model audition together and Alex doesn’t know why it makes him so fucking angry to see them together. He throws his towel in Hunter’s direction and leaves him yelling something about the milk delivery in his wake.
Henry storms through the door into the staff room barely a minute later. ‘Are you going to tell me what the hell your problem is, or are you going to continue to act like a child?’
Alex scoffs out a laugh. ‘I don’t have a problem.’
‘Don’t you? Because you’ve made your feelings about how much you hate me very clear, Alex. But I just don’t understand why.’ He pauses.
‘Do you want to know what I think?’ Henry’s lips curve upwards into a knowing smile. He takes a step towards Alex. His eyes are dark, his pupils wide, just a small ring of blue left around them.
‘I think,’ Henry says, and he takes yet another step so that he’s right in Alex’s space. His lips right by Alex’s ear, hot breath fanning over his neck. His voice is low and slow and sure. ‘I think that you’re jealous.’ His lips curve around the word, holding it on his tongue like it’s an ace card. ‘I don’t think you hate me at all. I think...’ His tongue slips out to wet his lips, pink on pink. ‘You want to know what you’re missing. I think that you’re jealous of all the other men. You want to know what it’s like to fuck me.’
Alex lets out a traitorous hitched breath and Henry laughs darkly and Alex feels it run the whole way through him. He swallows down the lump in his dry throat. He can feel Henry grinning with the confirmation against his neck and Alex feels like he’s on fucking fire.
‘Am I right?’ Henry hums against his neck.
Alex can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t speak. His jaw is trembling as he bites down on his lip, desperate not to let out a sound. ‘You can have it, you know. All you have to do is ask.’
And unforgivably, Alex whimpers.
Henry steps back and gives Alex a long look with raised eyebrows. Alex doesn’t move, he can’t move. He’s rooted to the floor. Henry shrugs casually, and then turns and collects his bag from the floor.
‘Goodnight, Alex.’
***
Alex goes for a run. He’s restless, still on edge and angry after what Henry said, so he bundles himself up and pulls on his sneakers and he runs.
The thing is, Alex knows he’s bisexual. That’s not the problem. Sure, he might have come a little late to the realisation that jerking off and making out with your male best friend for most of senior year isn’t an entirely heterosexual thing to do, and not realised until he got to college and found his eyes straying to his teammates’ bodies in the showers after lacrosse more than a passive appreciation or interest warranted, but he got there eventually. The only thing is, that his bisexuality has been… well, more theoretical than anything since he and Liam used to jerk off together. Sure, he kissed a couple of guys in college, but it never went any further than that. This isn’t some sexuality crisis he’s having, but there’s something about Henry’s words that have unsettled something in him.
He’s not jealous. He’s not. Henry is a pompous prick; he’s rude and condescending and shuts Alex down whenever he tries to show even the slightest bit of interest in him. Or, whenever he used to try anyway. He’s given up now.
He gave up around the time that Henry scowled and didn’t answer when Alex asked him about his parents, or that time he asked if he was going home for summer at all, and Henry just responded with a flat ‘no’. It’s not about the guys. It’s not. It’s simply about the fact that Henry is simply, entirely and irrevocably, an absolute jerk.
***
On Thursday after class, Alex arrives at one of the LGBTQ shelters in Brooklyn. He’s been volunteering with a group that offers legal advice through Law School.
‘Can I help?’ a guy asks, as Alex walks into the lobby and looks around. It’s decorated with lines of flags around the ceiling and there’s something about the guy talking to him that is so fucking familiar and Alex just can’t place. He’s got a teal buzzcut and smooth dark skin, wearing a Christmas jumper over a calf-length red chiffon skirt and Alex cannot work out where the fuck he’s seen him before. ‘Oh. Alex, right?’ he says.
‘Uh, yeah. Sorry...’
‘Pez,’ he says, holding out his hand. Each of his fingernails is painted a different colour. Alex takes it in his and shakes it.
‘Right,’ Alex says. ‘I’m ah, I’m here with the legal aid group—’
‘Of course, just—’
‘Pez!’ comes a disturbingly familiar voice, round vowels and British, but with a nasally tone, like he has a cold. ‘Where did you put— oh. Alex.’
Alex blinks at Henry, who is obviously wearing a fucking boring ass shirt and jeans but with a Santa hat on his head and tinsel round his neck. He’s got a bright red nose like the fucking reindeer, as though he’s been blowing it constantly.
He’s not seen him since… since that weird moment in the staff room where Henry said that he thought Alex wanted to fuck him. He doesn’t, of course he doesn’t. Henry is just a jerk with an objectively nice face. ‘What are you doing here?’
Henry looks up at Pez, and Alex notices something pass between the two of them. Henry sneezes. ‘Henry helps out here when he can. They’re waiting for you in the Wilde room, just down the hall, second door on the left,’ Pez tells him.
Alex looks between the two of them. Pez is one of the guys he’s seen Henry with before, he realises. Except now he looks at the two of them, they don’t actually look like a couple at all. They don’t look like two people who have ever slept together. There’s an ease in the way they move around each other, but it’s a different kind of closeness. Pez stands in front of him in a way that seems almost protective of him.
There’s something nagging at him about the idea of Henry helping here. Sure, Alex knows he does the poetry nights to raise money for the shelter but that’s him trying to enhance his own platform. He can’t exactly picture Henry sitting here talking to kids and laughing with them off his own back.
Alex furrows his brow and slinks through the doors. He hears Henry coughing in the distance down the hall.
***
Henry doesn’t turn up for his shift at Holleran’s on Sunday.
‘I need you to go round there and make sure he’s still alive,’ Nora tells him down the line. ‘He lives near you,’ she says as she rattles off his address.
‘Really nice of you to volunteer me up to go get traumatised by finding my enemy’s dead body in his apartment, seriously—’
He can hear Nora roll her eyes down the line. ‘Henry isn’t your enemy, Alex. Are you going or do I have to get Hunter to do it?’
Alex rolls his eyes and stares down at the textbook blurring before his eyes. Sure, he doesn’t like Henry, but he wouldn’t wish Hunter’s presence on anyone. Even Henry. He doesn’t know why Nora even hired him.
Alex exhales heavily and tells himself that it’s almost Christmas, which is a time of year for doing good and nice things. Things like potentially finding your enemy’s body in their apartment because he’s three hours late for his shift. Henry has a great many failings in Alex’s humble opinion, but punctuality is not one of them. ‘Fucking— fine, but if he is dead, you’re paying for my therapy.’
Which is how Alex finds himself in a building that looks like it’s falling to fucking pieces, wondering if Nora gave him the right address because there’s no fucking way a guy like Henry lives somewhere like this.
Alex knocks on the door, which he’s managed to just walk straight up to because the security lock on the front door was broken. Then he knocks again, and the force of it causes rubble to come away from the wall. The light flickers in the dingy hallway. This can’t be where Henry lives. He’s just getting his phone out to tell Nora as much, to tell her that she’s sent him to the wrong address, when the door opens.
Henry stands in front of him, pink-nosed and eyes squinting at him in pyjamas with a thick blanket wrapped around him, clearly having just woken up.
‘Alex?’ he asks, blinking rapidly, his voice croaking.
Alex blinks at him. He is, apparently not dead, but he sure as hell looks like it. Henry lets out a hacking cough.
‘Oh my god,’ Alex says.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Nora sent me to check you were still alive when you didn’t turn up for your shift which… I’m not sure how to report back on. You look—’
‘Shit,’ Henry mutters, his eyes wide. ‘Shit. Bollocks. Shitting fuck—’
Alex blinks. He’s never heard Henry swear so much.
He begins to retreat into the apartment in a bundled blur of blankets. Alex hesitantly steps in after him.
Henry is already on the phone, apologising profusely to Nora, croaking and coughing with every other word. He’s standing at a kitchen counter, dimly lit by just the fading afternoon light through the window. Alex turns his head around the room.
He’s not exactly put a great deal of thought into where Henry lives, but if he did think about it, it wouldn’t have been anywhere like this. It’s dark and there’s barely any furniture, just a threadbare couch that looks like every couch Alex has seen left on the street, and a rickety table. There aren’t any pictures on the walls – just a shelf full of worn old paperback books. Alex gravitates towards it and lets his eyes run over the well-thumbed spines of Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde in particular.
A chill runs down his spine. ‘It’s fucking freezing in here,’ he mutters.
Henry nods. ‘No heating or hot water, boiler’s broken.’ Alex’s eyes stray over the stack of unwashed dishes behind Henry.
‘You’re sick,’ Alex says. He narrows his eyes. ‘How long has it been out?’ he asks.
Henry sighs. ‘A week or so.’
‘So why don’t you get it fixed?’
Henry glares at him. ‘Because I can’t get hold of anyone. I don’t know if you’d noticed but clearly this building isn’t exactly top of anyone's priority list.’
‘Yeah but you could just pay for it and reclaim the costs probably,’ he says, looking around again. ‘It’s freezing.’
Henry sighs heavily and rolls his eyes. ‘Because I can’t fucking afford to do that, Alex. Why do you think?’
Alex recoils, and rolls his eyes. ‘Oh please, you’ve got money.’
‘Why do you think that?’ Henry asks.
‘Oh, come on,’ he says, ‘you’re… you.’
Henry huffs out a laugh. ‘Right well. You’ve now observed I am indeed alive, if you’d like to leave and continue coming to baseless conclusions about me elsewhere, that would be much appreciated.’
‘You can’t stay here,’ Alex says.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Look, dude, I don’t like you but you’re sick. You’re like, actually sick to the point I think you should see a doctor which I’m guessing you’ve also not done, but like… you can’t stay here.’
Henry rolls his eyes. ‘And where do you suggest I go?’
And Alex, like the absolute fucking idiot he is, says, ‘my place. Come on.’
***
Henry goes with him begrudgingly, grumbling about how he’s fine. Alex is sure he’s only persuaded when he tries to turn a light on and the bulb blows instantly. By the time they’re at Alex’s apartment, Henry is coughing up a lung and Alex thrusts his keys at him when they reach his door. ‘I’m going to the grocery store. Please just… go and have a warm shower or… something.’
Henry takes the keys in his hand, and pauses for a second.
‘What?’ Alex asks.
Henry sniffs and diverts his eyes. ‘Which apartment is it?’
‘Oh,’ Alex says quietly. There’s something so vulnerable in Henry’s voice, a sad, defeated slump to his shoulders. ‘3F. The lock sticks a bit but if you just give it a shove it’ll open.’
Henry nods and swallows, then retreats inside Alex’s building.
Alex passes slowly through the aisles, standing under fluorescent lights at the food, unable to make any sort of decision on what he wants to eat. He’s not sure what the fuck just happened. How and why Henry lives in a place that’s far beyond being just a run-of-the-mill shithole and has ventured into actual health hazard territory. Alex should probably feed Henry too. God knows what he’s eaten over the past few days with no gas or electricity. He picks up a bunch of stuff to make chicken soup, some fruit and vegetables. He doesn’t like the guy, but Henry looks like he’s in danger of contracting scurvy, and Alex should probably try to stop that from happening. It is Christmas after all.
When he returns to his flat, he can hear the water from the shower. He busies himself putting away the groceries, flicking on his Christmas playlist while he does. He loves Christmas, sue him.
Alex’s apartment isn’t exactly fancy but it’s clean and nice and, crucially, has heating and gas and isn’t crumbling around him. He’s got a couch that he’s at least 70% sure hasn’t ever been a crime scene, which is a significantly higher level of certainty than he can say for the couch he’d seen in Henry’s apartment. His apartment is warm and lived in. He’s got a blanket on the couch and a bunch of crystals that June gave him to ward off evil spirits on his bookshelves, which are mostly full of textbooks. There are too many mugs out that he’s still not got round to washing, but it doesn’t look like a complete bomb site. He’s got a Christmas tree by the window that he decorated the previous weekend with June and Nora, with Mariah playing in the background. The soft, fresh smell of pine flows through the apartment, mingling with the cinnamon Alex left out when he made his coffee this morning.
He hears the bathroom door creak open, and the soft pad of feet behind him. He turns, Henry is standing there with a towel wrapped around his waist, broad chest bared to Alex, looking uncertain. ‘Sorry, I… I saw a clean towel on your laundry pile so I—’
‘It’s fine.’ Alex blinks. ‘Oh shit, do you… do you want… um.’ He pauses, and Henry looks so small in front of him. He’s taller than Alex, with a broader chest and longer legs, but Alex can see the faint shadow of his ribs through paper-white skin. ‘Clothes?’
He watches Henry swallow, and follows the lump with his eyes. ‘Please.’
‘I can ah— I can wash yours if?’
Henry shakes his head. ‘It’s fine. I ah, I have an arrangement with my dry cleaner. The machines in my building have a habit of destroying anything you put in them.’ Alex blinks, and he’s not sure what expression creeps onto his face, but Henry quickly balks and says, ‘Christ, not that sort of arrangement. I tutor his daughter in English and History and he keeps my clothes… well-preserved, I suppose. He repairs them when necessary. Some of them were very much in danger of falling to pieces.’ Alex thinks of the elbow patches on the blazer Henry sometimes wears. He’d always thought they were an obnoxious fashion statement. A shiver runs through Henry and his body shakes.
‘Shit, sorry,’ Alex says. ‘Clothes.’
He grabs a pair of sweatpants and a sweater that he remembers being too big and hands them to Henry.
Henry pauses. ‘Christ this is embarrassing,’ he mutters.
‘It’s fine—’
‘No.’ Henry sighs. ‘Can I… can I borrow some clean underwear and socks as well, please.’
Alex inhales and his eyes widen. ‘Shit, yeah. Sorry, of course.’ He grabs a pair of nondescript black boxers and some socks and holds them out to him.
Henry swallows and nods, and takes them before disappearing back into the bathroom. When he returns, he’s holding his own clothes in a neatly folded pile. ‘I haven’t been wearing the same underwear for a week, before you start thinking that. I had spares…’ he says nervously.
Alex doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how to react to the fact that at least like, seventy percent of his opinions about Henry have been upended in the last hour. ‘Do you want something to eat?’
Henry’s stomach answers for him with a low, loud growl.
‘Sit down,’ he says. ‘Is ah, soup okay for now?’
Henry gives him a small flicker of a smile. ‘Perfect.’
Henry sits hesitantly on the sofa, White Christmas gently playing from the speakers while Alex moves around in the kitchen to make soup. Then, when he looks up again, Henry is lying on the couch with Alex’s blanket half over him sleeping soundly.
He wakes again with the shadow of Alex standing over him. ‘Shit,’ he mutters. ‘Sorry.’
‘Soup’s ready,’ he says. ‘I made chicken noodle— shit, you’re not a vegetarian or something are you?’
Henry bites down on his lip. ‘No. I’m not,’ he says quietly. ‘Thank you.’
Henry takes the bowl of soup from him with a grateful twitch of his lips and lets out another small cough, and a sniff. He eats the soup slowly, and Alex watches him over the rim of his bowl, wondering when the last time he ate a proper meal was. By the time Henry finishes, he’s barely keeping his eyes open. Alex takes the bowls back to the kitchen and when he comes back, Henry is asleep again.
He looks peaceful, Alex thinks. There’s a slight tension in his brow, and that disapproving pinch of his lip is still there – not even satisfied in his dreams, Alex thinks. He does look softer though, tiny snuffles and tight snores coming from his blocked up nose.
He gets his phone from his pocket and spins it in his hand. He thinks about texting June or Nora to ask what to do with a sick British man sleeping on a sofa that’s too small for him, but there’s something that makes him think Henry wouldn’t want them to know and something that makes him feel weird about telling them, like they’d make a big deal out of Alex bringing him to his apartment, so he doesn’t.
Alex sits at the kitchen table and studies in the dim, fading light of the day. He’s got ink smudged across his hand and his hair, well past the point where it needs cutting and curling around his neck, is shoved out of his face with a hairband he stole from June. The day fades into night, then past night into early morning. Alex looks at the clock on his laptop screen, and then around the room. He lets his eyes adjust and refocus to the dim light. A movement from the couch catches the corner of his eye.
‘Oh, you’re awake,’ he says.
He flicks the lamp on by the couch and Henry is illuminated by a flood of yellow light. His hair, still damp when he went to sleep, sticks up in a wild array of different directions. He has Alex’s blanket around him. He looks so young, hazy-eyed blinking back sleep.
‘You should drink some water,’ Alex says getting up. He should drink some water, he thinks. He’s barely had any today either.
He’s been on a weird schedule, caught between studying and sent to rescue Henry, then making soup for Henry and then studying again. He’s barely stopped all day and he has his last final in two days. Whoever decided it was fine to put exams in the week before Christmas is a textbook sadist. So it’s less a week before Christmas and Alex is up to his eyeballs in textbooks and flash cards, with his sick enemy on his couch, studying while June and Nora have spent the evening ice skating. Alex doesn’t exactly have stellar hand eye coordination, but he would kill to be with them and not… here.
He hands Henry a glass and he takes it gratefully. ‘Do you want food?’ he asks after a pause. ‘I could put some more soup on or I can probably make grilled cheese or something.’
Henry looks up at him. ‘I don’t— no, actually, it’s fine, don’t worry.’
Alex rolls his eyes. ‘What do you want?’
Henry sighs. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got tea? I know June drinks it sometimes and… I can make it of course, I just… I’d really, really like a cup of tea,’ he says and Alex feels his eyes widen because Henry’s voice is shaky, through the hoarseness. He looks like he’s on the brink of tears; defeated.
‘Um.’ Alex pauses. ‘Shit, yeah, I’ve… I’ve probably got some somewhere,’ he says. He gets up and starts rummaging through the cupboard and pulls out a couple of boxes. ‘I’ve got Peppermint, Green, Earl Grey and… I don’t even know what this is, Rooibos?’
‘You have Earl Grey?’ Henry asks, and there’s something in his voice that Alex doesn’t recognise. It sounds almost hopeful, longing.
‘Yeah.’
‘That would be perfect,’ Henry says quietly. ‘I can… I can make it.’
Alex doesn’t know much about tea, but he knows better than to interfere with a British person making it, so he lets Henry take over. By the time Henry is done, he’s cradling the mug like glass, gently raising it to his mouth.
‘Are you…’ Alex starts, then he stops. ‘Are you like, okay? Other than being sick, I mean. You—’
‘I’m fine. I’m… I’m very grateful for this but I’ll be out of your hair in the morning, I promise. I know you‘re not exactly my biggest fan.’
Alex scoffs.
Henry sighs. ‘Trust me Alex, I’m more than aware of your feelings on me – how I live my life and who I sleep with, it’s—’
‘It’s not that,’ Alex says, ‘I just think you’re a condescending prick. Like, I tried to ask you so many times about yourself. I asked you if you were going to see your parents for summer, I asked you if you were going home or if they might come here and—’
‘My father died five years ago, when I was eighteen,’ Henry says, looking across the room and Alex feels his heart skip a beat. Fuck. He hadn’t known. ‘My mother has hardly been able to hold a conversation with any of us since. The grief has destroyed her so completely that sometimes I wonder if she might go the same way, if she might be lost to us too.’
‘Us?’
‘I have older siblings: Philip and Bea.’
‘They’re still at home? In England?’
‘Yes.’
Alex nods slowly. ‘And the ah, the apartment?’ he asks. Henry says nothing but the crease in his lip becomes even more prominent. ‘It’s just… I mean, everyone knows who your grandma is, dude.’
Henry’s face turns stony. ‘I’d like to go to sleep now,’ he says short and clipped, and Alex feels his body go rigid.
He blinks, unable to work out what the fuck just happened. One minute, Henry was soft and opening up tentatively like pages of a book just starting to reveal their secrets, and the next, he’d slammed shut. It’s not like people don’t know who he is. Everybody knows who his grandmother is. Even Alex is well aware that Mary Mountchristen-Windsor is one of the most prominent talking heads in the British establishment, always popping up on TV to spout her hateful opinions on the issue of the day.
‘There’s a spare toothbrush under the sink,’ Alex says, hesitating slightly before leaving the room.
When he climbs into bed, he can’t help but feel like he’s made two steps forward with Henry and five steps back. He can’t get the image of the pinch of his lips out of his head, the hardness in his eyes. He sighs and throws his head back against his pillow, and eventually he falls asleep.
***
‘No, no it’s okay. No, it's fine. Pez, honestly, don’t worry. Yes. Yes. No I can’t ask Shaan, he’s got his wife’s family coming. Pez, it’s fine, I’ll sort something. Just… have fun in Tokyo. Yes, you too. Okay. I’ll be fine. Okay, bye.’
Henry is coming off a phone call when Alex wakes up the next morning. He lingers in the doorway for a minute, listening to Henry talk to Pez, then watches him hang up with a heavy sigh and scrub his hand across his face. He’s not entirely sure what to say or how to act around Henry now. He’d thought they’d reached some sort of brief detente the night before, a mutual agreement that maybe actually they didn’t piss each other off as much as they originally thought, but then Henry had put up an iron wall, and Alex had been left there staring and wondering what the fuck he’d done wrong.
Henry turns to face him. ‘I ah, I was trying to see if I could stay at Pez’s for Christmas,’ he says, ‘but he’s out of town and he’s not left a spare key anywhere.’
Alex nods slowly. ‘You can stay as long as you need,’ he says.
Henry stares back at him, brow slightly furrowed, and Alex rolls his eyes. ‘I’m not going to throw you out on the street when you’re sick,’ he tells him. ‘I’m not a complete dick.’
Henry huffs out a laugh. ‘I’m not sure you’re a dick at all, actually.’
‘You seem… less pissy,’ Alex says after a pause, because truly he has no idea what else to say to that, or about last night and Henry shutting him down.
‘Yes,’ Henry says. ‘A bit. I’m sorry if I kept you awake at all.’
Henry had been up a large part of the night coughing, but it’s not exactly like it kept Alex awake. His sleeping pattern is less a pattern and more like something that resembles an explosion in a yarn shop. He’s got all the components, he just can’t seem to make them into anything that resembles a healthy routine. So he’s up a lot at night usually. When he does sleep, it’s like a fucking log, but last night he’d spent it tossing and turning, churning Henry’s words over in his mind and incapable of getting that stony set of his face when he’d said ‘I’d like to go to sleep now’ out of his head. Then, every time he was about to fall asleep he’d heard Henry’s hacking cough and just been reminded all over again that Henry was on his couch, and would still be on his couch in the morning. Alex has a final in three days; he really could have done with the sleep.
‘It’s fine,’ he says, ‘I don’t sleep much anyway.’ He makes himself a coffee, and then he pulls out another mug, and it’s not until he’s halfway through that he realises that he’s making Henry a mug of Earl Grey. He looks up, and catches Henry’s eye. Henry is watching him carefully with something like confusion on his face. ‘Sorry, I… I just assumed you’d want tea. You’re British so… I just sort of always assume you want tea.’
Henry shakes his head, and gives Alex a weak smile. ‘I’d love one.’
***
They fall into a strange routine over the next couple of days. Alex studies for his finals while Henry sleeps on the couch, or reads. Alex tries to give him fluids and medicine and more soup, but by day two, his cough has loosened and he’s got enough energy again that he’s moving around the apartment with ease, looking like he’s always belonged there, so he just leaves Henry to it. He’s got twenty four hours until his last final and still so much to do.
He lets Henry just move around the apartment – still in Alex’s clothes. Henry finds one of the few novels on his shelf – a copy of Death Comes For the Archbishop that June had left at Alex’s when she finished it – and spends the day working through that. He makes food that could barely be described as edible, it’s so bland that Alex wonders if this illness he’s got has destroyed his sense of taste and smell as well, until Henry reassures him he hasn’t. He is, apparently, just a shit cook.
It’s when Alex is just about to leave for his final, backpack on and hat on his head, that Henry stands up, stretches his arms above his head. The T-shirt rises up slightly, revealing a stretch of pale white skin above the waistband of Alex’s pants. ‘Can I make you dinner, or something?’ he asks, ‘please? To… thank you. You really didn’t have to—’
Alex blinks at him. ‘Wait what? Are you going somewhere?’
‘Yes well I ah, I’m feeling a fair bit better now. Pez is away and I can’t stay with Shaan – he’s a family friend – but Pez said there’s a room I can stay in at the shelter that they usually reserve for staff so—’
‘Wait what? No, you can’t… Jesus fuck, it’s Christmas in like three days. Look, I’ve got to go take this final but… just, don’t go anywhere.’ He opens the door, then turns back to Henry. ‘Don’t cook anything either. Please.’
Alex takes his final. He thinks he does a passable job on it and he probably doesn’t fail, but he can’t say that his mind is fully on the task at hand. He can’t stop thinking about Henry. He’s known the guy for months, always standoffish around Alex but perfectly happy and bright with everyone else, capable of going home with any guy he wants and clearly more than capable when he gets there too given how frequently they come back asking for him. Alex still doesn’t particularly like him, he still doesn’t understand him or why he’s such a dick all the time, but he’s probably not as awful as he originally thought.
Henry’s funny and smart, and has shown a genuine interest in Alex’s studies. When Alex tells most people about his ambitions to be a Senator, he’s usually laughed out of the room, but Henry had sat and listened with genuine interest and then asked questions. He had asked whether Alex would want to stay in New York or move back to Texas, what it would take and why he wanted to go to Law School first, why he wants to go into politics. Henry had told him about the books he reads, his poetry, and his PhD in Queer Literature and the work he does to help Pez with the shelter. Pez is, apparently, an old school friend and Henry tries to go to the shelter once a week to volunteer.
Their interactions are casual and polite, but underneath it all there’s still a strangeness. There’s still a tension, a crack in the floor that they’re tiptoeing around and have been ever since Henry shut down that conversation on his first night. Alex still can’t work out why.
Alex also only has forty minutes left of his fucking exam and he needs to finish.
By the time he’s finished, it’s dark outside again. He talks to a couple of people from class outside about the exam with his hands shoved into his pockets and as he’s talking, snow starts to fall. Alex looks up. The white droplets are falling from the sky and a light blanket is starting to settle on the ground around him.
The subway is packed. Alex finds himself crammed in between a guy carrying four bags of presents and a couple carrying a whole goddamn tree between them. By the time he exits the subway, he’s got scratches on his hands where he’s been brushed by the pine needles and has probably contracted about four new viruses from the number of people coughing all over each other without a care.
He trudges up the stairs, and he’s barely got his key in the door before he hears the sound of his playlist through the door. His Christmas playlist. The one Henry scrunches his nose up at every single time Alex puts it on. When he opens the door, Henry is standing in the kitchen, hands in the sink, soap suds around his wrists, finishing the dishes that Alex has been neglecting for the past week. He turns with a gentle, tired smile.
‘I ah, I took your advice on not cooking,’ he says, ‘but I wanted to do something… to thank you.’
Alex looks around. His blanket is folded on the couch, the cushions perfectly plumped. Henry has cleaned the entire place: hoovered the floor of the scattered pine needles dropped from the tree and done the dishes. Something tightens in his chest.
‘Oh,’ he says quietly. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s the least I could do really,’ Henry says quietly, ‘all things considered.’ He lets out a small cough, and Alex can’t help but wonder what might have happened if he hadn’t gone to find Henry that day and dragged him back to his apartment. He can’t help thinking about Henry sitting in the dark freezing cold without food or heating and how much sicker he would have let himself get before asking for help. He thinks of what Henry said earlier that day, about the spare room at the shelter and him spending Christmas there.
‘What you said this morning, about the shelter, you shouldn’t go,’ he says. ‘I know my couch isn’t the most comfortable bed but— you’re welcome to stay for Christmas if you want to.’
‘I wouldn’t want to impose,’ Henry says. ‘You don’t have to pity me or be nice to me just because I’m sick, Alex, I— Christmas isn’t that big a deal to me, it’s fine.’
Alex shakes his head. Henry says it’s not that big a deal to him, but there’s something in his tone that tells Alex he’s lying. He’s put Alex’s Christmas playlist on, above everything else he could have chosen to listen to. ‘I’m not… It’s Christmas,’ he says, ‘it’ll just be me, June and Nora and… well, I guess you’re not as awful as I initially thought.’
Henry huffs out a smile. ‘If you’re sure then… well, your sofa is more comfortable than you give it credit for.’
‘I ah, I was thinking of getting takeout if you want some?’ Henry pauses, and he’s about to open his mouth when Alex adds, ‘my treat. Call it an apology for being such a dick to you.’
‘I think you’ve more than made up for that at this point, I—’
‘Okay well, I don’t want to cook and I don’t want you burning down my apartment building so we’re getting takeout.’
Alex orders Chinese and they sit on the couch with bottles of beer, eating noodles from the carton while they argue over what to watch.
‘I cannot believe you think Jedi is a better movie than Empire,’ Alex says, rolling his eyes in disbelief.
‘I can’t believe you don’t! Christ, you’ll be telling me you think Die Hard is a Christmas film next.’
Alex stares at him and blinks. ‘Of course it’s a fucking Christmas movie! It’s literally set at Christmas.’
‘Something being set during Christmas-time does not automatically make it a Christmas film,’ Henry counters.
Alex rolls his eyes. ‘Go on then, tell me your entirely wrong opinion about the best Christmas movie. If the answer isn’t Home Alone then I’m kicking you out.’ He pauses. ‘Is it The Grinch because you see yourself in him?’
Henry looks out the window and Alex watches him following the snow fall outside. ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ he says quietly. ‘That’s my favourite Christmas film. It’s a Wonderful Life.’
‘Oh.’
‘There’s something just very real about it. You know? It’s not sugar coated and irrefutably happy like a lot of them. The villain sort of gets away with it, but… there’s community and hope in it all as well and at the end of the day that’s more important. You can have all the money in the world and still be a terrible person,’ he says, and there’s something in his voice that makes Alex realise he’s not talking about the film anymore. Henry swallows. ‘My grandmother disinherited me after I made it clear I had no plans to follow her guidance, cut me off completely. I have an inheritance from my father but it’s in a trust that I don’t have access to until I turn twenty five. He was an actor, so there’s money there, I just… can’t get to it.’
Alex feels his heart thud in his chest. ‘There’s no provision if you… if you need it before then?’
‘No. My ah… my sister was already going off the deep end a bit when he died. She’s an addict, she’s better now but she wasn’t doing well when he died. I suppose he wanted to try and make sure she wouldn’t squander it all away on cocaine and I think… I don’t think he thought Mum would be quite as absent as she has been. I can hardly blame him, it was so quick – he barely had time to think any of this through. He and my mum were… well they were so in love, thought they were both going to live forever with each other so, well they’d just never really got round to thinking about it.’ He clears his throat. ‘Bea is just about to get her share, so I’m sure she’ll send me some, but…’ he trails off.
‘You haven’t told her how bad things are, have you?’ Alex asks quietly.
‘I’m not completely destitute,’ Henry says. ‘I can pay my rent on time and my bills… most of the time. I just… can’t do things like pay to fix the heating when my landlord doesn’t reply for a week.’ Given the state of Henry’s apartment building, Alex thinks his rent probably isn’t exactly high. Henry pauses. ‘But no, I haven’t. She’ll only worry,’ he says quietly. ‘I get by with a scholarship and my money from being a TA but… well, it’s why I work at Holleran’s as well.’
Alex swallows. He doesn’t know how Henry finds the time. There’s something about the way that Henry says it that takes Alex right back to the last time they were both there. It takes him right back to the back room, to Henry standing over him, voice low and clear in his ear. The hairs on Alex’s arms stand up just at the memory.
‘I shouldn’t have said what I did,’ Henry says, clearly remembering it too. Maybe he sees the look on Alex’s face. ‘Last time. That was… it was out of line, I’m sorry. I just… Christ if you hadn’t made it very clear you’re bisexual then I’d really wonder if you were homophobic, but—’
‘I’ve never had sex with a guy,’ Alex blurts out. He doesn’t know why he says it, it just slips out.
Henry blinks. ‘I’m sorry? I thought, you said—’
Something in his tone makes Alex bristle. ‘I’m still bi even if I’ve not had sex with a guy, it’s—’
‘No, no, of course,’ Henry agrees hastily, ‘it just… surprised me, that’s all.’
Alex looks down at his sock-covered feet and shrugs his shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ he says quietly, ‘I guess… it always felt like I didn’t want to do it with someone I didn’t know or trust and like, I like women. I’m attracted to them, I like having sex with them so I just…’ Alex shrugs. ‘Did that instead. Like I’ve been attracted to guys, I’ve kissed guys and I used to fool around a bit with my best friend in high school but there’s never been anyone I’ve wanted to do… more with.’
Henry nods slowly. ‘So… your problem isn’t that I have sex with a lot of different guys?’
‘No,’ Alex murmurs, ‘I’m sorry, I was an ass to you about all of that. I— I’m sorry. I guess, in a way I wish I could, but I just… I don’t know, I want to, I want to know what it’s like but there’s just never been the right person, I guess. Like, I’m impulsive as fuck normally but… not with this apparently.’ There’s the disapproving punch again at the crease of his lips. ‘What? You don’t want the true love stuff?’ Alex asks.
‘I did, once upon a time,’ he says. ‘But I’ve seen what it does to people. My mother loved my father so much that she can’t even face her life without him now. I can’t…’ He shakes his head. ‘I can’t let that happen to myself as well. I don’t do love. It’s easier not to.’
Alex blinks. ‘What so you’re just going to not even give yourself the chance to be happy?’
‘People don’t always need romantic love to be happy,’ Henry says. ‘Plenty of people don’t want or need a romantic partner to be happy.’
‘Right,’ Alex agrees, ‘but there’s a difference between having no interest in it and shutting yourself off from the possibility of being happy and from something you are interested in because you’re scared.’
‘I’m not scared.’
Alex shrugs and takes another pull from his beer bottle. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘I don’t sleep with people to fill some sort of empty void in my heart if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Henry says with a roll of his eyes. ‘I just like sex, I like having sex with men. I have a… healthy sex drive, and I don’t want to lead anyone on and make them think I’m looking for something that I’m not, and I don’t want anyone to get attached. It’s easier this way.’
‘Okay. I never said you were trying to fill an empty void.’ Henry raises his eyebrows at Alex. He sighs. ‘Okay so I might have implied you were doing that a few times. I’m sorry. I’m just a jealous dick, I guess.’
The word hangs in the air. Jealous. There’s something murky and heavy about it because Alex doesn’t know why he’s jealous, or who he’s jealous of, but there’s been something itching around his brain telling him that maybe, maybe Henry was right.
Maybe it’s not Henry that he was jealous of, but all the other guys.
Alex coughs. ‘Well, I’m going to go to bed,’ he announces, standing up abruptly. It’s barely even ten p.m., but suddenly the room feels small, too small and Alex’s thoughts and myriad of feelings are far, far too big.
‘Oh,’ Henry says. ‘Okay. Well, goodnight Alex,’ he says, there’s something in his voice that’s softer now, gentler than it was before. The lights from the tree glow soft on his face, and Alex’s heart skips a beat slightly. Which is ridiculous, because sure, Henry is objectively an attractive human being and Alex isn’t blind. But Henry was also his sworn enemy until like five days ago and now he’s just a guy who was sleeping on Alex’s couch because he was sick, and is now still sleeping on Alex’s couch because it’s Christmas.
‘Yeah. Night,’ he says, and when he crawls into bed, it takes him far, far too long to fall asleep.
***
‘Wait, what?’ June says, down the line. Alex exhales heavily and winces a little. It’s Christmas Eve and he’s on the phone with June, talking through their plans for tomorrow.
‘I said you need to bring pie for four, not three.’ He pauses. ‘Henry is here… Henry is coming for Christmas.’
‘Henry?’ There’s a beat. ‘Wait what do you mean he’s here?’
‘He ah, he might have been staying here since Nora sent me to find him the other day and he was sick. He had no heating or anything and—’
‘You’re telling me Henry – as in Holleran’s Henry – has been staying on your floor for a week and this is the first time you’ve mentioned it?’
‘I mean, he’s been on the couch but yeah.’
‘Is he still sick?’
‘No, he’s fine now. He had a cough but I think that’s pretty much cleared up now. He just… he was going to be at Pez’s shelter. I’m not a complete dick, Bug. It’s Christmas. I said he could spend it with us.’
There’s a hiss of whispers down the line and Alex vaguely hears June repeat all of this to Nora, hears June say ‘he says “It’s Christmas”’ in a mocking tone, and then he hears Nora’s snort in the background and her say, ‘Sure, Jan.’
‘Hey, are you bringing pie or not?’ Alex says.
‘Oh we’ll be bringing pie. Maybe also popcorn.’
‘I hate you, goodbye.’
‘Love you too,’ June says, before she rings off.
He throws his phone back down on the bed, and sighs. He’s been desperately trying to destress since his final, but he still feels so fucking wound up, on edge. Every time he sits down to watch a movie, Henry is next to him and he feels his skin prickle into goosebumps. He can hear Henry moving around in the living room, and a part of him wants to join him but he needs to unwind. He needs a long, hot shower.
He stands under the spray and lets the water run over him, lets the muscles in his shoulders loosen under the heat. He’s not usually one for long showers. Usually, it’s a matter of speed and efficiency, just another thing on the list of things he needs to do to start his day, but today he needs to think and it’s too cold to run. He thinks about Henry and the last week, how something has shifted between them. He thinks about how when he spent half the day reading yesterday, for some reason, all he wanted to do after was tell Henry about the book, and how he wants to teach Henry to make something, anything, so he won’t starve to death when he leaves.
He stands under the hot water and washes himself, and then when he can’t hold back any longer he wraps his hand around his cock. His mind drifts to broad stretches of pale skin and crystal clear blue eyes and blond hair. It’s been a while since he did this, with finals and with Henry here. He’s felt too awkward, too uncomfortable, to be getting himself off with Henry in the next room, but it’s been so long and he’s worked up and kind of fucking desperate.
It’s embarrassing how quickly he gets hard, and even more embarrassing how quickly he’s on edge working his hand over himself. He’s too far gone to even try to stop the way that he thinks about the hand on his dick being paler and bigger than his own, and Henry’s low voice in his ear saying, ‘all you have to do is ask.’ His legs are weak and shaky, barely able to hold his body upright as he hurtles towards the edge; and when an image of Henry in front of him on his knees for Alex, mouth open and waiting, blue eyes staring up at him, pushes his way into his mind, he’s done. He comes with one hand bracing himself on the wall of the shower and prays that the water muffles his shout enough.
Alex exhales slowly. He’s not only done, he realises, he’s also extremely attracted to Henry, wants Henry on his knees for him, wants to be on his knees for Henry, and maybe also do other stuff – softer stuff like cuddle him and cook for him, teach him to cook for himself, talk about books with him.
In short, Alex is completely and utterly fucked.
It takes him a while to build up the courage to go back out into the living room; but when he does, Henry is sitting on the couch reading, still wearing Alex’s clothes – a different sweater now, but he looks so soft and at home and Alex kind of wants to run his fingers through Henry’s messy hair, shining in the sunlight like strands of gold.
‘Afternoon,’ he says with a small smile.
‘I was thinking about snickerdoodles,’ Alex says in response.
Henry blinks at him. ‘Is that a type of dog?’
‘What? No. It’s a cookie. Like… cinnamon and sugar.’ He shakes his head. ‘I was going to make some.’
‘Would you— would you like some help?’ Henry asks.
So Alex finds himself laughing with Feliz Navidad playing in the background as Henry rolls out the dough they’ve made onto the countertop. ‘Oh my god, you’re terrible at this.’
‘I’m simply rolling out the dough. I’m following instructions! How can I be terrible at following instructions?’ Henry says with a laugh, and a smile that covers his entire face. Alex feels his insides do a swoop like a flock of birds across the sky.
‘Let me,’ he says, shoving Henry out of the way with his hip and taking the rolling pin from him. He rolls out the dough. ‘Honestly sweetheart, it’s a wonder you haven’t starved to death before now.’
Henry coughs. ‘Well, ah. From what I hear, biscuits aren’t essential to a balanced diet.’
Alex scoffs. ‘You’re listening to the wrong people.’ He wrinkles his nose. ‘Fucking biscuits, they’re cookies.’ He starts to roll a ball of dough between his hands, and Henry takes another. Alex watches as he rolls it into a ball and then puts it on the baking tray, next to the one Alex places there, then nods at him. ‘Good. Sprinkle some more cinnamon-sugar on them.’
‘More?’
‘I said what I said. More.’
Henry shakes his head with a laugh, and covers each ball of dough in cinnamon-sugar.
Once they’re done, Henry turns to Alex with a grin. ‘Well that wasn’t entirely unsuccessful,’ he says. He blinks. ‘What?’
‘You’ve ah, you’ve got a little something—’ Alex says, gesturing to his own cheek, where Henry has a stripe of flour on his own.
Henry reaches up to his face and tries to wipe at the wrong cheek. ‘No, on the other—’ Alex says, then he watches as Henry tries to wipe the flour away again, and misses.
‘Here,’ Alex says without thinking, and brings his own thumb to Henry’s cheek and swipes away the line of flour from his pale skin. He feels Henry still and inhale sharply, and he can’t help the way that his insides feel like they’ve turned to butter under his gaze. It’s hot, and his eyes are a dark blue in this light, murky and deep rather than crystal clear, and Alex wants to sink into them.
Alex coughs. ‘Done,’ he says. ‘You should probably just take a shower, it’s in your hair too,’ he says quickly.
Henry gives him a small smile. ‘Of course.’
‘I can deal with this,’ he says, gesturing to the mess they’ve made.
‘If you’re sure,’ Henry says tightly. He hesitates, lingering in the doorway before he leaves.
Alex hears the shower start a while later, and it doesn’t stop for half an hour.
***
Alex wakes up early the following day, like the twenty-two year old child he is. He still feels restless, still frustrated and wound up about too many things, and all of them to do with Henry but it’s Christmas, so he pushes that to the side. He’s going to spend the day listening to Mariah and cooking too much food and drinking too much wine with June, Nora and Henry.
Henry is blinking into consciousness when Alex enters the room, hair a mess, in a spare T-shirt of Alex’s and… a pair of tight black boxers. Alex’s tight black boxers. He’s lying on the couch, blanket half thrown off with the other half caught between his legs, black boxers covering the curve of his ass and definitely not doing anything to cover the fact that Henry is hard. He isn’t usually up this early, he realises. The couple of times he had been awake first were when Henry was still looking more like an ailing Victorian child with consumption than a flu-ridden twenty-three year old man, and then he was wearing Alex’s slightly too short sweatpants. Which in hindsight, is also an image Alex is going to struggle to get out of his mind.
Henry coughs, and pulls the blanket back over him and Alex very valiantly pretends that he definitely did not see the outline of Henry’s cock through his boxers – Alex’s boxers, his brain reminds him yet again.
Alex busies himself with cooking while Henry showers. By the time Henry is out of the shower, Alex has chopped every vegetable and potato in sight and is halfway through basting the turkey. He turns to look at Henry. He’s dressed in a shirt Alex had given him a few days before that’s pulling slightly across his chest where his shoulders are broader than Alex’s. It’s a deep midnight blue that somehow brings out his eyes even more. Alex is so completely and utterly fucked.
‘Can I help?’ Henry asks, his voice smooth like velvet in Alex’s ear.
Alex shakes his head. ‘Nope, you’re fine,’ he says, and for a second he’s terrified that Henry is about to insist but June – not for the first time – saves his life by calling his phone.
‘Your buzzer is broken and we’re outside and it’s freezing, let us in,’ she says.
He turns to Henry. ‘Can you go and let June and Nora in?’ he asks, and Henry looks grateful to have been given something to do.
He returns with June and Nora in tow, and they move through Alex’s apartment, instantly making a mess of everything Henry had tidied up the previous day in a blur of velvet and perfume. They shove Alex out of the way, gathering glasses and plates from his cupboards and pour prosecco into glasses while Henry lays the table. June slides over to hand him a glass and picks up a conversation with him easily about books. Nora raises her eyebrows at Alex and walks to his bedroom. Without a word, Alex follows her.
‘So,’ she says with a glint in her eyes.
‘Shut up,’ Alex murmurs.
‘You’ve finally got there then?’
Alex stares at her, then glances over at June and Henry again. ‘He’s attractive and I might be moderately attracted to him, that’s all.’
‘Uh huh,’ Nora says. ‘And you’ve wanted to bang him for like, a million years.’
Alex closes his eyes. ‘Okay so maybe, I just didn’t realise that’s what that was…’
‘But now you realise, you’re gonna do it, right?’
Alex swallows. ‘No.’
‘What?’
‘He’s— He doesn’t do relationships. He’s not into that.’
Nora scoffs. ‘Please, I’ve never known anyone who loves Jane Austen more than Henry, and I live with June.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Alex tells her. ‘Look, would he sleep with me? Probably, yes but I—’
‘You actually like him,’ Nora says.
‘I— He’s…’ Alex exhales. ‘He’s maybe not as terrible as I first thought.’
‘Oh my god. You actually really do like him, don’t you?’
Alex swallows and looks over at her, her curls falling over her face, her big green eyes. They dated, a couple of times, a few years ago, slept together a couple more times before realising that they were far better off as friends, and that Nora was far more interested in Alex’s sister than she was in him.
The thing is, she’s right. It’s not like Alex has fallen completely and irrevocably in love with Henry but well, he’s starting to realise that maybe that hatred he had for him wasn’t actually hatred at all. He’s starting to realise that maybe Henry isn’t a terrible stuck up prick, but a guy desperately trying to keep himself afloat in a terrible situation; a guy who is smart and funny and caring, a guy who is probably lonely and subject to dark moods and stressed.
‘Yeah, I think I do. But we literally had a conversation last night where he said he doesn’t do relationships. I’m not saying that he’s not hot or that I’m not… y’know, into him but I don’t think I can do casual. It’s just… it’s not going to work. We wouldn’t want the same thing.’
Nora blinks at him. ‘Huh.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing that’s just… incredibly mature and thought out.’ Nora stands up. ‘Like, it’s stupid but… considered.’
Alex blinks at her. ‘What do you mean it’s stupid?’
‘The bullshit about Henry not wanting a relationship.’
‘He literally told me—’
‘Yeah, and he literally got drunk and cried on June about how he’s going to be alone forever like last week.’
Alex forgets sometimes, in how much he’s spent convinced he hates Henry, that Henry, June and Nora have actually become friends. They hang out, they do things together, June sits at the counter at Holleran’s and talks to him while he works when it’s quiet. They’ve all just made the decision not to mention it when Alex is around. There’s something about the idea of Henry, soft and vulnerable and drunk, crying on the shoulder of June while Nora looks on with a smirk that makes Alex’s insides go weak. ‘He’s just scared,’ Nora says.
The thing is, Alex knows that. He knows Henry is scared, and Alex is usually impulsive about approximately every thought he’s ever had, but not about this. He has too many memories of sitting as his parents fought to run into something blindly without thinking every single aspect through. He’s got a pros and cons list in his mind for why he should and shouldn’t just take Henry up on the offer he made in the back room of Holleran’s, when he said Alex only had to ask. He thinks over it every time he steps into the shower or lies down to sleep:
Pros:
- The sex will, in all likelihood, be excellent
- Henry’s hands
- Henry’s shoulders look like they could cover Alex’s
- Henry’s pink lips
- Henry knows what he’s doing
- Henry’s mouth on him
Cons:
- The sex will probably be so excellent that Alex will never want to leave
- Henry doesn’t do relationships
- Alex will probably end up getting his heart broken
Admittedly, it’s not a very balanced list. The cons far outweigh the pros on any sensible measure, but Alex is so very interested in that mouth.
Alex has stuff to do now though, stuff like cooking and ignoring his slowly brewing feelings and eating a lot and very pointedly not thinking about Henry’s mouth.
The whole ‘not thinking about Henry’s mouth’ thing becomes increasingly difficult when they sit down to eat, because Henry keeps laughing when Nora talks and his grin stretches wide across his face, his head thrown back and neck stretched out towards Alex. Alex wants to kiss it, wants to kiss and bite that pale stretch of skin until it starts to bloom purple. He sips on wine and his lips turn just a touch darker. He talks, spits out his opinions and thoughts, lets everything he thinks drop from his mouth and Alex rolls his eyes and challenges him on all of them, but it’s not antagonistic, it’s fun.
They stuff themselves with food and play Christmas music on repeat. Alex and June had decided not to do presents today, Alex had known that Henry wasn’t exactly going to be going out and braving the stores and he doesn’t want to end up with an awkward situation where everyone was exchanging gifts but Henry. So, there aren’t any presents, but Alex finds he doesn’t mind. There’s food and wine and the night creeps in, presses at the windows and slips away from them. They drink, eat the snickerdoodles they made the day before and play card games. Alex and June squabble over the best Christmas songs and movies just like they do every year and Henry just watches them in barely concealed bemusement.
‘What’s your problem with Christmas anyway?’ Alex asks him, once June and Nora have left. June’s drunken voice still singing Merry Christmas Everyone carries down the halls as Nora laughs and tries to shush her as they make their way down to a cab.
‘What do you mean?’
There are still dishes all around them, but there’s also still half a bottle of wine to finish and it’s Christmas, so Alex reaches forward and splits the rest of it between their glasses.
Alex raises his eyebrows. ‘Oh come on, you’ve been weird about Christmas since you got here. You hate it.’
‘I don’t hate Christmas,’ Henry says, and Alex narrows his eyes. ‘I had a very nice day.’ He coughs. ‘Thank you, for letting me join you.’
Alex shrugs and he lets out a small laugh. ‘You know, I was not looking forward to Christmas this year,’ he says. ‘Not because you were here,’ he adds hastily when he sees Henry’s face, ‘I just… I’ve always loved it, even when it was my parents screaming at each other across the dinner table because it was at least a time I actually got to see them both in the same room.’
Henry is quiet, so Alex carries on. ‘So, I was pissy when my dad said he couldn’t come and my mom had already booked a trip but— well, it was actually a really good day. I’m… I’m glad you were here.’
He takes a sip of his wine. It’s not the best he’s ever had but it’s passable; June is good at picking out a decent bottle for a good price. They’re on the same couch, Alex sitting cross-legged on one side, Henry with his knees tucked up to his chest on the other.
‘I loved Christmas as a child,’ Henry says. ‘It was always so full of life and my father would really go all out with it. He’d read us stories and dress up and he would do all the cooking. There was always so much love and life in it and—’ He clears his throat. ‘I’m not sure I’ve felt that same way since… until today.’ Henry takes another sip from his wine glass. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said last night.’
‘About what?’
‘That I’m scared,’ Henry says, bringing his eyes up to meet Alex’s. There’s something he’s not noticed there before, something soft in the depths, gentle waves lapping against the shore. ‘I am, I’m scared.’ He looks down at his lap. ‘I’m absolutely bloody terrified.’
Alex can feel his heart beating in his ears. His throat is dry, and he wonders, over the pounding in his ears, if he’s hearing this all wrong. ‘Of what?’ he asks quietly.
Something has shifted. Somewhere between the many bottles of wine, and June and Nora dragging them off to different rooms to clearly carry out a coordinated attack; somewhere between Alex’s hand landing on Henry’s during a card game and Alex serenading the turkey with Christmas songs while he cooked, something has changed. Alex swallows.
‘A relationship, getting hurt,’ Henry says quietly. ‘Opening myself up to the possibility of falling in love with someone and getting my heart broken.’
Alex blinks back. ‘But what if you didn’t get hurt?’
Henry presses his lips together. ‘What are you saying?’ he asks, his voice barely a whisper.
‘Did you mean what you said before?’ Alex replies. His voice is at the same level. ‘When you said I only had to ask?’
Henry stares back at him and swallows. ‘Yes.’
‘And the other thing? The whole no relationships thing? You said that you don’t do love. You said that you do sex and you do physical, and you don’t do love or feelings. That’s what you said.’
Henry nods, and there’s something like wild panic in his eyes. ‘I don’t. Not normally and I’m so fucking scared because I’ve seen what being in love does to you. I’ve seen what you can lose. But you, I— I can’t stop fucking thinking about you.’ Alex suddenly recognises the look in his eyes: not panic, but fear. ‘I dream about you all the time, and I’ve spent so long telling myself that I can’t let myself feel anything more than that but I’m so fucking tired —’
Alex kisses him. He puts the glass on the table, leans over and presses his lips to Henry’s. It’s gentle, barely even a kiss, but Henry freezes beneath him.
Alex inhales sharply. He’s such a fucking idiot. ‘Shit,’ he mutters. ‘Shit, fuck sorry. I—’
‘Alex,’ Henry says, ‘I don’t know how to—’
‘Are you going to run off? If we do this, am I going to wake up in the morning and find you gone?’
Henry looks back at him and blinks steadily. ‘No,’ he says quietly.
‘Are you going to let me make you fucking breakfast and sometimes hold your hand?’ Alex shrugs. ‘The hand-holding thing isn’t a necessity but… I’d really like to.’ He pauses. ‘The breakfast thing is, though, you need to eat.’
Henry huffs out a laugh and looks up to the ceiling, like he can’t quite believe what he’s doing. ‘I’d be amenable to that.’
‘Are you gonna talk to me when you’re scared?’
Henry’s eyes are damp. Alex can see the tears there as he nods. ‘Okay.’
Alex thinks his heart stops. It’s just white noise in his head, his eyes fixed on the clench of Henry’s jaw. ‘Can I kiss you?’
Alex watches the thoughts flicker through Henry’s mind, watches every hesitation cross and fade from his face. Instead of answering though, Henry leans over and puts his lips against Alex’s.
It’s gentle at first, hesitant brushes of his lips against Alex’s as though he’s asking for permission. Alex isn’t sure he’s ever felt like this, this keyed-up, this electric. His fingers itch on the couch, desperate to reach out. It’s soft, and it’s nothing like he thought Henry would kiss; nothing like he thought Henry would kiss him when every single one of their interactions has been accompanied by a frenetic buzzing under his skin, every conversation a fierce tug of war. He thought Henry would kiss more like that. Maybe he does, maybe he’s just holding back with Alex. Alex doesn’t want him to though. He doesn’t want him to hold back, he never has; the push and pull of it is who they are. So he pushes back, he kisses Henry harder, firmer, drags his body towards him and lets his fingers reach over to find Henry’s hip.
Henry kisses Alex back, meets him with the same energy, and Alex can’t help but think this is more like it. It’s not harsh or fighting, it’s just that Henry stops holding himself back. He kisses Alex with everything he has, kisses him like he wants more, and Alex returns it, because he does too. Henry swipes his tongue against Alex’s lips, and he opens for him easily like a flower in bloom, and then Alex’s brain stops processing because Henry kisses like nobody he’s ever kissed before. It’s hot and heavy, sure swipes of Henry’s tongue against his, reaching, grabbing, wanting more.
Henry rests his forehead against his as Alex’s fingers find the buttons of Henry’s shirt – Alex’s shirt – stretching tight against his torso, and he starts to undo them. Henry is breathing heavily, looking at Alex from under his eyelashes and there’s such heat there, uncontrollable flames burning bright blue. ‘Alex,’ he murmurs. ‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure if you’re sure, sweetheart.’
Henry pulls back, and looks into Alex’s eyes properly this time; pupils blown wide. He nods. ‘Yeah.’
Alex nods in return. ‘How do you feel about moving this to a bed then?’
Henry exhales a laugh. ‘A bed sounds… incredible to be quite honest with you,’ he says, and suddenly Alex remembers that he’s been sleeping on the couch for over a week now. His back must be killing him.
Alex leads him to the bedroom, and it’s only when he’s there, standing in front of Henry, whose shirt is now open, that he remembers he has absolutely no idea what he’s doing. Sure, he knows the theory; he’s watched enough porn in his time, and he vaguely remembers the feeling of Liam, hard in his hand; but that was different, he was a dumb teenager then, they both were, but Henry knows what he’s doing.
‘I—’ Alex says. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m gonna need you to like, tell me if I fuck this up. I’m gonna need you to show me how to make it good. I want to be good. I want it to be good, I want to be good at it, I mean.’
Henry smirks softly at his correction, and Alex feels the heat rush to his cheeks. ‘I’m fairly confident you’ll be just fine, but okay,’ he says, and his voice is slightly strained as Alex’s fingers reach out to brush up his bare chest.
‘What do you want?’ he asks.
‘I—’ Alex murmurs, but he doesn’t finish his sentence as his fingers trace the lines of Henry’s stomach. He’s thin. Too thin, Alex thinks, he wants to feed him another Christmas dinner and like, seven deserts, but there’s some muscle definition there, and his fingers drag through a line of hair leading down to the waistband of his jeans.
‘Alex, I need you to tell me,’ Henry says, bringing his lips to Alex’s ear again. ‘I need you to tell me what you want. I want you to know what you want. I overstepped the other week when I said what I did and—’
Alex bites down on his lip. Yeah, maybe Henry did overstep, but what he said wasn’t wrong. ‘When you said that I wanted to fuck you? When you said that I wanted to fuck you because I was jealous?’
Henry’s eyes flutter closed. ‘I’m sorry, I—’
‘You were right. I do want that. Maybe not… maybe not tonight though?’ Alex says. He looks up at Henry. ‘I want—’ He reaches upwards and kisses Henry again, brings his lips to his neck and kisses him there. He licks and sucks and bites until there’s a blooming purple hickey on Henry’s neck, and then he tries to push him to the bed.
‘Talk to me,’ Henry says. He smiles gently, and there’s something in his eyes that’s soft and hesitant, as though he can’t believe any of this is happening. Alex gets it, he can’t either. ‘Another night. What do you want tonight though?’
Alex swallows. ‘I want to blow you,’ he says.
Henry nods. ‘You said before that you wanted me to show you how to make it good. Do you still want that?’
Alex lets out a whimper. ‘Fuck. Yeah. I mean— yeah.’
‘Good. In which case, do you have a condom?’
Alex inhales. ‘In the drawer,’ he says, nodding towards the bedside table, but he doesn’t move. Henry doesn’t either. He just pulls Alex back in for a kiss.
It’s gentler this time, but no less forceful or feverish; there’s still the same level of heat and want there, but something softer and more reassuring there too. They stay there for a while, trading lazy kisses, dragging soft moans and whimpers from each other’s lips and swallowing them down. Henry undresses Alex slowly. He pushes his shirt from his body and stares at him with heavy lidded eyes and murmurs, ‘so beautiful.’
Henry guides him to the bed, and Alex grabs the condoms from his bedside table and throws them down next to them on the sheets. Henry kisses his way down Alex’s chest; traces his fingers up the lines of his legs and to his boxers, where he’s hard. Henry sinks his lips and teeth into Alex’s thighs and Alex squirms under him. ‘Fuck,’ he moans.
Henry drags his lips over Alex’s boxers, sinks the wet heat of his mouth over Alex’s cock through the fabric and Alex feels transported. He works his mouth over Alex until he’s desperate, leaking at the tip through the fabric and writhing. He wonders if Henry can taste it on his tongue.
‘Condom,’ Henry murmurs hoarsely, and Alex hands it to him as he sits back onto his heels to peel Alex’s boxers from him.
‘You’re unusually quiet for someone who normally never shuts up,’ he says conversationally, as he drags Alex’s underwear from his body. Alex is pressing the crown of his head back against his pillow, biting down on his lip. He really, really wants this to be good for Henry too, and a stream of profanities probably isn’t going to set the right mood. ‘Hey,’ Henry says, ‘I want to hear you. I like hearing what’s good for you.’
Alex exhales. ‘Jesus fuck, okay. Like, everything you’re doing is just— keep doing that,’ he says, right as Henry rolls the condom onto him and swallows him down to the hilt barely a second later. ‘Oh my fucking— Jesus fuck, baby.’
Henry lets out a startled whine. It’s muffled, but it’s there. ‘You like that? Baby ?’ Alex asks, as Henry continues to work his mouth over him, but he looks up and blinks once and Alex knows that’s a yes. Alex knows he’s experienced but fuck, he’s never had anyone like this, never had anyone who seems to enjoy this as much as Henry seems to. He sucks cock like it’s what he was put here on this planet to do. He slows down, and Alex wonders if it’s on purpose, to give him time to process his movements, what Henry is doing. If this is Henry teaching him. So he tries to focus on the swipes of his tongue and the way he relaxes his throat, and even through the latex, it’s still the best thing he’s ever felt.
Henry brings him to the brink embarrassingly quickly with the steady hot pressure of his mouth and the swipe of his tongue pulsating on Alex’s dick. When Alex comes into the condom with his hand on the back of Henry’s head, he can’t help but think about what it would be like to come in Henry’s mouth, on his tongue; what it might be like for Henry to come in his.
Henry sits up again, and he’s barely sitting back on his heels again when Alex surges up to meet him. He kisses him, tangles a hand in the strands of gold and tightens his grip. ‘Jesus fucking Christ, sweetheart,’ he murmurs, kissing him again. He never wants Henry to do that with another soul. He wants it to be him and only him; he thinks he always has.
He pushes Henry down onto the bed. ‘Just say if I’m doing this wrong,’ he tells him, before slowly starting to take off Henry’s boxers. He peels them away slowly and his cock curves upwards, heavy and leaking just a little at the tip as Alex rolls the condom on.
He goes slowly, gently taking the tip of Henry’s dick into his mouth, and the taste of latex under his tongue feels weird but he pushes past it because the rest of it is really, really fucking something. Henry is heavy on his tongue and he takes him down slowly, as far as he can. He can feel Henry writhe beneath him and gasp, ‘oh my God, Alex.’
Henry’s hand finds his hair and Alex moans into it as he tightens his grip. Henry has probably had better, he thinks, but he’s probably doing okay for a first try because Henry gasps beneath him when he tries to mimic that thing Henry had done with his tongue. Alex feels him tighten his grip in his hair and then murmur something about his eyelashes when he pushes his head into Henry’s hand and looks up. It doesn’t take long before he feels Henry’s cock pulsing on his tongue and a breathy laugh drag itself from his body, his hips bucking in tiny stunted movements as he comes.
Alex flops down on the bed next to Henry, both of them panting slightly. He turns to Henry. His eyes are closed, and the silence stretches. Maybe, Alex thinks suddenly, Henry has changed his mind. Maybe this was all a terrible mistake and Henry is having second-thoughts about all of it; maybe he’s about to get up and leave.
‘How would you feel about dinner?’ Henry asks, cutting through the quiet.
‘Right now?’ Alex asks, his brow furrowing slightly. ‘It’s like nearly two a.m,’ he says, glancing at the clock.
‘Tomorrow. I’m not sure I can take you out right now but I’d like to make you dinner.’ Alex tries not to visibly wince at the thought of Henry cooking. ‘And by make you dinner I mean that I’m sure I can put together a reasonable sandwich, or leftovers or something,’ he says. He turns to face Alex. ‘I would like to do this properly. I don’t… I’m not saying it’s going to be easy for me, or that I’ll always get things right. I’ve spent so long stuck in my head insisting to myself that I can’t have anything like this… you were right, I’m scared. But I’d like to try, if you’ll let me.’
Alex’s breath hitches. He doesn’t know why because it’s not the first time Henry has said it tonight. ‘We don’t have to… I don’t know, I don’t have to go round telling people you’re my boyfriend or something,’ he says, and he watches as Henry’s face softens.
‘I could be though,’ Henry says quietly. ‘If you wanted.’
Alex looks at him. He can’t even think of anything sarcastic or flippant to say. All that comes out is a hoarse, ‘sounds fucking great, sweetheart.’ Alex pauses. ‘What are you going to do about your apartment?’ he asks quietly.
Henry exhales. ‘I suppose finally take Pez up on his offer for his spare room,’ he says and Alex turns to him with wide eyes.
‘Pez has a spare room and you’ve been living in that health hazard? Sweetheart, we have got to get you a sense of self-preservation.’
Henry rolls his eyes, but his face softens immediately after. ‘I know,’ he says quietly. ‘I just didn’t want anyone to know how badly I was doing. I just… never let anyone come over, always went back to someone else’s place, you know. I’ll talk to Pez, I promise. I’ll be less stubborn. I’m not going anywhere.’
They fall asleep after more kisses and traded barbs. It’s the first time Henry has slept in a proper bed in weeks. Alex falls asleep with Henry curled around him like an overzealous koala – it’s surprising, all things considered, how he gravitates towards every shift and turn of Alex’s body.
Alex sleeps heavily and dreams of Henry, of Christmas and eating a messy sandwich made of leftovers on the couch in the morning. When he wakes up, Henry is still there, squinting into the morning sunlight, his body warm next to Alex’s.
He keeps his promise, he stays.