Chapter Text
Alex maintains that this was not his fault.
Not entirely, anyway.
“The fountain? Really?”
Alex shifts on his feet, squelching slightly in his shoes. They might both be currently dripping on the carpet. He opens his mouth to explain, but apparently that question was rhetorical; Zahra holds up a hand.
“I cannot begin to tell you how much I do not care what caused it this time,” she says, clearly at the end of her rope. Alex’s mouth snaps shut. “This has gone on far too long. We can’t have these kinds of… misunderstandings anymore. You don’t have to like each other, but you do have to be able to work together, or else there will be dire consequences. Am I making myself clear?”
Alex swallows and nods, but his nemesis speaks first.
“Crystal,” Henry says from beside him.
“That’s good to hear,” Zahra says. “But I don’t fucking trust you two to be anything approaching mature about this, so.” She slides a paper across the desk containing an address for an office a few blocks away and a series of dates. “You’ve been scheduled for four mandatory sessions of reconciliation therapy, with more at the discretion of the therapist.”
“What the fuck?” Alex blurts before he can stop himself, only to be swiftly silenced by Zahra’s glare.
Henry, wisely, keeps quiet.
“Mandatory,” she repeats, daring either of them to argue. When neither of them do, she turns back to her computer. “You’re dismissed.”
With a quick, uncertain glance at each other, Alex and Henry both turn to go; there’s little else to do. Right now it doesn’t matter who started it (it was Henry), only that they have little other choice if they want to keep their jobs. Alex fought hard to get to his position, and he’s not going to let some stuck up prick be the reason he loses it.
“Gentlemen,” Zahra says before they get to the door. They both pause and look back at her. “I will deny ever saying this if questioned, but I like both of you. You’re good at what you do, and I don’t want to fire either of you. So get your shit together, ok?”
The therapy appointments are scheduled every Thursday evening, after normal working hours, which is just fucking great. Another way to make the middle of the week longer than necessary. Alex doesn’t mean to be late to the first one, truly, it’s only that he gets wrapped up in his work and somehow manages to miss the reminder on his phone telling him it’s time to leave. Suddenly he looks up and it’s five minutes before he’s due at an appointment at least twelve minutes away. He nearly sprints out of the office and down the road, because the last thing he needs is to give Zahra a reason to sack him for not taking this seriously.
Not that he actually intends to take it that seriously. The whole thing is a joke. He’s very sure that a little therapy isn’t going to help anything when the problem is that Henry Fox is an asshole.
The asshole himself is sitting in the therapist’s waiting room when Alex comes rushing in five minutes late and out of breath. He could have stopped by Alex’s desk and reminded him that it was time to leave, but instead he let Alex be late so that he could look better. Typical. Henry cocks an exceedingly judgmental eyebrow at him, but just as Alex is about to tell him to go fuck himself, the office door opens and a tall Asian woman steps out.
“Cynthia, is my five-thirty—” she starts to ask the receptionist, before stopping when she catches sight of Alex and Henry.
“Other half just arrived,” Cynthia says dryly with a pointed look at Alex.
“Oh good,” the therapist says, smiling at them. Dr. Chen, Alex remembers from the information Zahra’s secretary had given him. “Alex and Henry, right? Come on in. I hope you didn’t have any trouble finding me?”
“It was quite straightforward,” Henry volunteers, and Alex shoots him a vicious glare behind her back as they follow her into the office.
“Yeah, no problem,” Alex adds, still catching his breath. “Just lost track of time. Sorry I’m a little late.”
Dr. Chen just cocks her head slightly as she turns and settles down into a chair. “It is your time, of course, but I encourage you to think about priorities and what you want out of these sessions. But we’ll get to that soon enough.” She gestures to a small collection of furniture opposite her. “Please, sit wherever you’ll be most comfortable.”
The office is about what he expected from a therapist’s office. A comfy-looking couch, a couple of armchairs, and a low coffee table fill most of the space in front of a large, mahogany desk with a laptop on it. There’s a pitcher of water and several glasses on the table, though Alex can’t help but eye the coffee machine in the corner longingly. The art decorating the walls is East Asian in origin—Chinese, he’d wager—mostly sketches and paintings of craggy mountains and birds. Other personal touches dot the office: some kind of half-completed knitting project on the table next to Dr. Chen’s chair, and a few photos of her and another woman scattered amongst the bookshelves, including a wedding photo with the doctor in a red cheongsam and her wife in a white ball gown.
Henry takes an armchair by himself, sitting stiffly with his back ramrod straight and one leg crossed over the other, so Alex takes the couch. He drops himself heavily onto it as Dr. Chen picks up a file and a notebook from the table, already dreading what’s to come. He’s never been to therapy, and he’s not exactly pleased to have been forced into it. Especially not with his nemesis. No doubt Henry is going to come off as an angel and Alex the bad guy, like always happens, even though Henry is just as complicit in their fights.
Whatever. Alex just has to get through four sessions.
“My name is Dr. Amy Chen, my pronouns are she/her, and I’ll be working with you for these sessions,” the therapist tells them once they’re settled.
“I’m Alex,” Alex says, lifting his hand slightly.
“Henry. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Chen.”
“Likewise,” she says. “You can feel free to call me Amy or Dr. Chen, whatever you feel most comfortable with.”
“What about Doc?” Alex asks with a grin. He can practically feel Henry rolling his eyes, which is half of why he asked—the other half being him figuring out exactly what he’s going to be able to get away with.
Dr. Chen’s smile deepens slightly. “If you like,” she allows. “I see you’ve been scheduled for four weekly, hour-long sessions, with the option to continue if I think it would be beneficial.” She frowns slightly, her brow furrowing, but then moves on. “It looks like your sessions have been paid for in advance, but if you have any administrative questions about that you can feel free to ask Cynthia. We do ask that you give 24 hours notice if you need to cancel or reschedule, and punctuality is appreciated.” She glances up at Alex, but there’s a tiny curve to her lips.
“Won’t happen again, ma’am,” Alex offers contritely. He’s always hated disappointing authority figures, even those without any real authority over him.
“You should know that everything you say in the sessions is completely confidential. Before we get into why you’re here, I just want to let you know a little about me and my methods. I’ve been practicing for twenty years as a counselor, and I specialize in couples and conflict resolution. On a personal note, I’m also particularly interested in the issues queer couples face—I’m trans, and my wife and I have been together for ten years.”
That’s nice and all, but Alex doesn’t really see why it’s relevant to their problems. ‘Conflict resolution’ at least makes sense—no doubt that’s why Zahra picked her. Jesus, he hopes Zahra doesn’t think that Alex’s problems with Henry are because he’s gay. Or that Henry thinks— but no, if Henry thought he was a homophobe he would have said something, Alex is sure of it. He wasted no time letting Hunter have it when he made some stupid comment last year during Pride month (which Alex has to admit was extremely satisfying to watch). So yeah. Not relevant.
“Do you have any questions for me?” Dr. Chen asks, snapping him out of his musings. Henry answers in the negative as Alex shakes his head. “All right. Why don’t we begin by you telling me a little about why you’re here.”
“We’re not getting along and it’s become… a problem,” Henry says diplomatically.
Dr. Chen nods. “Well, I’m glad that you see that and want to do something about it,” she says, and a frustrated scoff escapes Alex before he can stop it. Naturally, she turns to him. “I take it this wasn’t your idea?”
“You could say that.”
“But you’re here, so there must be something about this relationship that you think is worth saving.”
“I guess,” Alex allows, frowning. That’s kind of a strange way to put it, but it’s true enough. What’s worth saving is his fucking job, but seeing as that’s predicated on improving his relationship with Henry, it’s all basically the same.
“Why don’t you tell me about your relationship,” Dr. Chen suggests. “How long have you known each other?”
“Two years,” Alex answers.
“And how long have you been having trouble getting along, as you put it?”
“Since the beginning, really,” Henry puts in. “We’ve always fought.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“Because he’s an asshole,” Alex bites out immediately.
Henry rolls his eyes and sighs that annoying, put-upon sigh of his. “Oh, of course, it’s always my fault.”
“Henry, I’m sensing some resentment at always being blamed for your disagreements,” Dr. Chen says.
“Yes, I would say that,” Henry says. His lips thin into a hard line as he glares at Alex. “I acknowledge that I can be… a bit prickly sometimes,” he continues grudgingly. “But I’m hardly the only one at fault here. He’s the one who overreacts at every imagined slight.”
“They’re not imagined,” Alex huffs indignantly. “He thinks he’s better than me.”
“That’s not true!” Henry protests.
“Ok, let’s take a step back,” Dr. Chen cuts in after observing this volley. “One thing I want to encourage you to do is to avoid reading into each other’s intentions. Instead, try to express how their actions make you feel. Do we think we can do that?” They nod, and she seems satisfied. “Now, if you’ve been fighting frequently, what brought you in today? What was the tipping point?”
“Alex insulted me, I might have implied he didn’t have any taste, and then he pushed me into a fountain,” Henry says, his voice dry as a desert.
“Hold on, that is not what happened,” Alex immediately intervenes. “What he said was that I lacked class, because he’s a conceited asshole. And I didn’t try to push him into the fountain, I was just trying to keep him from walking away from me, like he always does. He’s the one who lost his balance when he jerked away. And he pulled me down with him.”
“You did insult him, though?” Dr. Chen asks with a cocked eyebrow that Alex does not care for.
“It wasn’t— I just said his tie was dumb. It was a joke,” Alex grits out. He can’t help it if Henry doesn’t have a sense of humor.
Dr. Chen makes a note in her notepad, and Alex has to stop himself from protesting more. A moment later, she looks up at them again. “And what made this conflict stand out in particular?”
“Nothing, really,” Henry says, which is true enough. “I think everyone has just had enough of us fighting.”
“Your friends?”
“Friends, coworkers, our boss,” Alex elaborates.
“You work in the same place?” Dr. Chen asks.
Alex frowns in confusion again as he answers, “Yeah.” It seems kind of odd that Zahra apparently didn’t tell her anything about why they’re here, but maybe it has to do with the confidentiality stuff.
She makes another note. “So that must mean you see each other a lot.”
“Quite,” Henry says, sounding extremely aggrieved by that fact.
“And do you find you fight mostly at work?”
“Well, yeah,” Alex says. They do occasionally end up at the same social events, mostly because Nora and June are close with Henry’s best friend Pez, but they seem to be better at avoiding each other in those situations, probably because their friends have threatened not to invite either of them to shit if they couldn’t behave like adults.
“So, would you say that your arguing at work is negatively affecting your lives at home?”
Henry shrugs. “Not really?”
“Sometimes my sister and best friend get pissed at me because they say all I do is complain about Henry when we’re supposed to hang out,” Alex admits. “I don’t,” he adds, mostly to Henry, who looks taken aback by this information. “They’re grossly exaggerating.”
Dr. Chen hums thoughtfully and makes a few more notes. “How do they feel about your relationship with Henry?”
“Pretty much the same as everyone else,” Alex says. “They think I’m overreacting because they don’t see the same side of him that I do.”
“You just don’t like it when they agree with me,” Henry puts in smugly. Alex glares at him.
“Does that happen frequently?” Dr. Chen asks.
“No,” Alex huffs at the same time as Henry says, “Yes.”
More fucking notes. This time they go on for a while. Alex is dying to know what they say. Finally, Dr. Chen looks up at them again. “We can talk more about family later, but for now I’d like to get back to the roots of your fights. How would you describe your communication?”
Alex snorts before he can stop himself. “What communication?”
“Henry?”
“Hostile,” Henry answers flatly. “I feel like I can’t say anything because he’s going to misinterpret it and get angry at me.”
“Do you feel like he misinterprets your intentions often?” Dr. Chen asks.
“Always. Like he assumes the worst of me by default.”
“Because most of the time you’re actively trying to be a dick to me,” Alex retorts. Then he catches the look that Dr. Chen’s giving him and huffs slightly. “Fine. It feels that way.”
“I’m not trying to be a dick,” Henry protests.
“Well you’re doing a bang-up job of it anyway.”
Henry just sighs in response.
“It sounds to me like you’re stuck in a cycle of accusations—justified or not—and defensiveness, which can be difficult to break out of,” Dr. Chen says evenly. “We’ll dig into more ways you can improve your communication during the next session. For now, I want to give you some concrete strategies that you can put to use right away when tensions rise. Some of these are pretty standard, but some of them are things I want to recommend because they seem work for my wife and I when we get into disagreements when one of us feels attacked.”
Fortunately, the rest of the session passes without too much drama. They talk a bit more about what kinds of arguments they typically have, and Dr. Chen gives them some more suggestions to try out if they get into fights in the next week—all but guaranteed. Some of the techniques she gave them do seem like they might be useful for keeping their arguments from blowing up, but he still can’t help but feel like on the whole this is a waste of time; there are so many other things he’d rather be doing than rehashing old fights with Henry. She also asks that they keep a journal of the times that they do fight, including how they were feeling before, during, and after. Alex didn’t expect to have fucking homework, too.
“As we wrap up this session, I want to talk a bit about what you’re each hoping to get out of this therapy. What are your goals? What are we working toward?” Dr. Chen asks them. “Henry, would you like to go first?”
“I’m tired of fighting,” Henry answers wearily. “Our current arrangement is untenable.”
“Alex?”
“Yeah, sure. Ditto,” Alex mutters. What he wants is for these mandatory sessions to be over so they can get back to their lives, actually. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be an adequate answer for Dr. Chen, because she gives him a pointed look. “Ok, yes, I agree. Something has to change if this is going to work out.”
“I’m glad you both see it that way,” Dr. Chen says. Then she closes her notebook and folds her hands on top of it. “I think I’m starting to get a sense of where the issues lie. The good news is that you’re both here, and you’re both willing to work on this relationship. That’s promising. Not all of the couples I see are even at that point.”
“Sorry, what?” Henry says, voicing Alex’s stuttering thoughts as well.
Dr. Chen continues, though, seemingly oblivious to their abrupt confusion. “Working with your partner can complicate things, but we can figure out better ways to separate your work and home lives, and ways to help you keep disagreements from turning into harmful fights. Does that sound good?”
Alex looks at Henry, who’s staring back at him with the same slightly stunned expression that Alex is sure he’s wearing. “Uh. Yeah,” he somehow manages.
“Great, well it was good to meet you both. Please check in with Cynthia before you leave to make sure all of the necessary forms have been signed.”
There’s little to do other than exactly that. Maybe Alex misheard, or misinterpreted what she was saying there at the end. Except he knows he didn’t. He thinks back over the session, looking for any moments where they might have suggested that they were something other than mortal enemies and can’t come up with anything, but he also can’t come up with anything that definitively proved that they weren’t together. Which is insane. Now that he thinks about some of Dr. Chen’s questions in a new light… well, fuck. Her bringing up her speciality in queer couples makes a lot more fucking sense.
On the sidewalk in front of the office, Alex turns to Henry, opening his mouth and closing it again before he can actually come up with words. “You heard that too, right? I’m not going insane?”
“She thinks we’re a couple, yes,” Henry says. He sounds a little queasy. Understandably.
“Fuck me, this is just great,” Alex groans, dragging a hand over his face.
“We’ll just explain that there was a misunderstanding—”
Alex cuts him off with a bark of laughter. “Oh, be my guest. And you can also be the one to tell Zahra that she mistakenly signed us up for couples therapy.”
“I beg your pardon?” Henry says as his eyebrows climb skyward.
“Look, it’s only three more sessions,” Alex reasons. “I say we just do them and get it over with.”
“What, and pretend to be a couple?”
Henry looks vaguely horrified by the suggestion, which is fair. Alex isn’t really sure why he made it, other than the fact that he’d rather not admit that they sat through an entire couples therapy session without realizing what it was. If they just pretend for the remaining sessions, no one has to know. Also there’s the lure of fucking with Henry. Alex’s smile sharpens.
“Too much of a stretch for you, Fox?”
“Hardly,” Henry scoffs. “You’re the one who’s straight.”
“So you don’t think I can pull it off?” Alex counters.
Henry folds his arms over his chest and looks him up and down pointedly. “Not particularly, no.”
“I bet you I’m not the one to give it away.”
“You actually want to wager on this?”
“Why not? It’ll keep things interesting.”
“And what are we wagering?”
Alex shrugs. “Winner’s choice.”
“That seems rather… expansive,” Henry replies dubiously.
“Guess you better not lose then, Fox,” Alex taunts.
“I like my odds if you’re going to keep referring to me by my surname,” Henry shoots back. He looks at Alex with a measured stare for another long moment, then sticks out his hand. “Alright, then. Winner’s choice.”
Alex shakes it, smirking. “You’re on, sweetheart.”