Chapter Text
“Pez I know I say it every week but it shouldn’t be that difficult to find someone who is willing to be more than a fuck.” Henry sighs
“H that’s a little vulgar for a Monday at 4pm no?”
Henry shakes his head, leaning back into the worn out vinyl booth that is holding together both his last shred of dignity and his sanity.
“Pez, of the two of us you are much more vulgar. Let me have this.”
“Darling, I am not vulgar. I'm colorful! And don't try to steal my style, Haz. Doesn't suit you. No one wants a knock-off when they can have the original!"
Henry groans into his hands, careful not to let his elbows rest against the sticky countertop.
The Campus Corner Cafe was many things, but an upstanding, clean establishment was not one of them. Still, it was perfect for Pez and Henry to meet up once a week, take their drink of choice, and split an overwhelmingly large breakfast burrito. Henry would bemoan his lack of dating life and complain about the previous week's hookups. Pez would listen, commiserate, and then launch into tales of his many lovers and just how lovely they were.
Henry wasn’t in the mood when he was getting the shaft, literally. Always smaller, usually more unsatisfactory than he was willing to admit. He shoots Pez a withering glare,
“I am just fine and dandy at sex thank you very much, but when you ask for anything more than the sex, every Red Blooded North American Male in a 20 mile radius of this campus seems to clam up and scatter like prey being hunted for sport.”
Pez throws back his head and laughs. “Love, you are basically hunting for a boyfriend. But these guys are commitment phobes, and your heart shines like a golden retriever looking for a forever home.”
Henry grumbles like a petulant child. “It doesn’t need to be forever.”
Pez just shakes his head in exasperation and tries to reach over to steal a piece of Henry’s burrito. Before he can manage, Henry grips his wrist and raises an eyebrow. Pez pouts and tries, as always, to flirt his way out of it. “Haz, I have literally told you a million times: the more you come onto me, the more I must deny you. My love for you is that of a long-lost sibling!”
“Shut up you muppet,” Henry gives up on his endeavor and lets Pez take a bite of burrito.
Satisfied with his victory, Pez leans sideways, twirling his fork around like a microphone. “All I’m saying is that most men on this campus want to sling the banana around instead of curling up next to one.”
“Pez, I am not a banana.”
Ignoring him, Pez leans forward and asks, “So tell me then my liege, what would your perfect person do for you besides ignore your banana?”
Henry sighs and sits back. He closes his eyes and leans into the cracked vinyl cover of the booth.
“Pez, all I really want at the end of the day is someone who will curl up with me on the couch.”
“Mate, you need a dog not a boyfriend.”
Henry cracks an open one eye. Pez raises an eyebrow and snorts, gesturing as if to say ‘am I wrong?’
“It’s not just cuddling, it’s enjoying the space of another human being,” Henry explains. “It is being able to wrap myself so completely around someone that the only noise is the thumping of our hearts together. It is hard enough trying to get a date out here when all I really want is to curl up with someone’s head on my chest and play with their hair.”
“I can do that for you sweetheart,” a southern Texas drawl interrupts.
Jolting out of his stupor, Henry opens his eyes to one of the most breathtaking sights he has ever laid eyes on.
There stands a man with deep sun kissed skin. Freckles scatter across his nose like he has been enjoying southern California, not slogging through a gloomy fall on the east coast. He has a wild head of curls that Henry wants to run his hands through.. A half smirk on his face highlights a dimple. But more than any of that are his eyes— sparkling brown catching the reflection from the neon sign to twinkle gold.
Before Henry can even make a comment, the man slides into the booth next to him. The feeling of a body pressed up against his own is a volcanic brand across an otherwise desolate ruin.
Henry catches a whiff of fresh cinnamon and something spicy. Whatever cologne this man is wearing seems to have molded perfectly to his skin. He knows that when they leave the cocoon of this worn-out booth, he will take the smell with him. Decades from now, he could catch it on the street and long to follow around a corner, just past a light...looking for someone that was never his to begin with.
Henry is mesmerized by the syrup sweet voice speaking softly in his ear, “I’d like to cuddle with you. Rub your back, draw circles into your skin, play with that hair you’ve got going on there. It would be nice, lovely.”
“Excuse me?” Henry says unsure, flustered, not knowing what to do with himself.
The man smiles. It’s softer, there is a heated warmth in the quirk of his lips.
Pez, of course, cannot seem to keep his mouth shut. “Oh my, well aren’t you delectable! Henry, you’d better take up this strumpet or I’ll do it for you.”
Henry waves a vague hand in Pez’s direction as if to tell him to shove off, but is distracted trying to come up with something, anything, to say.
“I - erm,” is all he manages before this mysterious daydream of a man speaks again.
“Just think,” he says in a voice smooth as silk against Henry’s eardrums. “You and me, curled up somewhere comfy with a blanket wrapped around us, not a care in the world.”
Henry just sighs at the idea, trying to ignore the way Pez is gleefully bouncing on the seat across from him. He isn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth (even if a horse walking into the establishment would make more sense than this Adonis deciding to make Henry the target of his cuddles).
He braves looking the man in the eyes, sure that he could easily be unmoored, sinking into that warm brown gaze .
Composing himself slightly, Henry leans forward into the man’s space and lets his eyes drift down to those lips. He bites his own, then whispers, “I think it sounds a little too good to be true, are you willing to make good on such a promise?”
Pez is gasping, clutching his heart over a monstrosity of sparkles and plaid that only he would be able to pull off.
The stranger grins more broadly, “Why don’t you hand me your phone and we can find out somewhere without an audience.”
Fuck .
This man has spent all of a minute in Henry’s presence and all he wants is more.
With his hands shaking more than he would like to admit, Henry pulls his phone out of his pocket and unlocks it.
With a few quick taps and a little flourish, his phone is handed back to him. The stranger stands, and the warmth at Henry’s side leaves so quickly that he feels like he’s plunged into the Arctic.
“Sweetheart, I’d love to stay,” the stranger says. “But contract law won’t take itself. Please use that number. I don’t give it out to just anyone!”
As he walks off, Pez leans forward and demands, “Henry, who was that?”
Henry looks down at the new text message in his phone. He grins at the name Mr. Bodypillow
For all your cuddling needs.
“I’m not sure, Pez,” Henry says. “But I sure as hell am going to find out.”
Dearest Mr. Bodypillow, a cuddling emergency has occurred and I require your expertise, warmest — the cuddle connoisseur.
Henry presses send and then promptly throws his phone on the bed across his room.
He has absolutely lost his mind.
He has typed and retyped the opening message on seventeen different occasions in the last twenty minutes alone. Settling on that ridiculous harangue to try as an opening? The man was going to think he was absolutely insane.
This mental break from reality started when he woke up from an afternoon nap, and realized that he had taken three pillows and fashioned them into a makeshift human to clutch while asleep.
At some point one has to admit they need help. Henry wasn’t quite ready to admit that, but could not call himself “chill” as it were. Pez would delight in his own admittance that it was time to make a change, but instead of talking to Pez he was sending ridiculous messages to strangers.
He tells himself he does not care. He has more important things on his mind and on his to-do list than a random man he spent only a few minutes of time with.
*bzzz bzzz*
Henry rushes over to the discarded phone praying the message was and wasn’t from the mystery man.
my dearest cuddle suitor i can only hope this is the Prince Charming from the cafe on monday
The grammar is atrocious. Not a single convection for punctuation used, and the lowercase “I” has Henry’s own eye twitching. Regardless, Henry feels his cheeks warm at the idea of being called Prince Charming — trying not to think too hard, he quickly types back:
I would hope you were a one cuddle customer at a time kind of guy?
you are not a customer but an equal opportunity cuddle enthusiast as myself
though I have nO idea what to call you other than handsome
His texts come in little bursts of fragments, like someone hit the send button before he could quite get the entire thought out. Still, Henry feels like he is a 14 year old teenager texting a crush for the first time. A few sweet words should not make him feel this way. With a bit of a grin Henry, fully leaning against the wall not able to take his own eyes off the screen types back
I’ll give you my name if you give me yours.
There are immediate bubbles that come up and subside. Maybe they are called texting bubbles for the fizzy feeling they leave your stomach in when you know without a doubt that someone is composing a message to you. The next barrage of messages they send back and forth leaves Heny
woah Woah
what kind of boy do you take me for
thats a big ask
I can always just stay your Prince Charming.
thats a given but
i guess if i was to give you anything a name isn’t too hard
its alex
Alex. The name seems to fit this boisterous man so well.
I can still be your Prince Charming, but I also go by Henry.
so henry
my Prince Charming and cuddle suitor
you seem to be in dire straights for some human affection
I see what you did with that dire straights line talking to a man as gay as a maypole.
knOw what they say about a man with great humor
he also has bIg hands
You are ridiculous. You know that is the first time you have capitalized the letter I in our entire conversation and it is in the middle of a word?
grammatical conventions are capitalist and i will not
succumb to the PRessures of society
but if i get going i will not stop so cuddling
You and Me
someWhere
sometime
yeah
If it wouldn’t be too much of a bother, yes I would enjoy that greatly.
it would no’t be a bother at all
would you be able to last without affection until
friday after 4:30
Henry couldn’t believe he was actually agreeing to a meet up for some hugs with a stranger - no Alex - as if he hadn’t had one night stands before. This somehow felt more illicit.
You can come by my apartment at 5?
There was a lull in responding. Henry could feel his heart constrict at the idea that he might get a no.
This was the most vulnerable he felt in a long time, and he had spent his last weekend getting railed by a guy named Fabian that he had only met earlier that evening. There hadn’t been any kind of connection there, just carnal desire. Well… Fabian might have thought it was carnal desire but it was more like a lukewarm dusting of desire and a performance that nobody would rate fresh on rotten tomatoes.
Henry lets himself daydream for a moment about what carnal desire with Alex might look like, but before he can think up more than a tantalizing glimpse into the idea, his phone, still clutched tightly into his hand, vibrates.
send the addy and im there sweetheart
With hands that are now shaking Henry quickly types out his address and for the first time in a half hour lets his phone fall from his fingertips. He moves from his slightly hunched position over to the bed and tries not to scream into a pillow. Friday can’t come quick enough.
Friday finally arrives and Henry is a walking disaster.
10:04am
Henry should absolutely cancel everything right this minute and just never touch another human being ever again. What in the world was he thinking, scheduling a cuddle date, or maybe not even a date, with some guy who obviously was trying to pull a fast one?
1:34pm
For the love of Christ, what the fuck was he going to wear? He only had three and a half hours to decide and that wasn’t nearly enough time for him to completely burn and rebuild his entire wardrobe from scratch.
3:48pm
It was getting to be way too close to five for Henry to be comfortable. He has changed a total of 4 times before finally settling on just walking around in his boxers until he can calm himself down enough that every item of clothing he owns doesn’t make his skin itch.
4:35pm
It is decision time. Henry looks at the neatly laid out options that he has folded and then refolded every time he has tried them on in the past few hours. Joggers or jeans or pants? He figures he should do joggers but would that seem sloppy? He knows that grey pair are a bit suggestive but is that necessarily a bad thing… he doesn’t want more than cuddles right now but really the joggers are the most comfortable thing he owns. He pulls them on and then has to contemplate the shirt.
4:47pm
He pulls the cashmere over his head and isn’t entirely satisfied with his choice but Bea told him that this jumper brought out his eyes and that it makes him look like a huggable teddy bear. That sounds like the right kind of choice for whatever this is about to be.
4:55pm
Henry is wearing a hole through the floor in front of his apartment door. Maybe Alex just wouldn’t show up and he has spent today in a tizzy for no reason. Still he longs to breathe in the sweet scent of those flyaway curls again.
Truly there couldn’t be any reason for Alex to actually take his ridiculous request seriously. Nobody would think it was normal to have to ask for cuddles or a hug.
He knows he is lonely, but this feels a bit like stooping to a low that others don’t have to do.
No.
Henry is not going to feel sorry for himself when only minutes from now he’ll have an armful of the most attractive man he had seen in his entire life right here in this apartment.
Alex. Maybe short for Alexander. He would have to check about that. Alexander seems to roll off the tongue so nicely.
Before he can ponder further, he hears three harsh knocks on the door.
He looks over at the clock on the wall.
4:58pm.
Two minutes early.
Show time.
He rips the door open, and there’s Alex, looking like every fantasy Henry has ever had.
He’s in a deep forest green sweatshirt and dark gray sweats. He has a backpack slung over one shoulder. All Henry wants is to pull him into a hug.
“Alex,” he lets out with a bit more of a sigh than he means to.
“Hi, Sweetheart.” Two words shouldn’t get his heart pounding like a snare drum, but nothing about Alex seems to follow any kind of normal pattern for Henry.
He opens the door wider and Alex sweeps in. Before Henry can get another word out, Alex blurts— ,
“Can I have a hug?”
A little stunned, Henry just nods. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who needed human affection.
Alex carefully sets the backpack down and toes off his shoes before stepping into Henry’s space.
Henry is immediately hit with that aroma he knows he will never tire of: sweet cinnamon, a cologne with sandalwood, and whatever clean scent from his fabric softener Alex uses.
Alex is a few inches shorter than Henry. He can’t help but feel giddy at the idea of wrapping his arms around Alex and him fitting perfectly in his arms.
That, and the idea of being able to lean down and kiss Alex’s forehead has already prominently planted itself in his mind.
“Hello,” Henry whispers softly,
“Come here,” is all Alex can say back before reaching forward and pulling him in.
Henry feels a little awkward at first.
It is all at once not enough and too much.
There is a prickling fire and ice sensation that rips through his body at every connection point. From where his fingers are lightly touching Alex’s back to where their chests connect from collarbone to waistline.
Alex’s arms are tightly wrapped around Henry solid iron bars along his back, strong enough to weather any storm. He can feel a soft fluttering of breath on the right side of his neck in the space between his ear and shoulder where Alex’s face lays claim to a new home.
After about 15 seconds, the wrought iron grip along his back gets tighter and Henry decides to get with the program. With tentative hands gaining confidence every second he isn’t pushed away, Henry rubs his arms up and down the wide expanse of Alex’s back. He can feel corded muscle beneath the layers. He lets his hands pull Alex fully flush against his own body gripping the soft fabric of the well worn sweatshirt.
Alex nuzzles closer, thumbs lazily swiping back in forth in a little maddening pattern. Henry brings up a hand from Alex’s back and softly rests it against his head.
Slowly, with the kind of reluctance that was palpable, Henry pulls Alex away from his body.
He looks a little punch drunk and gives a small smile. That little quirk of the lips will be driving Henry mad in his dreams tonight.
“So is Alex short for Alexander?” Idiot. The second thing you ever ask him? Henry feels like a complete dunce. Alex just nods his head in a yes motion.
“Do you have a preference?” Henry isn’t about to leave the question completely up in the air even if he was ridiculous enough to ask it.
“Honestly, as long as you are saying my name, I am okay with anything,” Alex responds, biting his own lip.
Henry has to let out a laugh at that. How can a complete stranger seem to be made perfectly for him?
“Well Alexander, why don’t we move this to a more comfortable position.”
Alex nods again and then slips his arms from around Henry’s back. He lets them run down Henry’s arms eliciting a shiver before sliding their hands together. He looks up into Henry’s eyes. All Henry can think about is the perfect set of lashes surrounding deep brown.
“Lead me, my cuddle connoisseur,”
Henry just grips the hand in his own tighter, and leads Alex away from the front door and into the living room. Henry likes to think of his space as tasteful. There are a series of literary posters on the wall and a few art prints of his favorite Amiet pieces. A floor to ceiling bookshelf takes up the corner and the entire space is done in warm fall reds and browns. Looking at his sofa in all of its oversized glory, never before has he been so thankful to have spent hours meticulously planning out the space with Pez when he first moved in.
He pauses and looks over at Alex. “So, Mr. Bodypillow, how do you want to do this?”
Alex shares a sly grin and then almost just as quickly as it came the grin slips away. Instead, he is left looking a little like he needs another hug.
“Umm, can I actually be held this time around?” He asks timidly. Henry is surprised by the reserved nature as Alex has been all brash confidence so far, but the apparent nerves are helping him feel a little better.
His heart beats double time at the mention of ‘this time around.’ Alex already wants to do this again and they haven’t even done more than hold hands. It makes Henry giddy.
“Of course, Alexander. You said we were cuddle connoisseurs, and this is a two way street. I’d love to be the one to hold you.”
Alex swallows and nods.
Henry lies down on the couch, legs splayed so Alex can fit himself between them. Instead of lying right on top of Henry as intended, Alex sits normally with both feet almost touching the ground, letting Henry’s legs awkwardly stretch around the back of his body from where he has laid claim to the couch.
“Okay if we are doing this we are going to do this right,” and Henry takes the hand that is still clasped between them and pulls Alex down on top of him.
Alex sputters out a laugh before situating himself on top of Henry, quickly tangling their legs together. He fits his head against Henry’s chest, one arm deeply embedded in the couch cushion and the other strewn near his own head splayed across Henry’s chest.
“So Henry,” Alex says entirely into Henry’s sweater, not even lifting his head.
“What’s your story?”
Henry has to snort. Of course Alex barrels in with a non-sequitur. Henry can’t imagine silence and Alex get along for more than a few seconds at a time. Left field seems like a more comfortable territory for a man who practically sat on his lap at their first meeting.
“I’m sorry, when were you under the impression that I was the one who gets to share first? You obviously have a lot on your mind Alexander. Why don’t you tell me why you always seem to be moving at two million miles an hour?”
Alex grumbles, burrows in closer and then takes a deep breath,
“Well I guess it’s pretty easy. I grew up in Texas with divorced parents that made every holiday a nuclear explosion rather than something to celebrate. I moved out here on a sports scholarship. I’m Poli-Sci and Pre-Law, but don’t tell my parents I am Done with politics or they would both have my head.” Henry can hear the capital letter in done, and privately wonders what sport Alex is playing. Alex continues on, “Son of a sitting governor and senator, so the expectations—” he pauses a moment and shrugs his shoulders, “are pretty exponential.”
Henry lightly runs his hands across Alex’s back, “That doesn’t sound very easy, darling,” the endearment slips out without much of a thought.
Alex’s shoulders sag and he continues, “It’s not really that easy. But I have to make it look easy, because there are all of these people counting on me. If I stop to breathe, it’s all too much. And even worse, my only friends are my sister and her girlfriend who live on the opposite coast.”
He is gripping and ungripping his hand in Henry’s sweater. That just won’t do. Quickly without reproach, Henry slips his hand into Alex’s and gives it a squeeze.
“They told me to just approach anyone who seemed kind and make some friends since I’ve been here three years and can’t seem to do much more than exist on the periphery. I heard what you said and I spoke without thinking. It led me here though, so I’m not too upset about that one.”
Henry can’t help but smile a little at the ending, but the rest of it breaks his heart. Nothing about Alex seems anxious or lonely.
“I’m not too upset about that either.”
Alex settles down and continues on opening up about his parents divorce. How getting an ADHD diagnosis at 21 felt. The way it took him longer than he ever thought possible to realize that he was Bi and likely somewhere on the Asexual spectrum. That things didn’t seem to all line up just perfectly for him the way they did for other people.
Love wasn’t easy. For a while he thought he was broken, or that something had to be wrong because he didn’t feel the same way about anything. There was an initial spark, but the idea of shoving his tongue in someone’s mouth only moments after meeting them gave him every ick imaginable. Dating in college was hard because of the immediate expectations that came with it. Sex was fine but it didn’t do much for him ever and that really seemed to scare people away.
When there is a lull in Alex’s conversation he squeezes Henry’s hand as if to say your turn . So Henry lets himself open up in a way he hasn’t since Pez came into his life.
“I think it is much more difficult to explain my parents than just their titles, I call them mom and dad, but they are known to so many others that they don’t always feel like they are just mine.”
Alex lifts his face and scrunches it up, endearing and ridiculous.
“What could you possibly mean by many others, It’s not like your dad is Indiana Jones or something.”
“No but he was James Bond.”
Alex pulls fully away from him, partially sitting up. Henry thinks he might have said something wrong, but Alex puts his hands on Henry’s chest stopping him from moving.
“You are being serious aren’t you.”
“Yes,” Henry lets it out slowly, the soft ending lingering in the air.
“What is your last name?”
“It’s Fox, Well it's Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor, but the Fox portion is from my dad.”
“Like Arthur Fox.”
“Well that would make sense as he was indeed my father.”
“Is.” Henry tilts his head to the side at Alex’s comment, “He is your father, regardless of if he is here anymore or not,”
All Henry can do is tighten his hold on Alex. Alex closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and Henry has no idea what is about to come out,
“Okay, Hen,” Alex interrupts the silence, and Henry doesn’t want to think about how that nickname makes him feel, “Let me tell you something. Arthur Fox is a babe, and i It makes sense as his son that you are also a babe because genes and all that, but a movie star as a dad? That must have been a hard way to grow up.”
Henry can’t escape the flush at being called a babe even if it is in the same breath as his father. He nods his own head in agreement and starts to share more. What family expectations looked like when you were adjacent to British nobility. How he grew up on movie sets and spent the ensuing years in hospitals. What it felt like to lose his dad at 14 and then have to share that grief with the rest of the world that thought they knew him too.
The entire time he is talking Alex has nestled down into Henry wrapping his arm back around him. It doesn’t feel as hard to share when there is a warm weight keeping him grounded.
From there the heaviness grows as the conversation turns even more somber. He touches on his grandmother and his older brother Philip’s expectations, the disaster that was his coming out, along with fleeing across the pond. With a little probing Alex is able to get him to share even more. That Philip had witnessed him coming out to Bea as a last plea to get her to rehab. Before the dotted line was signed for her hospital stay, Philip had run to Mary Mountchristen and Henry had been kicked out of the house in all but name.
Alex takes a deep breath interrupting his story, “There should be no consequences for living who you are. There shouldn’t be a world where you have to suffer for the bigotry of those who never learned that love comes in so many forms. Narrowing it down to romantic love between a man and a woman is a very stringent box to put such a beautiful emotion in.”
It is all Henry can do to grip his waist at the overwhelming emotion that he feels to hear someone say it so clearly. He lets out a choked, “Thank you.”
He continues on sharing about his dreams for his future degrees in English and History, the ultimate dream of queer anthologies, as well as how much he misses his dog David.
“You can not name your dog David,”
“I mean I can, and I did” Henry retorts the heaviness of the afternoon’s conversation dissipating.
“That is literally the name of a tax attorney. Why would you give a beagle such a weight to bear.”
With a laugh Henry ruffles Alex’s hair, “He is named after Bowie, but I couldn’t just name him Bowie no? I felt it was a bit on the nose, and a man should have a bit of mystery I have found.”
Alex shakes his head but leans into Henry’s touch and he lets his hand sit there on top of his curls aching to card his fingers through them.
Just as he settles, he lets out a quiet, “You should do that thing with your hands.”
A little taken aback Henry asks, “What thing with my hands?”
“You said you would play with my hair. You said you wanted to.”
And that’s really all it takes for Henry to take the hand sitting on Alex’s head and slowly sift his fingers through Alex’s curls.
Soft, silky, and the way Alex relaxes is better than Henry could have imagined. He practically purrs with the attention as he melts further into Henry .
They sit there for a while. No music, or tv show, or movie to distract. Just their soft breath and the quiet Friday afternoon. There is some noise from outside the window, as there is in any city, but none of it really seems to matter.
Henry can feel the stress from the past few weeks fade away. He knew he was a little touch starved, but the comfort and care that he feels from someone holding him tightly shouldn’t mean this much.
Alex starts humming and Henry begins to pull his hand away. Before it can even leave Alex’s head Alex lets out a noise of frustration,
“I am having a moment about this okay,” Alex pulls Henry’s other hand where it is resting on his lower back up to his hair and places it there.
So Henry lets Alex “have his moment,” which just consists of him wiggling around even further like he is going to burrow inside Henry and make a home in his chest, before settling more tangled up than before.
“Moment achieved,” Alex says quietly before turning the hand on Henry’s chest over. Henry brings one of his hands down from their perfect place tangled up in Alex’s hair. Alex lets their fingers lightly drag together before placing a delicate kiss—so soft and you might miss it—against Henry’s palm.
There is a moment where the entire world focuses on a pinpoint. Where the sounds outside of the very isolated screaming in one’s brain are silent. All that is left is his beating heart. It roars against his ears an unsteady rhythm, thumping against his ribcage an animal that has been hurt so many times it wants to flee.
Instead of letting the animal out, he dives deeper. He pulls Alex’s tangled fingers up to his own lips and lightly gives a few soft brushes before holding their hands directly against his heart.
Alex just makes an “mmmmmm” sound, humming into the cavity inside Henry that he has now occupied.
Henry lets his eyes close, carried by the feeling of warmth in his arms.