Chapter Text
Alex’s hands shake as he tries to grip the edge of toilet for support. There's bile on his chin and in the toilet bowl, and although the bile is clear, it leaves a distinct film over the water. The acidity in the air makes his eyes sting. Soon, a couple of fat tears plop into the toilet.
Eventually, after deeming the bout of nausea over with, Alex lets out a final, wet cough and sits back on his haunches. He stares at the toilet in apprehension for a few minutes. He can’t bring himself to look away from it.
Swallowing, Alex forces himself to make a list.
One: He threw up Sunday morning after a particularly unbridled night out with his law school friends. (Terrible hangover. Worse nausea. A very sweet Henry, who did his best to take care of him.)
Two: Monday morning found Alex still a bit queasy, but he managed not to puke. (A residual hangover is not unheard of, he reassures himself.)
Three: On Tuesday, he felt fine. (That’s good. That’s good, right?)
Four: The car ride to class on Wednesday made Alex feel so motion sick that he spent most of his mock trial practice breathing hard through his nose and staring blankly at the wooden grain of the desk. After completely butchering his set of closing remarks—which he can absolutely not afford to fuck up next week when the actual mock trial is scheduled—he excused himself from the room, found an empty classroom, and laid down for twenty minutes. A couple hours later, when he was finally done with his last class of the day, he told Cash that he would not be driving home, but walking. Pure insanity. It took over an hour and a half. Over the Manhattan Bridge he went. The fresh air managed to make Alex feel human enough by the time he arrived home to Henry that he didn’t feel the need to mention it to him. (Not good.)
Five: On Thursday, Alex felt…fine. Fine enough to have sex on the living room rug, anyway. (So, “fine” where it counted, at least.)
Six: Friday morning. This morning.
Alex wipes the bile from his chin and lets out an unsteady breath. He squeezes his eyes shut and bites down on his bottom lip until it throbs.
This morning, after waking up with no Henry beside him, Alex threw on some clothes and padded out into the hallway, planning on finding Henry either in the study or the living room doing work from home. Alex didn’t make it two steps out of their bedroom before stopping. Even on the top floor of the brownstone, the smell of cooking bacon was strong. It wafted up the stairs and hit Alex like a wall. His stomach immediately twisted. Barely thinking, Alex spun on his heels back into the bedroom, ran into their ensuite, and retched into the toilet.
Now, Alex sits on the tile floor in a daze. His stomach is still twisting, but it’s not from the nausea anymore. Dread swirls uneasily inside of him. He digs his fingers into the fabric of his shirt, presses them hard against his abdomen, and begs to God that it isn’t true.
It can’t be. Him and Henry, they’re careful. Alex has been really good about taking his birth control over the past few years, especially once he finally got on ADHD medication after they moved in together. Sure, Alex forgets sometimes, but Henry is conscientious about reminding him. Hell, once Alex had to keep track of two pills, Henry even picked up a pill organizer for him. Every morning, after Henry takes his meds from his own pill organizer, he checks inside Alex’s, too. They have a system down. It works. And if the system fails, then they use condoms. It works.
Alex feels like he can’t breathe. He lurches up from the bathroom floor and flushes the toilet in a rush, trying to hide the evidence. He fists his hands in his hair and pulls. This is, by all accounts, something he cannot fucking handle right now. His mock trial case is next week, and after that, finals. He’s supposed to graduate in a month. This is the last thing he needs.
He knows he’s been unbearable this semester with all his readings and papers. He knows it’s been cutting into his and Henry’s time together, and he damn well knows Henry isn’t exactly pleased about it—but Henry is an awfully loving and an incredibly patient man, and so Henry hasn’t said anything. But Alex can tell. He can tell. They haven’t had a real date night in nearly two months, something they usually try to do once a week. For starters, between Alex’s schoolwork and his externship, he’s barely had time to give attention to himself, let alone to Henry. It’s Henry, bless him, who has been the one keeping Alex properly fed and watered this semester. Alex is fairly certain that he would have died of negligent caffeine consumption by now if it weren’t for him.
And then there’s the London problem. Henry has had to go to London for a one-week period each month since the new year. Alex misses him terribly when he’s gone and overworks himself without Henry there to drag him away from the home office—for sleep, for sex, for literally anything other than staring at a computer screen. Tonight, Henry leaves for his week-long April trip. Henry tried his damnedest to reschedule it so he could be in town to attend Alex’s mock trial next Thursday, but Mary insisted on it. Alex told Henry it was fine.
He was lying.
Catching a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror, Alex takes in his red-rimmed eyes and his messed up hair. There’s an overwhelmed, skittish look about him.
He tells himself to breathe. He doesn’t even know if it’s true. It very well might not be true. He’s just stressed. There’s only so much stress the human body can take before it starts doing weird things, right? And it isn’t just the stress, either. It’s the caffeine and the lack of sleep, too. Plus, Alex hasn’t had much time to cook recently, which means Henry is usually in charge of dinner, and that, more often than not, means takeout. Maybe Alex’s stomach is just sick of all the pad thai he’s consumed recently. Maybe that’s the cause of his nausea.
Even as he says it in his head, he doesn't believe it. He has never felt so nauseous, so consistently before. He doesn't know what to do.
There’s a knock on the bathroom door. Alex jumps. He quickly glances over to make sure the door is locked. It isn’t. Alex flexes his hand, trying to determine whether or not he’d be able to silently turn the lock without Henry hearing it on the other side. Probably not.
“Hey, love. I’ve made breakfast whenever you’re ready,” Henry calls through the door. His voice sounds excited. “I didn’t even burn the bacon this time. Do you want to eat in bed or down in the kitchen?”
Alex does not want to eat breakfast at all. The thought of being anywhere near that bacon makes his stomach roll. Alex takes a deep breath and tries to suppress the feeling.
He doesn’t know what to say. He has to think of something fast.
“Uh,” Alex begins. “I completely forgot that I, uh, agreed to meet Gianna and Aaron at the library this morning to go over some stuff for our immigration class. I’m already running pretty late.”
“What?” Henry asks.
“Yeah. Aaron was out sick this week, so.”
“Well, can't Gianna just update him about what happened in class?”
“Gianna’s notes are shitty,” Alex says. That’s the opposite of the truth. Gianna’s notes are color-coordinated. Gianna’s notes have integrated links in them. Alex loves Gianna’s notes. “I’d be, like, totally screwing Aaron over if I didn’t go.”
It’s silent on the other side of the door. It goes on for long enough that Alex thinks that Henry might have left the room, but then Henry’s voice picks up again. It’s small, quiet. “I thought we were planning on spending today together.”
Alex puts a hand on his forehead. He opens his mouth to reply, but he doesn’t know what to say.
Whenever Henry leaves on business, they always spend time together beforehand. They both need it. Sometimes Henry’s trips are short, spanning the length of a weekend, which isn't too bad. But there have been times when Henry has had to stay longer. Last year, Henry was called away for a whole month after Martha had a failed round of IVF and Henry had to join Philip on a tour of Oceania at the last minute. That particular trip wasn't Mary’s fault, or anyone’s fault, really. Henry had been more than willing to accept Philip's request for his presence on the tour. But Alex still remembers picking up a call during his lunch break between classes, sometime around the three-week mark, and feeling powerless as he listened to Henry cry himself to sleep on the other side of the planet.
Finally, Alex says, “It’ll only take a couple hours, baby, I promise. You can finish up some of your work for the shelter while I’m gone. Besides, you aren’t leaving for the airport ‘til five.”
“It’s nearly noon,” Henry says.
Silence falls again. This time, it’s punctured by the sound of someone descending the stairs.
Alex has really fucked up.
After a couple of minutes of trying to make himself look somewhat presentable, Alex exits the bathroom. Henry left the bedroom door open on his way out, which means the smell of cooking meat has wafted into the bedroom. Alex gags and makes himself bite back a new wave of nausea, doing his best to hold his breath. He needs to get out of this fucking house.
Tugging on a pair of socks and pulling on a sweatshirt and his tote bag, he makes his way downstairs as fast as he can and grabs his sneakers by the door. Then, he bolts out of the house. He sits down on the brownstone’s steps and waits a minute until he is sure he is not going to throw up. After that, he puts his shoes on and starts walking. He knows that there is a drug store a couple blocks away, but he and Henry go to that one fairly often. The people there might recognize him.
Alex hasn’t even made it halfway down their street by the time Cash runs to catch up with him. The man looks pissed.
“Are you serious?” Cash asks.
Alex shrugs. “Oops.”
“Oops?”
Alex grinds his teeth and pulls his hoodie over his head.
They walk for fifteen, twenty minutes until Alex stops in front of a random pharmacy he has never been to before. He asks Cash to wait outside while he ducks in. It takes Alex a bit of wandering to figure out where everything is, but soon he is standing in front of the menstrual products. He looks around that section for a little while before heaving out an irritated sigh and starting to look in different sections. He wanted this to be a fast errand so no one would have time to recognize him. In, out.
After a few minutes of no success, Alex starts feeling cagey. Maybe he should leave and find a new drug store. He’s spent too much time in this one already.
Just when he’s about to resign himself to another hunt for a different drug store, he spots it. It's right near the counter in the back. The pharmacist at the counter is busy checking someone out, so Alex has to awkwardly skirt around them to get to the shelf. There’s a few different options, and Alex has no idea what he should be looking for, so he simply grabs a random box that says it contains two tests and then gets in line. His heart is nearly in his throat by the time he makes it to the counter and hands the box over to the pharmacist. He keeps his eyes on the floor while the pharmacist scans the box.
Alex reaches up to his chest and starts tracing, through his clothing, the outline of the key and ring on his necklace. It’s a nervous habit. Alex only became aware of it after Henry pointed it out to him. He snaps out of it when the pharmacist tells him the total. As Alex gets out his wallet, he goes to grab his card, but then he thinks better of it.
No paper trail for someone to hack into.
Alex hands the pharmacist a twenty instead.
“Need a bag?” the pharmacist asks.
“No, I’m good.”
“Receipt?”
“No, thanks.”
When the pharmacist hands him the box and his change, Alex takes it with a forced smile, tells the pharmacist to have a good one, and then buries the box and the loose cash in the bottom of his tote bag. He keeps his head low as he exits.
He sets off walking again. He doesn’t know where he’s headed. It would be nice to go for a run, but he’s wearing jeans and it would look ridiculous. So, fast-walking as compensation it is. He walks until he hits the East River and then turns back around. At some point he stops at a bodega to pick up a bottle of Pepto Bismol, which he should have just gotten at the pharmacy but had been too keyed up to remember. He also grabs some drinks and snacks while he’s there. He knows a Cadbury egg won’t make up for him ditching Henry this morning, but it’s uncommon to find Cadbury-brand chocolate in the US and Alex decides to take advantage of the Easter candy being sold here while he still can. The chocolate alone won’t be enough to get Henry to forgive him, but it’s a small step in the right direction.
By the time Alex makes it back home, an hour and a half has passed. He steps into the house cautiously, a little scared it will still smell like the bacon Henry was cooking this morning.
The scent isn’t as strong as it was before, thankfully. The back door to the deck is wide open. That means Henry is outside.
It drives the security team nuts when they keep the door open.
Alex snakes his way through the living room and kitchen before making his way to the porch. Below, in their little backyard surrounded by concrete walls, Henry sits on a towel in the grass with David. The dog lays with his belly up and head thrown back, blissed out as Henry absent-mindedly rubs his stomach. Most of Henry’s attention is on his laptop.
Alex doesn’t announce himself, but he can tell by the way Henry’s spine straightens that he has heard Alex arrive. Alex goes down the porch steps and makes his way to Henry. He sits down in the grass beside him and rummages through his bag for the Cadbury egg, deliberately tamping down the fear that nudges its way into his mind when his fingers brush the box of pregnancy tests. When Alex finally finds the Cadbury egg, he offers it to Henry with a proffered hand and a small smile.
Henry glances at it. Most of his face is schooled down, but there’s a stiffness in his jaw that tells Alex that he's still a bit cross. Henry saves his work on his laptop with a deft flick before plucking the egg out of Alex’s palm. He starts slowly removing the foil wrapping, careful not to tear it. Henry is always attentive and deliberate like that. Alex loves that about him.
“Thank you,” Henry says quietly. He still hasn’t looked directly at Alex yet.
As Henry eats the chocolate egg, Alex tells him, “I’m sorry about earlier, Hen. It wasn’t okay for me to just leave like that.”
Alex can tell that Henry is intentionally chewing slowly so that he can draw out his reply. Eventually, he swallows and says, “I’m mostly just surprised you scheduled plans for today, I suppose. I thought we were going to do a bit of work together and then grab an early dinner before I leave.”
Guilt crawls its way up Alex’s throat. That had been the exact plan.
Despite how much Alex wants to spill his guts to Henry and tell him the truth, something stops him. Alex can’t tell Henry anything, not right now. Alex needs to be sure first. There would be no point in telling Henry if it weren’t true.
“I’m sorry,” Alex says again. Then: “We can still do that. We still have a couple hours. How about we do something nice, huh? A little impromptu date night? We could order in, or we could do a picnic out here or something. Or I could cook for you. I’ll make you whatever you want.” When Henry doesn’t respond with immediate enthusiasm, Alex plows on. He has an overwhelming sense of needing to make something up to Henry, and it goes beyond just making up for ditching him this morning. Alex feels like he’s really fucked up, in more ways than one. “It’ll be fun. We’ve still got time before you leave. Let me make it up to you. Please.”
There must be an edge of desperation to Alex’s voice because Henry finally looks over at him. He has to squint against the afternoon sun to do it.
Henry’s freckles have slowly started coming back with the warming weather, but they aren’t out in full force yet. Alex knows he’ll have to wait a few more months for that to happen. The freckles will probably reach their height in July when he and Henry travel to the lake house this summer for Independence Day weekend.
After a moment, Henry reaches over and takes Alex’s hand. “Just take me to bed, love.”
______________
Alex takes Henry apart. It’s been a while since Alex has felt so simultaneously grave and urgent, like something critical hangs in the balance and he isn’t sure if he’s going to survive it. It reminds him of how he felt the night he showed up in London four years ago after Henry tried to break things off between them. A dire need to be close to Henry, to ruin him to the point of devastation, to prove to Henry that he can be good for him, takes over Alex. He siphons all of his scared, frenetic energy from earlier into Henry, and Henry, like a grounding wire, takes all of it gladly. By the time Alex has loosened Henry up with his tongue and his fingers, Henry is a beautiful, writhing mess.
Alex slips off the bed to grab what he’s looking for before climbing back on and settling in between Henry’s thighs. He kisses Henry’s cock once, and it twitches underneath his lips. With practiced hands, Alex lubes up both sides of the strap quickly. He slides the bulbed end inside of himself. The lube is still a bit cold, but it won’t be for long. Alex lets out a breath once the bulb is settled fully inside. The fullness, the stretch of it, feels good. Henry watches him with heavy-lidded eyes.
“How do you want me?” Alex asks.
Henry holds one leg open while reaching out with the other leg to hook it around Alex’s shoulders and pull him closer. Once Alex is in range, Henry takes Alex by the back of the neck and hauls him into a searing kiss.
When they break apart, they’re both breathing hard against each other’s mouths.
“Like this,” Henry says. “I want you like this.”
Alex moans and rests his head on Henry’s shoulder. When Alex has collected himself, he reaches down and lines himself up. Henry gasps as Alex pushes in. He is slow with Henry, careful with him. When Alex feels the familiar pull of the strap once the head has slipped past Henry’s sphincter, he pauses to give Henry time to adjust. Alex kisses him again.
Once Alex is fully seated inside Henry, Henry impatiently squeezes Alex's torso with his legs and urges him to start moving. Alex does. He fucks into him slowly at first, drinking in all of Henry's little moans. The ridged part of the strap at the base of the bulb rubs deliciously against Alex. He quickly finds a rhythm, one that leaves both him and Henry gasping.
“Fuck, baby—”
“Come here, I need you.”
Henry wraps his arms around Alex and holds on tightly, and Alex buries his face in Henry’s neck. He rocks into him steadily. They continue like that forever, neither of them wanting it to end.
Henry’s voice is wrecked when he finally asks, “Is it charged?” The insertable bullet vibrator at the base of the strap, he means.
Alex moans at the thought of it. “Fucking hope so."
Reaching down, Alex finds the button and presses it. Immediately, low vibrations start from the strap. It’s strongest at the base, against Alex’s dick, but it’s still very much noticeable along the bulb and the dildo. They don’t always do this—use a vibrator when Alex is fucking him—but it drives both of them right to the edge when they do. This particular strap-on is definitely Alex’s favorite.
Alex turns the vibe up until it's at a moderate level. He bites his lip in response to the feeling that pools at the base of his abdomen. Henry gasps, arching his back and tightening his legs around Alex. His fingernails dig into Alex’s back. Alex hopes that there will be marks there tomorrow.
“Oh, god,” Henry whispers. “Christ.”
“I got you, baby. I got you.”
He keeps fucking Henry, and soon, the combination of the ridges and the vibrations have Alex’s whole body shaking, on the verge of orgasm. He bites Henry’s shoulder to try and stave it off, knowing that if he comes now, the vibrations will be too intense for him to continue. He wants Henry to come first.
“Gonna come for me, baby?” Alex asks. He licks a stripe up the side of Henry’s neck. “I wanna see you come for me.”
Henry lets out a high pitched whimper. Alex is, by all accounts, louder during sex, so being privileged enough to be given a level of trust with Henry, to be able to draw out these types of sounds from him, feels like an accomplishment. It feels fucking holy.
Alex tries reaching down to start stroking Henry, but before Alex’s hand has even gotten past his stomach, Henry grabs his wrist.
“I’m so close,” Henry pants. His face looks almost dazed. There’s sweat pooling in the groove of his sternum. “I’m so fucking close.”
Alex nods, understanding. Henry wants to come untouched. Alex can do that for him. Alex can make that happen.
Clenching the bulb tightly to keep it in place, Alex slams his hips into Henry. Henry throws his head back and groans, his whole body jolting with each thrust. Henry is fucking gorgeous all splayed out on the sheets like this, his mouth open, his hair a mess. God, if only Alex could come inside him. He wishes he could fill him up and watch it drip back out. Alex supposes that’s the sort of thing that got him into this mess in the first place—the nausea, the fear, the box sitting in his bag. Alex grinds his teeth together and focuses on keeping his rhythm steady, trying to push his unwanted thoughts out of his mind. He does not want to think about the stupid fucking box sitting in his bag right now.
The bulb suddenly feels awkward inside him, and the vibrations don’t feel as pleasurable as they did before. Alex stares resolutely at the bunched up sheets next to Henry’s head.
It’s not that Alex doesn’t want kids with Henry. Of course he wants kids with Henry. There’s a ring hidden in his goddamn gym bag, for fuck’s sake. He’s planning on proposing after he graduates.
The two of them are going to Spain for three weeks after Alex’s graduation. Henry coordinated the whole thing in secret and then presented Alex with two first-class tickets this past Christmas. Alex was hesitant to agree at first, given the fact that he hasn’t had that much free time in…forever. But Henry persuaded him in the end, telling him that he deserves to relax before starting work at the end of the summer. Alex agreed, under the condition that he be allowed to bring all his Bar study guides with him (and with the thought in mind that Spain sounded like a really nice place for him to propose to Henry). Alex is guessing that Henry has the same idea—to propose in Spain—but he keeps that suspicion to himself.
They love each other. Enough to marry each other. Alex is sure of that.
Alex is also sure that he cannot have a baby. Jesus Christ. He cannot put himself through a pregnancy, and he sure as hell cannot put himself through a birth. Just the thought of it makes him feel out of control. His ninth grade biology class had to watch a video of some poor woman giving birth, probably as a tool to encourage abstinence. Although the abstinence part definitely didn't stick, the video only bolstered what Alex already felt about pregnancy. Alex knew then and there, even if he woke up the next day and decided he wasn’t trans, that he would never, ever do that to himself.
Back when he thought he only liked girls, he sort of figured that whoever he ended up marrying would be the one having the kids. And if she didn’t want to, or couldn’t, then they would adopt. But Alex cannot do this himself. He is happy to donate his eggs to a surrogate if Henry likes that idea too, but he cannot fucking do this. He pictures himself pregnant, and cold dread washes over him.
He would have to stop taking testosterone. He would probably have to give up coffee. The latter sounds stupid in comparison, but he is genuinely a little concerned about caffeine withdrawals. Plus, he just turned twenty-six. He’s so fucking young. He wakes up every morning feeling like he has no idea what he’s doing, feeling completely out of his depth, like he has somehow tricked everyone into thinking that he’s a capable adult. He does not feel like one.
All of a sudden, Alex becomes hyper-aware of his body. The way that his knees dig into the mattress makes his skin feel raw, and every drop of sweat feels ticklish and sticky. The tightness of Henry’s legs around his back and shoulders makes Alex feel too constricted. He presses his face into the mattress beside Henry’s head and shuts his eyes, trying his best to ignore it. He just needs to wait until Henry comes. He can do that. He can fucking do that.
It could have been a few seconds or a few minutes. Alex doesn’t know. All he knows is that it feels like there are ants crawling all over his body and that the disparity between temperatures—the blistering heat from Henry’s skin where their chests are pressed together and the frigid air of their bedroom that stings his back—becomes too much. Alex shoves himself up, completely off of Henry, and pulls the bulb out of himself in a rush. It’s hard to hold onto it with how slick it is, but Alex manages to keep his grip on it with all the force he can muster. Henry’s legs have released Alex by this point. His thighs fall open against the mattress. Alex scoots away enough so that there’s no skin-to-skin contact, and then he presses it into Henry again.
Henry convulses, the angle clearly better from here. He grabs wildly at the sheets with his hands before slapping one of them over his mouth. Even with his mouth covered, the noises that Henry is making are fucking obscene. Alex turns the vibrator all the way up. Henry screams into his hand. After a few more thrusts, Henry comes.
Alex waits until Henry’s body starts twitching from overstimulation, just the way Henry likes it, before turning off the vibrator and pulling the strap out of him. It’s only when the buzzing has stopped that Alex notices that his hands are shaking. He grips the strap tighter to try and ground himself, but it doesn’t help.
They’re both breathing hard, but where Henry’s breaths are long and deep, Alex’s are short and shallow, and they’re getting worse.
Henry nudges Alex’s hip with his knee. The contact feels terrible. Henry’s skin is too hot.
“Vibrations too much for you?” Henry laughs, the sound slow and buttery.
“Huh?”
“When you pulled it out,” Henry clarifies. He stretches, languid. The man looks positively out of it. In a slurred, sing-song tone, Henry says, “I can handle more overstimulation than you can.”
It takes a couple seconds for Alex to catch up.
Henry thinks that Alex came and that’s why Alex took his side of the strap out before continuing to fuck him with it.
Alex forces himself to smile and nod. “Yeah. Felt so fucking good, baby.”
With that, Alex stumbles off the bed. Henry raises his head to watch him go.
“Gonna clean this up,” Alex mumbles.
In the bathroom, Alex sets the strap on a washcloth and turns on the tap. The cleaning is perfunctory, and Alex is pretty sure he only manages to do it successfully out of pure habit. Setting it out to dry, Alex grabs another warm washcloth and takes it back out to Henry. Henry is staring at him carefully, tracking him with his eyes.
When Alex kneels on the mattress again, Henry reaches an arm out, clearly trying to beckon Alex into laying next to him. Alex feigns being too busy to notice. Instead, he focuses his attention on cleaning Henry up with gentle swipes off the washcloth. When that’s over with, Alex gets off the bed and takes the washcloth over to the laundry hamper, dropping it inside. He usually tries to throw it into the hamper from the bed, but his skin still feels prickly, and the texture of the bed sheets is only going to make it worse. Alex does not know what to do when he’s done. The logical thing to do would be to get back into bed with Henry, but for some reason, he can’t quite force his feet to move.
Henry must notice Alex loitering by their dresser because he says, softly, “Hey.”
Alex looks over at him.
“You okay?” Henry asks. There’s concern in his eyes.
“Hm? Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Something imperceptible crosses over Henry’s face, and then he sits up. He moves slowly, his body clearly sore. “Alex.”
Alex shifts from foot to foot. “What?”
Henry pulls his knees to his chest. The tightness of his lips expresses anxiety, clear as day. There’s still that imperceptible look on his face, too.
It makes Alex uncomfortable.
“Did something happen, love?” Henry asks.
“I’m fine,” is Alex’s automatic response.
Henry purses his lips. He sets his chin on his knees. When he speaks again, his eyes are wide with worry. “That’s not what I asked.”
Alex huffs out a breath and tries playing it off. He shrugs one of his shoulders. “I’m fine, sweetheart. I promise.”
“Is this about our fight earlier?”
That takes Alex by surprise. What fight? Their conversation this morning? It hadn’t been a fight. It was a misunderstanding—or, rather, a fabricated misunderstanding. A lie. But it hadn’t been a fight. Does Henry think it was a fight? Is Henry still mad at him?
Alex’s breathing comes out unevenly.
“No, it’s not that,” Alex says. “I said nothing’s wrong.”
“I just—I’m leaving in an hour, and I don’t want us to part on…on wrong footing. I want to make sure you’re okay. Are you?”
“There isn’t any ‘wrong footing’, Henry. I’m fine, okay?”
It must come out harsher than Alex intended because Henry blinks and jerks his head back.
“I meant that everything’s, like, chill,” Alex tries to amend. “Don’t worry about it.”
Henry climbs off the bed. He looks nervous, and he cradles himself with his arms. “If it’s not the argument we had, then did something happen in bed? Was the vibrator too much? You could have turned it off—I wouldn’t have minded. You should always turn it off or use a safeword if it’s too much. I never want you to push yourself just to try and make me feel good.” Henry looks scared. “I don’t ever want to hurt you.”
Alex feels guilty.
Alex knows Henry’s past partners weren't always respectful of boundaries. There were some, two of them, who really weren't. It took almost a year of living together for Henry to open up about them. It’s not as if Alex hadn’t suspected before; in the emails, Henry mentioned that his first time was with one of Philip’s friends. Philip is six years older than Henry. Alex isn’t an idiot. But Alex never pried. Eventually, Henry told Alex about the man, and some time after that, Henry also told Alex about the other one, some guy at Oxford who got pissed when Henry tried ending an on-again, off-again fling.
Alex has put Henry in a position today that he does not deserve to be in.
“You didn’t hurt me,” Alex tries to reassure him. “What happened—that’s not on you.”
Henry’s face breaks. He starts towards Alex in a rush, then catches himself mid-motion, hovering about a foot away. “Alex, I am so sorry—”
“No, no-no-no-no-no. This isn’t fucking on you, baby, okay? It’s on me, not on you. I got overwhelmed, and I could have safeworded, but I didn’t. That’s not on you. That’s not on you, you hear me?” It looks like Henry is about to say something, but Alex doesn’t let him. “Besides, I did stop. I did stop, okay? I took it out when it got too much. I did stop. You’re fine. I promise you, you’re fine. Everything’s fine.”
Henry looks pained, and he’s clutching his biceps tightly like he’s trying to hug himself. “Why didn’t you tell me? Alex, I always want you to tell me.”
Alex struggles for a reply, and he shrugs his arms out in a halting way. He feels like a deer caught in the headlights. “I dunno.”
He does know. It wasn’t the vibrator that was too much. It’s this whole damn day. The nausea, the stress, all of it. Everything’s been too fucking much. But it isn’t Henry’s fault that Alex deliberately tried to ignore his personal limits when his body was telling him otherwise.
It’s Alex’s fault.
“Love,” Henry says. His eyes wander somewhere above Alex’s head, like he’s trying to formulate his words carefully. “First of all, this isn’t ‘on’ you, alright? Please, please don’t put that on yourself. I should have been more aware of you, but I was more worried about myself. These trips to London have been wearing on me and I guess I just wanted to get lost for a little while. But that’s not an excuse, especially if I didn’t make it clear to you beforehand that that’s what I needed. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Alex.”
“Baby, come on.”
“No. Let me finish, okay?” Henry’s eyes look pleading. “The second thing I wanted to say was that you need to promise me that you’re never going to do that again. I need you to promise me that you’ll stop or safeword when something feels even slightly uncomfortable. I don’t care if you think it’s not that big of a deal or that you can push through it. I don’t care. You tell me, alright? You tell me.”
Alex’s lip wobbles. He nods. “Okay.”
“You promise?”
“I promise,” Alex says. “I promise. I’m sorry.”
Henry shakes his head. “Please don’t apologize. You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Okay.”
Henry hesitates a moment, still hovering a little bit away. “May I hold you?”
Alex breathes in and out, trying to assess himself. “Mm. Maybe not right now, if that’s okay.”
Henry nods quickly. “Of course it’s okay. Is there anything else I can do for you? Draw you a bath? Leave you alone? Just sit with you for a while?”
Alex considers his options. He still feels a little panicky, and he doesn’t think he wants anyone touching him right now, but he does feel less awful than he did before. A bath sounds kind of nice. He usually doesn’t take baths unless he’s trying to relax sore muscles or unless he’s with Henry. They’re both shower people, really, but Henry likes to take the occasional bubble bath. Alex teases him for it, but he often joins him. Now, though, Alex thinks taking a bath by himself would be nice.
Alex finds himself nodding. “A bath, maybe?”
Henry’s shoulders relax and he nods in return. “Great. Right, then. I’ll start on it.”
Alex watches as Henry enters the ensuite and starts adjusting the faucet on the bathtub.
“The way you like it,” Alex calls over, “with the bubbles and shit.”
“Bubbles and shit it is, then,” Henry says. He throws an easy smile over his shoulder towards Alex.
God, Alex is in love with this man. He tries telling himself that everything is going to be okay.
______________
Alex nearly falls asleep in the bathtub. That sort of thing is usually frowned upon, so thankfully he doesn’t, but he’s close, his head bobbing, by the time Henry pokes his head into the dim bathroom. It’s just the shower light that’s on right now.
Henry quietly pads over and kneels down by the tub. He rests his cheek on the porcelain lip.
“Hi, love.”
Alex gives him a little smile. “Hi, baby.”
“How’re you feeling?”
“M’better.”
Henry looks relieved to hear it. “Good. That’s good.”
Alex reaches out and touches the side of Henry’s face. His skin is fairly smooth, except for a little notch underneath his eye. That’s where the champagne glass nicked him when they tumbled into Philip’s wedding cake together.
Henry’s eyes crinkle when he smiles at him, and the notch pulls.
“Thank you,” Alex tells him. “For—you know. Before. Thank you.”
Henry cups Alex’s hand and presses his face harder against it. “Of course. I just want you to feel safe.”
“I do.”
Alex does. He always does, with Henry.
He watches as Henry turns his head to kiss Alex’s palm.
“Look,” Henry begins, heaving a little sigh. His fingers massage Alex’s hand. “I’ve got to leave in twenty minutes. I’ve just finished packing, and I’ve gone ahead and fed David. I was wondering, if you don’t mind, if I could take a shower to get the lube and sweat off? But if you want to stay here and rest, I can use the shower in the guest bedroom instead. I don’t want to bother you.”
Henry leaves in twenty minutes. For a whole fucking week.
Alex squeezes Henry’s hand tightly.
“Can I shower with you?” Alex asks.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I’m sure. I wanna—I just wanna be with you right now.”
They shower together. Henry has enough sense to set a timer on his phone for ten minutes beforehand, and Alex watches him from the sidelines as Henry efficiently cleans himself. When Henry is done, Alex opens his arms up to Henry. They hold each other under the spray of water. Alex tucks himself against Henry’s body easily, breathing in the scent of Henry’s soap in big whiffs. They usually allow themselves more time to recover from sex before one of them has to leave.
“What time is your first meeting in London tomorrow?” Alex asks. Maybe Henry can move his flight back a little, just a couple of hours.
Henry presses him harder against his chest. “Noon,” he says. He sounds apologetic. “It’s a luncheon with the board of trustees of a pediatric hospital in Birmingham. Sorry.”
Alex nods. “S’okay. You gotta do what you gotta do.”
“Please,” Henry says. It comes out like puh-lease. Alex feels Henry’s breath ruffle his wet hair as Henry lets out a frustrated sigh. “Don’t you start with that rubbish, too. I won’t hear talk about my so-called duty, not from you.”
Henry’s royal obligations have always been a touchy subject, but especially so as of late. Although Henry has always been critical of the Crown, it’s never been like this before. Alex first noticed the shift in Henry’s attitude last year, sometime after Henry returned from his tour of Oceania. It’s just gotten worse since then. Alex doesn’t necessarily mind that Henry has gotten more fed up with it recently. It is bullshit that Henry has to haul ass across the Atlantic all the time, and Alex is glad that Henry has been recognizing it for the bullshit that it is. But, still. Alex doesn’t want to see his baby worn so thin.
The timer goes off. Henry blindly reaches for the handle, and the water stops. Stepping out of the shower together, they dry off and pull on fresh clothes. Alex shrugs on sweatpants and a hoodie, but Henry has to put on slacks and a dress shirt. Alex helps him with the buttons, leaving a kiss on his clavicle. Then, Alex grabs the suitcase and starts wheeling it out of their room. Henry tries insisting that he can do it, but Alex won’t let him. He carries it down the stairs to the bottom floor, puts on his shoes, and then heads outside.
There’s a car waiting by the sidewalk. The driver gets out to help load the suitcase in the back while Henry totters by the open car door, clearly trying to stall for time. Alex presses a big kiss to his lips. They aren’t technically allowed to do PDA, but Alex doesn’t care right now. They hug each other tightly. Henry’s hair is still wet.
“I love you,” Henry says.
Alex closes his eyes and thinks about the box that’s sitting in his tote bag inside right now. He also thinks about the ring box in his gym bag. “I love you, too.”
When they pull apart, Henry kisses him again, then turns and gets into the car. Alex watches him put his seatbelt on.
“You’ll call when you land?” Alex asks.
Henry levels him with a look. “It’ll just wake you up.”
“Who says I’ll be sleeping?”
Henry swats his stomach. “I’ll call when I’m done with the luncheon, you fiend. Do try to get some sleep, though.”
“Fine. Deal.”
They kiss one more time before saying their final goodbyes. When Alex shuts the car door, he immediately regrets it. Maybe he should have told Henry.
After watching the car drive off, Alex stands there on the sidewalk, all alone, and kicks the toe of his sneaker against the brownstone’s steps.
Fuck.