Work Text:
Here’s the thing. Alex is simultaneously very, very smart and very, very stupid. Nora calls it the Claremont-Diaz Paradox, and every time she does, June sticks out her tongue like she’s about twelve years old, and then Nora makes a comment about what she would rather June be doing with her tongue, and – okay. Off track. Not relevant to Alex’s current predicament, which is perhaps the most damning example of the Claremont-Diaz Paradox. Alex got himself into NYU Law with flying colors and LSAT scores in the 99th percentile, worked his ass off for three years, and graduated with honors and a crippling caffeine addiction. And then, because he is an idiot, he decided to take his JD, his potential, and his mountain of student loans to his brand-new job as a public defender.
It’s not that Alex doesn’t love his job. It’s the most fulfilling thing he’s ever fucking done, he gets to spend ever day hunched over a desk and mainlining Coconut Berry Redbull and actually help people in the process, but… but. He works twelve hour days for what he assumes is about the same pay he would make working at a Hot Topic, and he fucking adores it, he does. It is not, however, conducive to things that June tells him are important, like affording a place to live. Or going grocery shopping. Or… well, you get the picture.
He doesn’t really know where June gets off being all high and mighty about eating something that didn’t come out of a box for dinner, considering she makes a journalist’s salary and Nora is still doing her PhD at MIT, but whatever. It’s just one of those facts of life. As long as the earth keeps spinning, June will have her shit together more than Alex does.
Having a place to live, though… that’s kind of an important one, and one that Alex is currently hanging onto by the skin of his teeth. His previous roommate had moved back home after realizing that her dream was not, in fact, to pursue a career on Broadway – and thank fucking God for that, because Alex really couldn’t listen to another rendition of Defying Gravity in the shower every morning – and stuck him with the rest of their lease. Which means that Alex really needs a roommate. Like, pronto. STAT. ASAP.
He’s not sure who’s desperate enough to move into the other room in his beautiful, probably-not-bedbug-infested 700 square feet of Hell’s Kitchen, but he really fucking needs to find somebody.
“Tell me you’re not actually looking for a roommate on Craigslist,” Nora’s voice snorts, almost horrified, from the other end of the line.
“What else do you want me to do?” He groans around a mouthful of boxed mac and cheese, because even though he can cook, he hasn’t had the time for it since he was about 19 years old. “List this place on fucking Zillow or something? It’s not like I own it, I just need to sublet.”
“I don’t know, ask around at work or something? It’s not like anyone else in your office is flush with cash, right?”
He’d tried that. The only person who had texted him about the poster he’d put up on the communal bulletin board was WASPy Hunter, and Alex would rather live in a refrigerator box in Hoboken than spend one more minute with Hunter than he needed to.
“Nobody was interested,” he lies, and Nora snorts again.
“So your next logical step was Craigslist ? You know the only people that are going to respond to an ad for a roommate on Craigslist are, like, serial killers, right?”
“As long as they pay their rent and keep their body parts on their shelf of the fridge, I don’t really care,” Alex mutters, looking up at where the 15th is circled in bright red marker on the calendar stuck to his fridge. RENT DUE, his own handwriting says, taunting him, mocking him.
“I could loan you –”
“If you finish that sentence, I’m hanging up on you,” he warns.
“Fine, fine,” Nora sighs, and he hears June’s voice in the background say "It was worth another shot.”
Honestly, Alex is probably exaggerating his situation a little bit. He’s not destitute, and he could afford to cover another couple months’ rent by himself, but Ellen Claremont had drilled the importance of a healthy savings account into him too much as a teenager for that to be a feasible option. And he’s sure as hell not borrowing money from his sister. So, Craigslist it was.
Overworked and underpaid public defender seeking roommate for 2-bedroom 3rd floor walk-up in Hell’s Kitchen. Serial killers, theater majors, and cat people encouraged not to apply.
There are more details than that, of course – his address, for one, the monthly rent, the unit’s amenity (singular, not plural – it was the ancient washer and dryer in the hall closet), etc, etc. Alex leaves his name and phone number at the end for any prospective applicants and presses post, hoping he doesn’t automatically start getting messages from a phone sex line or something. (He’s not really sure why that’s what comes to mind, but whatever. It’s been awhile. See aforementioned lack of time to do literally anything other than his job.)
He finishes his dinner and tries not to feel guilty about drinking a Corona while he finishes a report for his supervisor, Zahra. Somehow, she’ll know he wasn’t 100% sober while writing it, he knows she will, because she’s terrifying and Alex is pretty sure she’s psychic, but he’s just too tired to care. It’s been a long day, a long week, a long fucking year. Nora hangs up on him once she hears him typing and realizes that he isn’t paying attention anymore, so he’s left alone in his too-empty apartment with his threadbare sofa and the mildly embarrassing stack of dishes in his sink, the sound of his keys clicking bouncing off the walls well past midnight.
_________________________________
It takes two days before he gets a reply to his ad that isn’t just someone trying to con him into buying something they’re trying to get rid of.
unknown number: is your apartment listing still available?
alex: do you know the words to hamilton?
unknown number: i can’t say that i do
alex: then you’re in luck
my apartment is still VERY much available
unknown number: that’s the piece of information you need from me
before deciding to cohabitate?
not, perhaps, my name? occupation? sordid past embroiled in a life of crime?
alex: questions 2, 3, and 4, how did you know?
also why are you using the word cohabitate
like we’re moving into the bronx zoo
unknown number: because it’s proper english?
also, in case you were interested in the answers to questions 2, 3, and 4:
my name is henry, i’m an adjunct english literature professor at fordham, and
my crimes are my own, but i can promise that i do meet all three of the criteria you listed in your ad
alex: i respect a man of mystery
henry: i do have a question
your ad didn’t specify your building’s pet policy, but i do have a dog
would you be amenable to living with a slightly overweight beagle?
alex: if you promise to stop texting like a sickly victorian child
but i fucking LOVE dogs and my building does allow them
henry: smashing
alex: holy shit are you british
i should have made hatred of the monarchy one of my criteria
henry: well, no need to worry about that
Henry comes to see the apartment the next day, because, apparently and thankfully, he’s in just as much of a hurry to find a roommate as Alex is. And ostensibly not a serial killer, if Alex takes him at his word, even if he is British and insists on using the most formal language possible to send Alex texts about the fact that he’ll be five minutes late because there’s a mariachi band holding up the subway. He’s funny, though, which is a fucking relief, because Alex couldn’t say three words to Broadway Hannah without wanting to tear his hair out.
They have to set up their appointment for a time when Alex knows he’ll be home, which means it’s half past seven when he’s finally scrambling to tidy up, even after telling Zahra that he needed to leave the office at five. They both knew that wasn’t going to happen, even if he didn’t have a trial that day, but it was worth trying.
It’s eight when Henry – well, he hopes it’s Henry – knocks on the door, and Alex is in the midst of making sure that 1) he doesn’t have a pile of dishes in his sink and 2) there’s nothing visibly incriminating in his room. Alex doesn’t have a lot of shame, but he does have some.
“Sorry!” he calls, nearly tripping over an old NYU sweatshirt he’d haphazardly tossed onto the floor in the living room the night prior as he makes his way to the door. “I – oh.”
When Alex opens the door, he almost has a heart attack.
Henry is… wow. He’s not even meeting Henry’s eyes, which is the first thing that throws him off. He’s tall, and Alex has to look up to meet deep blue eyes and blonde hair falling into his face, soft smile and soft gray sweater and – oh, this is going to be absolutely terrible for him, isn’t it?
He has two saving graces, thankfully. The first is that Henry, for some reason completely unbeknownst to Alex, looks just as stunned as Alex feels, as if he’s startled by the sight of him, tie undone and hanging around his neck, the top two buttons of his shirt open, dark circles under dark eyes.
The second is that there is an – aptly described – overweight beagle bowling him over, and his ass is on the floor before he can do something stupid like tell Henry he’s pretty.
“Oh, Christ – Alex, I am so sorry, David just gets excited to meet new people, and I thought I would bring him to make sure you were alright with him,” Henry flushes and begins to apologize immediately, nearly stumbling over his perfectly posh words as he tries to pull David’s leash back towards him.
“Oh, you’re such a good boy,” Alex coos, already scratching behind the dog’s ears and laughing as he wags his tail early, nearly on top of Alex at this point. “Wait – his name is David? ”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“Is he an accountant ?”
“If he is, he’s a poorly-mannered one,” Henry huffs, finally getting David to relent and stop attempting to lick Alex’s face. “But no. David is after Bowie. You know – Heroes, Space Oddity –”
“I know who David Bowie is!” Alex protests, because he is not going to be lectured on his music taste by a sweater-wearing English professor with a dog named David. “Why not just name him Bowie, then?”
“A little on the nose, don’t you think?” Henry hums, grinning like he knows it’s making something flutter in Alex’s chest. (It is.)
Oh, this is really going to be terrible.
___________________________
Henry moves in a week after that, because aside from the fact that Alex is immediately obsessed with David and refuses to let him leave his sight, they figure out that they make surprisingly compatible roommates. The fact that both of them are rarely home anyway certainly doesn’t make matters worse, and Henry expresses an immediate disdain for Alex’s boxed dinner habits, but they both agree that singing in the shower is strictly off limits, which is really all Alex needs. He starts to get used to the sight of Henry curled up on his sofa with his laptop and dinner when he comes home from long days, to hearing the whistle of the kettle in the morning instead of his alarm clock.
It’s a comfortable sort of domesticity that he hasn’t really had since living with his mom and June in Austin, and he realized soon enough that he’s missed it desperately. Even if it comes with its drawbacks – namely, the fact that Henry seems to unironically love Grand Designs, but Alex convinces him to switch to Bake Off when he’s home, and Alex’s favorite Friday nights (when he’s not being dragged by one of the coworkers he tolerates to a dingy bar uptown) are spent pretending he knows anything at all about macarons and getting a little too tipsy on a shared bottle of Trader Joe’s wine, David laying on top of his legs.
It’s nice. It’s comfortable. He tries very hard not to think about the fact that sometimes he gets distracted looking at Henry’s ass in slacks when he has to dress nicely to go in and teach.
One night a few weeks in, drunk enough that he’s been trying to assess what exact shade of blue Paul Hollywood’s eyes are, Alex broaches a question he realizes he’s never asked.
“Why did you need to move so badly?”
Henry looks over at him, confusion knotted in his brow. “What?”
“I mean –” Alex waves his hands, not exactly sure what he’s gesturing to. “You know. You’re way too normal to be on Craigslist looking for a roommate, so you must have been desperate.”
“ You posted on Craigslist.”
“ I was desperate,” Alex points out, nudging Henry with his foot in a way that he probably wouldn’t if he’d had less to drink.
Henry falls quiet for a minute, looking away, and Alex’s gut twists.
“Sorry, you don’t need to –”
“My boyfriend broke up with me, and I had been living in his apartment, so I needed to find somewhere else. I… couldn’t stay there for longer than I had to.” His words are careful, delicate, and all that’s ringing in Alex’s head is the word boyfriend.
It takes him a second too long to respond, apparently, and the shock must have shown on his face, because Henry is pulling away from him and getting up to stand, his expression shuttering. “I should go to bed.”
“Oh! Wait, fuck, no. I’m, like, aggressively bisexual,” Alex blurts, because that’s the only thing he can think to say to make sure Henry doesn’t think he’s, like, homophobic or something. God. That is not at all why Henry saying he had a boyfriend is making his head spin.
Henry’s expression is shocked, just for a moment, before he starts laughing.
“You’re aggressively drunk ,” he snorts, but it’s almost fond, and Alex sees his shoulders sag just slightly, like he’s letting go of tension there.
“Am not!” Alex protests, trying to stand up to match Henry’s height – and, because he is absolutely drunk, he forgets that David is practically pinning him to the couch, and ends up rolling onto the floor instead, which only makes Henry laugh harder.
“I hate you,” he pouts, and he doesn’t know how he keeps ending up on the floor when Henry’s around, but he finds that he really doesn’t hate it as much as he probably should.
“Of course you do.” Henry is clearing their plates – if Chinese takeout boxes could be called that – and putting the half-empty bottle of wine back in the fridge. He turns to go to his room, barely a few steps from the kitchen (Alex never said the apartment was big ) and pauses with his hand on the doorknob.
“Alex?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.” It’s soft, almost unsure, but so fucking relieved, and it makes Alex’s heart ache, just a bit.
________________________
It becomes slightly more difficult not to let his eyes linger on the sliver of skin between Henry’s shirt and his pajama pants – printed with beagles, which Alex mocks mercilessly but secretly adores – that he can see whenever Henry is getting something from the cabinets above the stove once he finds out that Henry is queer. It shouldn’t change anything, not really, because Alex isn’t a terrible human being and he knows that Henry being queer doesn’t mean he’s interested in Alex, but… y’know. Lizard brain. Pretty boy. It’s easy enough to connect the dots.
They tell each other more about their lives in passing. Little snippets of conversation in the mornings over coffee, which Henry has started to make alongside his tea. He learns that Alex likes it with just a little milk, a pinch of sugar, and a pinch of cinnamon, but he’ll drink it black if he’s particularly exhausted. Alex learns that Henry has his sister ship him his favorite Earl Grey blend from home, because everything in American grocery stores – Henry calls them supermarkets, accent curling around the consonants in a way that shouldn’t make Alex feel things, but once again very much does – is disgusting. It’s the first he’s heard about Henry’s family, even though he can never shut up about June and Nora.
Over alcohol, he finds out why. Henry’s family is a sore subject, and rightfully so – distant relatives of the Queen with too much money and a warped version of reality that doesn’t involve Henry being happy. Alex thinks this is fucking stupid, and tells him so. Henry finishes Alex’s drink and tells him he’s not allowed to have any more, and Alex watches him wrap his lips around a bottle of Modelo like he’s ascended to heaven. Maybe he has, and it’s a ridiculously inadvisable crush on his roommate who is solidly out of his league. Seems like God’s sense of humor to him.
Hearing about Henry’s family makes it easier to tell him about his own – about being ferried between Texas and California, about hearing his parents screaming at each other downstairs while he tried to sleep, shoving a pillow over his head to try and drown it out. Henry lets him have another beer and listens to him with soft, wide eyes, intent on taking in every piece of information Alex will give him and holding onto it like it matters.
They talk about warm Texas nights and cold English rain and what college was like. Alex learns that Henry went to NYU too, that that was his method of escape, and has no fucking idea how he never noticed him on campus. It seems wrong, almost, that they were so close to each other and never met before Henry answered his stupid Craigslist ad. It was only a year – Henry was finishing his last year of undergrad when Alex was starting his first of law school, but still. Still. Something about it is a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit. Another cosmic joke in the string of them that make up Alex’s life. (The last part, he says out loud, and Henry pokes him and tells him to quit being dramatic.)
He finds himself spending less time at work. Not because anything has changed, really – he still has a crippling caseload, because the New York City criminal justice system is atrocious, and Alex fucking hates cops who bust people for bending the rules to survive – but because he actually wants to leave the office. Wants to go back to an apartment that feels more like a home now than it ever did, even if it hasn’t gotten any bigger or any less threadbare or had the heating fixed so that he isn’t huddling under a pile of blankets to avoid his toes falling off from frostbite in the New York winter.
He and Henry venture out of the apartment together more often too. Mundane errands to the grocery store, fighting over what brand of yogurt to buy and how many boxed dinners Alex is allowed to get before Henry cuts him off. Henry comes to the bar with him sometimes after work when Alex can’t escape the lure of his coworkers and texts him, desperate for company that won’t bring up contract law. Desperate for Henry’s company, because Alex likes his coworkers, but none of them make him laugh the way Henry does. Alex tags along to one of Henry’s department mixers when he has a plus one and Henry claims he doesn’t have time to find an actual date, and struggles to find friends on the American continent because they’re all tossers who wouldn’t know a good cup of tea if it punched them in the face.
( “So, the tea I make you is terrible, then?”
“You’re an exception. I taught you, remember?” )
Alex brings Henry back a sandwich from the bodega on the corner when he has the energy to go on morning runs, and Henry makes extra pasta whenever he cooks dinner for himself so that Alex has something to bring to the office with him the next day. They do Friday trivia nights at their local gay bar, and they’re lethal together. Alex tries to act like it’s fine when guys come up and flirt with Henry, when Henry flirts back, glancing at Alex every so often. People flirt with him, too, but for once, he doesn’t want the attention. Neither of them ever leave with anyone, though. They stumble back into the apartment, well on their way to plastered, and argue over whether to watch Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi. They usually fall asleep before they can do either, and Alex becomes just as used to waking up on their couch as he does in his bed on Saturday mornings.
Sometimes, when he does actually make it to his own bed, he stares up at the ceiling in the dark and thinks of Henry. Of the way he throws his head back and laughs when Alex says something funny, of the way he holds his pen cap between his teeth when he writes. Usually, it’s all clouded by a fuzzy, drunk haze, but sometimes it’s achingly sharp, sickeningly clear. He bites his lip so he doesn’t make a sound when he touches himself, when he rocks his hips into the mattress.
It’s embarrassing. It’s all he can think about.
In the morning, they eat hungover breakfast together, and Henry makes a poor attempt at a full English that gets marginally better each week. Alex pretends he hasn’t come to the thought of the hands that butter his toast.
____________________
June is supposed to be coming for Christmas. She and Nora live in Cambridge, and sometimes Alex goes to visit them, but Nora got roped into some kind of extended project because, as she puts it, she was the only sorry motherfucker they could find who doesn’t celebrate Christmas or have the good sense to lie about it.
Anyway, June is supposed to be coming for Christmas, but it’s December 22nd and the entire city is blanketed in snow. Alex can barely see anything but white flurries out his window, even though he’s only on the third floor, and June is calling him from the airport to tell him that her flight’s been grounded and it’ll be at least a couple more days before she can make it, if she can at all.
“It’s okay!”
“Alex,” June sighs, staticky and pitiful and tired. “I’m really sorry, you know I would get there if I could.”
“I know, Bug,” he promises her, tugging the blanket he’s wearing tighter around his shoulders. His teeth are chattering slightly as he talks, because his landlord has been promising him the heat will be fixed “next week” for the past three months, and it’s negative two degrees fahrenheit outside. “Next year, yeah? Maybe Mom and Dad will be there too.”
June snorts. “Yeah, okay. And I’m Santa Claus.” Her voice softens slightly. “I love you, Alex. Stay safe, okay?”
When she hangs up, the howling of the blizzard outside is all Alex can hear until the door to Henry’s bedroom creaks open.
He’s bundled in the navy blue quilt from his bed, and Alex is pretty sure he’s wearing at least three pairs of socks, dwarfed by the same soft gray sweater he had been wearing the first day they met. “Why,” he starts, voice shaking from the cold, “don’t we have a heater?”
“Do I look like our landlord?”
“You don’t want me to answer that,” Henry warns, lips pulling into a bright, teasing smile under his reddened cheeks.
“I hate you. I do not look like Gary,” Alex huffs, smiling even though Henry is an asshole who’s comparing him to their ancient, bearded, probably Republican landlord. “Fuck, I’m so cold,” he mutters, shoving his feet, already covered in fluffy socks, under the cushion of their couch like that’ll help matters. “I was looking forward to June being here, she’s basically a walking space heater.”
He has vivid memories of trying to kick June out of bed when they were all piled into a hotel room on his mom’s campaign trail for Texas state senate because she’d always run hot, but now all he wants to do is curl into her side like he did when he was young and fall asleep on her shoulder. Partially because he thinks he’s well on his way to hypothermia, partially because he hasn’t seen her in months and misses her desperately.
Henry’s quiet for a moment, wind whipping outside as white snow sticks to their windows in flakes and sheets. It would be picturesque — New York blanketed in snow, a true White Christmas — if it wasn’t so inconvenient. Alex has been working from home the past two days, which is the only silver lining to this whole mess. It’s easier to stomach writing case reports in sweatpants than a suit. So has Henry, though, and he thinks it might be the longest they’ve spent in each other’s company since he moved in. Somehow, it hasn’t been awkward at all.
“Bea always says I run warm.”
Henry’s voice is oh-so-gentle, almost hesitant, and Alex snaps his head up to look at him. He’s still hovering in the doorway, and his hair is in his eyes, but he’s holding his blanket so tightly around himself that he tries to blow it away with a huff of air. It’s the cutest fucking thing Henry has ever seen.
“Sorry, I’ll – I’m sure you’ve got work, as do I, so –”
“Shut up and come over here before you turn into Snow Miser,” Alex interrupts, opening his blanket to Henry, even as the chill of the apartment rushes in and makes his teeth chatter and goosebumps crawl on his skin.
Henry curls up beside him on the couch, and soon both of them are buried under Alex’s blanket and Henry’s quilt. Henry’s lanky limbs and the soft fabric of his sweater press against Alex, and he loses all self-control as he tries to get as close to the warmth of him as possible, until every curve and angle of his body is slotted against Henry’s like a perfect puzzle piece. Now – now he finally feels warm. Henry’s touch is like hot coffee, like his favorite NYU sweatshirt, like… other cozy, comfortable things. He’s too preoccupied with Henry’s pianist’s fingers resting on his thighs to keep waxing poetic.
“Alex?” He asks after a few moments, cheek pressed against Alex’s curls. Alex would, he thinks, rather die than ask him to move.
Alex hums questioningly, as if opening his mouth, breaking the silence, would shatter this moment somehow.
“What the bloody hell is a Snow Miser?”
Alex bursts into laughter, shaking with his back curled against Henry’s chest, and Henry shakes his shoulder indignantly. “What is a Snow Miser?” He asks again, and Alex manages through giggles to find the TV remote in their pile of blankets.
So they cuddle, because that’s really the only word for it, and watch The Year Without a Santa Claus, and Alex sings along to all the songs just like he had when he was a kid. Henry cackles with laughter every time Alex misses a note in a way Alex has never heard before, in a way that warms his heart. He’s a little obsessed with it.
They fall asleep like that, Alex’s head on Henry’s chest, and he swears, drifting in and out of sleep, that he can feel Henry’s fingers carding gently through his curls, lulling him into dreams of tropical beaches and tall drinks, floating in crystal blue waters and seeing Henry’s smile.
_________________________
June manages to make it for New Year’s, thank God. They exchange Christmas gifts then, and she insists that he spends all of December 30th wearing the ugly sweater she’d bought him as a joke, even though it’s days too late. Henry is also inducted into the tradition of Christmas sweaters, but his is genuinely lovely and not garishly green and decorated with actual working lights, and he and June get on like a house on fire. It’s ridiculous, really. Nearly from the moment she drags her suitcase up to their apartment and sees Henry’s battered copy of Pride and Prejudice laying haphazardly on the kitchen counter, they’ve been rambling on about the literary prowess of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. Alex has barely gotten a word in edgewise, even though June is his sister, but he can’t quite bring himself to care.
It makes him almost irrationally happy that they get along so well, if he’s being honest. Except for the fact that June keeps shooting him glances like she knows something, which he hates. There’s nothing to know. (There is, and it’s the fact that he keeps checking out Henry’s ass while he’s standing on a ladder to help June hang the sparkly silver tinsel for the New Year’s party they’re throwing. June clocks it immediately, and he’s just thankful that he’s pretty sure she won’t mock him as badly as Nora would.)
He’s wrong. Henry goes out to get more wine – and to pick up his best mate, Pez, who Alex has heard a lot about but hadn’t had the chance to meet until now, on account of the fact that he’s been doing charity work in Nigeria since September – and Alex finds himself immediately cornered.
“You want to fuck him so bad it makes you look stupid,” June declares, popping the top of a bottle of tequila.
Alex chokes on his own drink, spluttering. “What?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. The sexual tension in this house is disgusting. Which is not to say I want to know anything about your sex life, but half the conversations we’ve had since Henry’s moved in have been more about him than about you. I swear I know more about the annoying students in his English Lit course than I do about your caseload,” she continues, moving on to slice wedges of lime nonchalantly, like she isn’t flaying Alex open with her words and exposing the parts of him even he tries to ignore.
“Don’t – June, we’re friends. I like living with him, that’s it,” he insists.
“You’re a terrible liar. Truly awful,” she hums. “You haven’t stopped looking at him since I got here.”
Alex sighs. “It doesn’t matter. We live together, and he just got out of a shitty relationship. If – If there was something, it’s not like I could do anything about it.”
June finally looks up at him, as if she realizes that Alex is being serious for once. That this is more than having an attractive roommate. “Oh. You actually like him, don’t you?”
“Bug,” Alex says, his voice strained. “Don’t make this a thing. I’m fine, it doesn’t have to be a thing.”
She looks at him like she wants to say more, but presses her lips together. “As long as you know what you’re doing.”
“I do. Promise.”
He does not.
He very emphatically does not.
Their apartment is packed with enough people that Alex can’t tell that their heat is still broken. Music is thumping through the speakers, nearly loud enough to shake the walls, loud enough to make Alex forget about everything that isn’t Bad Bunny or the alcohol that’s probably replaced about half of his bloodstream. He loves New Year’s.
Pez had immediately endeared himself to Alex by insisting that they get trashed on tequila and Fireball like college students, which he had done happily, and encouraged Henry to dance with him in the middle of their living room. Alex really has no idea how Henry and Pez found each other – they are, he thinks, possibly the most different people on Earth – but Henry practically lights up around him, and it makes something in Alex’s stomach giddy and warm. He’d learned long ago that seeing Henry happy makes him happy, like the idiotic sap he pretends he isn’t.
Henry, however, absolutely cannot dance.
“Do they not have rhythm in England?” Alex finds himself yelling over the music, weaving through people until he can brush his fingers against the inside of Henry’s wrist to get his attention. His cheeks are flushed, red from alcohol and body heat, and Henry’s are even brighter.
“They don’t really cover house party etiquette in ballroom dancing lessons,” Henry replies, almost drunk enough to stumble over his words, but not quite.
Alex isn’t sober enough to stop himself from putting one hand on Henry’s waist – closer to his hip, really, to the curve of his ass. “Let me teach you, then.”
“They didn’t cover that in ballroom dancing, either,” Henry murmurs, almost to himself, but he doesn’t move away from Alex, instead stepping closer into his space, until Alex can feel his warm breath on his cheek. “Alright, then. Show me.”
It feels like a challenge, and everyone Alex has ever met knows how he feels about those.
He holds Henry’s hips, pressing him close, and Henry sucks in a breath through his teeth. “This doesn’t feel like dancing, Alex.”
“Patience, sweetheart,” Alex says with a grin, then lets out a loud whoop of joy when the song changes to one he adores. He sways to the beat, moving and grinding his hips in tandem with Henry’s like this is fine, like it’s normal, something they do.
Henry’s hand is in his hair.
Alex lets go of Henry’s hips to sling his arms around his shoulders, and Henry doesn’t put even an inch of space between them.
Distantly, someone is counting down.
Five.
Henry’s pupils are dark, blown wide. The deepest blue Alex has ever seen.
Four.
He’s had too much to drink to know that this is a bad idea.
Three.
Henry tugs on his curls, just slightly, and Alex makes a needy noise in his throat.
Two.
They don’t make it to midnight before Henry is crushing his lips against Alex’s. There’s no talking, no warning, just the warmth of Henry’s mouth, tasting like too much champagne and bad ideas and everything Alex has ever wanted. His hand is still buried in Alex’s curls, using them to tug him close, to keep him still so that Henry can lick into his mouth, messy enough that teeth clash but Alex couldn’t care less. It’s the best kiss he’s ever had. He wants so much more than this kiss.
“Fuck,” Henry breathes when he pulls away. His eyes are still closed, and Alex’s hand has come up to cradle his flushed cheek. “Fuck.” His eyes open, and then suddenly the warmth of him is gone, and he’s pulling away, leaving Alex feeling overwhelmingly cold.
“Wait, H –”
But he’s already stumbling away, and it’s all Alex can do to grab wildly at his hand, desperately closing his fingers around Henry’s wrist. “ Henry. ”
Henry looks terrified. His eyes aren’t clouded anymore, no happy, drunk haze settling over him. Everything is in sharp, stark contrast. Horribly real, horribly new.
“You can’t run away. We both live here.”
Somehow, that’s the first thing to slip out of Alex’s mouth. It’s probably best that it’s that instead of something worse, something like Was that a mistake for you? or What did I do wrong? or Whatever that was, please do it again.
Henry lets out a strangled laugh. “Do you think I’m not intimately aware of that fact?”
“We’re drunk.”
“Alex, if you’re going to keep stating very obvious fucking facts –”
“This doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to,” he blurts before Henry has the chance to leave. Because that would be worse than any other alternative. Obviously, Henry doesn’t want him. It was midnight on New Year’s, Alex was a warm mouth. He was there. It’s fine. It has to be fine. So he’ll pretend that this kiss isn’t something he’ll think about at night, that he won’t remember the hot press of Henry’s mouth, the way he felt, the way he tasted, his hands in Alex’s hair like he wanted to fucking own him. To keep him. Alex would let him, but that’s not what Henry wants. Alex isn’t what he wants. “It’s New Year’s,” he adds, forcing a nonchalant shrug that makes him want to cry.
“It’s New Year’s,” Henry repeats, like he doesn’t understand the words, but then his nervous expression shutters to something carefully neutral. “Sure.”
__________________________
Alex doesn’t see Henry again until January eighth. The morning after they kissed, June has to hold his curls back as he throws up, a mixture of alcohol and panic and regret churning a nauseous storm in his stomach. He doesn’t know where Henry is until midway through the day, when he gets a curt text from Pez informing him that Henry is staying with him for a little while. Alex curls up in bed and cries, and it’s so bad that June doesn’t even have the heart to tell him that she warned him. Because she did. She warned him and he did it anyway.
But he didn’t. He didn’t.
Henry was the one who panicked, but Henry kissed him. And then regretted it, obviously, but – still. Still. Doesn’t that mean something?
June leaves before Henry comes back. She tries to push her flight back, but Alex assures her that he’s fine, he’ll get over it. He’s made plenty of drunk decisions before, this one shouldn’t be any different. He promises her that she can go, that he’ll call her every day. Maybe he hugs her a little too tight before she gets in her cab to go back to the airport, but that’s his business.
He’s not… doing particularly well without Henry there.
He goes to work, but he stays at the office until the latest possible minute, until all of the partners have gone home and it’s just him and the night cleaning staff. One night, he falls asleep there and wakes up at his desk, Zahra standing over him with a look that’s more concern than anger. That’s the scariest part, really. He thinks it would have been better if she was angry. The day she finds him there, she kicks him out of the office at five on the dot, and he’s practically a zombie on the train home, staring numbly at the linoleum floor and letting bodies jostle him this way and that.
He can’t bear the aching emptiness of the apartment. It’s too much. A constant reminder that he wasn’t enough for Henry – or the opposite, maybe. That he was too much. That he never learns his fucking lesson.
On the third day Henry’s gone, Alex goes to put on his old NYU sweatshirt only to realize that it isn’t his. That the sleeves flop down past his hands, that it’s too long – built for someone taller, broader. Built for lanky limbs and a bright smile and a British accent. It smells like Henry, and Alex hopes that tears don’t stain. He folds it carefully, going to put it on Henry’s bed but realizing he can’t bring himself to open the door. It feels like a breach of privacy — and hasn’t he already done enough?
When January eighth rolls around, Alex is starting to think that maybe Henry is gone for good. Maybe he’ll come home from work one day and every trace of him will be gone from the apartment — he’ll have to put out another fucking Craigslist ad, he thinks, but he can’t bring himself to find it funny. He can’t bring himself to reach out to Henry, either. He just scrolls aimlessly through their texts from the day before he ruined everything, reading their bickering and bantering like it’ll keep him afloat. He’s sure Henry’s blocked his number by now anyway.
He’s sitting on the floor, knees pressed to his chest, dirty dishes from what food he’s managed to eat in the past few days scattered around the apartment next to a tower of disposable coffee cups. He looks like shit, honestly. It’s been days since he’s gotten more than three hours of sleep and his eyes are red, rimmed by deep, dark circles. He doesn’t have anyone in New York to check on him, but he’s scraping by. It’s okay. He’ll get better. He has to, doesn’t he?
It’s ridiculous. It’s painful – that someone he’s known for less than six months could hurt him so badly just by leaving.
And then he hears a key turn in the lock, and suddenly, his heart is in his throat.
It’s not fair that Henry gets to kiss him and run away and come back and Alex is still almost happy to see him, some sick and twisted sense of relief invading his senses at the sight of blonde hair through the door. He feels frozen, rooted to the spot, unable to do anything but watch from the floor as Henry breezes back into his life. He shouldn’t let him, he knows. He should be angry, should kick him out, take his keys.
But then Henry’s eyes are locked on his, taking in his surroundings, his messy curls and tear-stained cheeks and mountains of unfinished paperwork and terrible coffee – the evidence that Alex has very much not been fucking okay for the past week – and he has the audacity to look confused. To look worried. As if it isn’t his fault, as if he had fucked off without a week after kissing him and thought Alex wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t care.
“Alex?”
“Fuck you,” Alex snaps, his voice weak and wobbling, taking in Henry – who looks fine, like he’s gone off on a nice holiday with Pez and had a relaxing time while Alex has been sitting here trying to work out what he did wrong, if he’d ever see him again.
“ What ?”
“You can’t – you can’t kiss me and then disappear for a week and then come back like nothing happened!” He cries angrily.
Henry flinches, still hovering in the doorway, like he’s been hit, like Alex’s words have taken a physical form and knocked some part of him loose. “You said it didn’t mean anything,” he says, almost numbly, voice like a heavy stone, sinking to the bottom of Alex’s stomach.
“I – what?”
“It was New Year’s, I – that’s what you said , Alex,” Henry reminds him, almost like he’s pleading with Alex to remember that night the same way he does – as if Alex could fucking forget. “That it was New Year’s and it didn’t mean anything. I didn’t think…”
Alex is getting to his feet now, picking himself up off the rug and putting himself back together. “You have selective fucking hearing,” he grits out, because he is not going to lose Henry based on a misunderstanding.
“I assure you, I heard you loud and clear –” Henry bites back, finally, crossing the threshold of the apartment and stopping barely a foot away from where Alex stands by the sofa.
“I said it didn’t have to mean anything if you didn’t want it to , Henry.”
Henry’s face nearly drains of color. “ Why – ”
“Because I didn’t want this to happen! I didn’t want you to run, I – I didn’t want to lose you as a friend just because you don’t want me the way I want you,” Alex practically yells, his voice cracking slightly.
“ Because I don’t want you – Christ, Alex,” Henry breathes, eyes widening with something like realization. “You’re fucking thick.”
“Oh, that’s nice – real fucking nice, Henry,” Alex bites sarcastically, even though he still kind of wants to cry. “Thanks for that.”
“I’m in love with you, you absolute reprobate,” Henry snaps.
Alex is kissing him before he can think.
It’s better than the first time, he thinks, because he isn’t surprised, isn’t in shock, isn’t terrified, waiting for Henry to pull away. He holds him so tightly he knows his fingerprints will leave marks like bruises on his hips. He doesn’t care, and from the needy noise Henry is letting out against his lips, fingernails digging sharply into Alex’s back, he doesn’t think Henry does either.
They barely pull away to breathe, practically panting into each other’s mouths, foreheads pressed together and eyes closed.
Somehow, they end up on the couch, Alex’s back pressed into the cushions, hips bracketed by Henry’s thighs and his weight on top of him. He goes willingly, so willingly, and he feels warm and languid, the anxious, angry tension dissipating with every kiss Henry trails down the column of his throat.
“Let me get this straight –”
“Alex,” Henry mutters lowly, nipping at his collarbone like he’s warning Alex not to talk and then laving over it with his tongue.
“Well, I guess it’s really the opposite of straight,” Alex continues, grinning up at the ceiling where Henry can’t see him.
“ Alex.” It really is a warning now, and Henry grinds his hips down against Alex’s in an attempt to shut him up.
“ Oh ,” Alex gasps softly at the feeling, his own hips bucking up in response. “Do that again.”
“Are you going to stop talking?” Henry asks, even though he’s already unbuttoning Alex’s shirt, kissing his way down his chest in a way that makes Alex shiver and shake.
“Probably not,” Alex admits, grinning wolfishly up at Henry when he pulls back to meet his eyes.
“Demon,” Henry says, leaning down to capture Alex’s mouth in a kiss, wiping away any trace of a smug attitude he’d managed to muster. “Menace.” Another kiss. “A plague upon polite society.”
“Henry?”
“Sweetheart, I really am going to have to suggest that you put your mouth to better use,” Henry hums with a wild grin, cheek resting on Alex’s stomach.
“I love you too.”