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“Alright,” Ellen said, hands on her hips in a distinctly mom like fashion. “You all set?”
”Yes, Mom,” Alex said for the thousandth time that day. “I promise, I can take care of the rest myself.”
Oscar clapped Alex on the shoulder, laughing. “Come on, Ellen. Let’s leave before the kid graduates, already.” Alex laughed half-heartedly at the quip, but he still went a little cold at the withering glare his mother send Oscar’s way. June, ever the protector, picked up on it and swooped in to save him.
”Here, Dad, come move the car with me, okay? Go ahead and say bye.”
Oscar did, and it only took twenty minutes and two tearful, crushing hugs on his part. New record, honestly. They left with June assuring him her and Nora’s apartment was right down the road and her manicured hand practically forcing Oscar out of the door. And then it was just Alex and Ellen.
Ellen took a breath and swept her eyes over his half-finished dorm room—the deep blue bedding, the ottoman that was going to be filled with weed the second Ellen left, the Mexican flag hung right over the bisexual one. The other side of the room was still barren, waiting for his mysterious random roommate to bring in his own style. Alex could see the wheels in her head turning as she prepared a patented Mom Speech.
”Alright,” she said. “You know where all your classes are?”
”Yes, Mom.”
”You know your RA’s alcohol policy?”
”Yes, Mom.”
”You know what bathroom is best to shit in?”
”Oh, my God!”
”Well?”
Alex groaned. He loved his mother, but he was eighteen and ready for her to leave. “Yes, I do! Down the hall to the left!”
“Good.” Ellen relaxed with a smile. “Just one more thing, sugar—you know what to do if anyone gives you shit for this?” She didn’t specify what ‘this,’ was, but Alex knew—he was a brown, queer man in the white-dominated honors dorm of a white-dominated school. He’d thought about it hundreds of times already, snapped out of made up scenarios where he’d endure slurs in Algebra 1025, where he’d be sneered at in the dining hall, where he would spend the next four years alone because he was disadvantaged and overcompensating and just too much.
But he pushed it out of his mind. His mother was staring at him expectantly, and she needed an answer. “Yes,” he said.
Ellen nodded. “Good. Kick their ass, no matter how much taller than you they are.”
”I’m not that short!”
”I mean, I didn’t marry your dad for his height—“
”Okay, Mom, see you at Christmas!” He said, practically pushing her out of the door. She laughed and kissed his cheek, shut the door behind her. Alex listened to her heels click down the hall and back to her car, back to the house that was no longer his home but his mom’s place. And then he was alone.
He sat on the bed, staring at the piles of shit to unpack around him yet doing nothing at all. Yes, he was valedictorian from his high school. Yes, he had planned for every possible scenario. Yes, he had all his classes and possibly clubs and teams planned out in a Google Calender already. But was he still shaking with nerves, alone in room 1071?
Abso-fucking-lutely.
There was so much to do. But he couldn’t, he told himself, do much of anything else until his roommate got here and they could make decisions together. Besides, the guy was due to arrive at noon, and it was already 11:46, so Alex waited.
And waited.
And waited.
He fidgeted, paced, checked his phone without reading anything on it. Noon turned to one, and still, no sign of his supposed roommate or his family. His parents were probably long gone right now, and short of texting June all of his problems until she got so upset she blocked him (again), Alex had to just sit there and let it happen. He hated letting things happen.
Finally, an hour and a half late to move in time, the door pushed open.
Alex stood, expecting a brigade of family members for him to greet with a tight smile that charmed everyone with a lick of sense. Instead, he was met with a single figure standing in the doorway, tall and straight-backed, a bag in each hand and another slung over his back.
The man’s eyes widened at the sight of Alex, like he hadn’t expected him to be there. “Erm,” he said, tightening his grip on his bags. Alex bristled already—he was no stranger to white people clutching their purses around him.
”Hey,” Alex said, jumping in with charisma before he could become a total asshole. “Henry, right?” He extended a hand, which Henry didn’t take.
”Yes,” Henry said coolly, and Alex noticed a posh accent curling his vowels. “I take it you’re Alex?”
Alex nodded. “That’s me. Is this everything you’ve got?”
Henry nodded but said nothing. The silence stretched like a cord of discomfort between them, each second a lifetime. Just to fill the space, Alex said, “I had no idea you were British, dude. What are you doing at NYU?”
Henry’s shoulders bunched. “I’d rather not say,” he replied.
Alex held Henry’s wary stare. Henry’s posture was too straight, his hair too perfectly arranged. It hit Alex, then, that in the four minutes he’d known the guy he’d picked up nothing warm or welcoming from him. And Christ, they’d be living together for four years? Alex wasn’t sure he could handle it.
But Henry was all alone in a new country, and Alex wasn’t always the nicest of people but maybe it was time to learn about the benefit of the doubt. He pasted on a smile. “I can help you get your bags,” he said, reaching for the smaller of the two in Henry’s left hand. Henry jerked away so violently he nearly toppled backwards, and Alex blinked, hard. His hand was still outstretched as Henry righted himself, shook his head, stretched out a spasm in his neck.
”No,” he said, quiet but firm.
Alex’s grin finally wavered. “Excuse me?”
”No,” Henry said. “I…” He trailed off, his eyes stuck somewhere behind Alex. Alex followed his gaze and felt dread settle hard in his stomach at where it landed.
Pink, purple, and blue. An eagle set between red and green lines. The flags that Alex refused to be ashamed of, taken apart by Henry’s unreadable gaze.
So. It was like that. Henry was like that.
When Alex turned back to him, he had the audacity to duck his head and shuffle his feet like he had been made uncomfortable. Well, Alex was so fucking sorry for it.
”That’s…” Henry started, and his accent meant Alex couldn’t read him in the slightest. But, well, he could certainly make an educated guess.
”Yeah,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “It is.”
Henry took a breath and trained his eyes not on Alex, not on the flags, just a plain section of wall above Alex’s head. His face went infuriatingly still, like a mask. At least he has the decency to hide it.
“You good?” Alex asked, knowing damn well his tone indicated he wished Henry was anything but.
Henry didn’t even look him in the eyes. “I’d like to be alone,” he said. “Please.”
Alex scoffed. “Yeah. Right. See you tonight, I guess.”
Alex didn’t look to see Henry’s reaction before he was out the door.
——
Alex was sprawled across June’s secondhand couch, effectively mirroring a painting he saw of a fainting Victorian woman years and years ago. June was apparently not having it and shoved his legs over the side to make space for herself and her extra large bag of Goldfish Crackers.
She said, “You know, when I said you could visit me whenever you needed, I didn’t mean two hours after moving in.”
Alex groaned and threw an arm over his eyes. “You don’t get it. This dude is, like, a major asshole.”
”You barely met him. Why don’t you just give him a chance?”
Alex propped himself up on his elbows, shooting June a withering glare that her Older Sister Shield protected her from. “I did give him a chance. He blew it when he practically fucking spit on my bi flag.”
”Are you sure it wasn’t the Mexican one?”
”Look me in the eyes and tell me that’s any fucking better.”
”It’s not,” Nora conceded, emerging from her room to grab a handful of Goldfish and nudge Alex’s head out of the way with her hips so he was sandwiched between the girls. “But, like, is he hot?”
”I’m sorry?”
”Well, you know. Racist homophobes are sometimes bearable if you use them as eye candy.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “I didn’t get a good look at him between all the bullshit he was producing. He had a British accent, if it helps.”
Nora whistled. “Damn. What’s he doing all the way over here?”
”He wouldn’t say. Probably trying to reignite British colonialism from the honors dorm.”
June and Nora shared one of their girl glances that Alex never had any hope of deciphering. Then, June said, “Look, maybe he’s a total asshole. Maybe he’s not. But I have plans tonight, so if I give you some vodka to take back to your dorm, will you leave me alone?”
”He is a total asshole. And yes. Taaka’s cures everything.”
“Perfect. Take the bottle under the sink and get the fuck out. And don’t kill your roommate!” June called out the last part as Alex slipped out with the largest bottle in his hand, and he kindly flipped her off on his way out.
——
When Alex made it back to the dorm, Henry was gone. Alex felt something leave him—Dread? Fear? Curiosity?—and his tense shoulders fell limp. He hid the vodka in his ottoman and looked at Henry’s side of the room. It was already neatly organized, a sharp contrast from Alex’s stacks of boxes and half-unpacked bag of clothes. He had a simple but plush white bedspread, so he obviously wasn’t planning on getting drunk enough to puke on it, and besides a tiny Union Jack tacked above his headboard, it was entirely devoid of decoration.
Oh, Christ, Alex had just moved in with the most boring nineteen year old alive. Fucking yippee for him.
He didn’t even have Henry’s goddamn phone number, so it wasn’t like Alex could call him like, hey, what’s up, want to take your homophobic racist ass to the dining hall with me?
All this to say—Alex ate his under seasoned dinner alone, that night.
——
Henry didn’t come back until well after sunset. Alex was sitting on his bed going through his calendar for the trillionth time when the door creaked open. Henry’s blonde hair was windswept, his sweatshirt rolled up to his elbows. Alex’s stomach flipped, and he cursed Nora for putting the idea that this guy is attractive in his mind. Because this level of hotness was pretty clearly wasted on Henry, so Alex elected to ignore it.
Henry looked almost disappointed when he saw Alex. But he quickly covered it up and cleared his throat politely. “Hello,” he said.
Alex bit back a few choice words. “Hey,” he said, suddenly and randomly thankful he wasn’t wearing his glasses. As Henry shut the door and walked in with a ramrod straight back, Alex asked, “Where were you?”
Henry raised an eyebrow. “What?”
”I’ve been by myself for, like, five hours. Where’d you go?”
”Are you upset with me for leaving?”
”No,” Alex replied, and it came out much more aggressive than he’d planned. Like, yeah, he was aggressive, but it was supposed to be more ‘hey don’t come at me with your bullshit’ and less ‘I wish you’d stayed out forever.’ But, apparently, Henry took the latter.
”Then there’s no issue,” he said coldly, the conversation practically welded shut.
They got ready for bed silently, brushing teeth and changing in opposite corners. Plugging his phone in, Alex saw Henry dry swallowing a pill in his peripheral and decided it was not his fucking problem.
Henry’s eyes swept once more over Alex’s flag as he fell into bed, and if Alex had any less self restraint he’d have gotten up and left in his pajamas to request a room change from this asshole blonde. But he just turned out the lights and rolled over to face the wall, and the night went on.
——
Alex woke up with a slightly more level head than the night before. Slightly.
He sat up quietly to keep from waking up Henry, only to find him already up and at his desk. He was pouring over some book, his brow furrowed in concentration that snapped the moment Alex’s bare feet hit the floor.
”Hello,” he said again, like he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. Alex couldn’t care less.
”Hey,” he said, tugging off his shirt and pulling a slightly more respectable one on over it. He didn’t miss the way Henry made a point to look away as he got ready.
”Where are you going?” Henry asked.
”It’s welcome week. There’s shit to do every day.” Alex slipped on his shoes and leveled his gaze, forcing sleep away. June had said something about second chances—this was about to be it. “I’m going to the LGBT student meeting,” he said, his words measured carefully.
He watched Henry’s reaction closely, scrutinizingly—he paled, some, his eyes narrowing, a sharp pinch forming in the corner of his mouth. “Oh,” he said, his voice tight like he was holding something back with desperate hands. Probably a fucking slur.
Alex held his stare. “Wanna come?” He asked.
Henry’s eyes widened and he looked away faster than June had when she accidentally walked in on Alex jerking off sophomore year. “No,” he said, like a nail in his own coffin.
Alex nodded. No. So, there was his answer. Second chances be damned.
”Fine by me,” Alex huffed, and then he was gone. God, the first thing he was gonna talk about at this meeting was his fucking roommate.
——
He didn’t talk about Henry at the meeting, by the way.
A week of classes passed, then two. They were, of course, already kicking Alex’s ass. He was pretty sure he’d spent half of his meal points already on coffee alone. He spent most of his time in the library chugging pure caffeine and squinting his way through some bullshit articles that his professors assigned. Sure, maybe if he went back to the dorm to study he could wear his glasses and make the whole damn thing easier, but, like, no. Not that Henry was there often, of course. He was always out, and Alex never knew where he went.
Henry was apparently an English major, which was fucking fine by Alex. No classes together, and all that. But English majors didn’t really do much, and Henry didn’t seem like the partying type, and Alex didn’t like the guy but he was curious as to where exactly he fucking was all the time. He didn’t even seem to sleep, since he came in after Alex had gone to bed and was usually gone by the time he woke up.
It was this useless, unrelenting, and incredibly on-brand-for-him curiosity that possessed him to do something not really stupid, but definitely weird.
He got ready for bed like normal, turned off the lights and crawled between the sheets. And he waited. Maybe he could catch Henry stumbling home drunk, in the arms of some girl. Maybe he’d be on the phone with his mom who was secretly the queen of England. Maybe he’d be breathing hard and fast—don’t think about it like that, he’s a homophobe, Alex told himself—and covered in blood because he’d just murdered somebody.
Half an hour passed, maybe more, as Alex fought off sleep. Insomnia was a bitch, but caffeine crash was more powerful, and he was really struggling here.
Around midnight, the door finally opened. Alex shut his eyes and focused on evening out his breaths, making sure he looked as asleep as possible.
Henry shut the door quietly behind him. Alex heard him take off his shoes, his jacket. But then he just…stopped. He hadn’t sat down, hadn’t done anything, was probably just standing in the middle of the room, but he was doing nothing at all, unless he’d mastered the art of brushing his teeth entirely silently. Strangely, Alex thought he felt eyes on him for a few long seconds.
Then Henry moved to the sink, and the feeling ebbed into an echo so faint Alex wasn’t sure it had been there in the first place.
Henry brushed his teeth, changed his clothes. That pill bottle rattled again, and Alex didn’t miss the change in Henry’s breath when he downed a pill. Then Henry slipped into bed, and Alex resigned himself to just not knowing what Henry did because he clearly wasn’t drunk or bringing home chicks while Alex was asleep or—
A wet sniffle from Henry’s bed broke Alex out of his thoughts. Another. Alex was about to break his silence to get up and offer him a goddamned tissue so he could blow his nose and get it over with, but then Alex heard it. A single sob, muffled halfway through, like Henry was biting down on his hand.
Alex’s entire fucking body froze. Three feet away from him, his icy, secretive roommate was crying. Alex could hear it, plain as day, stifled sobs and harsh sniffs, like Henry could barely breath with it. Alex ran over everything he knew about him in his mind, because he didn’t like questions with no answers—Henry had come here alone, Henry brought almost nothing with him, Henry hadn’t shown Alex a single genuine smile since he’d arrived. But Alex had no fucking clue what that all added up to, and as another broken sob escaped Henry, he understood that he would not find out tonight.
Alex felt like he shouldn’t be hearing this, and he was tempted to throw off his covers and leave the room, but then that would reveal that he was obviously just pretending to be asleep, and that would absolutely not help, so he just stayed where he was, listening to Henry cry into his fist because he didn’t want to wake Alex up.
Eventually, he quieted, and Alex heard his breaths even out as he fell into merciful sleep.
It took Alex hours to fall asleep, though. Because, suddenly, it seemed like Henry’s icy exterior was a whole lot thinner than it had looked at first.
——
The next morning, Henry didn’t look like someone who’d spent the better part of an hour crying in the darkness less than eight hours ago. He looked no different than he always did, which prompted Alex to wonder just how often this kind of thing happened.
He shouldn’t have felt bad for his racist, homophobic, asshole roommate. But he also shouldn’t have done what he was about to do, so…
”Wanna get breakfast?” Alex asked.
Henry looked just as surprised as Alex felt at the words. “Excuse me?”
Alex rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, I don’t think either of us really have friends. And I heard of a good pancake place down the road. Wanna go?”
Henry blinked. “I have…a friend,” he said.
Annoyance started to overshadow pity. Something unidentifiable laid inbetween the two. ”Are you just making up excuses to dodge me?”
”What—no!”
”Then get your shit and let’s go.”
Henry started to slip on his shoes. Tying the laces with frustratingly deft fingers, he looked up at Alex with that long neck that he absolutely didn’t deserve and asked, “Why do you want me to come?”
Alex bit his tongue. “Because even if we clearly don’t like each other, we can be halfway to civil since we live five fucking feet from each other and I don’t want to spend all my energy avoiding you.” Alex took a breath. “And, because I’d like to have a friend, too.”
Henry looked caught off guard, his lips parted the smallest amount. Dammit, why were they so pink?
He finished tying his shoes and stood. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
——
Fifteen minutes, two awkward subway rides, and almost ten thousand thoughts of what the fuck am I doing later, they were standing outside of some indie place Alex had heard about on the Q train last week.
”Pancake Billy’s House Of Pancakes,” Henry read, an eyebrow raised. “Really rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?”
Alex had to remind himself that Henry wasn’t allowed to make him laugh. “Well, I never said it was the best named spot in Manhattan. Come on.”
Alex pulled them into a corner booth, and a short waitress with unruly curls and glasses handed them their menus before slinking off to go whisper in the ear of a tattooed line cook. Alex smiled—he never got tired of lesbians.
Henry was already pouring over his menu, and Alex wanted to make a quip about British food, but he’d forgotten his fucking contacts and the light was too low and Alex couldn’t read a word of this fucking menu. He swore a little under his breath and, like raising a white flag, pulled his glasses out of his jacket pocket. He read over the menu quickly, choosing the cheapest thing because he was a broke ass college freshman before quickly tucking his glasses back away.
When he looked up, Henry was staring at him, something soft and deep in his eyes. Something Alex hadn’t seen before.
Alex stared back, a challenge with no prize, no end goal. Henry didn’t look away. Neither of them could win. Neither could lose.
But then the plump, curly-haired waitress came back and wrote down two orders of pancakes, and the…whatever that was broke.
”So,” Henry said, his hands clasped in front of him as if he hadn’t just engaged in very strange eye contact with Alex. “Why did you bring me here?”
Alex shook off the last of his weird fucking mood. “What?” He asked, kind of like an idiot but listen he just woke up and second (third?) chances weren’t easy and cut him some fucking slack, okay?
”I mean, you’ve not been the most friendly with me before. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ungrateful for this change, but why did it even happen?”
Alex held his tongue on saying I haven’t been friendly because you all but seized up when you found out I’m queer. Instead he said something that was also the truth, if only a little further back on truths that made his blood boil. “Because we’re going to be in a shitty cinderblock room together for an entire year and I want to at least try to not hate you.”
Henry hummed. “Proving difficult, isn’t it?”
Strangely, Alex wanted to laugh almost as much as he wanted to smack him. “Yeah, actually, it fucking is.”
That shut Henry right the hell up. His smug, half-amused smile fell and he trained his eyes down. Alex suddenly remembered that the man across from him had been sobbing into the darkness not even twelve hours before, and something deep within him twinged with guilt.
To fill the sinking void between them, Alex asked, “What made you choose NYU?” A cliche question, but Alex was barely treading water in the turbulent ocean that separated them. Anything to keep his head above the waves.
“A friend of mine goes here,” Henry said. “He convinced me to apply with him. I didn’t even want to go, really, but the acceptance letter came in and I just…” Henry gestured lamely to himself and the booth he sat in.
Alex nodded slowly, trying to remember that this was his break from total fucking loathing. But it was hard, because the school that Alex had sacrificed sleep and friends and all of his teenage years, pounding on the Dean’s door with bloody hands clutching SAT scores to get into? For Henry, it was nothing at all.
”Why here, though?” Alex asked. “Why not Oxford, or Cambridge? Somewhere closer to home?”
Henry tapped, tapped, tapped his fingers against the glass of water he’d received. It was strange, like a crack in an obsidian wall—a single point where he wasn’t poised, perfect, planned. A twitch of humanity.
”Family,” Henry said.
”What, you have some here?”
”No, Alex,” Henry said, his voice flat and hard and resigned. “I was trying to get away from my family over there.”
A thousand pictures flashed through Alex’s mind—Henry, his entire life condensed into three bags held with white knuckles. Henry, standing alone in the doorway. Henry, crying by himself instead of calling his father or texting a sibling.
Alex raised his eyebrows. “Oh. Shit.”
Henry took a sip. “Isn’t it just?”
”I mean, I—I get that,” Alex said quickly, words tripping over themselves and out of his mouth in a desperate attempt to grasp at the dying straws of this conversation. “My parents divorced when I was, like, twelve, and they still can’t be in the room together so move in day was, you know, yikes. And my sister is always pissed at me, so, you know—yeah. I mean, not to brush your shit off. I just, like, relate, I guess.”
Henry was staring at Alex with calm eyes, and Alex suddenly felt a hot glare of some unholy cross of shame and anger. He had just been trying to keep breakfast from falling into total shambles. It wasn’t like he even liked Henry, but he didn’t like failing, either, and he had set out this morning with a clear mission—don’t fuck everything up.
Mission report? Not good, boss.
Henry took a breath, and Alex just had to watch as he said with all the composure in the world, “My father died last year. The family’s been a mess ever since, not for lack of trying. It came to a head right before I graduated, and I had a chance to escape, so I took it. Now I’m here.”
Here. Sitting across from a short Mexican who had all but told him to go fuck himself. Yeah, no, shame was definitely starting to win out.
”Well,” Alex said, desperately hoping he sounded more nonchalant than he felt, because a cold corpse was in Henry’s recent past and Alex had no idea how to deal with that, “how are you liking the states?”
Henry rolled his eyes. “Well enough.” Another sip. “That’s where I am, most of the time. Just walking around. Exploring.”
Henry looked out the window with somewhat wistful blue eyes, the morning sun casting gray light over his face, and you know, he was actually kind of pretty. Funny, too, in the dry way British people can be funny—
Alex almost slapped himself in the fucking face.
No.
No.
This wasn’t happening. Alex wasn’t letting it. Also, damn Nora to hell for ever even putting the idea that maybe-racist-definitely-homophobic-Henry could ever be hot in his head.
Henry, thankfully unaware of his crisis, turned back to Alex, resting his chin on his fist. “What about you?” He asked. “What do you do when I’m gone?”
”Study,” Alex answered too quickly.
”That’s it?”
”Well if I watch a little Netflix inbetween, sue me, you fucking menace.” He’d meant for the words to come out sharp and biting, but they only made Henry laugh (he was not letting himself like that sound).
“I’ll keep it in mind for when I find an American lawyer.”
And. Well. Alex laughed.
At some point, the nice waitress and her probably-girlfriend set their plates down before them. Half of Alex wanted them to ask if he and Henry were on a date, just to see Henry’s reaction. The other half absolutely did not want that to happen. Or maybe did. No, definitely didn’t.
The pancakes were good. The damning part was, Henry was even better. He was funny and weirdly smart, pulling out counterpoints the second Alex tried to argue that Percy Jackson was better than Harry Potter (of course you’d be a Hufflepuff, you little Son-Of-Athena ass bitch). Egged on by Alex, he launched into a five minute long ramble about Jane Austen’s genius and fortitude, and the blush that colored his white ass nose when he caught hold of himself and apologized was not fucking allowed.
Alex had to remind himself, over and over, or the look on Henry’s face that first day. Cold. Confused. Disgusted.
(It was getting harder to remember).
It didn’t come crashing down until the very end.
Before that, it was fine. It was good. They were toeing the line between animosity and something else, something only a stone’s throw from friendship, fragile as a newborn bird’s wings. A tiny, optimistic voice in the back of Alex’s mind whispered that he had all year to change Henry’s mind on whatever outdated bullshit they taught in England. That maybe, if they worked to understand each other, they could be friends. Weirdly mature for him, but this was new territory for everyone involved, so.
After finishing pancakes, one of them eating like a normal human being and the other—no names named—with a perfectly positioned fork and knife cutting away at the syrup-soaked meal like he’d been fucking trained for it, the check came. Alex reached for it first, defending his choice when Henry tried to protest with a wink and an, “I always pay on the first date, babe.”
It had just slipped out. Half of it was a challenge, sure, some residual anger and a genuine question of can we do this? But the other half, the dangerous words, had just slipped out.
Henry drew into himself, curling around his ribs like a willow’s branches around its trunk. Like he was protecting his heart. Protecting it from Alex. From what he was.
Alex held onto the check with white knuckles and let Henry gather himself, let him run a hand through his hair, do whatever he needed to do to cope. Henry seemed like he wanted to die. Alex was definitely fucking ready for something of that caliber to happen.
Henry had the decency to at least avert his eyes from Alex’s face as he reached into his coat pocket and said, “I think it’s best if we stay out of each other’s way from now on.”
Alex scoffed. “Yeah. Sure.”
Henry stood warily, like he was worried any sudden movement might grant him a broken nose. Like he was worried he could shatter beneath a heavy footstep.
Before he left, he pressed a twenty onto the open check, right between Alex’s hands. His slim fingers lingered a second too long—an unanswered silence, a stretch of time.
Then he was gone, and Alex didn’t know if he should be left fuming or disappointed or something else entirely.
——
Staying out of someone’s way when the aforementioned someone slept in the same fucking room as you was hard, but damn if Henry didn’t make a point to do exactly that. Somehow, Alex saw him even less than before. He was always out, and maybe Manhattan was big, but how much could Henry fucking explore?
When they were in the same room, it was terse and silence, with very few words beyond ‘hey’ and ‘sorry’ and ‘I’m going to bed’ uttered from either one of them. Most of the ‘sorry’s’ from Henry, because he seemed constantly remorseful and awkward now, and because Alex didn’t really feel inclined to be polite to him anymore.
But.
But that wasn’t entirely the truth, was it?
Because in the moments Henry let his guard down and forgot Alex was there, he became someone that Alex could really have liked. He watched Bake Off, poured over the same mediocre books ten times like he could get something new from them with every reread, laughed in his sleep. When he wasn’t being an obtuse fucking asshole, he was sarcastic and interesting and so fucking smart. If Henry was anyone else, anyone else at all, he might be one of Alex’s favorite people.
But Henry was Henry, and Alex was stubborn Alex, and they stayed fumbling out of one another’s orbits for the entire goddamn fall semester.
Now, the day before winter break. Henry was, as always, out. Alex wondered if he really had a home to go to for Christmas.
He had to fight to keep empathy locked away.
Alex had his suitcase packed to go home, and there was nothing left to do but wait for the takeoff time. So he was sitting criss-cross in bed in plaid sweatpants and his reading glasses with a whole city of opportunities right outside his window, stuck in his dorm.
The folder Henry had left on his bed before Alex even woke up had been pulling his attention all morning. The perfect little shit finally forgot something, did something wrong (which he seemed to think he was incapable of if his haughty exterior and keep your things on your side of the room said anything). What the fuck was even in there? Probably just some boring Dickens with equally boring annotations.
Alex stared at the folder. The folder stared back. Oh, what the hell?
He crossed the minuscule distance between the beds and opened the folder. The weirdly pristine blue plastic gave way to well-organized sheets of paper, just as expected. But instead of writing by some long dead white guy, Alex saw…music. Sheet music, specifically, and Alex didn’t know much about musical theory but this seemed super complicated. Professional level, at least. Concertos and symphonies and shit meant to be accompanied by another thousand instruments, all condensed into a single piano line.
And then, hidden in the very back, squirreled away in the shadows of greatness and pristine white paper, was something else. Two pages staples together, the paper soft and worn and a little wrinkled at the edges. Alex pulled it out with gentle hands, the folder forgotten on the comforter below him.
It was Your Song. There were little handwritten notes next to almost every measure, as simple as decrescendo here or as incomprehensible as rising scale for a lover. A tiny heart was doodled over the line your eyes are the sweetest I’ve ever seen.
This felt like something he wasn’t meant to see. It felt like Alex was leaning over Henry, peeling back his skin and peaking between his ribs to watch his heart beat. It was odd, imperfect, shaped a little weird, and Alex saw so much of it laid out in front of him.
”Alex?”
Oh. Oh, okay. So Alex was fucked.
He turned around and saw Henry in the doorway. He must have gone for a run, because he was in athletic clothes and his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. He was breathing hard. At first Alex thought it was just from the running, but Henry’s gaze was far too fixed on the papers in Alex’s hand.
Alex raised the folder—no use in denying it, now. “You play piano?” He asked.
Henry did that fucking thing that Alex couldn’t stand—straightened his back, leveled his stare, pinched the corner of his lip. Tucked away whatever he was thinking beneath a cold exterior. “Yes,” he said.
”Is that where you are, all the time?”
”Yes,” he repeated.
”Oh,” was all Alex could say. It was strange, seeing Henry before him with all of his walls up while his heart lay beating and warm in Alex’s own hands.
Alex shifted. He shouldn’t have been feeling like this about Henry, shouldn’t have felt vulnerable. He couldn’t.
“You know Elton John is gay, right?” He asked, injecting as much venom into his voice as possible.
Henry blinked. Alex felt like the universe was born in the moment his eyelashes fluttered down, then up. “Yes,” he said slowly.
Alex cocked his head. “That doesn’t bother you?”
”Why would it?”
Oh, Alex was seriously going to fucking kill him.
”Because you’re a raging fucking homophobe!” Alex exclaimed. He stared at Henry, waiting for his response, feeling like he was going to shake out of his skin.
When Henry seemed to catch up and realize this wasn’t a joke, he shut his mouth where it had dropped open. “…Excuse me?”
Alex crossed his arms over his chest, suddenly very aware that he was sitting on Henry’s bed. ”You heard me.”
”I heard you, Alex, I just haven’t got a bloody clue what you’re talking about.”
”Come on, man.” Alex gestured to the bi flag, which he was honestly surprised hadn’t been ripped down or some shit by now. “I saw you glaring at it when you moved in. And ever since, whenever I bring up now I’m queer, you just clam the fuck up like it’s taking every bit of British discipline you have not to do me in. I’ve tried to put up with it and be polite, but I’m fucking sick of it!”
After a moment of silence that could have housed generations of lifetimes, Henry did something Alex could have never predicted—he let out a single, nervous laugh. Then another, and Alex realized distantly that this was the first Henry had laughed because of him.
”What are you laughing about?” Alex asked, confusion starting to overshadow his anger. “What’s fucking funny about this?”
”Is that what you think?” Henry asked, his face still stuck in a half-hysterical smile. “Is that why you’ve been acting like this?”
”Well, yeah, man. You practically shat on my flags.”
Henry’s smile fell. “Alex, that’s not…I mean, I’m…” He shuffled in place, fiddled with the hem of his jacket, did everything but answer. His walls had crumbled with that laugh, and he looked like he didn’t know what the hell to do now that he was left in the rubble.
”What?” Alex asked. “What?”
Henry looked like he was digging his own grave. He looked like he was coming alive.
”I’m gay,” he said, his voice like a release, an exhale. “Have been the whole time, you know.”
Alex might have laughed if his brain hadn’t ground to a fucking halt. Because unless this was all a really weird dream, the very foundation that he had built his opinion of Henry on had just been torn out from under his feet and turned upside down.
”What?” Alex asked, like Henry not even five minutes ago.
Henry raised an eyebrow. “You heard me,” he mirrored. Alex punched a breath out. Henry continued, “Is that really why you’ve been treating me like this? Like you wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire?”
”I thought you hated me!” Alex practically shouted. “Why—why did you act like that, then? Whenever I talked about being queer?”
”Because I was scared, Alex. Being gay is what ran me out of England and into the Western fucking hemisphere. Excuse me if I got nervous when you kept shoving it at me like you were accusing me of being gay.”
Alex scanned Henry’s face, the deep blue irises, the fading smattering of freckles over his nose. Henry looked incredulous, but there was something else there. Something that told Alex there was more at stake than just Henry’s reputation.
And then.
And then.
And then.
Well. And then, he was pretty sure he got it.
”That’s not it, is it?” He asked slowly.
”What?” Henry asked, and his voice was small like he knew exactly what the fuck Alex was talking about.
”There’s more. Other reasons you’re nervous around me.”
Henry opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again as his eyes dropped sadly downwards. “Alex,” he muttered, “we’re roommates. I can’t afford to think of you like that.”
”But you do, don’t you?”
Henry bit his lip. He looked up and held Alex’s gaze with an unwavering strength that contrasted the quivering in his limbs. Something more, too—hope, dim but there.
”Don’t you?”
Henry took a shuddering breath. “I haven’t hardly seen you be anything but angry with me. I don’t think I can, yet, but if you start just being you…”
The unspoken words fell between them, as physical as the flags on the wall, an eagle and a pink stripe and a tiny Union Jack. I could like you. I could love you. I could, I could, I could.
”I could, too,” Alex said. There—that seed of hope in Henry’s eyes bloomed into an entire orchard in a split second.
”You could?” He asked, his lips starting to lift in a cautious smile.
“I…I could.”
Henry beamed for real, then. Alex didn’t feel too fluttery about it, not yet. But he could. “What were we fighting about, again?” Henry asked.
Alex’s phone rang, and he knew his mom was ten seconds away from stomping up to his room and tearing him away himself, because Ellen Claremont did not like to wait. Alex looked up at Henry, who would be here when he got back in the spring.
”I don’t know,” he said. “Want to talk it out on our next move-in day? Do-over?”
Henry’s stance was relaxed, kind. He might look like that every day, now. The possibilities of the future kind of made Alex’s head spin.
”Sounds great.”
With that, Alex nodded and picked up the bag he was bringing home. Only one, the essentials. Everything else would be left in this room.
Well, not everything.
In the doorway, Alex decided that there were some things he just couldn’t go home without. So he turned on his heel and grabbed Henry by the neck and kissed him.
Henry was frozen in surprise for a fraction of a second before he was kissing Alex back, and this kiss felt better than any other kiss Alex had ever had before. Maybe because it was a new beginning, maybe because of the millions of kisses he might explore after this from a new lens, maybe because it was just Henry. It didn’t matter now, with their lips pressed together and Henry’s hair impossibly soft beneath his fingertips. He could fucking analyze it later.
Alex pulled away, breathing hard, trying on a shaky smile even though he felt like his entire world had tilted a single degree off of its axis. Henry looked like he’d been struck by lighting. Another thing on the list of things he could have been exploring all these months.
”See you in spring,” Alex breathed, and Henry smiled, and then, somehow, Alex was in the backseat of his mother’s car, unable to answer any of her questions. Because right when he’d sat down, he felt his finger run over something paper in the pocket of his suitcase, and he’d taken it out.
Somehow, when Alex wasn’t looking, Henry had slipped the sheet music for Your Song in his suitcase. Alex laughed to himself—he wondered if Henry would ever stop surprising him, knocking the wind from his chest.
He hoped the answer was no.
He had the rest of time to find out.
(And if, when Alex came back in January with the sheet music and a frame, Your Song became the centerpiece of room 1071—well, then that was the first step down the path they made, wasn’t it?)