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Henry’s nearly done. He’s got two more sets of oblique crunches, and then the horrible five-minute plank variation, which he hates, but knows it works. And then he’ll be done.
He’s on the floor of the living room of the flat he shares with his best friend, having moved the coffee table out of the way for this workout. Under him is a pink yoga mat his sister had left behind and that Henry quite likes. It’s the perfect level of cushioning without being too soft, plus, it goes nicely with their grey and green colour scheme, and that makes Henry happy. He’s sweating buckets, wearing nothing but low hanging jogging bottoms, and he faintly wishes he’d laid down a towel on the mat before he started. The early spring heat had caught him off guard.
He’s just moved on to planking, the final part of this particular torture session, when he hears the front door unlocking. He’s holding a side plank, left arm and left foot holding his entire body weight up, right arm and right leg held straight up in the air, and he tips his head forward slightly to look over and watch Alex coming in. He manages to hold his balance, which is not an easy feat for him in Alex’s presence.
Alex takes two steps into the flat, clattering as usual, and then freezes. He stands in front of the open door for a few moments, staring at Henry, then walks in properly, kicking the door shut behind himself. His eyes still haven’t left Henry.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Henry rolls his eyes.
“Exercising? I’m sure you’ve heard of it before.”
Alex stomps across the room, dropping his bag down by the sofa so carelessly it sounds as if it’s filled solely with glass bottles and bricks. Surely something in there is broken, but Alex doesn’t stop to check.
“Why the hell do you look like some sort of glistening upright starfish?”
Henry sighs.
“What’s with the insults, Alex? Surely there’s nothing that unusual in me exercising. You know I do it regularly.”
“Yeah, I guess. You just don’t normally do it at home,” Alex mutters.
“I know. Just didn’t feel like going all the way to the gym today. I had too much work to do.”
The one minute timer on Henry’s phone buzzes, and he taps it off then turns to hold the same pose on his other side, holding his left arm and leg up in the air, which has the added benefit of giving Alex his back. Maybe this way he’ll be able to ignore whatever rant is coming his way.
Instead though, he hears soft steps and feels Alex’s presence closer to him. It feels like he’s standing maybe a foot away from Henry, but he doesn’t want to turn his head to check. Nothing good can come of giving into his impulses where Alex is concerned. If he gives into this one, he might start giving in to the daily urge to profess his love for him, or drop down to his knees in front of him and take him in his mouth. It’s even odds as to which one it would be.
Henry holds strong.
“Jesus Christ,” comes the quiet mutter from behind him.
“Excuse me?” Henry pants, straining to get any words out without losing his balance.
“How are you real?” Alex says, even quieter. But Henry hears it.
“How am I—” The minute buzzer cuts him off again, alerting him to his last change. He shifts his body, moving into a low plank, elbows and forearms resting on the floor, lower body held up on his tiptoes. He settles into the position, then risks turning his head to look at Alex.
He’s standing between Henry and the TV unit, his suit jacket thrown carelessly over the armchair. He’s got one hand on his tie, navy with a pattern of flying macaws, as if he’d started to loosen it and then stopped. He’s not moving, but when Henry lifts his head, he sees very clearly the volume at his crotch. It’s big, and as Henry’s eyes go past, it twitches.
“Alex?” Henry chokes out. He’s not quite brave enough to look Alex in the eye, afraid of what he might see there.
“You’re all… sweaty.” Alex gestures over his back, hands waving wildly.
“Yes, that tends to happen when one exercises, I’m afraid.”
“But you’re like… dripping.” Alex’s voice sounds strange. Slow, and thick.
“Okay.” Henry tries to keep his cool, but there’s something happening here, something in Alex’s tone and his behaviour that tells Henry this isn’t just a normal Alex rant. There’s something tortured and wanting in it, and Henry knows it’s probably just wishful thinking on his part, but he’s never heard Alex sound like this before.
Then there’s the rustle of fabric against fabric. Alex moves and Henry feels fingers coming to touch the nape of his neck, sliding lightly down the entire length of his spine, and stopping at his waistband, just at the top of his ass.
The contact is so slow and measured and at the same time unexpected, that Henry is frozen for a second, except for the small gasp that escapes his lips.
It’s not that he doesn’t want Alex to touch him, because, by god, he wants it. He’s wanted Alex since they first met at university five years previously, Henry working on his master’s and Alex on his law degree, and moving in together had only made things worse for Henry. But Alex had always been enthusiastically straight, so Henry had decided early on that if he couldn’t have Alex how he wanted him, he would settle for whatever he could get. Platonic-flatmates-slash-best-friends seemed like the best it would ever get.
Until tonight.
When Alex had willingly touched him in a way that felt very much not platonic.
Unfrozen under the heat and confusion of what had just happened, Henry collapses onto his front, making a wet, splattering noise. He cranes his head back just in time to see Alex mindlessly raise his hand to his mouth and lick his fingertips. The very same ones he’d just run down Henry’s back. His eyes are glazed over, staring at Henry but unseeing.
Henry whimpers and turns over to lie on his back, his elbows holding up his torso.
“Alex?”
Alex looks at him for a few moments longer. He stares at his abs, then slides his eyes up to Henry’s pecs and when he finally, finally reaches Henry’s face, his expression changes.
It goes from what had been very obviously confused lust, to something like despairing embarrassment.
Pushed by what he saw briefly on Alex’s face, Henry leans forward and reaches one hand out, wrapping it around Alex’s calf, the only part of him he can reach. Alex had looked for a second like he might bolt, and Henry would really, really like him not to. He wants him to stay. To maybe talk.
To see if he wants to touch him again.
Under Henry’s grip, Alex moves. He steps one leg over Henry’s body, and drops down to his knees to straddle him. Alex sits on top of Henry’s undeniably hard cock, then runs both hands up his wet, slippery chest, thumbs lingering over his nipples, drawing out a moan from Henry’s lips.
Then Alex looks up. His expression is shocked, his eyes wide, but Henry only gets a split second to notice it, because Alex crashes their mouths together, and his whole world, carefully constructed to keep him safe, to keep him out of just exactly this kind of harm’s way, comes crashing down.
Alex’s kiss is everything. It’s hungry and all-encompassing immediately. He slips his tongue in Henry’s mouth as if it was the source of air and water and all that he needs to stay alive. It’s clear to Henry that there has never been a kiss like this before. It is the stuff of life. His lips are water and his tongue is fire, and his hands are running through Henry’s hair like wind, his hips pressing Henry down to the earth, grounding, making sure he doesn’t float away.
Henry grabs onto Alex just as hard, clutching at his shoulders, pulling him close, then slipping his hands up to tangle through Alex’s curls, curls he’s dreamt about, curls he’s thought about constantly, how soft they would be, how it would feel to bury his fingers in it. And it’s so much better to finally be there, but surrounded by the force of nature that is Alex.
His hips twitch up into Alex, who moans loudly, and the sound is so good, so perfect, that it jolts Henry.
He opens his eyes.
He pulls his mouth away.
He has to stop this.
“Alex,” he tries to say, though Alex is still lost in the moment, his lips still chasing Henry’s.
Alex hums, but continues to clutch Henry’s face and reach for his lips.
“Alex, wait.”
Alex opens his eyes and pulls back. He looks like he’s just been yanked out of a dream and he’s not quite sure of where he actually is.
“What is it, H?” Alex asks, hands still cupping Henry’s jaw, one thumb stroking gently across his cheek.
Henry pulls up all the willpower he can muster.
“Alex. I can’t do this. Not casual. Not with you.”
Alex is leaning down to rub the tip of his nose against Henry’s when the words hit him.
“You can’t—oh.”
His hands drop. His back straightens up, though he’s still very much sitting on Henry’s cock.
“You can’t…” he starts to say, but doesn’t finish. Henry stares at him, hoping for an answer, hoping that whatever had brought this on might mean something more for Alex, mean as much as it does for him.
Alex’s eyes shift slowly. They fall first on his own hands, resting open on Henry’s pecs. Then move up to Henry’s neck, focusing on his Adam’s apple, causing him to swallow thickly. They come up to Henry’s lips, lingering, his own bottom lip being pulled into his mouth by his teeth. Finally, Alex reaches Henry’s eyes, and whatever he sees there, well…
Henry doesn’t know if he likes it or not, because whatever it is, it causes Alex to panic.
Fear shoots across his face and he lets out a high pitched whine, then stands up off of Henry, turns and bolts from the flat.
He shoots out of the door and slams it behind himself, and Henry’s left on the floor, reeling from the most confusing ten minutes of his life, wondering if it had been a dream or hallucination, because surely it couldn’t be real.
More than anything, Henry lies there wishing Alex would come back.
—
Henry stays on his favourite pink yoga mat for a long time, not thinking about how he’s going to ruin it by getting it super sweaty and not wiping it down straight away. The sweat cools on his body, and then dries, but he doesn’t move. He starts to shiver as night falls and the cool air blows in through the open window, but he lies there, waiting, hoping.
All he can think of is Alex. How he’d felt. His hands, clutching Henry tightly. His lips, his tongue, ravenous on Henry’s. His breath. His gaze. His moans.
The horror on his face right before he’d run away from Henry.
Henry had always known it would come to this, in the end. That his ridiculous, unrequited, life-destroying love for Alex would always break his heart. He’d chosen to indulge it, because, if he’s being honest with himself, pulling away from Alex at any stage in their friendship would have broken him. He could have brought it forward or put if off, but the end result had always been inevitable. So he’d chosen to delay it, for as long as possible.
But he’s always had an extraction plan in place for when it became too hard. A fake family emergency. Some last minute thing calling him to England, the details unimportant. A quickly packed suitcase and a note stuck to the fridge. He has a credit card and his passport lives in the top drawer of his bedside table, where he can get to it easily. He has an open invitation to stay at Pez’s place, or Bea’s.
Henry had always known the day would come.
There had only been two times through the years when he’d thought it might be time to get out.
The first had been about a year ago, when Alex had gotten a girlfriend. A nice woman with curly brown hair, who’d started coming over frequently, staying for entire weekends, lounging on their sofa, wrapped around Alex. With every passing day, Henry had grown sicker and sicker over it. His bad days had started coming closer and closer together. He’d stopped looking after himself, stopped spending time with Alex, stopped coming out of his room except to go to work.
It had built up into a dark spiral, and Henry had been sure, then, that the only thing to do to keep himself safe was to leave.
But then she was gone. Alex had mentioned a break-up, but said very little about it, and he’d not seemed particularly sad about it. He’d made a huge fuss over watching Star Wars with Henry, letting him pick Return of the Jedi, buying pizza and beer for the both of them, even though he was the one who’d just ended a relationship and Henry should have been comforting him, as his best friend.
Their lives had gone back to normal, back to how they had been before the girlfriend had appeared, and Henry had relaxed back into it. He’d put it all out of his mind, the pain, the daily heartbreak of seeing Alex with someone else. He had their friendship back. That was enough.
The second time when Henry had thought he’d have to leave had been about something else entirely. It had been only a few months ago, and Henry couldn’t quite pinpoint what had changed between them, but something definitely had.
It had been noticeable in how physical Alex had become with him, hugging, sitting close to Henry on the sofa, tickling him when he wanted to tease. It had been clear in Alex’s eyes when looking at Henry, pausing, measured, and always, always fond. Henry kept catching Alex just staring at him. He never seemed to have a reason for it and he always fobbed Henry off with an excuse if he asked about it, but it kept happening.
And then one night they’d been watching TV together, and slowly but surely, through talking or joking, Alex had moved up the sofa, until he’d ended up sitting right next to Henry. Then a nice and romantic scene had happened on the screen, something so irrelevant that Henry had immediately forgotten, but it had been enough to make Alex look up at Henry, give him the sweetest, softest smile possible, then reach over and take Henry’s hand, interlacing their fingers. As a final flourish, Alex had leaned into Henry’s body, placed his head on his shoulder and let out a deep sigh.
He had done nothing else, just sat there, platonically holding Henry’s hand, and Henry had wanted to die. He’d sat for a full five minutes, fighting the urge to cry, until he couldn’t take it any more. He’d dropped Alex’s hand, excused himself with a brisk “Tired. Bed” and walked as quickly as possible to his room.
In bed, he had fought off panic, kept it under control. But he knew he couldn’t let anything like that happen again, ever.
He needn’t have worried.
The next morning, Alex had looked at him a little sadly, something quiet, pensive in his demeanour. He had asked Henry if he was okay, and upon receiving an affirmative response, Alex had nodded. From that moment on, Alex had kept himself at a distance. No more teasing, no more sitting close together, no more staring. No more touching.
Henry had hated it, but at least he'd been able to breathe.
And so, he had stayed. He had put it all out of his mind and gone back to living an existence around Alex. Floating in his orbit but never getting too close, just basking in his light.
But now Henry knows that won’t do, not any more, not after this.
He lies on the floor, scared but knowing with complete certainty that the time has come to set his plan into motion. To get himself out.
But he can’t move, because he now has hope pining him down.
Hope that Alex will want him, the same way Henry does.
He had prepared himself for heartbreak, for loneliness, but not for this. For hope. To have the possibility dangled in front of him and then snatched away? Carefully crafted torture.
Henry is struggling to move under the crushing weight of disappointment, so he lies there. For hours.
And Alex doesn’t come back.
Eventually, through tears and heaves and sobs, Henry drags himself off the floor. He walks into the shower, then collapses under the spray, letting the water wash away his tears.
Tomorrow. He’ll get himself out tomorrow.
Tonight, the best he can do is shut his bedroom door and get into bed. He tries to sleep, tries not to stay awake, but instead he lies there in the dark, hoping to hear the front door open.
It takes hours. At 3am, nine hours after Alex bolted, Henry finally hears him come back in. He hears the click and squeak of the door, opening then locking, and then the familiar footsteps as they travel down the hallway.
The breath sticks in his throat as Alex walks past his door towards his own room, hope hope hope that he will knock, will talk to Henry, but he continues down the hallway, through to his own bedroom. As he hears that door shut, Henry can’t help but let out a sob.
He buries his face in his pillow, trying to muffle the sounds.
Then there is a soft, timid knock on his door. His heart goes from zero to sixty in a split second.
“Yes?” he cries out, and it truly comes out a cry.
The door opens and there’s Alex, leaning against the frame. He’s standing a bit funny, crooked, and he’s making tiny little noises Henry doesn’t quite understand. There’s a light on in the hallway and Alex is standing in front of it, so Henry can’t see his face.
“Alex?”
“H.” His voice doesn’t sound right. It sounds broken.
Henry sits up in his bed, scared.
“What’s wrong? Alex, what happened?”
Alex walks into the room and makes his way to the side of the bed. He looks down at Henry, his expression a little more visible now they’re so close.
His eyes are puffy and swollen, his bottom lip bitten red. His hair is a mess. His breathing is weird.
He looks at Henry for a long time, not saying anything.
Then he raises his hand, cups Henry’s cheek and climbs onto him for the second time. He straddles Henry, puts both hands up to his face, then leans down.
With only a few inches separating them, he whispers simply: “Henry, please.”
And Henry is tired, he’s so, so tired. He’s tired from his workout. He’s tired from the hours he’s spent crying. Most of all, he’s tired of denying himself what he’s wanted for years. He’s tired of keeping away from Alex. Of not looking when he walks around in nothing but boxers. Not snuggling up to him when he falls asleep on their sofa. Not touching him when he wants to so bad.
He’s tired of not having Alex. Henry’s tired and he wants. So he takes what he needs. If this is it for them, if he has to leave tomorrow, he wants to at least have this. Just once.
Henry surges up and crashes their lips together, and he knows immediately there’s no going back from this. No recovering.
Alex’s lips are soft now, soft, and so responsive. His face is damp, and with a jolt Henry realises he’s been crying, but he kisses so hungrily that it seems unimportant. His tongue pushes into Henry’s mouth, and searches and searches, exploring him from the inside.
All of Henry opens up to him. His arms. His mouth. His legs.
His knees fall to the sides and Alex presses him down, rubbing their erections together, and Henry wants to die. Right now. At the cusp of having everything he’s ever wanted.
He thrusts up against Alex, driving the contact, making it more, bigger, harder. He pulls Alex’s t-shirt quickly off over his head, and Alex is supple, willing. Alex’s trousers follow quickly, and suddenly Henry has him naked on top of him, in his full, bronzed glory. And he is glorious. In the half light, Henry makes out the shapes of his chest, his rounded pecs and nipples standing pert in the chill of the night. He takes one into his mouth and suckles, and Alex lets out a moan, so loud an unexpected that instantly sears itself into Henry’s consciousness. A core memory. Whatever happens next, Henry’s life will be divided into before and after the moment when he first heard that sound. The moment when he made it happen.
Henry’s hands move down Alex’s back and grip his ass, pulling him down, hard. But he wants more now, he really wants to feel Alex. He reaches to pull his own jogging bottoms off, and in the process Alex ends up stretched on top of him, their entire lengths pressing together.
Finally, Henry can feel him. Alex’s cock rubs alongside his, the contact burning his skin. Henry spreads his legs again, and this time he wraps them around Alex’s thighs, wanting to pull him closer, bring him to where he needs him.
Alex thrusts against him, his hips moving constantly. The tension builds and builds, but it’s not enough. So Henry stretches one arm out to the bedside table, opens the drawer. He pushes his passport out of the way and pulls out lube and a condom, hands them to Alex without saying a word.
Alex looks down at the objects in his hand then back up at Henry’s face. His eyes are wild, flicking all over the place.
He says the first words either of them has uttered since he’d begged Henry to let him in.
“You want me to?”
It’s Henry’s turn to beg.
“Please.”
Alex nods and pushes their mouths together, but soon he disconnects, tearing the condom wrapper open. He leans back to roll it on and Henry gets his first proper good look at Alex’s cock, thick, red, dripping. He wants it in his mouth, down his throat, but Alex is quick with the condom, and suddenly Henry looks forward to the next thing. Alex inside him.
Alex drizzles some lube on his cock and his fingers, then reaches down between Henry’s cheeks. Henry lets him spread the lube on the outside, then pushes his hand away.
“Now. Now, Alex.”
He wants Alex, and he wants all of him. He doesn’t want to be fingered open. He just wants to feel it all. He wants to remember.
Alex nods, and with his hand he positions himself at Henry’s entrance. Then he pushes in, hand and hips working together against the tightness of Henry’s hole. He moves slowly, slowly, and as he finally starts to slip inside, Henry whimpers. He doesn’t even recognise the sounds he’s making, because it’s good, it’s so, so good, but he’s never felt anything like this. The stretch burns, and he feels it all through his body, climbing up his spine and searing through his gut.
Alex stops moving for a moment, shocked by the noises Henry’s making, so Henry wraps his legs tightly around Alex’s ass and guides him in, encouraging him to keep going. Henry’s never done anything like this, so reckless, so intense. Of course it had to be this way with Alex. It could never have been any different.
He pants and hisses as his ass adjusts to having Alex inside
Alex pauses, looking down at him with concern in his eyes. He lays a hand on Henry’s cheek.
“Are you—”
Henry twitches his head, flicking Alex’s hand away. For a moment, Alex looks hurt. But Henry doesn’t want that, Alex’s tenderness, his care, the illusion of love. He just wants to get lost in the feeling of having Alex inside him. He wants it to erase the fear and the pain and the longing. He just wants to be in his body, not in his mind.
He urges Alex on, and Alex gives in to him. He leans down and attaches his mouth to Henry’s neck, fucking him deeply, slowly but so thoroughly, finding his prostate and hitting it relentlessly.
Within a few minutes, Henry’s done. Being with Alex is just as wonderful as he’d hoped it would be. His body feels more alive than ever before. He tightens and clenches underneath Alex as his orgasm bursts out of him, coming between their bodies, splattering both their stomachs.
Alex watches him intently, his eyes wide, wide, and when Henry relaxes he drives into him one last time. His face is beautiful when he comes, a particular mixture of pain and joy Henry has never seen before. Is pretty sure he’ll never see again.
He flops down on top of Henry, breathing heavily, then slowly pulls out of his ass.
It hurts, and Henry hisses. He hates the empty feeling. Hates that this is over now.
Alex looks at him with concern as he lands on the pillow next to Henry’s.
They clean up separately, and lie side by side, not touching anymore. Henry feels Alex’s gaze on him, but he doesn’t look over again. He keeps staring up at the ceiling, waiting for Alex to say something, to say what he wants from Henry, wishing to hear him promise that this isn’t casual, that he truly wants Henry. But the silence only stretches and thickens, until it’s a wall that Henry can’t break through.
He still doesn’t know what this night meant. And he’s pretty sure that’s an answer in and of itself. Neither of them says anything, and eventually Henry is overcome by the heavy weight of sleep bearing down on him. He lets it pull him under.
—
The light in the room is faint and grey when Henry stirs. It must be just after sunrise. Without opening his eyes, he knows the room is empty.
He stretches a hand out behind himself, to where Alex had been before he’d had fallen asleep, but he’s not there anymore. The bed is empty, cold.
It’s what he’d expected, for Alex to be gone, for their night together to have been nothing more than experimentation for Alex, a pity fuck for his best friend, but it still shatters him.
Tears immediately start burning his eyes. Henry curls up in a ball and cries as silently as possible, then, using the heartbreak to power himself, he gets up, pulls his suitcase out from under the bed and puts is on top of the messed-up sheets. He flips the top open and starts packing.
He’s only gotten as far as pants, socks and t-shirts when Alex walks back in the room.
He looks soft, so soft, sleep mussed, hair wild, eyes puffy. He’s wearing a baggy plain white t-shirt Henry is pretty sure is one of his, nothing but the edges of tight navy boxers peeking out from the bottom.
He’s holding two steaming mugs, and when he clocks what Henry is doing they wobble, spilling hot liquid all over his hands and the floor below.
A loud “Fuck!” slips out of his lips and he rushes to the bedside table to set the mugs down. Henry wishes he could help soothe the burns, bring Alex a cold cloth or a bowl of ice water, but his legs aren’t moving. They’re barely holding him up.
He’d thought Alex was gone. He’d been sure he wouldn’t come back.
“You’re packing,” Alex says, and it’s not a question. Henry just looks down at the floor, avoiding the big brown eyes that threaten to swallow him whole. “You’re leaving?” The words squeak out of Alex.
Henry’s got emotional whiplash. He doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore. In the last twelve hours, he’s twice thought he had Alex and then lost him. He’s twice forced himself to accept that he needs to go, only for Alex to come back with no explanation.
He doesn’t know if he’s coming or going, so he just crashes down onto the bed. The tears start falling again, and an invisible band squeezes around his chest, tight tight tight, crushing until he can barely breathe. He starts to hyperventilate and in a second Alex is in front of him, kneeling on the floor, clutching at his face.
“Henry! Henry, look at me!”
Henry shuts his eyes tightly, and shakes his head, his chest heaving.
“Henry, please.” Alex repeats the words he’d said only a few hours ago, but this time Henry can hear they’re not cloaked in desire. Instead, it’s affection, and concern. “Breathe with me, Hen. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.” Alex’s voice is hoarse and cracked, and Henry finally opens his eyes to see that Alex is crying as well.
He breathes with Alex. They count together and they slow down together. Alex holds Henry’s hands and strokes the backs with his thumbs, and slowly, Henry calms down. Tears stop flowing from both of them.
Eventually, Alex gets up from the floor and sits down on the bed, both legs crossed so that he can turn and face Henry. Henry turns to face him too, one leg folding up onto the bed. Alex looks at him, and there’s so many emotions on his face. Confusion. Sadness. Concern. Determination.
“Are you alright to talk now, H?”
Henry nods briefly.
Alex’s voice is barely a whisper when he asks: “Why are you packing?”
“I don’t know any more.” A deep breath. “I thought you’d left. And I told you I couldn’t do casual. I can’t. I just can’t. I’m just… not strong enough.”
“You thought I had sex with you and then left.” Alex's voice is almost harsh. “You thought I’d slept with you for a one night stand. With you.” He shakes his head.
“I have to go, Alex. I can’t live like this any more. It’s too hard.”
“It’s too hard? What’s too hard, Henry? Please tell me.” Alex’s hand twitches towards Henry, but he doesn’t touch him.
Henry knows he has to say it. If he’s going to have any sort of chance at a clean break from this, he needs to say what exactly has made living with Alex impossible. He looks up, trying to hold Alex’s gaze as he lays his heart out, but at the last moment he drops his eyes. He looks instead at Alex’s hands, fingers wound around each other, stubby nails picking at his broken cuticles.
“It’s too hard to love you and live with you everyday, knowing I can’t have you.”
Alex makes a loud, wounded noise and shoots up off the bed. He paces down to the bedroom door and then back to Henry. Henry’s thrown by this explosion of movement. Alex paces in front of the bed, tugging at his curls, his chest rising and falling quickly. He shakes his hands out and then speaks in gasps.
“Love me.” Henry blinks repeatedly, then gives him a quick nod. “You love me?” Alex’s eyes are locked onto his.
Henry nods again, slowly. Tears fall from his eyes, but he smiles a little as he says “Yes, Alex. I love you. I've loved you since... probably since the moment I met you.”
Alex groans loudly and throws himself back on the bed, but closer to Henry this time. He lets their legs tangle, and clutches Henry’s hands.
“Then have me. Henry, please have me.” He says this desperately, then lets out a deep sigh, but Henry barely hears it through the loud loud buzzing in his ears and the feel of his heart trying to crawl out of his chest. Alex can’t possibly mean what he thinks he means. “I clearly went wrong somewhere, because I thought you knew you could have me.”
“What?” Henry whispers.
“I thought you knew. I tried to show you, to get close to you, you know, physically. So you would know that I wanted you. But then I held your hand that one time on the couch and you went stiff as a board and ran off. And you kept your distance. So I thought that meant you didn’t want me like that, that I’d been stupid in assuming you felt about me the way I felt about you.”
Henry looks down at their entwined hands. Puzzle pieces slot into place, though he can’t quite make sense of everything just yet.
“You were trying to show me how you felt.”
“Yeah. But then you rejected me, so I stopped. And then what I did yesterday was so inappropriate, and so embarrassing. To touch you, to jump you, when you’d clearly been trying to keep away from me. That’s why I ran away.”
“Oh.”
“When I calmed down a bit, I thought about what you said, about casual, and I realised what you meant. You didn’t mean you didn’t want me, did you?” Henry shakes his head. “You meant you wanted me for real.”
“I did. I do.”
“That’s why I came back.” He lifts a hand up to Henry’s face, stroking strands of hair away from his forehead. Henry closes his eyes and leans into the touch. “Sweetheart.” The tenderness in Alex’s voice makes him open them again. “Henry. I love you. I’m so in love with you, it’s eating me alive. It took me so long to understand what I was feeling, but once I did, there was no way I could fight it. And I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, didn’t make it clear.”
Henry laughs and cries all at once, shaking his head in disbelief and then flopping forward to rest it on Alex’s shoulders.
“Oh, Christ.”
He’s happy, so, so happy, but he’s scared too, and so confused. He’s fought these feelings for too long, tried to keep them small and contained, and now that he’s allowing himself to feel them… It’s like they don’t fit inside him, like they’re the wrong shape for his messed-up heart. He doesn’t know if he’s capable of living comfortably with them out in the open.
Alex strokes the back of his head then leans down to speak into his ear.
“Henry. Can you put this goddamn suitcase away, please? I can’t stand to look at it any more, it’s freaking me out.”
Henry lets out a small laugh and stands up. He flips the top of the suitcase shut and in one quick move lifts it off the bed and slides it under, not thinking twice about the things still inside it. He can deal with that later.
He sits back down in front of Alex.
“You can’t scare me like that again, Hen. I thought I was losing you,” Alex says while stroking his cheek, wiping away the tears.
Henry straightens up and looks him firmly in the eye. It seems unbelievable that Alex doesn’t know how serious this is for him, how much he’s hidden away for so long.
“Alex, I’ve been scared for years. I’ve been sure I’d have to leave for years. That’s why I jumped straight to packing. I’ve been preparing myself for it to become too much, to get to a point where I couldn’t take it anymore. And when I thought you’d left me this morning… I was sure the time had come.”
Alex’s face drops.
“You’ve been preparing for me to break your heart,” he says, measured, slow. Like he finally gets how deep Henry is in this. Henry nods silently. “And I… I did that to you.”
“You didn’t do anything, Alex. It’s not your fault that I loved you despite you being straight.”
Alex scoffs. Maybe straight isn’t the right word any more.
“It is my fault though. I didn’t tell you. I let you think I wasn’t yours.”
The breath hitches in Henry’s throat. Alex slides his fingers under Henry’s chin and tilts it up, making him meet his gaze.
“Do you know it now? Do you believe me when I say I’m yours?”
Henry’s head does something between a nod and a shake. Then he lets out a small laugh.
“You might have to give me some time to get used to it.”
Alex wraps his arms around Henry’s shoulders pulling him into a tight hug. Then he leans forward, shifting both their bodies until they’re lying down on the bed, heads side by side on one pillow, bodies entwined.
He looks straight at Henry and smiles.
“Okay, baby. Okay. You can have all the time in the world.”
Then he pulls Henry into him.
Henry buries his face in Alex’s neck, wraps an arm around his waist and lets out a deep, deep sigh, hugging Alex tight.
He has all the time in the world.