Work Text:
I. The Beginning
There’s nothing extraordinary about the holiday party in Alex’s second year of grad school—nothing, that is, until Pez brings out the box.
It’s not small, and it’s wrapped in some kind of godawful paper that’s currently shedding glitter behind him like a trail of sparkly breadcrumbs. Then it proceeds to shed glitter all over Alex, because that’s exactly whose lap Pez drops it in. Naturally, the whole production draws the attention of pretty much everyone in attendance: all the grad students and postdocs in their department, a few of the younger faculty, and a handful of associated friends and significant others from across the university. It’s not an official departmental party, by any means, but it is a traditional gathering after finals are over, and not many people miss it.
“Didn’t know we were doing gift exchanges tonight,” Alex’s annoying roommate, Hunter, calls out across the room.
“Oh, this one’s special,” Pez announces to the room at large, ever the showman, ignoring Alex’s baffled expression as he stares up at him. They’re friendly enough, sure, but mostly they hang out regularly because Pez is very close with Nora, who’s Alex’s best friend in the department, and his sister June, who’s in the journalism school. They’re not exchanging-gifts close. They’re certainly not whatever this is. “I saw it at Primark when I was last home and I just knew I had to pick it up. In a way, it’s a gift for the whole department.” He finally looks down at Alex and winks. “Go on, open it.”
Alex hesitates, something in his gut telling him this is about to be really embarrassing for him. He doesn’t really know why Pez would single him out like this, but he’s also never one to back down from a challenge, so fuck it. If Pez wants to try to embarrass him, let him. Alex has very little shame, actually.
He makes as much of a mess as possible tearing off the paper, because this is Pez’s fancy apartment and Alex is pretty sure he deserves it for whatever’s coming. Good luck getting that glitter out of the couch’s upholstery. The box underneath is unmarked, and when Alex pulls the lid off he sees… some kind of large, gray fleece thing, which appears to be covered in a popcorn bucket pattern.
This does precisely nothing to clear up his confusion.
“What is this, a blanket?” he asks, glancing up at Pez, who just gives him an expectant look and gestures for him to get on with it.
The object becomes only more baffling when he pulls it out of the box, because there are sleeves and a hood, and ok, Alex has seen Pez wearing the blanket-hoodie hybrid he calls an oodie more than once—everyone has, because he has formal oodies and work oodies that he wears in to the department, not to mention the oodies he always dons at their regular movie night. But this one is extra-wide, and it has two hoods.
As Alex holds the oodie up in front of him, the room erupts in chatter and laughter, though he can’t figure out why. Then he turns it around, so that the front is facing him, and there, safety-pinned to the front of it, is a piece of paper. It reads: Our Get Along Oodie.
“Pez, you didn’t,” comes a despairing voice from behind him. The very one that Alex has been avoiding all night in the hopes of having one social event where they didn’t end up sniping each other’s heads off.
Pez grins unrepentantly. “It’s a joint present, but I knew I’d never get the two of you to stand next to each other, so.”
“Very funny,” Alex says, forcing himself to smile and chuckle. Fine, he can laugh at himself, even over this. And maybe their feud is a little ridiculous, but it’s not his fault Henry’s always been an asshole to him. “If only it were that easy, huh?” he quips as he drops the oodie back in the box and goes to set it on the coffee table in front of him.
“Wait, you have to try it on!” Pez says as he pushes it back into Alex’s hands. “At least give it a shot.”
“I don’t think—” Alex starts, at the same time as Henry says, vehemently, “Absolutely not.”
Which is really fucking irritating, actually. Yeah, Alex has absolutely zero desire to get into this oodie with Henry, but the fact that Henry clearly finds it so offensive means he’s gotta do it.
Alex twists to look behind him, where Henry’s standing with two of the faculty, Shaan and Zahra, the latter of whom looks a little too amused by this turn of events. Henry, for his part, practically has one foot out the door already.
“What’s the matter, Fox?” Alex drawls, grinning meanly at him. “Scared of cooties?”
Henry’s eyes narrow and his mouth goes tight, but his cheeks flush pink. “Perhaps I’m not keen on that cheap excuse for a cologne you wear rubbing off on me.”
“It’s not cheap, you pretentious ass,” Alex snaps. Ok, maybe it’s a dupe because he’s a poor grad student, but it smells exactly like the original, which is expensive as fuck.
“And now we see why it’s necessary,” Pez interrupts before they can really get going, which makes everyone laugh.
“Come on, you gotta!” Postdoc Kyle encourages—apparently when he’d started in the department there’d been a grad student also named Kyle that was just finishing up, but the ‘Postdoc’ that got appended to his name seems to have stuck long past the need for it.
“For the sake of departmental harmony!” Nora jumps in, the traitor. See if Alex makes her any buñuelos this Hanukkah.
“Wear it for a full minute and I’ll give you each a pass on one of the guest speaker’s seminars for spring semester,” Zahra offers, which is actually a good fucking deal. The grad students are required to attend, no matter what the topic is, and some of them are incredibly fucking boring.
“Obviously, Henry’s not willing to try it,” Alex says to the room with a shrug and a shit-eating smirk. “Can’t force someone to be collegial.”
“Christ,” Henry groans, then he’s stomping across the room and snatching one half of the oodie up, a challenge flashing in his eyes as he stares down at Alex. “A minute, was it?”
“I’ll set a timer,” Nora volunteers, pulling out her phone.
Getting into such a thing is somehow even more awkward than it seemed out the outset, particularly when both participants are trying to stand as far away from each other as possible. There are too many limbs and Alex can barely tell which way is up in the hellish thing, and then Henry fucking elbows him in the ribs. Asshole. By some miracle Alex finds one of the neck holes and shoves one of his arms in a sleeve, and then they’re finally in it.
Everyone cheers, which is more than a little humiliating. Alex smiles like it doesn’t bother him. It’s already ridiculously warm inside the oodie from the very first moment they put it on—he can’t even imagine spending any amount of time in this thing with another person he likes—and not nearly large enough to provide any reasonable space between the two of them. Still, Alex doesn’t jerk away like he’s been burned when their arms accidentally brush, unlike some people.
“You could at least try to pretend that you’re not completely horrified by the idea of merely standing next to me,” Alex grinds out under his breath, for only Henry’s ears.
“You haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,” Henry huffs.
“Oh yeah? Why don’t you illuminate me, then?”
Henry stares at him for a beat, an inscrutable expression on his face, and Alex’s stomach drops for some inexplicable reason. The thing is, he’s never known what the fuck Henry’s problem is with him, and that alone eats him up more than anything else. Maybe if he had a fucking inkling—
“Time!” Nora screeches, and then Henry is scrambling out of the oodie and beating a hasty retreat, leaving Alex off-kilter and overheating in a double-wide oodie.
By the time he gets the goddamned thing off, someone is pushing a drink into his hands and Pez is clapping him on the shoulder and saying something about him being a good sport,
“What the fuck, man?” Alex asks, shaking his head. “I thought we were good.”
“And we are, Alexander,” Pez tells him. “I apologize for the theatrics, but I do have my reasons, and they are not exclusively to embarrass you.”
“So the embarrassment was just a happy bonus?”
Pez’s eyes glitter. “A small inconvenience. One day you may thank me, yet.”
“Yeah, right,” Alex snorts. He very much doubts that.
II. The Wager
“And that is how it’s done!” Pez crows victoriously.
Across the beer pong table, Alex replays the game in his head and tries to figure out how it all went wrong. This was supposed to be a shoo-in. An easy win. Jesus fuck, Pez had been handicapped with Nora, who can’t shoot a ping-pong ball to save her life, but apparently she must have murdered a leprechaun or something because her luck was incredible tonight.
“I’m fairly certain that’s not meant to bring good luck,” Henry says dryly when Alex voices this theory.
The worst part is that he can’t even blame his teammate; sure, maybe Henry wouldn’t have been his first choice, but Alex has to grudgingly admit the man has good aim. They should have had this on lock. Instead, Pez and Nora had handily swept them.
“I told you, he becomes some kind of beer pong savant when he’s had tequila,” Henry sighs, wiping a hand over his face. “This was a mistake.”
“Oh, that’s rich,” Alex snaps, “a fucking mistake, of-fucking-course. Look, asshole, I played almost perfectly—”
“I never said you didn’t, and I’d appreciate you not putting words in my mouth—”
“Gentlemen,” Pez interrupts. They both turn to find him grinning like the fucking Cheshire cat, an image which is helped by the fact that his hair is currently striped pink and purple. “There is the small matter of my prize.”
Right, Alex had been so confident that they’d win he might have made an inadvisable wager. Namely…
Like a magician, Pez produces the popcorn-themed couples oodie out of almost nowhere, which is doubly impressive given its size. The bastard was fucking prepared.
“Must we do this now?” Henry groans.
“We must, we must!” Pez cheers.
“Time to pay up, fuckers,” Nora puts in, as delicate as ever.
It’s been two months since the holiday party, and Alex had genuinely forgotten about the cursed oodie until Pez had unearthed it tonight. It still bears the ‘Our Get Along Oodie’ sign, and Alex is still not thrilled about wearing it, but he’s not one to go back on a bet.
“Let’s get this over with,” he sighs, holding out his hand for the offending garment. “What exactly is the plan here, anyway?”
“I call it Seven Minutes in Oodie,” Pez explains. “You know, like Seven Minutes in Heaven, but—”
“In the oodie. I got it, thanks,” Alex finishes flatly.
“What you get up to in there is, of course, up to you,” Pez says, his eyes glinting with mischief, apparently completely unfazed by the murderous look Henry is giving him.
Alex would have thought the oodie was bad enough, but no, Pez shoves them in a closet, too, once they’ve struggled into it. There’s a plus side to that, though: at least their shame will be private this time. They gracelessly manage to drop down to sit on the floor with their backs against a wall, as far apart as the oodie will allow. Theoretically, they could take it off and no one would know, but Alex isn’t a dirty cheater. Apparently Henry isn’t either, because he doesn’t suggest it even as he shifts uncomfortably next to him.
“So, we’re just gonna sit in silence for seven minutes?” Alex ventures after maybe a minute passes. It’s not that he wants to talk to Henry, or that he can’t shut up—unlike what some people like to joke—but this amount of awkwardness is excruciating.
Henry, of course, sighs and tries to cross his arms over his chest, only to realize that he can’t because one of them is stuck inside the oodie. “What exactly do you suggest we converse about?”
“I dunno. Maybe you could finally tell me why you dislike me so much,” Alex says, which unfortunately comes out more petulantly than he’d like.
“Me?” Henry scoffs, looking over at Alex. “You’re the one who came into this program already determined that I was your enemy, for reasons I could never fathom.”
Alex squints at him. “You really don’t remember?”
“Remember what?”
“The conference in Philly?” Alex prompts. “I was looking for grad programs and I wanted to talk to you about this one to see if I should apply, but you completely blew me off.”
“Christ, all this because of that meeting?” Henry asks, rolling his eyes like Alex is the one being unreasonable.
Alex feels his face heat, and not just because of the oodie. That’s certainly not helping, though. “When I finally found you and Pez after the poster session, you turned to him and said, ‘Can’t you take care of him?’ and then you walked away.”
“Oh,” Henry says.
“Yeah, ‘oh’,” Alex huffs. “Pez tried to make excuses for you, but, like. It always felt like you never wanted me here. Like you thought I wasn’t good enough for the program.”
“I can assure you, I’ve never thought that, Alex,” Henry says. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “If I’m completely honest, most of what I remember about you at that conference is how brilliant you were presenting your research as an undergrad and putting half the grad students there to shame.”
Alex doesn’t know what to say to that. How they could have started at Henry being impressed by him and still ended up like this. “Coulda fooled me,” he mutters.
Henry ducks his head a little, staring at the floor of the closet in front of them as he picks at a loose string on the oodie’s sleeve. “Not that it’s an excuse, but the timing was terrible. It was my first meeting as a grad student, and my bloody poster was scheduled on the anniversary of my father’s death. Shaan told me we could contact the program committee and try to get it changed, but I thought, it’d been four years. I could handle it. I didn’t want to be a problem.” He lets out a soft, humorless puff of laughter. “I couldn’t handle it, as it turns out.”
Oh, fuck. Alex can’t fucking imagine how hard that must have been, and there was Alex, the annoying go-getter undergrad who wouldn’t leave him alone. “Fuck. I didn’t know.”
Henry shoots him a little, melancholic smile. “Of course you didn’t. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for that day, and that my actions made you feel unwelcome. I have to say, I was a little surprised you came here anyway.”
“Well, Raf’s research was pretty much exactly what I wanted to do, and everyone else was friendly,” Alex says with a shrug. “I figured I could probably avoid one asshole. Which turned out harder than anticipated. Don’t get me wrong, the department being tightly-knit is great, but…”
“You’re the one who chose to share a flat with Hunter,” Henry says, with the tiniest flash of a grin, and the teasing surprises a smile out of Alex.
“Ok, that one wasn’t my fault. He was another incoming student, how was I supposed to know he’d be such a, a—”
“Complete wanker?” Henry offers.
“Sure, let’s go with that,” Alex laughs, shaking his head.
It’s a shock how easy it feels to laugh with Henry—how nice his smile is, and how it makes something warm kindle in his chest. Yeah, Henry was an asshole to him, but maybe if Alex hadn’t been such an antagonistic bastard, they might have reached this point sooner.
“I’m sorry, too,” he says, impulsively, and Henry’s eyebrows lift. “I have a bad habit of holding onto grudges, and I know I haven’t made things easy since I got here.” He sticks out his hand that’s not currently inside the oodie. “Truce?”
It’s awkward because they’re the wrong sides for shaking hands, but Henry’s hand is warm and soft in his, and Alex is struck by the strange impulse that he doesn’t want to let go. But then the door of the closet is bursting open and Henry pulls away, and Alex tells himself he absolutely does not miss the sensation of their skin pressed together.
“Are you two done making out in here?” Nora asks, her eyes roving over the pair of them like she can somehow sense the change.
“Ha ha. Keep your weird fantasies to yourself, wouldya?” Alex retorts, struggling to his feet as Henry does the same.
By the time they finally manage to extract themselves, Henry’s face is bright red from the heat of the oodie, but he’s smiling, and Alex is smiling, and yeah. Maybe they’re gonna be all right.
III. The Cabin
To be fair, Alex hadn’t expected it to be this cold at this time of year when they planned this joint research trip. It hasn’t really been a problem to this point because the institute is plenty warm and their hotel is nice enough, but the weekend trip Alex had talked Henry into because he really wanted to see this part of the mountains… well, that’s another story. There’s clearly a reason that the cabin had been so cheap to book.
“Please tell me there’s a heater somewhere in here,” Henry says as he looks around the small space. Besides the current temperature, it’s a nice place, with two decent sized beds, a sofa, and a small kitchenette. No wifi or televisions or even cell service, which was also part of the plan: to unplug for a weekend and just appreciate nature, or whatever. Freezing their balls off was decidedly not part of the plan.
“Uh,” Alex says. “They said there’s a wood stove?”
Henry shoots him a look before he walks over to the cast iron wood-burning stove in the corner, which has a neat stack of firewood and a bucket of kindling sitting next to it. “And you’ve a lot of experience with operating such things?”
“Fuck no. I’m from Texas, dude. But, I was in the boy scouts. I can build a fire. I just can’t promise I won’t smoke us out.”
“Well,” Henry says consideringly. “Surely it can’t be that difficult.”
“How many PhDs does it take to work a wood stove?” Alex quips.
“Hopefully none, since neither of us have ours yet,” Henry returns with a grin.
It’s nice, the easy, playful banter they’ve fallen into over the past half a year. After the closet, the frosty relations had thawed between them, and then something new sparked. Alex found himself seeking out Henry sometime during the course of most days, not just to chat about work, but about other things too. He spent almost as much time in Henry’s office as his own. They even sometimes hung out outside of work and their mutual friend group—it started when the local movie theater was going to be playing the original Star Wars trilogy and they were the only two who wanted to go, and afterward they kinda just kept up a regular theater date.
Not that they’re going on dates, because they’re not. It’s not like that. They’re just friends. Ok, maybe Henry is kind of ridiculously attractive and smart and funny, and maybe seeing him in clinging, wet swim trunks on an outing they all took to the beach last summer might have sent Alex into a slight spiral about his sexuality, but it’s fine. Henry clearly isn’t into him, so they’re friends, and it’s cool.
When they’d realized they both needed to visit the same research institute and archives for their dissertation research, it had only made sense to plan to go at the same time. Traveling together was pretty much guaranteed to put their new friendship to the test, but it turns out they work well together. Alex is the planner and organizer, which also comes with the stress of worrying about everything working out according to that plan, and Henry helps keep him calm when things, inevitably, don’t.
Like this.
“I dunno, H,” Alex says, pushing a hand back through his hair as he looks around the little cabin. “Maybe this was a mistake. We could just call it and go back to the city.”
“Nonsense,” Henry replies. He’s bending over to look more closely at the wood stove, and Alex absolutely does not get stuck staring at his ample ass (he does). “It’s lovely up here, and it’s supposed to warm up tomorrow anyway. It’ll only be one night.”
Henry is right about the wood stove, at least, though Alex refuses to give him the satisfaction of admitting it. Between the two of them, they get it going and the place warms up quickly. Alex makes them a simple dinner in the kitchenette with the supplies they brought with them while Henry reads, and afterward they play card games that turn into drinking games when Henry pulls out a bottle of some kind of cheap local liquor. It tastes terrible, but they drink it anyway, and Alex doesn’t remember the last time he felt this warm and happy.
“We should probably get some sleep if we’re going to accomplish even a fraction of your overly-ambitious plans for tomorrow,” Henry eventually says. He’s half-reclining on his elbows on the rug in the living area, his long legs stretched out so that his feet nudge Alex’s knee across from him. The flickering orange light filtering through the front window of the wood stove bathes him in an ethereal glow, and fuck, Alex doesn’t think he’s ever looked more beautiful.
“Fuck off,” Alex laughs, forcing that thought out of his mind as he shoves at Henry’s foot. “My plans are exactly the right amount of ambitious.”
“Mm,” Henry hums, and his expression is so open and ridiculously fond that it makes Alex’s breath catch in his throat. “Regardless, we will need rest.”
“Not sleepy,” Alex protests, only to be betrayed by his own body when he’s interrupted halfway through with a yawn. “Ok, fine,” he concedes as Henry laughs at him. “What do we do about the fire?”
“What do you mean?”
“Once it burns out in the middle of the night, it’ll be freezing in here,” Alex points out. He frowns as he looks around the cabin. “I guess we could share one of the beds and use a lot of blankets?”
He says it casually, like the idea of sharing a bed with Henry doesn’t set off a thousand fucking alarm bells in his head. It’s probably a terrible idea, all the more terrible because of how much he wants it for all the wrong reasons. Is he a terrible person for taking advantage of the cold to sleep next to the man he’s halfway in love with? Probably. Oh, well.
“I, er. Might have something that could help?” Henry says, flushing a little in a way that Alex can’t make heads or tails of. He clambers to his feet and crosses over to his luggage, which he opens and digs through for a moment before he pulls out some kind of strange plastic-sealed object. “Pez somehow snuck it into my luggage when I wasn’t looking,” he sighs. “At least he vacuum-sealed it.”
As he turns the object, Alex catches sight of popcorn tub-print fleece through the plastic and realizes with a start that it’s the oodie. “You’ve had that this whole time and never said anything?”
Henry gives him an odd look. “Was I supposed to suggest we wear it while you were cooking?”
“Good point,” Alex allows.
“It’ll be a nightmare to re-pack, but if it keeps us from freezing, I suppose it’s worth it,” Henry reasons. He bites his lip, hesitating. “If you’re comfortable with it, that is.”
Right. It’s one thing sharing a bed and blankets, and it’s quite another to share the couples oodie all night. It will probably keep them warmer than anything else, though, and the garment is pretty big. Just sharing it doesn’t mean they have to cuddle or anything. And really, Alex should be the one asking Henry if he’s comfortable, given that Alex is pretty sure his big fat crush is visible from space.
“Yeah, man,” Alex says with a forced nonchalance that probably doesn’t land. “Fine by me.”
The issue with the oodie is that it’s super warm for the top half of their bodies but not so much for their legs, so they decide the best course of action would be to wear sweatpants but go shirtless, which is fine—it’s fine, it’s fine, Alex repeats to himself as they get ready for bed and finally clamber into the oodie together. Getting into the bed is just about as awkward as you might guess, but they manage it and get the blankets settled over their legs, and then there’s nothing to do but try to sleep.
Yeah, right.
The cabin is still warm enough that Alex is sweating right now, feeling the heat radiating off of Henry’s body. They’re pushed as far apart as the oodie will allow, and the tension across the gap between them is almost palpable. Every one of Alex’s nerve endings feels like it’s lit up with the desire to close the distance, to touch in a way he’s absolutely not allowed but so desperately wants. So instead he lies there on his back because there’s not enough leeway to turn away from each other, his whole body tense, shifting occasionally to try to get comfortable and utterly failing.
This was probably a mistake.
He’s just about to say as much and suggest maybe they should just stick with blankets, when Henry lets out an exasperated huff. “Oh for Christ’s sake, just come here,” he says, stretching the arm within the oodie out to grab Alex and draw him in until he’s tucked under Henry’s arm with his head pillowed on Henry’s shoulder.
It should be fucking awkward because they are basically cuddling now and Henry’s bare skin against his is a-fucking-lot, but despite that, Alex feels himself relax into Henry’s arms almost immediately. It’s actually perfect—not just the way it’s clearly the optimal way to arrange themselves in the oodie, but also the way he fits against Henry’s side like he was made to be there. From the way that the tension leaves Henry’s body, draining away like the air is slowly being let out of him, he must feel similarly. Alex stretches his free arm over Henry’s waist before he can think twice about it and settles in, letting his eyelids fall shut. It’s fine, just for tonight for the warmth and comfort, and they won’t ever speak of it again.
Nevermind that Alex sleeps better than he has in years.
+1. The Apartment
“Hey, where’d the blankets I brought over end up?” Alex calls out down the hall.
“Think that box got unpacked. Try the hall cupboard?” Henry yells back from the kitchen, where he’s currently watching over their popcorn. He doesn’t cook much, but he took charge of popcorn duties back when he and Pez first started hosting departmental movie nights, and that’s held over.
Alex thinks it’s cute, how seriously he takes it, but then again Alex thinks pretty much everything he does is cute at this point, because Alex is fucking hopeless.
Agreeing to take the extra room in the apartment might not have been the best idea, but whatever. Pez is away for a year on a fellowship, leaving Henry without a flatmate, as he’d say, and it would have been dumb to turn down the opportunity. Alex had been living with Hunter for far too long already, unable to afford living alone and not thrilled about the prospect of picking up a random roommate. The devil you know, or something like that. But Henry’s basically his best friend at this point, so when he’d asked if Alex wanted to take the room, of course he’d said yes.
Tonight was supposed to be the first movie night since Alex moved in, but Pez was gone and Nora and June had begged off, and with those dominoes down, Alex and Henry had officially ‘canceled’. Except they’re still watching a movie, just the two of them. It’ll be nice. A roommate bonding activity, or something like that.
An avalanche of blankets almost buries Alex when he opens the linen closet in the hall, and he only narrowly manages to avert complete disaster. The one he’s looking for is mercifully on the top, but as he’s shoving the rest back inside, he catches sight of a familiar fleece fabric buried on a lower shelf. He can’t help it; he digs out the oodie and then, because he’s pathetic, he buries his face in it, breathing in the faint scent of wood smoke and Henry’s cologne, intermingled with his own.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Henry asks from behind him, and Alex doesn’t jump, but it’s a very near thing.
He turns to see Henry standing with the bowl of popcorn in his hands, impossibly soft in sweatpants and an old Oxford t-shirt, his tawny hair a mess, and thinks, helplessly, Yes, I found it.
Even if he can’t have it, having found it is enough. It has to be.
Henry’s eyes drop to the oodie in his hands, and he lets out a little puff of laughter. “Ah, so that’s where that got to.”
“Perfect for movie night,” Alex jokes, holding it off to better show off the popcorn tub pattern.
He didn’t really mean to imply anything, but Henry just smiles and gives a little shrug as he leans sideways against the wall. “If you like.”
He shouldn’t say yes. Climbing into this thing with Henry is pretty much guaranteed to: A) overheat them both; B) absolutely torture Alex’s poor heart; C) give away his feelings even more than he already has; and D) ultimately lead to Henry getting uncomfortable and deciding he can’t live with Alex after all, and Alex already broke his lease on his old apartment so he won’t have anywhere to live and he’ll have to crash on Nora and June’s uncomfortable couch for god knows long, and—
“Alex?”
Alex snaps himself out of his spiraling and forces a smile. “Might as well use this thing for its intended purpose once, right?”
Yeah, that wasn’t the right answer. Fuck.
He almost forgets to be worried once they get back to the living room and start bickering about what movie to watch. It’s all so normal and easy, and they’re both laughing when they struggle into the oodie—somehow, putting it on never gets any easier—and Alex allows that he was probably overreacting before. They’ll wear it for a little while until it becomes unbearably hot inside, and that will be that.
Alex blames the oodie for the way he tucks himself against Henry’s side, popcorn bowl nestled into his lap so they can both reach it with their free hands, and also for how warm he feels when Henry holds him close inside it. This is fine, everything is totally chill and Alex is definitely paying attention to the movie and not how Henry’s thumb is rubbing little circles on top of his shoulder.
Oh, who’s he kidding? Not even Harrison Ford can keep his attention when Henry’s wrapped around him and their bodies are pressed together like this. Alex tries to subtly tip his head to surreptitiously look up at Henry, but of course it doesn’t work; Henry notices immediately and looks back at him. He waits for Henry’s eyebrows to raise or for him to ask what Alex is doing, and Henry’s lips part as if to speak—but it doesn’t come. Not looking at those full, pink lips, so close to his, is basically impossible, and Alex doesn’t even pretend to have the willpower to keep his eyes from falling to Henry’s mouth.
The thing is… he’s lying against Henry’s chest, and he can feel Henry’s heart racing, and he realizes, with a start, that maybe he was wrong.
Maybe he can have it, after all.
“Henry, can I—” he starts, but he doesn’t get it out before Henry’s lips are on his, warm and soft and insistent all at once, and it’s everything.
The angle is terrible, but it doesn’t matter—Henry is kissing him like he never wants to do anything else ever again, his hand tucked behind Alex’s neck and pulling him in closer, his fingers clenching in Alex’s curls, and Alex is pretty sure could happily do this forever, too. Well, possibly this but better. A moment later, Alex gives in and pushes himself up, turning without letting his lips leave Henry’s for even a second as he climbs onto Henry’s lap within the oodie, and neither of them even flinch when the popcorn bowl goes clattering to the ground. Alex has got one hand on Henry’s cheek and the other pushing up under his shirt to press against the bare dip of his waist, and it feels so perfect slotted into that spot that Alex is sure it was made just for him.
“Christ,” Henry gasps when Alex finally relinquishes his lips and transfers his attention to the angle of his jaw. “I never thought—”
“That I was desperate to jump your bones?” Alex finishes. “Thought it was—ah—pretty fucking obvious, sweetheart.”
“Hardly,” Henry scoffs, at least until Alex decides that their mouths would be better put to use for other purposes. Inside the oodie, Henry’s hand slides up the top of Alex’s thigh, inching closer to where Alex is already hard and aching for him, only to stop a maddeningly short distance away. “Alex, love,” he breathes in the spaces between their kisses. “Can I touch you?”
Alex grinds his hips forward and sinks his teeth into Henry’s lower lip before he pulls away just far enough to say, “I’m gonna be really mad if you don’t.”
Then Henry’s palm is finally pressing against him, heavy and hot even through Alex’s sweatpants, and a whimper slips past Alex’s lips at the contact. He bucks forward into it, chasing the pressure, his own fingers digging into Henry’s waist as his other hand seeks more skin, only to be foiled by thick fleece.
“We should—fucking hell—get out of this thing,” Alex grunts as he tries to shove the excess fabric out of the way.
“Probably,” Henry agrees, but he doesn’t let up his assault on Alex’s pants. Instead he pushes his hand past Alex’s waistband and gets a fist around Alex’s cock, and Alex swears loudly, tipping his head back. Henry takes the opportunity to sink his teeth into Alex’s neck. “Demon,” he mutters against Alex’s skin, “menace.”
“Wha—”
“Do you always go commando when lounging around the house?”
Alex grins, rocking into Henry’s grip. “Not always. But pretty often, yeah.”
“Fuck,” Henry swears with feeling and a wicked twist of his wrist. “Why in the world did I ask you to share my flat again?”
“Was it because you’re so down bad for me, baby?” Alex teases.
Henry growls and kisses him hard again, which Alex would like to say does nothing for him, but it really, really does. Giving up on getting out of the oodie in favor of touching more of Henry, he moves his hand down to Henry’s waistband and yanks his sweats and boxers down enough to free his cock. Which Alex would really like to see, in fact, but for right now he’ll settle for the feel of the soft skin against his palm and the way Henry’s foreskin slips over the head under his fingers. He’s never touched a dick that wasn’t his own, but he can one hundred percent say he’s really fucking into it. Or maybe he’s just really fucking into Henry. Kinda hard to tell the difference, but Alex doesn’t think he really cares, either way.
“Need you,” Henry gasps out, but Alex doesn’t have a chance to ask what exactly that entails before he’s manhandling Alex to where he wants him, which is another thing to mark down on the really fucking doing it for him list. He grabs onto Alex’s ass, tugging his hips further forward until their cocks rub together, then wraps one large hand around both of them as he urges Alex to thrust into his fist.
It’s not quite slick enough—though that might not be true for much longer given how much they’re both leaking at this point—but that doesn’t seem to matter, because Alex is rapidly hurtling toward the edge and hanging on for dear life. Henry is more vocal than he imagined, a litany of ‘that’s good’ and ‘perfect, love’ spilling from his lips that fall like hot sugar down Alex’s spine to pool in his gut. When he finally shakes apart, it’s with one hand clenched in Henry’s hair and his face buried in Henry’s neck, and the feeling that he might float away if Henry weren’t holding onto him with an iron grip. Moments later, he feels another rush of heat against his cock and his stomach as Henry follows him with a little, breathless laugh.
Henry is the one who seems to come back down to Earth first, wiping his hand on their bunched-up sweatpants as he tries to more or less blindly set them to rights with the oodie.
“Christ, this is a mess,” Henry huffs softly, but he’s also smiling like he can’t stop, so Alex counts it as a win.
He finally shifts, pressing lazy kisses to the sticky, overheated skin of Henry’s neck. “Well someone couldn’t keep their hands off me long enough to get rid of this thing.”
“I didn’t hear you protesting that much,” Henry counters.
“No,” Alex agrees. Henry is still holding onto him tightly, but the euphoria of their joint orgasms is slowly ebbing away, letting the reality of what they just did flood in in its place, and he pauses, his face half-buried in the fleece of Henry’s hood. “Henry?”
“Hm?”
Alex finally sits back and stares down at him, only to be momentarily overwhelmed by how fucking beautiful he is like this—his hair in wild disarray, a pink flush on his cheeks, his lips puffy and kiss-bitten. It’s incredible that Alex gets to see him like this, that Alex is allowed to make him look like this, and all he can think of is that he’s not sure he’ll survive if Henry thinks this is going to be some kind of roommates with benefits situation.
“What now? I just mean…” Fuck, he’s an idiot, they’re literally sitting here still wrapped in a fucking oodie with come drying on their skin. Alex winces at himself, squeezing his eyes closed. “Fuck, this is a bad time, sorry, we can wait—”
“Alex, please,” Henry interrupts gently. When Alex opens his eyes again, he finds some of his own anxiety reflected back in endless blue eyes, but Henry’s hand finds his inside the oodie and he links their fingers together. “Just… say what you mean to say.”
“I’m kind of in love with you, H,” Alex confesses in a rush. Go big or go home, right? Except, this is his home now, so it doesn’t really work because he doesn’t really have anywhere else to go if this falls flat, and his head is gonna start hurting if he tries to twist this idiom any further. He can’t quite bring himself to meet Henry’s gaze anymore, staring instead at the bookshelf behind his head. “I think I have been for a while. And I’m sorry if it’s too much or too soon, but I just thought, if I’m going to be living here… you deserve to know.”
There’s a horrible, excruciating beat of silence, then Henry’s other hand comes to his jaw, nudging Alex’s face back toward his. He’s smiling. The relief that cracks through Alex’s chest is so intense he could cry.
“Considering I’ve been in love with you since Philadelphia, I think I’m ok with that,” Henry says indulgently, like it should be obvious. Like loving Alex is as innate to him as breathing. Like he’s just been patiently waiting for Alex to get his shit together, but it’s ok, because he loves him.
“Really?” Alex breathes.
Henry cocks an eyebrow at him. “Does that surprise you?”
“I mean, yeah,” Alex says with a little puff of laughter. “I thought you weren’t interested in me like that because you never made a move, even after we became friends.”
“And I thought you were straight,” Henry counters.
“Touché,” Alex concedes, and then he kisses Henry again, because he can, because it’s already been too long since they last kissed. He thinks, perhaps, that he’s already addicted to Henry’s lips and it could become a problem. How the fuck is he gonna get any work done when Henry’s office is just down the hall from his? At least he’s got unfettered access here— He pulls back as something else occurs to him. “So, about those boxes in my room I haven’t unpacked…”
“I don’t think we’ll need two bedrooms, do you?” Henry asks, grinning. “Put them in mine, love.”
+2... Two Weeks Later
“I can’t believe you’re actually FaceTiming in for this,” Alex tells Pez as he looks over June’s shoulder at her phone. Pez’s face fills most of the screen, his hair a somewhat-more-sedate-than-usual blue, and he looks tired, though that’s probably in part due to the time difference.
“And miss movie night with my darlings?” Pez scoffs from the phone screen. “Perish the thought. Plus, a little bird told me it might be worth my while.”
So Henry must have tipped him off, then.
Somehow, Alex and Henry have managed to keep their new relationship a secret for the past couple of weeks. It started out with an argument over whether anyone in the department would notice on their own, and then it became a challenge not to be the first to give it away. Plus, it was kind of nice to keep it just to themselves for a little bit, and sneaking off to make out in empty rooms was kind of hot. But Alex is officially done with not being able to hold his boyfriend’s hand whenever he wants to, so they decided on this.
“I call sofa!” Nora announces, then drops herself unceremoniously over the back of it onto the seat.
“Shove over,” Alex says, pushing her feet off the cushions. “Hosts get the rest of the couch.”
“That’s not a rule,” she complains, narrowing her eyes at him suspiciously.
“It is now.”
Everyone else is settling onto chairs and cushions around the living room with their drinks, and June situates herself on the floor in front of Nora and sets the phone on the coffee table so that Pez currently has a view of the couch. The only person now missing is Henry, who appears moments later with a bowl of popcorn and another of chips, which he sets on the table.
“Are we all ready?” he asks the room, receiving a bunch of confirming nods.
“Hold on, babe,” Alex says, and then, with a slightly theatrical flourish, he pulls the oodie out of the basket of blankets next to the sofa as everyone else watches with delightfully befuddled expressions.
“Right you are, love,” Henry replies with an indulgent smile.
The only bad part of this plan is that they don’t get to watch everyone’s faces as they don the ridiculous garment, but it’s still worth it to witness the shock and confusion as Henry sits down sideways on the couch and Alex tucks himself in between his legs with his back pressed to Henry’s chest and Henry’s arms around him. To top it all off, Alex twists his head to look up at him, and Henry drops a chaste kiss on his lips.
Alex is grinning like an idiot when he settles back in, partly because he’s so in love he could die, and partly because everyone is staring at them with their mouths hanging open.
“What?” Alex asks with as innocent an expression as he can manage. “How else are you supposed to use a couples oodie?”
Pez breaks the silence first with a delighted whoop, which makes Henry duck his head and turn a delightful pink. “Congrats boys, I always knew you had it in you.”
“So you two are…” Amber starts.
“Boyfriends? Yeah,” Alex confirms.
“I fucking knew it,” Nora announces, because of course she does. “How long? Two weeks, right?”
“You didn’t tell us for two weeks?” June jumps in before they can even confirm it.
Alex just shrugs. “It never came up.” He knows he’ll get the third degree from her later, but for now, at least, she lets it go. At least, she lets that part go.
“You can’t wear that at movie night, I don’t want to think about you two getting up to things in there,” she protests, settling back against Nora’s legs.
“Gross, Bug. We’re not gonna have sex with our friends in the room,” Alex says, which makes June slam her hands over her ears. Alex, naturally, kicks her in retaliation.
“I object on the grounds that you’re too fucking cute in there and it makes me sick,” Postdoc Kyle puts in, grinning broadly as he tips his beer in a little salute.
“Noted,” Henry laughs, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to take it up with Pez. It was his gift, after all.”
“And I’m very satisfied with my purchase,” Pez says smugly.
Yeah, Alex is pretty satisfied, too.