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For being his always-supportive democrat mother, President Ma was a little low on Alex’s list of people to come out to. He knew she’d accept him, but he also knew that her support might be complicated by the potential political implications of the first woman president having one of her half-Mexican kids also turn out to be both queer and trans.

So, he’d told his dad first. Alex and June had flown down to Texas for the same week their abuelos flew up from Mexico, so Alex figured he could get June first, then his dad, and then maybe his abuelos, depending on their responses to his carefully rehearsed tests of their open-mindedness—Aren’t Han Solo and Princess Leia both so cute? Isn’t Pa’s whole gender-neutral bathrooms thing, like, so cool of him? Did you see that trans celebrity shut down that asshole reporter like a champ?

Despite exactly none of his coming outs going down the way he’d planned, his family had all been completely wonderful about it. Oscar Diaz wasn’t the patron saint of gender-neutral bathrooms in Austin for nothing, so he’d been nothing short of loving and supportive, and he helped Alex get the rest of his plan in motion before Alex and June flew back to D.C.

A few weeks later, he told his mom over pizza, with June holding his hand until she let go to slap the back of his head when he’d begun apologising for making things harder for Ellen’s campaign. His mom had echoed the sentiment, although less violently, and assured Alex that she would actively and publicly support him if and when he decided to come out to the nation—No election is more important than my son’s freedom to be himself, she’d said.

He wasn’t sure about doing that, initially; but it was in devouring interviews and statements of other public figures—including Prince fucking Henry, of all people—coming out as part of the LGBTQ community, and in reading the supportive comments and feeling his own feelings about it all, that he’d decided that yeah, maybe he could be that too. Even if he was planning on running back home to Texas, like, immediately after doing so.

So, three years into Ellen’s term and amongst campaign plans for re-election, Alex shared his identity as a bisexual trans man in a televised statement, and then promptly left for Texas with June—who’d only moved to D.C. to keep Alex alive—in hopes of stepping out of his public role and away from the attention of the media. His mom’s still the president, of course, but he’s recognised and bothered a whole lot less down in Texas. It helps, too, that he’s buzzed his shoulder-length curls into an undercut and has had HRT doing its thing for a few months, so he’s looking more and more different from the way much of America remembers him.

Alex stops in the middle of the sidewalk—ignoring the many people who are now huffing and just barely sidestepping around him—and stares blatantly at the man walking toward him on the other side of the pavement. Prince fucking Henry. He’s recognised Alex too, and instead of the tight press smile or bored sneer he’d expected, Henry is giving him a scrunchy frown and a real, tentative smile. He manages to cross against the flow of traffic without bothering anyone, and he touches a gentle hand to Alex’s elbow to bring him out of the way of disgruntled students and onto the grass instead.

“What the fuck.”

Henry’s smile dims a little as he lets his hand fall back to his side. “Hello, Alexander.”

They haven’t seen one another since they exchanged a whispered argument about profiteroles at some fancy dinner over a year ago, when—to the rest of the world, at least—Henry was a straight man living in Kensington Palace and Alex was a straight woman living in the White House. And now… a gay man and a bisexual trans man meet in Texas. And despite Henry abdicating and all but disappearing for a year, he’s in the loop enough to know Alex’s new name—not that that’s bad, of course, just… a little surprising. But not nearly as surprising as his standing in front of Alex here in Austin.

“Alex,” he corrects automatically. “What’re you doing here?”

“Getting my degree, I hope,” Henry says, arching an eyebrow up, appearing amused more than anything else. Alex’s gaze slips down to where Henry’s holding a novel and a bound notebook against his chest, to the UT lanyard hanging out of the canvas tote over his shoulder. He lets himself check Henry out while he’s at it, taking in his brown knit sweater and slim black jeans cuffed above white Converse, which were the most surprising part of his outfit until Alex notices the two tiny silver hoops pierced through the cartilage high on one ear.

He blinks and slides his eyes back to Henry’s. “Here? At UT Austin?”

“No,” Henry says, and Alex prepares to sigh in relief before Henry flatly continues, “I got lost on my way to Oxford. Of course here.”

“Why here?”

“Needed a change,” Henry muses mildly. “It was this or throw a dart at a map and hope not to end up in the middle of the Pacific.”

Alex blinks in disbelief. “You abdicated and left the monarchy and the whole fuckin’ continent to get away from your bigoted family… and came to Republican Texas?”

“Might I point out that you also publicly came out—congratulations on that, by the way, dear—and immediately moved to Texas?” He smirks almost lazily before continuing, “And what happened to your idealistic notion that Texas and its people aren’t just a stereotype?”

Alex’s mouth falls open.

“You certainly defy a number of them yourself,” Henry adds thoughtfully. “To answer your question, though, my mate Pez—if you remember them? They’re opening a shelter for queer youth here so I sort of… followed them, I suppose.”

“Left the monarchy and hitched a ride to Texas,” Alex repeats flatly.

“Austin, Texas,” Henry says, “With a queer, genderqueer Black person, to volunteer with LGBTQ youth and write my thesis on queer history.” He lets his gaze drop from Alex’s face down the length of his body and back up again. “And apparently… listen to pretty boys tell me that I shouldn’t be here.”

Alex’s brain stumbles as he tries to make sense of it all with what he remembers from his few disastrous conversations with Henry over the years. “Pretty?”

“Sorry,” Henry says, appearing to take a genuine apologetic pause. “Would you prefer a different adjective? Handsome, perhaps?”

Alex stares at his small, unguarded smile. Eventually, slowly, he says, “Pretty’s… fine.”

“Wonderful. So.” Henry shifts the books in his arms and raises an eyebrow. “Are you going to repeat everything I say, or just the bits that don’t fall in line with your preconceived ideas about the kind of person I should be?”

“Uh…” Alex says, “The… second thing? Probably.”

Henry laughs and shakes his head, eyes crinkling with his amusement, but somehow Alex doesn’t feel laughed at. “Noted.”

“Can we go back to the part where you think I’m hot?”

“Sure. What about it?”

Alex shifts his feet and huffs, flicking his eyes away from Henry as his face warms. He feels him shift closer, the toe of his Converse knocking against Alex’s boot, and it’s all so absurd that it finally jolts Alex out of his shock and back to where he is.

“Shit. Fuck. I’m late,” Alex says. “Fuck.” He starts backing away and points a finger at Henry.

“Go,” Henry says, waving him off with an actual, real smile, eyes crinkling in a way Alex has never seen on him before today. “I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

“Is that a promise?” Alex calls across the growing distance.

“It’s a threat, darling,” Henry says, finally turning away and allowing Alex to do the same.

What the fuck? Alex thinks dazedly as he rushes to his class. Has Henry always been so unfairly fucking attractive?  

“I’d heard you were floating around here somewhere.”

Alex relinquishes his place in line at his favourite coffee shop, spinning around with a dramatic flourish as he turns to grin at Pez. “Seriously, what the fuck are y’all doing here?”

Pez narrows their eyes playfully and matches his smile. “Please,” they say, “You’re delighted to see me and don’t you dare pretend otherwise, young man.” They pull Alex into a squeezing hug, then draw back and grip him by the shoulders. “And don’t even try to pretend you haven’t been talking to Hazza, babe. He’s told me all about it.”

 Alex rolls his eyes and says, “Talked. Once. Past tense.”

“Sure, darling,” they say airily. “And I suppose you didn’t threaten him with a good time?”

“It was the other way around actually,” he mutters.

“Oh, I know,” Pez says, sounding delighted, “Though, the way Henry told it, it didn’t sound like you were exactly opposed.”

“God, do y’all tell each other fuckin’ everything? Tell me, bebé, what colour underwear is he wearing right now?”

Pez cocks their head and stares at him.

“Oh, god,” Alex says, squeezing his eyes shut. “Don’t. Please don’t. I hear it, okay?”

“I suppose we do tell each other everything,” Pez muses innocently.

Alex’s eyes fly open. “Please don’t. I’ll buy you a coffee or tea or whatever the fuck you want if you just… keep this whole interaction to yourself. Please.”

“Have you forgotten how obscenely wealthy I and my family are?” they say before rolling their eyes and giving him a softer smile. “Throw in a croissant and you’ve got a deal.”

They fold back into the queue and Pez hip-checks him out of the way and pays for their coffees and treats despite Alex’s intention to make good on his promise.

“And how’s the lovely June?” Pez says as they settle into a table together, “Is she still in D.C.?”

He updates Pez on what June’s up to these days—working as a journalist in a supportive office where she’s valued for her work and not just brushed off as the president’s daughter—and then tells them all about the chaotic few weeks in which he came out, packed up his shit and road-tripped with June back home to Austin, and how he’d crashed in her new apartment—a time chaotic in its own right—before he could move into his dorm, which he shares with a roommate since he hadn’t applied early enough to secure a single and was too proud to let his dad pull any strings.

“I could’ve stayed with my family, and I love them, most of the time,” Alex says, “but I dunno, I didn’t wanna live with my dad or my overprotective big sister anymore, you know?”

“So, living on campus, then?” Pez asks brightly, “What’s the roommate’s deal? Lucked out?”

Alex winces.

Their smile softens into a sympathetic pout. “Fuck. Bad?”

Alex shrugs and drags his lip through his teeth. “I… yeah. Kinda. It’s fine, though.”

“Babe…”

“It’s fine,” he insists, “So, how’ve you been? Henry mentioned a shelter? Must be chaos, no?”

“Ah, there you go mentioning loverboy again,” Pez says dreamily, but they move swiftly and graciously onto the new topic, excitedly telling Alex all about the plans for the LGBTQ youth shelter across the river in Travis Heights.

It’s not even a week later when Alex’s roommate has a class cancelled and comes back early, already making some backhanded comment about the lesbian punk chick in his class—who sounds fucking awesome in Alex’s opinion—and looking expectantly at Alex like he’s not just ignored their spoken agreement to keep to themselves for the year.

And Alex—in trying to keep the half-hearted promises he’d made to basically everyone in his life that he’d at least try to slow down, take better care of himself and let people be there for him—slams the door on his way out, gets in his car and texts Pez. And then he’s driving across town, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel and trying not to think.

It doesn’t work very well. He’s still fuming and flustered while he jabs repeatedly at the elevator button in Pez’s building, watching the floor number go down so… fucking… slowly. When it finally reaches the lobby, Alex rushes forward without thinking.

Henry catches him by the shoulders just before they slam into one another, and Alex’s hands fly up to Henry’s ribs to steady himself. Shit. Does he live here? He should have thought of that. Henry might be on his way out now, but Alex doesn’t think he can go upstairs and complain to Pez about his asshole roommate knowing he’s in Prince Henry’s apartment.

Alex pats Henry’s chest gingerly before removing his hands and stepping out of the awkward embrace. He forces himself to ignore how it comes out a bit stilted when he manages to say, “Hey there, sweetheart. Should’ve known I’d run into you here.”

“Alex,” Henry says warmly, “I’d wondered when I might see you again. Are you… here for Pez?”

“Yeah,” Alex says, staring forlornly as the elevator ascends away from them again, “I needed—Yeah.” He clears his throat. “You live here too?”

“Oh, no. They got a place closer to the site for the shelter and I live closer to campus,” Henry says, “but we rarely go more than a day or two without inviting ourselves over one way or the other.”

“Oh,” Alex says, rocking back on his heels. “Cool.”

Henry cocks his head with a little crease in his brow. “I didn’t know you and Pez were close,” he says. “I wasn’t even sure whether you’d met.”

“Oh. Uh, yeah. We ran into each other at a few things over the years and y’know… got to talking. We have a lot in common.”

Henry nods thoughtfully and says, “I suppose always being among regrettably few non-cis-het-white-men in the room at those awful events must have helped that along?”

“Something like that, yeah,” Alex says slowly, and all at once something is triggered in his body and he viscerally remembers why he hated Henry. Fucking hell. This is not the time or place for that to surface.

“Pez always hated those things; they only went for me,” Henry’s saying, “Though they’d never made me feel badly for it.” He shifts his feet and says almost kindly, “I can’t imagine it must have been easy for you.”

“No,” Alex says, “It wasn’t.”

Henry wets his lip and rolls it through his teeth with a frown. Fuck. He’s always been so fucking perceptive to Alex’s slightest fucking shift. They don’t even fucking know each other; it’s ridiculous and unfair that Henry can read him so easily. Especially after the way Henry had blown him off and then only ever treated him with that same icy indifference rather than the bland but polite smiles he offered everyone else—with the very few exceptions being when they argued instead, though that was only when no one important was within earshot to hear Henry being a pompous dickhead. And it’s definitely not fair that while Henry used to use his fucking mind-reading skills to get under Alex’s skin, now he’s… What? Being empathetic and thoughtful? Fucking asshole.

“Right,” Henry says slowly, “I suppose I’ll let you—”

“Yeah.”

Henry’s frown deepens, and Alex almost feels bad for the confused, kicked-puppy look on his face after the one-eighty he’d done since the other day. Almost. But now he’s getting keyed up and he needs to leave before he says some things he’s not sure he means. He’s not an asshole. Mostly.

“See ya ‘round, Your Highness,” he drawls, sidestepping Henry and swerving to take the stairs to the next floor so he can wait for the elevator there instead.

He heads up to Pez’s in a daze, knocking feebly on the door and giving them a weak smile when they open the door with a grin that quickly falls. They usher him inside and close the door softly before chasing Alex to where he’s started pacing the length of the living room.

“Alex, darling,” Pez says slowly, “What’s going on? Did something happen?”

“I’m—” He shakes his head. “Fuck.”

Pez takes his hands and guides him to sit on the floor. They sit together with Pez gently rocking him against their chest while he tries to breathe. It should be weird, he realises, being comforted by the best friend of one of the guys he’s so frustrated over, but mostly he’s just grateful. He thinks again about how completely opposite Pez and Henry are, how similar Pez and Alex are, and he wonders what went so wrong in Henry’s mind before they’d even met that he wouldn’t even let Alex say hello.

“You didn’t drive here like this, did you? I’d have picked you up, darling.”

Alex shakes his head. “Was fine before,” he says, “Well. Y’know, mostly. Sorry for—It’s—I’m being ridiculous.”

“I can assure you you’re not,” Pez says firmly. They grimace. “You didn’t happen to run into Henry on your way up here, did you? I’d meant to kick him out right away but I thought things were different between you two nowadays.”

“I hadn’t seen him in over a year,” Alex says, “I’d forgotten why…” He shakes his head, too tired to find the words, but Pez nods like they understand. “But then I remembered.” He takes a stuttering breath and, in a too-small voice, says, “Why couldn’t he just—”

Pez tilts their head and considers him. They’re the only person who can look at him without making him want to squirm. “You absolutely don’t have to, but do you want things to get better between you?”

Alex shrugs and says, “I don’t know. I have no fucking idea. I just. I don’t wanna talk right now. Can we just… watch a movie or something?”

“All right,” Pez says, nodding and already getting that look on their face that tells Alex they have plans. “All else I’ll say is that, Alex, babe, you should talk to him. There’s no rush, and we both know you don’t have to, but…”

Alex nods clumsily and noncommittally, but Pez seems satisfied.

“Okay, snookums. Now. Pizza and wine or tea and biscuits?”

Alex is sitting in his Black Women’s History lecture and actually learning something from the professor—a short Black woman who is one of very few of Alex’s professors who isn’t a cishet white man—and fidgeting with his pen when said pen catches awkwardly and flies right out of his fucking hands to hit the person sitting in front of him.

“Shit, fuck, sorry,” Alex mutters automatically as he regretfully tears his attention from the professor and shifts his brain back to human-mode.

The person turns around with one eyebrow arched sharply, and of course, it’s fucking Henry. Alex isn’t sure how he hadn’t noticed Henry being in this class at all, let alone sitting right in front of him. Maybe he needs to lay off the coffee and start sleeping more.

Henry gives Alex a slow once-over, picks up the pen and tucks it behind his ear before turning his attention back to the professor.

“Hey,” Alex hisses, “There a reason you’re holding my favourite pen hostage, Fox?”

Henry half-turns so it could still appear as if he’s paying attention should anyone look in their direction. “Favourite, huh?” he says, “There a reason you flicked it at my head, then?”

“Thought it might jar your brain loose and turn you into a decent person,” he snaps.

Alex gets to feel a triumphant burst of satisfaction as Henry clenches his jaw, rolls his eyes and turns forward again. Except he still has Alex’s pen and the professor is sweeping across to their side of the room so Alex has to fucking wait until the end of class. And he can’t even focus on what was actually a very interesting lecture.

Henry takes his sweet time packing his things away before slowly turning to face Alex. “Go to dinner with me,” he says.

“That’s your demand? Buy you dinner and I’ll get my pen back?”

“I’m not demanding anything of you,” he says, rolling his eyes. “You can say no.”

Alex eyes his pen where it sits behind Henry’s ear, under soft-looking blond hair. He cocks his hip and bites his lip as he considers his options.

Henry’s expression hardens into annoyance. His bright eyes go almost cold and he sighs, reaches up for the pen and drops it into the tote on Alex’s shoulder. “Go to dinner with me,” he repeats.

“I don’t get it.”

“Christ,” Henry mutters, and he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Never mind.” He turns on his heel and walks down the aisle and out of the lecture hall, back straight, broad shoulders slumped just slightly inward, not looking back. And Alex hates himself a little for the way his eyes follow him until Henry’s out of sight.

Alex is drumming his fingers on the table and checking his phone for the millionth time—Alex is usually the one who’s late, so he’s getting worried—when Henry walks in. His eyes sweep the café, staggering over Alex before coming back to him when it appears he doesn’t find what he’s looking for, and Alex watches him warily approach.

“Don’t suppose you’re waiting for Pez?”

Alex narrows his eyes. “I am.”

“Bloody wonderful.” Henry sighs and drops into the seat across from Alex, elbows landing on the table with a painful-sounding thud. He drags his hands down his face. “I’m going to kill them.”

“What? What’s happening right now?”

Henry lets his arms fall into a heap on the table. “I was also supposed to meet Pez.”

“Oh.”

“Quite.”

Henry looks tired, Alex notices. More so than he did only a few days ago when they’d had their weird little tiff in class. He’s still pretty, though, which is really fucking unfair. He doesn’t pretend he’s not staring, and he revels in the pink glow to Henry’s high cheekbones.

“So…”

Henry shakes his head and straightens his back. “Sorry. I’ll just—Can I buy you a coffee for the trouble? I swear, I’m going to shred their favourite jacket for this.”

“So, you know what this was supposed to be about?”

“Yes, I do. Again, I apologise—You clearly don’t want—”

“Don’t apologise,” Alex says, “Just tell me what’s going on.”

Henry sighs again, looking down at the table like it’s personally wronged him. He takes in a quick, audible breath before meeting Alex’s eyes. “Let me get your coffee,” he says, glancing around the café, “and then… can we take a walk?”

“I mentioned to Pez how our last conversation went,” Henry says as they start down the paved trail through the park, “and evidently, they decided—”

“Do you recount all your conversations to Pez or just the ones you have with pretty half-Mexican boys?”

Henry gives him a flat look. “Just the ones that make me want to tear my hair out.”

Alex grins proudly and takes a sip of his free coffee. “Good to know. Go on.”

“They told me to try talking to you again,” he says, “And I told them that that wasn’t happening.”

“And here we are,” Alex says flatly. He sucks his teeth and resolves to help Henry in shredding half of Pez’s closet.

Henry sighs, flashing him an emotionless smile. “And here we are.”

“So? Are you gonna talk to me?”

“Wasn’t planning to, no.”

“Come on, man, we’re already here. Say what you wanna say.”

Henry sucks in a breath and holds it, looking sideways at Alex as they continue walking. “Right. Fine. Er. When Pez was apologising for kicking me out the other day,” he says slowly, “they might have mentioned your roommate situation.”

“Man,” Alex says, shaking his head and chuckling, “if Pez’s gonna tell you all my shit and vice versa, we might as well just cut the middleman and be friends ourselves.”

Henry winces. “Er, yes, I believe that rather was the idea,” he says carefully.

“Oh,” Alex says, “Huh?”

“Anyway,” Henry says quickly, “When we last spoke, I was trying to invite you to dinner to see whether we could get along well enough for it to make sense for me to ask you to move into my flat with me.”

He stops walking. “In what world would that ever make sense?”

“The one in which you have a transphobic prick for a roommate and I have a spare room, perhaps?”

Alex jogs the few steps he needs to catch up to Henry, who’d kept walking without him. “What do you get out of it? You don’t need my rent money, you don’t know that I’m not a shit housemate, you don’t even fucking like me.” He stops again, and Henry sighs and does the same, turning to face him as Alex says, “I don’t need your fucking pity or your charity.”

“It’s not bloody charity,” Henry says hotly. He closes his eyes and shakes his head before continuing, “I’m merely presenting you with another option. I know you have your sister and your dad here. I know you have your mum. You could go to the administration if that’s what you wanted. Hell, Pez would happily put you up if only you’d bloody ask. But I know you’re going to stay in your toxic situation because you’re a stubborn, self-sacrificing shit who doesn’t believe he deserves better. Meanwhile, quite literally everyone in your life would feel a whole lot better if you found another place to live.”

“You’re not in my life!” Alex shouts, “Why the fuck do you care so much!”

“Because I want to be!”

Alex crumples inwards, feeling like the fire in his chest has been doused down to leave only the confusing embers of his anger. Leaving him just… unsettled. And fucking tired.

Henry slumps and closes his eyes, mouth drawn into a wobbly line. “What do you think I’ve been trying to do since we first ran into one another here?” he mutters. “I thought we might finally have a chance to sort ourselves out and actually be—”

Alex scoffs. “What? Friends?”

Henry scowls and looks away. “Never bloody mind, then.”

“What? You’re serious? Now you want to be friends?” He turns his back on Henry, shaking his head and swallowing the incredulous laugh threatening to bubble out of him.

Henry’s voice is weak and small when, from behind Alex, he says, “What does that mean?”

Alex spins around to face him. “Do you not remember the day we met? Or every single other time after that? At the fucking Olympics, I was nervous as hell and I thought we were maybe kind of in the same boat and all I wanted was to be your friend but you—”

“Christ, Alex, I wasn’t bloody allowed!” His chest is heaving and he looks fucking broken. Furious and stricken and sad. He doesn’t look at Alex when he quietly continues, “You are the brown, queer, trans child of a very progressive American president, and the queen forbade me from being anything more or less than politely indifferent in your presence.”

Alex scoffs and rolls his eyes.

Henry shoots him a scathing look and shakes his head. “I was eighteen,” he says, “I was depressed and deep in the closet. My dad had just died, my sister was awol and my mum… I was numb, and despite that, I still managed to be so fucking scared. So yes—” His nostrils flare as he nods, jaw tight and chin raised staunchly. “I did as I was told. And as soon as I turned twenty-one, I left.”

Alex turns away. It makes sense. He knows it does. But he’s still angry and fucking hurt. The blame has shifted slightly, but it’ll take time to trust that Henry is genuine after their years of… whatever the hell that was. He sorts through everything he’s learned and tries to take it on board. He hates himself for it, but he still wants this. He’s still always been drawn to Henry, even when he was a standoffish dick. And clearly, he’s… different now. From that first day, Henry was so different to the man Alex remembered that his first instinct hadn’t been to snark and argue, but to flirt and make himself late to class.

Alex swallows and turns back around. Henry’s sat down on the grass, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped behind his head, completely, eerily still.

“Look, I think I should go,” Alex says carefully. “Can we… Can we continue—or—or try this conversation again another time?”

Henry nods, but he doesn’t otherwise move.

“Are you gonna be okay?”

He lets out a derisive laugh. “I’ll be fine,” he says. He drops his hands and picks his head up to look at Alex. “You?”

Alex shrugs, and Henry just nods before hanging his head again.

And Alex leaves. He texts Pez on the way to his car, reaming them out for ambushing them and then telling them to check in with Henry.

Later, when Alex dumps his bag out on his bed, he finds a shiny set of keys with a folded note tucked into the loop of the keyring.  

You’re too bloody stubborn for your own good, you fucking nightmare. Use these to let yourself into my place if you ever need to. At any time, for whatever reason. Address is on the back.

The very next fucking day—and only because the alternative is breaking his hand on his roommate’s face—Alex swallows his stupid pride, googles Henry’s address, and drives over. He lets himself into the building and takes the stairs instead of the elevator to stall before he finds himself in front of a clean blue door with three silver numbers in the centre—312. He takes a few deep breaths to steel himself and knocks.

He waits two whole minutes before knocking again, a little louder this time, and when there’s still no answer, he swallows and lets himself in, trying not to feel like a complete creep. Henry had invited this, he reminds himself.

He walks on his toes through the entry hall and into a ridiculously tidy kitchen, where he dumps his things on the island’s clean marble countertop. He digs through his bag and then backtracks to the door with a pen between his teeth, peeling a sticky note off the pad on his way back down the hall. He opens the front door again and slaps the pink sticky note on it, just above his own eye level and just below the door number. He carefully writes, ‘Alex is here. Don’t freak out,’ before leaning back to make sure he’s spelled everything correctly. Once he’s satisfied that Henry won’t have anything to make fun of, he turns around, flinches and bangs his elbow into the doorjamb. Henry is standing down the hall at the top of the stairs, watching him with a soft smirk.

“Motherfucker,” Alex mutters darkly.

“Hello to you too, darling,” Henry says dryly, cautiously crossing the distance between them. He reaches up and tugs the sticky note off the door to read it, and he lifts an eyebrow without looking at Alex.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Henry says, “How long’ve you been here?”

“Like thirty seconds?” Alex tries to read Henry’s face, but all he can see is his impassive profile. “D’you want me to leave?”

Henry swivels to look at him. “No. Not at all.” He gestures toward the door, where Alex’s foot has it propped open. “Shall we?”

They head inside and through to the kitchen. Alex tosses the pen and pad on top of his bag and watches Henry press the sticky note onto the shiny steel fridge before setting his things down beside Alex’s.

“Poked around yet? Need a tour?”

“Literally just got here,” Alex reminds him, “But nah.” He turns to look around the open dining-living area, taking in the neatly stuffed floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the huge, cosy grey couch and matching armchairs, and a rather large collection of throw blankets. His gaze lands back on Henry, who’s watching him nervously. Alex splays his hands on the counter in front of him. “Are you sure you don’t mind me being here?”

When Henry’s finished rolling his eyes, they narrow and lock onto Alex. “If I have to tell you again how much I want you to be here, I imagine this conversation will go very much like our last.”

Alex rubs at the back of his neck and mumbles, “Yeah, okay.”

Henry nods shortly. “Good. Staying for dinner? Pez will be over to teach me to make this Swiss pasta dish I can’t pronounce the name of, if you’re interested.”

“You cook?” He tries to hide his surprise, for the sake of trying to be civil in Henry’s home after he all but broke in, but he knows he’s not doing a very good job.

But Henry just grins and laughs and says, “Pez is teaching me to cook. I’m not sure how much I’m really absorbing, though. If you’re hungry and willing to take the risk and judge that for yourself, check the fridge. There’s some leftover risotto that I made without supervision.”

Alex snorts and steps around the island to snoop through the fridge. Sure enough, there are neatly stacked glass containers of at least two different homecooked meals, and a whole lot of fresh ingredients. He grabs a container of risotto, digs through Henry’s cupboards for a tiny bowl, takes the fork Henry offers him, and scoops some out to try. Henry watches him with a small, smugly amused smile.

“Wow,” Alex says, “I’m impressed.”

Henry’s chest puffs out a little even as he seems to deflate with his relieved breath. “Really?”

“Shut up,” Alex says. “Did Pez teach you this too?”

“Not the risotto, no. We did some cooking lessons together when we first moved over here, so I can follow a recipe. But yes, it is usually that they’re teaching me things they’ve picked up on their adventures. Last week it was Laksa; before that it was Jollof.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m just…”

“Just…?”

“Surprised.”

“I imagine you’ll continue being surprised until you let go of the outdated image of me that you seem to be holding on to,” Henry says flatly.

“That’s… fair. I suppose I should try to work on that, huh?”

Henry rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling and he brings out the tray of apology brownies that Pez had made and brought over for Henry yesterday. He and Alex are sharing the last of them when the intercom rings, and Henry lets Pez into the building before going right back to fighting Alex’s fork with his own. The front door handle jiggles and Henry startles when loud, impatient knocking echoes through the wood.

“Mm—” he says, licking a smudge of chocolate off the heel of his hand, “Fuck. Will you get that?”

Alex watches blankly for a moment long enough to stray far out of the realm of appropriate or subtle before forcing himself away from Henry and down the hall.

“You have six seconds before I resort to digging for my key, you harlot!” Pez shouts through the door, “You’d best not be naked in there!” Alex swings open the door to see Pez brandishing a set of keys. Their body deflates while their face lights up, and they very pointedly look Alex up and down. “Not naked, then,” they say with a teasing pout. “Boring!”

“And who’s the harlot, again?” Henry shouts exasperatedly from inside.

“Can’t it be both of us?” Pez shouts back as Alex steps aside to let them in. At a more reasonable volume, they add, “You two sorted yourselves, then?”

“Uh,” Alex says, “Not exactly.”

Pez rolls their eyes, but their smile is sad. “And yet you’re here.”

Alex shrugs one shoulder and clears his throat. “I’m still mad at you.”

They wince. “Fair enough. Sorry, Alex,” they say softly.

Alex wrinkles his nose. “I’m not your babes anymore?”

“Oh, Alexander, my darling,” they say, grabbing his hand and twirling him before he can make sense of what’s happening, “you’ll always be my number one babes, the light of my life, el chico más bonito en—”

“¡Dios, cállate, bebé!” Alex interrupts loudly, bringing a hand to his cheek to check whether he’s blushing. “I get it, shit. Shut up.”

Pez giggles as they flounce down the hall and into the kitchen, and Henry raises an eyebrow at the both of them from across the island.

“You realise I have neighbours, yes?” he says, “Must you call me a slut where everyone can hear you?”

Pez rolls their eyes. “Please, as if you’re at all ashamed of that.”

Henry grins impishly. When his eyes slide back to Alex, though, the smile softens into something more sincere and kind. “Don’t worry, I never bring anyone back here. Only you two and my sister have this address.”

Alex shakes his head reflexively. “No worries, man. You do you. This is your place.” He and Pez sit down at the island while Henry frowns and shakes his head, mechanically setting the kettle to boil and bringing mugs out of a cupboard. Alex nudges Pez with his elbow. “Hey, since when do you speak Spanish, anyway?”

Henry snorts, then looks up sheepishly when Alex turns to look at him. “They can ask for pronouns and flirt in about twelve languages.”

“Sixteen, actually,” Pez announces proudly, “Picked up Tagalog, Urdu, Arabic and Vietnamese since I started working on shelter prep over here.”

Henry gives Pez a flat, unimpressed look. “Please tell me you’re not flirting with all of your few and very important work connections.”

“Of course not!” Pez says brightly, “Not all of them! Just the ones who flirt back, of course.”

Alex snorts, hand flying up to uselessly cover his mouth as he starts laughing. Henry sighs, looking deeply disappointed in them both.

“Feelin’ left out, sweetheart?” Alex drawls through lingering laughter, leaning across the counter lasciviously. “Podría perderme en el océano azul de tu mirada, princesa.”

Pez squeaks delightedly and Henry, blushing a pretty pink, swivels to look at them.

“What? What’d he say?” He turns back to Alex and says, “Did you just call me princess?”

Alex presses his lips together to smother his smile before clearing his throat and saying, “Nope!”

Henry narrows his eyes and turns back to Pez.

“Oh, darlings,” they say dreamily, “This is going to be so very fun.”

Pez patiently walks them through the Älplermagronen recipe that they seem to know off the top of their head, and Henry continues to surprise Alex by actually being fairly decent in the kitchen. Even where his skill isn’t quite up to snuff yet, it turns out that he takes direction very well, even if he does so with rolled eyes and muttered threats of slipped knives.

When Alex accidentally laughs at Henry and Henry accidentally waves the knife dangerously close to Alex’s neck—not that Alex was worried, since he was too busy laughing and watching Henry’s bashful grin—Pez banishes them both from the kitchen to finish the cooking on their own.

“Both of you get out!” Pez shouts through their laughter, “You’re both horrible!”

“At least I can cook,” Alex mutters.

“I’m trying, aren’t I?” Henry says defensively, “It’s not my fault I never learned before.”

“Right,” Alex says, sobering a little, “Sorry.”

Pez grins and lightly smacks them both with the dish towel. “Out.”

Alex tries to pretend he’s not watching Henry as they settle in at the little round dining table, but Henry, the world’s most perceptive fucking asshole, apparently, sighs and arches an eyebrow curiously.

“What is it?”

“I… have a follow-up question,” Alex starts carefully, “after our last… conversation.”

Henry snorts inelegantly, and Alex really sort of likes the way it makes him seem more like an actual person. “Go on, then.”

“If you weren’t allowed to even talk to me—when I wasn’t even out as trans yet, by the way—why’d the queen let you keep Pez?”

Henry raises an eyebrow and Alex huffs and flaps a hand between them.

“You know what I mean.”

Henry nods slowly and lets his gaze wander over to Pez in the kitchen while he thinks. “We met when we were away at school,” he says, “By the time she’d caught word of my improper, ill-advised friendship—though it helped that the Okonjos are well-respected and well-off—it was too late for her to take them from me. Not that Pez would have allowed it, at any rate, but our friendship was open and public and any attempt to pull us apart would have been met with too much scrutiny from the media, especially once they came out as genderqueer. She couldn’t afford for the family to be accused of being transphobic or homophobic or racist or—”

“All the different kinds of asshole she definitely is.”

“Exactly,” Henry says.

Alex’s eyebrows creep upwards.

“What?” Henry says with an awkward laugh. “You do realise all of that is exactly why I renounced and left the bloody country?” He sighs. “The point is—It was too late for Pez. And… truthfully, regardless of what I’d wanted, even if she hadn’t made it clear I wasn’t to engage with you more than I had to, I… I wouldn’t have wanted you to get caught up in any of that. Not for me.”

“You said regardless of what you wanted? What did you want?”

The corners of Henry’s mouth turn even farther down. “I… I’d wanted to get to know you. You were…” He presses his lips into a thoughtful pout, and Alex wonders what he’s holding back. “My opening would have been to ask if you wanted to sneak away to find some proper caffeine and watch our security go mad trying to find us.”

Alex’s laughter escapes him before he can think about suppressing it. “You’re—Dude. That totally would have worked. What the fuck.” He ducks his head and laughs again, and then he looks up at Henry, whose smile is somehow both smug and bashful. “This,” he says, “This is real, isn’t it? Fuck, man, I’m gonna let a swarm of overcaffeinated hornets loose in Buckingham Palace after that asshole kept us from each other for so long.”

Henry gives him this soft, almost bewildered look and Alex feels himself begin to squirm under the scrutiny. “So, does that mean you might be willing to give this a chance?”

“By this, you mean…”

“Friendship, I suppose,” Henry says, but it almost sounds like a question. “You moving in here as well, ideally.”

Alex rolls his eyes. “You’re not giving up on that, are you?”

Henry smiles, but he looks almost sad. “No,” he says, “Probably not.”

“Why not?” Alex asks, frowning despite the effort he makes to remain calm and impassive. “I don’t get it.”

“We’ve already had this conversation,” Henry says tiredly, “You deserve to feel safe in your home.” He seems to consider Alex, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. “And,” he says, “I don’t particularly… do well living alone. I could use the company. I happen to enjoy yours.”

Alex scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Dickhead. You’re manipulating me with your sadness.”

Henry smiles at the table and looks up through his lashes. “Perhaps. Doesn’t make my reasons untrue. Though… does it count as manipulation if you’re already fully aware and suspicious of it?”

Alex squints at him. He sighs. “Look, I—I’ll think about it, all right? But I don’t—”

“Fine,” Henry says. He rubs at his temples and sighs before determinedly raising his eyes to meet Alex’s. “Just… Tell me you’re safe?”

“Oh,” Alex says. “Yeah, no, it’s fine. He’s not, like. Gonna do anything. He’s just… passive aggressively… shitty.”

“Doesn’t make it insignificant,” Pez says as they put the food down and join them at the table. “Now. Let’s eat—” They swiftly pick up Henry’s wine glass and start pouring with a flourish. “—and drink.”

Alex has been blissfully ignorant of his roommate’s existence for almost a month. He spends his mornings in the library when he doesn’t have early classes, and then spends the afternoons and evenings at Henry’s apartment, only ever heading back to the dorm after ten p.m., when his roommate can reliably be found knocked out and blessedly quiet.

Today, Alex lets himself into the apartment to find it quiet and empty, a note on the kitchen island telling him that Henry is out helping Pez with something but will be home soon. Alex tucks the note into his bag and raids the pantry for some snacks before flopping onto the couch, then he chooses a movie from Henry’s watch history and zones out until he hears keys jingling through the front door. He sits up and brushes the crumbs off his lap and onto the floor, grinning sheepishly when Henry gets the door open and catches him in the act.

“You’re lucky I’m too tired to deal with you,” Henry says fondly, dropping his things on the table and collapsing on the couch beside him. Alex offers him a cookie and Henry raises a brow appraisingly as he accepts it. “Thank you for sharing my own biscuits with me, dear,” he says dryly. He takes a bite and closes his eyes while he chews, leaning his head against the back of the couch. “Oh,” he says, blinking his eyes open. “I’ve been told to inform you that Pez is now trying out she and her pronouns to be used interchangeably with they/them.”

“Oh, cool.” Alex lets the change swirl around his brain for a moment and says, “I know you’re her best friend or whatever, but I’m still a bit offended that she told you before me.”

Henry scoffs. “Best friend or whatever?” he repeats. “Way to downplay ten years of getting each other through ridiculous amounts of family drama, my father’s passing, various coming outs, countless depressive episodes and panic attacks, moving across an ocean together…” He raises an eyebrow challengingly. “Shall I go on?”

Alex grunts. “No. Sorry.”

Alex is… still a little offended, if he’s going to be honest with himself. Irrationally and not seriously offended, but, well. Pez was the first person Alex came out to as trans. It was an accident, an uncertain truth blurted out at some big charity event when Pez—the first and only out trans person he knew at the time—happened to be the one who found him tugging at his dress and working himself into a panic after an overwhelming evening of being seen as a girl. Pez had draped their suit jacket around Alex’s shoulders and held his hands and promised him it’d be all right, and then they’d helped him feign sick and walked him up to his hotel room.

They were the first person who saw Alex for who he is.

“I don’t think they realised it would be that meaningful to you,” Henry says as he carefully watches Alex. “If they’d known…”

“No, it’s fine,” Alex says quickly. He shoves a cookie in his mouth to make himself stop talking and actually think for a minute. “I shouldn’t be making this about myself. I’m thrilled for her, really.”

“You’re allowed to have feelings about it.”

Alex rolls his eyes and lets out a noncommittal noise. “I’ll talk to them about my shit one day,” he says, “when they haven’t just announced news of their own.”

“It’s hardly news that they play around with gender,” Henry muses, “but sure.”

Alex’s jaw clenches and he narrows his eyes at Henry. “It’s still important,” he says.

Henry’s gaze focuses and his posture softens. “Fuck, no, yes, of course it is. I wasn’t—Pez said it wasn’t a big thing for her. She—” He takes a breath and frowns down at his hands. “They like that changing things up isn’t a big deal for them anymore. I know it’s important.” He looks up at Alex and asks, “Do you think she would put up with me if I didn’t?”

“I guess not,” Alex says cautiously. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, drags them down his face and lets them fall into his lap. “Sorry.”

“You’ve nothing to apologise for. I’m grateful you’re as protective of them as I try to be.”

Alex shrugs. “Still. I know you’re—You’re actually pretty good with all the gender stuff for a cis guy. I’m just—” He trails off with another jerky shrug and turns back to the movie.

“Want to talk about it?”

“Nope.”

“Want me to tell Pez to bring the wine?”

Alex sighs and says, “Yeah. Please.”

Pez promises wine and take-out if they can wait a little longer for her to be finished with her last meeting, so Alex and Henry busy themselves with turning the living room floor into a cosy nest of pillows and blankets, and bringing out plates and wine glasses. Once they’re satisfied, Henry falls back onto the couch and throws an arm across his face.

Alex hovers by an armchair, twisting his hands in front of him. “Hey, d’you mind if I take my binder off?”

“Course not.”

Alex frowns. “You sure?”

Henry shifts his arm off his face and sits up to look at Alex. “Yes? Why would I mind? Actually, speaking of—” he says, “You can absolutely tell me to bugger off, but do you mind if I ask a question about that?”

“By that, do you mean my tits?” Alex says sharply.

“Er,” Henry says. “Indirectly, I suppose? I meant about binding. Is that… the term you prefer for that part of your body?”

Alex pauses. He sinks into the armchair. Breathes. Frowns. Slowly shakes his head. “Chest,” he says. He clears his throat and looks away. “You can ask your question. I’m not promising to answer it.”

“Are you sure it’s all right?”

Alex huffs. “I said it was.”

“All right,” Henry says slowly, “Um. You do take your binder off in your dorm, don’t you? Is it—Are you safe to do that there?”

“Oh. Um.” Alex sucks his lip between his teeth and releases it. “Sort of?”

Henry frowns, and Alex mirrors him, thinking through the possible combinations of truths and half-truths that might placate Henry without outright lying.

“I… probably wear it a little longer than I should, a little more often than I should,” he says, “Or I’ll go to Pez’s or June’s or… here now, I guess, where I can take a break. I just avoid the dorm when I can.”

Henry’s whole face scrunches up as his frown deepens and turns more sad than confused. “I really wish you would just—”

Alex sighs and rolls his eyes. “Will you give up already? I can deal with him.”

“Christ, I’m not saying you can’t,” Henry says exasperatedly, “I’m saying you don’t have to. You carry so much, Alex. I’m simply trying to help you lighten the load in any infinitesimal way you’ll let me.”

“And having a guy you hate move in with you is somehow only an infinitesimal inconvenience to you?”

Henry stops. He stops breathing, even. He gives Alex a tired, cold look and clenches his jaw.

Alex knows exactly what caused the shift, and he squirms uncomfortably and wonders whether it’s somehow not too late to shove the words back down his throat. He knows Henry doesn’t hate him; he was sure Henry knew he knew that. And he thought that Henry knew Alex didn’t hate him either. They’re sitting against each other on the couch, sharing cookies and watching shitty movies, for fuck’s sake. He’d thought they were past this, but…

“I mean—” he starts.

“If it gets you away from your transphobic roommate,” Henry says, low but vehement, “then yes. Christ, Alex, you’re not a bloody inconvenience.”

The intercom buzzes and Alex flinches.

Henry sighs, rubbing a hand over his face before meeting Alex’s eyes again. “I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable. Are you… Will you still stay?” Alex nods slowly, and Henry lets out a relieved sigh. “You can borrow some clothes if you need to, if you’d still like to change,” he says, standing up and hovering awkwardly. “I… should go let Pez in.”

The intercom rings again as Henry makes his way over to buzz her up, and Alex swallows and heads down the hall, slipping into Henry’s room. He leans heavily against the closed door before taking a deep breath and pushing off to find a sweatshirt to drown himself in.

When Alex wakes up to the dim light of Henry’s living room, with Pez draped over his legs and Henry’s elbow in his ribs, he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised. He sees the signs, in sleepy hindsight—the wine, the low light, the soft pile of pillows and blankets and the warmth of Henry’s and Pez’s bodies beside him while they made fun of shitty rom-coms… And, well, it’s no wonder he drifted off. He snuggles into Henry’s side and falls back to sleep with a helpless smile.

At a much more reasonable hour, soft sunlight filters through the curtains and wakes Alex with a pleasing warmth that makes him feel like a cat basking in the sun. Henry and Pez are still sleeping, so he carefully slips out of the cuddle pile and takes a photo of them on the first phone he can find. It ends up being Henry’s, so Alex takes another on his own phone in case Henry decides to be bashful and delete it before Alex can get a copy for himself.

He blinks blearily at the time on his phone. He slept for a full eight hours. And he’s on track to be just slightly late for brunch with June. He rescues yesterday’s clothes from Henry’s room—grateful even more now for the impulsive decision to trade his jeans for too-long sweatpants the night before—and gets dressed, shoving the stolen sweatshirt into his bag for no reason at all. He leaves a note on the coffee table and adjusts the blanket over Pez’s shoulders before quietly heading out.

He grins when he spots June waiting for him outside his dorm building like she always does, dressed in a long floral skirt and a white long-sleeved crop top that used to be his. She’s glowering at the door and tapping her foot even though he’s only six minutes late—nine whole minutes earlier than he normally is. But Alex at least gets the satisfaction of sneaking up on her from behind, making her yelp and almost punch him in the face.

“What the fuck, asshole? You little shit.” She punches him in the shoulder instead. “Where did you come from?” 

“Hm? Oh. Henry’s. I slept there last night. He lives down that way.” He waves a hand behind him and grins. “So, talk to me about breakfast.”

“Hold it,” she says, frowning and poking a finger into the shoulder she’d just punched.

“Ow,” he says petulantly, rubbing at his shoulder and sending her a hurt look which she rudely ignores.

“You slept at Henry’s? As in Prince Henry?” 

“He doesn’t like to be called that, but yeah.” He makes it a few steps in the direction of their usual brunch haunt before June pulls him to a stop with a hand curled around his forearm.

“He doesn’t—Alex,” she says, “Are you two actually…” 

He raises his brows frustratedly when she doesn’t continue. “What?” 

“What are you two to each other?” 

“I dunno. Friends, now, I guess. Why?” 

June stares at him. “Because you hated each other a few weeks ago and now you’re having sleepovers?” 

“We… worked it out,” he says. He shrinks away under the weight of her narrowed eyes and says, “Jesus, June, you’re not Mom. Pez intervened and we’re all fuckin’ besties now. Is that all right with you? I hang out there a lot. He just—He lets me use his place when I need a break from the dorms.”

“Oh,” she says, deflating, “Well, that’s kind of him.” 

“It’s whatever,” Alex says. “So, can we go now? I have never needed coffee more than I do after this conversation, and I’m fucking starving.” 

Henry’s couch must have magical powers, because even Alex’s caffeine addiction and insomnia don’t seem to stand a chance once he sinks into it, especially when Henry’s curled up at the other end like he is now. Alex shifts his feet in Henry’s lap and snuggles into the soft blanket covering them both, and then Henry is nudging him awake.

“Come on, darling,” he murmurs, “You need to take your binder off before you go to sleep.”

“Mmph,” Alex says. His eyes are still closed but he squeezes them tightly shut anyway, and he grumbles when Henry chuckles above him.

“Alex,” he says gently, “You’ll be sore tomorrow. Get up, get changed and come to bed.”

Alex, eyes still squeezed closed, raises his eyebrows and mumbles, “Bossy.”

Henry sighs. Alex smirks. He finally blinks his eyes blearily open to see that the credits are rolling on the TV and Henry is kneeling by Alex’s head in pyjamas, holding an extra hoodie which Alex hopes is for him.

“Time’s’it?”

“Almost one,” he says quietly. “Too late for you to head back to your dorm on your own. You’re staying here.”

“Am I?” He laughs and reaches up to poke Henry’s cheek. “You’re cute when you’re mad at me.”

“I’m not—” Henry huffs and bats Alex’s hand away. “You’re annoying when you’re tired.”

“I’m always tired,” Alex says.

“Yes, that rather was the point, darling.”

“Hey!”

“Come on,” Henry says, “I want to go to bed.”

“Go, then.”

“Not until you bloody get up, get out of your binder and get into bed.”

Alex frowns and blinks slowly. “Too tired. You do it.”

“What?”

Alex’s arms feel ten times their weight, but he manages to bring them up above his head. “You do it, Mr. Bossypants,” he says again. Then he registers that he’s wearing an open button-up and drops his arms, holding one out to the side instead.

Henry reaches out and fidgets with the cuff of Alex’s sleeve while he frowns and says, “Alex, are you sure?”

“Trus’ you. Jus’ try not to touch anything.”

Henry cocks his head to one side as his frown deepens. He stares for long enough that Alex actually starts to wake up, and his sleepiness flattens into exhaustion.

“You’re so annoying,” he mutters. He shoves at Henry’s shoulders to make him shuffle around to turn his back before sliding his arms out of the shirt and pulling his tee over his head. He drops them onto the floor, pulls his binder off to join them and reaches an arm over Henry’s shoulder, wiggling his fingers until Henry passes the hoodie backward. Alex holds it against his chest and tugs Henry around to face him again. “Stop being so fucking careful,” he says.

Henry recoils. “I only—”

“I know,” Alex says, deflating and trying for a gentle smile. “I get it now. You care about me or whatever. But I’m all right. I’m not going to break. Sleeping on a couch in my binder once isn’t going to kill me. And I’m not going to toss you out of my life the second you make a mistake or slightly cross a line, especially not if I tell you to do the thing you think is crossing some sort of line.” He gets his arms through the hoodie sleeves and pulls it over his head without bothering to make sure he’s covered. When his head is through and he’s thrown the hood behind him, Henry’s cheeks are pink. Oh well.

“All right,” Henry says, “Sorry. Next time, I’ll just undress the barely conscious man on my sofa without getting proper consent.”

“As long as that man’s me, you have consent.” Alex sighs and shakes his head, reaching out to clasp a hand over Henry’s shoulder. “I’m grateful that you’re here and that you care, all right? But can I please go back to sleep now?”

Despite the accidental floor sleepover the week before, Alex was planning on never spending the night—never crossing that line. And though he has capital-T Thoughts about it being too much like giving in, or moving in, or being friends, or whatever else… he realises that he no longer has the energy to fight it. He lets Henry herd him into the spare bedroom and hover and tuck him into bed after he’s kicked his jeans off, and he falls asleep before Henry’s out the door.

Alex shuffles out of the spare bedroom in his boxers and borrowed hoodie to find Henry watching the kettle boil. “Hey, sweetheart,” he says softly.

“Morning,” Henry says, “Tea? Or—You drink coffee.” He frowns and waves a hand at the coffee maker. “I don’t know how you like it, but you’re welcome to…”

It’s a little strange navigating the whole… morning thing with Henry, but Alex just hums and makes his coffee and pretends he doesn’t notice Henry watching him. As soon as he has hot caffeine in his hands, he gets out of Henry’s way and sits at the island to watch him slap a pan on the stove and stick his head in the fridge.

“Are you a breakfast person?”

“Depends what you think counts as breakfast,” Alex says, “I usually just have coffee and maybe some dry cereal on the way to class.”

Henry frowns at him. “That’s not breakfast.”

“Hey, you asked, dude. If you wanna cook for me, be my fuckin’ guest, sweetheart. Otherwise, I’m more than happy to raid your boring cereal collection.”

“My cereal is not boring,” Henry says. He sighs. “I’m making you an omelette. Any objections? Requests?”

“Make it not boring.”

Henry makes him a spicy Mexican omelette, which more than surpasses Alex’s expectations and is definitely not boring. He inhales half of it without stopping to breathe, and he even forgets about his coffee for a few minutes. Henry watches him with a smug grin before turning around to whisk more eggs for his own boring omelette.

Left to look at Henry’s back, Alex feels a little less exposed. “Sorry for being a shit last night,” he says. “I think I’ve sorta… I’m a lot more comfortable here than I would’ve expected I’d be. I was tired and I wasn’t thinking about how it might be weird for you.”

Henry turns to lean his hip against the counter next to the stove, and he shakes his head. “You were right. You’ve no idea how pleased I am that you’ve been spending time here, and with me, and I’ve been…” He frowns and swipes his tongue across his bottom lip.  

“You’re worried you’re gonna do something to scare me off,” Alex says.

“I suppose, yes. Most importantly, I just want you to feel safe and comfortable here.”

“I am safe and comfortable with you.”

Henry smiles wryly and turns to poke at his eggs as they cook. “I didn’t know that. Or, well, I’d hoped, but I’m not sure I really believed it before,” he says, “You were so… understandably hurt and resistant in the beginning, and I suppose I’ve been waiting for you to remember…” He shrugs and shakes his head. “I have trouble trusting anything at face value. Being a public figure, and with the way my family is… Well. It’s something I’m working on with my therapist. I know that you of all people wouldn’t hesitate to tell me if I’ve fucked up, I just need to learn to trust it.”

“You’re in therapy?”

“Only for a few months as yet. After I abdicated, Pez and I spent a year travelling, never sitting still. It was only once we’d settled here that the reality of what I’d done… and everything from before really sunk in. I slipped into a depressive episode so quickly that I—Well, there was no stopping it. Pez helped me find a therapist and I’ve been seeing xem weekly ever since. That’s where I am Thursday mornings when you’re in class.”

“Good for you, Hen, really,” Alex says softly.

“It is,” Henry agrees, sliding his omelette onto a plate and turning to plant himself across from Alex. “Though I clearly still have a lot of work to do.”

Alex grins. “Is it weird if I say I’m proud of you? Because I kind of am.”

Henry chuckles and looks down at his plate. “That… means a lot coming from you, actually. Thank you.”

Alex’s roommate is a petty asshole. He and Alex realised on their first day in the dorm that they were completely incompatible—in that Alex is trans, and his roommate is passively but unwaveringly transphobic. They’ve since kept out of one another’s way and both avoid the room as much as possible, but the asshole is always extra quiet on days when Alex has to be up for class, and extra noisy on days when he can sleep in.

Alex wakes up ten minutes before his first class. He supposes he’s at least grateful not to be rushing around in a panic in front of said asshole roommate, since he’s apparently able to get ready completely fucking silently when he wants to, but that doesn’t change the fact that Alex is really fucking late and he can’t find the textbook he needs. He takes another look on his desk and when his eyes catch on the windowsill, he remembers where he’s left it.

He texts Henry, hey are you busy, and Henry calls him as he’s pulling his jeans up his hips. Alex fumbles to answer and doesn’t even pretend he’s not out of breath and panicking.

“Are you busy today?” he asks, “You don’t have any classes, do you?”

“What’s wrong?” Henry says immediately, “What do you need?”

“I left my fuckin’ Legal Philosophy textbook at your place and I’m running so late for Ethics and I won’t have time between classes to get to yours to pick it up and—”

“I’ll bring it to you,” Henry interrupts calmly. “I’ll meet you after your Ethics class. Just get there and settle in, and then text me where you are and what time you want me to be there, all right? Where’s the book you need?”

Alex lets out a breath. “Okay. Okay. Thank you. It’s, uh… on the window seat in your bedroom, under the blue blanket.” 

Henry snorts. “That’s specific. Why is it there?

Because Alex had been stressed and tired and needed to curl up like a cat in the sun and Henry wasn’t there, so… maybe he stole Henry’s favourite blanket and fell asleep there for a while. “It’s… a long story,” Alex says. Then he trips on the bedpost and swears loudly.

“Christ,” Henry says around a laugh. “I’ll let you go. But take a breath, will you? You can be a few minutes late. I’ll see you between your classes.” 

“You’re a fucking angel,” Alex says, “Love ya, Hen. See you soon.” 

He hangs up, gathers the shit he does have and legs it to his first class. 

Henry is waiting for him outside his Ethics class with a coffee cup balanced on his textbook and a paper bag in his other hand at his thigh. Alex carefully relieves him of the coffee before sliding his arms around Henry’s waist and smushing his face into his chest. Henry’s arms come up around his back to hold him as best he can with his hands full, and Alex gives himself another minute before coughing awkwardly and pulling back.

Henry gives him a soft smile and offers Alex the textbook. “Right in the oddly specific place where you left it.” Once Alex has tucked the book into his tote, Henry offers him the paper bag and says, “Breakfast. Because you’re a disaster.”

Alex sighs dreamily. “What did I do to deserve you?”

“Absolutely nothing, darling,” Henry says, and Alex really has no clue whether that’s an insult or a compliment or some weird two-birds-with-one-stone thing, but he decides he likes it either way.

He takes a few quick sips of his coffee before shoving it at Henry and trading it for the food. He peers into the bag to find a fancy-looking breakfast sandwich and a huge cookie, and he has to blink away the alarming wetness in his eyes. “You’re the fuckin’ best, H. Thank you,” he says.

They head off in the direction of his next class, periodically trading the coffee, sandwich and cookie back and forth so Alex can devour all three while they walk.

“How long do you have before Philosophy?”

“Ugh,” Alex says, wrinkling his nose. “Only about as long as it takes to walk over there.”

“And you’re coming home after?”

“Mm, if I don’t fall asleep and melt into my chair.” He takes a sip of his coffee, bouncing on his toes, before looking sideways at Henry. “Why? Is that okay? Do you have plans? Are you planning on bringing someone home or something?”

Henry gives him a bewildered look. “Yes,” he says slowly, “You, you bloody plague.” He deftly snatches the coffee out of his hand and replaces it with the sandwich. “Eat. Or I’ll keep your coffee and the cookie for myself.”

Alex takes a bite and, without swallowing his mouthful, says, “You don’t even drink coffee.”

Henry wrinkles his nose. “Just for you, I would drink all the coffee in the world out of spite,” he promises.

“Aw, I am special!”

“Special kind of chaotic demon, maybe.”

“You love me!”

Henry stops walking and Alex is reminded that he’s holding his coffee hostage. He stares Henry down for all of six seconds before dutifully taking another bite of the sandwich. He swallows and pokes his tongue out, and they keep walking.

“Good boy,” Henry murmurs, and Alex promptly trips over absolutely nothing before being caught by one of Henry’s strong arms around his middle. “Too far?”

Alex grins. “Baby…” he says, leaning into the accidental embrace and pushing up on his toes until his lips brush Henry’s ear. Then he steals the coffee back and dances out of Henry’s reach. “Hah! Take that, motherfucker!”

Henry rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Come on, you bloody miscreant. I came to bring you breakfast, not make you late for your class.”

“You came because I asked,” Alex says.

Henry’s ears go a bit pink. He lifts his chin a little and says, “Yes, well. That too.”

Alex’s phone buzzes in his pocket exactly two minutes before the end of class. He glances around to see other people already packing up and decides that the old white man reading straight from his slides is probably even less important than whatever spam he’s surely about to find on his phone.

Alex is always right, he decides. Because it’s Henry, who is definitely far, far more important than Professor Boring and who has shared his location with Alex. He zooms in on the little map and figures out that Henry hasn’t even left campus, and instead appears to be in the garden between this building and the next. Alex packs up quickly and stands up as soon as the clock rolls over to midday, without waiting to be dismissed.

He finds Henry sitting in the grass, book open on his lap, leaning back on his hands and soaking up the sun. His eyes are closed, but he smiles and opens them right on Alex before he can decide whether it’d be too mean to scare him.

“You’re still here.”

Henry sits up and closes his book without even marking his place. “I had my book,” he says airily, “It’s a nice day.”

“You waited for me,” Alex says, a little choked up. And yeah, maybe he needs a nap, but… “You brought me coffee and breakfast and my stupid book and then you waited… so we could go home together?”

Henry’s smile softens as he gazes up at him. “Maybe I just didn’t want to walk and knew you’d go all Southern chivalry on me and insist on driving me home.”

Alex laughs wetly and drops to his knees beside Henry to slug him in the shoulder. “You waited for me.”

“I did.”

“What if I want to walk?” he says stubbornly.

“Then we’ll walk,” Henry says reasonably.

“Sap,” Alex accuses.

“Disaster,” Henry fires back, sounding disgustingly fond.

“You might be right,” Alex says, swiping at his eyes. “All right, take me home, sweetheart. I wanna steal your stupid fuckin’ blanket and take a stupid fuckin’ nap.” When Henry just blinks innocently, Alex pokes him in the side and shoves out a put-upon sigh. “Yes, I’ll drive,” he says, rolling his eyes and adding, “mi querido principito,” under his breath.

It’s late when Alex gets back from June’s quiet birthday dinner at their dad’s house, so he toes his shoes off and quietly slides into the kitchen in his socks to relieve his arms of the leftover food and cake Oscar had sent along for him and Henry. When he realises the shower’s running, though, he gives up on being quiet, haphazardly shoving the food into the fridge and heading into the living room just in time to hear grumpy muttering from down the hall.

“Bloody fucking shit.”

Alex grins and lets himself laugh as he heads down the hall instead of flopping on the couch like his plan had been. He knocks on the bathroom door cheerily and says, “Everything okay in there?”

“Alex, thank god,” Henry says. “Could you please bring me my phone? I’ve left it in the kitchen but I’ve had an idea and I need to get it down before it disappears.”

Alex bites his lip against a laugh and says, “Sure.” He goes back to the kitchen for Henry’s phone and knocks happily on the bathroom door again.

“Yes, yes, come in. Hurry up, will you?”

Alex opens the door to find Henry with wet hair and with his toothbrush hanging from his mouth as he sticks his head out of the shower. He’s getting water all over the floor as he reaches out eagerly for his phone with both hands. Alex’s lips curl into an amused smirk and Henry frustratedly pulls his toothbrush out of his mouth.

“Alex,” he presses urgently.

Alex laughs at him and the fucking absurdity of it all, and Henry’s grumpy little frown only makes him laugh harder. He grabs the hand towel from the rail and trades it for Henry’s toothbrush, and as soon as Henry’s hands are halfway dry, he tosses the towel in Alex’s face and snatches the phone out of his hand. His shoulders thud back into the wall but he leaves the frosted-glass door ajar, which means that Alex can still see him. All of him, in his periphery, though he doesn’t let his gaze stray below Henry’s chest. Henry lets out an actual sigh of relief once he’s got a document open and has started typing furiously, and Alex can’t help but laugh.

“I loathe you,” Henry mutters without pausing.

“You’re welcome,” Alex says pointedly.

“Shh.”

Alex looks down at the foamy toothbrush in his hand and wrinkles his nose, shuffling over to the sink to rinse it off.

Henry lets out a complaintive noise. “Wasn’t done with that,” he mumbles.

Alex raises an eyebrow despite Henry’s unwavering focus on his phone. “Gotta assume you’re gonna be busy for a while and I’m not standing here holding your gross toothpastey toothbrush for you until you’re done.” He chuckles and goes back to Henry, using the hand towel to wipe at the smudge of toothpaste foam at the corner of his mouth and down his chin. “You are so lucky I love you, man.”

“Mmhmm…”

Alex sighs and reaches through the spray and past Henry to put his toothbrush in its holder in the shower. Henry keeps typing even as one of his hands miraculously leaves his phone to curl around Alex’s wrist. He absentmindedly presses a kiss to the heel of Alex’s hand before releasing him and wiping his wet hand on Alex’s t-shirt. Alex rolls his eyes and just strips his shirt off, using it to dry his wet arm as he does. It leaves him just in his binder, but Henry’s unlikely to surface any time soon and Alex doesn’t think he’d mind Henry seeing him shirtless these days anyway. He hangs his shirt over the rail to dry and turns to glance in the mirror.

“Oh, hey,” he says, “Do you mind if I do my T shot while I’m in here? I keep fuckin’ forgetting.”

“No, go ahead.” Henry glances over quickly, fingers still flying away at the screen. “You don’t mind me being here for that?”

Alex shrugs, but Henry’s already looking at his phone. So he unzips the case he keeps on the vanity, sets out everything he needs and washes his hands. He runs through the list of step-by-step instructions in his head as he methodically prepares the dose and cleans the skin to the left of his navel. He turns away from Henry to do the actual injection—just in case he resurfaces at the wrong time and is at all squeamish—and then drops the needle into the little sharps container in his kit. He shimmies his shoulders while he opens and slaps on a Star Wars band-aid—a gift from June—and then washes his hands again.

He turns and leans against the sink, watching Henry. “Can I borrow another hoodie?”

Henry snorts. “I think you mean steal, but yes, sure.” He looks up and adds, “I mean it quite literally when I say please knock yourself out.”

“You love me,” Alex says with a grin, pushing off the sink and leaving Henry to his shower-writing. He grabs a hoodie from Henry’s room and doesn’t bother zipping it before he collapses on the couch with a sigh.

Alex cracks his eyes open and smirks when Henry finally shuffles out into the living room. He’s in sweats and a t-shirt, looking flushed and very pleased.

“What’s your face doing? You look like you’ve just had the best wank of your life.”

Henry grimaces as the pink on his cheekbones darkens. “No, you utter menace. Just had a really great idea and embarrassed myself in my quest to write it down before it surrendered to the ideas abyss.”

“What’re you embarrassed for?”

Henry waves a hand vaguely toward the bathroom and coughs. “Anyway. Thank you, truly. And sorry.”

Alex flaps a hand. “You’ve got nothing to apologise for. It was enlightening, actually,” he says with a grin. “Is this why you always take suspiciously long showers? You’re taking breaks to write your fucking thesis?”

Henry just shrugs and joins him on the couch. “Sometimes,” he says. Then he snorts and adds, “Since when do you use the word wank?”

Alex shrugs. “Guess you’ve been rubbing off on me,” he says with a wink.

Henry gives him a flat look and deadpans, “I’m going to smother you while you sleep tonight.”

Alex gives him a considering look, raising his brows thoughtfully. “Kinky.”

Henry groans, low and guttural and hot.

“Ooh, erotic.”

“Fucking Christ.”

“That’d be pretty difficult considering he’s been dead for a few thousand years.”

Henry looks up with desperate, pleading eyes, opens his mouth and then quickly closes it.

“Don’t make me beg?” Alex guesses, grinning lazily. “Also kinky.”

Henry is silent for a very long moment. He swallows, wets his lip, and then in a dizzyingly quick succession, pounces, presses a brief, light kiss to the skin by Alex’s injection site and then swerves to blow a raspberry on the other side of his belly button.

“Fuck—Truce!” Alex gasps out around breathless laughter. “Fucking fine! You win!”

He moves up Alex’s body to hover over him, dips his head and whispers, “And what do I win?”

“Um… I have cake?”

A laugh falls abruptly out of Henry before manages to slap his hand across his mouth to muffle it. His elbow buckles and he seems to just barely be holding himself up.

“No!” Alex yelps. He manages to shove Henry up enough that Alex can slip out from under him and tumble onto the floor with a thud. “Shut your fucking face, Fox.”

Henry smirks down at him and suavely lifts a brow. Alex groans and drops his head onto the floor.

“I hate you.”

“Sure, darling.”

“Hey,” Henry says, once they’re settled into the couch with a huge slice of cake each. “I was distracted earlier, but I was listening. How often are you forgetting shot day?”

“A lot? I don’t think I’ve taken it on the right day since like… four weeks after I first went on T.”

“And it should be every Saturday now? Would it help if I remind you? Or we could write it on the bathroom mirror or something, if you like. Bea used to do that for me.”

“Your sister reminded you to take your himbo juice by writing on the bathroom mirror?”

Henry rolls his eyes. “When I was in a low place, she’d sneak into my bathroom with dry-erase markers and write little reminders to brush my teeth or tell me she loved me when I wasn’t up for hearing it. It helped, a little.”

“She sounds great.” Alex eats another forkful of cake while he thinks it over.  “It might help,” he admits. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“I offered, didn’t I? I’ll write you a reminder Saturday morning and if you haven’t erased it by the evening, I’ll bother you until you do it or I’ll stab you myself.”

“Want me to teach you how to do it next time?”

Henry blanches, fork frozen halfway to his mouth.

“Oh, you’re too fuckin’ easy,” Alex says gleefully. “Your threats are empty, Fox, you big fuckin’ softie.”

“And Pez taught us this Turkish Pilaf thing because Henry wants to learn how to cook, like, every dish ever invented and—”

“Henry’s learning to cook?” June says, eyebrows shooting up her forehead. “I’m impressed. Good for him. Have you taught him the ways of our ancestors yet?”

Alex hasn’t, so June makes him text Henry to ask whether he has plans for dinner and whether he’d mind June taking over his kitchen for the evening.

When Alex’s phone buzzes not two minutes later, he looks down at his phone and says, “He says, If you must. I’ll just stay out for the evening.”

“He did not.”

Alex grins. “He said he’d be honoured and he’s looking forward to catching up with you.”

“That’s better,” June says primly. “Tell him to be scared. And to check if he has cayenne pepper and paprika.”

“He’s in class,” Alex says, “But we’re out of paprika. Add it to the list.”

June eyes him weirdly when he uses his key to let them into Henry’s building, but she doesn’t say anything until they’re in the apartment and they’ve dumped the groceries on the counter. She looks around curiously and says, “Is he still not home? How often are you letting yourself in when he isn’t even here?”

Alex shrugs and starts sorting through the ingredients. “I dunno.”

“Well, when did you get your own keys?”

His hand freezes over the chillies. “Um.”

“Alex?” she says warningly.

He winces. “Like the second time we ran into each other?” He clears his throat and says, “Help me with this, will you? He’ll be home soon; his fancy-pants lit class finished at three and then he was gonna pick up some wine on his way back.” 

“You do it. You’re the one who apparently knows where everything lives.” She smacks her hands against her thighs. “Where’s your bathroom?”

Alex rolls his eyes. “It’s not a big place, June. Walk down the hallway and you’ll find it. Yell if you get lost.” He busies himself with setting everything out, making himself useful now because he knows June will take the lead with the actual cooking later. And then wet hands slap against the back of his neck and slide down his shirt, using it as a hand towel. “What the fuck!” he says, dancing away from June and landing an elbow in her ribs. “We have towels!”

“I saw,” June says brightly, swiftly dodging his attempts to retaliate. She makes it around to the other side of the dining table and raises an eyebrow at him, chest heaving with her breath. She seems to clock that Alex has given up and she kicks out a chair and collapses into it. “I also saw the words himbo juice in glittery marker on the mirror. What’s that about?”

“Oh, yeah,” Alex says, “I gotta do that today.”

June looks at him with the tiniest hint of a frown. “Do you live here?”

Alex is saved from what he’s sure would be a very confusing argument on both sides when a key turns in the door and Henry walks through into the kitchen.

It seems like he can’t decide whether to smile or frown when neither Alex nor June makes a move or says anything. “Hello,” he says carefully.

June jumps up and advances toward him. “How d’you feel about hugs? Because this is your five-second warning.”

Henry raises his eyebrows but chuckles and opens his arms, wrapping her in a tentative but warm hug when she reaches him. “What’s this for?” he says, looking at Alex over June’s shoulder.

“Oh, so many things, honestly,” June says, “For looking out for my ridiculous baby brother. For coming out—in a position as scary as yours, no less. For telling your family to fuck off. You know, just… all the wonderful things you’ve been doing with yourself.”

“Oh,” Henry says quietly, smiling proudly. “Well, thank you.” He presses a kiss to the top of her head and Alex laughs into his fist when Henry’s eyes widen in panic like he’d done it out of habit more than conscious thought. He clears his throat and steps back. “Oh, and congratulations on that piece on Latin American influences on fashion that you did. It was bloody brilliant.”

June smiles politely. “Aw, thanks. Did Alex make you read it?”

“Er… no?” Henry says.

“I haven’t even read it yet, Bug,” Alex says, wincing.

She frowns at him and looks back at Henry, perplexed. “You keep up with my work?”

“Well. Yes? You’re a fantastic writer and your insights are really very brilliant.”

She grins. “Oh, Henry,” she says, “we’re definitely keeping you.”

June graciously gives Henry five minutes to get changed and breathe before she leans into her Diaz genes and starts dishing out tasks for the empanadas. She gives herself the ambitious responsibility of focusing on the filling purely so she can stick Alex with the pastry—which he notoriously loathes and has always been terrible with. Henry doesn’t do much better, but he’s not the one who grew up with a Mexican father who taught his kids to cook and take pride in their heritage. Alex tries not to think about how Oscar Diaz would tut and shake his head and call Alex a sorry pendejo if he could see how focused he is on Henry instead of the empanadas. As it is, June isn’t going to let him off the hook either, but at least she dishes out her punishment in the form of teasing that he can throw right back, rather than disappointed fatherly frowns.

“At least you have an excuse,” she tells Henry, grinning widely and gesturing vaguely at his whiteness. “Alejandro, on the other hand…”

“Shut it, Catalina. I don’t know how I let you choose the one thing I fucking suck at.”

“It’s all that himbo juice,” she says sombrely, “It’s doing what it says on the tin.”

Henry snorts and, all too late, brings his hand up to his mouth to smother his laughter. His chest shakes with the force of it, and he turns his back to Alex, swiping a hand past his eyes.

Alex shoots a betrayed look at the back of his head. “You’re not allowed to find her funny!”

“No?” Henry says. He chuckles again, and yelps when Alex stalks over and digs his fingers into Henry’s sides. “Bloody—” He twists around and manages to get his hands around Alex’s wrists, pushing forward and pinning him against the pantry door. “Relax, love.” He grins and kisses Alex’s cheek obnoxiously. “You know you’ll always be my favourite Claremont-Diaz.”

Alex gives a serious nod. “Good. Because you only get one Claremont-Diaz, and you’re mine.”

“Oh,” Henry says, raising an eyebrow and crowding in closer. “Am I, now?”

“Yep!” he says brightly. “I called dibs.”

Henry looks far too amused—like he thinks Alex is joking—and not nearly flustered enough, so Alex winks and turns to June expectantly. Henry’s hands flex around his wrists before he takes his eyes off him to follow his gaze.

“He called dibs,” June says seriously, “in twenty-sixteen. On the way to the Olympics.”

Henry slowly turns on Alex, smirking in a way Alex tries really hard not to find hot. “Really?”

“No. Yes. Shut up.” He’s not sure where he was going with this. He’d meant to fluster Henry, not himself. He wriggles his hands and Henry releases him. “¡Dios, príncipe azul! ¡Me haces sonrojar! I’m fuckin’ sweating,” Alex says, fanning his face with a hand and gazing adoringly at Henry, who only rolls his eyes indulgently.

Alex grins, letting the act drop and rolling his shoulders. “I’m gonna go take my binder off.” He darts out of the kitchen and through to Henry’s room to steal a big t-shirt. He drops his binder on the end of the bed and stretches his back and shoulders a little, then slips the shirt on and heads back out.

When he walks back into the kitchen he has about four seconds to catch the suspicious whispering and the confused frown on June’s face and resigned set to Henry’s shoulders before they both look up with their wide eyes and innocent expressions that Alex doesn’t believe for a second. He narrows his eyes.

And then Henry smiles and Alex forgets everything else.

Once the empanadas go in the oven, Alex can finally breathe. He starts tidying up, weaving around June easily as she starts prepping for the pico de gallo. Henry leans back into the corner and watches them with a fond, almost dazed look on his face, like Alex and June taking over his kitchen is the best, most baffling thing that’s ever happened to him.

“I miss when we were chubby little babies and got to just sit on the counters while the adults did all this,” June says. Her posture has slowly slumped as they worked, but her eyes are still bright and sharp, and she’s smiling. “Henry, do you mind if we do the salsa at the table so we can all have a rest?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Henry says kindly, “You’re welcome to do as you like here.”

She shoves them out of the kitchen with cutting boards and ingredients and grabs a few knives before following them over. “How are you with a knife?” she asks Henry.

“Er… Not bad?”

“Hey, hang on,” Alex says, slapping his hands down on the table and leaning forward. “I’ve watched Pez confiscate knives from you at least three times in the last few months. You almost stabbed me in the neck the first time I came over.”

June meets Alex’s eye and hands a knife to Henry. She dumps the cilantro on his chopping board. “Roughly chopped, please.”

Henry grins and winks at Alex before following June’s directions. Alex looks at her for his own instructions, but she just narrows her eyes at him.

He rolls his eyes. “Give me a fucking knife, Bug.”

She does, but she also gives him yet another task he sucks at—mincing the garlic—which she very quickly regrets. “Peque, what the fuck are you doing?” she says, shaking her head and letting out a long-suffering sigh. She takes the knife from him and slides his cutting board over, then looks up at him with a mischievous glint in her eye, expertly chopping the garlic without even looking. “You remember the last time we made empanadas with Pa?”

Alex groans as his head hits the table. 

“Well, now I have to hear this,” Henry says. 

“No, you don’t,” Alex says into his arms. Then he feels eyes on him, and when he finally looks up, June’s giving him this soft, protective-older-sister look.

“You know I won’t if you don’t want me to, right?”

Alex sighs, sits up straight, angles his body toward Henry and says, “It was a dark and stormy night—Hey!” He picks up the garlic clove June threw at him and lobs it back at her, but she just catches it and finely cuts it up with the rest. He scowls and turns back to Henry.

“It was a completely ordinary afternoon in January and—” June says.

“And we were here visiting our dad—and this was before I was out—and our abuelos were up from Guadalajara,” Alex says. “June and I were cooking with Pa and I kept fucking up the fucking pastry and I was about to give up when Pa laughs at me and goes, No daughter of mine is getting away with such a sad fuckin’ excuse for empanadas. Keep trying or I’ll have to disown you, mija. And it was just an offhand, teasing comment to try to get me to lighten up, you know? But I was frustrated at myself and I was overwhelmed and I just shouted well what if I’m your son!” 

June giggles and points the knife at Alex. “And then Dad slowly turns around and goes—” She adds a stern set to her brow and deepens her voice. “You think that makes a difference, kid? No daughter, son, or child of mine is getting out of this. And you’re a stubborn motherfucker, so I know you’ll get it.” She smirks at Alex and goes back to chopping the chilli. “And then Alex burst into tears all over the empanadas.” 

“Just as Abuelita walked back in,” Alex mumbles into his fists. 

“Shit, yeah, what was it she said?” 

Alex winces, laughing, and he says, “Peques, ¿pasa algo? ¿Se el chavito de mal cocinando todavía?”

June laughs and tells Henry, “Why’s this one crying? Baby boy still sucks at making empanadas?”

“Hey, that—!” Alex starts indignantly before he just deflates and mumbles, “Yeah.”

“Did she… guess somehow? Or she already knew?” 

Alex nods miserably. “I came out in the most backward order ever. First Pez, who I think I’d spoken to once. Then my Catholic abuela.” He grins and shakes his head, then flaps a hand toward June and says, “Then her and my halfway Catholic dad at the same time—”

“Pez was the first person you told?” Henry says with a surprised frown.

“Mm,” Alex says, “Yeah. At the uh, that charity thing in Shanghai. Like… a year earlier.”

June gently curls a hand around his forearm and says, “I didn’t know that.”

Alex shrugs. 

“And anyway, what do you mean you came out in the wrong order?” June says, releasing his arm so she can slap it instead. “There’s no right order to come out.”

“But I had a list,” Alex stresses miserably. “You first, then Pa and maybe the abuelos depending on how everything else went, then Nora and Amy when we got back, then wait until I hadn’t fucked anything up for a while to tell Mom and Zahra and everyone else.”

June’s phone buzzes with the timer. “There, there, little buddy,” she says, patting Alex on the head before standing from the table to go check on the empanadas in the oven.

Henry’s looking at him thoughtfully, head slightly cocked, brows furrowed, mouth pushed into a pout.

“What?” Alex says. “You still stuck on the Pez of it all?”

He shakes his head distractedly. “I remember that night in Shanghai,” he says. “Pez was restless all night and then they disappeared for a while and came back without their jacket and acting even more strangely than before. It was odd, even for her, but I’d just assumed she’d managed an ill-advised hook-up or something.”

Alex snorts. Over Henry’s shoulder, he catches June’s eye as she pushes herself up onto the kitchen counter. She inclines her head and then turns her back to give them a moment—well, as much as she can while keeping an eye on the oven. “Nope,” he says, “Just found me having a breakdown. I still have that jacket, actually.” 

“You wore it in that interview—that statement when you came out,” Henry says like he’s just now putting it all together. “I didn’t realise until just now; I’d been focused on—But Pez never said.”

Alex shrugs. “They texted me and told me they were proud of me, that they were honoured to have been there for me in that small way, both in Shanghai and for my coming out.” He laughs and adds, “I don’t even know how they got my number.”

“MI6,” Henry mumbles absently.

“What?”

“Oh,” he says, startled. He winces. “Bugger. Er… Well. Pez and I watched your statement together—it was beautiful, by the way—and after, they may have… forced me to exploit the reach of my privilege to get your number for them.”

“And what? You just… did it?”

Henry nods seriously. “They threatened me with glitter.”

“But you didn’t question it at all?”

“It’s Pez,” Henry says with a fond grin, “There’s not much I don’t question with her. Whether I voice those questions is another thing entirely. I decided that either there was something I was missing or it was none of my business.”

Alex grins. “So… does that mean you’ve had my number the whole time? Like, before you asked me for it after you ran out of tea and had a breakdown because you couldn’t text me to pick up more?”

Henry throws a handful of cilantro at him. “No, not technically,” he says defensively, “I never saved it to my phone. But yes, it is buried somewhere in my texts with Pez. I could have found it, but I wasn’t going to use it without your permission.”

“Oh,” Alex says. “Even in a tea emergency?”

“Boundaries are important,” Henry says solemnly, “Even in a tea emergency, unfortunately.”

Henry wakes Alex up by throwing an alarming number of pillows at his head, one landing very quickly after the other until he apparently runs out of ammo. Alex groans loudly and gutturally, and Henry cheerfully drops onto the mattress beside him, falling back to lie sideways across Alex’s thighs.

“What the fuck, man?”

“Get up,” Henry says. “We’re going outside.”

“Why the fuck, man?”

“Because you haven’t had classes for three days, which means you haven’t been outside for three days, and you need some fresh air and sunlight.”

“Ughhhh.”

“Also,” Henry says a little less animatedly, “I need some fresh air and sunlight, so I’m making it your problem.”

Alex lets out a defeated sigh. “Fine.” He sucks in a deep breath to prepare himself for being alive today and he feels a smile stretch across his face. Cinnamon coffee and Henry’s fancy body scrub. His two favourite smells. “You made me coffee?”

“Hm,” Henry says, “Did I? I suppose you’ll have to sit up and find out.”

Alex bucks beneath Henry with an exhausted grunt followed by an amused sigh. “Um, sweetheart, you do realise where you are, yeah?” Henry laughs and sits up, letting Alex roll over and pull himself up. He sits up against the headboard, gratefully taking the mug Henry hands him and cradling it to his chest. “You made me coffee,” Alex says softly.

“I promise I didn’t poison it,” Henry says as Alex takes his first greedy sip.

Alex doesn’t even falter. He downs half of it before lowering the mug with a grin. “What’d I tell you about your threats being weak, Fox?”

Henry rolls his eyes. “I also made those Mexican breakfast burritos you like. But you have to get out of bed and come outside with me if you want those.”

“Ooh, fair trade. Coffee and breakfast. You spoil me, sweetheart. Am I allowed to shower first?”

“Not that you need my permission,” Henry says, wrinkling his nose, “but yes, I can wait. I just need to sear the burritos when you’re about ready. Take your time.”

“He says as if he didn’t just wake me from my beauty sleep up at fucking ass o’clock in the morning,” he grumbles, and Henry presses his lips together the way he does when he’s trying not to smile. Alex gives a few slow, confused blinks. “What? What’s funny?”

“Fucking arse o’clock?”

Alex abandons his coffee on the nightstand and flops face-first into his blankets. “Get the fuck out of my room.”

Henry laughs and his weight leaves the bed. “Get up or I’m taking your coffee with me.”

Alex shifts one leg out of the blankets to blindly kick at Henry’s thigh. As he seriously considers his options, his entire mental pros and cons list is overridden by the memory of Henry’s carefully casual plea for company and comfort. He sits up. “I’m comin’. Give me… ten minutes?”

Henry nods and Alex watches him do the math in his head to figure out that it’s likely going to be more like twenty. “Sure, love.” He pulls his bottom lip between his teeth and gently pushes Alex’s messy curls out of his eyes. “I…”

Alex wants to turn and kiss his wrist. Or bite him. But he’s not that brave. Instead, he grins and swings his legs off the bed, downs his coffee and shoves the mug into Henry’s chest until he takes it. They leave the room together and then Alex smacks Henry’s hip as they part in the hallway. “Try not to think too hard about what I’m doing in here,” he calls over his shoulder, shutting the bathroom door behind him as Henry chokes on a laugh.

Alex showers quickly, pulls on his binder, jeans and a sweatshirt, and shoves his things in his bag and his feet in his shoes, and he’s ready in eighteen minutes. He staggers happily into the kitchen, feeling so incredibly soft when he catches Henry wrapping up what looks like a truly lovely fucking breakfast. When Henry’s hands are empty, Alex slips between him and the counter and slides his arms around Henry’s waist, tucking himself under his chin.

Henry’s arms come up around his shoulders and his head lands against Alex’s with a slow, heavy exhale. “What’s this for?” he asks quietly.

“Te lo mereces todo, vida mía,” Alex mumbles against his chest. “I fuckin’ love you, H. That’s all.”

They find a quiet corner in the park down the street, spread a blanket out on the grass and sit down with their breakfast. Henry brought them each a thermos—tea for himself and more coffee for Alex—and the burritos are as good as they looked, pleasantly full of flavour and spice. Alex is halfway through his second one when he realises Henry’s staring at him. He’s holding the remaining half of his first burrito limply on his knee and pouting thoughtfully as he studies Alex.

“What’re you lookin’ at?”

“A complete and utter tragedy,” Henry says flatly, but his gaze sharpens and he looks away and takes a bite of his forgotten burrito.

“Shut up, asshole. There’s somethin’ bothering you. You’ve got your cute thinky face on.”

Henry inclines his head, cheeks going a bit pink. “You’re right,” he says. “Um. May I ask… What did you do on these days off before… Before?”

“Before my very own prince charming rescued me from my dickhead roommate?” Alex says, and he takes a bite of his burrito to stall, and then he sighs. “It was still early in the semester when I ran into you, so I didn’t actually have to deal with him for all that long. But I’d spend the day in the library from open to close or go to June’s when she wasn’t home.”

“Why only when she wasn’t home?”

Alex shrugs, far too casually, and says, “I can’t lie to her. And she’d have questions I didn’t—don’t want to answer.”

Henry frowns and puts his burrito down. “She doesn’t know how bad it was,” he says quietly. “Do I know how bad it was?”

“It isn’t that bad,” Alex says, “It isn’t fun, but it could be a lot worse. And June only would’ve worried.”

“We both already worry,” Henry says, giving him a flat look.

“Exactly!” Alex says, “So you don’t need—”

“Because we love you,” Henry interrupts loudly. His jaw clenches and he releases a carefully measured breath. “Why is it so hard for you to let the people who care about you actually bloody care about you?”

“Because I don’t deserve it! I can’t fucking stand it! It makes me itchy, Henry. I just…” He shuts his eyes and turns away. He swallows thickly, thinking of the promises he’d made to June, his dad, Ma and Leo, Amy, Pez, Henry.

“Who the bloody fuck told you that you don’t deserve to be cared for?” Henry says quietly, tone carefully measured but so furiously protective.

Alex shakes his head. His throat is tight with sobs that will no doubt fall out of him the moment he tries to speak.

“Oh,” Henry says, “Oh, love.”

Alex scratches absently at his collarbone and Henry lets out a choked laugh. Alex tries for a wobbly smile, tears jarring loose and sliding down his face when he opens his eyes. He reaches for Henry’s hand and clumsily gets their fingers threaded together. “Sorry.” He doesn’t mean to whisper, but his voice comes out fragile and hoarse, and he winces at the sound of it. “’M sorry.”

“Do shut up, darling,” Henry says, pulling Alex in for a cuddle despite the awkward angle. “You’ve absolutely nothing to apologise for.”

Alex clears his throat and wriggles out of Henry’s arms. He wipes his face on his sleeve, mumbles, “I don’t wanna talk about this,” and goes grumpily back to his food.

Henry hums and says, “Did I ever tell you about the time Pez and I got lost at Pride in Taipei?”

They’ve been watching Bake Off, but the episode has finished and they’re all caught up, and neither of them has bothered to put something else on. Henry’s still sitting on the floor where he’d slid down from the couch when someone’s showstopper almost toppled, and he keeps glancing over at Alex, who’s curled into the opposite corner of the huge couch.

“What?” Alex says, though it comes out as more of a grunt. 

“Sorry. It’s just. You’ve usually changed by now. You’ve been wearing your binder for a long time.” 

Alex looks away. “Yeah, it’s fine.” 

“Are you sure? You can borrow some clothes if—”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Alex says. 

“Alex, it’s been—”

“I said no,” he snaps. “Leave it.”

Henry looks at him for a few moments before inclining his head. “All right, love.” He draws himself up off the floor and calmly crosses the room to head into the kitchen.  

Alex presses his hands against his eyes and holds his breath, waiting until it begins to burn before slowly exhaling and drawing in another. 

He drops his hands when he hears Henry shuffling back over, and without thinking about it, Alex accepts the hot mug of tea being pressed into his hand. Henry grabs a blanket from the back of the couch, shakes it out flat and drapes it over Alex’s lap and legs before leaving again. Alex looks down with a frown. He pulls the blanket up under his armpits and cradles the mug at his chest, trying to make sense of… anything. 

Henry comes back a few minutes later with a packet of cookies and his own cup of tea. He sits at the other end of the couch, kicks his feet up into the coffee table and flicks through their watch history. Alex is still looking at Henry when he sees the screen for Empire appear on the TV in his periphery.

He turns to steadily meet Alex’s gaze. “Do you want to be left alone?” 

Alex shifts his hips further down the couch and stretches his legs out to put his feet in Henry’s lap, and Henry’s eyes crinkle with his smile.

“Can I touch?”

Alex looks away and nods, and Henry’s hand curls loosely around his shin. He presses play on the movie and strokes idly at the hairy skin of Alex’s ankle, and Alex glances over to see Henry’s easy, leisurely smile as he slides his thumb under Alex’s sock. Alex flinches. 

“Sorry,” Henry says, removing his hands from Alex entirely. 

“Tickles,” Alex mumbles, blankly watching the opening crawl transition into the first scene. “‘S fine.” 

Henry’s hand returns to his ankle. The other curls around his mug and he takes a sip of his tea, closing his eyes as he swallows. 

“You’re staring again.”

“You’re pretty,” Alex says. “‘S a nice distraction.” 

Henry’s lip quirks up into a smirk and he raises an eyebrow, eyes still on the screen. But Alex knows from just the audio and lighting that nothing particularly interesting is happening at that moment. “The second best Star Wars movie isn’t good enough for you?” 

Alex hums noncommittally. “First best,” he says automatically. 

“And yet you’re still watching me?” Henry’s eyes are blankly focused on the screen, though the return of the slight furrow to his brow and pinch to his mouth betray the true focus of his attention. He turns his head just slightly to look over at Alex, and then he turns back and takes a long sip of his tea.

Alex turns away abruptly. Something is shifting in his head; the comfort that Henry and his visage usually are is suddenly and unexpectedly only reminding Alex of what he’s not, and he sort of feels like throwing up. He lifts his feet from Henry’s lap and draws his knees to his chest. His elbows land on his knees and he presses his face into his arms, letting his hands flop behind his head. 

“I think I should go to bed.”

“Alex…”

“Don’t.” He can’t handle Henry’s compassion right not, even though the ice in his own voice is making his own eyes grow hot with tears. “Please,” he says into his arms, “Just… don’t, okay? I can’t do this right now.” He swallows and takes a shuddering breath, then he stumbles to his feet and down the hall without looking anywhere near Henry.

He dives into the spare bed as is and tosses and turns for a while, listening to Henry putter around and turn off lights; imagining the concerned furrow to his brow; feeling his worry through the closed door between them.

He takes a breath that isn’t quite deep enough and strips off his sweatshirt and binder, then he clenches his jaw while he pulls on a sports bra and one of Henry’s hoodies. He takes a picture of the binder in his lap to send to Henry before tossing it to the end of the bed with the sweatshirt. Then he throws himself under the blankets and begs for sleep.

Less than a minute later, Henry texts back, Proud of you. Goodnight, love x.

Alex wakes with an aching back and shoulders and a whole lot of guilt. He decides he can afford to skip the one class he has today while he figures out something nice he can do for Henry and takes a much-needed break from his binder. His dysphoria is blessedly much more quiet today, so after a hot shower to dull the ache, he gets dressed in black leggings and an oversized hoodie over his bare chest.

He steels himself before heading out into the living room and then deflates when he realises the person puttering around in the kitchen isn’t Henry after all. He shuffles over to sit at the island, unnerved by Pez’s uncharacteristic demureness.

“Coffee, darling?”

“Um. Sure. Thanks.” Alex watches warily as Pez nods and sets about making coffee. “What’re you doin’ here? Where’s Henry? Did I scare him off last night?”

Pez twists to look at him over her shoulder, raising an eyebrow suggestively. “Ooh, do tell!” they say delightedly, “What happened last night?”

“Nothing fun,” Alex grumbles, “Cool it. I just… I was a bit mopey. And I might’ve… shouted at him.”

“Oh.”

Alex rubs his hands over his face and mumbles, “Yeah.” He frowns into his hands and then looks up at Pez. “I don’t think he was upset, though? He sort of…” He wrinkles his nose and scratches at his thigh. “…took care of me after?”

Pez cocks their head as their eyes flit over Alex’s face and then quickly up and down his body. “Did you need taking care of? Want to tell me what happened?”

He shrugs and takes a sip of the coffee Pez slides over. “Bad dysphoria day. Bit his head off when he reminded me to take off my binder.”

“Ah. Understandable, if a bit unfortunate.” She reaches across the island to push his curls out of his eyes. “I’m sure he’s not too upset. He’s not one to hold grudges, especially not against someone as special as you are, darling.”

“So it’s just a coincidence that he disappeared before I woke up?”

Pez raises a sharp brow that matches the electric blue of their hair. “It is ten a.m. and he does have something vaguely resembling a life.” She smiles fondly. “It’s Thursday morning, poppet. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, then it’s not my place to tell you.”

“Oh. Yeah. Therapy.”

“Huh,” they say, “He did tell you.”

“You’re surprised?”

“Not surprised. Proud.”

Alex nods slowly. “Yeah, me too,” he says. “So, are you just here to babysit me? Got any more recipes for apology desserts in that beautiful head of yours?”

Henry comes home while Alex is showing Pez his abuelo’s trusty trick for separating eggs for the tres leches cake that she’d convinced him would mean far more to Henry than any of her recipes.

Alex shoves the bowl of yolks into Pez’s hand, stalks across the room and all but leaps into Henry’s arms. “I’m sorry,” he says into Henry’s shoulder, “Thank you for being so lovely even when I’m being a jerk.”

Henry’s arms come up around him and hold him tight. “Not to worry, love. You were having a bad day. I’m sorry for not noticing how uncomfortable you were.”

Alex squeezes him tighter and tighter until Henry lets out a choked laugh, then he pulls back and stands up on his toes to smack a kiss to Henry’s cheek. “Cool. So. Um. I was trying to surprise you, but we got a bit distracted, so. Wanna learn how to make tres leches?”

Henry is still asleep when Alex gets back after his morning class—soaking wet just from the run between the car and Henry’s building. It’s eleven a.m. which means it is a little unusual but not completely out of the ordinary—Henry’s insomnia means he sleeps when he can, even if that means he occasionally becomes almost nocturnal.

Alex has a shower and pulls on grey sweatpants and a black lace bralette before sneaking into Henry’s room to steal a sweatshirt. He opens the dresser drawer slowly and quietly, but Henry still stirs, releasing a grumbly little groan. Alex peeks over his shoulder with a sappy smile and turns around to watch Henry slowly wake up.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he says quietly, and he’s just pulling a zip-up hoodie over his shoulders when Henry finally cracks his eyes open.

He blinks blearily at Alex’s chest and mumbles, “Tha’s cute.”

“Yeah? Stole it from June,” Alex says, holding the hoodie open so he can peer down at the bralette. His body has changed since he last wore it; he’s getting hairy and his chest spills out a bit now that he’s a little broader, but it’s still just as cute. He grins at Henry. “Well. Stole it back. I let her at all my pretty things before I realised I still like them sometimes.” He lets his arms fall back by his sides and shuffles over to sit on the bed by Henry’s hip. “You all right?” he says, stroking a hand over Henry’s hair. “Have you not been sleeping well?”

“Jus’ a little under the weather. I’ll be right in a few days.”

“Sick or sad?” Alex says, moving his hand down to Henry’s forehead to check his temperature with the back of his hand. “Or both?”

Henry turns his face away and mumbles, “Sick. You should prob’ly go before I get my germs all over you. Pez’ll be over later to make sure I’m not dead. Said you could stay wi’them until ’m better.”

“You stupid fuck,” Alex says softly, “I’m not leaving you.”

Henry makes a pathetic whining noise, and Alex has to press his lips together so he doesn’t laugh. But Henry’s a perceptive asshole, even on the brink of death, and he grumbles and bats weakly at Alex’s shoulder. “Mean.”

“Adorable.”

Henry frowns and tilts his head, leaving his blond hair splayed across the pillow. “You or me?”

Alex grins. “Both,” he decides.

Henry rolls over and mumbles, “Half true.”

“Completely true,” Alex counters.

“Think you could make tea if you’re going to stay and continue being a nuisance?” Henry says, half into his pillow.

Alex sighs around his smile. He tucks Henry’s blanket around him and teases, “Should’ve known a rich, royal white boy would be a terrible, mopey patient.”

Henry tenses and he slowly turns onto his back with a frown. “I’m allowed to be miserable. I told you you didn’t have to stay.”

Alex takes his hands off Henry and folds them in his lap. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Hey. It’s all right,” Henry says, reaching clumsily for Alex’s hands. “You couldn’t have known,” he says gently, “but…”

“You don’t have to explain—”

“I’ve been working on this with my therapist—believing that I’m allowed to take up space. I’m allowed to be miserable and not pretend otherwise. I’m allowed to want to be taken care of.”

“Oh,” Alex says, “I’m sorry, Hen. You’re right; that’s definitely all true.” He idly strokes Henry’s hands with his thumbs as he tries to get them back on track. “But by the same logic,” he adds gently, “I’m allowed to want to stay and take care of you, don’t you think?”

“Bit hypocritical, don’t you think?” Henry fires back.

Alex’s mouth goes dry. He frowns, lips parting like he has any idea what to say before he shuts his mouth and looks down at their hands.

“I didn’t mean… We don’t have to do this right now,” Henry says.

“Right,” Alex says weakly. “Um. You should… Sleep. Or—Tea? I’ll make tea.” He awkwardly pats Henry’s hand and stands up, tucks Henry’s blanket around him and books it out of the room.

Henry sleeps for another four hours. In that time, Alex has finished the essay he was assigned that morning, called his dad, called Pez, had three more cups of coffee and cleaned the whole apartment. When he finally hears Henry tumble out of his room and down the hall to the bathroom, he puts the kettle on and texts Pez to confirm that he hasn’t let her best friend perish as Henry is, in fact, still alive.

“Mornin’, sweetheart,” Alex says when Henry drags himself into the living room in his PJs and fluffy socks.

He frowns at Alex across the room and blinks drowsily. “Are you being cute or did I sleep for a whole day?”

“I’m always cute,” Alex says brightly, all wide-eyed innocence. “You even said so earlier.”

“I’m sick,” Henry says petulantly, “And exhausted. I can’t be trusted to know which way is up right now.”

Alex points at the ceiling. “Up,” he says. He points the floor. “Down.” He plasters on a dazzling smile, points at his own face and says, “Cute.” He points at Henry with the other hand and adds, “Also cute.”

“Cute,” he mumbles dubiously, wrinkling his nose and sniffling. “I think y’mean disgusting.” His eyes fall shut and he sways on the spot a little.

“Sit your cute ass down. If you pass out on the floor, I’m leaving you there,” Alex says, rolling his eyes. “I’m making tea. You hungry?”

Henry slowly smiles and opens his eyes, gazing adoringly at Alex for a minute before nodding and shuffling over to collapse on the couch. Alex finishes the tea and takes it over, pulling the coffee table closer to the couch so Henry can reach it more easily. He fusses with pillows and blankets, creating a soft little cocoon for Henry to curl up in, and he makes sure he has tissues, cold meds and the TV remote in reach.

He heads back to the kitchen, heats up some soup and carries it carefully to the living room. “Oscar Diaz’s caldo de pollo,” Alex says, placing the bowl gently on the coffee table so he can push at Henry’s shoulders to make him sit up. “I had him dial down the spice for you. Not completely, though, because that shit’s good for you, but you should be able to handle it.”

Henry looks down at the bowl Alex places in his lap and then blinks up at him. “Your dad… made me soup?”

“Yep! It’s got—”

“But… why?”

“Because I told him you were sick?” Alex says slowly, sinking to his knees on the rug so Henry doesn’t have to crane his neck to look up at him. “I called to ask him for the recipe but he wanted to make it for you.”

Henry’s whole face scrunches up with his adorable pouty frown. “It’s a weekday. Isn’t he working?”

“He took the afternoon off,” he says with a shrug. “Dude, he offered to take a few days off to come take care of you.”

“What?” Henry croaks.

Alex smiles sadly. He wants to take Henry’s hand, but he’s busy cradling the bowl of soup like it’s a newborn baby or an Austen edition he hasn’t yet added to his collection. He squeezes Henry’s thigh through the blanket instead. “Henry. Sweetheart. You have people here. You have family. You’ve got me and Pez and June and Pa. You have people who want to take care of you.”

“Oh,” he says, staring at Alex with wide eyes. Then he blinks, suddenly averting his eyes and gazing into the soup instead. He clears his throat. “Um. Do you think you could get me a glass of water, please?” he says faintly.

Alex gives him a softly teasing smile. “You want me to go away so I won’t see you cry, huh?”

“Alex, please,” Henry says weakly.

He reaches out to push Henry’s hair out of his eyes, letting his hand brush against his warm cheek before dropping onto Henry’s knee. “No,” he says, “I won’t ever let you cry alone.”

Henry laughs wetly, shoving feebly at Alex’s shoulder as a few tears slip out and drag down his cheeks. He calls Alex a proper sap and Alex doesn’t argue, because he’s right.

Alex continues fussing over Henry and a few days later, once he’s mostly recovered, they dump themselves on the couch with hot chocolates and an abundance of cookies to watch a movie.

“Can we talk about it now?” Henry asks casually, suspiciously focused on dunking a fancy British cookie in his drink.

“Talk about what?” Alex says. He slurps his hot chocolate obnoxiously. “Your adorable habit of calling cookies biscuits and ruining your fancy ass biscuits in the cheap cocoa you like?” He winces when all he gets in response is a frown and exactly zero sassy comebacks. “Fine,” he grumbles. “Hit me. Do your fuckin’ worst, sweetheart.”

“You care for me, yes?” Henry asks, which is… not exactly what Alex had been bracing himself for.

“Um. Yeah. Course.”

“So, it’s not completely inconceivable that I would care for you?”

“Well. No. I never said you didn’t.”

Henry nods slowly. “I suppose that’s true,” he says thoughtfully. He looks pained—mouth pinched, brow furrowed, eyes sad and kind in a way that makes Alex’s elbow itch. “You said you didn’t deserve it.”

“Yeah, I guess I need therapy or whatever,” Alex says facetiously. “Cool. Painful conversation over?”

“Alex.”

“Henry.”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” he says carefully, “You can tell me to shut up and I’ll drop it and put the movie on. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“But you have more to say,” Alex finishes for him. He sighs. “Go on, then.” One painful conversation about feelings is enough; he doesn’t want to suffer through this again the next time Henry decides Alex needs therapy.

Henry studies him for a moment before carefully saying, “June moved across the country with you twice,” he says. “And if your dad was willing to drop everything for me for a bloody head cold, imagine what he’d do for you, love. If he knew—” He shakes his head, lips twitching like he might cry. He takes a deep, shuddering breath and closes his eyes until he seems a little steadier. “You were so good to me when I was ill—you’re always so good to me—and I just wish you could believe that you’re worth the same care.”

“Aren’t you being a little hypocritical now? When you were ill, you told me to go stay at Pez’s and then practically started bawling when you found out Pa cooked for you.”

Henry shakes his head quickly. “No. No. I know I deserve to have people love and take care of me; I just didn’t realise I had quite so many people who were so willing to do so.” He wets his lip and says, “Alex, what remains of my family… They don’t love me. Except Bea. So outside of her and Pez, I’ve never had that until now.

“When we were children, Bea and I were often left with only Philip or the staff to watch over us.” He smiles wryly. “And we very quickly learned that we weren’t going to be… indulged just because we were ill, that it was easier to pretend we were all well and fine and just get on with it. And after Dad got sick, well. A little virus was nothing compared to cancer, so…”

“Fuck.” Alex fumbles to take Henry’s hands, holding them tightly in his own. “Sweetheart…”

Henry squeezes back. “You know you have people who love you and would do anything for you. You believe that they care for you. But for whatever reason, you just don’t think you deserve it.”

“Huh.” Alex had told Henry that bit once, accidentally, but he was sort of hoping he would just… forget about it. Or pretend he didn’t hear it. Not force Alex to confront all the fragile bits and pieces of his chaotic psyche. He wasn’t quite prepared to do this tonight, and he’s not sure what to do with it all, except perhaps shove all these thoughts and evil, troublesome feelings into the farthest cobwebby corner of his brain.

Henry narrows his eyes, mouth drawn into a grumpy, flat line.

“No, I get it,” Alex says begrudgingly, “You’re… right.”

“I usually am,” Henry says pleasantly.

But Alex is hardly listening. He nods absently and focuses on all the feelings he’s been having about wanting to look after Henry, even before his cold—making lists of recipes Henry might like, learning how to make his tea, tucking him into bed, tattling to Pez when he slacks off on taking care of himself. For once, Alex really tries to believe he’s worthy of the same love and kindness. Henry has done many of the same things for Alex, and Alex has let him purely because he didn’t notice it was happening until it was too late to stop him. But maybe Henry’s not such a good example. Maybe Henry’s just too good. Too nice. He’d probably take care of anyone, make sure anyone had the bare minimum of a safe place to hang out, even if they didn’t deserve it.

“Alex,” Henry says, “Stop it. Stop thinking.” He takes a breath, winces pre-emptively and very clumsily says, “Te lo mereces todo, mi amor.”

“Henry?”

“Yes, love?” he says carefully.

“Do you think you could get me a glass of water?”

Henry laughs, sounding terribly relieved. “Absolutely not. Come here, darling.”

Alex blinks quickly. It has the opposite of the intended effect and pushes his tears out to slide pathetically down his cheeks. He swipes at them and chuckles self-consciously, but Henry just gives him a tender smile, shakes his head and engulfs Alex in a warm, protective hug. It makes his chest squeeze with feelings he’s not sure he’s quite ready to face, but he thinks he finally gets it.

“Your Spanish pronunciation is shit, H,” he mumbles against Henry’s chest, smiling into his t-shirt when Henry’s laugh rumbles through them both.

“Guess you’ll have to stick around and teach me, hm?”

“Yeah,” Alex says, “Yeah, I will.” He squeezes his arms around Henry’s middle and adds, “Can’t let you embarrass me like that again,” which is well worth the ensuing scuffle. They end up in a tangled heap on the floor, pressed up against each other and each pinned by various limbs and caught in blankets, panting heavily. Henry lands a smack to Alex’s bum and doesn’t bother picking his hand back up, so Alex thinks he’s won. 

When Alex lets himself into the apartment after his afternoon class, he shuffles tiredly down the hall to find Princess Beatrice sitting on Henry’s couch. She’s already halfway to her feet when she looks over at him, and her easy smile falls in confusion.

“Oh,” she says softly.

“Shit, sorry,” Alex says, “You’re—I’m—”

“We’ve met,” she reminds him kindly, straightening up and crossing the room. “It’s good to finally meet you as yourself, though. Remind me of your name and pronouns?” 

Alex smiles despite his confusion, ridiculously warmed that she’d asked. It had been all over all forms of media when he came out as trans, but he likes that she’d thought to ask him directly. “Alex,” he says, “he/him. Uh. Do I—What should I—” He’s pretty sure he doesn’t have to do the whole HRH thing, but he doesn’t exactly need to be on the bad side of yet another royal. She’s always been kind to him.

“Alex,” she says with a warm smile, “Call me Bea, love. She/her.” She eyes the keys in his hand as she floats around the island into the kitchen. “You’re my brother’s… partner?” 

“Uh, no, no. We’re…” He shakes his head. “Sorry, what are you—What’re you doing here? Should I go, or—?”

“I came to surprise Henry.” Her gaze sweeps around the apartment, littered with Alex’s things as much as Henry’s, and she says, “Had I known before I arrived that he no longer lived alone, I’d have called, at least. I only meant to intrude on Henry’s space, not anyone else’s. I apologise for inadvertently invading your home as well.” 

“Oh, no, I don’t actually live here. I just—”

Bea lifts a sharp eyebrow. “Have your own set of keys and let yourself in while Henry’s out?” 

Alex grins. “Yep.” 

Curiously, she smiles like he’s passed some sort of test. “You should stay if you like,” she says, “Though you don’t have to, of course; I realise I wasn’t exactly in your plans. But I assume there’s a reason you’re here.” 

He nods gravely. “Asshole roommate at school.” 

“Ah, I see. May I ask why you don’t live here, then? I can’t imagine Hen wouldn’t have offered.” 

Alex groans. “Sorry,” he snaps, “but what is it with you two and trying to force charity on the queer Mexican kid? Do y’all need a fucking pet or something?” 

“Alex.” 

Fuck. Alex turns around to see Henry standing at the end of the entry hall. He looks between Alex and Bea, eyes wide and concerned and… hurt? Angry? Alex doesn’t care to find out.  

“Fucking hell,” Alex mutters. He picks up his bag and turns to Bea. “My apologies, Your Royal Highness.” He stomps down the hall, muttering, “I’ll get out of your fucking way,” and Henry grabs at his arm before Alex shakes him off and slips out the front door. 

So much for not pissing off the royal family.

When he steps out of the elevator on the ground floor, Henry’s there waiting for him, chest heaving with his breath. Henry swallows and he takes a step to the side so Alex is still able to leave the building if he wants to, which is ultimately what makes him pause. They know one another. Deeply. Henry knows he wants to flee and he’s letting him go, but trusting—hoping he’ll choose to stay.

“I’m sorry,” Henry says. 

Alex’s brows fly up and then slowly scrunch into a frown. “What?” 

“I’m sorry. Bea’s sorry too, if that makes any difference. Look, I—” He pauses to take some breaths, looking stricken but somehow still annoyingly collected. “You can leave, obviously, if that’s what you want. But we’d both like it if you came back up for dinner. All three of us had different pieces of different stories that led to that—” He waves a hand at the ceiling and pushes out a breath. “—eight-fold misunderstanding. We could—We could talk it out. If you wanted.” 

Alex cocks his hip and watches Henry’s chest as his breath slows and his posture relaxes. “Therapy looks good on you,” he says. His mouth pinches and he sighs through his nose. “Fine. Fuck. I hate being a mature adult sometimes.” He’s not even mad, not now that he’s had more than two seconds to respond instead of react, and he’s not so stubborn that he’d walk out and let Henry simmer in his guilt. He’d not even done anything wrong.  Alex isn’t sure any of them had.

“You don’t have to,” Henry says. “We’d understand.” 

Alex sighs again, rubbing a hand down his face. “No. No, it’s fine. It’s good.” He drops his hand and looks at Henry. “Does your sister like pastries?” 

Henry frowns before slowly nodding. “Anything filled with sugar.”

“Okay. Okay. I’m gonna go for a walk.” He checks his phone. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes and we can try all this again. That all right?” 

Henry watches warily as he starts walking backward to the door.

“I’m coming back,” Alex says. When Henry finally gives him a short nod, Alex turns and heads outside.

Alex lets himself into the building but knocks on the apartment door—which he hasn’t done since the very first time he was here. Henry swings the door open and sweeps him up into a lingering hug.

“Sap,” Alex mutters against Henry’s shoulder, squeezing him tighter for a moment before shoving him back. He slips down the hall and into the kitchen and plants himself across from Bea where she’s sitting at the island. He slides the paper bakery bag onto the counter and holds out a hand. “Hi. I’m Alex; I’m Henry’s friend. It’s lovely to see you.” 

“Bea,” she says, delicately shaking his hand, “I’m Henry’s favourite sister.” 

“You’re my only sister,” Henry mutters behind her.

“And therefore,” she insists, “also your favourite.” 

Henry snorts. “Yes, and that’s so important to point out because favourite by default is such an excellent brag.” 

Alex raises his eyebrows at Henry over her head and says, “I think it’s a good brag.”

Bea gives him a bright smile and Henry sighs loudly, flicking a lock of Bea’s hair.

“You two get a chance to catch up?” Alex asks.

“Yes, yes, we did the whole ‘what the hell are you doing here’ thing,” Bea says, waving a hand dismissively. “Alex, I apologise for—”

“No, it’s fine. I—” He pauses and shakes his head and says, “I’m sorry. I just. It’s a touchy subject, that’s all.”

“We’re good, then,” Bea says firmly. She twists to look at Henry. “You’re good?”

“Er,” Henry says.

Alex rolls his eyes and turns around to fill the kettle and set it boiling. When he turns back around, Henry has sat himself down next to Bea.

“We should talk about it, right?” Henry says carefully.

Alex sighs dreamily, stooping to prop his elbows on the bench and put his chin in his hands, smiling adoringly at Henry. “I taught you so well.” He laughs and straightens up as Henry rolls his eyes, then he turns around to pull mugs from the cupboard, tosses the box of tea onto the island behind him and sets the mugs down more carefully. “But nah, I’m good if everyone else is.”

“This is your doing?” Bea asks Alex, though she’s looking at Henry with raised eyebrows and eyes wide with careful surprise.  

“Nah,” he says as he drops a teabag into each mug, “it’s all Henry. I just… encouraged it. Very loudly. When we first reconnected here.” 

Bea’s brow pinches. 

“We had some… arguments,” Henry offers. 

“Ah,” she says, “like old times, huh?” 

Alex and Henry grimace in tandem.

Bea chuckles. “How’d we get here, then?” she asks. An uncomfortable wave of quiet passes but Bea doesn’t seem fazed. “Shall we change the topic?” she says, sweeping an easy, subtly assessing look between the two of them. It should feel tactless and awkward, but instead, Alex feels strangely comforted by it. “How about your family? How’s June?” 

Alex latches onto the subject change eagerly, launching into anecdotes and teasing Henry about the time they made empanadas with her, even though Alex did objectively worse that day. “She’d love to catch up if you’ll be in town for a little while. She always liked you.”

“I’m here for two weeks,” she says, “Provided Hen doesn’t get sick of me before that.”

“Hey, you’ll be here for Thanksgiving,” Alex says, “We’re doing a whole thing at Dad’s; y’all should come. Ma, Leo and Nora are coming down from D.C. too.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t want to impose—” Bea says, and Alex rolls his eyes.

“Am I gonna have to have the same talk with you that I had with Henry? Y’all are family. You’re comin’ to Thanksgiving.”

“Well, since you offered so kindly—”

“Insisted obnoxiously,” Henry says under his breath.

Alex chucks a tea bag at his face and Henry catches it out of the fucking air and tucks it carefully into his pocket. So—like a mature fucking adult, thank you very much—Alex sticks his tongue out.

Alex offers to cook so Henry and Bea can catch up properly, but they both wave him off and insist they’re more than happy with takeout. They sprawl out across various surfaces of the living room with pizza and some terrible old British sitcom that Bea insists they watch.

“It’s tradition, Henry!”

“We have company, Beatrice!”

“I really don’t mind, y’all.”

So they eat and catch each other up on their lives—though Bea and Alex have more material for each other—and they watch the show and make fun of it loudly until Bea starts yawning and Alex slips out to get the guest room ready for her.

He’s stripped the bed and is tidying his clumsy piles of textbooks, pens and clothes when Bea appears in the doorway and leans her hip against the jamb.

“Sorry,” he says, balling the sheets up in his arms, “I’m a bit of a mess. I’ll be out of your way in a minute.”

Bea’s frowning. She tilts her head a little and says, “Not sure I understand, love.”

Alex stops. “I’m, uh… sorting out the room for you?”

He slips past her and down the hall to the laundry to dump the sheets in the washer, shouting out at Henry to let him know to set it off in the morning. He pulls a fresh set of sheets from the cupboard—soft grey ones that have become his favourite—and swipes at the stray sock hanging from the lip of the dryer. He starts down the hall and tosses the sock into Henry’s room, then pauses again to straighten the floor runner with his toes. When he’s satisfied with that, he looks back up to find that Bea is watching him curiously, still standing in the doorway of the spare room.

And the ominous, very early beginnings of a Thought occur to Alex. A thread pulls loose in his brain, and for once, he resists the urge to tug on it until it unravels completely and inevitably overwhelms him. He lets the vague feeling register, though—the easy nature of it all, how comfortable he is here—but instead of letting it spiral into actual, tangible thoughts he might have to deal with, he just lets himself live in the feeling.

Alex has to slide back past Bea to drop the clean sheets on the bed, and he’s pulling the fitted sheet over the second corner, trying to ignore that she’s watching him, when she sighs exasperatedly and strides forward to help him tug the sheet over the last two corners.  

“Alex,” she says slowly. “You didn’t have to do any of this. If you were planning on staying, you should stay. I’m the one who’s shaken everything up; Pez loves a good sleepover or I can get a hotel. I’m flexible.”

“Nah, it’s cool. You’re here to hang with Henry,” he says, “I’ve got my dorm to go back to anyway.” He shoves back the frustrated noise he wants to let out when he hears light footsteps stop in the doorway. He turns around to see Henry frowning at him.

“You’re leaving? I thought you’d stay here tonight.” Henry glances out the bedroom window before pinning Alex with his gaze. “It’s late.”

“I’ll be fine, dude. I managed just fine before you. I’m just in y’alls way here anyway.” 

Henry, halfway toward wrinkling his nose at being called dude, falters and actually stumbles a step backward as Alex finishes talking. He and Bea are both staring at him, both inexplicably looking sad.

Alex really doesn’t want to do this, now or ever. “Fucking hell. I’ll sleep on the couch, then.” 

“Share with Henry,” Bea offers after another tense moment. “He’s a good cuddler.” 

“Bea,” Henry says sharply before he turns his gaze on Alex. “I’ll sleep on the sofa. You take my bed for the night. Then… we’ll figure the rest out in the morning.” 

“What’re you talking about? I’ll just go back to my dorm. Y’know, where I live. And you two can have your own beds and make the most of Bea’s visit. I don’t get why you’re both being so weird about this.” 

Henry rubs a hand over his face and squeezes his temples. He looks sharply up at Alex and says, “I’ll deal with you tomorrow.” He says goodnight to Bea and herds Alex into the other bedroom. “Are you comfortable sharing the bed?”

“If I say no, are you gonna let me sleep on the couch?”

“No,” Henry says.

“Then sure.”

Henry huffs and he draws his brows into a concerned frown before he quickly clears his expression and nods. “All right.”

Alex grins. “Aw, you’re learning!”

“No need to point it out,” Henry mutters. “You’re a nightmare.”

“Would it help if I enthusiastically consent to sleeping with you?”

Henry narrows his eyes. “No.”

Alex laughs and lets his face fall into a pout. “Boring.”

“I trust that you’d tell me if you really didn’t want to do this,” Henry says. And though it does up like a question toward the end, Alex counts this whole thing as a win, even if he hasn’t really had a second to actually think about what they’re doing.

“I would,” Alex says. “Really, I don’t mind. I… don’t want to go back to the dorm.”

“Finally ready to admit that, are you?”

“Tonight, I mean,” Alex adds quickly.

All at once, Henry rolls his eyes, sighs and shakes his head. It makes Alex’s mouth pick up in a cheery smirk, which of course makes Henry roll his eyes again. “Do you have a change of clothes here at the moment or do you need to borrow something?”

Alex pointedly doesn’t look at his sweatshirt on Henry’s desk. And he knows there’s a hoodie on the back of a chair at the dining table and a t-shirt of his behind the couch cushions and about half of his closet shoved into the drawers in the spare bedroom, but he finds himself saying, “Yeah, can I borrow a t-shirt?”

Henry opens a drawer and tosses him an oversized faded black tee. “Bottoms?”

“Uh… nah,” he says, then adds, “If that’s all right?”

Henry shrugs and shakes his head, waving him off to go change and brush his teeth first.

Alex shuffles back into the bedroom in his boxers and Henry’s t-shirt, and he sits at the foot of the bed and flops back while he waits for Henry to finish his turn. He hears the bedroom door open but it doesn’t close, and, instead, he can feel Henry hovering awkwardly in the doorway. He pushes up on his elbows and peers over at him. “Hen?”

“Er, I should tell you. Bea wasn’t kidding about me being a cuddler,” Henry says carefully, “I’ll—It’s just… I might reach for you during the night. Is that…”

“Fine by me, sweetheart. Let’s see how good these cuddles really are.”

They get into bed and wrestle the blanket back and forth—though they both know it’s more than big enough for the both of them—until Alex’s stubborn competitive nature is forcibly evicted by soft sleepiness and Henry’s physical and metaphorical warmth. He shifts closer, tucking himself against Henry’s side, and then rolls over to put his back to him, just barely catching Henry’s confused frown as he does. So he gently kicks a leg back to slot his ankle between Henry’s and presses his back more firmly against Henry’s chest.

“Oh,” Henry whispers, “Can I…”

Alex huffs and fumbles for his hand, bringing it over his waist and around his middle. Henry splays his hand across Alex’s stomach to pull him a little closer and then he gently tucks his fingers between Alex’s side and the mattress. He presses his face into the back of Alex’s neck, and Alex feels a sleepy, contented sigh against his skin.

“Goodnight, m’love.”

Alex wakes up pleasantly warm, pinned to the bed by Henry’s shirtless torso and a thick thigh thrown over his legs. He grins and pokes at Henry’s cheek where his face is pressed against Alex’s chest, but he predictably doesn’t even stir. Alex yawns and blinks blearily, searching the room for some context clues. Through the gap in Henry’s curtains, it’s clear that the sun is well and truly up, but otherwise, the only thing different from when they’d gone to bed is that the t-shirt Henry was wearing is now in a crumpled pile in the corner like it’d been thrown there during the night.

Alex traces the soft line of Henry’s back, fingers stuttering up pale skin just slightly sticky with sweat. He spends a few minutes connecting freckles and moles by touch alone and then brings his hand up to cradle the back of Henry’s head, fingers threaded through his soft hair.

“Mmph, s’rry,” Henry mumbles, shifting his weight off Alex until all that’s left is an arm thrown over his waist and a handsome face squashed against his arm. Alex is just about to try slipping out from under him when Henry’s arm curls around him so snugly that his hand ends up wedged under Alex’s back. “You’re not leaving?”

“Well… now that I have all my limbs back, I was hoping to get some coffee.”

“No. Stay.”

Alex laughs until Henry frowns against his arm. He just smiles and shakes his head. “Shh, sweetheart, just go back to sleep.”

“No.”

“What if I promise to come right back and bring tea?” He feels Henry’s eyebrows raise consideringly where his face is still pressed against Alex’s arm, and he has to bite his hand to stifle a laugh.

“Stop laughing at me.”

“Stop being adorable, then.”

“No.”

“Henry. Sweetheart,” Alex says through his laughter, completely giving up on trying to stop it.

Henry frowns again and slowly uncurls his arm so it’s only lightly resting over Alex’s hip, just in time for his breathing to even out as he drifts back to sleep. Alex smiles in the way that’s automatic and far too forgiving, and he finally slips out of bed.

He ignores his own sweatshirt on the desk and steals one of Henry’s before shoving his binder under his arm and slipping out of the room, quietly closing the door behind himself. He makes a bleary beeline for the kitchen, mechanically prepares his coffee in his stupid Ewok mug and drinks it alongside his breakfast—a bowl of dry cereal that he eats with his hand while he checks his phone. His dishes go in the sink before he shuffles down the hall to start the washing, and then he slips into the bathroom to put his binder on.

When he looks in the mirror, he feels a wave of warmth wash over him. In Henry’s loopy handwriting, and right in the centre where it wasn’t the night before, is a reminder for Alex to do his T shot. He does his shot and replaces the reminder with a terrible drawing of an angel and a little heart. He picks a different colour marker from the little cup in the corner of the vanity and adds a little thank you message for Bea. She hadn’t mentioned the various notes and reminders all around the edges of the mirror the previous night, but there’s no doubt that she’d seen it, and she more than deserves some credit for her method.

His plan is to head out and find breakfast so no one has to cook, but on his way through the kitchen, his eyes catch on the fridge and the little collection of sticky notes and torn-off corners of notebook paper under mismatched magnets. He’s stuck staring at the first one, the pink sticky note Alex stuck on the front door the first time he broke in—Alex is here. Don’t freak out—when quiet noises down the hall make him turn around.

Henry’s shuffling over and rubbing a hand over his eyes while he yawns. And he’s wearing one of Alex’s sweatshirts. His favourite green one he’d left on Henry’s desk the other day. And oh, the loose thread in his brain slowly unspools and those pesky feelings and memories and Thoughts turn into a pesky, unavoidable conclusion.  

He turns around and starts making Henry’s tea.

“Morning,” Henry mumbles behind him. “Sleep okay?”

“Mm,” Alex says absently. “Ten outta ten on the whole cuddle front, if you were wonderin’.” He glances over his shoulder at Henry right as he wrinkles his nose, cheeks flushed and smiling bashfully.

“Please don’t tell Bea that she was right.”

“Oh,” Alex says, “I’m definitely telling her. It’s my job as your—It’s my job to gang up on you with your older sister.”

“Hm, I’ll remember that the next time we see June, then, shall I?”

Alex turns and slides the tea across the counter. “Truce?” he offers.

Henry raises an eyebrow consideringly. “Sure,” he says. “Thanks, love.” He loosely curls his hands around the mug, dragging it to the very edge of the counter to press its warmth into his chest, and Alex watches helplessly as something settles deep in his own chest.

“I live here, don’t I?” Alex says quietly. 

Henry looks up from his tea with a soft but completely fucking delighted smirk on his face. “Afraid so. Finally noticed?” 

“I… But I—” His breath shudders in his chest. 

One of Henry’s brows lifts in mild surprise. “Alex, darling,” he says blandly, “you need to breathe.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” 

Henry rolls his eyes. “Don’t die of oxygen deprivation in my kitchen,” he counters. 

“I thought it was our kitchen.” 

“You’ve thought that for about six seconds,” Henry says, waving his hand dismissively, “Forgive me if I haven’t caught up with your ridiculous brain yet.” He tilts his head and contemplates Alex. “Alex, darling, when was the last time you slept in your dorm?” 

He shrugs. “Not since that day you had to bring me my stupid textbook because all my shit apparently lived here before I did,” he says, although… apparently that’s not quite true. “Before that? It… wasn’t often.” He takes a long look around at the apartment, his things just at home here as he is. “I live here?” he says. 

“You do,” Henry says gently. 

“When did that happen?” 

Henry laughs. “Probably the first time you let yourself in and started eating my food. At least since we started planning our meals and doing our grocery shopping together every week.”

“Right,” Alex says faintly. That was… so many weeks ago.

“Alex, your testosterone lives in my bathroom. Your arse lives on my sofa. There are law textbooks in my bed.”

“I know.” He just didn’t… know. “So, we live together,” he says a little hysterically, “Anything else I should know? Are we married? Are you pregnant with the royal first grandchild of the United States? Am I—”

“Alex.”

“Henry,” Alex says reasonably. But there’s something in Henry’s expression that’s making him nervous. He narrows his eyes. “What?” he says, halfway between a question and a groan. “There’s more. What are you not saying?”

“Er, well. Just so you’re aware… Bea, Pez and June all know that you live here.”

“Of course they do,” Alex says weakly, and he sighs and nods in defeat, dragging a hand down his face. “Tell me how that happened?”

“Well,” Henry says slowly. “Pez and June figured it out for themselves. June sort of ambushed me about it, actually, but I asked her not to mention it to you for fear you’d stop coming ‘round and start forcing yourself to stay in the dorm.”

“Right. And she agreed, because she always has to be fuckin’ right. That sounds about right.” Alex is going to kill June, no matter how right they’d all been. That doesn’t mean they’re allowed to conspire against him.

“I think that’s you, dear,” Henry says gently. “In any case, I believe the reason you’re looking for is that she loves you.”

“Yeah, whatever. And Bea?” He flaps a hand at the room at large and says, “That’s why… the whole weird misunderstanding thing yesterday?”

“Sort of, yes,” he says slowly, “I’d—While it was all still early on and fragile, I’d sort of offhandedly mentioned that you were all but living here, thinking absolutely nothing of it. Had I known that she was going to talk to you before I could, I’d have cleared everything up with both of you first. I might’ve come clean about that yesterday, if you hadn’t insisted we didn’t need to talk about it.”

“Oh.”

Henry nods consolingly. “So… how are we feeling about all of this?”

“Well,” Alex says, “I’m not going back to my dorm, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That certainly is comforting to hear,” Henry says.

“Although,” he says, because, well. He can’t really help it. He’s tired of not being able to say it. “While we’re at it, I should probably tell you that I’m in love with you.”

“Oh,” Henry says, cheeks turning pink. “Well, I—”

“Oh my god,” Alex says. He spins around and buries his face in his hands, then slowly turns back in defeat. “You knew.”

Henry shrugs a shoulder. “Well, one can never know…”

“Motherfucker.”

Alex determinedly flicks his eyes up to meet Henry’s, and Henry smiles, easy and fond and happy. Alex is fucked. And he couldn’t be happier about it. It’s no matter that Henry hasn’t actually said anything about how he feels about any of this; for once, Alex is pretty confident everything will work out.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Alex whines.

“I didn’t want to lose you if I was wrong. Or if I was right but you weren’t yet ready to deal with it. I wasn’t even sure whether you were conscious of it.”

“Oh, I knew,” Alex says, “Since the first fuckin’ day I saw you here.”

“I’d thought we were flirting that day. But the next time I saw you, something had changed and I…”

“We were flirting,” Alex says. He’s fairly sure he never really stopped flirting, even through all their… heated arguments. “I think I was just surprised that day, but then I remembered everything else—why we’d hated each other—and I couldn’t just brush it all aside because I thought you were cute and you were finally treating me like an actual person. I couldn’t get past it without fighting it out.”

“And after we’d fought it out? What changed?”

“You did. Or—I finally got to see who you were all along,” he says, and Henry’s expression goes impossibly soft. Alex squirms. “What?”

“I love you,” Henry says.

“Shut up,” Alex says, feeling his mouth stretch into a smile. “Shut up. You do not.”

“No?” Henry says, smiling indulgently. “Why not?”

“Because…”

Henry nods patiently.

“You love me?”

“I do.”

“You love me, and I live here.”

“Yes, dear,” Henry says, rolling his eyes fondly as he starts pushing to his feet.

But Alex hears Bea down the hall and shakes his head, pointing a finger at Henry’s chest. “No,” he says reluctantly, slowly dragging his finger down and watching as Henry sinks into his seat obediently. “You stay right there or I’ll do something none of us want Bea to witness and I will not apologise for it.”

Henry looks very deeply pained, but he stays put and plasters on a smile when Bea shuffles into the kitchen.

“Talked with Pezza last night,” she says, “I’ll be staying with them the rest of my visit.” 

Alex and Henry turn toward one another and share a glance that consists of raised brows and barely-there smirks.

“Er,” Henry says.

“You could stay?” Alex says. “I don’t mind sharing with Hen for a while.”

She cocks her head and slowly, she smiles very smugly. “Oh, my. It took you bloody long enough. You two finally figured it out?”

“Something like that,” Henry says quickly. “Speaking of which—You wouldn’t happen to have plans to be… anywhere else today, would you?”

Bea wrinkles her nose. “Do not say any more words right now. Both of you be quiet while I drink my tea and then you can—”

“Tea?” Alex says, spinning around to flip the kettle back on, “I can do that.”

Bea breathes a sigh of relief and sits beside Henry. “After breakfast, you two can help me bring my things down to the car and I’ll be out of your hair until you’re at least sixty percent less disgustingly in love and have gotten—” She waves a hand between them with a grimace. “—whatever this is out of your systems.”

“Beatrice.”

Alex grins. “That might be a while,” he says, “Like, a really, really long time.”

Bea stares at him flatly. Then she reaches down, tugs a fluffy sock off her foot and throws it in Alex’s face. “No more words,” she says firmly, “It’s too bloody early.”

“It’s almost eleven,” Henry says mildly.

Bea turns her flat glare on him. Henry smirks, leans into her and mutters something so quietly that Alex doesn’t hear it. But Bea certainly does, and she stumbles out of her seat with a shriek and starts whacking at Henry with the sleeves of her robe.

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” she says between thwaps. But she’s laughing, and she eventually groans and throws her arms around Henry’s neck—in what Alex is sure is a subtle threat—and drapes herself against his back. She stands on her toes to hook her chin over Henry’s shoulder and looks across the island at Alex. “I’m happy for you both,” she says.

Alex tosses her sock in her face, looking intently at Henry. “I hope whatever that was was something sexy we can make good on later.”

“Alex,” Henry says desperately, pink cheeks darkening even further.

Bea jumps away from Henry and buries her face in her hands. “I thought I told you both to be quiet.”

“You’re in our house,” Alex says brightly, “You can leave if you don’t like it.”

Henry opens his mouth and flounders for a moment before closing it without a word. Alex grins at him and slides Bea’s tea across the island.

They eventually get Bea and her things down to the lobby, where they find Pez bouncing on their toes by the elevator.

“Darling!”

“Pezza!” Bea is… deceptively strong, it turns out. She catches Pez when they jump into her arms, and she spins them around a few times around before lowering them to their feet and pushing up on her toes to kiss their cheek.

Pez’s eyes slide from Henry to Alex and then back again. “You finally told him?”

“That I live here or that we’re, like, completely in love?” Alex asks innocently.

“Disgustingly in love,” Bea amends, wrinkling her nose despite her proud smile.

Pez doesn’t even blink. “Interesting,” she says, nodding appreciatively. “You’ve done better than I thought. Well done, darlings.”

Henry beams. “We thought so.”

“Ugh,” Bea says, “Disgusting.”

Alex rolls his eyes. “By the way, y’all are all invited to Thanksgiving at my dad’s,” he tells Pez.

“Ooh, yes please!” they say, “I’d be delighted. I can’t wait to chat with Oscar again; he’s ever so wonderful, isn’t he?”

Alex wrinkles his nose.

“When did you meet Oscar Diaz?” Henry says incredulously, swivelling to follow Pez’s gaze when she slowly turns to Alex.

He fidgets under three heavy gazes, then he sighs and lifts his chin to meet Henry’s pretty blue eyes. “I, uh… sent them over to get the soup from him when you were sick. I didn’t want to leave you alone.”

“I was asleep. I wouldn’t have missed you,” Henry says. “I mean—” He coughs and flushes. “Well. You know what I mean.”

“Maybe I woulda missed you,” Alex says.

“Oh,” Henry says softly, “All right, then.” He turns to Pez and says, “Um. Thank you?”

Bea cackles behind him and slaps him on the back. “Oh, Henry, you utter disaster. Go. Go be in love and do not, under any circumstances, tell me anything about the rest of this day. Ever.”

“I, on the other hand,” Pez says as Bea starts pulling them toward the door, “want to know everything. In all its delicious detail.”

“Absolutely not,” Henry says.

Alex starts jabbing the elevator button, but he winks at Pez over Henry’s shoulder just to watch him blush and fall forward to hide his face in the crook of Alex’s neck. Once they’re safely alone in the elevator, Henry sighs happily and takes Alex’s hand, and Alex is so giddy that he just barely fights his first instinct to bring Henry’s hand to his mouth and bite.

“This has already been the most… interesting twelve hours of my life,” Henry says.

“That sounds awfully like a challenge, sweetheart,” Alex drawls, tugging him closer.

Henry grins and leans forward to whisper in Alex’s ear, “Good.”

Alex lets out a startled laugh and shoves him away. “That’s not fair,” he whines.

“No? What are you going to do about that?” Henry says innocently. Then he pushes off the wall as the doors slide open, leaving Alex behind to stare at his ass as he swaggers out of the elevator and starts down the hall.

Alex scrambles to follow him and can’t find it in himself to be at all embarrassed when Henry laughs at him. They get inside, and Alex crowds Henry against the door as soon as it closes behind them. “Hey,” he says.

Henry brings his hands up to slide around Alex’s waist, pulling him into a warm hug. “Hey, love.”

Alex relaxes into the embrace so easily it’s like his body knows he’s home. He sniffles and smiles against Henry’s chest.

They manage to separate long enough to make tea and coffee and settle in on the couch, Alex’s feet up on the coffee table with Henry’s long legs over his lap, bum right up against the outside of Alex’s thigh.

“So,” Henry says, far, far too casually. He takes a sip of his too-hot tea, looking over his mug at Alex. “Still inviting me to meet the parents already?”

Alex rolls his eyes. “My dad’ll love you,” he says, “And you’ve already met Ma, June and Nora, and they’re the ones you’d normally have to be scared of.”

“Not as your—” Henry presses his lips together as his cheeks go pink.

“Boyfriend?” Alex suggests gently, “Nemesis turned accidental roommate turned friend turned friend you want to kiss?”

Henry scoffs. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since the moment we first ran into one another on campus.”

That’s… quite a decent amount of time, actually. Alex would know—it’s been about the same agonizing amount of time for him too. His chest squeezes and he pulls his mouth into a smirk in a weak attempt to hide how giddy and warm he’s feeling. “Only since then?” he teases, “I remember you once telling me that you were interested in me before we even met. Your would-be opening was practically a line.”

Henry raises an eyebrow. “I’m gay,” he says flatly. “At that time, I wasn’t yet aware that you are, in fact, a man.”

“Oh,” Alex says, deflating. “Right. I knew that.”

“What about you, then, Mr. I called dibs three bloody years ago? You’ve always liked men and have always known that I am one. Are you telling me you thought I was cute when we were still trading dirty looks and arguing about desserts?”

“Wrong kind of dirty,” Alex muses, then he snorts and shakes his head. “Point taken,” he says. “You’ve always been annoyingly cute in that rich white boy way, but I never thought about… us. Not until you escaped your grandmother and learned how to smile.”

“Is that an insult or a compliment?” Henry asks, tilting his head to one side and narrowing his eyes.

Alex smacks his lips thoughtfully. “I could go either way. I think I’ll let you decide.”

Henry swings his legs off Alex’s lap and pushes him back into the couch cushions, hovering over him with a wicked grin. “Which one means I might get to kiss you in the next thirty seconds?”

“Insult, definitely,” Alex breathes, nodding firmly.

“Sounds like I win either way,” Henry whispers.

Alex leans up and kisses the smirk off his face. While Henry is distracted—quite thoroughly, thank you very much—Alex prepares and executes a swift flip, landing on top of Henry with a triumphant grin. “I win.”

“Oh, bite me.”

Alex strokes Henry’s hair out of his face, watching him close his eyes and taking in his open, vulnerable position—lips parted, neck arched and head tilted invitingly—and he dips down to gently bite him where his neck meets his shoulder. Henry bucks up against him and opens his eyes to glare weakly at Alex.

“Get out of my flat, you bloody miscreant,” he says, shoving feebly at Alex’s hip until Alex pins his wrists above his head.

“It’s an apartment,” Alex says, “And it’s ours.”

“Only—”

“And,” Alex interrupts loudly, “I thought we might… put our empty apartment to good use. You know, together? Maybe have a nice cuddle. Make out. Sacrifice some babies. Do some things that might just put your grandmother into an early grave.”

“Oh?” Henry says, tilting his head and gazing innocently up at Alex. “Such as?”

Alex goes in for a kiss and Henry leans up to meet him, lips parting so easily that Alex has to pull back so his own smile doesn’t make their teeth knock together. He gives Henry’s pretty mouth another quick peck, because he simply can’t help himself now that he’s allowed, and then kisses along his jaw and drags his mouth, tongue, teeth down his neck until clothes start getting in the way. He slips his fingers into the collar of his own sweatshirt against Henry’s collarbones.

“Hey,” Alex says quietly, eyeing the tempting dip of Henry’s neck. “Will you go with me to file a report and move the rest of my stuff out of the dorm?”

“Of course,” Henry says immediately, and Alex can’t help but smile at how breathless he sounds. “Er. Later, perhaps?”

“Mm,” Alex agrees, pouting thoughtfully as his gaze is pulled back to Henry’s mouth. “Much later. Tomorrow,” he says decisively. “Maybe the next day.”

They’re both smiling into the next kiss, and Alex? Well, he’s gonna fucking cherish it.