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Alex fucking loves his job.
He gets to travel. Gets to meet new people. Gets to be openly and thoroughly admired across multiple platforms. His bank account’s already surpassed what it would’ve been if he’d secured his dream job straight out of college. In a few more years, he’ll roll up to his first high school reunion smelling of something vaguely pretentious, a Rolex strapped to his wrist and folded Ray-Bans tucked into the breast pocket of a half-unbuttoned shirt just to look everyone who told him he’d be a massive failure right between their prematurely wrinkled, beady little eyes.
And have the added pleasure of knowing they’ve all probably gotten off to the sight of him naked at least once in their lives. Alex is only a little smug.
That’s the thing about being a young, hot, charismatic adult actor who’s actively breaking stereotypes and records previously held by middle-aged straight white guys across the industry, after all. He just kind of has a way of getting what he wants these days. Free drinks at bars, VIP invites secured, never a dull spot in his calendar. In high school, his self confidence had been non-existent. Now, it feels like he’s unstoppable.
From the moment Nora talked him into submitting a model profile for a new-age, progressive, all-encompassing porn site that actually wasn’t appallingly unethical, he’s heard endless yeses. Some over contracts and script offers at fancy restaurants or film sets, thousands of other times with his own mouth occupied and a willing, writhing body beneath him. Or on top of him. Or inside of him. Whatever. His versatility is part of the appeal.
Until last year, when all of his hard work had paid off and he’d won the award for Best New Male Performer—fondly nicknamed the ‘Up-and-CUMmer’ by his friends in the industry—and had the opportunity to sit amongst all the other top dogs; people Alex had only ever seen on his own small screen in a private browser once upon a time but now knew in real life. As friends, even.
It would have been kind of magical, if not for the fact that they sat him next to Henry Fox—the man who believes himself ‘responsible' for Alex’s claim to fame.
Sure, their video is still the most popular one in Alex’s catalog. It’s Henry’s, too. He’s checked.
So, what? Just because they immediately had undeniable chemistry and went nearly an hour over their cut time because they were too caught up in each other and Alex had sort of completely forgotten they were being filmed by the end of it doesn’t mean that it meant something.
It doesn’t matter, because Henry doesn’t film with anyone twice. Ever. And the next time he’d seen Alex after that—at the awards, in front of everyone, there are pictures—he’d not only neglected to shake Alex’s hand, but then proceeded to pretend as if Alex hadn’t previously fucked him to tears for the whole damn world to see for the entirety of the event.
Alex is used to hearing yeses. He still submits another request to film with him a week later. Just to see what’ll happen. Thinks maybe Henry's playing hard to get.
At the top of his inbox the very next day, forwarded to him by his manager straight from Henry’s response—
No.
It’s not his villain origin story, but it’s damn close.
Nora informs him that, regardless of heroes or villains, he’s just going to have to deal with it.
As much as he hates to hear it, Henry is in a slightly different bracket of popularity than Alex is. And while Alex does have a lot of rapid new engagement, Henry’s been around long enough to have loyal devotees that are pretty ride or die, and seemingly determined to keep his numbers up for him no matter what. Alex would be more upset about it if he hadn’t seen—experienced, really—what it’s like both to watch Henry fuck someone, and to actually be fucked by him. The stubborn asshole can be really charming when he wants to be, unfortunately.
He stabs a chopstick into his takeout container and wrangles a stray noodle back into his mouth with his tongue, chewing thoughtfully.
“Numbers on me convincing him to change his mind at the party next week?”
Nora cuts him an unimpressed look over the screen of her laptop. “Numbers on you finally admitting you have a big, fat, embarrassing crush on him and that’s why you won’t leave it alone?”
Alex scoffs. “Zero.”
“Exactly,” she says.
It doesn’t feel any better hearing it out loud. Alex pretends to choke for sympathy, then actually chokes, then steals Nora’s last extra large egg roll in retaliation when she doesn’t help him. He glances down at it in his hand and sighs before he stuffs his mouth full.
He wishes he could call him.
He doesn’t see Henry at the party.
Which is fine and also reasonable because the fancy beach house was absolutely packed and there was definitely a massive orgy happening in the basement, which isn’t that uncommon at these things but isn’t really Alex’s thing. He has a couple glasses of expensive, aged wine and learns what his house could look like one day if he makes it as big in the industry as this guy evidently does, not-so-subtly scans the balconies and main rooms for familiar faces, and makes conversation for all of an hour before he slips out the front door and heads back to his hotel.
Turns out it’s the best decision he’s made all night.
He’d know Henry Fox’s silhouette just about anywhere. So would a lot of other people, probably, but Alex likes to think he has a bit of an upper hand with it. He’s at the bar off the lobby of the hotel, and Alex would bet actual money on Henry being the only one who’d opted to wear a suit to a party full of porn actors. The worst part is, Alex can’t even blame him.
He’s gotta know what he looks like—suit jacket draped over the back of his chair, the top of his shirt undone and his sleeves rolled up to his forearms, his hair styled in a way that’s begging to be fucked up (preferably by Alex’s fingers), pink lips wet with his drink. The swanky lighting somehow flatters his pale skin even more, bringing out the flush in his cheeks.
And he’s alone. Rare, but perfect.
Without even glancing over at him, Alex flicks open another button on his own shirt—black, lace, tight—and saunters over a couple seats down from him, bending over the bartop to place his order. He hears Henry’s huff of a laugh as he drops both elbows onto the platform and glances over his shoulder. The noise is a little mean, just the way Alex likes it.
“Fancy seeing you here,” Alex says in response.
A glass of vodka hangs elegantly between Henry’s thumb and forefinger, slowly rotating as the liquid drawls from one side to the other and back again. Alex watches it until his own drink is ready, then takes a sip himself.
“We’re in town for the same event,” Henry says once Alex’s mouth is busy. “I’d hardly call it a coincidence.”
“Aren’t you a ray of sunshine,” Alex mutters.
“Sorry. Was I supposed to celebrate having your attention? Drop to my knees here in the middle of the lobby and beg?”
Turning toward him again, Alex takes a big enough breath to draw attention to his bare collarbones before he lifts his whiskey and downs half of it, licking the remnants off of his own lips and meeting Henry’s eye over the edge of the glass.
“Would you do that if I asked?”
Something shifts a little in Henry’s expression as his mouth promptly closes. It’s not the outright interest Alex would typically prefer but it’s curious. Alex can work with that.
There’s the barest hint of a smile on Henry’s lips as he lifts his own glass and looks away. “I’m beginning to worry I’m being followed at this point.”
“Don't flatter yourself, Fox. You’re not the only one who can afford a room here now,” Alex boasts, spinning so he can lean his elbows behind him on the bar instead, his chest on full display toward the lobby. Henry takes notice. “I know it must be tough, though. Me encroaching on your territory. Might even dethrone you one of these days.”
His eyes narrow. The curve of his lips grows. “Is this supposed to be some kind of poorly articulated threat, Alex?”
“Poorly articulated?” Alex echoes, slapping a hand to his heart. “You wound me, sweetheart.”
This time Henry outright smiles, quickly hidden behind his drink and a curt clearing of his throat.
“Most sincere apologies.”
The lounge is mostly empty around them, save for a few people at the high top tables on the other side of the bar. Alex watches a several actors he sort of recognizes who must be coming back from the party, three of them tangled together as they stumble their way toward the elevator with loose limbs and big grins. He turns back to Henry.
“Not much of a party person, then?”
“I’m afraid not,” Henry murmurs. “I’d much prefer a more…” he rolls his head to the side and gives Alex that vaguely disinterested once-over that never fucking fails to make him sweat, “intimate setting.”
Alex’s head tilts to one side. “Is that a threat, Fox?”
“Merely a suggestion.”
Turning back toward the bar again so that his elbow just barely grazes Henry’s, Alex lowers his voice. Watches Henry’s eyes drop to his mouth when he speaks.
“Thought you didn’t do sloppy seconds.”
“I said I wouldn’t film with anyone a second time,” Henry amends with a roll of his eyes at Alex’s word choice. He finishes off his drink and drops the glass back down to the bar with a loud clink. “I didn’t say everything else was off the table. Sloppy, as you say, or not.”
The thing is, Alex could say yes. He wants to, even. He’s never been with anyone like Henry before, and he’s pretty sure he never will be again. They just work together, even if Henry doesn’t acknowledge it. Hypothetically, he could go with Henry to his suite and they could fuck in the jacuzzi tub and on the California king bed and maybe even on the patio—they’d gone a similar number of rounds when they filmed together and it’s literally the most Alex has ever come at once in his life—and it would be, without a doubt, one of the best things he’s ever experienced. He knows this. Henry knows it too, or else he wouldn’t bother offering.
Alex thumbs at the edge of his glass as he considers it. Henry doesn’t rush him. He knows what he should do here, he just doesn’t want to have to do it.
For the plot, if nothing else.
Scraping up every last bit of pride in his body, Alex swallows back what he actually wants and the rest of his whiskey in one go, pushing off of the bar. He leans back in next to Henry’s shoulder where he’s sitting on the stool—Alex is taller than him like this—and for a quick, lightning-fast second, Alex thinks about kissing him. Right here, right now, regardless of who sees them.
But he can’t do it again. Can’t give Henry another piece of himself when Alex still hasn’t fully worked out the weight of the one Henry’d taken with him after the first time they were together, and what to do about the empty space inside of himself that it’d taken up before. The piece Henry still isn’t even aware he has.
Nora would call it feelings. Alex would prefer to keep pretending it’s some kind of game. It’s easier to rationalize it that way.
He sways in just enough that his lips barely graze Henry’s parted ones, enough to taste the vodka on his breath, enough that he gets the pleasure of watching Henry’s eyes begin to close before he pulls away.
“No.”
Alex leaves the bar and walks back across the open lobby to the elevators, forcing himself not to look back. He can feel Henry’s eyes on him all the way up until the doors close.
Maybe it doesn’t feel like as much of a victory as he thought it would.
Alex chews loudly on a piece of honey seared chicken while a rerun of drag race graces Nora’s television in front of him. Another week, another debrief on her floor.
“I’m proud of you, you know,” she says, nudging his ankle with hers. “If it helps.”
“Thanks,” he says, mouth full. “It doesn’t.”
With a sigh that’s far too dramatic for their current setup, she pauses the T.V., makes sure her food is a safe distance away, then turns and shoves him in the shoulder until he whines pitifully and tries to stab her with a chop stick.
“Stop moping. I didn’t invite you over to mope.”
“Gee, I’m so sorry that my feelings have brought down the stellar vibe you’ve got going on over here.”
Her brows crawl up toward her hairline. Alex resolutely looks down at his chicken.
“So you admit that you have feelings, then?”
He groans in response.
“Hey. There’s no shame in it. I mean, have you seen his body? I’d take my hands and—”
“Enough.”
“You’re jealous,” she grins, poking him in the thigh. “Damn. I knew you liked him but I didn’t know you like-liked him.”
“‘Like-liked him’?” he scoffs. “We’re not in middle school.”
“I bet if we were you’d have his name doodled with hearts all over your notebooks.”
“Noraaaaa—”
She smacks a hand over his mouth. “Stop it. My neighbors are gonna think something I definitely don’t want them to think.” With a frown, Alex licks her hand in retaliation. She grabs it between her thumb and forefinger until he admits gross, spitty defeat. “And stop complaining, too. It’s gonna be fine.”
“How is it gonna be fine?” he complains, dropping his head back onto the sofa behind him.
“I’m telling you—you guys do this. You go back and forth. Pull each other’s pigtails.” She waves a hand, as if this is common knowledge. “You got your turn to have the last word this time, but the odds are pretty high that it won’t be that way for long. You just have to be patient.”
Alex pauses for a second, considering it. Nora’s almost never wrong about this stuff, as much as he hates to admit it. And even though he’s shit at waiting around for things, this seems objectively better than the idea of nothing happening between them again at all.
He turns his face toward her, smushing his cheek into the cushion. She flicks a grain of fried rice from his chin.
“...Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she nods. “Now can we please get back to the show? Can’t believe I’m having to comfort a man who’s literally on just about everyone’s free pass list about the one guy he can’t manage to get.”
“Hey,” Alex huffs, glancing back at the television. “You’ve already seen this episode a million times before.”
“What’s your point?”
He rolls his eyes and goes back go his chicken with just slightly more enthusiasm than he had before, metaphorical pigtails and all.
“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”
There’s a long sigh from the other end of the line. God. Even the way he breathes is pretentious. Alex is only marginally turned on by the sound, which is, thankfully, somewhat less than normal.
“Hello to you too, Alex,” Henry says.
There’s a freshly composed contract in front of him with both of their names on it, sent over from Henry’s management. Alex has read it over three times now and consumed twice as much caffeine about it, and he still isn’t entirely sure it’s real.
“So you just weren’t gonna mention this to me when we talked at the hotel then? I feel like I’m missing something here, Fox.”
“I simply didn’t feel a need to.”
“Bullshit,” Alex bites. He really wishes he weren’t grinning. He hopes Henry can’t tell through the phone. “If I’m agreeing to this, I’m gonna need to hear you say it.”
Silence settles between them, long enough for Alex to pull the phone away from his cheek to check that they’re still even connected before Henry—obviously begrudgingly—speaks.
“Fine. It’s—apparently my ratings have gone down recently. Only by a little,” he supplements in a mumble. “I suppose people are saying things are getting… predictable. I can’t entirely blame them. And my manager has informed me that if I want to get them back up again by the time award season comes, then…”
“You want us to break the internet again,” Alex finishes.
“We hardly broke the internet,” Henry scoffs, pausing for another moment. “However. I don’t need to tell you that people quite enjoyed seeing us—together.”
“For somebody that literally fucks people for a living you sure do have a hard time saying the actual words, y’know that?”
He goes quiet again, but this time it’s like Alex can practically see Henry on the other side; eyes narrowing and tongue slipping out to wet his pink, soft fucking lips, all flushed and raspy when he leans in and says—
“Let me put it like this: I’d like it if you signed the contract so that I can get you underneath me again and fuck you until we both forget there are cameras in the room.”
Fuck.
“Is that more to your liking, Alex?”
Alex laughs as if he isn’t already half hard in his boxers, texts Nora a quick and narrowly composed S.O.S., and absolutely does not tell Henry he already signed it the moment it showed up in his inbox.
“It’ll do.”
The thing about filming with Henry is that he does fully fleshed out scenes. His lively and colorful producer, Pez, is known for his incredible scripts and the cinematic filmography, and Alex can’t even deny that he may have shed tears a ‘few’ times over the years watching some of the videos his name is attached to. There’s an old exes-to-lovers one that Alex still has saved on a hard drive somewhere that he paid an obscene amount of money to own.
So when he works with Henry, it’s bound to be explosive. Alex knows it firsthand from filming with the duo before, and they've only gotten better since. The scripts are a guideline but Pez encourages real emotions and reactions and, obviously, pleasure, and last time he’d granted both Henry and Alex permission to do whatever felt right in the moment. He hadn’t even reprimanded them when they’d gone almost completely off-script and accidentally turned something that was supposed to be absolute filth into something unintentionally passionate instead.
This time around, Alex had signed the contract without even bothering to look at the script first. In hindsight he probably should’ve, but, like. It’s Henry. Alex has watched everything he’s ever been in from start to beautiful finish about ten times over, each. He’d been predicting predictable.
The script Pez wrote for them this time is set at the precipice of a slow burn between two men—Alex and Henry—who have hidden their feelings behind petty arguments and feuds until one of them—Henry—inevitably breaks and storms over to Alex’s place in a fit of passion to confess his love and subsequently make it, too. There’s even supposed to be flickering candles and fake rain in the background for the added ambience.
He’s done dirty before. Naughty. Debauched, in Henry’s fancy vernacular. Alex has gotten on his knees for high end productions behind a camera just as often as he’s done it in shitty, shaky first-person filmed on a cellphone, has begged to fuck someone or be fucked or countless other depraved things with moans that he knows people audio-record and keep to listen to separately too. He’s been tan, dark haired, hard dom just as often as he’s been the whimpering, pathetic sub, and truth be told, he fucking enjoyed just about every minute of both. It wasn’t real, necessarily, but it’s fun to be someone else for a while. To play pretend.
Alex is a great actor, but he’s a terrible liar.
The night before his call time, Nora texts him as he’s getting into bed after a thorough wax and skin care routine. Alex grumbles about it but reaches back to his nightstand to squint at the incoming message.
It’s a screenshot of Henry’s stats page, digitally marked up with Nora’s own notes over the top. Alex furrows a brow as he scans his eyes over it. It doesn’t look all that different from his own stats page, and he doesn’t understand what Nora’s trying to get at.
Until a second screenshot comes through. The first one is filtered by a few weeks ago, the next from just the last few days.
Henry’s stats never dropped at all. His ratings are exactly the same.
Quietly, Alex locks his phone and plugs it back in on the nightstand, then turns back to stare at his ceiling.
So. Either Henry’s just a compulsive liar (which unfortunately wouldn’t make Alex any less attracted to him at this point), or…
Or he wanted to be with Alex so badly again that he’d gone out of his way—had an entire damn script written and a half-assed excuse about ratings—to do so.
Alex rolls onto his stomach so that not even his ceiling can see the look on his face, and grins until he falls asleep.
The pre-filming ritual is intense and sacred. Alex doesn’t know of many of his peers that meditate before hopping into bed with somebody but it works for him, in a way. It’s one of the only times he likes total silence.
Even then, it isn’t truly total quiet. There’s familiarity in the zip of his travel bag, the hiss of the shaving cream, the scent of the wax strips and the appreciative appraisal of himself in the mirror before he heads out there.
The instructions for today weren’t very long or detailed, and mostly gave him freedom to style his body however he was most comfortable. Aside from a bit of hair and makeup up top to make the storyline believable, the rest of himself is largely left alone. He likes the way the hair on his chest draws the eye to his firm pecs, how the same dusting of it tapers back up beneath his belly button and leads down to the trimmed section of it around his dick and fades out around his thighs.
(It’s totally not important and definitely doesn’t factor into his decision at all that Henry had remarked on the feeling of it beneath his fingers the last time—how he liked the contrast between the coarseness when he buried his mouth between Alex’s thighs versus the softness of it when he sunk a hand into Alex’s curls on his head to hold him steady. Absolutely not.)
The majority of the other prep has already been done, and there’s a well-loved bottle of lube on the vanity counter to prove it. It’s par for the course, though he’d honestly much rather have Henry do the work. As it is, they are still filming porn after all, and if the script wants Alex to magically open up for Henry’s massive dick a hell of a lot faster than normal, he knows what to do to pull off the shot.
Most of the time before he sees Henry, at events or parties or whatever, his mind is busy working up all the ways he can wind him up. What will get on his nerves just right, enough to bait but not annoy. He usually plans out some clever punchline or anecdote in anticipation of that contact-high once they notice each other, then clings to it to ride it out over the next couple of days.
This time, he’s just neutral. It’s weird. Alex isn’t totally sure if he likes it. There’s no butterflies behind his ribcage and his heart isn’t beating too fast in his chest.
He does kind of feel warm all over, though, which is probably just the air conditioning in the dressing room. It’s probably also why he feels, like, calm and shit. Even though he hardly ever feels calm, even when he’s alone. There’s a perfectly reasonable, non-feelings related explanation for why Alex feels any last inklings of nerves totally disappear when he shuts his eyes and pictures Henry moving in, opening up his mouth and saying—
“Alex?”
Tearing his eyes away from the mirror in front of him, Alex turns to look at Henry in the doorway of his dressing room.
“Hey,” he breathes. Winces. Clears his throat.
“Hello,” Henry returns. “I—I’m sorry. I tried to knock first. I wasn’t sure if you…”
“It’s all good. I was just finishing up,” Alex waves him off. “Well. Not like that.”
It manages to crack a small smile from Henry, who’s leaning up against the door frame in his navy blue robe, tied loosely at the waist. In less than an hour, he certainly won’t be wearing it anymore. Won’t be wearing anything at all, in fact. Skin against skin, against Alex’s skin, pushing and pulling and positioning. Inside of him. Bare. Just like the first time. It was a special request in the contract. Alex wonders if it was a script thing or a Henry thing. Thinks it might be inappropriate, ironically, to ask.
“I would hope not. Might be a bit counterproductive to this whole thing.” Henry’s smile flickers, and he hovers in the doorway for a moment before meeting Alex’s gaze again. “You do know you’re allowed to back out of this at any moment,” he says.
Alex stands from the vanity and leans against it instead, his arms crossed over his chest and a smirk on his lips as if faking it can summon the confidence he usually has about these things.
“You scared, Fox?”
There’s no time to get an answer, but Alex is sure Henry wouldn’t have given him one anyway. He’s notoriously difficult to read, even in the kind of environment they’re in. Maybe part of the attraction to him is the mystery of it. Even though Alex doesn’t think that’s why he has feelings for him personally, and—shit.
So maybe Nora was right about that, too.
Before he can panic about it, Pez pokes his head in over the top of Henry’s shoulder and grins at them both, raising his brows. He looks to Henry first.
“I had a feeling I’d find you here,” he squeezes Henry’s shoulder. “Now, shall we go and get you two naked?”
Alex nods. Squares his shoulders. Pushes off the vanity. Everything else will just have to wait.
“Let’s do this.”
They both look back to Henry, who’s still hovering, and also still has this look in his eye that Alex really fucking wishes weren’t so devastatingly hot for absolutely no reason at all. He’s got a job to do, for fuck’s sake. He can’t keep getting lost in Henry’s baby fucking blues.
He seems to shake himself out of it once Alex cocks a brow, and dips back into the hallway under Pez’s arm with a nod of his own.
“Let’s.”
The lights are dimmed. Every eye in the studio is on them, rapt and attentive. Alex is dressed in a black tee shirt and gray sweatpants, his hair styled loosely so that it’ll fall over his forehead in a way that hopefully conveys he’s previously been lounging morosely across ‘his’ sofa, a strategically obscured glow flickering lightly from a box just off-lens meant to resemble a muted television.
Henry stands across from him, chest heaving and dripping with 'water' that's really just strategically dripped baby oil so nothing gets uncomfortably cold, tracking it all over the fake carpet. His white button down is a little gratuitously see through, his wide pecs and broad shoulders and small, pink nipples poking deliberately through the fabric. The noise of pattering rain echoes distantly from a speaker overhead, the air crackling between them.
“I just don’t know why we keep dancing around it,” Henry-but-not-Henry grits, his jaw locked and blinking hastily.
“I’m not dancing around anything,” Alex responds, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m not the one who was out on a date with someone else tonight.”
“Well, I’m here now, aren’t I? Doesn't that count for something?”
“I didn’t ask to be your second best,” Alex drops his voice, his good side angled toward the camera. “You don’t get to hate me for years and then suddenly decide that you want me once it’s finally convenient for you—”
“I never hated you,” Henry sounds pained when he says it, taking another step forward. “I never hated you.”
“Then why can’t you answer your own question? I’ve been here the entire time. You know I have. If we’re so inevitable, then why have you been dancing around it?”
Henry turns to look at the penthouse wall beside him with an expression that somehow conveys apprehension, desire, and radiating angst all at once. Fuck, he’s good. Even Alex is on the edge of his seat, and he’s read the damn thing multiple times from start to finish. His gaze drops to the floor, the cams pulling in on his face.
“I thought I could get over you. I thought I could just get you out of my system and that would be enough. But I—” his voice breaks on the final syllable and when he looks up to find Alex’s eye again, his blue ones are glassy with moisture that isn’t the fake rain or oil. His laugh is stripped and raw when it leaves his lips with a small shake of his head. “I’m—I’m just so tired.”
“Of what?” Alex whispers.
Something shifts in Henry’s expression, his shoulders straightening and the determined glint returning to his eye. Alex hopes they got a close up of the way his throat shifts elegantly when he swallows. A metaphor for his pride, or something.
“Of pretending that I’m not completely, irrevocably in love with you.”
Yeah, okay. So it’s as much of a sucker punch hearing it as it was reading it on paper. Actually, it’s ten times worse. Alex nearly swallows his own tongue. Luckily, he gets to stick it inside of Henry’s mouth now instead.
They’re crossing the distance to each other and meeting directly in the middle with so much energy that they bounce apart a little bit before there are hands in Alex’s hair and on his cheeks, an oiled shirt bunched desperately in his own grip at Henry’s back.
Henry’s always been a fantastic kisser but it seems like he’s gotten even better since the last time Alex had him like this, his palm warm where his thumb swipes over Alex’s cheekbone, their noses turned to tuck against each other at just the right angle, the pressure of his tongue a private enhancement instead of a cheap move for the cameras. Alex vaguely registers the cams moving in closer to their left—their cue to move things along.
He goes easily as Henry gets both hands on his hips and pushes him back against the nearest wall, slotting their fingers together and pressing Alex’s hands high above their heads. As soon as they settle there Alex moans lightly and rolls his head backward, and a string of spit connects their mouths still when Henry pulls away to press open mouthed kisses down the length of Alex’s neck instead. One of Alex’s hands slips loose of his restraints to bury itself in Henry’s hair to keep him there.
“Missed you,” Henry says against his cheek, one of his thighs pressed between Alex’s.
There’s another line there—Alex is definitely supposed to say something back. It was kind of witty, too. Whatever it was gets swallowed up by yet another deep, thorough, unexpected kiss, the first break from the script they’ve done today.
He focuses on the other beats instead, everything else he’s supposed to have done by the time they move to the bed. He hikes a leg up over Henry’s thigh and grinds against him indulgently, groans when he feels Henry hard already against him and reaches down between their bodies to draw attention to it, and when the cam moves out again, he sets about unbuttoning Henry’s collared shirt and slipping his hands over the expanse of his shoulders.
“You said you loved me,” Alex murmurs just loudly enough for the hovering mic to pick up, leaned up on his tiptoes to press his lips against Henry’s ear.
Henry nods against him. “I do.”
Dropping back down onto his feet, Alex leaves Henry’s shirt barely hanging off of him and holds out an open hand between them, looking up from underneath his lashes as he attempts to pull off both confident and vulnerable all at once.
“Show me,” he says.
He’d have had to practice this bit beforehand if it were anyone else, but he knew Henry would nail it regardless. Alex is clumsy as shit but Henry has a way of making it all look intentional and seamless, and he pushes and pulls Alex seductively, slowly across the living area and into the open bedroom of the penthouse, shedding his shirt and Alex’s tee along the way.
There’s a moment where they both pause at the foot of the bed just to take each other in, naked from only the waist up, their hands mapping out each other’s bodies in reacquaintance. Alex might be on company time here but he’s not stupid. He has no doubt it looks genuine when he trails his gaze up the curves of Henry’s stomach, the hard line that delves out from his middle up into the wide points of his shoulders. When he presses a thumb against the mole on Henry’s hip he’d left a lovebite next to the first time he’d discovered it. He tries not to wonder how many others have done that in the time since and fails miserably. Time to move on, then.
He drops a hand to Henry’s belt and Henry works Alex’s sweatpants down his legs, kissing his way back up Alex’s body after he helps him step out of them. His fingertips trace down the curve of Alex’s spine and he shivers in response, no doubt evident in the footage.
Alex fights the urge to glance over at the recording team. Pez hasn’t called a cut at all yet aside from to fix the lighting briefly earlier, which must mean they’re doing a good job. Even if Alex was expecting to get some breaks in between having the full weight of Henry’s attention. He’s free to signal out if he needs to stop for any reason but that’s exactly the problem here—he doesn’t want to stop. Ever.
They get Henry out of his pants and his boxers together—Alex himself had gone commando, at the script’s request—and then there’s just skin against skin, rough hands splayed across Alex’s shoulder blades and a bare thigh between his legs pushing him back onto the mattress. He falls, and Henry goes with him.
Usually there’d be more buildup, maybe some indulgent making out and tasteful groping before they undressed, but they—their characters—are supposed to know each other already. Know each other so well, in fact, that they can skip all pretense and posturing and just bare themselves to each other without hesitation, regardless of circumstance.
Alex is pretty sure the message comes across.
He gets Henry’s face between his hands as they lay on their sides next to each other, hooking one of his legs high up over Henry’s hip and grinding forward against him. They both shudder when their bare cocks touch, the contrast of Henry’s thick, pink, uncut one and Alex’s much darker, longer one still dizzying when he looks down at them. They frot against each other until Alex is dripping onto both of them, long enough to get at least several good shots of the evidence, before Henry reaches down and swipes it up with his thumb, taking it into his mouth and moaning at the taste.
He’d prepped himself already before this but Henry still takes the time he's allowed with the lube and opening him up, first with one finger and then with two. He’s always had such long, dainty fingers but the things he does with them are filthy, and it doesn’t help that he knows exactly what to do to drive Alex insane. He teases the tip of them just barely against Alex’s prostate and then promptly pulls away, patting him on the hip so they can move to the next position.
Henry settles up against the pillows and Alex kneels on his hands and knees beside him in a slightly modified sixty-nine. One of the cams pulls in behind him on where Henry’s slicking up three of his fingers now and sliding them back inside of Alex, and the other one has a front row view when Alex licks his lips and bends to take Henry’s cock in his hand, then onto his tongue.
He still smells like the same fucking body wash he did last time but a little more like just himself too, like he’d showered early and the soap is beginning to fade. Alex dips down as he traces a vein down the side of his dick with his tongue until he reaches the crease of one strong thigh, then drags his nose along the seam to breathe him in. He can feel the muscles twitch in response and smiles.
It’s not difficult to make it look like he’s enjoying himself. In fact, he’s pretty sure it’s horribly fucking obvious that he’s nearly giddy as he showcases his lack of gag reflex for the camera, swallowing around him the way he knows Henry’s likes as payback each time Henry teases his prostate only to pull away again. Alex knows this is part of it, and he should be thankful that Henry knows him well enough to understand that he might actually come if he teases him too much ahead of time but, fuck. Alex wishes he could turn around and just beg him to get on with it. To give him something.
He’s a mess by the time Henry’s up to four fingers and the team behind the cams signals that they’re good to keep going, Henry’s thighs quivering underneath him as he fights to keep from fucking up into Alex’s mouth, spit smeared all over everything. Alex knows this is one of his money shots—his hair fucked up from someone else’s fingers, his cheeks the same shade of red as his slick, open mouth, his eyes glassy and half-lidded, the shadow of his fluttering lashes thick and dark. He turns it slowly toward Henry as he sits up and spins himself around, still absently stroking a hand up and down his cock as he seats himself on top of Henry’s thighs.
This is one too. Alex leans down to let Henry taste himself, because it’s obvious how much he likes that, too, and swallows down his responding groan as Alex raises up on his knees and lines them up, teasing the head of Henry’s cock against his doubly-prepped rim.
“Did you touch him like this?” Alex whispers the line right up against his lips, pausing before he sinks down. Henry’s fingers flex on his hips.
“No. He wasn’t you,” he says simply. “None of them were.”
Alex so can’t blame his script-self for falling for it. He would—is—too.
With a quiet hiss, Alex eases himself back and pushes against Henry’s cock until it sinks just an inch or so inside of him. Alex forgot how thick he was.
He feels Henry’s fingers tap twice again on the side of them that isn’t currently being filmed, his code for a check in. Alex grins a little deliriously at the familiar gesture and taps back with the hand that’s pressed up by his shoulder on the pillow, and Henry’s own mouth lifts to mirror it until he’s overcome by another gasp when Alex takes him in a little further.
Even though he’d much rather just drop down and ride him into oblivion, Alex tries to draw it out as much as possible. He can feel himself unintentionally tightening around Henry in increments as he fucks back onto him shallowly and he knows it’ll be a good shot. He’s notoriously tight and Henry’s notoriously big, and sue him if he wants everyone to see just how well he can take Henry specifically, how Henry’s falling apart underneath him and he’s not even fully inside yet. He thinks nonsensically about completely fucking up the frame altogether by turning over his shoulder to meet the lens head on, saying ‘you think any of you fuckers could do better? ’
But he can’t say any of that, so he tries to communicate it with his body instead. The oil has dried but now there’s sweat beading on Henry’s hairline, slicking up his temple where it catches the candlelight from the nightstand. On impulse alone, Alex bends forward until Henry’s cock is almost fully out of him again, licks up the saltiness of his skin off of his face, then sits back and sinks down to the hilt in one go.
The air in the room seems to crackle again, the breath knocked out of them both. Henry’s lower lip is bright red when it pops out from between his teeth, his eyes clenched shut and his brow furrowed in concentration. Alex would make fun of him, if he wasn’t also fucking speechless.
It takes a minute or so to get used to before he can start moving. He checks in with Henry again before he kisses him and then sits up properly, both hands braced on Henry’s chest for balance as he grinds himself backward and then forwards again, his cock bobbing between their stomachs.
He keeps it slow until Henry seems like he’s able to control himself better, his eyes open again and his hands stroking over Alex’s thighs, his hips, playing with his dick. Alex fucking loves attention but it’s something else altogether when it’s Henry giving it to him; Alex feels drunk on the look he gives when Alex pushes himself up and actually begins bouncing on him, the way his eyes go from Alex’s face to his chest to his cock and back around again like he can’t decide which he wants to touch most.
Wiping the sweat off on the sheets, Alex removes his hands from Henry’s shoulders and places them behind him on his thighs instead, angling himself the way he usually does when he’s riding someone. The lighting will help too, accentuating the dip of his waist and the hard lines of muscle that move with him, his torso elongated and his throat bared as he shuts his eyes and finds his rhythm.
“Love,” Henry sighs beneath him.
It’s so quiet that Alex panics for a moment, thinking that he’s forgotten a line and Henry’s trying to remind him. But Henry’s face is completely open and void of any ulterior motives when Alex glances down at him again, still watching raptly.
It hits him at once that it’s a term of endearment, for him, one that’s not mentioned anywhere in the script. All sweet and slow and syrupy in Henry’s thick accent, dripping heat adding to the burning in Alex’s stomach.
“No one fucks me like you.”
Shit. He hadn’t meant to say that.
Henry’s eyes zero in on him immediately, and Alex fights the urge to babble out apologies like an idiot and accidentally break the scene. He feels his own cheeks burn hot just as Henry raises a hand to cup the one closest to the camera to shield it from view.
“That’s right,” he rasps in the same tone that Alex just had. “Made for me, weren’t you?”
Alex curls forward with a moan and when his mouth opens, Henry’s thumb presses down on his lower lip, then pushes forward until it rests on Alex’s tongue. It’s a welcome distraction, and also justifies Henry’s hand being on his face in the first place, and Alex seriously can’t fucking thank his lucky stars enough that Henry’s quick on his feet for the both of them.
Alex likes the way that it feels—not like Henry’s giving him something to keep his mouth busy from ruining anything; like he’s protecting him. Like, maybe, he’d wanted to keep those words just for them too.
He has got to stop overthinking shit. Henry’s the highest ranked performer in just about every category he’s filmed something in. Of course he’s going to be fucking convincing in a scene. Alex closes his eyes again and focuses on riding him, only completely delighted when it draws out a handful of other genuine noises from Henry’s swollen lips.
They’ve got a pretty good stride going that doesn’t break until their next cue. It’s a lighting effect meant to look like lightning from outside the far window but Alex had completely forgotten about it as he chased his own pleasure, and when a dull clap of fake thunder rolls over the speakers Alex shocks himself at the half-whimper that gets caught in his throat, at the way he instinctively falls forward against Henry’s chest to press his nose against his collarbone, suddenly a little cold in the big room.
Once again, Henry’s already steps ahead of him. Before Alex can back away he’s hooking an arm around his waist and helping him off to switch to their final position, rolling Alex onto his back in the center of the bed so he can hover above him.
There’s a pan up on their faces as they stare at each other, one of Henry’s hands pressing to his own on the pillow while the other reaches between his legs to push open Alex’s thighs again, but the kiss Henry gives him as he slides back inside isn’t for the cams.
Alex leans up to press their foreheads together even when they part, sharing the same air as Henry begins to fuck him slowly. He pushes one of Alex’s thighs back further until there’s a pleasant burn in the muscle, until his cock is deeper and exactly where Alex needs it.
He lets Henry know, although he’s sure he somehow already does. He leaves the mark of his nails down his back, rocks his own hips up to meet him, turns his face to the side to breathe in the linen where Henry was just laying that still smells like him. Henry’s fingers tighten around his own on the pillowcase as he speeds up, mouthing at the spot behind Alex’s ear.
He squeezes his palm twice. Another check in.
And Alex can feel it. Knows what he’s asking. It’s muscle memory to squeeze back, and he means to, he does, but…
He can’t do it. Like this, with Henry so close, it’s too hard not to blur the lines. He can’t see any of the crew anymore from this angle and he can feel every beat of Henry’s pulse like it’s his own and it’s not pretending anymore, not like this.
He’s not scared or hurt. Doesn’t think he could ever be, with Henry. But he can feel his own stupid feelings clawing their way back up his throat, can feel it tightening as they try to push their way out, and suddenly he doesn’t want this moment to be for anyone else anymore.
And he shouldn’t blow the scene in the final fucking hour and he really should just finish up and not make a fool of himself because if they stop, he’ll have to explain why and that’s even worse and—
When Henry doesn’t get a response, he slows down and pulls back. His brows are furrowed when he meets Alex’s eye, and then his features harden completely when Alex feels a tear roll down his cheek.
Fuck. He hadn’t even known he was crying.
“Alex,” Henry grits, no longer moving.
Alex shakes his head, curls a leg around his hip. “I’m good.”
“No.”
“Henry, I’m fine—” he tries quietly.
"I’m saying no.” Henry doesn’t move from on top of him, only turns his head enough to look at the crew. “We’re taking a break. Turn them off.”
There’s shifting, whispering. Alex squeezes his eyes shut and focuses on his breathing. Someone speaks up. “But we almost have the—”
“Turn it off,” Henry raises his voice. “Get the fucking cameras off of him. Now.”
The movement sounds more frantic now. Lenses clicking off and lights being shifted. Alex can hear someone beside them and things being set down on the nightstand. Henry’s hand curls around the back of his head, holding him there.
“The room is clear. I’ll keep everyone out, take your time. You call me if you need anything else,” comes Pez’s quiet voice from the side, more serious than Alex has ever heard him before.
The door to the penthouse clicks closed and Alex finally lets himself exhale, but he doesn’t fall back against the pillows. He stays curled forward with Henry’s hand in his hair until his neck starts to ache, and then just barely parts from him when Henry braces on both elbows to let a bit of the cool air in the room touch Alex’s skin again.
“Alex,” Henry says eventually, “can I pull out?”
He sniffs, turning toward the wall. This is not how he’d wanted this to go.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Don’t,” Henry stops him.
He shifts until he can plant one hand beside his head and use the other to carefully withdraw himself, slow enough that it doesn’t feel quite as abrupt when he’s finally gone. His muscles must be tired by this point but he holds himself up long enough to wrangle the sheets out from under them and get Alex lying comfortably with them draped up to his waist before he settles.
Alex gets a little distracted watching Henry’s pale ass as he leans over to the nightstand to grab what Pez’d left them, thinks dazedly about poking it with his toe, then feels so domestic he could throw up. This is so not good.
He’s filmed intense scenes before. Alex knows how to do this. Hell, just a couple weeks ago he’d spent two hours shooting a round of M/F/M marathon sex with heavy degradation and a good bit of bondage involved too. He’d walked out of the studio just fine, albeit with a bit of a limp, and he hasn’t really thought about it since.
He doesn’t understand why being with Henry’s so different.
“Here.” Henry leans back and his pale ass disappears under the sheets too, sitting up against the pillows as he passes Alex a water and a small towel. “Are you alright?”
Taking a long sip of the water before he answers, Alex wets part of the towel and wipes off his face with it, nodding.
“M’good, seriously. Just got in my head a little, I think.”
Thank you is right there at the tip of his tongue, but he can’t say that without implying other things and getting himself deeper into this. Playing it cool seems more logical. He tips the water back again and pretends that he doesn’t accidentally dump some of it straight down his chest.
“I can understand that,” Henry adds.
“I think I’ll be good in, like, twenty, probably.”
“There’s no rush. You know Pez will keep them all entertained.”
Logically, he’s got two options here. Finish the scene, or go ahead and call it. Which would be shitty for everyone involved, all the people who are waiting in the hall right now who will also make money off of this eventually. But Alex knows Pez would make sure everyone was taken care of regardless, and if he really needed to, Alex could just up and leave right now and it wouldn’t be held against him.
He doesn’t want that necessarily, though. He just might have some questions he needs answered first. And, ethically, he probably shouldn’t use the fact that Henry’s naked to subject him to his queries, but. Desperate times.
“Yeah,” Alex says belatedly. He edges his thumb under the label on the water bottle in his lap. “Hey, Henry?” Henry hums. “Why did you actually send me the contract?”
For a minute there’s nothing, and then there’s a long sigh.
“We’re already fully nude and sharing a bed together,” Henry mutters, “why not abandon what’s left of my pride?”
Adjusting the sheet around his waist, Henry bends his legs and turns to face him, his shoulder pressed up against the plush headboard. Alex mirrors him, leaving his water on the night table behind him as he picks at a loose thread in the duvet.
“I wish it were slightly more nuanced, but the truth is that I had far too much vodka the night after you left me in the bar and I ended up at Pez’s. I may have…mentioned the fact that I’ve not been able to stop thinking about you since the first time we filmed together.” Henry’s face goes a deeper scarlett than Alex has ever seen before, which is really saying something. “Perhaps a bit before that, if we’re being honest.”
“What?” he gawks. “But that’s—you were a dick to me.”
“Yes, well.” Henry laughs, quick and awkward. “I can act, but I’m afraid I’m a bit of a shit liar. I thought it’d be terribly obvious if I were to associate with you outside of all of this and willingly agreeing to film with you again would be breaking my own rules, so I just—didn’t.”
Go fucking figure. Maybe they aren’t that different after all.
“So, Pez…”
“Immediately wrote a script and sent it to your agent, yes,” Henry says on an exhale. “I’m assuming that he thought, well, that this would happen.” His eyes widen. “Not making you uncomfortable, of course, only that I would finally summon the courage to—”
“I get it, Henry,” Alex chuckles. He smooths a clammy palm over the sheet still in his grasp. “But you wanted to do the scene, right?”
“I—I should have said no, probably. But, quite frankly, I didn’t want to,” Henry admits. “I wanted to see you again. I wanted an excuse to not have to pretend anymore.”
It sounds a little too much like their lines from earlier, and Alex goes nonverbal for a second while he attempts to suddenly view all of their interactions in a slightly different light. He’d really—he’d honestly thought Henry just didn’t like him. Alex has always been drawn to things that seem impossible.
But now, Henry’s here, and apparently this thing is a possibility, and Alex just wants him more.
“Wow,” he says.
“Quite,” Henry rasps. His brows dip in toward each other. “Ah. Not to, er, make you feel like you owe me an answer, but—”
“Oh shit,” Alex shakes his head, sitting up, “no, I—I’ve been obsessed with you since the first time we met, so.”
Henry chokes and then attempts to cover it up with a cough, the same color from earlier returning to his cheeks. Alex is so going to enjoy seeing all the other things he can do to make that happen. “Oh. Well. That’s—very good, yes.”
“You get more British when you’re nervous, y’know that?” he grins.
“I’m not nervous,” Henry denies. He busies himself with cleaning imaginary lint off of the pillowcase between them.
“Sure, sweetheart.”
Something relaxes in Henry’s posture, and he leans in a bit more. “I like that,” he whispers.
Alex raises a brow. “Sweetheart?”
“Mm,” he nods. “You used to call me that, for a while. Before I was a prat to you.”
“Huh,” Alex clicks his tongue. “Always thought you liked baby better.”
The electricity that shoots through him when Henry falls the last bit forward is lethal, their shoulders completely pressed together as he groans next to Alex’s ear.
“That is not fair.”
“I guess…we’ve got time to workshop it,” Alex hesitates, flicking his gaze up to him as he grazes their hands together over the sheet.
It’s Henry, ultimately, that presses their palms together with a small smile.
“I’d like that.”
Alex shimmies a little until his back is half-pressed against Henry’s front, Henry’s jaw against his no doubt messy curls. He has to remind himself several times that this is actually happening and not scripted, the cams all off and the room empty.
It’s not entirely practical. They don’t even really know each other that well outside of all of this. They both still travel quite a bit if the offer’s good enough and the reputation they’ve cultivated for themselves might not be very conducive to monogamy—at least not at the level that Alex has recently decided he’d like to have Henry to himself in his post-sex cocoon—but, like. Fuck it. If Henry’s willing to figure it out, Alex is too.
“I can tell Pez to get rid of the footage—” Henry starts.
“What?” Alex sits up, half-turning around. “Why?”
Henry bites back a smile and swipes a thumb back and forth over his bare hip. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want it out there.”
“Well. I guess I didn’t, at first. But like, knowing what I know now…” he trails off, lifting a finger to press absently against a mark he’d accidentally left on Henry’s collarbone, “it might not be so bad.”
His smile curls into a full on grin and—shit. He’s fucking pretty.
“Territorial, are we?”
“Nah. I just know what I want,” Alex smirks. Henry swallows. “But if you don’t want the video out there then we can—”
“I don’t mind it being published,” he says quickly. “But we’re taking out the last part and redoing it. I don’t ever want to watch it back and know you felt uncomfortable.”
“Okay.” Settling back into his side, Alex picks up his hand again, tangling them together. “Hey. I thought you said you never watched your old videos?”
“And where might you’ve heard that, hm?”
“I’ve watched and read literally all of your interviews. I have no shame. Answer the question.”
When Henry still hesitates, Alex glances over his shoulder at him, cataloging the way his tongue runs over his bottom lip before he takes a breath.
“I don’t watch them, generally,” he admits, glancing at the bedsheet. “The one of you and I, however…”
A giddiness bubbles up in Alex’s chest and he laughs, pushing it into Henry’s mouth as he rolls on top of him and gets a hand beneath the sheet again. Henry’s so warm and more than willing, pleasantly loose in a way that a scene doesn’t typically allow for.
The fact that Alex might get this on the regular makes him a little lightheaded. He pulls back, only enough to hover above him with their noses grazing each other.
“So,” Henry reaches up and curls a hand around the back of his neck, “shall I call Pez back in then?”
Alex dips forward again, dragging his lips over the side of his neck.
“Five more minutes first.”
Turns out he’s not that hard to convince.
The new video hits the same amount of hits as their old one in a few hours flat. And then surpasses it by, like, a million. Or multiple.
In all fairness, it might have something to do with the fact that they went Instagram official the day after it was out, but Alex likes to think they simply had such good chemistry that people can’t get enough. He’s glad they can see it too.
He learns a lot. About himself, but mostly about Henry. That he’s a dork, for one. He wears sweater vests more than he’s actually lubed up and naked on film sets and his dog has one to match. He keeps Bake Off running on loop on his television even though he doesn’t actively watch it so his brownstone doesn’t feel as lonely. He wants to get good at cooking but can’t seem to get the technique quite right, which Alex is more than willing to help with.
And Alex doesn’t live with him, because that would be insane. He definitely doesn’t think too much about how he has his own clothes in Henry’s closet or his own side of the bed or his own toothbrush and shampoo, and he definitely thinks it’s fine and normal that he’s spent more nights there than he has at his own place and gets a little grumpy when he has to leave. It’s just easier. He doesn’t like being by himself and he and Henry just have a way of coexisting that happens to be really conducive for both of their schedules and happiness. That’s all.
(Alex is in love with him, he’s pretty sure. He’ll tell him later.)
He’s front row two months after that when they sweep the categories for Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Duo. Henry wins his token Best Male Gay Performer, and when Alex takes the cake for Bisexual Male Performer right afterward, Henry wraps an arm around him and kisses him, right there for every person and camera in the room to see. A couple more hours here, then they’re fucking off to celebrate on their own terms.
Alex fucking loves his job.