Chapter Text
“…we’re reporting live from Los Angeles Harbor where police are still investigating the apparent suicide of stuntman Alex Claremont-Diaz, who was recently revealed by police to be the prime suspect in the death of Michael Da Costa, following a dramatic boat explosion in the Outer Harbor…”
“Look, there! That could be— and surely you can— you can enhance that or something, right? He could still be—”
“Henry,” Nora interrupts with a weary sigh. “You’re grasping at straws. Believe me, I don’t want him to be dead either—”
“He’s not dead. He can’t be,” Henry insists stubbornly, still looking at a tiny smudge of pixels in the paused video from the news coverage on his laptop screen. It’s no more than a blip that seems to move away from the explosion before it fully erupts, but it’s there. “This could be him jumping away from the boat. They haven’t found a body.”
“Because there was an explosion,” Nora argues. “They found his jacket. There was blood on it.”
“Aha! Exactly!” Henry says, jabbing a finger into the air. “And isn’t that suspicious because shouldn’t his body be in the jacket if he were actually dead? Plus, he called me and said, well, he said a lot of things”—things that Henry is resolutely not allowing himself to think about right now, in fact—“but the important part is that he said to trust him, and doesn’t that have to mean something?”
Nora doesn’t say anything for a long moment. The bank of computer monitors making up the video workstation in Henry’s dimly lit trailer bathes her grim expression in a multi-coloured glow, pity and grief and frustration deeply creasing her face as she stares at him. Finally, she shakes her head.
“I can’t do this anymore. I loved him too, ok?” she says bluntly, which is frankly terrifyingly perceptive of her. “But this has to stop. You’re just hurting yourself, and you’re gonna hurt other people if you keep at it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go drown myself in enough work that I might stop feeling everything for five minutes. I suggest you do the same.”
Henry considers her advice for approximately thirty seconds, watching the door to his trailer slam shut after her, and promptly refuses to accept it.
Yes, he’s grasping at the thinnest thread of hope, but he doesn’t know how to keep going without it. And there’s no choice but to go on, not with the studio breathing down his neck about finishing on schedule with hardly any acknowledgement that they’d lost a crew member. Henry had gotten a call in the middle of the night from the head of the studio himself, Jeffrey Richards, telling him that there’d been a terrible tragedy. He’d gone on to assure Henry that this wouldn’t affect production and probably some other load of codswallop that Henry hadn’t listened to. Thank god he was just a stuntman, Richards had said—Henry remembered that, clear as day—and Henry had nearly quit on the spot.
Everything Alex had done, he’d done for this movie, though. For Henry. He couldn’t throw that away. And if Alex actually was—
No.
Henry scrubs backward on the video and hits play again. Watches the little blip move on the screen. Does it again. And again. Folds his arms on his desk and drops his head onto them with a heavy sigh.
Maybe he can’t do this anymore, either.
He hasn’t slept. He’s barely eaten. He’d been more or less a zombie when the car had come to collect him for the trip up into the mountains to their remote shooting location, and he’d spent the long drive ignoring the increasingly rugged landscape in favor of watching as much of the video coverage of the explosion as he could find, trying to glean any crumb of new information about Alex. He’s been running on pure denial and farcical hope, but even that, he finds, is running low.
And now, somehow, he’s got to go out there tomorrow and direct a film as if nothing’s happened. As if he hasn’t just lost the love of his bloody life. Again.
He doesn’t know how long he sits there, lost in his own misery, before his phone pings with an incoming message. It must be something to do with the film because he has his Do Not Disturb set to only let through work numbers, given the huge number of calls and texts he started getting the minute the news broke. When he flips it over, he sees a message from Rafael Luna: he wants to have a meeting in 20 minutes. Wonderful.
Henry sighs and wakes his laptop again, then rewinds and hits play. The audio from the news coverage breaks the stillness of his trailer, covering any other sound, which means he doesn’t realise he’s not alone until someone grabs his shoulder.
“Christ, you startled me,” Henry huffs, pressing a palm over his racing heart, but when he starts to turn back to look he doesn’t find Nora, or Raf, or anyone else that he could possibly be expecting. The intruder is in all black and wearing a motorcycle helmet that obscures his face, and Henry’s mind immediately goes to the men in the black SUVs that had been shooting at them. They must have found him, somehow, and this isn’t over, and—
“Help—” he starts to yell, only for the man to lunge forward and press a gloved hand over his mouth.
Henry thinks he hears a muffled ‘be quiet’ from under the helmet, but fuck that. He drives an elbow backward into his attacker’s gut, which is enough to break the man’s hold, and Henry surges to his feet. He grabs a heavy script binder off the desk and swings it hard across the man’s helmet, making him stumble back, but when he tries again the man catches his wrists and holds firm. Henry’s taller and no weakling, but the man is still faster than him and plenty strong, and he manages to divest Henry of the binder before he lunges forward again, clearly trying to get Henry into some kind of hold to subdue him. He pushes Henry back toward the desk, until he’s nearly sitting on it, and Henry scrabbles blindly behind him until his hand closes around a pen. Grabbing it, he wrenches his wrist out of his attacker’s hold and swings the pen down hard, plunging it into the top of his thigh.
The man yells in pain, finally releasing him, and Henry stumbles across the trailer and into the small kitchen table. There’s a mug there, sitting discarded from his tea earlier, and he grabs it and hurls at his attacker, who just manages to duck his head out of the way before it connects. The mug shatters on the wall behind him, sending a shower of white ceramic shards down over his shoulders, and Henry capitalises on his distraction to lunge toward him. The man holds up his hands to try to ward him off, but at this point Henry’s seeing red; all the fear, all the pain, all the anger over Alex’s death, it all comes pouring out, and maybe he doesn’t know that this man is directly responsible, but if he’s part of that bloody organisation then he’s responsible enough.
Henry’s got no fight training, but Alex once taught him how to disable an attacker, where the weak places were on a person’s body and how best to strike them, and that’s what he focuses on now. The man blocks some of them, but Henry gets enough shots in that he doubles over, and Henry uses his advantage to get an arm around the man’s throat from behind.
“You think you can come onto my set,” he grits out as the man struggles in his hold, “sneak into my trailer, and intimidate me?”
“Henry,” the man chokes out, “please— baby— it’s me—”
Henry releases his hold immediately, stunned as the man collapses forward onto the ground and yanks the helmet off with one hand to reveal a mess of dark curls.
“Alex?” he croaks, falling to his knees beside him. Grabbing him by his shoulders, Henry pulls him upright and eases him into a sitting position against the cupboards of the kitchenette, and Alex lets his head thunk back on the wood as he winces through heaving breaths.
“Jesus Christ, you’re— you’re alive,” Henry says unsteadily, his hands and eyes roving over Alex’s body, still unable to believe what he’s seeing. Then his eyes land on the pen still embedded in the top of Alex’s thigh. “Oh, fuck, I’m so sorry about that—”
“S’ok, baby, can you just—” Alex gestures weakly at the pen and Henry immediately pulls it out, grabbing a kitchen towel to press against the small wound. “It was nice work. Got it out just in time, I don’t think the ink poisoning set in.”
“I knew it,” Henry breathes, swiping a hand over Alex’s cheek and pushing back curls from his forehead. “I knew you were alive, you had to be.”
Alex smiles, though it still comes out as half a grimace. “You trusted me.”
“I did,” Henry says quickly. “I do. But, Alex— what is going on? The boat, and the suicide, and I got a call from bloody Richards—” He breaks off, shaking his head. “Everyone thinks you’re dead.”
“That’s the point,” Alex says as he shifts a little, his voice tight with pain. “The Da Costas are satisfied. Richards thinks it’s all wrapped up, so now Taylor can—”
“Wait, Jeffrey Richards is involved in this? The studio head?” Henry interrupts.
Alex exhales heavily, nodding. “He’s been blackmailing Taylor through Hunter. This was all a setup. But now Hunter’s gonna flip on him because I went to the docks to save his life, and he can help clear my name because he knows that Michael’s death was an accident.”
“I have so many questions,” Henry says, wiping a hand over his forehead. “Ok, what about the Da Costas?”
“What about them? I told you, they think I’m dead, so they won’t bother us.”
“I mean, even if we manage to fix the rest of this, what’s going to happen when they find out you’re still alive?”
Alex opens his mouth and closes it again, then frowns. “We’ll figure it out later. The important thing is that you can finish the movie now.”
“Are you mad?” Henry scoffs. “We have to get you out of here, we have to hide you, none of the rest of it matters—”
“Yes, it does,” Alex cuts him off, grabbing one of Henry’s hands in his and squeezing hard. “This matters. This is important. You’re just— You’re special, Henry, and the rest of us get to be part of something special because of you.”
Henry doesn’t think—he grabs Alex’s face in both hands and kisses him fiercely. Alex makes a little sound of surprise into his mouth, but a split second later he’s grabbing onto Henry’s hips and tugging him closer until Henry ends up in his lap. It’s messy and desperate and Henry ends up half kissing his teeth because Alex is grinning so broadly into it, but it’s perfect all the same. Alex’s hands move over Henry’s waist and back, clutching at his clothes and pulling him even closer, and Henry gives himself over to it willingly, losing himself in Alex’s embrace and in the slide of his lips.
There are so many reasons why they shouldn’t do this, reasons why Henry left in the first place, reasons why this might not work—but he knows, now, that not a single one of them matters. All that matters is that Alex is alive, and in his arms, and he loves him—
Henry breaks out of the kiss, but only far enough to press their foreheads together. “I love you,” he breathes into the narrow space between them, because Alex said it last night but he hasn’t, and he can’t allow that to go on any longer. “I love you, too, Alex, and I’m so sorry for pushing you away ten years ago. I loved you then, and it terrified me, and—”
A hard series of raps on the door interrupts him, and a second later, Raf calls out, “Henry? You got a sec?”
“Oh bloody hell,” Henry mutters under his breath, then calls back, “One minute!”
“Henry—” Alex starts, overloud, and Henry shushes him as he presses a hand over his mouth. Not that it lasts; Alex glares at him and tugs his hand away, but at least when he speaks again, he does so in a furious whisper. “I think he might be in on it. I mean, I don’t wanna believe it, but he sent me there.”
“Fuck,” Henry huffs as he clambers off of Alex’s lap and pulls him to his feet. “C’mon, you’ve got to hide.”
He shoves Alex further into the trailer, craning his neck back to make sure the front door stays firmly shut, and almost trips over his own feet when Alex stops suddenly just outside the bathroom.
“Wait, my helmet.”
“Huh?”
“The helmet,” Alex hisses, pointing back into the living area of the trailer, and when Henry turns he sees the motorcycle helmet Alex had been wearing laying discarded on the floor.
Henry swears under his breath again and goes to fetch it, intending to hand it off and hurry back to the front door, but when he gets close enough Alex snags him by the front of his shirt and drags him into a kiss that he has to try very hard not to melt into. As it is, it takes all of his willpower—and the sound of Raf banging on his door again—to pull out of it.
“I hate you,” Henry mutters, trying to keep himself from swaying back in.
“Henry? You all right in there?” Raf calls through the thin trailer walls.
“You love me, actually,” Alex chirps back, entirely too pleased with himself.
“Regretfully,” Henry returns. “Now behave, you reprobate.”
Raf looks to be about five seconds from trying the handle when Henry finally yanks open the door and pastes a strained smile on his face. “Sorry, hello, I got your message I just…”
He trails off as he takes a step back and Raf climbs into the trailer, looking around at what Henry realises is an awful mess. There are papers strewn everywhere, a chair overturned, and the shattered remains of a mug littering the floor. The tiny bits of ceramic crunch damningly under their shoes as they step further inside.
“Oh, wow,” Raf says, clearly taken aback. “You ok, kid?”
“Oh, yes, fine, just— a bit emotional, you know. Needed to blow off some steam,” Henry blusters. Fortunately, Raf seems to accept this honestly bloody awful lie at face value.
“I get it, I do,” Raf says sympathetically, punctuating it with a firm pat to Henry’s shoulder. “If it were up to me, I’d push production back at least a week in light of everything, but Richards”—he lets out a huff, shaking his head—“well, you know how he is.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Henry replies, unable to keep the contempt out of his voice. Not that he thinks he’d be blamed for it; even if he didn’t know about Richards’ involvement, nothing about the man has ever been very pleasant. Henry takes another step away, wringing his hands as he leans back against the worktop of the kitchenette. “Do you— do you know anything more about what happened? With Alex?”
Raf sighs as he picks up the overturned chair and sinks down heavily into it, shaking his head. His distress looks authentic enough, but Henry hasn’t spent enough time around the man to know him well enough to tell if he’s faking it.
“I wish I did. It all just seems so… unbelievable, you know?”
“I do.”
“I’ve known him since he was a baby,” Raf continues. “I met his father on the set of a Bond movie. Did I ever tell you that? One of your dad’s.”
Henry blinks at him, stunned, the problem of Richards and Taylor suddenly far from his mind. “No,” he breathes. “I had no idea he worked on one.”
“Alex never told you about that?” Raf asks, frowning, and Henry shakes his head. “Oscar wasn’t as well known then, so he was just part of the larger stunt crew. Playing henchmen in fight scenes and the like. We hit it off, friends ever since. We worked on a lot of movies together before he retired. He used to bring Alex to set all the time when he was a little kid.”
Movement behind Raf catches Henry’s eye, and he looks up just long enough to see Alex poking his head out of the bathroom door before he quickly wrenches his attention back to Raf, who mercifully hasn’t noticed his distraction.
“I watched him grow up,” he continues, staring off across the trailer, “and he was always such a good kid. I just can’t believe he’d be involved in something like this. I just keep thinking…”
“What?” Henry prompts when he doesn’t continue. Across the trailer, Alex narrows his eyes at Raf, ignoring Henry’s pointed looks trying to convey he needs to hide.
Raf shakes his head. “It’s nothing,” he says dismissively. But then, a beat later: “It’s just—” He leans forward in his seat, glancing toward the front door as if he thinks someone might be behind it. “Richards suggested that I ask Alex to look into things when Taylor didn’t show up. He was insistent, even. Which was kinda weird, yeah, but I honestly thought he was just being a racist ass like usual. All the Mexicans must know each other, ya know?” He grimaces, wiping a hand over his face. “I keep telling myself it had to be a crazy coincidence. There’s no way he could have known Alex was involved in all this. Right?”
“He didn’t know shit. It was a setup,” Alex says as he steps out of the bathroom, and Raf startles so hard at his sudden appearance that he nearly falls out of his chair.
“Jesus fuck,” he yelps as he whips around to look behind him, clutching his chest with one hand and the edge of the small kitchen table with the other. “Alex?”
“Keep it down, would you?” Alex snaps, eyeing Raf distrustfully as he walks across the small space to stand next to Henry. There’s a confidence to his stride, his shoulders squared and his eyes flashing with defiance, and it’s unfortunately devastatingly attractive. Which is not a super useful thought in their current predicament. Henry doesn’t miss the tension that lies underneath, though, and when Alex stops close enough that their shoulders are brushing, Henry doesn’t think before he slips a hand around his waist. He can’t regret it, not with the way Alex melts against him and somehow also stands a little taller, like he’s drawing strength from Henry’s support.
Anyway, Raf doesn’t seem to notice, considering he’s still staring, wide-eyed and mouth hanging open, like he’s seen a ghost. “But you— you’re not— you’re supposed to be dead!”
Alex’s mouth hardens as he folds his arms over his chest. “Am I? Supposed to be dead?”
“Jesus Christ, kid, that’s— that’s not what I meant,” Raf huffs. “The news was reporting it! What was I supposed to think?”
“So you didn’t know about the setup,” Alex says, somewhere between a question and an accusation. “When you told me to look for Taylor, you’re telling me you didn’t know that Richards was gonna have Hunter send me to the club and hotel, places Taylor’d been, in order to frame me for all of it.”
“No,” Raf says immediately and vehemently. “I swear I didn’t know. I swear on my abuela’s grave,” he adds, and Henry feels some more of the tension unspool from Alex’s shoulders. Raf exhales heavily as he sinks further into the chair, a grimace of shame settling over his features. “Richards was insistent that this stay a secret otherwise they’d have to shut down production, and I’ve put so much into this movie… I couldn’t afford to see it fail. So I put pressure on you that I shouldn’t have to get you to agree, and I deeply, deeply regret that. When you called me that night I honestly thought you were hallucinating that body. By the time I figured out it was all true, it was too late. But I need you to know, I would never, ever intentionally let something like this happen to you.”
“Ok,” Alex breathes, slowly nodding, and Raf sinks forward to lean on his thighs, burying his hands in dark curls shot through with grey. “What about the blackmail?”
Raf’s head snaps up again. “What blackmail?”
Henry hasn’t seen Taylor since Victorville and, if he didn’t know better, he could almost believe that the actor that appears at his trailer door isn’t the same person. He’s always been so warm and vibrant, but this Taylor is drawn and subdued, with dark circles under his eyes and a tight set to his mouth. He keeps his head down as he climbs the few steps into the trailer, his gaze barely flicking to its occupants, at least until his eyes land on Alex.
All at once, his eyes go wide and his mouth opens in a gasp, and he’s practically flying across the trailer to envelop Alex in what must be a crushing hug, based on Alex’s slightly pained expression.
“Hey, buddy,” Alex chokes out as he wraps his arms around Taylor and pats his back a little awkwardly. “It’s ok, Tay, shhhh.”
“I thought you were dead,” Taylor all but sobs into his shoulder, “and it was all my fault because I let you go instead of me.”
Carefully, Alex extracts himself from the hug and puts his hands on Taylor’s shoulders, pushing him back far enough to look him in the eye. “Hey. You didn’t let me do anything. I insisted. I made that choice. And I don’t regret it, ok?”
“But—”
“No buts. None of what’s happened is your fault. You understand that, right?”
Taylor nods, a little jerkily, then gives one manly sniff and tries to surreptitiously wipe his eyes before glancing over his shoulder at Henry and Raf. “So,” he mutters, then has to clear his throat. “They know?”
“A little,” Alex tells him softly, matching his near-whispered tone despite the fact that there’s no having a private conversation in a space this small. “That’s why you’re here. They want to help, but they need the whole story.”
“You trust them?”
“I do.”
With another little nod, Taylor finally steps away and turns fully toward them, his hesitance still written on his face. But then, after an encouraging look from Alex, he starts talking, and he doesn’t stop for a rather long time.
Henry wishes he could say that the story he tells—a tyrannical studio head hell-bent on controlling everything about the creatives who work for him, demanding they hide who they really are and shaming them into silence with threats—was unfamiliar, but it’s not. Apparently not to Raf, either, who looks increasingly grim but never surprised as he listens to Taylor’s story. How Richards had struck early, before he was a household name, and Taylor had been so grateful for what looked like an incredible opportunity that he hadn’t thought twice before signing on. How Richards’ control over him had grown so slowly and insidiously that he hadn’t realised what happened until he was already neck deep in it.
“I’ve had my suspicions for years,” Raf says eventually, weariness and self-recrimination blatant in his tone, “but I could never find any hard evidence. And I fucking looked. But all I really had was a feeling, you know?” He sighs, shaking his head. “Men like him, they always do whatever they want and think they’re above the consequences. Even after Weinstein, not enough has changed. But I never imagined it would be something like this. How many more people does he have under his thumb?”
The question is obviously rhetorical, but Taylor shrugs miserably. “I don’t know. And now… with all the dirt he’s got on me for Michael’s death, I’m never getting out.”
“What about Hunter?” Alex says immediately, straightening up a little from where he’d sagged against Henry’s side. “He said if we rescued him—”
“Hunter is a lying worm,” Taylor bites out bitterly. “When he found out you were dead, he reneged on his promise. He says there’s no reason for him to turn on Richards anymore, and he’s right.”
“No, he’s not. I’m gonna give him a reason,” Alex practically growls, already shifting forward as his hands clench into fists, like he’s going to go find Hunter right this instant. He doesn’t get far, though, because Henry doesn’t relinquish his hold.
“Easy, love,” he says, tugging Alex toward him again. “Did you forget you’re quite literally a wanted man right now? Or will be the minute anyone finds out you’re still alive. You can’t just run around threatening people.”
Alex makes a disgruntled sound, but he lets himself be pulled back into Henry’s arms, and Henry tries not to find the way he’s pouting utterly adorable. “Except that Hunter could help clear my name,” he argues. “I think that merits some threatening.”
“Henry’s right. We can’t play our hand too early,” Raf puts in. He’s been staring down into his lap for a few minutes now, still listening but also clearly trying to work out a solution to this puzzle.
“What are you thinking?” Taylor asks.
“Richards is coming out here tomorrow because studio types can’t help putting their noses where they’re not needed, especially if there’s production issues,” Raf explains.
“We get him to talk to Taylor between shoots, while he’s mic’d up.”
“Shouldn’t be hard,” Taylor says. “There’s no way he won’t want to make sure I know my place.”
“Exactly, exactly,” Raf says, pointing at him emphatically. “So Richards says something incriminating on tape, and we got him. And once Richards is down, Hunter won’t be able to hide behind his protection any longer.”
Alex twists his head back to look at Henry, who can only offer a shrug of agreement. It sounds as good a plan as any to him. “It’s worth a shot.”
“I better get back before Hunter comes looking for me. He’s been watching me like a hawk lately,” Taylor says, already starting to move toward the trailer’s door.
“Hey,” Alex says, halting him with a hand on his arm before he can leave. “We’re gonna get him. I promise. And when he goes down, you’ll be able to act in all the pretentious indie dramas you want, ok? I’m sure this guy will give you a role in his next one,” he adds, flashing a grin over his shoulder at Henry, who can only fondly roll his eyes.
Alex clearly isn’t expecting Taylor to pull him into another hug, but this time Alex embraces just as tightly. And Henry may have spent more than his fair share of time watching them interact on set, but they’ve never looked more like brothers than in this moment. He’s struck, almost physically, by how unbelievably good Alex is—his unwavering sense of right and wrong, and how much he’d been willing to give to uphold them, to protect someone he cares about. Henry’s not sure if he’s worthy of the love of someone like that, so incandescently, brilliantly beautiful inside and out—no, he knows he isn’t—but he knows he’ll spend his life doing his damnedest to try.
“I don’t know how to thank you, Alex,” Taylor mutters into his shoulder.
“Yeah, well you can think about it for when we’re done,” Alex says with a puff of laughter. “Now go put all those acting skills to good use, ok?”
Taylor nods, finally smiling a little as he disentangles himself from Alex and takes his leave. As the door swings shut behind him, Raf rises from his seat as well, catching Alex before he can go too far.
“Alex,” he says seriously, and Henry decides that now might be a good time to busy himself with tidying up the broken mug. Not that he can’t hear their conversation anyway. “I’m so sorry for everything. And I want you to know I’m all in on this. Whatever it takes, I’m behind you. And if you need anything—money, an alibi, help sneaking across the border to avoid the cops—just say the word.”
Alex laughs a little at that, shaking his head. “I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks, Raf.”
“You got somewhere safe to stay tonight?”
“Uh. Yeah, I’m good,” Alex says, and Henry doesn’t miss the way his eyes flick across the trailer to land on him.
Neither does Raf. He smiles knowingly. “I’m sure you are,” he says, clapping Alex on the shoulder. “See you tomorrow, kid.”
Then he’s gone, and Alex and Henry are left alone again with a tension building in the air, woven out of the dangling threads of Henry’s interrupted confession. One that won’t be untangled without a long-overdue conversation.
“We need to talk,” Alex says, clearly on the same train of thought. He walks over to Henry and tugs him up from where he’s crouching on the ground to sweep up broken bits of ceramic. “C’mon, leave that, baby.”
“We do,” Henry agrees. “But not without getting you taken care of.” He reaches down and lifts up Alex’s left wrist, where there’s a ratty bandage peeking out of the cuff of his jacket. “How many more of these are there?”
“Counting the puncture wound from the pen?” Alex asks cheekily. “Just the two.”
“Take a hot shower and let me get them bandaged properly, alright? Then we’ll talk.”
Alex stretches up on his tiptoes and presses a fleeting kiss to Henry’s lips. “Ok, baby. Whatever you say. Just one thing.”
“What?”
“Can I borrow some boxers? Turns out salt water is really uncomfortable once it dries.”
Henry sighs and shakes his head, but he’s got no hope of keeping the utterly smitten look off his face as he says, “You’re a disaster.”
“But I’m your disaster,” Alex returns, grinning.
“Yes, love,” Henry agrees. “Now go. Shower. I’ll put some clothes on the vanity.”
By the time the shower turns off, Henry’s got the place more or less put to rights again. He’s also managed to scrounge up a first aid kit that’s probably not equipped enough to deal with Alex’s injuries, but it will have to do. The kit waits next to him as he sits on the sofa, trying to read over the final script pages he’d furiously rewritten in the last two days instead of worrying about their impending conversation. It hasn’t actually been helping, considering what he’d done to the story. How he’d written an ending full of triumph and hope and promise, one where you can do ridiculous, stupid things for the person you love and it all works out anyway.
Unrealistic, he’d told Alex not two days past. Christ, it seems like a lifetime ago. And despite the fact that he’d made the edits, he still can’t quite let himself believe that he and Alex might be able to have their happy ending, too.
A small cloud of steam pours out of the bathroom door when it opens, and Alex follows a moment later, scrunching his hair gently with a towel as he pads across the trailer toward where Henry sits. Despite the fact that Henry had also left him a t-shirt and joggers, Alex comes out wearing only the tight black boxer briefs and looking like some ancient Grecian hero hand-sculpted by the gods, even with the mottled bruises darkening his skin. There are more than when Henry saw him shirtless at Pez’s house, but Alex moves just as easily and gracefully as ever, as if unbothered by the injuries.
It’s still unbelievable, how he takes so many hits and gets up again, how most of the world will never know the extent of what he carries—and how Henry is the one who gets to see him like this. Damaged. Vulnerable. Still the most beautiful person Henry’s ever known.
Henry swallows down those thoughts and forces himself to focus on the most pressing tasks. “Better?” he asks as he sets the script to the side.
“Mm,” Alex hums in confirmation. He flashes Henry a sheepish grin. “Might have gotten some blood on one of your towels.”
“It’s fine, love,” Henry assures him. “Come sit so I can patch you up.”
He’s expecting Alex to take the spot on the couch next to him, or possibly sit on the small coffee table across from him. Instead, Alex climbs right into his lap, straddling Henry’s thighs with his knees tucked on either side of his hips, and leans in to seal their lips together. Alex kisses him deeply, thoroughly, but not urgently; their lips move with the kind of languid ebb and flow that feels like an indulgence, that feels like they could keep kissing like this forever.
“Hello,” Henry says dumbly when Alex finally pulls away.
“Hi,” Alex returns, smirking at him as he sits back on Henry’s thighs. He glances down at the pen wound on his thigh, which is currently oozing a little blood. “You gonna…?”
“Right, of course,” Henry says, scrambling for the medical kit. It’s not the easiest thing to manage with Alex sitting on him, but Henry’s not about to dislodge him, so he makes do.
The wound is deep but not very large, so it’s no more than a few moments’ work to clean up the excess blood and seal it up with a single butterfly strip. Henry carefully tapes a square of gauze over the top, then pulls Alex’s wrist down from where it had been resting on his shoulder and gently turns it over to inspect the inside of it. The cut there is long and shallow, mostly scabbed over but not cleanly, not to mention the fact that god knows what might have gotten in there when Alex took his dip in the ocean.
“Hm. This is going to sting,” Henry warns him.
Alex, perhaps predictably, rolls his eyes. “Just get on with it.”
True to form, he mostly sits in stoic silence as Henry cleans the wound, though occasionally a hiss or sharp inhale sneaks through. Henry, in turn, responds automatically with reassuring murmurs and soothing strokes of his thumb against the soft skin of Alex’s forearm as he works. This one is a longer process, but eventually Henry gets the laceration properly closed with a series of butterfly strips and starts wrapping Alex’s entire wrist with the remaining gauze.
“You’ll need to get these looked at by a doctor, once we’ve gotten this all sorted. I suspect this one will need stitches, and—” Henry’s voice dies in his throat, because when he finally looks up, he finds Alex staring up at the ceiling and blinking away tears as he bites his lower lip so hard he looks in danger of drawing blood. “Alex, love, are you ok? Did I hurt you?”
Alex huffs out a watery laugh as he shakes his head, squeezing his eyes closed, which only forces out tears that glitter like diamonds in his long eyelashes. “‘M fine,” he insists as he sniffs and swipes roughly at his eyes with the back of his other hand. “I mean, it stung like a bitch, but that’s not what…”
He’s still resolutely looking away, and Henry’s heart clenches as he reaches out and gently cups Alex’s jaw, nudging his face downward. “What’s wrong, darling?”
Alex sniffles again, meeting Henry’s eyes for a devastating moment before he drops them to his lap. “It’s just— I spent years doing this for myself. Pretending it didn’t hurt. Telling myself I didn’t need anyone’s help. And now you’re here, taking care of me, and I…”
“Oh, love,” Henry says as his heart shatters into a thousand little pieces. He draws Alex forward, wrapping him up his arms as Alex buries his face in Henry’s shoulder and clings to him like his life depends on it. “I’m so, so sorry,” he murmurs into Alex’s curls. “I should have been there. I should have always been there.”
“Why weren’t you?” Alex asks, his voice small and miserable.
Christ, Henry’s not sure he’s ready for this. It’s not about him, though. Alex deserves to know.
“Because I was scared,” he confesses on a heavy exhale. “I was so scared, and I made the biggest mistake of my life.”
Alex takes a deep, shuddery breath before he finally sits back again, this time meeting Henry’s gaze steadily. He doesn’t climb off of Henry’s lap, though, and something about that helps settle the terror thrumming in Henry’s veins. Despite everything that’s happened, despite what Alex had said on the phone that terrible night, it still feels like this could fall apart at any moment. Like Henry could explain himself and Alex could decide that wasn’t good enough after all.
With a deep breath of his own, Henry takes Alex’s hands in both of his and holds tight, for his sake as much as Alex’s. “I told you that I loved you then,” he begins. “Truly, I loved you from that very first day on set.” He lets a little smile tug at the corner of his mouth as he swipes his thumb over the back of Alex’s hand. “You walked up to me, the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen, and introduced yourself by telling me that my father’s films made you want to be a stuntman. I’m afraid I was done for.”
Alex makes a little sound of disbelief. “The first day?”
“The first day,” Henry confirms. “You were so young, then. We both were. Fresh in the industry, the potential to succeed or fail like a knife’s edge. You know, of course, that I grew up in it, but I never told you the extent of my grandmother’s control over us. How she’d taken me aside when I got a job on my first film and told me that under no circumstances could I allow myself to indulge in any… deviant desires that would reflect poorly on the family. That letting that part of myself be known would be tantamount to career suicide.” Henry closes his eyes at the memory, swallowing down the bile that still wants to rise in his throat. “And I believed her. Why shouldn’t I? She was the head of the largest production company in Britain.”
“Jesus fuck, baby,” Alex breathes, squeezing his hands a little harder. “That’s horrifying.”
Henry just shrugs, unable to do much else. “I got used to hiding it. I was discreet and never let anyone get too close. When I met you, I thought maybe I could let myself have some part of you while we were filming, and afterward you’d go on to bigger and better things, that would be enough. It would have to be enough. Then we got to the end, and you started talking about what was next, meeting your family and seeing each other outside of the shoot, and… I panicked.” Henry sighs, shaking his head as he stares off into the growing darkness of the trailer. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want that with you, Alex. I wanted it so, so much. Which is exactly why I thought I could never have it.”
“I’m sorry, baby, but you know that’s bullshit, right?” Alex says. He frees one of his hands from Henry’s grip and lifts it to Henry’s cheek, caressing it softly. “I never would have asked you to be public. Not until you were ready. Even if that day never came.”
Henry smiles glumly as he turns his face into Alex’s palm and presses a kiss there. “I know that now. At the time, even that felt impossible. It took me a while, but eventually I realised that maybe she was right, once, but that things were slowly changing. And that might be a way I could do what I loved without having to hide part of myself.” A sharp, humourless puff of laughter escapes him. “I also realised that I’d royally fucked up and made the love my life hate me.”
“I didn’t—”
“Alex.”
“Ok, maybe I hated you a little,” Alex relents. “I was falling for you, and I let myself go because I thought we were on the same page, but then it turned out no one was there to catch me.” Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that he says it so matter-of-factly, given that it was ten years ago, but it still makes Henry ache. Even when Alex’s lips curve into a small smile. Maybe especially then. “But I get it now. Why you did what you did. I just wish it hadn’t taken ten years to get here.”
“I know. And I’m sorry for that, too,” Henry murmurs. He slides his hands around Alex’s bare waist to press against his lower back, urging him closer, and Alex goes readily, looping his arms around Henry’s neck. “I think I knew, subconsciously at least, that making this film would inevitably bring you back into my life. Only a truly exceptional stuntman could pull off what I wanted.”
“And I am the best,” Alex grins cheekily.
“That you are, love,” Henry agrees, smiling fondly. “I never dreamed that I’d get another chance with you. That I might be able to have what I lost all those years ago.”
Alex nuzzles closer, his nose brushing against Henry’s as he murmurs, “Well, you can. I’m yours, baby. You can fucking have me.”
For once in his life, Henry lets himself believe it.
He doesn’t hesitate before closing the last of the space between them, crushing their lips together as all the emotions he’s been holding back for days—weeks, years—come pouring out, and Alex matches him every step of the way. His hands tangle in Henry’s hair, fists closing so tightly on the strands that Henry nearly sees stars, and when he gasps into the kiss Alex only swallows it, his teeth cutting against Henry’s lips as he grins. Henry pulls him closer, tightening his arms around Alex’s waist until there’s not a centimetre of space left between their bodies, and still, it’s not enough.
After so long restraining himself, telling himself he could never have this, finally letting go of those last inhibitions is overwhelming. Even after they’d fucked in Victorville, when he’d nearly given in completely, he’d managed to claw back some of the self-control he was still telling himself he needed. The echo of Mary’s voice had lingered in his head even then, years after he thought he’d finally expelled her, warning about professionalism and appearances. He’d been so worried over everything in this movie having to be perfect that he’d almost lost Alex again before he ever really had him back.
Now, with Alex warm and solid in his arms, he’s never letting him go again.
“I love you,” he breathes when he finally breaks away for air, because he hasn’t said it nearly enough. “I love you, and I’m with you, always. Whatever happens. Even if that means… I don’t know, going on the run from the authorities in Mexico.”
Alex laughs and smiles down at him, taking Henry’s face in both of his hands. “I love you too, baby. But if you think I’m gonna let that happen, you don’t know me at all. We’re gonna finish this, and you’re gonna have a huge premiere like this movie deserves. Ok?”
“Alright, love,” Henry agrees, letting his lips curve into a matching smile. “Whatever you say.”
Alex leans in again, then, capturing his lips in a slow, soft kiss that doesn’t stay that way for long. Now, there’s another heat building between them—not just desperate emotion, but a spark of need catching like dry tinder. Christ, does Henry want to give himself over to it, but he also doesn’t miss how Alex is quite literally wincing in pain every time he gets a little too enthusiastic.
“We should—” Henry tries, only to get cut off by Alex dragging him into another kiss. “Alex, you’re injured—”
“I don’t care,” Alex nearly whimpers against his lips. “Henry, baby, I need you to touch me, please.”
“Ok, ok,” Henry relents, because not touching him is frankly becoming impossible. That doesn’t mean that he’s going to do anything to risk hurting Alex any more. He slides his hands lightly along the smooth skin of Alex’s back and down to palm his arse through the boxers. “Let me take care of you, then.”
In their current position, it’s not exactly trivial to get to his feet with Alex still in his arms, but it is entirely worth the effort. Henry hadn’t forgotten how much Alex always liked this trick in the intervening years, which was knowledge he’d put to good use in Victorville. He suspects that Alex delights in the somewhat over-the-top show of masculinity, not only because he’s slightly obsessed with Henry’s shoulders—by his own admission—but because although Alex isn’t particularly tall, he’s also hardly slight, and Henry doubts that many other people usually have it in them to toss him around.
Not that Henry’s doing any tossing at the moment. While Alex is busy sucking a bruise into the side of his neck—which he should probably care about but definitely doesn’t—Henry carries him to the trailer’s small bedroom and carefully lowers him to the bed. He does pull away when he feels the scrape of teeth in a new location, hovering over Alex on all fours and making a half-hearted attempt at a disapproving glare.
“Alright, enough of that, it’s going to look like I’ve been attacked by a bloody octopus,” Henry huffs, which quite predictably makes Alex grin and try to wrap all of his limbs around him in his best impression of one.
“You’re wearing too many clothes, baby,” he whines.
“And you’re doing nothing to help with that,” Henry returns as he disentangles himself from Alex’s clutches.
He does not, however, start getting undressed once he’s free; instead, he sinks down until he’s face to face with Alex’s cock straining in his borrowed boxers, a damp patch already forming on the front. The fact that Henry can smell his own laundry soap and body wash mingling with the distinct scent of Alex as he buries his face in the crease of Alex’s hip makes something hot and possessive curl in his gut. Thankfully, Alex is too distracted by Henry’s proximity to his cock to notice Henry’s too-tight grip on his hips or the low sound he makes in his throat, somewhere between a pleased hum and a growl.
“How thoroughly did you shower?” Henry asks him, curling his fingers into the waistband of the boxers.
Alex grins and cants his hips up. “Very.”
Henry doesn’t waste any more time before divesting Alex of the boxers, then he grabs a spare pillow and places it next to Alex’s hips. “Over,” he instructs, and Alex rolls onto his stomach, spreading his legs automatically as the pillow lifts his hips slightly off the bed. Slotting himself in the resulting space, Henry runs his hands slowly up the backs of Alex’s thighs until his thumbs are pushing into the cleft between the two perfect globes of his arse. “Christ, I missed you,” he murmurs as he leans in.
Up the bed, Alex lifts himself up on his elbows and twists to look down at him. “Are you talking to me or my ass?”
“Who says it can’t be both?” Henry returns, grinning, then cuts off whatever smart-mouthed reply Alex may have attempted by trailing the tip of his tongue along the crease between his arse and his thigh and up along his perineum, stopping just short of his hole.
Alex moans loudly, already trying to push back against Henry’s mouth, but Henry holds him down and takes his time, relishing every groan and gasp he pulls out of Alex with his teasing strokes and kisses. By the time he seals his lips over Alex’s rim, Henry’s reduced him to a trembling, quivering mess, and judging by the way Alex shouts, he’s not far from the edge.
“Baby, please,” Alex moans brokenly, his hips grinding in a small circle against the pillow as Henry slowly pushes his tongue against the tight furl of muscle.
“What do you want, love?” Henry asks, smoothing a hand up one of Alex’s twitching thighs.
“Y-your tongue. Your fingers. Anything,” he gasps out.
“Hm,” Henry hums as he presses the tip of one finger to the outside of Alex’s saliva-slick hole. “Well, I suppose you have been very good.”
Alex swears loudly, and Henry finally gives him what he wants. With how keyed up he is, it doesn’t take long before Alex’s moans and curses reach a fever pitch, and Henry feels his entire body convulse as he comes, chasing friction against the pillow and rocking back on Henry’s tongue and fingers. Then he abruptly collapses like all of his strings have been cut, melting bodily into the mattress as Henry chuckles and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“All right, love?” he murmurs as he climbs up the bed. Alex mumbles something incomprehensible, and Henry laughs and presses a sticky kiss to the back of Alex’s shoulder. “What was that?”
“Said gimme a sec,” Alex slurs into the mattress. “You melted m’brain. I’ll—” He gestures vaguely to Henry’s own straining erection, which he’s been resolutely ignoring. And given the fact that Alex seems moments from passing out, he’s content to do so, truly.
“You don’t have to do anything, love,” Henry tells him. “I’m fine, promise.”
“Bullshit,” Alex retorts, rousting himself slightly.
“Alex, you’re clearly exhausted. I told you to let me take care of you, and that’s what I did. I don’t need anything else.”
But this is Alex, and once he gets something into his head, it’s nearly impossible to convince him otherwise. “Come on me,” he demands.
“Pardon me?” Henry blinks.
“Or, wait— do you have lube? What am I asking, of course you do,” Alex huffs. Then he looks Henry dead in the eye and says, “Use my ass.”
“Alex, you just came, I’m not going to—”
“Not like that,” Alex interrupts testily. “Just— fuck my crease.”
Henry gapes at him for a moment, but he seems dead serious and also extremely ready to argue. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m fucking sure, c’mon.” He actually wiggles his arse. Christ. “Want you against me.”
Well. Who is Henry to refuse a request like that?
If he’s honest, Henry’s half expecting Alex to have passed out by the time he brushes his teeth and returns with the lube, but Alex is still grinning at him over his shoulder, apparently having found some kind of second wind. And well, Henry isn’t going to try to claim the idea isn’t insanely appealing. He’s also not going to pretend it doesn’t feel good to have Alex watching him hungrily as he gets undressed, laying there naked and fucked out but still wanting, and Henry’s cock throbs as he pushes his trousers and boxers over his hips and steps out of them. Taking up his position between Alex’s legs again, he holds Alex’s gaze as he slicks up his cock and leans down, exhaling heavily as he trails the head of it along the length of Alex’s cleft.
“C’mon, baby,” Alex urges in a low murmur. “Take what you need.”
And, once again tonight, Henry lets himself want. Lets himself have. Gives into the pleasure that surges up in him as his cock slides between Alex’s cheeks and Alex rocks back against his thrusts, murmuring filthy encouragements that send Henry hurtling toward his climax in record time. A breathless laugh shakes out of him as he topples over the edge, the sight of his come painting Alex’s back and arse only making the surge of emotions that accompany his release all the more intense.
Henry comes down slowly, pressing a trail of kisses across Alex’s shoulder blades and along the side of his neck until their lips meet again in a slow, drugging kiss. He can practically feel Alex already drifting off, so he summons last reserves of his own energy to go get a washing flannel to clean them up.
Alex is already asleep by the time Henry collapses next to him, pressing in close enough that the narrowness of the mattress is hardly a concern. Despite his own exhaustion, though, Henry doesn’t drift off immediately. He lies on his side and drinks in the sight of Alex sleeping—the fan of his long eyelashes over his cheekbones, the small gap between his full lips as he breathes steadily, the unruly drape of his curls across his face—and knows that whatever comes next, Henry won’t fail him.
“I’ll always catch you,” he murmurs, delicately pushing a curl back from his forehead. “Promise.”