Chapter Text
January, 2002
“What about this one?”
He turns the book around, showing the cover.
“Philip has just warmed to me, I will not give him a copy of How to learn to love your queer family member, Alex”.
You would have thought Alex’s signature pout would work on Henry after five years of experiencing it, but the man simply rolls his eyes and takes the book from Alex’s hands.
“Philip is an asshat and deserves to eat shit”.
“Eloquent, and yet, I stand by my decision. Please go somewhere else if you don’t want to help me look”.
“I was helping!”
Henry gives him the patented look of a Fox at his limits, so Alex does what he knows best and scatters. He roams the shelves, lets his fingers, those who always seemed thick and stubby next to Henry’s pale, long ones, glide across the titles. Colors seem to burst out of them, pink and purple, red and green. His eyes linger on an ocean blue book, the color of Henry’s eyes. He can feel every strain of his facial muscles as his mouth twists upwards, and it’s funny, how something so simple can make him smile after all these years.
He sighs, lets the warmth of it spread through his aching joints. It hurts his brain that he’s turning thirty in just two small months. June insists that it’s his hours at work and his lack of exercise that makes him feel like a grumpy, old man, but Alex is positive it’s the years catching up to him. That Henry is four years his senior and barely has wrinkles hardly helps.
“Alex, how can I help you today?”
His fingers fall from the book as he turns to find the source of the voice. Marcus, the general manager of Gay’s the word, is smiling at him, bright and slightly crooked. He’s in the one percent of Englishmen who doesn’t either have tea-stained teeth or a completely ridiculous accent, and though he’s your classical literary nerd with his mousy hair and glasses, Alex can see his objective appeal. He already has his own literary nerd though, which is why they frequent this shop often enough for Marcus to address him by name.
“Henry is looking for a book for his brother,” Alex explains. “The one who bullied him half his life and never took a stand against their abusive grandmother”.
Marcus crosses his arms. He’s about Henry’s height and therefor slightly shorter than Alex, but he clearly hits the gym more often than him, though that doesn’t say much. His shoulders are broad, and his arms are thick, and despite the height advantage, Alex feels small next to him. He puffs up his chest.
“And he decided to go to the oldest LGBT+ bookshop in England?”
There’s a glint of mirth in those grey eyes and Alex can’t help but laugh, even if it makes his shoulders draw forward, removing any pretense of out-muscling the man. “I never said Henry was a saint. He’s forgiven Philip, but not enough to not mess with him a little. I’m sure he’ll love a queer romance for his belated Christmas present”.
It’s not a queer romance Henry eventually chooses, but a coming-of-age story, just the slightest sting against his older brother, far kinder than he deserves.
“Oh, this is so wonderful,” Marcus says cheerfully when Henry puts it on the counter. “Did you read the part where Lisa –“
Alex zones out at this point, a feat ingrained in him after years of hearing Henry and June discuss the books they’re reading and/or editing. That they work together is what brought him to Henry, but there are days where he thinks he could have taught himself to the level of a professional piano player with the time he’s spent listening to the two of them.
“ – have a special edition of this at home, if you want to come by some time and borrow it. Or I could bring it here, you know. It’s such a beautiful story”.
Alex clears his throat. “We should get going,” he says, not unkindly. He puts a hand on Henry’s hand, the one that’s just rising to gesticulate wildly like Henry tends to do when he gets excited about words. It folds easily in his, long fingers intertwining with his own. His are clammy and Henry’s are cold, and still it’s the easiest thing in the world.
“Thank you again!” Henry says, his wide eyes still glinting with excitement as they give Marcus a last wave before exiting the store, hand-in-hand.
Alex smirks down at Henry, who still has that dumbfounded smile on his face from talking to a fellow bookworm. Alex would be jealous, had it not been for the even better one he gets when Alex makes him come so hard he forgets every word in the English dictionary.
Well. He’s maybe a little jealous. It’s not a new thing, this tightening of his abs, a sour taste on his tongue.
“That man has the biggest crush on you”.
Henry’s smile falls. It’s replaced by a familiar glare. “He does not. He’s just nice. I bet most people who come there has no idea how important that store is. What it means to people”.
What it means to Henry.
Arthur Fox, Henry’s late father, brought his youngest son to the shop when it opened in 1979. At the time, queer books were rarely available in ordinary bookstores, and Henry who was only eleven and already felt a little different, found solace in the words written for people far beyond his years. Every year on Henry’s birthday, they would travel to central London for the sole purpose of buying Henry a gift from the store.
He continued the tradition long after his father passed away to pancreatic cancer.
“Yes, I’m sure he’s a nice guy, who also thinks you’re a smoke show. Which you are, so who can blame him?”
Henry shoves him so he almost loses his balance, but the tiny, pleased smile on his face is enough to make Alex pull those lips to his own and kiss him in the middle of the street. Five years ago, Alex couldn’t imagine being this open about his love for another man, not that Henry is, nor will ever be, just any other man. Growing up in conservative Texas in the seventies and eighties, he got to see Houston’s first pride parade, but it took years for that pride to settle in his own bones. He has Henry to thank for that.
He has Henry to thank for a lot of things.
They take the tube to Debden, a long trip on the red line that has Alex sleeping fitfully on Henry’s shoulder, while Henry reads the book he picked up for himself.
Alex is a smart man. He aced law school, even his last year when he first came to London to finish with an exchange year. June and her boyfriend decided to come with him, his doting older sister afraid he’d spontaneously combust from caffeine-consumption or something. He never intended for it to be more than a semester, but then June fell in love with publishing, and Alex fell in love with Henry and here they are, a little over five years later. Alex still refuses to use the metric system and he finds tea blatantly horrible, but he still feels like a Londoner. Having the most British, tea-drinking, book-loving, sweater-wearing man for a boyfriend certainly helps.
Yes, Alex is a smart man, who knows law and history, who follows politics raptly, who’s always updated on the news and the constant fight for the rights of the colored and LGBT+ community. But words, words have never been his strong suit. He uses words like weapons where Henry turns them to long lines of intricate poetry. It has resulted in some interesting discussions through the years, a few blazing fights too. Well, blazing from Alex’s side. Henry has yelled at him exactly once, and that was years ago.
Even now, in the low afternoon sun of early January, sitting next to the love of his life with his hand in his hand and his thick shoulder beneath his cheek, Alex’s stomach twinges at the thought of those fights. A part of him can never stop anticipating the day Henry decides to leave him.
For he will. One day, he’ll wake up, sit down on the kitchen counter with his Earl Grey in his hands and the paper before him. He will look over at Alex, and for some inexplicable reason, decide he doesn’t love him anymore.
That day feels closer than ever.
Alex squeezes Henry’s arm, and he closes his eyes as winter-dry, chapped lips kisses his forehead, willing it to calm his racing heart.
The unbearably loud noise of children, plural, in screaming delight hits him before they’re halfway up the stairs, and then Henry is toppled over by his two nephews. That is, Henry lets himself be toppled. Even lying on the floor, it’s clear that he isn’t a man that is harried by a four-year-old and a two-year-old. His blonde locks are soft without product, strands falling across his forehead as he lets himself be tickled by small, grabby hands. His shoulders are broad and round, his stomach just this side of soft where a sliver of it is visible as his shirt rides up from his movements. Thick thighs flex beneath his jeans as he picks both nephews up, somehow finding his footing while pinning two shrieking kids to his shoulders.
His face is red and his grin is wide as he meets Alex’s gaze.
“Remind me why we don’t send the kids to Henry more often?”
Philip’s brows are in their perpetual state of frown, but there’s a softness to his smile that Alex didn’t see for the first two years of their acquaintance. Having children changed him.
“Because your mother would be terribly jealous and we can’t play favourites,” Martha answers easily and laughs when Henry bulldozes up the stairs with the kids above him. Philip rolls his eyes, but follows his little brother with the speed of a man who doesn’t want to miss what’s coming.
Alex doesn’t have the same need, so he follows Martha to the kitchen instead, content with cutting garlic and parsley for the fish she is making. “You’re still my favorite cook,” Alex says as the slightly bitter smell of cod fills the room, butter sizzling in the pan.
“Don’t tell that to Henry”.
Alex snorts. The Fox siblings all have some kind of deteriorating gene for making food that somehow makes them worse over time. Alex swears Henry could make a decent chicken when they first met. He sometimes thinks it’s all a ploy to make Alex take responsibility in the kitchen, something he accepts with little fanfare. There was a time where Alex didn’t eat much at all. That he now finds joy in the mundaneness of cutting meat in square pieces is something he doesn’t take for granted.
Come to think of it, that’s possibly why Henry is steadily less inclined to touch the stove. He returns the favor by picking up after Alex’s lack of housework. There have also been some rather impressive kitchen blowjobs, though they’ve only once resulted in a severely burnt lasagna.
“Is he doing okay, though?”
Alex’s hands still on the cutting board. He starts up again slowly, his fingers trembling slightly over the parsnip. “What do you mean?”
Martha is good for Philip. She doesn’t put up with his shit. Nor Alex’s. She seems to lower the heat enough to leave the fish to itself and she crosses the kitchen to stand next to Alex. “Don’t pretend like we’re not both the lovers of traumatized men. I know how Philip gets this time of year, and he doesn’t have half the introspectiveness that Henry does”. She taps her fingers against the counter. “Is he struggling?”
Alex sighs. Leaves the knife be. “A bit,” he says honestly. “Worse than the last couple of years”.
Henry doesn’t talk about it much, but Alex knows his tells. He sees it in the set of his shoulders, the slight pinch of his forehead. How every smile seems to come with effort, the feathering of his jaw more pronounced. December is hard for someone who lost both his parents one Christmas morning, one to cancer and one to depression. That it’s been seventeen years and that his mother is better doesn’t make much difference. Some days are just hard.
“It’ll get better soon, with spring”.
Alex nods, but doesn’t try to push out the words that sit somewhere beneath the lump in his throat. When Henry, Henry who has modeled healthy eating for Alex for the last five years, who always takes a second helping and never denies himself cake, picks at his food, you know something is wrong.
And it’s different, this time. This time, Alex can’t pretend that it has nothing to do with him, no matter how many times Henry denies the fact.
He clears his throat. “It’s nice to come here though,” he says, changing the subject. Martha doesn’t call him out on it. She returns to the fish, spluttering happily in its butter-bath. “I’m glad he and Philip is getting along”.
Martha hums. “As am I, though I’m certain George and Arthur is the main reason for his continued presence in our home”.
That Philip reached out to explicitly ask Henry’s permission to call his youngest son Arthur was the first redeeming thing Alex saw in the man. He has hated him slightly less ever since.
He hums noncommittally.
She’s not wrong. Henry’s eyes light up around his nephews, and though Alex isn’t inclined to feel the same way, he rejoices in the small seconds he gets to see his partner vivid and carefree, absorbed in the silliness of two toy trains crashing. And Alex wishes, he desperately wishes he experienced a similar sense.
He doesn’t.
Philip’s blusterous laugh overpowers Henry’s bright one, but Alex stills hears it, feels it in his bones. He hasn’t heard it much lately.
“Henry is officially our number one babysitter. Arthur is out like a light and George is playing with his train set”. Philip shakes his head. “A regular baby-whisperer, this one”.
“Please,” Henry says, though his smile is bashful. “I’m just good at tiring boys out. Alex would know”.
Philip groans, but it’s good-natured enough that Alex only kind of wants to punch him.
“You’d make a great father someday, Henry,” Martha says.
Alex feels the twinge again. His stomach snurps, like his intestines is drawing in on themselves. Henry blushes, pink spreading over his pale cheeks like wildfire.
“Well,” Philip begins. “I mean, you can’t though, right?” They all turn to him, Henry and Martha with equal down-turned expressions, and Philip shoots his hands up. “Disclaimer, this does not come from a homophobic standpoint just… practical”. He clears his throat, his eyes dashing to Alex for help. Funny, given their utter disagreement on… well, everything really. “I mean, you’re not allowed to adopt unless you’re married. And you’re not allowed to get married. So… you can’t”.
Ah. Well, perhaps this is the first time he and the oldest Fox-brother sees eye to eye.
“That’s true,” Alex says. The parliament doesn’t seem to be budging on the marriage laws, though the discussion has been heated after the Netherlands legalized same-sex marriage the year before. In that glorious moment, it hardly felt like England could be far after. The gang had celebrated it with a party so all-out Alex felt debilitated for days. He was hungover and hungry, though he didn’t dare put food in his stomach in fear of it exiting as quickly as it came in. He had a headache, his skin was sweaty and his eyes were burning from lack of sleep.
All excuses for how he reacted the following morning, when Henry pointed out that this also entailed the possibility for adoption.
He pretends not to see the look Henry is sending him now. If only it had been angry.
“Well, yes, but it won’t be that way forever,” Henry says, words Alex has heard him say a dozen times. “They’ve already taken it to parliament once, and will again. The lords are coming around. Give it a year’s time, a few years’ time, and the marriage law will crumble, leaving both same-sex couples and single queer adults the chance to adopt”.
Alex squirms. Henry isn’t wrong. The world is changing, and God knows Alex has wanted it to, protested and paraded for it for years. “Well, it won’t matter, will it? We agreed to not have kids, so we won’t”. He coughs. “And the adoption system is long and gritty, and is not a guarantee at all to get healthy, functioning kids. As someone in Family Law, I would know. Not to mention how the parents themselves are often not a good match. It’s a flawed system. It won’t be less flawed just by becoming less heteronormative”.
Henry doesn’t even blink. His eyes are worn. Defeated. They’re known words. Alex doesn’t even know for who’s benefit they’re repeating them now.
It’s a wall. A wall of Alex’s own creation.
“And what exactly is a healthy, functioning kid in your eyes, Alex?”
One of the boys starts screaming downstairs, the sound reverberating through the linoleum floor.
Alex feels like he just proved a point.
Guilt hits him a second later.
“I’ll take him. Honey, can you finish up here?” Martha asks, taking of her apron.
“I’ll help,” Henry says, voice distant. The bags under his eyes seem more pronounced in the dim light of the living room. They go together, Henry’s broad frame and Martha’s small stature, leaving Alex alone with his least favorite Fox-sibling.
Alex makes sure Philip doesn’t burn down the kitchen, and by the time dinner is ready, conversation has turned to Philip’s job as a realtor. Henry smiles and laughs at the kids’ antics, George pushing a fork up his nose in a surprisingly accurate depiction of his father. It’s still there, in the background. A simmering soup that someone’s forgotten to take off the heat, thickening and burning until it’s eventually an inedible mess that needs to be taken out with the trash.
“I’m sorry,” he says on the tube home. Henry’s book is in his lap, but he hasn’t read a single page. Alex knows. He himself has read the first sentence one-hundred-and-thirty-three times. He still couldn’t tell you what it says.
“What for?”
Henry does this sometimes, forces Alex to spell things out. He once said it comes with the job. A need for clarity. Not a single word should be without purpose. It’s like a slow form of torture, though he knows it’s not Henry’s attention.
“For you loving kids,” Alex elaborates. “I’m sorry I don’t”.
A breath leaves Henry’s lips, warm air hitting Alex’s face. It’s short and jagged, like it sticks in his throat. “It’s okay,” he says, and then his head is on Alex’s shoulder, a warm weight pressing it down in its socket where it belongs.
But it’s not okay.
It’s not.
-
“I just installed the update. It should make it easier to access the correct file”.
She twirls a lock of hair between her fingers, a dark contrast to her mocha skin. Her nails are a vivid red, just like her lips. She’s a good-looking woman. Alex would never deny that. It’s hard not to notice when he sees her every day, not to mention that she’s often the talk of the payday pub Friday. She’s the type of specimen who could have any person she wants, and she knows it. He’s fairly certain she hasn’t stooped as low as some of his colleagues, even if they like to brag of stolen stares in the cafeteria.
“Thank you, Nora,” Alex says with a sigh. He rests his chin in the palm of his hand. “Computers still give me the heebie-jeebies”.
She snorts, somehow delicately. “Statistics show that 100% of men who use words like ‘heebie-jeebies’ have an irrational fear of machines”. Her grin is bright white. “You do know that 50% of English households own computers, right?”
“Of course I do,” he says, though he didn’t. “Henry has his own monstrosity in his office. You know, he doesn’t even need to look at the keyboard to write? Sorcery, that’s what it is”.
Her eyes crinkle prettily at the corners. “Welcome to the 21st century. Let me know if you have any other issues, okay?”
He has a lot, but none that she can help him with. “Thanks, you’re a lifesaver”.
“Just your regular IT-girl,” she says with a wink.
Liam is standing in the doorway when she leaves. He’s one of the few who doesn’t ogle her like a prize pig for slaughter, giving her nothing but a bland smile as she passes. Alex supposes he’s a gentleman like that. He pulls at the knot of his tie as he turns to Alex, showing of sun-tanned skin at his neckline.
“You’re a flirt”.
Alex scoffs. “I’m a taken man, Liam”.
“That has never stopped anybody, and you know it”.
He sits down before Alex, a hand dragging through his sandy-brown hair. The winter sun, the seldom times it appears in London, has given him a few new freckles. They line his nose like constellations, though Alex never looks for them. Not like he roams Henry’s skin, finding Orion and Cassiopeia in his moles.
“I’m not that kind of man,” he says seriously.
Liam smiles kindly, though there’s something a little twisted in his mouth. “Of course not, you and Henry are like David and Victoria, Kurt and Goldie, Johnny and Jane –“
“Liam…”.
“- destined to be together despite what adversity may come your way. It’s simply written in the stars”.
Alex would usually snort at this, possibly throw a pencil Liam’s way. Today though, all it leaves is a slight sting in his midriff. He clears his throat, attempting to shake it out. “Is this your way of asking to come to Henry’s next reading? Because you have a lot to learn, dude, I’m telling you”.
Liam grins. “Says the least eloquent man I know”.
The pencil Alex throws hits Liam squarely in the chest. Well-deserved. “Stop harassing me and tell me why you’ve entered my office ten minutes to closing time”.
Liam picks up the red pencil with a huff, twirling it between his fingers. He has small hands. Feminine.
“Closing time? Is this a bar or a law firm? But yes, I did, in fact, need you for something”. He throws a beige manila folder on his desk. “Or Raf did”.
“Luna will kill you if he ever hears you call him Raf”. Alex opens the folder, scans the first page.
“Nah, we’re tight”. Liam leans forward, pointing to the first page. Great Huntington Hosptial v Shrivastava-Bankston. “Zahra and Shaun Shrivastava-Bankston wants their seventeen-year-old son with terminal brain cancer to go through experimental treatment, some new drug so far only tested on animals, with good results apparently. The hospital fears it will severely damage his brain, potentially leave him worse instead of letting him live out his remaining time peacefully”.
Alex sees the picture of the boy. It’s dated two years back. Just any young kid on a beach somewhere, wind in his hair, a stupid, adolescent metal-filled-grin on his face.
With a death sentence.
“Henry volunteers at that hospital”.
Liam looks up to the ceiling. “Of course he does. Anyway, the parents want to sue the hospital for not allowing the treatment. We need to pull the guilt card here, make the boy talk in mediation if possible, emphasize the tragedy that is a teenage boy not given the chance for a life, no degree, no kids, no first lay. You know. Hope it doesn’t go to court”.
There’s nothing in the file on the boy’s current state of health, though with a diagnose like terminal brain cancer, it’s probably not something to write home about. His hands twitch at the thought of it, seeing your child slowly withering away from you, the only thing you can do grasping at straws in the form of experimental trials.
He slams the folder shut with a loud thud.
“Let us meet with the parents and take it from there”.
Liam salutes him. “You’re the boss, I’ll give them a call, set it up”. He bounces from his chair and shoots finger guns at Alex. “John and Jackie”.
“Get out off my office”.
-
June has a spoon in her mouth before Alex can stop her, his waving hand aimlessly swatting at her as he stirs the pan.
She moans.
“Stop making porno sounds in my kitchen”.
“Stop making porn-adjacent food”.
He sticks his tongue out at her, though it’s hard not to smile at the pleased scrunch of her nose. “What does Evan think about you coming here every week, helping yourself to your little brother’s apartment?”
June hums. “Well, it’s Henry’s apartment, you’re just a parasite that’s bitten on and refuses to leave”.
“Please, we have a symbiotic relationship, I’m the shroom to his algae”.
A snort. “Okay, Mr. Encyclopedia, that is the nerdiest thing I’ve ever heard”.
Alex retaliates with a fist to her shoulder.
“Play nice,” Henry says as he enters the kitchen, leaving his briefcase on the counter. “Hello”.
“Hi”.
Henry leans in to kiss him, what would usually be a soft peck, an everyday thing. Alex doesn’t let it. Not tonight. He catches Henry by the neck as he’s about to pull back, lets their lips linger.
When he reluctantly lets go, Henry’s brows are raised in pleasant surprise. Alex wants to wipe that look from his face. He doesn’t deserve it directed at him.
“Long day at the office, Henry?” June quips, breaking the moment. “Your boss seems like such a drag”.
“That our boss prefers me to do the important work doesn’t make him a drag, June”.
Alex coughs, attempts for normalcy. “Can you imagine Cash in drag? He’d be so uncomfortable, poor thing”.
“Please stop”.
June laughs and lets Henry tell her about said important work, the last editing on the newest novel of one of their acclaimed writers. He tunes them out, finishes his stew instead as he lets the familiarity of June’s light airy voice and Henry’s calm, darker one wash over him. Lets it slow the beat of his heart, lessen the knot in his chest that has been steadily increasing with the size of Henry’s dark under-eye bags, with the amount of days he struggles to leave the bed. You wouldn’t believe it now, with how he gesticulates wildly at June and rolls his eyes at her following antics.
It makes it hard not to believe Alex is the problem.
Dinner is nice. Just like it’s always been since the first time June invited Alex to meet his colleagues, and those blue eyes swooped him away to a place where he could feel safe in his sexuality, in the skin of someone who loves another man like breathing. Alex still can’t help but frown at his food, his fork hovering above it, June’s voice a drone in the background. Work has been busy lately. And he’s been worried about Henry. He hasn’t been to the gym as much. Feels it in the way his shoulders hunch forward. Sees it in the mirror too, the absence of definition that follows long workdays ended in dinner at the pub.
Henry’s hand grabs his beneath the table. Lifts it to his lips, kissing his knuckles one by one.
Alex breathes. Eats his food, feeling the warmth of Henry’s palm on his leg.
“I should get going, make sure Evan is still alive beneath the hood of that car”.
“I still can’t believe you married a lowly mechanic”.
June claps him on the face. “Not everyone can find a real-life 16th century poet, can we?”
She hugs Henry with the same tenacity, a brother to her in everything but blood. They clean up when she leaves. Routine. Henry does the dishes while Alex dries, their shoulders bumping into each other.
“We should talk,” Henry says, soap suds running down his arms. Alex takes the time to dry them, pats his skin delicately in a rhythm unlike his heart.
“Is this about the kid-thing?”
Henry blinks.
“Do you think we need to talk about the kid-thing?”
Alex sighs, but takes Henry’s hand in his, damp from the water as it is. Henry follows him easily, like he’s always done, a constant presence in the storm that is Alex. The dark leather couch engulfs them both, their knees touching, Henry’s pale hand never leaving Alex’s.
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot, especially since we visited your nephews”.
Henry nods slowly. “That’s three weeks ago. You’re not usually one for processing these things alone”.
It’s true. Alex tends to burst out with every minor detail of inconvenience, a positive in that he rarely lets things fester, a negative in that he sometimes blows things out of proportion. His overthinking mind has been haywire of late, too chaotic to put words to life, even his usual ineloquent, unthought-through ones. It’s Henry who dwells, who leaves Alex to pick at the walls of worry in his body, stabbing it until he breaks.
“I just…”. He stops. Takes a ragged breath. Henry’s hand squeezes his. “You’re right. In a year - maybe two, maybe more, it doesn’t matter – you’ll be allowed to adopt. And I can’t be a part of that”.
Henry swallows, his throat working through it. His eyes are blank, dull. As if he’s seen this coming. “Why?”
“Because,” Alex begins, willing his voice not to shake. “Henry, we’d be terrible parents”.
Henry blanches, his hand slipping out of Alex’s.
“God, that came out all wrong,” Alex groans, reaching for the pale fingers that stay limp in his palm. “What I’m saying is, we barely got our shit together. I’m an anxious mess at the best of days, a total disaster at the worst, and you –“. He waves at Henry, at the tight set of his shoulders, the purple tint beneath his eyes. “- you are struggling, and I know this time of year sucks for you, but truth is a lot of times of the year sucks for you, and I don’t mind, I don’t, but is that what you want a kid to grow up with?”.
Henry frowns. “They would be loved, Alex”.
“Yes, like your mother loved you, though she barely spoke to you for years, entrapped in her own head. Like my parents loved me, yet I cried myself to sleep next to June for years at the sound of doors slamming and my mother screaming at a man too tired to care anymore. Every parent starts out with good intentions”.
Not to mention everything that could go wrong. He thinks of his newest case, a young boy, still just a kid really, his life coming to an end eighty years before it should.
“I’d fuck it up, Henry. I’d ruin it”.
Henry’s hands are on his neck, thumbs stroking the soft spot between his jaw and his ears. “Love, no. You give yourself far too less credit. Think of the things you’ve overcome. You wouldn’t”.
Alex’s vision goes blurry. “I would”.
Henry shakes his head. His forehead falls to Alex’s, a steady pressure against his aching skull. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t need it, Alex. I only need you”.
The first tear escapes Alex, and he chuckles wetly. “You say that now, but years later, when the opportunity is there and I’m standing in your way – what then?” He pulls Henry’s hands from his face, holds them in his own. “I don’t want to be something you regret”.
A sob leaves Henry’s throat, a wretched sound that cuts through Alex’s very core. “I could never regret you, Alex”.
Alex closes his eyes.
He’s the lighthouse. The key to everything. The stars, the moon, the love of his life.
“What if I don’t want to take that chance?”
He feels Henry’s hand go slack in his. Opens his eyes to see the steady stream of tears down that pale face, sees how one catches on the mole above his upper lip. “What are you really saying here, Alex?”.
“Sweetheart,” Alex begins, his throat catching on the word. Will he ever get to say it again? “For once, don’t make me spell it out for you”.
Henry’s up from the couch, his hand dragging over his mouth. He rounds on Alex, Alex who’s somehow found his way to his own feet. “Don’t do this”.
“Henry, you should be with someone who can give you the future you want”.
Henry glares at him, gestures between them. “We are the future I want”.
“Well, it’s not what I want!” Alex shouts, his words echoing through the room. “I cannot live my life knowing I was never able to give you this one thing you want, and stop pretending like you don’t. I will always feel like I depraved you of something, like you’re settling for less by settling for me”.
Longing glances in his nephews’ presence turned to hard stares over morning coffee, disappointment in his eyes.
“I won’t survive not being enough for you”. He breathes harshly. “Please, Henry”.
Henry cries out as he falls to the floor, his legs seemingly failing him, and Alex is there, tucking him against his neck, his sobs wrecking through Alex like they do through Henry.
His hands stroke through those blonde locks, soft like silk between his fingers. He always imagined he would watch those strands turn grey one day. His silver Fox.
“Is this really what you want?” Henry whispers, later, when the tears have stilled and they’re lying in each other’s arms on the hard floor. Alex tries to ground himself in it, in every bone aching with displeasure.
How could he ever want a life without Henry?
“It’s what is best”.
Henry doesn’t argue. Alex tries not to give it any meaning. But he does. He always does.
“I don’t know who I am without you”.
“Sure you do,” Alex says. “You’re Henry James Fox. A writer. A poet. A god-awful cook”. Henry chuckles wetly, warm breath against Alex’s neck. “My best friend. That won’t change, Henry. Never”.
Henry looks up, his mouth a wet presence against Alex’s jaw as those blue eyes find his. Alex would drown in them. He’d stay forever in their depths if he could. “Promise?”
Alex leans forward, let’s his forehead meet Henry’s, looking down at those lips, swollen and red from Henry biting them. He wants to kiss him, pour everything into that mouth, leave his very soul inside it.
But he can’t.
“I promise”.