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Henry has very few places he feels like he can just simply be.
No empty platitudes, no awkward dismissals, no needless and invasive questions he has to stumble his way through, grasping for answers to justify his very existence with. (And certainly not his lack of).
One of these places is Anita’s 24-Hour Dry Cleaning.
Anita herself doesn’t seem to care much about Henry’s habit of traipsing in during the dead of night to drop off his laundry to be cleaned, nor does she mind that Henry often curls up in a plastic chair in the corner with a book while he waits for it to be finished. They’ve talked several times over the last year he’s been coming here, and she always has a way of dropping some life changing anecdote of wisdom on him and then simply returning to her work, letting Henry have his silence amidst the sound of the tumbling dryers behind her. Henry comes in just before midnight and settles in, his nose in his book while Anita scribbles at old crosswords and grumbles things in Spanish that Henry can’t really understand, and then he’s out by the daylight when her shift ends and they both head home for the day.
She is also nearing eighty years old, and Henry worries about her sometimes. She’s the only one that deals with his peculiar… laundry needs without question, yes, but she’s also become quite important to him. Each time he relocates, this time to a brownstone just on the edge of Brooklyn, he tells himself not to get attached to anyone. But he’s always been fascinated with the process of life, even as someone who’s only allowed to admire it from afar.
She’s got many grandchildren, all of which Henry’s fairly certain he could list off by name and even possibly birthday, that stop by randomly to check in on her. But Henry sees the way she wilts a little each time they leave, be it from melancholy or the strain of pretending that her joints aren’t aching as terribly as they are. He finds little ways for them to touch—sliding change across the desk, grabbing his fresh laundry from her hands and, once, a brief hug when Henry had had a rather upsetting night—so that he can absorb some of it for her and ease her burden by the small amount he’s able.
They have a routine. Henry thinks he should be quite used to those inevitably coming to an end by this point but he doesn’t realize how comfortable he’s become until he walks up the creaking, wrought-iron steps to the storefront, the bell jingling quietly over the door when he enters, and finds the desk occupied by someone else entirely.
He sees dark curls first, slim shoulders and a smooth stretch of collarbone above a size-too-large sweatshirt. The man looks up at the sound; tan skin, sharp nose, caramel eyes and a—smiling, Henry realizes belatedly—mouth.
Henry just knows he tastes divine.
The man cocks a brow, standing up a little straighter to greet him. Henry swallows, glancing down at his laundry basket full of thoroughly blood soaked linens, then slowly back to the counter, one foot in and one foot out.
“You coming in, sweetheart?” he says. “I promise I don’t bite.”
Henry turns on his heel, heading back the way he’d come and disappearing into the night.
+
“Where’s Anita?” he says by way of greeting the next time he comes in, sans laundry and hands shoved into his coat pockets.
The man glances up just as he had last time, his chin falling out of his hand as he sits up and grins. Henry’s told himself countless times since the week prior that he’s going to be normal for once, even though he’s sure he looks far from it. The man, blessedly, doesn’t seem to care.
“You wound me,” he feigns an injury, pressing a hand to his chest. “You know, I’m just as good at this stuff as she is. Okay, maybe that’s a lie. But I am just as pretty. Or like, roguishly handsome, maybe,” he bobs his head, purses his lower lip as Henry tracks it carefully. “Was it because I said I didn’t bite? ‘Cause I could, if you wanted me—”
“No,” Henry shakes his head, squeezes his eyes shut. “No. That’s— is she alright?”
The man’s shoulders slump just barely. “Oh. Yeah, she’s okay. Her right hip’s been acting up again. I insisted she take some time off, so she’s all propped up in her apartment and the nietos are switching off taking care of her.”
Nodding slowly, Henry frowns. “How do you know…?”
Leaning over the counter, the man cocks his head and taps his fingers on the old cedar. “I’m gonna take a wild guess here and say you’re Henry, yeah?” he smirks at Henry’s silence. “She told me you’d be suspicious at first. That’s probably a good trait to have, y’know? ‘Specially in this day and age. You never know what you’re gonna find out there in the middle of the night.”
Henry blinks, standing still in the middle of the small sitting area.
“Oh, shit, yeah. Sorry. Brain gets ahead of me sometimes,” the guy says sheepishly, shoving out a hand. “I’m Alex. Anita’s next door neighbor. I’ll be here ‘til she’s back on her feet again.” Henry blinks again. “Okay. Not a handshake kinda guy. I respect it.” Alex pulls his hand back to his side, nodding. “It is Henry though, right?”
Finally, Henry sighs. “Yes.”
“Well. Pleasure to meet you, Henry,” he smiles. “Anita was probably the most upset at the prospect of losing you as a customer, so. You think you could do me a favor and keep bringing your clothes in so she doesn’t murder me?”
It probably isn’t her you should be worried about , Henry thinks.
“Will do,” he says.
+
Henry spends an hour and a half contemplating it before he ultimately forces himself to zip up the thick laundry bag and take it across town to the shop. He doesn’t trust easily, had stopped that quite early on, but he has a great respect for Anita, and if she trusts this Alex, then Henry supposes he must at least be capable of doing Henry’s laundry without pointing out the obvious.
“Well. That’s a shit ton of blood right there.”
He’d been wrong, evidently.
Gritting his teeth, Henry eyes him warily from over the counter, watching as Alex peeks inside the bag and weighs the items. Then, without any further questioning, he re-ties the top of it and holds out a hand.
“That’ll be fifty-five, even,” Alex says. “You get the favorite customer discount, of course. I’ve been informed.”
Fumbling for his wallet, Henry hands over the cash, pulling back before their fingers can touch. Glancing back down to the machine, Alex slips the money into the rickety drawer and slams it shut—the only way it’ll close properly anymore.
“You’re not— I mean, you aren’t—?” Henry presses.
“Look, man, it’s none of my business, yeah?” Alex tells him, reaching back to lift the bag off of the scale. He turns toward the back, then pauses. “I mean I guess it is technically my business in terms of like, this being an actual business which you’re paying me to do for you, but like— you get what I mean.” Raising a hand to wave dismissively before quickly slapping it back onto the bag so it won’t fall, Alex walks off toward the back room, his voice fading as he goes. “Also, I grew up with an older sister. I’ve cleaned blood stains out of sheets and clothing since, like, middle school. I’m a pro, promise.”
Left alone in the front of the shop and presuming that Alex will be quite busy for a bit, Henry finds his way to the corner chair and settles in, his hands between his knees. He hadn’t brought his book today because he hadn’t anticipated staying. Hadn’t anticipated any part of Alex at all so far.
He tells himself it’s the familiarity and not his own morbid curiosity when he leans his head back against the front window and crosses his ankles to wait, drifting into the lull of the machines once more, this time with Alex’s voice humming a tune over the top of it.
+
Alex’s heartbeat is much faster than Anita’s. Henry is just as concerned. It rabbits and jumps throughout the time Henry’s there over the next couple of weeks, picking up speed when he crosses the threshold, when he hands Alex his change, when he can feel Alex sneaking glances at him over the front counter when the laundry’s going and he’s doing homework and Henry’s reading his book of choice for the night.
Henry isn’t stupid. He’s been around too long not to be able to recognize when someone is interested in him.
“Have you thought of maybe investing in some kind of protective covering?” Alex asks him conversationally one night, tapping his pencil nervously over a textbook. “Not that I don’t enjoy seeing your face every week in the middle of the night, because I definitely do. But. Just for ease of cleanup.”
Henry pulls his gaze away from the page he’s read dozens of times at this point to look up at Alex. “No.”
He’s found the squeak of shiny, firm plastic to be quite the mood killer in the past. Most times, anyway. Alex bites his lip, and Henry forces his gaze away again.
“I could send you some links to some on Amazon, if— if you wanna leave your number. Or something,” he rushes. “No pressure though.”
It takes a full three minutes for Alex’s heart rate to return to normal, his foot tapping underneath the desk, and this time Henry can’t passively attribute it to his ill-advised caffeine intake.
He furrows a brow at his novel, frustrated with Austen’s portrayal of romance. He supposes she hadn’t been thinking of this particular situation when she’d written such passionate depictions of love and sacrifice. They’re some of Henry’s favorites, admittedly, but he’ll never be able to have them for himself.
He can’t leave Alex his number, because he can’t afford to get attached. Henry knows how these things go, is destined to live through it over and over and over again. At some point, it’s just easier to do what he does now.
Frequent the right spaces in the city, the hole-in-the-walls where all walks of life are welcome, and find someone who’s willing to offer their company—and their blood, in turn—to Henry for a night. The people who are gone by morning, the ones that leave Henry with nothing more than blood soaked sheets and not a bleeding, broken, still infuriatingly unbeating heart.
Besides, if Alex knew what he was really cleaning up each week, that Henry was the very same creature of the ni ght Alex had likely been jokingly referring to before, spending his free time looking for someone to willingly offer themselves up to feed from in exchange for sexual pleasure and then making a mess of his sheets with the evidence—he wouldn’t want anything to do with Henry anyway.
Alex is bright, young, and full of life, and Henry would drain him in an instant.
(Metaphorically, of course).
“You don’t like to talk much, do you?” Alex murmurs, still staring when Henry pulls himself out of his thoughts.
He clears his throat. “Not typically, no.”
He can hear Alex’s pencil hit the spine of his textbook, the small screech of the stool as he scoots back and stands. He can hear the hesitation when he says, “Got it. I’ll, uh, try to keep it down,” before he heads through the door to the back room, shutting it softly behind him.
Henry loses the dull thud of his disappointed heartbeat in the noise from the machines. Thinks his own, if he had one, would likely match.
+
“What’s this?”
There’s a new cushioned chair in place of the old plastic one he usually sits in, a hanging lamp and a small side table with some magazines right beside it. Alex shrugs, his eyes flicking between Henry, the new items, and the desk in front of him.
“Just thought the place could use some sprucing up. Besides, you tip ridiculously well. It was in the budget.”
They still talk, it’d be near impossible not to in the long stretches of time they sit in the front of the shop together, but Alex has dialed himself back just a little, and Henry is surprised at the depth of which this upsets him.
He’s also surprised at the apparent lengths he finds himself going to to rectify it. He can’t offer Alex what he’d initially wanted, but he can offer friendship. Probably.
Alex is talkative, and all it takes is one question to set him off on a tangent which inevitably spirals into a thread of other, smaller conversations about his family, his rigid and difficult university work, and his day-to-day thoughts and anxieties.
He doesn’t mind that Henry doesn’t contribute in equal measure, but each time Henry accidentally lets something slip he seems unfairly delighted.
He’s folding clothes behind the counter when he says, “You know, if you need help hiding the body, I’ve got a friend that—”
“Christ.” Henry expels a breath he doesn’t actually need to take, ignores the way his mouth twitches in the process. “They’re all still very much alive, thank you.”
Henry realizes his mistake moments too late, but Alex doesn’t say anything else. He grins into his own chest and continues with the clothes, easing into another rant about something Henry thinks is probably very interesting, given the way Alex is so passionate about it.
He’s too busy getting distracted by the concentrated furrow in Alex’s brow, the dimple in his cheek, his long fingers and gesticulating hands, the lithe curve of his neck and shoulders to know for certain.
+
“I’m starting to get the vibe that this might be a sexual thing.”
Henry very nearly chokes on his thermos of tea. He removes it from his mouth and dabs at his lips with his napkin from the 24-hour cafe Alex had brought them food from. Henry doesn’t need it, but it’s comforting sometimes to pretend. Especially when Alex has coffee cake crumbs on his chin and that mischievous glint in his study-worn eyes, glasses still perched on his nose.
“You do, do you,” Henry says plainly, reaching for another pastry across their makeshift picnic setup on a clean towel from the back.
“Yeah,” Alex agrees. “Only I kind of scared myself when I went on Reddit to try to figure it all out and I’m going to need you to promise me that my oozing sex appeal isn’t going to trigger something for you and cause you to strangle me right here in the middle of all the clean laundry. Anita would definitely side with you, so I gotta cover all my bases here.”
Rolling his eyes briefly, Henry bites into a jelly-filled tart and chews slowly, enjoying the weight of Alex’s gaze, the fulfillment of being seen, even if not fully.
“You’re safe with me, Alex,” he looks at him pointedly. “And I assure you, everything is all very consensual.”
The glacial pace in which a grin overtakes Alex’s features would set Henry’s blood, if he had any of his own, on fire.
“Consensual, huh?” he drawls. “Color me intrigued, sweetheart.”
+
Sleep had never come easy to Henry from what he remembers of his life before, but he’d found he actually missed it once it was no longer a necessity. He forgets, sometimes, that humans still need quite a lot of it until the signs get so obvious.
He’d known this entire time that Alex went to school during the days and worked all night, but he supposes he hadn’t spared much thought for how draining that might be. It’s been a little over a month since Anita’s been out that he walks in at midnight to find Alex slumped over the desk, his head in his hands and the air stale with a handful of emotions Henry doesn’t like the stench of. The bell over the door doesn’t even cause him to lift his head.
“Alex?”
At the sound of his name, Alex glances up, his glasses crooked, his nose red and lip swollen. Even still, he sniffs and runs a hand through his hair, sitting up a little straighter and offering Henry a wobbly smile.
“Hey, Henry,” he rasps, glancing away just as quickly.
“Alex,” Henry says again, dropping his bag of laundry carelessly onto the floor and approaching the counter. “What’s wrong?”
He only gets a shrug in response, and Alex’s cheek goes hollow in the spot where Henry can tell he’s biting at it from the inside. Without much thought he reaches over the counter to reach Alex’s wringing hands on the desk, slipping his fingers around Alex’s. The way his shoulders sag is almost immediate, squeezing Henry’s hand and wiping hurriedly at a stray tear that drips off of his chin.
“I told my parents I’m dropping out of law school today,” he whispers.
Henry winces, remembering their conversations about the pressure he’d felt to follow in their footsteps. “How did they take it?”
He stands there, bent awkwardly half-over the desk with the edge of the counter digging into his ribs, stroking a thumb over Alex’s knuckles while he talks, taking some of his pain without even meaning to. By the time he’s finished he’s exhausted, slumped over again with his cheek smushed into his hand while his other remains firmly in Henry’s hold.
“I just think that if something’s worth the effort, the circumstances or time limit shouldn’t matter. If it makes you happy, go after it, you know?” he says quietly, his eyes rapidly closing. “Or else you’re just always gonna wonder what could have been. And that’s— that’s scarier to me than anything else. Knowing that I had an opportunity to be a part of something good and I didn’t do everything I could to take it.”
Furrowing a brow, Henry frowns when he can’t extract any more of the pain from Alex through their hands. He’s helped all he’s able to.
He still doesn’t let go.
“You are good, Alex,” he says firmly, though when he glances down again Alex’s eyes have closed, his breathing low and even.
Slipping his fingers from Alex’s silently, Henry eases his glasses off of his face and folds them on the desk, then carefully rounds the corner to slide a hand underneath his knees and his back, setting him gently in the arm chair that Henry usually resides in.
He seems so small inside of it, with his knees tucked to his chest. Henry pulls his arms back and goes to stand, but Alex’s hand stops him again, slipping his fingers back into Henry’s own. Biting at his lip, Henry glances over at the door and then back down to Alex.
He sinks to the floor beside him and settles in to wait, the machines quiet and Alex’s heartbeat lulling him to rest.
+
Alex’s words echo in his head long after that night and the next early morning, when Henry wakes before him and slips silently out the door. He walks through the city back to his flat, the bag of clothes in his hands still unwashed, soaking in the feeling of the sights he doesn’t typically allow himself to revel in.
The light of the sun that typically seems so harsh is soft at the edges today, birds singing from their perches on swaying branches when Henry walks under them. He sees all sorts of people; a woman jogging in the park, a man trying to simultaneously push a stroller and hold a dog’s wiggling leash, an art class painting the skyline from a distance, a couple holding hands and someone in a tailored suit with a briefcase speaking hurriedly into a cellphone.
Henry often wonders where he might fit in all of it. What his purpose is, if he could be doing something more valuable with all of the extra time that usually feels like a curse but could be a blessing, he supposes, if he made an effort to look at it that way.
The thought blankets him all week long. He thinks about it around the apartment, when he visits the bar downtown but only makes it through a drink—just a whiskey, this time—before he ventures back home alone.
I just think that if something’s worth the effort, the circumstances or time limit shouldn’t matter.
It’s not that Henry can’t afford to take risks. There isn’t much that could find a way to hurt him given that he is quite literally already dead.
And yet, even that doesn’t seem to dull the pain of a broken heart.
If it makes you happy, go after it, you know? Or else you’re just always gonna wonder what could have been.
Henry doesn’t wonder. He mourns. He grieves for things that haven’t even happened yet, for the happiness that he assumes he might’ve had if he’d been brave enough to reach out and grab it with his shaking, stained hands. Hands he’d thought no one would ever want to hold, but that Alex had latched onto without a thought.
And that’s scarier to me than anything else. Knowing that I had an opportunity to be a part of something good and I didn’t do everything I could to take it.
He sits at the edge of his unmade bed, the bag still sitting by the door. The way he sees it, he has two options: remain here in the dark, alone, preemptively breaking his heart once more, or give it to Alex instead, let him breathe life back into it for as long as he’s able. To see the opportunity to be a part of something good and seize it.
When he puts it like that, it isn’t really much of a decision at all.
+
It’s Anita behind the desk when Henry storms into Anita’s 24-Hour Dry Cleaning in broad daylight, which should probably not be surprising. He pauses in the doorway, shuffling.
“Anita,” he tries to sound enthusiastic. “Are you— how are you?”
She waves a hand with an unspecific grunt, caught up in her word search puzzle. Henry blinks.
“How is your hip? I— I hadn’t known you were coming back to work yet.”
“I have been back for three weeks,” she tells him without looking up.
He frowns. “But I haven’t seen you—”
“Alex asked to keep the night shifts.”
Swallowing, Henry feels his chest attempt a futile beat. “He did?”
“He did,” Anita sniffs, finally looking up at him from behind her thick frames. “But he won’t be here tonight. Or for the next couple a’weeks, probably. He’s goin’ home for a bit to see family.”
“Is he still here?” Henry rushes, stepping forward. “When does he leave?”
“He was still upstairs about an hour ago when I came down here,” she says. “I’m in 3A. He’s 3B. Deberías de subir corriendo."
Spinning back toward the door, Henry extends a hand, speaking over his shoulder. “Yes. Alright. Thank you, I—”
“Henry,” she stops him, the kind of smile on her face that she only reserves for her beloved grandchildren, “el amor todo lo puede. Good luck.”
He doesn’t know what the words mean but he clings to them in his mind as he smiles in return, nods, and takes the steps to get the apartment complex next door. He vaguely follows the signs toward the right direction, taking the concrete steps two at a time until he reaches the third landing.
There’s 3-F, 3-E… Henry walks a bit further down, stopping directly in front of 3-B and 3-A, right beside each other. He lifts a hand to knock, then lowers it again when he glances down to find Alex’s keys still resting in the lock.
Henry extracts them and holds them in his hand, checking the rest of the empty, open-air corridor for any signs of him, but he comes up empty. But surely Alex wouldn’t leave without these, he thinks. Selfishly, he doesn’t want to believe that Alex would leave without saying goodbye to him, but Henry can’t blame him for it, not when he’d pushed Alex away each time he tried to get close.
Perhaps he really has lost his chance, just as he’d decided to finally take it. He’s debating turning them into Anita downstairs when there’s a familiar, dull thud in his eardrums, louder by the minute and just a tick too fast to be anyone else's.
Alex.
“Henry?”
He turns on his heel just as Alex stops at the top of the stairs, a duffel bag on his shoulder and a small frown on his lips.
“Alex,” Henry says.
They stand in silence for a moment as Alex fidgets, clearing his throat. “Um. I was just about to head out but I forgot…” he nods mildly toward the keys in Henry’s hands, hesitating. “What are you doing here?”
It’s in the same moment that Henry realizes he has no idea how to answer the question. To make sure Alex was alright? To ask him out to dinner? To confess his feelings and also the fact that he’s not entirely human?
“Um,” he says eloquently.
Before he can come up with something better, Alex takes a step forward, his eyes on the floor between them as he rubs at the back of his neck. “Hey, I— I’m really sorry about last week.”
Henry’s brows dip toward the middle. “What for?”
“I didn’t mean to just dump all of that on you. And I know it made you uncomfortable, so I—”
“It didn’t make me uncomfortable,” Henry interrupts.
“You left,” Alex points out honestly. Henry doesn’t miss the flash of hurt behind his eyes. “And you didn’t come back last night at the usual time. I thought…” he shrugs toward his feet, curling a hand over the strap of his bag. “Well. I thought either you’d finally had enough of me or that you were out doing… whatever it is that you do with those other people and to be honest the thought of both of those is—” his jaw shifts to one side, and he shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m going back to Texas for a bit with my sister, since I don’t have classes here anymore.”
“We can keep in touch,” Henry rushes.
Alex smiles wryly. “I thought you didn’t want me to have your number.”
Gripping Alex’s keys in his palm, Henry squeezes them and forces his chin up, makes himself be honest for once. If there’s anyone that could take it without flinching, it’d be Alex. Henry takes a step toward him, and Alex doesn’t move.
“You didn’t make me uncomfortable,” Henry says again, softer this time. “And I do like you, Alex. I just— these things are complicated for me and I needed some time to think about some things before I came back to you with an answer.”
Very slowly, Alex begins to nod, crossing his arms over his chest. “I get it. Vampire stuff.”
Henry sighs. “Well, yes. I’d just—” he snaps his gaze back to Alex when he realizes with wide eyes, scrambling to backtrack. “I mean, I—”
“Fucking finally,” Alex mutters, dropping his hands to his sides. “I figured at least one of my theories had to be right.”
“And you don’t— you aren’t—”
“Henry,” Alex says flatly, closing the distance further, “I flirted with you when I hadn’t even crossed sex murderer off of my list yet. If you want me, you have me.”
“You’ve made a list?”
“I wasn’t allowed to ask, so. You can’t blame me for getting creative,” Alex argues, dropping his duffel bag to the floor by their feet. “You should see the notes I took, and also the pattern of the stains weren’t quite the same as the ones I’ve dealt with before so I cross-examined them with— mmph.”
The keys fall from Henry’s hand when he steps forward to seal his mouth to Alex’s big, beautiful, ceaselessly moving one, one hand on his neck and the other pulling him in by the waist. For a moment Alex is slack underneath him before he suddenly simmers back to life, his fists gripping handfuls of Henry’s shirt and tugging him backward until Henry’s got him pressed against his front door, a leg between his own and the taste of Alex on his tongue.
“Would now be an inappropriate time to ask you to come inside?” Alex gasps, pulling away. “I have a stain stick in my nightstand. And, y’know. Full access to a laundromat, if needed.”
Laughing lightly, Henry lets his forehead drop to Alex’s shoulder, bites his lip when he feels Alex’s lips press against the top of his head.
“You’re not leaving?” Henry whispers against his collarbone.
Sliding a hand up and over his cheek, Alex tugs him back again to look at him properly, leaning up to kiss him thoroughly again.
“I think I can stay a little longer,” he grins.
They fumble for the abandoned keys and bag and move into the privacy of Alex’s flat instead, a tangle of limbs on his couch. His heartbeat flutters against Henry’s palm, but Henry doesn’t feel the rushing urge to get anything over with like he does with the people he usually brings home. He eases Alex’s hands away from the hem of his shirt and pulls both arms up around his shoulders, holding him close.
“We have time,” Henry says.
Instead of being put off, Alex relaxes into his chest instead, shifting gears seamlessly. He tugs Henry’s arm around him tighter and traces the corner of his mouth with his finger, tugging gently at his lower lip as he looks up at him.
“Am I allowed to ask you questions now? Since we’re not technically in the shop? ‘Cause, full disclosure, I have a lot.”
Smiling wider than he’s allowed himself to in years, Henry rolls his eyes, pushes Alex backwards and kisses him quiet.
+
(He was right. Alex does taste divine.)