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The brownstone is still when Alex comes home. The clock is ticking in the living room just like it always does, but there’s no sign of Henry’s movements, no David scuttling down the hall to greet him. It’s weird; eerily quiet and unsettling. Even though it’s just the two of them and David, the house is rarely this quiet. Usually, there’s music filling the house from the record player, Henry talking on the phone to Pez, or the sound of his fingers gently clacking on the keys of the keyboard as he types. But today there’s just silence.
‘Sweetheart?’ Alex calls out.
Nothing.
Alex doesn’t like the quiet. He never has. He’s always felt a compulsive need to fill it, and he knows that Henry is happier with it than he is, but he has become so used to Alex’s constant chatter now that he says even he finds it disconcerting to have the house be so still.
He checks the living room first, then the kitchen. He glances out to the garden, even though it’s raining and it seems unlikely that he’d be there. The thing is, Henry’s PPO told him he was here so he knows he’s not taken David out for a walk. He climbs the stairs and wanders into the study, half-expecting to find him sitting there in his armchair flicking through a book with David asleep at his feet, but he’s not. Alex wanders through the house, a knot tightening in his stomach as he walks through each empty room.
He swallows down the lump in his throat and pushes open the door to the bedroom. It’s dark, blinds still drawn and covers rumpled and unmade on the bed, and it takes a second, but then there’s a tiny high pitched whine, and his eyes adjust to the light to see David curled up on the bed next to a mass of blankets. Somewhere in that mass, Alex can just about make out Henry’s wan eyes looking back at him.
Alex’s heart skips a beat. He blinks. ‘Hey sweetheart,’ he says quietly, padding over to the bed. His throat closes up slightly at the sight of Henry, still in the same place he’d been in this morning: messy hair and tired eyes.
Henry lets out a soft, tired grunt, and David whines in response. Alex gives him a scratch behind the ears, kicks off his shoes and climbs onto the bed. David scrambles off and slumps over to his own bed in the corner. ‘Hey baby,’ he says, reaching his fingers around the covers that Henry has cocooned around his face, ‘can I come in?’
Henry hesitates. It’s not like Alex hasn’t seen him on a bad day before, but usually they’re dark cloudy moods that overcome him, and long periods of sluggish tiredness. They usually involve cancelling plans and Henry curled up on the sofa staring at Bake Off; Henry getting irritated at the tiniest things, and Alex prodding and provoking him teasingly until a smile catches onto his face. That’s what this had been until a few days ago, but slowly he’s inched further and further into a territory Alex doesn’t know, left him adrift without a map. Alex doesn’t like not knowing things.
He had slipped out this morning with a kiss on Henry’s forehead to go to a study session then class, and Henry was still asleep. He looks as though he hasn’t moved all day. Alex feels a pang of relief that at least he put some food out for David before he left this morning. Alex has seen Henry on a bad day before, but never quite like this.
He peels away the covers from Henry’s face and pushes his way in next to him. ‘Hey baby,’ he says again, pushing Henry’s hair from his forehead. ‘Can I hold you?’
Henry looks at him, heavy-lidded red eyes rimmed with dark circles, and bites down on his chapped bottom lip. He pauses, then croaks out, ‘please,’ and Alex braces himself and forces his heart to hold itself together, not to shatter at the sound.
Alex wraps his arms around Henry and holds him close and presses kisses into unwashed hair. ‘Have you had anything to eat? Or drink?’ he asks eventually.
Henry moves his head slightly in a movement that Alex is fairly sure is meant to be a shake of his head. ‘Can I get you some water and some soup?’ he asks, then adds, ‘please?’
Henry exhales steadily, then nods. ‘Okay.’
Alex helps him up, and guides him gently to the bathroom. ‘Food, then bath?’
Once Henry has consumed a bowl of soup and a glass of water, Alex runs a bath full of bubbles and they sit in warm water with Henry between Alex’s legs. Alex sits behind him quietly and leans his cheek on the side of the bath.
‘I love you,’ he says quietly and Henry takes a soapy hand and puts it on Alex’s head and tells him that he feels the same way.
When he’s finished, Alex pulls a pair of soft, clean sweatpants and an old college sweatshirt of Henry’s from the drawer and lays them out for him on the bed. Henry dresses himself in the clothes on the bed and pulls back the sheets for Henry to climb back in with him. He lies down and pulls him into his arms, Henry’s face right next to his heart. He can feel Henry’s hot breath on his chest through the cotton of his own shirt.
‘I wish,’ Henry starts, then he pauses.
‘What?’
He sighs. ‘I was going to say that sometimes I wish I didn’t have a physical form. You know, just having a body to take care of is just… exhausting sometimes, and the tiniest things become so overwhelming that it might be nice to just… I don’t know, be a brain in a jar. But then I realised I’d have to be alone with just my brain in a jar and that wouldn’t be much fun either.’
Alex pushes his nose into Henry’s hair. ‘Having a physical form can be annoying sometimes,’ he agrees. There are days when neither of them can manage, where the dishes stack up and the clothes spill across the floor and email after email goes unanswered. ‘But it can be good too.’
‘Not convinced the benefits outweigh everything else right now.’
‘You’d miss sex, and also Jaffa Cakes.’
Henry pauses. ‘A compelling point. Food and orgasms then, the only reasons to have a corporeal form.’
Alex huffs out a laugh and presses a kiss to Henry’s hair. ‘Baths,’ he says. ‘David putting his head in your lap, the sea breeze on your face, those cheesy romance novels that nobody but me knows you love as much as you do, trees turning in fall.’ He pauses.
There’s silence for a second, and then Henry says, ‘keep going.’ His voice is full of something Alex hasn’t heard before, an almost longing strain for things just out of reach.
‘Getting a letter in the mail, playing the piano with Bea.’ His hands move gently, up and down Henry’s arms. ‘Sand between your toes, the summer sun on your face, buying flowers at the market, blueberry pancakes for breakfast, watching it rain when you’re inside. Hugs,’ Alex says gently. ‘You know I love kisses but… you give the best fucking hugs, sweetheart.’
‘Point taken.’ Henry sighs. ‘It’s just overwhelming sometimes,’ he says quietly. ‘I get stuck in my head and it’s so hard to get back out. It's like a maze where every turn is a dead end. It just keeps dragging me in and I don’t know how to get out of it, and then I just can’t make myself get up and do things. I don’t know how to, it’s like I’m stuck and then my stupid body is the last thing I want to deal with.’
‘Hey,’ Alex says quietly, ‘I love your stupid body.’
Henry exhales something that Alex suspects is an attempt at a laugh. ‘Well, at least one of us does.’
Alex’s chest aches because Henry doesn’t deserve this. Nobody does, but especially not Henry. Because Henry – for all that he is a stupid stubborn shithead with too many last names and an impressive ability to still, after all these years, provoke Alex like nobody else can – is the best person on the fucking planet. He’s everything. He’s Alex’s everything.
‘I wish I could make it stop hurting, sweetheart,’ he says quietly. Alex pulls back and shifts himself down the bed. He takes Henry’s face between his palms and he looks into Henry’s eyes, big and shining blue and full of confused apprehension. ‘I love everything about you,’ he says. He leans forward and presses a kiss to Henry’s cheek.
‘I love this bit,’ he says, pressing another kiss to the crease by his eyelids.
‘And this bit.’ He kisses Henry’s forehead.
‘This bit.’ Another, for the tip of his nose.
‘I love this bit,’ he says, catching the corner of his mouth.
‘And this bit,’ he tells him, and kisses his chin.
‘All of it. All of you. And I know that doesn’t change anything or make it better, but I do.’
Henry presses his face into the crook of Alex’s neck. Alex brings his arms around him and envelops him in them, pulls him in tight and promises himself he’s going to fight off any of the demons he can.
‘Thank you,’ Henry murmurs. ‘I’m sorry—’
‘Hey.’ Alex shakes his head. ‘No apologising for bad brain days, remember? I’m here, okay? I’m gonna be here feeding you and bathing you when you’re ninety and have wrinkles in weird places anyway, so I’m fine to get a headstart while you’re still young and hot.’
Henry twitches in Alex’s arms slightly and Alex feels something like relief flood through him at the slight shake of Henry’s stubbornly unimpressed laughter. Alex can almost feel the roll of his eyes.
‘Do you want me to call Shaan? I can ask him to sort out another appointment or prescription or whatever? Or you can if you want, I just— I can do it if you don’t feel up to it.’
‘In the morning maybe?’ Henry says, his voice heavy. He presses his body against Alex’s even closer, curling around his fingers into Alex’s shirt and his long limbs intertwine themselves with Alex’s, just as inseparable as the ivy climbing its way up the back of the house. 'I just want to sleep.'
‘Whatever you want, sweetheart.’
‘Do you mind if I—?’ he says, slurring his words together just slightly, like they’re too heavy for his tongue to hold.
‘Sleep, baby,’ Alex tells him quietly. ‘You sleep.’
‘Love you.’
‘I love you too, sweetheart. So fucking much.’
Alex brushes his lips against the deep furrowed lines in Henry’s forehead. He remembers how so often he used to want to smooth them out with his thumb, like creases in paper, so this time he does. He presses his fingertips to Henry’s skin and feels it unwrinkle under his touch. He feels the way the tension seeps from Henry, as though it’s bleeding right into Alex instead. That’s fine, he thinks. Henry has carried so much for him in the past, shared the weight of so many of his own burdens; he’s happy to do the same, happy to be a guiding light in Henry’s periods of darkness.
Henry’s body slides into sleep. It’s slow and somewhat restless. He tosses and twitches and makes unhappy grumbles in his dreams, but Alex doesn’t move until Henry’s limbs are heavy with the weight of sleep. He reaches over and turns out the light, and then slots himself back in place at his side. Henry’s body shifts and curls itself into Alex’s waiting arms again.
He knows he can’t keep all of the clouds at bay – inside Henry’s head it’s already raining – but maybe he can help burn some of them away. He can help fight off any more from closing in. Maybe he can help push the dark aside and make room for the light again. He presses his lips to Henry’s hair. He pulls Henry closer and drifts off to sleep by his side.
He’ll make blueberry pancakes in the morning.