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It’s two in the morning and Henry still isn’t back yet. Alex drums his fingers on the counter, staring unblinkingly at the front door. He’s pissed and he has every right to be - and he’ll tell Henry exactly that, will tell him the second he walks through the door. He’ll rip him a new one and Henry will deserve it, and he won’t be cowed by his big blue eyes and guileless smile - he won’t.
Only the kitchen light is on. Five hours ago, the house had been completely dark save for the candles Alex had littered around the living room and kitchen. They’d burned low after a few hours, and he’d had all of them thrown out when they started looking like they were going to burn the house down. He’d put on a record - Henry’s Elton record that they’ve played half to death. He got sick of restarting the needle after the sixth time, though, so he’d put that away, too. The only sound Alex hears in the quiet now is the steady tick of the clock and his own breathing.
2:04.
He’s had to reheat the pasta seven times. He’s sure it tastes like shit at this point - nothing that’s been reheated seven times should even be edible. It’s the pesto one - Henry’s favorite - that has a million steps and takes forever to make, but if Alex had known that Henry would be this late he’d have spared himself the trouble and just bought a pizza. It was delicious, too. Alex hadn't bothered waiting for him - he tore into it two hours after the time Henry promised he’d be back. It was delicious, of course it fucking was. He’d used the expensive truffle oil that cost him an entire month’s rent - it was fucking exceptional.
The wine was back in the fridge. He had been tempted to twist it open and down the whole thing, but he figured that he needed to be sober when Henry got back. If Henry ever got back.
If he finds out Henry went back to his sister's or Pez’s, he’s going to fucking murder him. Let the state catch him, he doesn't care. Pez can vouch for him, he’ll say that it was completely justified.
Something rattles in the lock. There’s a bump and a muffled curse, and then more rattling. Alex straightens up as the door swings open. He takes another glance at the clock - 2:10, the fucker - and turns back to the door, mouth already open to give the man a piece of his mind before it shuts with an audible click. Henry closes the door behind him and turns around to face him, clutching a couple of branches in one hand. That isn't what gives Alex pause, though. It’s the giant slash down Henry’s front - one huge line from his left shoulder running across his chest and down his right side. Henry smiles gamely at him.
“You fucking asshole,” he hisses before Henry can say anything, already turning around to take the first aid kit from under the sink. “Get in here. On the dinner table.”
He hears some shuffling, and when Alex walks out of the kitchen, he almost bumps straight into Henry. He stumbles back. “Jesus, Hen.”
“Happy anniversary." Henry smiles softly down at him, holding out his hand. He’s holding a bouquet of cherry blossoms.
“Shut up." Alex means for it to sound sharp but fails, because as pissed as he is, this is the love of his life, and even bleeding and hurt Henry is so fucking sweet. “Sit down. Dinner table.”
Henry stays where he’s standing - fuck, swaying - with his arm still outstretched, adamant. “It’s the Kwanzan, from the west side of the reservoir. I know how much you love them.”
Alex takes the flowers with a long suffering sigh, and he tries to hide how fucking fond he really is. He keeps his voice firm. “Dinner table. Now, Hen.”
Henry salutes him lazily and hobbles over to the table. Alex hurries back into the kitchen to put the blossoms into a vase, absently taking note of the hobbling. Putting the flowers away is the last thing on his mind right now, but he knows from experience how much of an uncooperative piece of shit Henry will be if he just sets the flowers aside before tending to him, so he grabs a random vase from the cabinet and fills it up halfway with water. The branches are comically long, like Henry had ripped them off the top of the tree - which, knowing Henry, he probably did.
The idiot. He cuts the branches off at a diagonal and all but shoves them into the vase. He rushes back out and sees Henry not on the dinner table like Alex fucking asked but halfway across the room, fiddling with the record player.
“Henry George - ”
A very familiar set of notes ring into the air, and Henry looks up at him, expression completely innocent.
Alex grits his teeth as Elton starts to sing. Things are decidedly not even a little bit funny right now. “You know I could very easily just leave you to die, right?”
“I’m going, I’m going,” Henry says, sheepish. Alex has his hand on his hip as he waits for Henry to hobble over to the dinner table. Alex takes sympathy on him - he’s limping, what the fuck happened - and helps him for the final few steps. He flicks on the light and it takes everything in him not to react, now that he can see the full extent of Henry’s injury under stark lighting. All he does is hoist him up on the table and step in between his legs. Henry’s arms automatically wrap around his hips and Alex, pissed that he is, can't help leaning into them.
He brandishes a pair of heavy-duty scissors and starts cutting off Henry’s suit, making sure he doesn't let the steel touch his bare skin. This was a nice suit, too - identical to his old one, of course, all blue and white which made his eyes pop and made him look like a beacon, an angel - but was a bit stronger, a little less flammable after his last suit was disintegrated into ashes from his battle with a fire wielder.
His suit had melted off his body from the waist up, which the cameras absolutely loved - but had Alex fuming for the rest of the day.
It’s a little like what his suit looks like now that Alex has cut into it. He’s cut it all around his neck and shoulders, and eases the sleeves off Henry’s arms, leaving his torso bare. Alex steadfastly does not let himself look at the cut.
“Have you put the flowers away?” Henry asks when Alex rummages through the kit. It’s better stocked than your typical first aid kit. It was already filled with top-grade equipment Alex nicked from the hospital supply closet, but since meeting Henry, it’s now stocked with random creams and ointments from years of research and trial and error. He imagines he could make a killing selling emergency first aid kits for superheroes, but then figures nobody would buy them anyway. No average person would be expected to tend to an injured superhero.
Alex is, of course, the exception.
“I did, you maniac,” he says as he unscrews the lid off the heavy-grade antiseptic. “That was illegal, by the way - those were public property. You know you're not above the law, right? I could have you arrested for that.”
Henry only hums. “Did you like them?” When Alex doesn’t respond, busy soaking large wads of cotton, Henry presses, “The flowers?”
“No, I didn’t,” Alex snaps, though not unkindly. “They suck and you suck. So you can, like. Suck it." Henry wouldn’t have taken it to heart regardless, but Alex brings a hand to the back of his neck and squeezes anyway.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say suck so many times at once that wasn't immediately followed by ‘my cock,'" Henry muses.
Alex glares at him. “Stop being cute.”
Henry cocks an eyebrow lazily, which does many, many things to Alex’s insides. Not the time. “I don’t think ‘cute’ was quite the word for it.”
Alex glares at him. “You’re not funny." Henry only grins and closes his eyes.
Alex finally lets himself look at the cut. He swallows. It isn't the worst thing he’s ever seen, and certainly not the worst thing that’s happened to Henry, but it’s still awful. It’s only a single cut, and a clean one at that, but it’s so impossibly large and deep, and so much blood is pouring out of him Alex wonders how Henry's still conscious.
Alex takes a deep, grounding breath and gets to work. He presses the large wads of cotton on the cut. Henry doesn’t hiss, but his body tenses and he clenches his jaw hard. Alex is quick and methodical as he cleans away the worst of the blood and disinfects the wound, but he casts far more glances at Henry's face than necessary to make sure he’s not making it worse. This is his job and he’s fucking good at it so his hands are steady and don't shake once, but inside, his gut is lurching.
“Who the fuck did this?”
“A boy from Queens. Left hand was one big claw. I’d left him under a car and had my back turned for just a second to check on the mayor - when I turned back around he’d already ripped the car in half.” He opens one eye and smiles wryly at Alex. “Forgot he could do that, I guess.”
“You bastard,” he says lowly. “You reckless idiot.”
“I love you.”
“Stop talking." Alex is tempted to jab the cotton directly on his wound, but his hands remain gentle and decisive. “I swear, if I walk into the hospital tomorrow and find out I have to fix up the fucking mayor, I’ll never forgive you.”
There’s a pause. “Sorry.”
“Shut. Up." Henry shouldn't have to apologize to him, he doesn't need to. “Did you kill him?”
“The mayor?”
“Yeah, the mayor - no, obviously not the mayor. The guy.”
“No." Henry’s eyes are closed again, and his head is tipped back, baring his neck. Alex presses his lips against it briefly - he’s only human and sue him, he worries - and when he goes back to tending the wound he can see one corner of Henry’s lip curl up. “He was still a teenager. I reckon sixteen. Seventeen at the most. He was in foster care. Badly abused. So I suppose he thought that if anyone was at fault, it’d be the mayor.”
“Fuck,” Alex says with feeling.
“Fuck,” Henry agrees. “Left him with the police. Made sure he got put in a social center."
Alex tosses the wads of bloody cotton on the table and douses his hands in sanitizer, wiping the blood from his hands on whatever cotton’s leftover. He takes out a needle and thread from the kit. “I’ll have to suture it.”
“Hmm,”
“Henry?”
“Yes, yes, go for it.”
Another thing Alex keeps in his first aid kit - a hard, misshapen metal blob the size of his fist. He passes it to Henry wordlessly, who immediately grips it in his left hand. When Alex drives the needle into his skin, Henry’s hand flexes, and he squeezes the metal blob until it shoots upwards and spills out of his hand. This isn't the first time he’s had to sew Henry up - the first time, he’d given Henry a belt to bite, but he’d had it chewed up into pieces in the first few seconds. After that, he tried giving him a piece of kevlar, then rubber, then a random rock he found on the ground outside. Then, a broken piece from an operating table the hospital wanted to throw out. It’d been hard, unforgiving, and a rectangle the size of their sink when he’d first brought it home, but when Henry’d gotten hundreds of tiny pin pricks on his back after getting himself in trouble with a swarm of pixies, he’d squeezed the plane of metal like a stress ball, and by the end of the three hours it took to patch everything up, it was half its original size and oblong-shaped, but wholly unbroken.
The microwave beeps. Henry’s head jerks up, and he inhales deeply, as if only just noticing the faint smell of pasta that had been, for the better part of five hours, unmistakable. “The pesto?”
“Uh-huh."
Henry’s right hand tightens its grip on Alex’s hip. “My favorite.”
“Your favorite?” Alex says without looking up. “Why would I make your favorite?”
“Because you love me?”
“Fake news.”
Henry’s looking at him now, expression open and smiling. It’s an effort on Alex’s part not to let himself melt under his easy gaze. “It’s been reheated to death, though, so it probably tastes like shit.”
“I doubt it,” Henry says easily. “I’m sure it’s delicious.”
Alex gets on his knees to finish up the stitches down Henry’s side, and bites the thread to cut it before tying it off. When he looks up, there’s heat in Henry’s eyes, and a wry smile on his lips. “You always look so hot when you do that.”
Alex flushes and stands up. “Shut up.”
“You have something against me talking tonight, have you,” Henry remarks.
“The more you talk, the more you bleed out,” Alex says, “and I’m just trying to lessen the amount of blood I have to scrub off the table tomorrow. But if you want to bleed to death, be my guest, I won’t fucking stop you.”
“I’m not sure that’s quite how it works.”
“I’m sorry, did you go to medical school? No? Then shut up.”
Henry’s not wrong - Alex is pissy tonight. Pissier than usual. It isn’t really Henry’s fault, it never is. After five years, Alex has never really been mad at him - he’s just mad at the world and its annoying, dangerous villains who seem hell-bent on taking Henry away from him on special occasions and roughing him up - and not in the sexy way.
The record has long stopped playing. Alex twists around to see if there’s anything else that needs patching up on Henry’s back and catches sight of the still-yellowing bruise over his right shoulder blade. From just five days ago, when Henry had to fight a man with supernaturally enhanced fists on the George Washington Bridge.
Alex’s suppressed anger and irritation rush out of him all at once. Underneath it all, he’s tired, and he’s worried. He smooths an antibiotic over the stitches and then starts on the gauze. His voice is soft when he asks, “They couldn't have sent someone else?”
It’s what he asked just this morning, when Henry had called him at work, apologetic, and told him that he might be late for dinner tonight. And like this morning, Henry sighs, and says, “There wasn't anyone else.”
“There’s Pez,” Alex argues. “Pez could’ve gone. Or that new spider guy - he’s been fucking everywhere lately. Why couldn't they have gone instead?”
It’s the same argument every time. “You know why they couldn't.”
Alex does know why. Henry’s the most powerful superhero in New York right now - hell, the most powerful in America, at least - and as much crime as the other superheroes are able to fight to keep the city relatively safe, when it comes to highly dangerous, powerful criminals, it’s a no-brainer. Henry leaves the cats stuck on trees and petty burglars to the vigilantes. He takes on the big guys himself.
“Where the fuck is Philip, then?” Alex grumbles. “What was he so busy doing that he couldn’t have provided backup?”
“He had a party at the firm. Couldn’t get away.”
“Of course he did,” Alex mutters, straightening up the gauze down Henry’s sternum, “because it’s just so hard to leave a party. And an office party’s definitely more important than making sure your brother doesn’t get ripped to pieces by an unstable teenager. Just awesome.”
Alex huffs a breath out of his nose. Henry looks at him carefully. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“You’re obviously upset.”
“Not at you.”
“Debatable.”
He tuts, and smooths the gauze down Henry’s stomach. “Keep this up and I’m going to be.”
Henry puts the metal blob on the table - it’s in a vaguely L-shape now, and it clinks when Henry sets it down. He’s silent for a long while, but Alex can tell he’s working up to something, so he waits patiently and continues wrapping the dressing over Henry’s stitches. When he finally speaks, his voice is quiet.
“I’m sorry I was late." Alex looks up, and Henry’s eyes are staring right into his, sorrowful and distressed. “I know I promised you and everything. This anniversary means the world to me, you know that. Or, at least I hope you know that. Because it does. And I tried so hard to be here on time, and I’m so sorry I wasn't.” He looks like he’s on the verge of tears, and Alex, inexplicably, feels hysterical.
“Don’t apologize,” is all Alex says. “Fuck, baby, you’re off fighting and risking your life, you don't need to apologize -”
“I do -”
“Sweetheart, I understand -”
“No, you don’t - I love you,” Henry interrupts firmly. He carefully enunciates every single word, gaze deep and unblinking. “I love you. You are the most important thing in the world to me. You are bigger than everything. The fighting is a big part of my life, yes, but you are my life. And you need to know it killed me that I wasn't here tonight.”
“It’s okay,” Alex says softly.
“No, it’s not,” Henry says, smiling weakly. “It’s not fair to you. It’s not fair that you have to wait up for me every single night to make sure I haven't gotten myself killed, that you cooked and had things prepared only to spend all night worrying, that you have to sew up your sodding boyfriend on the night of your anniversary.”
“Well, I love you, so it’s a good thing I want to be here, waiting up for you and fixing you up, huh?”
Henry shakes his head and looks down. Alex tips his head back up again with the back of his hand. He meets Henry’s eyes head-on and looks intently into the blue of them. “Hey. I’m not going anywhere. And I don't blame you for anything.”
Henry stays silent, but he looks like he’s barely restraining himself from objecting. Alex continues before he can say anything. “I get to be with you, and I get to be here, waiting for you to come home to me every single night. I’d say that’s pretty fair to me.”
Henry scoffs, and Alex leans in closer so their noses are touching. “I will never be angry about the fighting. Sure, I’ll get pissed when I find out you’re making unnecessary risks that could get yourself killed, but I’ll never get angry or upset that you’re out there fighting. Saving the world. The only thing you could do to piss me off is leave me or die.”
“I would never leave you,” Henry says softly, pressing a hand to his cheek. Alex leans into it.
“Then don’t die, huh?”
Henry says nothing, but Alex doesn't expect him to. He ends up using the entire box of dressing, and runs a hand lightly over the bandage a few times. “Look at what you’ve done. You made me run out of gauze,” he says lightly.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t fucking apologize,” Alex says vehemently. Henry mouths sorry at him anyway, and Alex can’t help it when the corner of his lip curls up in response. He leans away from Henry, running his hands down his arms. “Okay, that’s done,” he announces. “Anywhere else that’s hurt?”
“No,” Henry says. Alex’s fingers run through his hair and caress the back of his head anyway, feeling around for any bumps. He feels a wet spot at the side of his head near his neck, and when he pulls his hand away his fingers come away bloody. Alex gives him a look. Henry just looks surprised, like he genuinely had no idea how that could've happened.
Alex huffs but doesn’t say anything. Cleaning and patching up that wound only takes two minutes - he’d usually shave the hair around the injury but it’s late and Henry’s getting restless enough as is, so he settles with disinfecting it and sticking a large plaster on it, all by stretching over Henry’s shoulder after Henry’s arms tightened around him when he moved to step away. When he’s done, he presses a kiss to Henry’s cheek, just because.
“You hungry?”
Alex has to reheat it again - eight times now it’s been in the microwave, Alex thinks the amount of radiation is probably enough to turn anyone mutant - and he really doesn’t want Henry anywhere near it. But Henry is insistent and made a show of threatening not to eat at all if he wasn’t eating the pesto, so Alex serves it on a plate and places it in front of him.
Henry’s sitting on the stool at the kitchen counter now. He beams when Alex hands him the plate. “Thank you, darling.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Alex says, running a hand through his hair. “If you get food poisoning from this I want it on the record that you asked for it.”
“Of course,” Henry says, before taking a big bite of it. Alex winces and waits for Henry to choke or spit it out, but all he does is moan appreciatively around his fork. He shovels another forkful into his mouth. Alex blinks at him.
“Absolutely delicious, my love,” Henry says earnestly between bites.
Alex is not having it. “You’re full of shit right now, let me - ”
“No, it’s mine,” Henry says stubbornly and quickly shovels more of the pasta into his open mouth. Alex has barely blinked before the entire plate is empty, and Henry smiles wide with his mouth closed, cheeks full of pasta like a chipmunk.
“Really? You’re so immature.”
“No, I’m just hungry."
When Alex puts the plate into the dishwasher, he swipes a finger through the sauce and brings it into his mouth. He gags, and almost throws up.
Later, he helps Henry upstairs and helps peel off the bottom half of his suit to inspect the source of his limp. When it turns out to just be a sprained ankle, Alex feels as though a heavy weight has just been lifted off his shoulders. Suddenly, he feels very, very tired.
“I was scared,” Alex whispers in the dark of their room. They’re in bed now, after Alex has wiped the grime and dirt off him and helped him into cleaner clothes. Henry’s on his back, one arm snaked around Alex’s shoulders. Alex is curled up beside him, arms wrapped low on his waist, face crushed into the ball of his shoulder.
Henry takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I. Not while I was waiting. I don't think I’ve been scared for you for a while. But when you got home, and I saw that -” Alex takes a deep breath himself, “- the way that thing tore right into your chest. I got scared. I got scared about the fact that I didn't feel scared when you came home late. You could've died, Henry.”
“But I didn't,” Henry says in a low murmur. “It wasn't that bad.”
“Yeah, but you could've, and I wouldn't have even. I don't know. Suspected it. Because I wasn't scared for you. Someone could've finally killed you and I wouldn't have known or suspected a thing until Philip or whoever knocked on the door the next morning and told me. That’s what scared me.”
Henry is silent beside him. After a few moments, he speaks up. “I’d rather you not suspect a thing than be sick with fear and worry.”
Alex jolts up abruptly and leans down over Henry, eyes blazing. “I don’t. I want to be scared for you. I worry, of course I worry - I worry about you all the goddamn time - but I want to be scared, too, because I am scared. You could die at any moment, Henry. At any battle. And it’s been five years and I’ve become comfortable, but I don't want to be.”
“You have a life of your own, Alex. You deserve a life, away from all of this. I don’t want to subject you -”
“If I had to wait up for you and fix you up every single night for the rest of my life, I'd be the happiest man alive, because that would mean that you would be coming back home to me, every night, alive. I don’t care that you have to put yourself in so much danger all the time - I mean, fuck I do care, I just. What upsets me is when you put yourself in dangerous, genuinely life-threatening situations, alone. For my sake, at least, stop being a self-sacrificing idiot and ask for fucking help.” Alex’s voice breaks, “It’s too much for me to bear.”
Henry stares at him for a few beats before surging up to kiss him, and Alex immediately lowers himself down, careful with Henry’s stitches. He kisses Alex like a man gasping for air, like Alex is oxygen and he can’t get enough of him in his lungs. His hands are desperate as he grips Alex’s hair his arms his shoulders, tugging and whining into his mouth.
Alex keeps his hands gentle as he holds Henry’s face, cupping his jaw. It occurs to him that this is the first time they’ve kissed tonight.
He tries to get him to slow down. Henry seems content to swallow him whole, making noises of discontent whenever Alex tries to pull away. But after a while, the kisses grow less urgent and more delicate, softer - lingering presses of lips, breaths hot on cheeks, noses bumping softly against one another. Minutes or hours or lifetimes later, they break apart, but they don’t move away, breathing each other’s air.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Henry says wetly, his voice breaking with raw, unadulterated honesty.
“Good thing you’ll never find out,” Alex says in response, because it’s almost three a.m. and he’s exhausted and in love and so fucking relieved to have his stupidly brave gorgeous superhero boyfriend under his hands, right here beside him, where he knows he’s safe. He snuggles in close to Henry, being mindful of his bandages. Henry’s hand starts stroking his hair.
“I love you,” Alex says quietly into Henry’s neck. “Don’t ever fucking do that again.”
“I love you, too. I won’t,” Henry says easily. They both know it’s a lie, but Alex simply presses his lips against Henry's neck, and tries to finally get some sleep.