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There are a few truths that remain consistent in Alex’s life: he’ll always be a Texas boy no matter where he lives, he needs coffee in order to function, he loves his research even if he doesn’t always love grad school, and he can’t stand Henry Fox.
It wasn’t always that way. Besides the fact that he didn’t know Henry Fox existed before the first time he attended their field’s annual international congress, they’d gotten along well enough during that conference. They were both first year grad students—Alex at Columbia, Henry at Oxford—whose advisors worked on the same system, so it was likely that their dissertations would be on similar topics. Henry had been polite, if reserved, and seemingly immune to Alex’s attempts to befriend him. They’d be going through the same shit, is all, and surely it’d be nice to have someone to go through it with, even at a distance?
Then they’d both gotten rip-roaring drunk on vodka and whiskey at the party on the last night of the conference, and all of Henry’s careful guardedness seemed to melt away. He flirted openly, and Alex found himself flirting back without really meaning to, and then Alex found Henry’s mouth on his in a secluded hallway away from the main party. He’d tasted like alcohol and fruity mixers, and Alex’s brain had shut off for maybe the first time in his entire life. Henry had blown him in a bathroom in the convention center—which Alex reciprocated with a hand job rather than admitting he had no fucking clue what he was doing—and set off a sexuality crisis that plagued Alex for weeks after the conference.
Henry also fucking ghosted him the next day. At first Alex thought maybe he just had an early flight out, but he never responded to a single one of Alex’s emails. Whatever. They were both busy.
It was the second year at the conference, when Henry had actively run away from him every time they’d ended up in the same room and then been downright rude the one time that Alex had finally caught him alone, that had sealed it. That and the fact that he was scheduled to give a talk immediately following Alex’s and had proceeded to rip Alex’s work to shreds, not-very-subtly insinuating that Alex had majorly fucked up his data collection, analysis, or both. To say Alex had been pissed off would be a massive understatement.
Since then, they’ve been enemies. Although they work on the same system, Henry is all theory, whereas Alex’s work is rooted in experiments and practical application, and they almost never come to the same conclusions. Now, instead of avoiding him, Henry makes snide remarks and skewers Alex with cutting wit whenever possible. They trade barbs every time they come into more than passing contact. This past year, their third year, Alex almost decked him at a poster session. It doesn’t matter how hot he is, with his annoyingly blue eyes and irritating cheekbones, or how brilliant, or that Alex sometimes still thinks about how his stupid pink lips had looked stretched around his cock when he jerks off—Henry Fox is his fucking nemesis, and that’s never going to change.
Which is why his advisor’s news is so fucking dire.
“I’m taking a sabbatical next year,” Zahra tells him. “In Oxford.”
“Why?” Alex says, unable to keep the exceedingly inappropriate disgust out of his voice.
Zahra cocks one perfectly manicured eyebrow at him. “I’m going to be working with Shaan Srivastava on some new models. Our data, their theory. He’s agreed to host me for the year.”
Good fucking luck with that, Alex—narrowly—does not say. His advisor on sabbatical sounds like a good deal to him, actually. He’s in his fourth year, done with his primary data collection and ready to dig into his analysis, which will take some time to figure out. It’ll be nice not to have anyone looking over his shoulder.
Then Zahra says, “I think you should come with me,” and his whole world stops.
“What?”
“Your project could benefit from an improved theoretical framework,” she tells him—which, ouch—“and Srivastava would make a great external committee member on your dissertation. There’s money in the grant to pay for your ticket and offset living costs.”
“Do I have to?” Alex blurts before he can help himself.
Zahra gives him a look that quite clearly says she’s regretting ever accepting him as a student. “Are you serious? Did you not hear what I just said? I’m paying for you to come with me and work with the best theoretician in the field, you little shit. Any grad student would jump at a chance like this.”
Somehow Alex manages not to suggest she take one of them instead. “It’s not that I’m not grateful…” he starts. His advisor’s expression says he has one chance to answer this correctly. “Sorry, you just surprised me. Yeah, it sounds like… a great opportunity.”
“It is,” she says flatly before turning to go.
“Hey, uh,” he says before she gets to the door. “Is Henry Fox still a grad student in his lab?”
Zahra is not an idiot. She knows exactly why he’s asking. “No,” she tells him, and Alex feels an intense wave of relief. Maybe it won’t be so bad after all. Then, she continues:
“He’s a postdoc now.”
You’d think finding an apartment—sorry, flat—to sublet in Oxford wouldn’t be that hard, but Alex is apparently looking at the wrong time of year, and the few he finds are either sketchy as hell or tell him sorry, but it’s ‘too complicated’ once they find out he’s not a British citizen. Zahra asks Shaan for him and reports back that it’ll probably be easier when he’s actually in country, so Alex gets a room in the cheapest hotel he can find and crosses his fingers. His advisor has already left, but Alex had to wait for some paperwork to come through on his fellowship for the year, so he flies in a few weeks later. Before his plane takes off, he gets an email from Zahra telling him Shaan will send someone to pick him up at Heathrow, which is nice.
At least, it is until he gets out of customs and finds Henry fucking Fox waiting just beyond the barricade.
Alex grimaces and reluctantly walks over to him. “Is it too much to hope that it’s just a terrible coincidence that you’re here? Maybe to pick up your great aunt Mildred?”
The look Henry gives him is just as withering as usual. “Shaan asked me to come pick up a visiting student. That can’t be right, though, surely? You’re not still a student?”
“Fuck right off,” Alex says, forgetting that Henry’s his ride. “At least I’m earning my degree instead of having my family buy it for me.”
Henry’s eyes flash. “Excuse me?”
“We started the same year, and PhDs take five years at least.”
“Not in the UK, they don’t,” Henry says smugly. “Typical, you Americans would be slow.”
Alex is actually going to murder him. Then he could steal his car, though he’d have to drive on the wrong side of the road.
“You know what?” he says through gritted teeth. “The train sounds like a fantastic fucking idea right about now.”
“Of course,” Henry sighs, sounding more aggrieved than he has a right to be.
“What?”
“I knew you’d be a petty arse about everything.”
Alex gapes at him. “You just insulted me, and I’m the ass?”
“So implying I didn’t earn my degree is a compliment now?” Henry shoots back.
This is clearly going nowhere, fast.
“Right, well, see you around I guess,” Alex huffs, grabbing his bags and turning to leave.
He gets about five steps away before he hears Henry say, “Alex, wait.”
Alex has no intention of waiting, but a moment later—damn his long legs—Henry tries to grab his elbow. Alex jerks away as he whirls around, only narrowly keeping his footing, and Henry withdraws his hand like he’s been burned.
“What?” Alex snaps.
Henry sighs, his shoulders drooping slightly. “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… well. Any of it. You’re here for the year, correct?” Alex nods slowly, regarding him suspiciously. “Then it’s very likely we’ll be spending a fair amount of time together. Can we possibly… start over?”
It’s definitely not what he expected, and Alex doesn’t know if he can trust him, but he’s—unfortunately—got a point. They have a fair amount of history, though. “From where?” he asks.
That seems to take Henry by surprise. “From the beginning, I suppose.”
The beginning. So they forget about the antagonism and the sniping. Nearly three years of bad blood. And they also forget about the hookup, not that either of them have spoken of it since it happened.
Alex thinks he can probably live with that.
“Ok,” he agrees cautiously.
A tiny smile curves into Henry’s mouth that somehow still reaches his eyes; Alex pointedly feels nothing about it. This doesn’t mean they’re friends now. It’s just… a truce.
“Um,” Henry says after a beat. “My car is in the other direction?”
Alex looks around him and realizes he has no idea where he was even headed. “Right. Lead the way, I guess.”
“Can I help with your luggage?” Henry offers.
Alex’s first instinct is to refuse, not even just because it’s Henry. He’s sometimes (usually) stubbornly self-sufficient to a fault, even when it comes to shit that doesn’t matter. June has yelled at him more than once about how accepting some goddamned help doesn’t mean he’s failed. Letting Henry carry some of his bags won’t kill him, and he is fucking exhausted and powerfully jetlagged.
“Yeah, sure,” he answers, and Henry immediately reaches for one of the heaviest ones. “Wait, that’s—”
“Christ, you don’t pack light, do you?” Henry huffs, but it’s accompanied by a good-natured, teasing smile.
“You try packing your life up for a year,” Alex retorts with a small answering grin. “Most of which is going to be cold and rainy. I don’t know if my Texan blood is going to make it.”
“Fair enough,” Henry says as he hefts the bag with startling ease, the muscles of his chest and arms straining against his polo shirt.
Fuck. That’s… fuck. Look, Alex is very bisexual, and Henry has always been stupidly hot, but they’re starting over. Clearly Henry regretted the hook up and wants to forget about it, so Alex drooling over him isn’t going to help anything. He might have some whiskey about it later, but right now he’s got to ignore whatever complex combination of emotions is swirling around in him about this whole thing. They’ll see each other more, but surely he’ll be able to avoid spending too much time around Henry.
That hope lasts about as long as it takes them to get to the car.
“Where are you living?” Henry asks as he displays more superhuman feats of strength while loading Alex’s bags into the trunk.
“Right now, just a hotel until I can find a more permanent place. I kept striking out on getting a short-term lease, but Shaan said he’d help me when I got here.”
Henry frowns and tips his head slightly. “Just stay with me,” he says, “until you find a flat, that is.”
“You have an extra room?” Alex asks instead of immediately turning him down.
“Well. I have a home office with a futon. It won’t be the most comfortable, but it’s cheaper than a hotel. It’s just me and a lazy beagle there now. You don’t have an allergy, do you?”
Alex shakes his head. “Two bedrooms,” he says with a low whistle. “Look at you, living the high life as a postdoc.”
Henry ducks his head, a pretty pink flush dusting his cheekbones. “It’s not that nice a flat.”
“Better than my postage-stamp studio in Morningside Heights, I’d wager.”
“So will you? Stay?” Henry asks. “You can tell me to shove off. I won’t be offended, I promise.”
Alex should say no. Living together, even for a short amount of time, is probably a recipe for disaster. Henry’s probably just offering to be nice, even though he looks sincere.
“Yeah, why not,” Alex hears himself say as they get into the car. “Living with my former nemesis sounds like a riot.”
“I appreciate the ‘former’ modifier,” Henry says, laughing softly, and oh. Alex wants to make him laugh again, desperately. Wants to be the reason the corners of his eyes crinkle like that, utterly unguarded.
Jesus.
This could be a fucking problem.
For better or worse (for better, definitely for better), Alex is too busy with research to worry too much about his unexpected, and not entirely welcome, new feelings about Henry. Zahra’s used her head start to get a lot of new projects going, several of which seem to already involve Alex, so he has to hit the ground running and struggle to catch up. Fucking typical.
Of course he still sees Henry frequently, though somehow more at work than at Henry’s apartment. They’re collaborating for the first time, and it’s kind of amazing how they just seem to click. He’s been more than familiar with Henry’s work for years—he couldn’t not be, given their research areas—but he’s always been so concerned with proving Henry’s models wrong that he never seriously considered how some of them might help with the analysis of his own data. Not that he’s ready to admit Henry might be right about some things, and they still get into heated arguments, but now they’re exhilarating rather than irritating. They come out of them with new ideas instead of bruised egos. Henry’s always been able to go toe-to-toe with him, Alex just never let himself admit how fucking hot that is.
So yeah, things have been going well, except for the whole finding an apartment thing. A few weeks into his stay in Oxford, he still hasn’t come up with anywhere that attractive. Plus, he’s just too busy with work, and staying with Henry is easy. He lives close to campus, the futon isn’t that uncomfortable, David is a delight, and it’s nice to have someone to talk to when he’s not at work. It would be lonely, is all. Alex often works late on campus, whereas Henry leaves earlier and works at home so he can take care of David, and when he gets back far too late at night he’ll often find Henry has saved him some leftover takeout because he somehow already knows that Alex tends to forget about eating when he gets into a research rabbit hole.
Sometimes he feels a little bad for basically kicking Henry out of his own home office, but Henry’s never complained or bugged him about when he’s going to find his own place. He’d offered to help Alex find somewhere when he first arrived, but since then he hasn’t brought it up at all, even though he must want his own space back again. Alex had tried to keep his shit contained at first, but it’s been slowly spreading out into the rest of the apartment and mingling with Henry’s stuff, like it belongs there.
Henry’s never complained about that, either.
Alex is straight up not having a good time right now.
His analysis just isn’t working. Besides the fact that he’s been fighting with the software for hours, there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with his implementation of a theoretical model Shaan suggested he try out. It should work. It just doesn’t, and it’s driving him up. the fucking. wall. He’s been holed up in Henry’s home office—his de facto bedroom—for hours, nearly tearing his hair out, when he hears a now-familiar tread behind him.
“Come on,” Henry says, gripping his upper arm. “You need a break.”
“Some of us still have a dissertation to finish,” Alex snaps irritably.
“And you’re not getting any closer to that tonight, I promise,” Henry replies gently, apparently unfazed by Alex’s bad mood. “You’re going in circles. Problems like these always look better with fresh eyes in the morning. Trust me.”
The look on his face is so full of concern and understanding, and something inside Alex fractures a little bit. Somehow, someway, he does trust Henry, maybe more than anyone else in his life. Which is a startling realization.
“Come on,” Henry repeats, and this time Alex lets himself be tugged to his feet. “Grab a jumper.”
“Where are we going?”
“The roof.”
“The roof?” Alex echoes incredulously.
David trails up behind them as they climb the stairs, Henry carrying a fucking picnic basket containing god knows what and Alex just wondering why the hell they haven’t been up there already. He gets something like an answer when they get to the top and the door to the outside is clearly labeled NO ROOF ACCESS. But Henry grips the handle just so and gives it a jiggle, and the door swings open easily. The roof itself is nothing special, though there are clear signs of people using it despite the sign. A few chairs. Some potted plants. Then Henry disappears into a corner and a moment later several strands of fairy lights twinkle on. He’s smiling softly when he re-emerges.
“Technically we’re not to use the roof for gatherings, but the tenants all share the space. I’m not sure if the manager doesn’t know or just doesn’t care, but the lock has never been fixed.”
He sets the basket down and pulls out a blanket with a flourish, then lays it out on the ground. David immediately curls up in a corner, and Henry sinks down cross-legged, leaving Alex little choice but to follow his lead. When he does, Henry sticks his hand into the basket again and pulls out a bottle of wine.
“The cure-all for dissertation woes,” he says as he pulls out the already-popped cork.
“Is that so?” Alex says, unable to keep from smiling at him. The fairy lights flutter in the breeze and cast dancing patterns across his face.
“Tried and tested,” Henry confirms.
They pass the bottle back and forth between them as they talk; Henry declares no shop-talk and instead asks Alex about Texas and his family and how he got into the field. In turn, Alex finds out more about Henry—about his father’s death and his rocky relationship with most of his family now, about his passion and spark, and falls a little more for him with every passing minute. He’s been so good, not allowing himself to get too close, but the wine loosens his resolve. Neither of them are drunk, but they’re pleasantly buzzed. They lean closer, as if pulled into each other’s orbits, and eventually end up lying on their backs side-by-side, their shoulders pressed together as they stare up at the meager stars shining through the light pollution.
“I miss the night sky,” Henry sighs. “It’s been so long since I visited Wales. We had a family home there when I was growing up.”
“Ooh, fancy,” Alex teases, and Henry shoves him sideways slightly; their bodies pull back together like magnets. “You should see the stars at my dad’s lake house. Fucking spectacular.”
“You’ve no room to give me shit about Wales when your family has a bloody lake house, you wanker,” Henry laughs.
“I will literally always give you shit, no matter what.”
“I know,” Henry sighs, sounding ridiculously fond.
Alex tips his head to the side to look at him, the edges of his profile picked out in the faint light. He’s so impossibly beautiful, and Alex has had just enough wine to do something monumentally stupid.
“Henry?”
Henry’s head turns toward him, and the soft smile curving his lips makes Alex’s heart hammer in his chest. “Hmm?”
“What happened after the conference our first year?”
The smile drops off Henry’s face, and Alex curses himself for inevitably ruining everything. They’d been getting along so well. He doesn’t even have another place to stay yet. Shit, he really timed this poorly. He has to know, though; it’s a question that’s been plaguing him for years.
Henry swallows hard and looks back up at the sky, and for a moment Alex thinks he’s not going to answer. “Why?” he whispers eventually.
“I think you know why.”
“Alex—”
“You could have just told me if you didn’t want it to mean anything. Whether you didn’t have a good time or just didn’t want anything more. I would have been cool with it. Disappointed, but ok.” Henry makes a soft sound at that. “Instead you acted like I had the fucking plague.”
Henry’s face crumples. “I’m sorry, Alex. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I don’t want an apology, I want to know why,” Alex says stubbornly.
“It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it or didn’t want to do it again.”
That doesn’t make any sense, and Alex is just getting more frustrated. “Then what was it, Henry?”
“Of course I wanted it to mean something!” Henry snaps as he buries his face in his hands. “I wanted it to mean far, far too much.”
“I don’t understand,” Alex says softly, hating the fragility in his own voice.
Henry pulls his hands away and bites his lip so hard it looks like he might draw blood, before he finally sighs. “We were first years, Alex. Our entire careers ahead of us. Have you ever noticed that none of the leading figures in our field are queer? Not openly, anyway.” He lets out a short, bitter laugh. “I needed that to be me. There was an immense amount of pressure on me from my family to prove I wasn’t wasting my life. That I wouldn’t dishonor our name. A name I don’t even use anymore.”
“Jesus Christ,” Alex breathes, more than a little stunned.
“I couldn’t afford distractions.” Henry’s voice gets even quieter. “Couldn’t afford to let you get too close. Because I knew.”
He shouldn’t ask. He shouldn’t push. “Knew what?”
Henry’s face tips toward him again. “That I would fall in love with you.”
“Henry,” Alex whimpers, his voice breaking over the second syllable.
“You were never part of my ten-year plan,” Henry says with a sad smile.
Alex swallows hard. “And now?”
“Now I’m deciding I don’t much care about what anyone thinks.”
That is, officially, too much. Alex closes the narrow gap between them to press his lips to Henry’s for the first time in three years, and it feels devastatingly, achingly, like coming home. He’s hooked up with other people in the intervening time, even tried dating once or twice, but it never felt right. It was never as good as he remembered it being with Henry, which he always ascribed to rose-tinted glasses looking back on a night he’d built up far too much in his head. He was wrong, though, because this kiss is just as dizzying as he remembers. This kiss makes his stomach swoop and his blood sing in his veins. This kiss makes him feel whole.
Henry shifts, pulling away, and Alex panics for a split second until it becomes clear that he’s doing it so that he can climb over him. He straddles Alex’s hips as he grabs his face with both hands to kiss him more desperately, licking into Alex’s mouth and dragging his teeth over Alex’s lower lip. Alex’s hands find Henry’s hips then keep going, sliding over the roundness of his ass, gripping muscular thighs, then moving up again to slip under Henry’s cable-knit sweater, seeking smooth, warm skin.
In the heat of the moment, Alex might have forgotten that his hands are freezing from being outside all evening.
“Fuck!” Henry yelps, his eyes wide as he jolts up out of the kiss. “Your hands are like bloody ice lollies!”
Alex can’t help it: he laughs, and only laughs harder when Henry glares at him. “Sorry,” he tries, though it doesn’t come out very apologetic. It doesn’t much matter because Henry starts laughing too as his attempt at disapproval shatters, and soon they’re both giggling near uncontrollably. Henry tucks his head into Alex’s neck, and Alex slips his hands into the back pockets of Henry’s jeans, tugging him close.
“Should probably move this inside, love,” Henry murmurs into his skin in between pressing kisses there.
“Don’t want to give your neighbors a show?”
Henry laughs softly again. “Not particularly.”
Alex reluctantly releases him, and Henry clambers to his feet before offering Alex a hand up. Just when Alex gets his feet under him, though, Henry gives him another tug so that Alex stumbles forward into him. Wrapping his arms around Alex’s waist, Henry pulls him into another lingering kiss that steals Alex’s breath away despite the fact that it’s completely chaste.
“You did that on purpose,” Alex accuses when they part, trying to ignore the way that being held like this, pressed against Henry’s solid chest and enveloped in his strong arms, is making his heart do something alarmingly fluttery in his chest.
Henry grins at him. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
At their feet, David gives a soft little chuff.
“All right, yes Davey, back in we go,” Henry says in that particular David-voice he uses, and despite the fact that it shouldn’t be possible, Alex falls a little further.
He realizes, looking at him now—soft and slightly rumpled and undeniably happy—that he’s basically been in love with Henry Fox since that first conference. All this time. It’s a little staggering. Henry catches him staring and tips his head in a wordless question, but Alex just shakes his head and offers him a smile that might give too much away. Not that Alex really cares anymore. Once Henry’s gathered up the blanket and the wine bottle and tucked them back in the basket, he takes Alex’s hand and twines their fingers together before they head back inside.
Turns out, nothing about this is a problem.
“Ah, Alex, there you are,” Shaan says as he pokes his head through the door. “I may have a lead on a flat to sublet.”
“Oh, that’s ok,” Alex tells him. “I’m staying with Henry.”
Shaan stares at him for a moment, during which time Alex becomes acutely aware that he’s in Henry’s office while Henry isn’t even there—he’d gone to a meeting—having eschewed the desk that he’d been given in the shared lab area in favor of tucking himself into Henry’s space. He is, in fact, wearing one of Henry’s sweaters today.
“For the duration, then?” Shaan clarifies eventually, which is a more pointed question than it sounds.
“Um. Yeah.”
“So you don’t need a flat.” It’s not really a question.
“Nope,” Alex answers, popping the p.
“Ah,” Shaan says, the single syllable containing multitudes. “Well, I’m glad to hear that.”
There’s a knowing but genuine smile on his face, like he understands everything that Alex hasn’t said. It should be a little terrifying, because he and Henry haven’t talked about telling anyone yet, especially in their field, advisors included. Somehow it’s not. It just feels… good.
“Are we still on to meet about the problems you were having about that model this afternoon?” Shaan asks, returning to business, and that feels good, too.
“Yup,” Alex tells him. “I think I figured out one of the issues but I want your thoughts on the implementation.”
“Very good.” Shaan starts to withdraw again, but pauses. “Forgive my directness, but I know you weren’t sure about this trip at the beginning. I hope you’ve found your time in Oxford fruitful so far?”
Alex can’t help but grin. “Absolutely.”