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In hindsight, Alex should have dropped the International Law class after the very first lecture. Really, that had been enough for him to know that it would be a cold day in hell before Professor DuPont’s rambling about the building blocks of statecraft and the intricacies of international institutions would ever make any sense to him. It was too theoretical, too far-removed from the reality of the relations and tensions between states – navigating which could honestly be something considered a specialty of Alex’s at this point. He is not, somehow, well-versed in scenarios in which, sure, various principles of law apply, but which Alex cannot ever conceive of happening in reality. (In what world does Morocco colonize Indonesia? Why does Alex have to deal with the legal fallout of a completely nonsensical border dispute? Is the moon made of cheese in this world? Is the sky green?)
He’d thought a class like this would be easy. A way to knock out a requirement and give himself a break – not that the concept of an ‘easy A’ really existed in law school, but a guy could dream. Hell, Alex navigated international law just to visit his boyfriend’s family for Christmas, he knew this shit.
Except, really – apparently – he didn’t.
It isn’t just that his professor was a bit of an asshole.
Normally, he could stick it out, even if Dr. DuPont voted for Richards, even if he referred to Alex’s coming out as a “spectacle.” He’s a good student, and he knows what he’s doing. He just has to work a little harder to get things to click – but when doesn’t he? When isn’t he used to that?
So maybe it’s his stubborn nature that made him attend every lecture ten minutes early well past the drop period, take the most detailed notes he had in his life about customary international law and jus cogens principles and the International Criminal Court. He’s never late, never rude to the professor or any other student, completes every reading well before class, and highlights and annotates his textbook to hell.
And yet – Alex is failing.
Failing in a way he never truly has before.
Certainly not in an academic setting, not when he had used school as an outlet, a way to cope, for practically his entire life. The closest to “failing” Alex Claremont-Diaz had ever gotten was an A- on a paper he’d been forced to write about Clarence Thomas, and that was because, although entirely accurate and well-written, there were no less than seventeen thinly-veiled jabs at his ability to adjudicate hidden amongst its fifteen pages.
For so long, academics had been the one thing Alex could count on when everything else in his life was falling apart, the one thing he had always been good at. It didn’t matter that his parents were getting divorced as long as he could figure out how to factor an equation, didn’t matter that June was moving out to go to UT-Austin as long as he could analyze Jane Eyre, didn’t matter that his mother was on the campaign trail more often than he ever saw her as long as he could balance lacrosse with his position as valedictorian.
But now, every time a paper comes across his desk marked to within an inch of its life, bleeding a C – or even worse, a D in bright red ink, his chest grows a little tighter, his breathing a little quicker. Thankfully, he’d not yet managed to fuck up spectacularly enough to get himself a real, honest to God F. He’s not sure he’d survive it.
He’s already not sure how well he’s surviving. It’s not uncommon for him to spend hours upon hours in the library dissociating, staring out the ancient, arched windows at the city outside instead of studying, because it was all he can do. Sometimes, realizes after an entire afternoon and evening wasted that there were enough missed calls and texts from Henry asking him when he would be home for dinner to scroll through, and on those days, he swears his stomach drops clean through his body to the floor.
He’d attempted to ground himself more than once on the tile floor of the law library’s bathroom, back pressed to the linoleum stall divider. One hand jamming the heel of his palm into his eyes to hold back anything potentially humiliating, the other clutching his paper so tightly that the crimson ink bled onto the skin of his palm, as if branding him as the culprit of something so genuinely awful, making him take responsibility. Or, even worse, seeing Henry’s messages seared into the back of his eyelids, going from excited to confused to disappointed.
Pez sent me home with some of those cinnamon candies you love! Looking forward to seeing you tonight – there might be a surprise in store for you (& no, it’s not the sweets) xx
David misses you [image attached]
Darling? It’s past five, were you still coming home for dinner tonight?
Alex?
?
Every buzz of his phone sends a pang of guilt through him, even if it was only an email or a Google Alert. Every glance down at the paper in his hand makes his stomach roil.
But he doesn’t have time to feel sorry for himself.
It was barely ever more than ten minutes before a Secret Service agent came knocking, and Alex had to be up and at ‘em again, camera-ready as always, just in case.
He’d worn sweats to class one time during his 1L year, and it had made its way around Twitter accompanied by a general consensus of Damn, ACD looks rough. That incident had been enough to make him push his alarm half an hour earlier to make sure that nobody saw him like that again, no matter how fucked-up his sleep schedule already was. He didn’t need people on Twitter pitying him, poking and prodding at his life and deciding that he wasn’t doing well – that, obviously, the fact that he looked like any other 23-year-old meant that something was desperately wrong. With him, with him and Henry, with his mother – whatever people had decided to fixate on that week, really.
It’s fucking exhausting.
But it’s his life, and he can’t change it. Some days, Alex wishes that there was some option for him to abdicate, like he knew Henry had secretly been dreaming of, but didn’t dare to actually do. That he could say get me the fuck out of here without crushing his mother’s dreams. It would have been different if the expectations for the press had been made stricter at the start. But instead, there was the White House Trio, golden and shiny and new, marketable millennials who made his mother’s approval ratings skyrocket during his first term. It would have been different if he hadn’t fallen in love with Henry, but he wouldn’t fucking change that for the world.
So here he is. Picking himself up off the bathroom floor and plastering a press smile on his face, shoving his failure to the depths of the leather messenger bag Raf had gotten him as a Christmas present the year he’d admitted to taking the LSAT.
He would go to office hours the next day, would dissect everything he’d done wrong with Dr. DuPont so that hopefully, he wouldn’t make the same mistakes again – despite the fact that somehow, the class just seemed to get more and more confusing as the semester went on, and Alex never seemed to be able to catch up, to wrap his head around any of it.
It’s fine. He’s fine. Everything is fine .
Until it really, really isn’t.
________________
He’s been assigned a role in a mock trial, intended to force students to build a case from all sources of international law – a discipline that makes Alex’s head spin more and more the longer they spent evaluating how customary law seemingly sprang into existence – to argue before a theoretical criminal tribunal. He’s spent countless, painful hours going over each and every line of their textbook, everything he’d scrawled down during class, and crafted what he thought was one of the best arguments he’d ever made.
Something to be proud of, even.
He’s not even sure why he was shocked anymore when Professor DuPont ripped it apart. Alex had to stand in front of his entire class and take the criticism, put his head down and nod as every word he’d said, everything he’d worked at for weeks was criticized and analyzed under a painfully microscopic lens. Alex became an example of what not to do, of every law student’s worst nightmare. His arguments – apparently – were poorly researched, overly emotional, illogical outside of the constraints of domestic law – and God, the criticism just kept coming until Alex could feel it like a tangible weight on his shoulders, forcing him down, down, down until one of the other students took pity on him and asked Dr. DuPont a question regarding their own performance.
Christ, how pathetic did he have to be for another law student to actually show him some kindness instead of being at his throat? When arguing wasn’t even something he could do well anymore? So much for Alex being seen as a competitor, as someone worth worrying about when it came time for professors to curve their grades.
He knows his performance in the mock trial will only drop his grade further, his stomach souring as he imagines the toll it’ll take on his GPA. And it seems silly – a decimal point of all things, filling his stomach with so much dread. But it’s a decimal point he’ll have to change on his resume, a decrease in the number that – ostensibly – represents how qualified Alex is to find a job, to pass the New York Bar so that he can stay here. New York isn’t the first place Alex had ever felt at home, but it is the first place Henry had ever really felt safe – it’s where the shelter is, full of kids whom Henry absolutely adores and gushes about every day when he comes home, takes off his coat, and gives Alex a kiss.
Every terrible grade, every time Alex couldn’t just be good enough at this one thing is chipping away at his chances of keeping the life he’d built here with Henry.
The way he had seen himself for so long; the parts of himself that he was proud of are crumbling in front of his eyes, slipping through his fingers like sand. Eroding until it’s washed away with everything else, until Alex is nothing more than a shell of himself, a pretty prop that paparazzi can flash a camera at and get a smile back from, a boy living in his mother’s shadow. In his boyfriend’s shadow.
The thought sits heavy and dull in his chest, putting pressure on his heart and lungs until everything else went numb. Until he leaves the lecture hall like a ghost in a sharp suit, going through the motions of returning home without registering any of it. It’s all foreign to him. He fumbles with his MetroCard, stumbles over cracks in the sidewalk, can barely hear the man beside him asking him to move his briefcase so he could take a seat. Nearly goes flying when the F train jerks around a corner, as if he were outside of his body, watching the entire thing from afar. An Alex puppet, devoid of any of the parts that used to make him good, useful, worth something.
He’s three blocks from the brownstone when his muscle memory finally fails him. Nothing more than a tree root, bursting through the concrete – as if it were mocking Alex by thriving despite their shared conditions, while Alex is failing, failing, failing – but it’s enough to send Alex flying, scraping through the fragile skin of his palms as he catches himself. Barely enough to draw blood, but enough to sting. Enough to force him, just for a moment, back into his body so that when tears prick at the corners of his eyes, he feels them tacky as they slip down his cheeks. Enough to register the service agent kneeling at his side and grabbing his hands to see how badly he’s injured – but not enough to do anything more than shake his head when asked if he needed medical attention, to hold up two fingers – a lie – when asked where he was on the pain scale. He doesn’t think the pain scale was supposed to go beyond the physical. The concept of speech suddenly feels overwhelming – words caught in his lungs, in the back of his throat, on the tip of his tongue. No matter how badly he wants to talk, it’s all he can do to croak out a raspy I’m fine. Nothing has ever been further from the truth.
But he picks himself back up again – with an embarrassing amount of help from the agent – and forces himself to stand on shaky legs. The paparazzi certainly don’t need to see him like this. He can’t disappoint his mother with whatever tabloid theories get splashed across the front page – First Son Drunk and Disorderly or ACD’s Latest Accident would only lead to the latest in a string of PR nightmares for her. Alex’s latest in a string of disappointments. Three blocks. All he has to do is make it three more blocks without fucking something else up.
Somehow, he manages.
Henry is on the sofa when he gets home, going over documents for the shelter while Paul Hollywood drones on in the background about Victoria Sponge. Alex is careful not to disturb his boyfriend as he goes, is careful to put his bag and his keys in their place, which he rarely does. He picks up things of his that had ended up strewn across their living space as he crosses the room, each jacket or package or trinket instilling more heavy shame in his stomach.
Another weight settling heavy on his shoulders, another thing he just can’t get right.
Alex gnaws anxiously on the inside of his cheek. He doesn’t want to be alone now, not really. He feels like he needs someone to ground him, to bring him back to his body – if the limbs that stumbled through the motions of coming home were even his anymore. But he doesn’t want to intrude on Henry, either — doesn’t want to force himself where he isn’t wanted. Especially not when it suddenly seems like all of Alex’s failures had swallowed their brownstone whole, made themselves physically tangible until they suffocated Henry, too. He lingers in the doorway, suddenly nervous to speak even to the man he loves. He can’t help wondering when Henry will see all of these failures for what they are — when he’ll finally realize that Alex isn’t good enough for him.
Before he gets the chance to turn and run — not that he has anywhere to go, except into the bedroom he shares with Henry — his boyfriend’s eyes lock onto his, and he lights up with a smile. “Alex! Love, I didn’t even hear the door. You’re usually such a whirlwind when you come home, I couldn’t ignore it even if I tried. What’s got you so quiet today?” He grins, and motions to the empty half of their sofa. “Come here, I know you love Cake Week.”
And oh , that’s just what Alex needed to push him over the edge entirely. He presses one hand over his mouth, stifling the sudden sobs that threatened to escape as he sags against the kitchen door, seemingly triggered by nothing at all. It was like a dam had broken, everything Alex hadn’t realized he was feeling all pouring out at once. “I — I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t —
Henry looks terrified. “Alex? Christ — what happened? Are you hurt?”
He crosses their living room faster than Alex had ever seen him move, and Alex feels, more than anything, heart-wrenchingly guilty. “No. I’m — fuck, H, I’m fine,” he insists, rubbing the tears from his eyes harshly enough that it almost hurts. He’d forgotten entirely about his raw palms, and bites back a hiss when he curls his hands into fists. The physical sting feels so inconsequential when compared with the panicked thump of his heart. “I’m sorry. Just — go back to watching Bake Off, please. I didn’t mean to.”
Henry is looking at him like it aches, eyes wide and searching, reaching up to gently touch Alex’s cheek and cradle him there, in the palm of his hand. “Didn’t mean to what , love? Please, tell me what’s wrong. Did someone from your class do something?”
“No,” Alex insists, practically pleads, kicking himself for not even being able to keep this to himself, for forcing Henry to shoulder his burdens just like he always did, for the way Henry could cut right to the heart of the problem in an instant. “Really, I — I’m fine, it’s stupid. I didn’t mean to bother you, I’m sorry.” He holds his things tighter in his arms, like he can make them smaller, make them (and himself) disappear. “I’ll just – um, I’ll go, I should go, I interrupted your night.”
“My ni – darling, I was just waiting for you to come home,” Henry tells him softly, still looking utterly confused but entirely unwilling to take his palm from Alex’s cheek, to break their tiny tether of connection. “You’re not bothering me at all. You could never. Please, Alex, what’s wrong? I just want to help, love, whatever it is. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I’m so sorry,” Alex insists again, the words catching on a harsh, painful lump in his throat and coming out as nothing more than a sob. “I can’t — I can’t — it’s too much, I — I don’t —“
His breathing comes quicker now, the warning signs of a panic attack clawing at his chest as tears burn where they well in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Hen. Please — p-please don’t leave, I’ll fix it, I promise.”
He can’t get the image of his last paper out of his head, vicious slashes of red pen and his TA’s pitying expression staring back at him every time he dared to do so much as blink. His grade was slipping further and further, and nothing he had done was enough, and he was going to fail this class and fail law school and fail Henry and —
It was too much. He couldn’t breathe, but he could feel Henry’s arms coming to wrap tightly around him and the soft vibrations of gentle platitudes murmured in his ear, lowering both of them gently to the sofa with promises of you’re safe and it’s okay, I’ve got you until Alex was hiding his face in Henry’s shoulder and shaking and shuddering with sobs, barely able to comprehend the low murmur of the reassurances he knew he didn’t deserve.
“Alex. Alex, love, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere, I promise,” Henry is telling him, rocking him gently back and forth until Alex can breathe again, until he doesn’t feel like his lungs are collapsing in on themselves. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been like this, how long he’s been cocooned in Henry’s lap, staining his shirt with tears and snot and God knows what else, but the second he opens his mouth to apologize again, Henry is shaking his head.
“I love you more than anything else in the world, and if the next words out of your mouth are I’m sorry, Alex, I swear to you —“
It’s enough to startle a wet, choked laugh out of him, and Henry smiles, carding a hand through his curls and resting it at the nape of his neck to hold him steady.
“There you are, darling. That’s it.” He’s quiet for a moment, all soothing gestures and a gentle, loving kiss pressed to Alex’s forehead that calms some of the fear still tight in his chest. But then he’s pulling away, and Alex can see the concern in his eyes written plain as day, and fuck, that was his fault. “Do you — can we talk about what made you upset?”
He lets it slip out in a whisper before he can stop himself.
“I’m failing a class.”
The words hang between them for a moment, and Alex can’t force himself to meet Henry’s eyes in the silence. They feel earth-shattering, heavy like lead on his tongue. Like they’ve broken his teeth upon impact, shattered his jaw so that he can’t possibly take them back.
“ Oh. ” Henry’s voice is so gentle — but he sounds relieved , somehow, as if this isn’t something Alex should be worried about at all, as if he’s going to channel his inner Ellen Claremont and tell Alex to buck up, buttercup and try harder next time. “Oh, darling, that’s quite alright. You’re so good — you care so much, and I’m sure you’re doing your best. Christ, I see how hard you work, you practically live at the library,” he adds with a soft laugh.
“You’re so hard on yourself, love. I’m certain you’re not failing — you’ve told me how much you pushed yourself in high school. A B isn’t failure, Alex. What grade did your professor give you? An 85?” Henry kisses Alex’s cheek, and it feels wrong. Alex doesn’t deserve it, because Henry still doesn’t understand.
He can’t even comprehend how badly Alex has truly fucked everything up this time, how far he is from average . The worst thing he can imagine is a B, and Alex knows immediately that he can’t tell him how wrong he is. It wouldn’t be fair of him to offer up all of his broken pieces and expect Henry to glue them back together, to let him cut his hands on the shards.
Alex is quiet. He knows he shouldn’t be, knows that Henry deserves an honest answer to his question because Henry deserves every good thing in the world and Alex wants to give them all to him. But he also knows that Henry carries so much, feels so much. A boy born with his heart outside of his body, Henry had called himself once.
Alex won’t be another thing to break that heart, to burden that boy.
He can fix this before Henry ever has to know, can’t he? He can. He will. He’ll make more use of the time in a day, spend longer hours in the library, work harder. Be better. Be good enough for once, for someone. For Henry, who deserves so much better than him, but who Alex selfishly and desperately hopes will stay anyway.
“I know, I know. It’s stupid,” he says eventually, forcing a little teary laugh and a shrug, trying not to start crying again when Henry hugs him close and plants a kiss in his curls. He feels horrible, rotten, and it’s all he can do not to shrug out of his hold so that the rot doesn’t eat away at Henry, too.
“It’s not stupid, of course not. You just put too much pressure on yourself. Come on, love, let’s take the night off. We can order in and I can catch you up on all the Bake Off you’ve missed?” Henry sounds so hopeful , is doing and saying all of the right things, doing everything to make Alex feel loved. It would have worked, too, if Alex wasn’t such a failure, such a fuck-up. He doesn’t have the heart to say no, even if he knows it means he won’t sleep that night.
He makes himself smile, and tucks his head into the crook of Henry’s neck. Pulls the ends of his shirtsleeves over his hands so that Henry doesn’t notice where the skin is red and raw. The only lie that’s tangible, the only one that Henry would be able to unravel, to see the way Alex was fucked up underneath. “That sounds nice. Can we get Thai?”
_____________________
His lie of omission lasts for another week.
Another week of dancing around, of pretending that he’s just a little down, but really, it’ll all be okay in the end – that he’ll figure it out like he always does. That he’ll bounce back, because he’s Alex. Because sure, he’s in law school, and he tries his best to attend every charity event Zahra asks him to, and he visits Henry at the shelter on days when his lectures are canceled, and makes sure that they have dinner together (and sex) at least two days a week despite their busy schedules, but he’s Alex. The fire June says he has under his ass might’ve been for no good goddamn reason, but at least it was there.
He thinks he finally understands what it means to be burnt-out now.
But his exhaustion doesn’t make finals week any further away than it is, and it certainly hasn’t brought his grade in Dr. DuPont’s class up any higher.
He just feels… lost. He’s exhausted all of the things he’s been told to do – he’s been to his professor’s office hours at least once a week since the semester started, he’s read the textbook front to back (even the parts they hadn’t been assigned, just to get a better idea of the theories he was supposed to be analyzing in their entirety – and, maybe a little, for brownie points). He’s been weeks ahead of every reading and every assignment, never done anything late or last minute, tried his damndest to connect with the people in that class and form a study group, despite the cutthroat nature of law school.
And yet.
And fucking yet.
Here he is. Failing. Not the kind of failure Henry thinks he means – the kind where Alex is just a high achiever, just puts too much pressure on himself. The kind where he’ll still scrape by with a grade he’s okay with in the end. The kind that can be attributed to a hardass professor, or getting sick mid-semester, or… anything other than the fact that Alex is just fucking bad at this. He just cannot, for the life of him, understand the subject matter no matter how hard he tries, how much work he puts in.
So when he slips out of bed after Henry has fallen asleep one night and pulls on his boxers and sweats and sneaks off to their study, he knows it’s futile. He’s known it wouldn’t magically make everything okay every time he’s done it – more this semester than ever before – but then, at least he had hope. At least he thought that a few extra hours spent on his paper in the dead of night while Henry was fast asleep in the other room might bring him from a C to a C+, or something equally pathetic. Now, he knows that nothing will come of it. That he’s depriving himself of sleep, of comfort without any hope of some sort of payoff.
For posterity’s sake , he thinks to himself almost bitterly, settling down in the leather chair behind the desk that he and Henry share.
At least this way he knows that he did everything he could. That he was self-destructive enough, hid enough from Henry for as long as he could – from June and Nora, who keep asking pointed questions about his wellbeing after he cracked one too many self-deprecating jokes last time they got wine drunk and watched The West Wing. It’s an odd kind of self-flagellation, but it’s the only way he knows how to cope.
At least this way, he can tell Henry he tried his best when he eventually figures everything out. When he gets that soft, placid, disappointed look on his face. When his touches get colder, like Alex is sure they will.
There’s still a love bite blooming on his collarbone from barely more than an hour ago, and he wants to cherish it. Permanently ink it on his skin, like he’s scared he’ll never have another. He should be warmly tucked into bed beside his boyfriend, should have his chest pressed against the pale planes of Henry’s back, should be sleeping with his lips still parted against whichever mole they had kissed last before he drifted off.
It wasn’t perfect, though.
He knows that Henry can tell something is still wrong. And maybe it’s Alex’s own fault for brushing every concerned look and gentle question away, for promising that everything was fine, would be fine when he knew it wasn’t true, for answering him with kisses instead of words when he felt too rotten to lie. But he just wanted one more night – and another, and another – where Henry didn’t pity him, where he didn’t know.
Alex should be cherishing the rest of that night.
But instead, he cracks open his textbook, ignoring the bright gleam of the clock in the corner reading 2:42 am . He’d seen two in the morning far too often lately – sleep had never exactly been something Alex was well-acquainted with, but they’d only grown more distant since he had started law school. He’d been averaging no more than five or six hours of sleep for weeks now – always with something to do, somewhere to be, some new way to give himself away.
One more night of little sleep. That’s all. He can do one more night, and then this whole nightmare will be over – even if it means he has to deal with the fallout.
He makes it two hours before he closes his eyes.
It’s nearly another two before Henry finds him.
Alex wakes, bleary-eyed, to a hand shaking his shoulder, his boyfriend’s worried voice growing louder and louder in his ear.
“Alex? Alex, love – darling, did you sleep here? Alex, come on, wake up,” Henry murmurs, though even half-asleep, Alex can tell that there’s something frantic in his tone, and when he lifts his head weakly to meet his eyes, they’re a concerned, bottomless blue.
Fuck.
“‘M sorry, Hen,” he slurs groggily, sitting up to rub the sleep from his eyes. The sun is only just beginning to peek in from behind their sheer curtains, meaning that it’s still early – which is odd, considering the last thing Alex remembers is it being a Wednesday night. “Shit – what time ’s it?”
“Almost eight, darling. I woke up because David was scratching at the door, and I tried to ask you to let him out, but there was nobody in bed with me.” Henry’s voice is wry, playful – Alex would’ve thought he was joking entirely if there wasn’t something else there too, something conveyed better by the fact that his eyes haven’t left Alex’s, by the fact that he seems unwilling to take his hand from his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, baby,” Alex whispers – because he is. He’s so sorry, for so many things, and he’s so fucking tired. “I –” he tries, opens his mouth, but no words come out. They’re all trapped in his throat – the only way to let them out is by allowing the tears that he knows will accompany them to fall, and he sure as hell isn’t doing that.
But it doesn’t seem to matter anyway, because Henry is licking the pad of his thumb and taking it to Alex’s cheek, and that seems to surprise some of the aching anxiety out of him, just for a moment.
“Wh –”
“You fell asleep on your textbook, love.” Henry shows him his thumb, now a bright neon pink, from where Alex had apparently managed to cover his face in highlighter ink.
But – fuck, if there was that much on his face, then that meant –
It only takes one glance down at his book – at his painstaking annotations, the color-coded highlighting system he’d had and a million notes written in the margins, not to mention the actual content – to confirm his suspicions and make him feel like he was going to vomit. It had all been drowned in a veritable sea of bright pink, all of his work obscured entirely while he was sleeping, ink irrevocably soaked into the pages.
“ No – no, no, no –”
His stomach is turning in on itself in knots, tears burning – yet again – in his eyes, threatening to spill if he isn’t careful. All those hours of work – all the proof that he had tried, that he might be a fucking failure but at least he had tried – gone entirely as a result of his own carelessness.
Suddenly, his phone starts to chime.
His alarm.
The one he has set for every Tuesday and Thursday morning, warning him that it’s time – usually – to drag himself from the warmth of Henry’s embrace and get ready to leave for his lecture.
His hands are trembling as he reaches over to turn off the alarm. “I – I’m sorry. I just had some work I needed to finish,” he murmurs by way of explanation, almost mechanically. It isn’t a lie, really, but it feels like one, and he can see the disbelief reflected back at him in Henry’s eyes, but he doesn’t have time for that. He’s never been late to one of Dr. DuPont’s classes, and he definitely can’t fucking start today, not when he’s already made so many mistakes, ruined everything –
His nails are digging crescents into his palm, and he doesn’t realize until Henry takes both of Alex’s shaky hands in his and forces him to unfurl his fingers. “Darling —”
“I – I can’t, I need to get ready, I’m going to be late,” Alex interrupts. He can’t have this conversation now. It would take too much time, and he wouldn’t be able to concentrate at all in class, let alone how it would affect Henry. This just… it isn’t a good time. Maybe after finals are over, maybe when Alex can breathe again without feeling the stinging weight of his own incompetence curled up in his ribs, digging sharp claws into his heart. “I – I need to find a washcloth, I need to get up, I can’t –”
Henry is staring at him with wide eyes, bottomless and piercing blue. He still won’t let go of Alex’s hands. He opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, but closes it again, pink lips pursed and worried.
Alex tries to tug one of them out of his grasp, but he holds firm, keeping him in place, staring at him. At, what Alex assumes, is the mess he must see there – a man he braved the scrutiny of the world to be with, now reduced to this. Crying and covered in highlighter ink, running on two hours of sleep, practically living in the library and missing dinners and dates and leaving him alone in bed and still fucking failing.
“Please let me get up, Hen,” he tries again, nearly begging. “I can’t – I have to go, you don’t understand.”
“You won’t tell me anything!” Henry suddenly blurts – and then immediately looks horrified with himself for saying it, but barrels on. “You had a panic attack in my arms last week and asked me not to leave, but then I woke up this morning and your side of the bed was cold and I didn’t know where you were , but you were here. I – I didn’t say anything the first couple of times you snuck out of bed last month, because I thought you really did have a deadline, and I didn’t think you knew I’d noticed, but I can’t – I don’t know what’s going on, Alex!”
Oh, Alex thinks. Oh. He sits back down in the chair; watches Henry roughly push a hand through his blonde bedhead.
“And I tried to talk to Nora and June, but neither of them knew anything either, and they said you’d been dodging their texts lately, and Nora was nearly ready to come over here and break down our bleeding door, but I was an idiot and promised them that I could take care of it. Of – of you. But I can’t, because you’re hiding things from me and pretending you’re fine when you quite obviously aren’t, a-and I’m scared. ”
He looks so young. That’s all Alex can think for a moment. He is young, really – Henry is only twenty-four, but all the Byron and regal training and cardigans with elbow patches have always made him look older than his years. Wiser.
Sometimes he forgets that Henry is still new at all of this too.
That he’s as scared as Alex is.
That all they have is each other, and Alex can’t keep running himself into the ground for Henry’s sake without even asking him if that’s what he wants.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. It’s all he knows how to say. His face is still bright pink even if it’s blurred by tears, and his palms are bleeding ever-so slightly, and he’s just a boy doing his best to apologize. For everything all at once, anything under the sun that’s ever made Henry look as desperate and devastated as he does now.
“Please don’t go to class,” Henry murmurs in return. It’s worry paired with aching, painful hope, and Alex is terrified of what will happen if he crushes it.
But he’s never missed a class before. Not even this class – Alex Claremont-Diaz has never skipped a class in his life without being on death’s door. And sometimes, even then, he’ll still make his way to campus, armed with fever reducers and a bag of honey-lemon cough drops.
But this is worse than a cough. This is more important than anything else. This is Henry.
“I’m failing.”
The words come out in a rush, barely more than a breath of air, but Henry leans in close and presses a kiss to Alex’s temple anyway, even if he’s failing, even if he tastes like ink and two hours of sleep and salty tears and disappointment. He’s said them before, but he thinks Henry understands now.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you when you tried to tell me,” Henry murmurs against his skin, squeezing his hand ever so gently. “But I don’t think you believed me when I told you I loved you regardless of your grades.”
“You thought I had an 85,” Alex counters wetly, a little bit teasing, a little bit petulant, but entirely unwilling to give up the tether of Henry’s touch.
Henry snorts a soft, breathy laugh. “I suppose I did. But I meant it no matter what your actual score was, love. That certainly wasn’t supposed to be the point of that little speech. You are worth… so much more than that to me. To everyone who loves you.”
Alex tightens his grip on Henry’s hand until he feels like a kid at the doctor, squeezing his mom’s hand while he gets a shot to take the pain away. To let someone else hold it just for a moment, trusting that they love him enough not to be upset.
“I don’t… I can’t…” Alex tries, doing his best to form the words, to express all the ways in which he’s failed that future version of Henry, the one that he forces away from his happy place when he proves too inept to find a job here. The one that leaves him, just maybe, in the end. The fact that he would deserve it if he did. The way that he can’t ever stop his brain from following the same doom spiral, from ending up terrified and alone and unworthy of his loved ones every damn time.
“I know, darling,” Henry murmurs, and the care in his tone pierces so deep into Alex’s soul that it hurts. “Let me show you, alright?”
“But I –”
“Would you make me go into the shelter on a bad day?”
“What?” Alex asks, brows furrowed, not following the connection. “Of course I wouldn’t. I – did I do something to make you think –”
“No – Christ, love, no,” Henry assures him, gently smooths his curls away from his face to meet his eyes without any obstructions. “This is a bad day, Alex. You’re having a bad day, and that’s okay. It might not look the same as mine, but I’m going to help you just like you help me.”
Mentally, he protests instantly. Thinks that Henry has a diagnosis. Henry has suffered so much, had lost his father, lived under his grandmother’s thumb, had to keep his very soul under lock and key for so long. This is Alex’s own fault. It can’t possibly compare –
“I can hear you thinking,” Henry hums, and shakes his head. “Stop it. Just… let me take care of that beautiful brain of yours for a while, alright? Please, Alex.”
His body gives in before he really realizes what’s happening, going nearly slack and loose-limbed in his boyfriend’s embrace.
Henry half-carries him into a hot shower, where Alex watches the minutes on the digital clock on the counter tick by, by, by, — until the lecture has officially started and he’s still wrapped in Henry’s warm embrace, two trains and six blocks away. Being out of the limbo of still having a chance to rush out the door and make it there seems to take some of the weight off of his shoulders, and it’s only when he knows Dr. DuPont has been speaking for nearly ten minutes across town that he can relax his back against Henry’s chest and let his tears mix with the warm shower spray.
Henry’s arms support him through all of his soft, shaking sobs. Henry’s voice murmurs in his ear, tells him that he loves him, that he’s proud of him no matter what, that he’s proud to be able to call him his in front of the whole world for no other reason than simply because he’s Alex. Not because he’s the First Son, or because he graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown, or was high school valedictorian, or is top of his class at NYU Law. Because he sings when he makes dinner every night and shakes his hips to Selena and Bad Bunny and Lil Jon for nostalgia’s sake, because he argues with Henry every time he comes home and Return of the Jedi is on (even if Henry is only using it as background noise), because he loves his friends and family fiercely and is achingly, painfully, beautifully loyal.
Somewhere in the midst of all of that, Alex manages to stop crying long enough to call him a fuckin’ sap, to turn around once Henry has finished his six-step curl routine and press his face – long since carefully and tenderly washed clean of any ink – into his boyfriend’s chest until the water runs cold.
He still feels too open, too raw, to do much of anything but stand there and drip water onto the bathmat, so Henry wraps him in a fluffy towel and meticulously dries him off, taking time and care with every curl, every soft, fleshy part of Alex’s body. As if each and every one is important, as if they all mean something to him.
Now, when they curl up together on the couch, Alex clinging to Henry like a koala while he places Alex’s Thai order (the one he’s had memorized since the second week they moved in together), something in his brain goes quiet. Not entirely silent – but it’s as if a loud, angry, persistent buzz has been muffled somehow by the scent of Henry’s cologne and the Oxford jumper he gently eased over Alex’s head. By the fact that he hasn’t left Alex’s side even once since that morning, not even when Alex shakily explained the fact that he is well and truly failing – that this will affect his GPA, his job prospects, and there’s nothing he can do about it but try to be better in other ways. But acknowledge that this isn’t something he can do and move on – which is fucking terrifying for him, and not something he’s ever been faced with before now.
Alex fights. And usually, he wins.
But this time, he lost.
And Henry is still here to piece him back together again, to pick up the broken pieces of that vase and repair them all with gold. To love him even more in this new, flawed form than he had at the start.
So this time, when they sit on the sofa with seemingly every limb somehow tangled together, Alex lets himself breathe, lets the steady beat of his boyfriend’s heart guide his lungs as if they were Henry’s own.
They tuck into their curry as Henry runs through the Biscuit Week signature challenge with all the drama of Shakespeare, and for the first time in months, Alex doesn’t feel quite as much secondhand panic when Nadya’s biscuit sculpture shatters. He knows somehow, it’ll be alright.