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Alex isn’t right. (John takes one look at him, pale and terror-stricken in the doorway of their bathroom, and Alex isn’t right.)
“Alex,” he ventures. He sounds cautious, but he doesn’t hesitate to put his laptop aside and place a hand on their bed, ready to stand. “Are you okay?”
His words must strike something, or maybe it’s his voice. He watches Alex steady himself away from the door, his movements stiff, and meet John’s eyes.
His hair is loose around his shoulders, an odd thing because John thought Alex liked his hair out of the way while he washed up, and he’s holding something. “Laurens,” Alex says, quietly, and the hazy orange glow of the lights behind him should make him look softer, gentler, but John feelscold.
Silence hangs heavily in the air, and John wonders when it went from Alex brushing his teeth before bed to Alex’s frame crumpling against the doorway with something not-quite-right in his eyes. (He hasn’t heard Alex use his last name for a while now. It should be pleasantly familiar, should be normal, but there’s— there’s something—)
“I,” Alex says, his hand finally slipping from the doorknob. John can feel his own expression start to twist into one of worry, and he’s on his feet before he can think about it, reaching for Alex.
The other man meets him halfway in a sudden surge of movement; there’s an arm tight around his back, a hand warm on the back of his neck. (Something is falling to the floor; John doesn’t see it.) There’s a moment in which all else lapses from John’s mind, and he’s wondering what he could have thought was wrong when this is him, this is Alex, the man he’s married for two years, and then the moment passes and all he can feel is the desperation in Alex’s crushing hold. “John,” Alex says, this sighing sort of exhale that goes muffled into John’s shoulder.
“Alex,” he murmurs, easing a hand over the other’s hip and over the small of his back. “You’re acting like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“My dear Laurens, I thought I had lost you.” Alex is stroking his thumb rhythmically over John’s spine, and John gets a feeling that he’s being cradled.
It isn’t right. John chuckles, an attempt to look amused, but it’s an empty sound. “Laf and Herc are going to make even more fun of us when they hear that we’re missing each other when we go into different rooms.”
It’s not the right thing to say. Alex’s fingers on his neck tighten a fraction of an inch, and he’s saying, “This must be a sign.”
This is when John notices that Alex’s shirt is a grayer than he remembers, looser around the sleeves than he remembers, made of rougher material than he remembers. “Alex,” he says. He goes unheard, Alex only squeezing him tighter, whispering other things into his shoulder, and John gets a hand between them, half grabs at the front of Alex’s shirt — buttons? When did Alex wear buttoned shirts to bed? — and pushes. Tries to push. “Alex,” he repeats, a little louder this time but no more firmer, the end of his voice tapering into something weak as he spots what Alex had dropped on the floor.
“Never again,” he hears. “Not if I can help it this time. Never again.”
“Alex, you left the light on. Let me turn it off and we can head to bed, okay?”
(And of course he means the bathroom, Alex always forgets to turn the light off. There’s a pair of shoes in there, he glimpses the heels of them, did Alex forget to leave his shoes by the front door again?)
“Alex.”
(No, not just shoes— Legs clothed in loose sweatpants, a head of black hair, this familiar body splayed on the white tiles of the bathroom floor—)
“Alexander.”
(Alex?)
When Alexander finally pulls back, he’s smiling, this lilt of his lips that’s both reverent and promising, and John isn’t— This isn’t—
“You’re not,” he begins.
“I am not,” Alexander murmurs. “But with time, I can be.”
(It’s a quill, on the floor. He had dropped a quill.)
“You’re not,” John repeats, voice kicking higher as realization pricks him, but Alexander is holding him close again, tight like he’s something that’s once been lost, whispering nonsensical phrases that make John feel dizzy, dizzy, unable to concentrate on anything other than the stroking of Alexander’s thumb, comforting, venerating, and then he’s not there, he’s someplace else, he’s—