Chapter Text
Alex knows he’s pushing it.
It’s 2:14 a.m., and their dorm room is aglow with the cold blue light of his laptop screen, the soft golden spill of Henry’s reading lamp, and the flickering shadows of a night that refuses to end. The world outside their window is quiet, distant, like it belongs to someone else. In here, it’s just him, his cracked open casebooks, and the increasingly dramatic way his right eye is twitching.
He's deep in the trenches of constitutional law, typing with the sort of feverish, caffeine-fuelled desperation that can only come from twenty pages of notes and absolutely no memory of what he's just written.
The door creaks softly.
Henry pads in from the kitchen area of their suite-style dorm, wrapped in his oversized grey jumper that Alex once tried on 'as a joke' and then pretended not to notice when it mysteriously migrated into his own drawer. Henry has a mug in each hand, steam curling gently up from both.
“You look feral,” Henry says, entirely too gently, and sets a mug down beside Alex’s laptop.
“Hot,” Alex replies, without looking up. “Like, vaguely dangerous feral, or sad raccoon feral?”
“Both. But the kind that needs to be lured away from a power cable with caffeine.”
Alex glances at the cup. Coffee. Hot, black, perfect. Just how he likes it. He lifts it, sniffs. “This is the fancy stuff. That bag we were meant to save for midterms.”
“You’re halfway through a twenty-page analysis on due process at 2 a.m. I’d say that qualifies.”
Alex takes a sip, sighs a little too deeply, and slumps in his desk chair like he’s physically deflating. “I owe you my firstborn.”
“God forbid,” Henry murmurs, sinking down onto his bed across the room. “I’ve seen your genetics.”
Alex throws a pen at him. It bounces harmlessly off Henry’s knee. Henry, for his part, doesn’t retaliate, just tucks his legs under him, leans against the wall, and sips his own tea, like this is all entirely normal. Which, to be fair, it kind of is.
This is how it always goes.
Alex stays up working until his body forgets how to blink. Henry, also awake, because Henry is always awake, quietly steps in with the calm efficiency of someone who’s learned that care doesn’t have to be loud to be noticed.
Except, of course, Alex doesn’t notice. Not properly.
Not in the way that matters.
“You should sleep,” Henry says eventually, voice quieter now, almost fond. “Your sleep schedule is going to abandon you entirely.”
“Bold of you to say, considering the last time I woke up before you it was because you were still awake on your fifth re-read of Pride and Prejudice this year.”
“Can you blame me? That book is an absolute masterpiece. Everytime I read it, I feel like I learn something new.”
“Nerd.” Alex mumbles teasingly.
Henry shrugs, and there’s that tiny smile again, the one that seems too private for public use, the one he only ever wears in this room, late at night, when it’s just the two of them and no one else is looking.
Alex doesn’t dwell on it. Or rather, he does, but not in any useful or self-aware way.
Instead, he goes back to typing. The coffee kicks in. His brain fog clears just enough to become hyperfocused, which he’s told Nora is basically a superpower. She told him that’s also what people with ADHD say when they’re avoiding therapy.
Another hour slips by.
Henry reads in bed with his feet tucked under a blanket, occasionally glancing over when Alex swears at a Supreme Court ruling. There’s something remarkably steady about his presence, like a lighthouse. Quiet. Constant. Always gently guiding Alex back to the shore when he starts spiralling into legal hell.
Eventually, Henry says, “Do you want a break?”
Alex doesn’t even look up. “I can’t stop now. If I stop, I’ll crash. And if I crash, I’ll die.”
“Dramatic.”
“Accurate.”
Henry doesn’t argue. He disappears briefly, returns with a small plate of biscuits, chocolate digestives, because apparently that’s what Henry thinks counts as brain food, and sets them beside the coffee mug like he’s laying out offerings for a stressed-out goblin.
Alex grabs one immediately. “You’re enabling me.”
“And yet you’re not complaining.”
He’s not. He’s really, really not.
The room is warm. Safe. The buzz of stress hasn’t gone, but it feels muted. Manageable. Like Alex can maybe do this, finish this paper, survive the semester, because Henry is here. Because Henry always is.
Alex chews, types, mutters something about Scalia being a cryptid, and misses the way Henry looks at him in that moment.
Misses the softness. The ache.
“Thanks, by the way,” Alex says eventually, without thinking. “You’re, like… the best roommate ever.”
Henry doesn’t answer for a long time.Then, finally he whispers a soft, “That’s what I’m going for.”
Alex smiles small and sincere, then drains the last of his coffee. “Seriously. I’d probably be dead in a pile of Red Bull cans without you.”
Henry laughs under his breath, quiet and breathy. “Yes, well. I do my best to prevent such tragedies.”
They fall into silence again. The kind of silence that’s not heavy, not awkward, just full. Of something unspoken.
Alex doesn’t notice it, though. Not really. He just sinks a little deeper into the rhythm of work, the hum of their dorm, the quiet comfort of knowing Henry’s across the room, within reach, like he always is.
It feels safe. Familiar. Inevitable.
He doesn’t think about why.
He doesn’t see the way Henry watches him over the rim of his mug. Doesn’t see how Henry’s fingers tighten slightly, like he’s holding back the words he could say.
Alex just yawns, leans back, and murmurs, “Don’t let me fall asleep on my keyboard.”
Henry’s voice is almost a whisper. “Never.”
And Alex, tired, caffeinated, and content in the presence of someone who truly makes him feel safe, smiles again.
He doesn’t know.
Not yet.