Chapter Text
“Don’t you ever get tired of this stuff?” Alex asks him one morning after he’s presented Henry with his breakfast.
Henry sidles up against the pool coping, arms crossed. A drop of water slowly drips along the flexed muscle in his forearm. He co*cks his head at Alex’s mug. “Don’t you ever get tired of that stuff?”
Alex snorts and takes a sip of his coffee. He wouldn’t classify this as a friendly conversation, exactly, but it’s a steady improvement from a week prior. Henry ignores him for a moment, picking through the tilapia quarters while Alex finds his usual seat on an old polyethylene lounge chair that he dug up in the basem*nt and drug between two potted palms a few days earlier.
Eventually Henry replies, “Dad said that it was the best option. Ethical to source, nutritionally complete.”
Alex tries his best not to jerk forward in surprise. This is the first time that Henry has mentioned Arthur on his own accord. He does so cooly, his gaze still turned on the platter of fish. Alex cannot f*ck this up.
“Well, sure,” Alex says, “I could eat nutritionally complete dog food for every meal and it’d probably be more ethical than half of the stuff at the grocery store. That doesn’t mean that I want to.”
Henry shrugs. He pops a bit of tilapia into his mouth and chews. “It doesn’t bother me.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Henry squints at him. It almost looks like he’s fighting the urge to grin. “I know, Alex. Maybe it wasn’t a very good question.”
Smoke and mirrors. Alex is starting to learn Henry’s tricks. He whistles and shakes his head. “Your loss. Maybe I was gonna bring you something new.”
“Devastating,” Henry drawls. It admittedly sounds pretty good in his dumb little accent.
Alex stares into his coffee cup. A sudden epiphany hits him. “Hey. Can you drink?”
Momentarily distracted by some of the flowers planted near the pool, Henry’s head snaps back in Alex’s direction. “What?”
Alex waggles the cup at him. The coffee sloshes. “Like, do you ever get thirsty?”
“I thought that you were a biologist,” Henry manages incredulously.
“What, you want me to give you my credentials?” Alex snorts. He tips back the mug and drains it. “I study corals, Henry. They have a way more interesting diet than you do, but it’s not like I can ask them questions. Or, well. Expect an answer, at least.” He grins. “Nevermind. I guess y’all have a lot in common.”
Miraculously, Henry laughs. “Yes, I can drink.”
“But do you have to?”
One of Henry’s eyebrows raises skeptically. “I’m not a science experiment.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not a third grader at a science fair, so your secrets are safe with me,” Alex replies with a wink. Henry scoffs and shakes his head.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Aw, thanks.”
Henry pushes away the empty platter and eases into the water, one hand still draped loosely against the coping. “I don’t get thirsty,” he reveals. Alex wasn’t expecting an honest answer. He smiles in spite of himself. “Not like you do, at least.”
“I don’t know if I do much of anything like you do,” Alex observes. He keeps his voice light enough to make it clear that it’s a joke. Henry smirks. The expression has lost some of its edge.
“Thank heaven for small mercies.”
“Oh, you wish, Fox,” Alex laughs. He swings his legs around and stands, striding forward to pick up the platter with his free hand. Henry sinks deeper into the water. That’s fine. This has been far better than eating in silence and glaring, even if Henry doesn’t want to share the same six feet of space with Alex at any given moment.
“Alright. Fascinating as this has been, I gotta head out— and let the record show that I’m not gonna bring you anything fun home.”
“I haven’t asked you to!” Henry cries out after him when Alex turns and saunters towards the double doors.
Alex waves the empty platter over his shoulder at him and swears he hears his laughter again once he’s out in the hall.
“You look like absolute dog sh*t.”
Alex glances up from his grading and wonders, briefly, how he ever convinced himself that he might be in love with Nora.
“Jesus. Hello to you, too.”
Nora snorts and pushes herself off from the open doorframe of Alex’s cramped office so that she can step inside.
“Hey. Welcome back. You could’ve called me before you dropped off of the face of the planet, you know.” She tosses herself into the chair angled at the front of his desk. He regrets making his office so hospitable to guests.
“Why, so that you could harass me over the phone?”
“Yep.” She stares him down. There’s something strangely tender underneath everything else. That’s why he loves her, of course; not like that, but it’s still love, as enduring as its romantic counterpart. “You doing okay?”
Alex plucks off his glasses and sighs, rubbing his eyes to wear away the last few hours of mediocre student essays. “I mean, look— Arthur died, I can’t sleep, and I’m about six lightyears behind on grading.”
“You could use a haircut, too.”
Alex laughs. Nora fights her own grin. “f*ck, man. You got anything else for me while I’m down?”
Nora nods her head from side to side appraisingly. “I dunno. When’s the last time you got laid?”
“You’re a sad*st,” he groans.
“Ahuh,” Nora says. She leans forward and snatches one of the essays from his desk. “God. These kids aren’t very bright.”
“It’s a 101 class, asshole,” Alex replies, stealing the paper back from her. “They’re probably all your students, anyhow.”
“No way. I can smell their fear from a mile away.”
“There is something fundamentally broken about you.”
“Thank you,” Nora says with a smile. “You wanna get lunch?”
Alex stares down at the piles of untouched papers. Yeah, he really does. He nods and tosses his glasses onto the desktop in defeat. “Yep. But there’s another stop I want to make on our way back.”
The Green Eagle is an old diner a few blocks east of campus famous for an incredible five dollar burger and a laundry list of health code violations. Alex has been patronizing it for years; hell, he would’ve starved halfway through his junior year, otherwise. None of the other doctoral students would be caught dead in here. Nora doesn’t qualify, because she’s a weapons grade genius and finished off her PhD when Alex was still a sophom*ore. To be fair, no other faculty member would ever come to the Eagle, either.
“They’re a bunch of idiots,” Nora says around a mouthful of ground beef when he voices this opinion aloud.
Alex pops a fry into his mouth. “Maurice is okay,” he says, thinking of Nora’s octogenarian coworker, a mathematician specializing in something that Alex can’t even superficially conceptualize. Nora hums thoughtfully.
“Yeah, we can keep him. I don’t think his stomach could handle this stuff, though.”
Alex shrugs. “His loss.”
Apropos of nothing, Nora then says, “June thinks that you’re depressed.”
Alex nearly chokes on his swig of beer.
“I think that she’s probably right,” Nora continues casually. She takes another bite of her burger.
“I… Okay? Thank you?”
Nora looks at him like he’s an idiot. “Of course you’re depressed. Arthur was basically your dad— although, honestly, at first I thought that it was more of a daddy situation.”
“Oh my God, Nora. Can we please not do this?”
“He was probably the nicest person that I’ve ever met,” she continues, undeterred. “He didn’t deserve all of that.”
Alex frowns. He is not going to cry into his sh*tty light beer over a linoleum table and laminated menus, serenaded by ABBA as they’re piped through the nearby jukebox. His life might be a total mess, but he’s not quite there just yet.
“No, he didn’t. I mean, nobody does.”
“Some people do.”
“You’re really nailing this whole consolation thing.”
“I don’t know why you’d think that I would,” she replies easily. “You’re allowed to be depressed,” she continues, which is clearly the thesis of whatever this is that she’s bulldozing through. To be honest, it’s a lot more reassuring than what everyone else has been telling him.
“I would be,” she continues. “This whole idea of just moving on is a load of horsesh*t. I mean, did you know that the campus bereavement leave policy allows for three business days? We get more days off for Christmas.”
“It’s Texas,” Alex replies, which is an answer to the question, but also maybe not. He subconsciously appreciates the fact that Nora has apparently been looking into the university employment handbook on his behalf. Nora snorts.
“Yup.”
Alex drags a French fry through the gloopy ketchup piled on his plate. “This is probably an incredibly stupid thing to do, but can I get your advice on something?”
“Why would it be stupid?” Nora leans forward on her elbows, a dangerous new glint in her eyes. “I’m way smarter than you are.”
Alex laughs and shakes his head. “IQ and EQ are two totally different things, Nor.”
“Cute.” She leans a little closer. It’s a positively predatory move. “You thought that you were straight until you were old enough to drink.”
“It’s really charming when you gate-keep the queer experience,” he notes dryly. She rolls her eyes.
“You had sex with a man before your twentieth birthday.”
“This is why this was a stupid idea.”
“We’ve haven’t even gotten to the advice yet. This stuff is all free of charge.”
Alex drags a hand across his face. Jesus. He needs to make new friends.
“I’m… I found out that Arthur has some family here in the States,” he begins warily, because although Nora is indeed the biggest asshole in his life, she also generally has very good ideas. “He asked if I could keep an eye on them— you know, help them through all of this.”
“That’s sweet of you.” Nora sounds more bored than endeared.
“I’m just worried that it might not be my place.”
“What, to help somebody out? Charity,” she says in mock-horror, “God forbid.”
“It’s a little more than just help. They have some mobility issues.” That’s a funny way of putting it. Henry looks like he could fold Alex into a pretzel if he was so inclined. Nora doesn’t need to know that. She would absolutely never shut up about it. “So, you know, it’s kind of, like, got a caretaking aspect to the whole thing.”
“You love that sh*t.”
“…Come again?”
“You are the biggest sap in the entire universe, Alex. Don’t kid yourself.”
“Well, yeah,” Alex blusters, because there’s never really any point in disagreeing with Nora. She is, unfortunately, almost always right. “That’s my point.”
“Oh, come on. Are you seriously asking me if your altruism isn’t altruistic enough?” Nora groans. She tosses back her head for good measure, every second an Oscar winning performance.
“I don’t know!”
“Alex,” she replies, and suddenly she’s serious, all of the glitter gone from her voice. “I think that you need this. It’s okay to need things. I know that you hate when people feel sorry for you— and, like, I do, but I know that you’re gonna get through it, too. If ‘getting through it’ means saving a few innocent bystanders along the way, consider this my formal endorsem*nt.”
Alex laughs and shakes his head. “Thanks, Nora.”
“No problem.” She reaches forward and grabs his hand, giving it a tight squeeze. He squeezes back. She releases his fingers and steals a French fry on her retreat. “So. Where to next?”
“This is weird.”
“It’s a fish market,” Alex grumbles. “I don’t know why you’re acting so surprised. It’s literally in the name.”
“Yeah, but, like, I’m not sure if this is supposed to be really depressing for you or some sort of professional foreplay.” She prods at a display of butterflied cuttlefish cutlets and wrinkles her nose.
“I’m a marine biologist, Nora, not a marlin.”
Nora rolls her eyes. “Adorable wordplay.” She pulls back her hand when the fishmonger behind the display starts to stare at her a bit more intently and wheels around to peruse a clutch of pink shrimp on ice. “So what are you looking for? A new girlfriend?”
For Henry, maybe. Alex really regrets that he can’t voice the joke aloud. What a wasted opportunity.
“You already used that punchline,” he says instead. “I dunno. Something for dinner. I need to mix it up.”
Nora nods, because she knows that Alex has a penchant for cooking when his stress levels get a little high. “What about that?” She points at a tangle of octopus tentacles. Alex frowns and shakes his head.
“No way. They have as many neurons as dogs, you know.”
“So twice as many as you.”
To her credit, all of her ribbing feels like a baptism after so many miserable days spent with people cooing over him instead. God. He really needed this.
“They have three hearts, too, so three more than what you’re used to,” he shoots back. Nora grins.
“How about them? They’re basically bugs, right?” she asks, pointing at lobster tank.
“Sure.” The doomed lobsters crawl around the bottom of the tank. Alex tries not to think about it too closely. He could probably swing a descent into veganism, but Henry would wither away into dust, so he’s got to make concessions, even if there are a few too many parallels between a holding tank and an indoor motel pool to make the whole thing entirely palatable. “That works.”
Alex murders the lobsters as carefully as possible and poaches half of them in butter. He leaves the other half whole and artfully arranges them across Henry’s 1950s housewife serving platter.
“What’s this?” Henry asks, amused, when Alex leaves it in its usual spot before heading back to his lounger.
“I dunno, some weird lookin’ tilapia,” Alex replies.
Henry laughs. It sounds lighter than the little sharp barks that Alex has won out of him before. Alex crosses his legs and digs into his dinner, the plate balanced precariously in his lap. Henry leans against the pool coping and inspects his crustaceous offering first.
“I’m afraid to say that you strike the image of a positively dreadful marine biologist,” he says.
Alex grins and dips his next bite of lobster into his little dish of melted butter with extra aplomb.
“Yeesh, and you had such a great opinion of me before.”
Henry takes one of the lobsters in hand and cracks open the shell like it’s made out of tissue paper. Intellectually this is very interesting; emotionally, it triggers some of Alex’s more primordial fight or flight responses. The happy little noise that Henry makes and then rapidly fails to silence helps with the second part.
They eat without speaking. It’s nice. Alex admires a young, green frond growing out of the crown of a nearby palm. He can understand why so many rich people have greenhouses. Koi ponds, too, although Henry would probably take offense at that one.
“I’m sorry,” Henry says suddenly. Alex nearly spills the butter.
“What?”
“For before. With the food. I was a bit of a prat to you.”
Understatement. Alex can’t believe that he’s getting an apology at all, so he lets it slide. “It’s okay.”
“It really isn’t,” Henry replies. “You were just trying to help. I lashed out.”
“I think that’s normal,” Alex says. He means it. Henry winces. It’s a slight thing, but Alex has started to learn how to read him.
“I wouldn’t know,” Henry says, suddenly sounding small.
Alex ponders on it for a minute before he replies, “My parents got divorced when I was thirteen. You know what that is, right?”
Henry gives him a somewhat withering look at the suggestion, but he nods, too, which is what really counts.
“Apparently it was obvious to everybody else, but I was totally blindsided by it. I was at summer camp when it actually happened— came home and suddenly half of the closets were empty and the garage was missing a car. We lived here in Texas. My dad moved to California, which is basically the moon for all it did to our relationship. I was a total dick for the rest of high school. Gave my dad the silent treatment, did some stupid reckless sh*t, the whole nine yards.”
Henry leans a little closer to him from across the coping. He looks a little surprised that Alex is sharing this much information with him, but his attention is unflinching. It’s a weird feeling. No one ever bothers to listen too closely to Alex when he speaks, on account of the fact that he usually struggles to shut up.
“What I mean to say,” he continues before he wears out his welcome with Henry, too, “is that we do weird stuff when we get hurt. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way that it is.”
Henry studies him a little longer. His eyes are the color of gemstones.
“Thank you, Alex,” he says finally. Alex knows that it’s meant for more than just one thing.
“You’re welcome.”
Ironically enough, Alex is in the middle of installing a set of cheap surveillance cameras along the gutters of the motel office when a black limousine suddenly pulls into the lot. It’s another hot day— of course it is —and he’s already burned himself twice on the sh*tty asphalt shingles.
“What the f*ck,” he mutters when the limo doesn’t realize its mistake and make a hasty retreat. It idles instead. Then the driver’s door opens and a man dressed in an impeccable uniform emerges to head to one of the passenger side doors. “Oh, sh*t.”
Alex launches himself down the ladder, leaving a trail of tangled electrical wire in his wake.
“Hey. Hey!” He calls out. The chauffeur ignores him. Dick. “Hey, man, sorry, we’re closed!”
A second man emerges. He’s dressed in a red-and-white checkered Western shirt with long fringe down both arms and honest-to-God chaps. Alex’s brain stutters. It’s not like it’s an entirely unfamiliar look, here in the heart of Texas, but he’s never seen anybody pair it with star-shaped sunglasses before.
“Ah!” The man shouts. He claps his hands delightedly. “You must be the handsome new roommate.”
“Uh,” Alex manages, which is starting to be a problem: he was valedictorian, for f*ck’s sake.
The man tips down his sunglasses and gives Alex a long, appraising look. “Delightful. Exactly as described.”
“Sorry, can I help you?”
The man offers him a generous smile. “I hear you already have quite a lot on your plate.”
This is accurate. Also irrelevant. Alex rubs his burned fingers against his leg. “Look, man. I don’t know how you found yourself out here, but we’re closed for business.”
The man sniffs and takes a quick glance across the motel grounds. “Well, surely to the right beholder it has its charms.”
Alex follows his gaze to the old refinery, which is currently belching out a long line of oily black smoke. “Right. I—”
“Not to worry. I’ve made my reservations in advance.”
“No, listen,” Alex says with a frown. The chauffeur suddenly materializes, burdened by a matching set of Louis Vuitton luggage.
“Wonderful,” the bedazzled man chirps. “Lead the way. Or shall I?”
“Hey!”
“Alex, is it?”
That one brings Alex up short. He gawps at the man, trying his best to leap in front of him before he gets too close to the office door.
“And who the hell are you?”
The man doesn’t wilt at the obscenity. “Pez,” he informs him neatly instead, not breaking his stride even when he offers a hand in Alex’s direction. It’s covered in rings which glitter and sparkle in the sun. “Like the sweets.”
“Okay, Pez, like the sweets: I don’t know how else to tell you that we aren’t taking guests right now.”
“Or ever, I imagine.” Pez stops, at least. The chauffeur stops as well, an obedient shadow, unbending under the weight of the bags. “Ah. I see,” Pez adds suddenly, the fringe on his sleeve going wild when he reaches for his back pocket. He procures a phone encased in an entire bird’s worth of peaco*ck feathers. “One moment. I’ll patch this all up.”
A video call flashes onto the screen. Alex stares with bewilderment when the call connects and displays Henry on the other end, his face framed by the green-blue pool. He looks delighted, until he notices Alex, at which point he turns a little pale.
“Hazza, darling, I always knew that you had a way with words,” Pez croons, which explains precisely nothing. Henrys’ horrified blush doesn’t, either.
“Pez, don’t— Alex—” Henry stutters. “I— Pez, I told you to call me when you arrived.”
Pez swings the phone around to give Henry a quick view of the parking lot outside. “Message received and followed to the letter,” he preens.
“Not exactly,” Henry deadpans.
“Well, I came as soon as I was able. This government of yours is not so fond of a man possessed of a Nigerian passport, if I’m being candid.” Pez glances over at Alex, as if he’s supposed to be able to commiserate. “I intended to arrive last month. They were unconvinced until I was able to secure a visa, which required a business, which, you can appreciate, does take some time to acquire.”
Alex is not able to appreciate this, with or without his recent foray into small business ownership.
“I don’t mean to domineer,” Pez adds with a simper, “but I do believe I am actively melting. If it’s all the same to you gentleman, shall we reconvene inside?”
Alex snatches his phone in lieu of a reply. Henry cowers on the other end, as if Alex is as capable of throttling him through the screen as he is desirous of doing so. “When did you get a phone?” he barks.
Henry juts out his jaw. “I’m not a child, Alex.”
“Henry!”
“Oh, just let him in.”
Pez is Percy, Henry’s boyhood penpal. Maybe this was obvious. Alex thinks that he can get a pass for having some trouble with keeping all of the trivia of caring for a goddamned merman in line.
Pez, on the other hand, seems utterly unflustered by the fact that his friend is more scale than skin. He rushes into the pool without a second thought to his leather pants and flings his arms around Henry with a cry.
“Oh, Henry,” he sighs. “Look at you. How are you?”
“All right,” Henry replies. His voice is a little choked. Alex shifts uncomfortably on his feet at the poolside, realizing suddenly that he’s probably eavesdropping on something that he shouldn’t overhear.
“Like hell you are,” Pez chides. “I’m so sorry that I couldn’t come sooner.”
“You can’t control everything, Pez.”
“Well, when it comes to you, I very well might.” Pez drags him into another hug. “Although I suppose you aren’t suffering too terribly with your new company in mind.”
“Pez,” Henry groans with a not insignificant amount of desperation behind each letter. “That’s enough.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“That’s doesn’t—” Henry stares up into the ceiling in consternation. Pez watches gamely, his hands still wrapped around Henry’s arms. “Have you introduced yourself, even, or is it just all this, all the time?”
“I have,” Pez informs him. “Splendid to finally have a face for the name.”
“I wish I could say the same,” Alex decides to add. Henry shoots him a mean little glare.
“I don’t have to ask your permission for company,” Henry simpers.
“Like hell you don’t!”
“Now, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Pez intervenes. “We all have quite a bit to catch up on.”
“I have to finish up outside,” Alex says petulantly, which would be a more polite way of leaving the two men to reunite, if not for the fact that he’s still pretty pissed off about this whole thing.
He stalks over to the doors before Pez begins to congratulate him on his well-bodied endurance. Henry snaps his name at him again. Alex drags in a deep, beleaguered breath and storms his way back outside.
Pez finds him later once he’s rewired the cameras twice and finally managed to coax an image out of them. He’s changed out of his leather and fringe. That, paired with his general composure, strips some of the gaudy theater out of everything.
“Alex,” he greets him. Alex nods and gives a final wind to the excess wire that he’s coiled between his thumb and his elbow before tying it off and setting it aside.
“Should I expect you to spend the night?” Alex asks, which is really a rhetorical question: he caught Pez’s chauffeur making up one of the rooms a few hours earlier. Somehow the man magicked the thing into an actual living space. He’s not going to ask any questions. He’s full-up on fantasy, as far as he’s concerned, even if the answer to this one is probably just money.
“If it wouldn’t be too much of a trouble.”
Alex grunts. Shrugs. Admits defeat.
“How is he? Really?”
Alex stares at a crack in the pavement. It spiders across two parking spaces before widening into a dusty pit.
“I don’t know. Some days he’s fine, some days he isn’t.”
Pez nods. “He’s always struggled with it, you know.”
Alex doesn’t. He doesn’t know a lot of things about Henry. About any of this. It makes him itch. He hates it.
“His brain is an amazing thing,” Pez continues wistfully. He doesn’t look at Alex when he talks. They both look ahead to the empty road. “Like he can see more than we can see, feel more, just... listening to this entire world that we’re a bit too deaf to hear. He's destined to find some melancholy in it, I imagine, from time to time."
A little ache opens in Alex’s chest. “I think he’s lonely.”
He means to say it as a term of gratitude. Maybe it comes out that way. Maybe it doesn’t.
Pez hums. “Aren’t we all?”
