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The brownstone is quiet when Alex returns from work.
On the outside, it’s unchanging. Alex thinks sometimes that’s why Henry’d loved it so much, for its soft halo when the sun sets behind it and the stubborn mismatched brick, unflinching and perpetually quaint.
Alex’s reasons for liking it are different. It’s one thing to have a sturdy base, something solid to point to when somebody asks where home is. It’s another to make it more intimate than that; home is Henry, regardless of where they’re at. But Henry’s here, the welcome mat he’d chosen at the farmer’s market, the lamp flickering in the bedroom window where he reads before bed, black dirt underneath the beds of his fingernails from planting the roses along the front steps.
Inside, the house is dark today. Sometimes it’s like that. Two years here means they’ve established a pretty predictable schedule, but predictable for them is still chaotic sometimes. Alex drops his keys in the bowl by the door and toes off his shoes, leaving his bag by the door as he shrugs off his jacket.
“I’m home, H,” he calls into the living room from the foyer, but his own echo is all he gets in response.
He takes a second to flip on the lights and undo his tie, leaving it on the kitchen island. There’s leftovers in the fridge from last night, but he’s not opposed to ordering in if Henry feels like it. David’s collar jingles down the hallway, heard before he’s ever seen, and Alex smiles and crouches.
“Hey, buddy. Where’s your dad, huh?”
Unsettled, David chuffs at him, not quite a bark. With a frown, Alex stands again to check his food bowl. David’s usually napping right now after his afternoon walk, but he follows Alex into the kitchen with more energy than expected.
The bowl’s empty, and it looks like it has been for a while. Frown deepening, Alex grabs the dog food from the bottom of the pantry and fills it and the water bowl, then leaves a treat in David’s bed for when he’s finished eating. He’s putting up the jar again when he catches sight of the miniature daily calendar on their fridge.
H - therapy w/ Evelyn @ 2pm.
Fuck. Alex had forgotten that was today.
Shutting the pantry door, he leaves David to eat and heads for the stairs, unbuttoning his work shirt as he goes and leaving him in a much softer tee underneath. At the top of the landing their bedroom door is halfway open. Usually, if it’s a bad day, Henry closes it to make it quieter. Otherwise, they always leave it open. He’s not sure what in between means.
The shower’s running in their bathroom. With David occupied downstairs, Alex steps over the threshold and closes the door until it clicks. He lays his shirt over the back of the chair and glances around the empty bedroom for clues, but comes up empty.
“Baby?”
Henry either doesn’t hear him or doesn’t respond. The pit in his stomach’s been building since he remembered the appointment, kicking himself for not checking in sooner, but there’s time for that later. For now, he approaches the half-open double doors to the en suite and lays a palm against the nearest one, pushing it open a little further.
“Henry?” he checks a final time, making sure it’s okay to come in. When he’s still met with silence, his worry wins out and he steps inside anyway.
There’s no fog on the mirror, no warmth in the room, no trace of Henry’s humming over the sound of running water. It takes Alex too long to even realize Henry’s there at all, the guilt festering further when his eyes drop to the floor.
Henry’s there, in the tub, the shower running above him while he sits on the ground. His knees are pulled to his bare chest, arms wrapped so tightly around them that they’ve gone a little white, and his face—his eyes are open, but Alex doesn’t think he’s really seeing anything, staring idly at the wet tile in front of him without reaction.
He doesn’t move when Alex eases in a breath and steps closer, but Alex thinks he’s at least aware that he’s in the room. Henry gets like this sometimes, but it hasn’t been this bad in a while. This appointment was supposed to be more intense, but Henry thought it’d be fine.
If he wants to be alone he usually asks for it, so Alex takes his chances and steps forward again, then, without care for how much water has spilled out onto the floor from not closing the divider, he drops down to sit on the outside of the tub opposite Henry.
“Thought you were gonna call me if it ended up going badly,” Alex says gently, careful not to sound accusatory.
Slowly, some part of Henry seems to trickle back online. He still doesn’t move but his shoulders rise with an inhale, and he blinks at the wall.
“It didn’t,” he rasps. “It went—well. I thought—I got through it, all the way. I said it all out loud. It felt—good.”
“Okay,” Alex acknowledges, leaving space for more. Henry blinks at the wall again, and something in his brow twitches.
“But then—I didn’t—I was still thinking about it, after. When I got home. We did exercises to—to leave it there, in session, but—” he frowns, his eyes dropping down to his feet. “I got home and I—I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t turn it off. I had to…”
While Henry thinks, Alex reaches over to test the back of his hand under the stream of water falling on Henry’s shins. He nearly flinches at it. Ice cold. His hand hovers by the controls.
“You want me to make it warmer?”
“No,” Henry says immediately, voice wavering. “No—please.”
“Okay. I won’t touch it, H. I promise.” He brings his hand away from the controls and back to his side, unsure of if he’s allowed to touch or not. “What can I do?”
Henry’s quiet for another few minutes as the sun sets outside the window. Alex has been through a lot of shit, had experiences most other people haven’t. But he’s never been through this before, and as much as Henry hurting makes him want to dive in headfirst and offer up solutions until he finds the right one, that isn’t what Henry needs.
He bites his tongue and waits.
“I don’t know,” Henry says eventually, quiet. “It’s been so long since I’ve thought about it, I—I thought I could…”
“It’s okay if it was a lot,” Alex assures him.
Some color seeps back into Henry’s cheeks as he furrows a stubborn brow. “I wanted to be able to be over it. I thought I was getting there, but I just—I was just not thinking about it and that’s—that’s not the same bloody thing.” Alex can tell he’s upset, but he’s breathier than he should be, like he can’t quite find the energy to be as angry about it as he wants to be. His voice cracks. “And then today it all—it’s all back, Alex, it’s all—he’s everywhere.”
The pit in Alex’s stomach splinters and breaks open, aching.
“Sweetheart,” he says, helpless, wishing he could fix. “I’m sorry. I don’t—I don’t know how to make it better. I’m sorry.”
Henry says nothing, but the divot between his brows stays.
“Should I call Evelyn back?” Alex asks.
He shakes his head, dropping his chin back onto his knees. It stays there for several long moments, and Alex watches the water roll down over his cheek in thick droplets, wishing he could wipe them away.
“David,” Henry says suddenly, partially slurred as if in a daze. “I didn’t—didn’t take him out, earlier. I was…”
Alex interjects before he can move, though it hadn’t seemed like he was going to regardless. “He’s asleep on his bed downstairs. You don’t need to worry about him right now.”
For the first time since he’d gotten home, Henry’s eyes slip over to him, flickering across his face. Alex lets him look, lets him find whatever he needs to see. Evidently, he does.
“I want—” Henry says, sharp and quick. “Can you get in here with me?”
Alex hesitates. “You sure?”
He waits for Henry to nod before standing up slowly and reaching down to peel off his socks. He’d left the button-up in the bedroom and his shoes downstairs, but he’s still wearing his slacks and an undershirt. He reaches for the hem, and Henry makes an urgent noise.
“Alex. Can you— Christ,” Henry huffs, jamming the heel of his palms into his eyes.
“Anything,” Alex promises, waiting. “What do you need?”
Henry’s voice is muffled and distorted through the water and his arms, but Alex can just make it out. “Can you keep your clothes on?”
Alex’s throat burns. He nods anyway, leaving the shirt and pants in place as he steps up to the tub. Henry’s huddled closer to the middle of it so there’s room enough for him to step in behind, his feet and the cuffs of his pants quick to absorb the cold water, but Alex bites back any sort of reaction as he grits his teeth and drops into a careful sit.
It’s far from the first bath they’ve taken together, but Alex takes more care than usual to be aware of his limbs, unable to see anything else but the way Henry’s muscles, bare and vulnerable, are all trembling underneath his skin. There’s a constellation of freckles that goes from his shoulder blade over to the opposite hip and down to the base of his spine, and Alex usually presses his mouth to those spots when they do this. Today, he holds still.
With one leg on either side of Henry, Alex takes a deep breath and leans against the back of the tub to give him as much space as possible. Though the water has made the material of his pants undoubtedly rough, Henry seems grounded by the contact against his bare skin.
Slow and meticulous, he unfolds, tendon by tendon, with visible effort. It takes minutes for Henry to lean back in mechanical increments, until eventually, he’s laying stiffly back against Alex’s shoulder, slumped and angled enough that his hair touches Alex’s chin and he can still keep his knees to his chest.
His breathing is stilted—aiming for control but overridden with nerves. That part, Alex is familiar with. He keeps his own breaths nice and slow, easy to follow, and soon enough Henry’s attempting to mimic them.
“This okay?” Alex checks.
Henry nods again, stiff but sure of himself. Alex’s arms are still on either side of the tub, unsure where they should go, and Henry abruptly tosses a wet hand out from around his shins to find Alex’s, sinking his fingers through the back of Alex’s and squeezing.
Even though he shudders with it, he takes in the first full breath he has since Alex got home.
“This—helps,” he manages.
“Good.” Without moving his hands, Alex turns slightly to press his mouth against damp hair. “I’m glad, sweetheart.”
He hears Henry swallow.
“I didn’t realize how bad it was,” he whispers.
Alex hesitates. “What do you mean, H?”
“I didn’t—I didn’t realize how bad it was. What happened. I thought—I thought it was me, that I was making it into something— else,” he explains. “But then—then, everyone I’ve told, they—they look at me like—like—”
“Like w hat, honey?” Alex prompts when he struggles for the words.
“Like they’re scared for me,” Henry finishes, raw. “I hate it. I hate it.”
Alex’s fingers twitch underneath Henry’s tight grip, and Henry squeezes again.
“I’m sorry, if I ever…”
“Not you. You haven’t—but everyone else—their faces, Alex. Like they’re horrified that I didn’t know—that I could have been okay with it. That I could have asked for it.”
Deliberately, Alex lifts his other arm off the tub and slides it across the front of Henry’s shoulders until he can grip the opposite one, lightly but firmly holding Henry to his chest as he tries to find the right response without letting his own emotions get in the way.
“They don’t know, Henry. Nobody knows what you went through but you. They don’t get to make you feel bad about it.”
“They said I could press charges,” Henry blurts, like he needs to keep talking. “It’s been too long, technically, but because of—because it’s me, they said I could—that there are ways to go about it.”
“Do you want that?” Alex asks carefully.
He has his own opinions—of course he does. But it’s not his decision.
“I don’t know,” Henry croaks. “I don’t know—I don’t know anything, Alex. I don’t know.”
Lifting the hand off his chest to his hair, Alex pushes some of it back off his forehead, out of his eyes. “Okay. It’s okay. You don’t have to know anything right now.”
“I was so wrong about—all of it, for a long time. How am I—how can I trust myself now? It’s been—what if I’m remembering it wrong, or—” He trembles, squeezing his eyes shut. “What if they think I’m lying?”
“Nobody thinks you’re lying. You don’t have a reason to lie about any of this, sweetheart.”
“I wish I didn’t remember it so well,” Henry continues, his voice shaking the longer he goes on. “It’s so—I’d tried so hard to forget about it that I thought I really did. And then she asked me to start from the beginning today and I just—it was all right there. Like it was just sitting there inside of me, waiting to come out all this time.”
“Maybe it was,” Alex proposes gently. “You’ve held it in for a long time, H.”
“No, it was—it was too much,” he struggles to clarify, shaking his head. “I—I remembered too much. I remembered the name of the hotel. His cologne. Not my clothes, but I can see—in my head, I can see his shirt, the buttons, one of them broke when I tried to—” he breaks off for a moment, cursing and mumbling, somewhere Alex can’t follow. “Christ. I remember what the bloody pattern in the carpet looked like because I just kept staring at it, I couldn’t look him in the eye, I couldn’t—”
When he starts shaking, Alex wraps the arm around his chest again and holds him steady, dipping his own head toward Henry’s shoulder to hide the way his jaw locks with incoming tears. He tries to keep his breathing even, tries to be strong now for the both of them. He’d known what this appointment was about, had offered to go with Henry, if he wanted. He’d known it would be difficult, and he’d told himself that if Henry felt comfortable enough to share things with him, he could do that. He could listen. Henry lived it, Alex can do this. Can help him carry it, can help him learn how to set it down sometimes.
He’d thought he could hold it together a little better than this.
“This is—I think I did this afterward, back then. The shower.” Henry’s grip tightens. “He’d already left, some time after I passed out. Went back to campus. Everything gets—it’s all blurry, sometimes. And I got up and there was—the sheets. The sheets were dirty. I didn’t know what to do. And I—everything hurt. I got—I think I crawled to the bath?”
He wavers on the edge of a sob, but it never comes. Alex presses a chaste kiss to his shoulder. He won’t tell Henry to stop, not until he’s finished.
“You’re okay,” he murmurs. Henry’s other hand flies up to his chest, curves around Alex’s arm there, digs his nails in.
“But it wouldn’t—I couldn’t get him off of me,” Henry whispers, trembling. “I couldn’t get clean, and Shaan was waiting outside, ready to leave, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t move. I was—I don’t think I was really there. I don’t even remember getting home.”
“Sounds like your body was trying to protect you where it could.”
“It wasn’t enough,” Henry insists.
Alex blinks rapidly. “I know.”
As if the dam had broken open, Henry just seems to keep finding words, spilling out of him despite the effort it’s taking to purge them. Alex flips the hand Henry has a grip on, palm to palm, and interlocks their fingers again. The cold water seems even louder in the brief silences in between now, pounding against the shower floor, shallow underneath them and soaking through Alex’s clothes.
“I can’t believe I—I thought that was normal.”
“You didn’t know any better,” Alex reminds him.
“I was scared,” Henry says. “Then and today. I’m so—I don’t want to feel like that anymore.”
“I don’t want you to either. I’m always—whatever you need, Henry. No matter what. I’m in this with you, okay?” Alex’s voice is the one that breaks this time, and he sniffs, pushing lightly at Henry’s shoulder. “Come here.”
He widens his arms and Henry turns fully sideways against him despite the lack of space, letting Alex hold him the way he’d been holding himself together earlier. He rubs his palms along Henry’s arms, the top of his back, the outside of his leg, trying to work some warmth back into his skin.
Alex isn’t sure how long they stay that way, the sun having fully disappeared outside the bathroom window. He cries silently, tears blending into Henry’s already wet hair, both of them shivering from the cold. His muscles protest the hard floor, and he’s sure Henry’s feeling it too. But the air in the room still feels pressurized, and it’s not Alex’s bubble to pop.
Sure enough, when everything finally goes still and quiet, Henry speaks up again, despite everything.
“He raped me.”
Alex doesn’t flinch. He breathes in. Holds it. Breathes out.
“I know, sweetheart.”
“He—he shouldn’t have done that. It was—wrong.”
“Yeah. Yes. It was wrong.”
“I wish—” Henry starts, confidence waning into a whisper. “I wish that hadn’t been my first time.”
“Me too.” Alex swallows, throat burning, and holds him tighter. “God. H. Me too.”
Henry goes quiet again, but he’s finally lax against Alex; heavier, like he’s coming back to his body again.
“That’s the first time I’ve said any of that out loud.”
He sounds exhausted. Alex swipes a thumb back and forth over his shoulder.
“It help?”
“I think so,” Henry decides. He waits for a minute. “Can we get out now?”
Joints cracking, Alex unwraps their limbs and stands. He steps out to grab towels then comes back to help Henry up, supporting his weight when his muscles refuse to work smoothly after being bent and tense for so long. His mind rushes with thoughts of water and food, fresh sheets, but he pulls himself back to the present. One step at a time.
Henry slips into a pair of pajamas and leans against the counter to brush his teeth, and Alex dries off and changes out of his wet work clothes in the bedroom to give him some privacy. He does manage to get Henry to drink half a water bottle before climbing under the sheets, but food will have to wait until they get some rest first. He lets David in at the door before he lies down.
They meet in the middle like usual, Henry curved up against his side and David at their feet. Alex hesitates again for a moment but Henry eliminates the questions, pulls Alex’s arm where he wants it, bends a knee over the top of his thigh, splays a hand on his chest, warmth returning.
Alex doubts either of them will sleep much. Henry’s insomnia acts up when something’s weighing on him and Alex still feels restless with leftover energy he feels like he could be spending helping somehow but isn’t.
At some point Henry starts crying, but there’s no sound to it. It’s like the tears are leaking from his eyes and into Alex’s shirt but he’s not quite registering them, his wobbling chin making a dent in Alex’s chest. He curls an arm around Henry’s shoulders and lets his own tears soak the pillow, pressing his mouth over and over again to the top of Henry’s head.
They’ll be okay. They have to be, by design. Soon enough, they’ll have to get up again. Alex will go back to work and Henry will have to make a decision about a lawsuit and they’ll handle whatever comes of that, too. Alex has spent a lifetime learning how to fix, from covering things with bandaids to ripping out the floors and starting fresh altogether, taking the things he couldn’t fix to heart.
He’s learned, these last few years, that letting something ache is sometimes more necessary than erasing it.
The house is quiet by the time Henry’s breaths have evened out in warm puffs against the side of his neck, and Alex carefully threads fingers through his hair and listens.
The lamp is still on in the window. He’ll keep watch.