Work Text:
For as long as he can possibly remember, Alex has hurt .
He wakes up to a pinching in between his shoulder blades. He rolls off of his shoulder, shaking out the numbness in his fingertips as he lays on his back. On the ceiling, Alex finds figures in the popcorn texturing to distract himself. There’s a face in the corner that he notices almost every morning. The vague shape of a star. A figure, two large wings sprouting from its back. He finds as many as he can until he’s distracted enough that the pain becomes just another part of him, and he crawls out of bed to get ready for work.
The pain follows him, of course. It’s always right there behind him, the slightest pinch most of the time. Other times it’s a flame licking across his back, burning just under his skin. No matter which kind of pain he has today, he tries his best to ignore it. It’s normal . It’s just who he is. His name is Alex Gabriel Claremont-Diaz. He works at a shitty little diner across town from where he lives, in his shitty little apartment. He’d like to be a lawyer someday. He is always in pain, and no doctor he’s ever been to has been able to explain why. It’s just who he is.
Night falls eventually, and Alex travels back from work to his apartment. He doesn’t get much done around the apartment after work. He doesn’t have much energy for anything except lying on the couch, or in his bed. He either brings food home from the restaurant where he works, or he orders takeout. If the pain that day at work was only a pinch, it is always a flame by the time he gets home from work. If the pain that day at work was a flame, it is lightning by the time he’s home from work. When the pain becomes a lightning strike, Alex doesn’t order food. He doesn’t have dinner. He takes pain medication, if he can reach it, and he lays in bed until it becomes a pinch again, and he can finally sleep. It’s right back to more of the same tomorrow, and he has to sleep if he wants to get through the next day.
Years pass him by in a blur. The pain never leaves him, but now in the morning he wakes up to warmth by his side. He doesn’t flip over onto his back today, just wiggles his fingers to rid them of the numbness while he looks beside him. A beautiful display of golden hair splayed out over his pillow, closed eyes, a hint of a smile on his lover’s soft pink lips. It’s the first time he’s had something to stare at other than the popcorn on the ceiling, and god he could get used to this. He hopes Henry spends many more nights over at his place.
Alex wraps an arm gently around Henry’s shoulders, toying with the hair at the back of his head. His eye twitches briefly, the only outward sign of the pain that shoots between his shoulder blades as he moves for the first time that morning, and he ignores the pain. It takes a lot less time to get distracted from it when he has a view like this.
Henry wakes up not too long after him, leaning his head back slightly into Alex’s hand, encouraging him to keep playing with his hair as his eyelids flutter open. Alex is trying to suppress his pleased grin, but his eyes crinkle of their own accord as Henry smiles right back at him.
“Good morning,” Henry murmurs, arms and legs stretching outwards in a way Alex wished he could without his back protesting. He doesn’t mind admiring it from this point of view instead though, as the blankets slip down Henry’s chest, exposing more of his pale skin that Alex can hardly keep his eyes off of.
“Good morning,” Alex mumbles back, and it registers only briefly that this is the first morning Alex has had that he could actually describe as a good one in years. He doesn’t dwell on it much, instead moving his hand that had been playing with Henry’s hair forward to cup his cheek instead, thumb brushing over his lips and then up and across his cheekbones, admiring his face as he leaned in closer and gently brought their lips together.
Henry is smiling almost as wide as he was into the kiss, his arms going to wrap around Alex’s shoulders. He tugs, just the slightest bit, trying to pull Alex forwards into him. It works, but Alex follows up the movement with a yelp, pulling back from the kiss to wince as pain shot up his back. It was the worst kind of pain, one he usually managed to avoid but even one wrong shift was all it took. His shoulder blades twinge, almost as if there was something just under his skin trying to claw its way out, and Alex has to ball his fists into his sheets to keep from whimpering.
“Oh my god, Alex, are you okay?” Henry gasps, letting go the moment that Alex cries out in pain. He sits up in the bed, watching Alex flip himself over onto his back as if trying to straighten it out, hands hovering over his body like he wanted to help but didn’t want to end up hurting him by accident.
“Sorry, sorry,” Alex stutters out quickly, opening his eyes and offering a weak smile up at Henry. “I’m okay, I’m fine. Just shifted in a weird way, I guess.” He brushes it off, pulling Henry back into him now that he was on his back and not going to twist himself in the wrong way.
Henry seems worried still, searching Alex over as if looking for any evidence that Alex was lying, but Alex holds his pain well. Not finding anything, he seemed satisfied, and lay himself gently over Alex to kiss him once again, soft and short.
“God, you’re like an old man. You’ll need a hip replacement soon, won't you?” Henry jokes, and Alex is quick to force out a snort and an eyeroll. Just like that the conversation has moved on, and Alex is free from Henry’s worried gaze. The last thing he wants is to be too dramatic and worry Henry over nothing.
Alex believes himself to be pretty good at keeping his pain under wraps. He knows his boyfriend well, knows how much he cares. Henry doesn’t need anything extra to worry about, especially something that he can’t fix. Alex has accepted the pain as a part of himself now, but he knows Henry wouldn’t be able to. At least not at first. When Henry’s over he does whatever he can to mask his pain for him, and it seems to work well.
It helps a lot that Henry is such a gentle person. Alex got lucky, he thinks. Henry’s touch is so soft and Alex feels like Henry could never hurt him. He hurts anyways, when they embrace, or when they kiss, or when they crawl into bed together at night. But that’s never been Henry’s fault. Alex just hurts no matter what.
It’s been worse lately. It’s strange to imagine Alex could be any worse, when he already hurts every single day, but it has. It’s not a pinch anymore. Now it’s more like a nail, just beneath the surface of his skin, scraping. When he moves he can feel the tapping of a hammer on its head, driving it up further against his back, but never enough to pierce right through. Alex keeps going to work, but he doesn’t invite Henry over much during the week. He sees him briefly on his lunch breaks, enough so that he won’t worry, but not long enough to see the pain he’s carrying behind him. An invisible backpack full of rocks sits on his shoulders now too, weighing them down so much he can’t hide it all from Henry. He sees that Alex is tired, that his shoulders sag and his eyes are dark from not getting enough sleep at night. He doesn’t say anything, but Alex knows he sees it. He’s even more gentle than usual.
“You should take some time off,” Henry offers gently after a pause in their conversation. Alex realizes with a start the pause began because he started to doze off on Henry, head resting on his arms on the diners table. “Maybe we could spend a week together. I’ll take time off too, it could be a vacation together. A staycation.”
“Staycation,” Alex snorts weakly, averting his eyes. The idea sounds… amazing . A week off work, staying in his little apartment with his boyfriend? They could stay in bed, watching movies together, maybe he could finally get a little more sleep. God knows he needs it.
But he wouldn’t be able to hide his pain for an entire week. If Henry was this worried over some eyebags and slouching shoulders, Alex knew that if he saw Henry when his pain was at its worst he could be horrified. Alex has been in so much pain his stomach turns and nausea brings his lunch back up over and over again, until there’s nothing more than bile to come up, and he still keeps going. His pain can be so unbelievably ugly, and this pain, the hammer and nail, they’re new , and not even Alex knew how ugly this could get yet.
He shrugs at Henry, looking back at him now. He offers a smile, and tries to brighten up a bit more. Tries to worry Henry a little bit less. “That sounds fun,” he admits. “But I can’t really afford to miss too many shifts right now,” he lies.
That weekend is the first where he doesn’t invite Henry over. Weekdays without sleepovers is one thing, he’s sure Henry wouldn’t question that, but when he tries to text Henry and ask him to come over the muscles in his back lock up. He reaches out slowly for his phone, to at least give an excuse for why he wouldn’t be having Henry over his weekend, but his fingers barely grasp at his phone before a hammer strikes the nail in his back, and of its own accord his hand twitches, knocking the phone over and off of his bed.
Alex lets out an awful noise, one he’s not sure has ever slipped past his lips before. It’s a mixture of a cry and a scream, a strangled, gargling sort of sound, and Alex’s back against the bed begins to burn. It’s a searing pain, spreading out from his shoulder blades, right where his pain always starts, and throughout his entire back. It burns down his spine, to his legs, and up to his neck. It starts to creep over towards his sides and another gargled scream leaves Alex’s throat as he forcefully flips himself over onto his stomach, needing to get his back off of the bed, to get everything to stop touching his back. Even his shirt is too much pressure against the searing pain, and in his panic he claws at it to get it off. He doesn’t care how, doesn’t care that it’s one of his favorite shirts that he accidentally fell asleep in last night, nothing matters except that he needs to get it off. He grabs at the fabric and pulls hard, ripping and tearing and loosening it up so he can slip it off and free his back of anything that could be touching it.
It barely helps as the cool air touches his skin, and instead of offering relief only causes him more stinging pain as it hits him. Another striking of the hammer comes from his other shoulder blade now, and Alex buries his face in his pillow and screams, feeling tears pooling onto the pillow beneath his face. His teeth latch onto the pillow case fabric as he tries to hold back more screaming, to avoid drawing the attention of his neighbors. He won’t be able to answer their concerned knocks and he doesn’t want to waste emergency services time if they get called instead, so he bites down hard and keeps screaming.
Another strike of the hammer. The nail feels closer to the surface than ever. Alex’s voice is already so sore he feels like he can barely scream anymore, so he just keeps sobbing quietly into his pillow. Another strike to the other side. And then another, and another, and another, and another, and—
The nail breaks through the surface, and Alex finds his voice again. He screams into his pillow, barely muffled with how loud it is this time. He doesn’t think about the neighbors anymore, he can’t think of anything at all. His mind is a blur of one word sentences, screaming over and over.
Stop. Stop. Stop. Hurts. Hurts. Stop. Hurts. Help.
Alex hears it as his skin rips apart behind him more than he feels it at this point. The pain is so much, too much, that it’s barely even there anymore, even while still being the only thing he can think about. He registers that skin shouldn’t be able to rip like that, feels something soft brush against his back and jumps. Was someone there with him? Was someone doing this to him, had he been stabbed, was that a hand brushing against his back? He reaches behind himself, in too much pain to turn his body around to look, and grabs hold of whatever it is touching his back, gripping it tightly and it… hurts ? It hurts him to grab, but that doesn’t make sense because there should be nothing touching his back like that that he could feel, nothing should be hurting him in the space above his back and yet. He lets go with another violent sob, and it stops hurting immediately.
For a moment Alex almost feels… normal. Like his pain had receded back into a normal level, like he can think again, breathe again. He does breathe, drawing in quick gasps of air through his mouth like he’s trying to swallow it, and he hopes this pain is over, that he’ll never have to experience anything like it again.
A knock comes at the front door. Alex tenses, knows he’s going to have to explain all the screaming he just did to someone. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say, would his neighbors even believe him? He goes to crawl out of his bed, hoping to answer the door and just tell them to go away, that he was fine, but before he makes it very far he feels another jolt of pain on the side of his shoulder. The one that hadn’t sounded like it split right open on his back. He gasps and the pain sends him forward and off of his bed, landing on the floor with a thud on his side, and Alex curls into a ball as tears slide down his cheeks silently. Maybe they’ll just go away if he lays here long enough.
As if hearing his thoughts, the sound of keys going into a lock echo into his apartment. Alex startles, eyes wide and panic filling his brain again. The only person to have keys to his apartment was Henry, and Alex curses himself over and over for giving them to him weeks ago. Henry hasn’t used them at all until now, the worst possible moment he could walk right in and see Alex in a miserable state. Alex’s body shakes with anxiety as he begins to crawl towards his bedroom door, grinding his teeth together to hold back the grunts of pain as he moves. He just wants to close the bedroom door, to buy himself more time, but his eyes catch sight of himself in the mirror hanging on the back of his bedroom door, finally seeing the source of all of this pain.
A… wing ? A thin spread of skin , stretching out over his back, bones forced through the skin of his shoulder blades to form the outline that the skin attached to. It hangs out behind him, casting a shadow over where he lay. Alex can feel the nail—no, not a nail—the bone forcing itself out from his shoulder blade on the other side. A pitiful whine escapes him again, and he hears a worried Henry calling out to him.
“Alex? Was that you?” Alex can see Henry approaching through the cracked door he never got to close, but he has no more time to think about it before pain overtakes him once again. This time with no pillow to scream around, his cries are loud , and just before his vision blackens around the edges he sees Henry speed up and shout his name again, throwing open the door and finding Alex lying there, screaming in pain as a disgusting flap of extra flesh sprawled out across his back on one side. On the other side Henry watches as bone pokes its way through a hole carved in his shoulder blade, small droplets of blood pushing through around the bone.
“Alex, Jesus Christ,” Henry gasps, collapsing onto the floor beside him on his knees, as gently as possible pulling Alex up and into his lap. “What should I do? Alex should I call an ambulance, what the fuck is—has this happened to you before?”
Alex can barely respond with any coherency, but he manages to shake his head no vehemently. Henry isn’t sure to which question he’s responding, so he pulls out his phone to start dialing 911, but Alex pushes his phone down frantically, eyes catching Henry’s and pleading with him silently not to call anybody. What could anyone possibly do to help him now anyways? Alex must be some kind of monster , Henry shouldn’t even be here, shouldn’t be holding him so close, his fingers carding through Alex’s hair and whispering gently into his ear. Alex should be shoving him away, telling him to get away from him, that he didn’t deserve Henry, that Henry probably wasn’t safe around him. What if this was some kind of contagious illness? He doesn’t know how that could make any sense right now but nothing made sense right now, nothing except pain, pain, pain, and instead of shoving Henry away to save him Alex can’t help but curl further into his arms, pressing himself firmly against Henry’s chest as he cries and screams as bone rips through his flesh more and more.
Alex doesn’t know how long they’re both sitting on the floor of his bedroom while he screams. He barely registers it when the pain finally stops , and the wings stop growing out behind him. It takes him multiple moments of gasping down air while Henry pets his hair and kisses his forehead for him to realize that his pain hasn’t just gone back to its normal level. His pain is gone .
“It’s, it,” Alex tries to explain through his tears, stuttering. “It’s gone, it’s over, I’m-I-I don’t hurt anymore ,” he almost wants to smile, but lifting the corners of his lips right now would take too much energy that he doesn’t have right now, so he just lets his head roll weightlessly against Henry's chest as he fully collapses into him. “It's gone, it’s gone.”
“Alex,” Henry whispers, and Alex can feel something wet drip against his forehead. He realizes suddenly Henry has been crying too. “How long?”
“How-“ Alex breaks out into a coughing fit, his throat sore and lungs still screaming out for air. He can’t get anymore words past, and Henry seems to realize this. On wobbly legs he gets Alex standing, letting Alex’s full body weight lean against him as he leads him slowly into the kitchen. Alex goes to collapse into a chair at his table, but Henry holds him tightly and redirects him to a stool.
“Your back,” Henry says quickly, frowning. “You need to be careful with your back.”
Alex is sure the pain of leaning against his newfound skin and bones would be nothing compared to the pain of them bursting out of his skin, but he still appreciates not having to find out.
Henry goes to step away from him. Alex cries out and grips his hand tightly. Henry frowns, wrapping his arms around Alex’s neck (careful to avoid his back), and leans his forehead gently against Alex’s.
“Alex,” he whispers, his lips brushing lightly across Alex’s nose. “I promise you, my love. I am not leaving you. Please, just let me get you some water. You need it. You can’t even talk right now.” Henry worries, his eyes still full of tears just as Alex’s are. Alex takes a moment, relishing the feeling of Henry holding him so gently, so close, and nods. He still feels cold and empty as Henry steps away, but he squeezes his eyes shut and reminds himself he’s coming right back, he’ll be right there by his side.
Henry keeps his promise. He returns to Alex’s side with a large glass of water, encouraging Alex to drink it. When Alex first starts gulping down the water he nearly chokes himself, and Henry hurriedly grabs the cup from him.
“Here,” he whispers, petting Alex’s hair with one hand while the other holds the glass to his lips. “Let me help you. You need to drink slower.”
It takes some time before Alex’s throat isn’t burning anymore for him to be able to talk. Henry starts off their conversation by asking him the same question from before.
“How long have you been dealing with this?” His voice is soft, not accusatory, and he’s still pressed against Alex’s side as he speaks to him.
“The fucked up wings? They’re new,” Alex croaks, his tone almost an attempt to be lighthearted, but they both knew Alex didn’t really have it in him to be a jokester tonight. “The… the pain? Years.”
“ Years ?” Henry gasps, his gaze pointed worriedly towards Alex’s back. Towards the fleshy, bat-like wings that stick a good distance out of his shoulder blades. Alex can barely believe he’s been living with these things growing from his back for this long too.
“Alex,” Henry squeezes Alex’s hand gently. “Why didn’t you tell me? I mean… I knew something was up, I knew you had pain sometimes but—I just thought, you’d tell me when you felt comfortable. You—You don’t owe me any explanations. But… I would have tried to help you.”
“Neither of us could have possibly known what to do about the kind of pain that caused this ,” Alex gestures towards his back, and the wings flutter gently. Alex seems to shiver. “Jesus—Did they just—?”
“You can move them?” Henry mutters, more to himself than to Alex. A silence falls over them for a while, Henry staring curiously as the wings now flutter gently back and forth on Alex’s back, almost like a new nervous fidget. Alex stares down at his lap, fingers laced together.
“I’m—I’m sorry.” Alex says, his voice soft. “I’m sorry I didn't tell you, I—” He swallows down his nerves, and the fluttering picks up its pace. “I didn’t want you to worry. Pain is—was, normal. I didn’t think there was any reason to concern you over it.”
“I could’ve been here for you,” Henry turns more fully to face Alex, his eyes sincere and worried. “I could have been here today, I could have been here when this started. I don’t think I could get rid of your pain, I don’t know if we can—if you want to fix this. But I can be here for you, Alex. I could make sure you aren’t suffering alone .”
Alex is quiet again, tears falling from the corners of his eyes once more.
“What is this, Henry? Why are there-what the fuck is wrong with me?” Alex cries, burying his face in his hands. The wings on his back pull inwards towards him, like they’re hugging his back to soothe him. The gesture only makes him want to gag.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Henry assures him, drawing him into his chest again and kissing the top of his head. “Alex, I don’t know why this happened—I don’t know what’s going on, but it is not your fault, there is nothing wrong with you. We will figure this out together, Alex. Together . Okay?”
“Please,” Alex sobs, his fingers curling into Henry’s shirt loosely. “Please don’t leave me alone. I don’t want to be alone again.”
“Never,” Henry promises, tilting his chin up to look him in the eyes. “Never, Alex. You will never have to be alone again.”
“We’ll figure out what caused this?” Alex asks, his voice small and scared, something Henry has never heard from him before. Henry nods, leaning forward and leaving a gentle kiss to Alex’s lips.
“We will.” He promises, holding Alex tight. His wings flutter nervously again, and Henry gently runs his fingers over them, an attempt to assuage them. It seems to work, as the wings tucked themselves gently behind Alex, satisfied to finally be comforted as well. Alex nodded back at Henry, relieved beyond belief to have someone so perfect by his side.
“I love you,” Alex blurts, hands thrown around Henry’s shoulders and face buried in his neck. Henry smiles, his cheeks red and he wraps his arms firmly around Alex’s waist, holding him as close as he possibly could(and still not close enough).
“I love you too,” Henry murmures back, kissing the crown of his head. “Every last part of you.”