Fic; Long Distance, 5/?
Title Long Distance 5/?, following Running Uphill
Rating pg-13? nc-17 overall.
Summary Hank and Alex move past curious and into the strange new territory of 'committed.'
Disclaimer Will never own, boo. Characters belong to their belongers.
part one
part two
part three
part four
What I need is a time machine, Hank thinks, as a cramp makes itself known in his knees and lower back from sitting twisted in Alex’s lap. A time machine to go back to when his mother was closing the automated garage door and telling him that they were selling the house. He would have told her right then that he didn’t really like the idea, and maybe even would have let her know that he had news of his own, too. Would things have been different? Calmer? He probably wouldn’t have gotten a slap to the face, he thinks wryly. And he wouldn’t have yelled at Alex, then, either. But would Alex have shared his story with him had that not happened? Likely not. But then he also wouldn’t have to go home to apologize to his mother, later, when he manages to leave the walls of the Summers’ home.
His head is spinning with alternate scenarios, conditions, what-ifs, and the cramp is shifting lower into his calf and turning into a dead leg. He stretches out the leg slowly, one minute degree at a time, grimacing, and Alex inhales sharply, like he’s just waking up again. Which is entirely possible. His breathing had gotten pretty even, there.
“Cramp,” Hank mumbles by way of apology.
“Damn,” Alex curses, much more awake than Hank had thought. “You probably have to go, huh. You’re mom’s probably worried.”
“She knows I’m here,” he says, prying himself away from Alex’s warmth and planting his feet on the floor. He allows himself a lengthy, back-popping stretch.
Alex insists. “Still. She’ll be worried.”
“I guess so.” Hank admits that she’s probably worried. Doesn’t mean he has to feel sorry about that. Only - he reaches the zenith of his stretch and feels two satisfying pops in his lower back - he does, a little. He hasn’t exactly been making it easy on her, he realizes guiltily. But what will he say when he sees her? Maybe he should get her a gift. A new juicer would be nice.
“You want me to...?” Alex starts, sounding hesitant. Hank turns to look and sees that a flush is creeping across his cheeks. The cigarette he smoked earlier is still lazily emitting smoke on the ashtray, though most of the smoke escapes out the window. One day, he’ll get him to cut back - quit, even. One day maybe Alex won’t need them. “I can come with you, if you want.”
“Come with me?” Hank repeats dumbly. “To see my mom?”
“Yeah, you know,” he says uncertainly, the flush now traveling to his neck. “For moral support. And stuff.”
The offer is tempting; with Alex there, surely his mother won’t yell at him, or berate him, or do other motherly things. There is an underlying feeling though, that nags at him to say no, that Alex shouldn’t be there as a buffer. No, he should be there as his partner. Their first appearance - together - in front of Hank’s mom will not involve tension-laden civilities and half-hearted apologies. “She won’t see it as moral support,” Hank explains, shaking his head, “She’ll think that I’m teaming up with someone against her. And she’ll get defensive. Probably not with you in the room, but after you’ve left. Thank you, though.”
Alex is frowning, disappointed. Hank leans over to kiss him on the cheek. “I’ll bring you home another time. Soon,” he adds.
“I just - What will you say to her?” Alex is fretting over him, in his own way. Hank bites his lip to keep from grinning, a heart-swelling feeling bubbling up inside of him.
“Sorry that I’m a hormonal, bratty teenager, who has trouble communicating with words. How’s that sound?”
Alex looks skyward, like he’s seriously considering the response. “Sounds about right,” he says with a slight curl in his lips.
He leaves after Alex forces him into the shower, claiming that no forgiveness will be had if he smells like funk and cigarettes, and after a promise to call or text as soon as it’s all settled. They don’t talk about what happened last night or this morning. To Hank, it already feels like a part of their history, something that happened long ago. They’ve seen each other’s skeletons and weren’t too bothered by the bones.
It’s nice to be fussed over like this, Hank muses. It’s nice to want to be fussed over like this.
He doesn’t buy a juicer, but he does stop for an ice-green-tea-with-ginger for his mother on the way home.
He enters the kitchen to find his mother looking into the cold spaces of the refrigerator, making tutting noises and reshuffling the plastic containers that are stacked upon the shelves. With great deliberateness, he drops his keys onto the marble countertop of the breakfast bar, the noise startling his mother once so that she withdraws from fridge and closes the heavy door, and his own presence startling his mother again. “Oh!” she gasps, jumping a little. “Hello.”
“Hi, mom.” He climbs onto one of the stools before the bar, clasping his hands in front of him. The marble warms against his skin. His mother is dressed professionally in a neutral thin blouse and bright, form-fitting skirt that hits just above the knee. She’s even wearing her pumps in the house. “Break from the hospital?” he asks amicably, smiling a bit to show that he doesn’t want to fight. He puts the cup of green tea on the countertop, the condensation that had gathered quickly dribbling down onto its smooth surface. A peace offering. “I got you tea.”
“I had two hours in between appointments because of some scheduling fiasco, so I thought I would come home and fix myself a nice salad, but wouldn’t you know that we have no kale? Guess getting groceries is on the list.” She shrugs, returning with a timid smile of her own. It looks fragile. Long seconds pass and Hank watches the smile fall from her face. “Have you eaten yet?” she tries, taking a few steps toward him so that they are across from each other, his mother reaching over the sink before her to take the cup of tea. “Thank you,” she adds.
Hank shakes his head. “No.”
She takes a few sips of her tea before saying, “Would you like to get lunch?”
“Sure.”
They decide on sushi and his mother drives them over to Hiro, a tiny sushi and noodle bar that doesn’t put up any signs of the awards it has won.
The sun today is oppressive - no clouds in the sky to break up the heat that envelops the city. The little bell above the door rings when Hank opens it, a rush of cool air escaping and inviting them in. Hank thinks that he’ll never be able to accurately describe the scent of this place, though he’s been here so many times that the sushi chefs behind the bar nod to him with a small smile whenever he enters (“Spider roll and California roll, extra wasabi, miso soup with no tofu, right?”). It’s steam from cooking rice, and sizzling eggs, and seafood, and soy sauce, clean and savory and not too overwhelming. The low murmur of satisfied customers blankets the restaurant; the place seats thirty bodies comfortably, and normally such a small space would make Hank feel a little antsy, but he’s been coming here since he was a child, since before the divorce. Bamboo screens and wooden booths and lanterns fill up the space, the sushi chefs at their stations wearing bandannas around their foreheads and wielding knives and skills that produce paper-thin slices and the servers dressed in cheap kimonos, and it works, this whole restaurant works, even in a ridiculously bland town like North Hills. A hostess bows and greets them immediately as his mother holds up two fingers.
They are seated in a secluded booth, the space between the back of the wooden seat and the ceiling filled by bamboo stalks. He gets his first text from Raven, his phone buzzing in the back pocket of his jeans. He slides it out and reads the screen quickly, noticing the look that his mother sends his way. The text reads: How’s it going with mom? She’s got her lips a little pursed, like she’s considering reprimanding her son for being rude. His mother has always enforced just one rule consistently - no distractions at the table. Considering how rare it was that they were ever at a table, together, it was an easy rule to enforce.
Sushi lunch. he texts back quickly, putting his phone away. He wonders if Raven knows the whole story. Since they were little, she’s had an awareness about her, knowing when things were about to or had become pear-shaped. Something she might have picked up from Mr. Xavier. Despite this sense, it didn’t mean that she necessarily went out of her way to un-pear the situations, though. He wonders if Alex told her anything but then quickly dismisses the idea. Alex probably told Sean the basics, who probably told Raven an ornamented tale of the basics, who probably thought that his mother and he were on the verge of a third world war, now. Maybe he should have done more than reply ‘sushi lunch.’
“Was that Alex?” his mother asks in a remarkably steady voice, one eyebrow raised and a shaky little smile on her face.
“Raven.”
“Is that where you were last night?” she asks a little too quickly and eagerly, eyes bright.
“No. I was at Alex’s.” Hank watches her face carefully.
It is like a shadow descends over her features, darkening the irises of her eyes and hollows of her cheeks. Then, she fixes it - she sits up straighter and breathes through her nose and blinks and says, “And how is he doing?”
Hank catalogues the split-second changes in demeanor and knows his mother is trying, in her own way, but that she is still struggling to understand. He shrugs. “We had a fight, sort of. But we’re okay now.” Their waitress comes and places two glasses of water before them and looks between them, the smile on her face genuine but tired and like she feels the tension at the table and hopes for it to disperse long enough for Hank and his mother to order and eat and leave her a generous tip.
“Ready to order?” she asks in a sweet voice. They order, and when she rushes away she takes the immediacy of the conversation with her. Hank’s phone buzzes again but he leaves it, watching his mother examine her manicured nails.
“So,” his mother continues when she has no more fingernails to examine, the conjunction awkward and forced like she is trying to tag it on to the unfinished exchange they had before. “What was the fight about?”
“I guess it wasn’t really a fight.”
“Well,” his mother responds quickly. “What was it then?” In this they are similar, brains wired in a way that makes the gathering of data of the utmost importance, definitions and numbers and categories. If it wasn’t a fight then it was something else.
“Look, mom, you don’t have to force yourself to, like, be more interested in this.” Their soups come and the steam rises up between them.
His mother says with a pucker in her lips, “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, now you know about me and Alex. But we don’t have to talk about it all the time if you don’t want to. It doesn’t have to be a thing.”
“Isn’t he important to you?” she responds, which throws him.
He takes a sip of his water to mask his surprise and temporary inability to respond. “Er, yes. Of course,” he tells her guardedly.
“Then it should be a thing.” She uses his own words against him. “Then I want to talk about it.” He can almost see her sitting him down in her office at the hospital, mapping out a chart before him, calorie-intake diagrams replaced by measurements of hormone levels and their correspondence to feelings of attraction. Is he her client or her son? Then, she says, “Listen, Hank. I’m - I’m sorry about what happened yesterday. It’s inexcusable. I’ve been very irresponsible...with you. So let this happen, okay? Let’s try.”
Her son, then. It is too much. He feels a betraying sting behind his eyes and blinks rapidly to clear it. “That’s very...thanks.”
She tilts her head to the side just a little, eyes softer than before. “I want things to be okay between us. You’re all I’ve got, now, you know?”
And it’s true. In a way, he is all she’s got. Maybe that’s why she’s trying so hard to mend the rift between them, maybe she feels the distance like she’s drifting at sea, her ex-husband a disposed anchor left behind. And now the house is even being cut away. Her friends - Hank realizes that he hasn’t heard of them in a while. He’s sure she’s still seeing them, but he wonders which side his parents’ friends took in the divorce, if she had lost half of them when the ink dried on the divorce papers. What does she have but her position in the hospital and Hank? Without him, she would float aimlessly. And Hank? What anchors him?
Their sushi comes and that train of thought ends. He smiles at her, close-lipped but real, and she returns the same.
//
So. Sorry for the delay. And how short this is. I am bad at updating :(
Rating pg-13? nc-17 overall.
Summary Hank and Alex move past curious and into the strange new territory of 'committed.'
Disclaimer Will never own, boo. Characters belong to their belongers.
part one
part two
part three
part four
What I need is a time machine, Hank thinks, as a cramp makes itself known in his knees and lower back from sitting twisted in Alex’s lap. A time machine to go back to when his mother was closing the automated garage door and telling him that they were selling the house. He would have told her right then that he didn’t really like the idea, and maybe even would have let her know that he had news of his own, too. Would things have been different? Calmer? He probably wouldn’t have gotten a slap to the face, he thinks wryly. And he wouldn’t have yelled at Alex, then, either. But would Alex have shared his story with him had that not happened? Likely not. But then he also wouldn’t have to go home to apologize to his mother, later, when he manages to leave the walls of the Summers’ home.
His head is spinning with alternate scenarios, conditions, what-ifs, and the cramp is shifting lower into his calf and turning into a dead leg. He stretches out the leg slowly, one minute degree at a time, grimacing, and Alex inhales sharply, like he’s just waking up again. Which is entirely possible. His breathing had gotten pretty even, there.
“Cramp,” Hank mumbles by way of apology.
“Damn,” Alex curses, much more awake than Hank had thought. “You probably have to go, huh. You’re mom’s probably worried.”
“She knows I’m here,” he says, prying himself away from Alex’s warmth and planting his feet on the floor. He allows himself a lengthy, back-popping stretch.
Alex insists. “Still. She’ll be worried.”
“I guess so.” Hank admits that she’s probably worried. Doesn’t mean he has to feel sorry about that. Only - he reaches the zenith of his stretch and feels two satisfying pops in his lower back - he does, a little. He hasn’t exactly been making it easy on her, he realizes guiltily. But what will he say when he sees her? Maybe he should get her a gift. A new juicer would be nice.
“You want me to...?” Alex starts, sounding hesitant. Hank turns to look and sees that a flush is creeping across his cheeks. The cigarette he smoked earlier is still lazily emitting smoke on the ashtray, though most of the smoke escapes out the window. One day, he’ll get him to cut back - quit, even. One day maybe Alex won’t need them. “I can come with you, if you want.”
“Come with me?” Hank repeats dumbly. “To see my mom?”
“Yeah, you know,” he says uncertainly, the flush now traveling to his neck. “For moral support. And stuff.”
The offer is tempting; with Alex there, surely his mother won’t yell at him, or berate him, or do other motherly things. There is an underlying feeling though, that nags at him to say no, that Alex shouldn’t be there as a buffer. No, he should be there as his partner. Their first appearance - together - in front of Hank’s mom will not involve tension-laden civilities and half-hearted apologies. “She won’t see it as moral support,” Hank explains, shaking his head, “She’ll think that I’m teaming up with someone against her. And she’ll get defensive. Probably not with you in the room, but after you’ve left. Thank you, though.”
Alex is frowning, disappointed. Hank leans over to kiss him on the cheek. “I’ll bring you home another time. Soon,” he adds.
“I just - What will you say to her?” Alex is fretting over him, in his own way. Hank bites his lip to keep from grinning, a heart-swelling feeling bubbling up inside of him.
“Sorry that I’m a hormonal, bratty teenager, who has trouble communicating with words. How’s that sound?”
Alex looks skyward, like he’s seriously considering the response. “Sounds about right,” he says with a slight curl in his lips.
He leaves after Alex forces him into the shower, claiming that no forgiveness will be had if he smells like funk and cigarettes, and after a promise to call or text as soon as it’s all settled. They don’t talk about what happened last night or this morning. To Hank, it already feels like a part of their history, something that happened long ago. They’ve seen each other’s skeletons and weren’t too bothered by the bones.
It’s nice to be fussed over like this, Hank muses. It’s nice to want to be fussed over like this.
He doesn’t buy a juicer, but he does stop for an ice-green-tea-with-ginger for his mother on the way home.
He enters the kitchen to find his mother looking into the cold spaces of the refrigerator, making tutting noises and reshuffling the plastic containers that are stacked upon the shelves. With great deliberateness, he drops his keys onto the marble countertop of the breakfast bar, the noise startling his mother once so that she withdraws from fridge and closes the heavy door, and his own presence startling his mother again. “Oh!” she gasps, jumping a little. “Hello.”
“Hi, mom.” He climbs onto one of the stools before the bar, clasping his hands in front of him. The marble warms against his skin. His mother is dressed professionally in a neutral thin blouse and bright, form-fitting skirt that hits just above the knee. She’s even wearing her pumps in the house. “Break from the hospital?” he asks amicably, smiling a bit to show that he doesn’t want to fight. He puts the cup of green tea on the countertop, the condensation that had gathered quickly dribbling down onto its smooth surface. A peace offering. “I got you tea.”
“I had two hours in between appointments because of some scheduling fiasco, so I thought I would come home and fix myself a nice salad, but wouldn’t you know that we have no kale? Guess getting groceries is on the list.” She shrugs, returning with a timid smile of her own. It looks fragile. Long seconds pass and Hank watches the smile fall from her face. “Have you eaten yet?” she tries, taking a few steps toward him so that they are across from each other, his mother reaching over the sink before her to take the cup of tea. “Thank you,” she adds.
Hank shakes his head. “No.”
She takes a few sips of her tea before saying, “Would you like to get lunch?”
“Sure.”
They decide on sushi and his mother drives them over to Hiro, a tiny sushi and noodle bar that doesn’t put up any signs of the awards it has won.
The sun today is oppressive - no clouds in the sky to break up the heat that envelops the city. The little bell above the door rings when Hank opens it, a rush of cool air escaping and inviting them in. Hank thinks that he’ll never be able to accurately describe the scent of this place, though he’s been here so many times that the sushi chefs behind the bar nod to him with a small smile whenever he enters (“Spider roll and California roll, extra wasabi, miso soup with no tofu, right?”). It’s steam from cooking rice, and sizzling eggs, and seafood, and soy sauce, clean and savory and not too overwhelming. The low murmur of satisfied customers blankets the restaurant; the place seats thirty bodies comfortably, and normally such a small space would make Hank feel a little antsy, but he’s been coming here since he was a child, since before the divorce. Bamboo screens and wooden booths and lanterns fill up the space, the sushi chefs at their stations wearing bandannas around their foreheads and wielding knives and skills that produce paper-thin slices and the servers dressed in cheap kimonos, and it works, this whole restaurant works, even in a ridiculously bland town like North Hills. A hostess bows and greets them immediately as his mother holds up two fingers.
They are seated in a secluded booth, the space between the back of the wooden seat and the ceiling filled by bamboo stalks. He gets his first text from Raven, his phone buzzing in the back pocket of his jeans. He slides it out and reads the screen quickly, noticing the look that his mother sends his way. The text reads: How’s it going with mom? She’s got her lips a little pursed, like she’s considering reprimanding her son for being rude. His mother has always enforced just one rule consistently - no distractions at the table. Considering how rare it was that they were ever at a table, together, it was an easy rule to enforce.
Sushi lunch. he texts back quickly, putting his phone away. He wonders if Raven knows the whole story. Since they were little, she’s had an awareness about her, knowing when things were about to or had become pear-shaped. Something she might have picked up from Mr. Xavier. Despite this sense, it didn’t mean that she necessarily went out of her way to un-pear the situations, though. He wonders if Alex told her anything but then quickly dismisses the idea. Alex probably told Sean the basics, who probably told Raven an ornamented tale of the basics, who probably thought that his mother and he were on the verge of a third world war, now. Maybe he should have done more than reply ‘sushi lunch.’
“Was that Alex?” his mother asks in a remarkably steady voice, one eyebrow raised and a shaky little smile on her face.
“Raven.”
“Is that where you were last night?” she asks a little too quickly and eagerly, eyes bright.
“No. I was at Alex’s.” Hank watches her face carefully.
It is like a shadow descends over her features, darkening the irises of her eyes and hollows of her cheeks. Then, she fixes it - she sits up straighter and breathes through her nose and blinks and says, “And how is he doing?”
Hank catalogues the split-second changes in demeanor and knows his mother is trying, in her own way, but that she is still struggling to understand. He shrugs. “We had a fight, sort of. But we’re okay now.” Their waitress comes and places two glasses of water before them and looks between them, the smile on her face genuine but tired and like she feels the tension at the table and hopes for it to disperse long enough for Hank and his mother to order and eat and leave her a generous tip.
“Ready to order?” she asks in a sweet voice. They order, and when she rushes away she takes the immediacy of the conversation with her. Hank’s phone buzzes again but he leaves it, watching his mother examine her manicured nails.
“So,” his mother continues when she has no more fingernails to examine, the conjunction awkward and forced like she is trying to tag it on to the unfinished exchange they had before. “What was the fight about?”
“I guess it wasn’t really a fight.”
“Well,” his mother responds quickly. “What was it then?” In this they are similar, brains wired in a way that makes the gathering of data of the utmost importance, definitions and numbers and categories. If it wasn’t a fight then it was something else.
“Look, mom, you don’t have to force yourself to, like, be more interested in this.” Their soups come and the steam rises up between them.
His mother says with a pucker in her lips, “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, now you know about me and Alex. But we don’t have to talk about it all the time if you don’t want to. It doesn’t have to be a thing.”
“Isn’t he important to you?” she responds, which throws him.
He takes a sip of his water to mask his surprise and temporary inability to respond. “Er, yes. Of course,” he tells her guardedly.
“Then it should be a thing.” She uses his own words against him. “Then I want to talk about it.” He can almost see her sitting him down in her office at the hospital, mapping out a chart before him, calorie-intake diagrams replaced by measurements of hormone levels and their correspondence to feelings of attraction. Is he her client or her son? Then, she says, “Listen, Hank. I’m - I’m sorry about what happened yesterday. It’s inexcusable. I’ve been very irresponsible...with you. So let this happen, okay? Let’s try.”
Her son, then. It is too much. He feels a betraying sting behind his eyes and blinks rapidly to clear it. “That’s very...thanks.”
She tilts her head to the side just a little, eyes softer than before. “I want things to be okay between us. You’re all I’ve got, now, you know?”
And it’s true. In a way, he is all she’s got. Maybe that’s why she’s trying so hard to mend the rift between them, maybe she feels the distance like she’s drifting at sea, her ex-husband a disposed anchor left behind. And now the house is even being cut away. Her friends - Hank realizes that he hasn’t heard of them in a while. He’s sure she’s still seeing them, but he wonders which side his parents’ friends took in the divorce, if she had lost half of them when the ink dried on the divorce papers. What does she have but her position in the hospital and Hank? Without him, she would float aimlessly. And Hank? What anchors him?
Their sushi comes and that train of thought ends. He smiles at her, close-lipped but real, and she returns the same.
//
So. Sorry for the delay. And how short this is. I am bad at updating :(