i'm not looking for an escape all cause I'm scared I might lose you

It was the beeping that woke him at first. Loud beeping. It was as fucking obnoxious as Henry's alarm in the mornings, which contrary to the blonde's beliefs, Alex could hear through the wall thank you very much, Henry, you pompous early rising ass.

Honestly, why he loved the man who had become his roommate was still a mystery.

Well, okay, it wasn't /exactly/ a mystery, given June and Nora had been giving him flack about it since Henry moved into their apartment one spring morning when Alex desperately needed company for financial reasons and only those.

However, as fate would have it, Henry was not only loaded, but also gorgeous. Like a Greek statue in a museum come to life type of beautiful. Alex supposed that was exactly what came when your roommate was formally a prince, but still. He's allowed to hype Henry up, even if most of his nights were spent with the sound of the musical Wicked in his head at the mere thought of telling Henry just how much he wanted to just.../be/ with him. Exist. In a way.

Not that had hadn't been already, but you know. It was platonic. Alex had every desire for it /not/ to be platonic, but he wasn't exactly up for the inverse of possibly telling Henry, being rejected and then the man vanishing the next day with his belongings.

Despite what he may say on the outside, Alex is far too fragile for that, so he keeps quiet and pretends, sometimes, that they have a future together when it's clear they don't.

Anyway, the beeping.

At first, Alex's muddled mind thinks it's the alarm and grumbling, moves to throw something at the wall to encourage Henry to get the fuck up and shut it off, but a burning, prickly sensation in his hand stops him, making him hiss. His tongue feels cottony in his mouth suddenly and the sheets beneath him do not feel like the ones he shelled out his life savings for, not the blankets on top that have too much scratch and wither to them.

Something is very wrong here.

His head also hurts. Like, don't get him wrong, he was prone to headaches in the morning as every college student was that went though the sadism of a law degree, but it's far more sharper and his head feels too heavy to lift up.

It's like a boulder is attached to his neck and when trying to open his eyes, it's too bright and the world's in double vision, making his already churning stomach just that bit worse.

Curling back up again, it takes several tries before he can finally not feel too much like yesterday's croissant is going to make a reappearance before he opens his eyes again, blinking several times to try and readjust the settings on the world, but getting nowhere.

He does, however, get one thing pretty clear. He is not in his apartment. Like at all.

It's white. Too white. Also too bare. Fuck, is this a prank by Henry's friend Pez? He knew he was waiting for the chance to get him back for that sneaker super glue incident. Did he end up sleeping in like, a homeless shelter or something? What was he doing last night?

...No, really, what /was/ he doing last night?

Alex almost had to strain to get some sort of memory back into him, panic running through his veins as he came out blank and more sore than before. Why couldn't he remember last night? He remembered yesterday morning, that was clear, but everything after was just...not there. Gone. Like a puff of smoke had created itself in Alex's brain space and flew out of his ears and into the unknown. What had happened last night to cause him not to remember?

It seemed that something had triggered him off because not only did he hear another unfamiliar alarm go off somewhere in his haze, but another noise caught his attention and took him away from it. Footsteps.