Heaven Can Wait

Title: "Heaven Can Wait"
Author: Sabrina Cross
archive: yes to FFIC
category: episode tag for "Portrait of Evil"
rating: R
summary: Henry and Chandler discuss H's motivations for staying in Hollywood.
feedback: yes, on or off list: furrygirl@usa.net

The cookies were gone.

The ones Henry had brought, along with all the beer and corn chips Ben had brought by a day or so earlier.

They hadn't spoken much at all since Henry's less-than-complimentary goat nut comment. He'd bought the damn cookies. Why was he blaming their sub-standard nature on Chandler?

Okay, so maybe they shouldn't have finished off that last six-pack. But Chandler had managed to get himself to that perfect stage of inebriation, and he couldn't really find it in himself to give a rat's ass. The Perfectly Drunk Stage, the Warm Glow Express, rapidly approaching the Feeling-No-Pain Plateau.

Not too drunk, when you make really bad mistakes, say things you intensely regret the next day, and/or leave the contents of your stomach someplace unfortunate and expensive.

But not too sober, either - where your inhibitions are still clinging to you, and you hang just this side of relaxing. No, Chandler was in the groove. The perfect stage of inebriation. Henry wasn't quite there yet, but he'd be catching up with his partner pretty soon.

"H?" Chandler ventured when Henry reached for the final beer.

"Yeah, man?" he said.

"You gave up Heaven." He paused. "Heaven, H, do you know what that means?"

Henry was silent for a moment, as though considering the question, and trying to formulate the perfect response to it. But before he had a chance, Chandler spoke again, eyes wide, voice soft, as though he'd just had some sort of revelatory thought.

"You gave up Heaven…for me, didn't you?" he asked.

Henry shrugged. "Yeah. I guess so," he said, and maybe he was a little bit closer to drunk than either of them had previously realized. He sipped his beer. "You're a good partner, man. The best."

Chandler's eyebrows leapt suddenly and dramatically upward, as though they'd been simultaneously snagged by twin hooks.

"I am?" he asked, and his surprise and disbelief were genuine.

"Yeah." Almost gruff. "You are."

"But you're the one they picked," Chandler said. "You're the one they wanted to send -Up There."

Henry sipped. He had no problem with being thought of as exceptional, but vast amounts of Chips Ahoy, Fritoes and Harp conspired to make him a bit more willing to consider his own limitations. "You'll get there, man. Up There. Eventually."

"Oh, yeah," Chandler groused. "Heavenly stuff, here." He spread his arms in a 'ta-da' gesture, then realized that, coming from a dead guy, bedridden and in a neck brace (even when that guy was aiming for ironic effect), it just didn't work.

"I may get there - Up There, eventually. But I bet you'll get there first."

(Morose.)

(Where, oh where had his mellow buzz gone? Oh, where, oh where could it be?)

Henry scowled at him. "Look here, man," he snapped in sudden annoyance. "I'm not Batman. You're not Robin. You're my partner, okay?"

"I could be Robin," Chandler said after a moment of sheepish silence, during which Henry sipped some more. "I look great in tights, H."

Superb timing, utterly superb, if he did say so himself. Henry choked, sputtered, and only narrowly avoided baptizing his partner with a mouthful of beer. He giggled, swallowed, and giggled a little more.

"You're a trip, man," he chuckled when he could breathe again. "A fuckin' trip."

For a little while, they were quiet again.

Chandler's silence was the more brooding of the two. He'd never been one for introspection, really (even stone-sober it tended to boggle his mind), and he certainly wasn't prepared to go head-to-head with it with this killer mellow buzz on, but his thoughts were wandering.

Wandering back, trying to remember just how they'd arrived at the subject of his non-existent (but quite flattering) tights.

Oh.

Oh, yeah.

That's right.

"You gave up Heaven, H."

Henry looked puzzled. Almost annoyed again. "Didn't we cover this already?"

"You gave up Heaven…for me."

"We covered that too. We covered everything."

Chandler shook his head. "No we didn't," he said in the carefully reasoned tone of a man who'd thought very long and very hard while under the influence of a very large amount of very good beer. "No way. We haven't covered why."

"What?"

"Why," Chandler repeated. "Why'd you give up Heaven for me?"

Henry shifted in the wheelchair. Stared at his beer. Sipped.

"H.?"

Big sigh. "Chandler, is it really that big a deal, here?"

"I'm thinking it is."

"Why?"

"That's what I'm asking."

"No - why is it a big deal?"

"Oh." Chandler paused. Chandler considered.

"'Cause it makes us…unequal," he said after a minute or so. "I…I'm stuck here, and you've got like, a table reserved for you Up There. It gives you a…an unfair advantage."

"What?" Henry asked. "What advantage?"

"You're their - maybe even, well, His - favorite, man. Unfair advantage."

Henry shook his head. Idiot.

"No special powers, remember? Anyway, do you really think I'd use any of this against you?"

"No, I guess not," Chandler replied dourly. "It's just…unfair, that's all. And you won't even tell me why,"

"I don't know why."

Chandler fell silent again. A longer silence than any of the others they'd shared since the undeniably surreal conversation had started. He was thinking.

Thinking.

Thinking.

And -

Oh.

Oh, wow.

"I've got a theory, H." He said finally.

"A theory?"

"Yeah."

"About why?"

"Yeah. About why." Chandler stared at his partner for a second or two. "You may not like it."

"Just tell me your damn theory."

Chandler took a deep breath. "You love me."

Henry sat very, very still for a moment. Didn't say anything. Didn't react at all.

Finally, he said, "Okay."

"Okay what?" Chandler asked.

"Okay. I love you man - it's that, whatsit…Filios, right?"

"Brotherly love."

"Yeah," Henry agreed enthusiastically. "Brotherly love. Why would I not like that? The seventies, Chandler."

"I don't think it's Filios, H."

"Agape, then."

"Not Agape. The other one."

Chandler was reaching out, grabbing the wheelchair, pulling it - and Henry with it -closer to him. Henry's eyes widened.

"There's another one?" he asked, playing for time - but time for what? Time to formulate - what? A rejection, an escape? Because he knew damn well where this was headed. Time to formulate - what? An eloquent - albeit slightly drunken -acceptance speech? Because he knew - oh, he knew - where this was headed. Of course he did.

Because there was another one.

"Sure there's another one," Chandler said, leaning closer still, covering Henry's hand - the one that rested on the arm of the chair, not the one still gripping the beer bottle, gripping it like it was some sort of life line or grounding wire - with his own. "Come on, you know what the other one is, H."

Silence, frozen stillness, still as two glaciers, while Henry tried to track Chandler's transformation from befuddled drunk to sloe-eyed seductor, then he said, "Eros," very softly.

"You got it," Chandler said, smiling a little. "Eros." The sibilant S of the words hissed over Henry's lips in the split second before Chandler kissed him.

Nothing much at first, nothing to write home about, even if they were allowed to write home, which they really weren't, nothing at all erotic, really, just the soft, still pressure of Chandler's lips that grew slowly, delicately, shifting into a gentle persuasion, a careful coaxing - that of trainer to unpredictable pet, and it couldn't be said who was more surprised at Henry's immediate acquiescence -Chandler, or Henry himself.

It had been so very long for each of them

(was that why?)

that

(or was it something else?)

the kiss alone was enough to send their heads spinning, their hearts racing, and to inspire other portions of their bodies to vibrant life.

The beer bottle - almost empty anyway - slipped from Henry's fingers, falling unnoticed to the floor as Henry's hands asserted their independence, rising up to cradle Chandler's face.

"Ooh - ow," his partner gasped sharply into his mouth, and the small outcry was just enough to shine some icy sanity into Henry's foggy brain.

"Can't do it, man," he said, pulling back. "We got rules, you know," but his voice was hardly steady, and he didn't resist when Chandler tugged him out of the chair and onto the bed, scooting back as he did so.

When they had settled, and sat, facing one another, Chandler said, "No sex in the Corps?"

"Among others."

"I don't suppose he meant Corps Headquarters."

"No."

Strange. Chandler didn't feel drunk anymore. Not on alcohol, at least.

"Corps rules," he said a moment later. "No sex in the Corps, not -no sex with men."

Henry almost smiled. "No, that part's cool."

"Okay," Chandler said, putting on his best "oh-give-me-a-break" face. "Deacon said Corps agents can't have sex. Right?"

Henry nodded, longing for

(among other things)

another beer.

"Deacon said no sex - cuz how do you know you're not having sex with a morlock, right again?"

Henry nodded again, feeling somehow trapped, but also liking it, a little. "Right."

"H." Chandler said, taking his partner's hand again, his face earnest, his voice intense. "I'm not a morlock." He paused, seeming to think. "Are you a morlock?"

Henry frowned a little, as though considering the possibility. "No," he said slowly, after a moment. "I'm not a morlock."

"We're not morlocks, H," Chandler said, and there was a certain urgency in his voice now, a taut vibration in his body, in his very stillness. "We're not morlocks, okay? This is a No Morlock situation, here."

Henry reached out, an almost-smile forming on his lips, and tangled one hand into his partner's

(spiky, greasy, gross)

hair, leaned in, and kissed him, for what seemed like a really long time. When they drew apart again, they were both breathless - and they were both smiling.

"Really gonna do this?" Chandler asked dreamily.

"Yeah."

Something in Henry's voice made him focus again. "Yeah, but…?"

"You're still in a neck brace, for one."

"Jeez, H, you're not gonna hurt me - "

"And," Henry overrode him, "you smell really, really bad. Shower, Chandler. Shower. Then we can take care of business, okay, man?"

Grumbling - nearly snarling, when you got right down to it -Chandler wobbled off in the direction of the bathroom, muttering something that sounded a whole hell of a lot like "cock tease."

Kicking off his shoes, Henry flopped down onto the bed. Lacing his fingers together behind his head, he grinned up at the ceiling, considering his earlier words.

"I told 'em you and I still had things we had to do."

Heaven could wait.

Oh, yeah. He heard the shower go on down the hall.

Heaven could definitely wait.

END