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He’s never been kissed like this, as if the feeling could swallow him up whole, Henry’s body grinding down and covering every inch of his.
Alex was wrong before, Henry’s going to be the one to kill him, not the other way around.
he scoops Alex up against his chest greedily as if he’s trying to touch all of him at once.
Messy earnestness and rough focus, not a dutiful prince but any other twenty-something boy enjoying himself
A true prodigy. God Save the Queen.
Ascended to the next plane, merely a pair of eyes floating through a dopamine haze.
With a feat of Herculean strength, he summons up two whole words: “Fuck you.”
Mutually satisfying sexual experiences do not a relationship make.
“For fuck’s sake, man, you just had my dick in your mouth, you can kiss me good-night.”
pretend to care about the rules of the game, but his primary turn-on has always been competence.
Polo bat? Polo club? Polo … mallet? This sport is a travesty.
It almost hurts to look at him—the athlete’s focus, all the dressings of aristocracy laid wide open for him.
It’s fast and dirty and Henry is swearing up a storm, which is still disarmingly sexy, but this time it’s punctuated by the occasional word of praise, and somehow that’s even hotter.
You’re a mad, spiteful, unmitigated demon, and I’m going to kiss you until you forget how to talk.
Alex’s heart goes so fucking weird that he has to put his head in his hands for a full minute. (But, like. It’s fine. It’s not a whole thing.)
He’ll withdraw for hours or days, and Alex comes to understand this as grief time, little bouts of depression, or times of “too much.”
Very much can relate
Listen, you’re undoing everything this country’s crusty forefathers fought for and deflowering the darling of the republic. You at least need to know basic American history.”
I can’t believe our ancestors survived centuries of wars and plagues and genocide just to wind up with your sorry ass.”
“Stop trying to Jane Austen my life!” he yells back.
Henry passing for hungover but handsome, and Alex just doing his best.
Hangover tending isn’t part of his job description, but he’s a mother hen.
O, fathers of my bloodline! O, ye kings of olde! Take this crown from me, bury me in my ancestral soil. If only you had known the mighty work of thine loins would be undone by a gay heir who likes it when American boys with chin dimples are mean to him.
I’ll take you apart with my teeth, sweetheart.
You are a delinquent and a plague,
Alex wonders how such rich genetics conspired to make Bea and Henry both so interesting to look at, all mischievous smiles and swooping cheekbones, but punted so hard on Philip. He looks like a stock photo.
“Well,” Alex grunts, “when at Wimbledon.”
“Awesome, fuckin’ love doing things out of spite,”
And Alex’s heart doesn’t spread itself out in his chest, and he doesn’t have to grip the edge of the settee to steady himself. Because that’s what he would do if he were here in this palace to fall in love with Henry, and not just continuing this thing where they fly across the world to touch each other and don’t talk about it.
Henry lets Alex take him apart with painstaking patience and precision, moans the name of God so many times that the room feels consecrated.
“Speak not the bastard’s name.”
If he’s some anonymous, normal person, removed from history, he’s twenty-two and he’s tipsy and he’s pulling a guy into his hotel room by the belt loop. He’s pulling a lip between his teeth, and he’s fumbling behind his back to switch on a lamp, and he’s thinking, I like this person.
I honestly don’t know if I’m good enough or smart enough to ever be either of my parents. But I could be that.”
“Someone else’s choice doesn’t change who you are.”
“I wanted to believe in some people being good and doing this job because they want to do good. Doing the right things most of the time and most things for the right reasons. I wanted to be the kind of person who believes in that.”
Most things are awful most of the time, but you’re good.”
As if on cue, there’s a series of bumps from the other side of the closet door, and Henry, halfway into Alex’s boxers, comes literally tumbling out of the closet.
your mother has enough to manage without having to process her son’s fucking quarter-life NATO sexual crisis,
“Every time I see you, it takes another year off my life.
The first slide says: SEXUAL EXPERIMENTATION WITH FOREIGN MONARCHS: A GRAY AREA. Alex wonders if it’s too late to swan dive off the roof.
Alex actively wishes for the sweet release of death.
So you need to figure out if you feel forever about him. And if you don’t, you need to cut it the fuck out.”
Alex feels like his heart is caught somewhere between his tonsils.
The phrase “see attached bibliography” is the single sexiest thing you have ever written to me.
Should I tell you that when we’re apart, your body comes back to me in dreams? That when I sleep, I see you, the dip of your waist, the freckle above your hip, and when I wake up in the morning, it feels like I’ve just been with you, the phantom touch of your hand on the back of my neck fresh and not imagined? That I can feel your skin against mine, and it makes every bone in my body ache? That, for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all?
Tho I long for the actual sunlight contact between us I miss you like a home. Shine back honey & think of me.
“Math has no authority here,” June tells her.
He looks bronzed and soft-mouthed and young, a Texas boy, the same kid he was when he left for DC.
Alex’s breath forgets how to do anything but laugh helplessly.
Henry effortlessly lifts June’s cooler up onto one shoulder and Alex pointedly does not swoon about it.
“Hope you’re ready to fucking party.”
