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for the weirdos & the dreamers
“So is that what’s happening now?” Alex says, glaring down at Nora’s napkin bird. “Has he decided to finally shut me up by wooing my sister?” “Aw, little buddy,” Nora says. She reaches over and pats his hand. “It’s cute how you think everything is about you.”
So, you can hate the heir to the throne all you want, write mean poems about him in your diary, but the minute you see a camera, you act like the sun shines out of his dick, and you make it convincing.”
I’m the President of the United fucking States! I don’t need you to come here and—and—” “Mansplain?” Zahra offers. “Mansplain!” Ellen shouts, jabbing a finger across the table at Oscar, eyes wide. “This presidential race to me!”
“Christ, you are as thick as it gets,” he says, and he grabs Alex’s face in both hands and kisses him.
So, the thing about the kiss is, Alex absolutely cannot stop thinking about it.
He needs a list. So: Things he knows right now. One. He’s attracted to Henry. Two. He wants to kiss Henry again. Three. He has maybe wanted to kiss Henry for a while. As in, probably this whole time.
He’s not thinking about Henry in the shower or at night, alone and wide awake in his bed. Except for when he is. Which is always.
“Numbers on me being into dudes?” That pulls Nora up short, before she cocks her head to the side and says, “Seventy-eight percent probability of latent bisexual tendencies. One hundred percent probability this is not a hypothetical question.”
Alex has a tactical brain. A politician’s brain. It works fast, and it works in many, many directions at once. And right now, he’s thinking through a puzzle.
Henry enters stage right. His suit is black, smooth, elegant. Perfect. Alex wants to rip it off.
Alex thinks he calculated all wrong, but then Henry’s kissing him back, and it’s everything. It feels as good as—better than—he remembered, and he can’t recall why they haven’t been doing this the whole time,
“Right. I meant—I just thought—” “Stop thinking.” “Yes. Gladly.”
He drops a hand onto Henry’s thigh, feeling the electrical pulse there, the smooth fabric over hard muscle. He pushes up, up, and Henry’s hand slams down over his, digging his nails in.
“I’m going to die,” Henry says helplessly. “I’m going to kill you,” Alex tells him. “Yes, you are,” Henry agrees.
“Okay, so,” Alex says. “Yeah. So here’s what we’re gonna do. You are gonna go be, like, five hundred feet away from me for the rest of the night, or else I am going to do something that I will deeply regret in front of a lot of very important people.” “All right…”
“And then,” Alex says, and he grabs Henry’s tie again, close to the knot, and draws his mouth up to a breath away from Henry’s. He hears Henry swallow. He wants to follow the sound down his throat. “And then you are going to come to the East Bedroom on the second floor at eleven o’clock tonight, and I am going to do very bad things to you, and if you fucking ghost me again, I’m going to get you put on a fucking no-fly list. Got it?” Henry bites down on a sound that tries to escape his mouth, and rasps, “Perfectly.”
He’s unsure of the dress code for inviting your sworn-enemy-turned-fake-best-friend to your room to have sex with you, especially when that room is in the White House, and especially when that person is a guy, and especially when that guy is a prince of England.
He kisses Henry until it feels like he can’t breathe, until it feels like he’s going to forget both of their names and titles, until they’re only two people tangled up in a dark room making a brilliant, epic, unstoppable mistake.
In an instant of sudden, vivid clarity, he can’t believe he ever thought he was straight.
Henry returns the favor happily, hungrily, and Alex doesn’t know or care what sounds or words come out of his mouth. He thinks one of them is “sweetheart” and another is “motherfucker.” Henry is one talented bastard, a man of many hidden gifts, Alex muses half-hysterically. A true prodigy. God Save the Queen.
“For fuck’s sake, man, you just had my dick in your mouth, you can kiss me good-night.”
“I don’t actually care,” he says, and grabs Henry by the stupid collar of his stupid polo and kisses his stupid mouth.
Perfect Stoic Prince Charming laughs when he comes, and texts Alex at weird hours of the night: You’re a mad, spiteful, unmitigated demon, and I’m going to kiss you until you forget how to talk. And Alex is kind of obsessed with it.
Birthday head from another country’s prince will do that.
“I miss you,” Alex says before he can stop himself. He instantly regrets it, but Henry says, “I miss you too.”
Henry rolls Alex onto his side and burrows behind him until he’s covering him completely, his shoulders a brace for Alex’s shoulders, one of his thighs pressed on top of Alex’s thighs, his arms over Alex’s arms and his hands over Alex’s hands, nowhere left untouched. It’s the best Alex has slept in years.
“Just so we’re clear,” Alex says, “I’m about to have sex with you in this storage closet to spite your family. Like, that’s what’s happening?” Henry, who has apparently been carrying his travel-size lube with him this entire time in his jacket, says, “Right,” and tosses it over his shoulder. “Awesome, fuckin’ love doing things out of spite,” he says without a hint of sarcasm, and he kicks Henry’s feet apart.
Henry kisses his mouth over and over again and says quietly, “You are good.”
Alex winces. “Please don’t tell Mom.” “Seriously?” she hisses. “You’re literally putting your dick in the leader of a foreign state, who is a man, at the biggest political event before the election, in a hotel full of reporters, in a city full of cameras, in a race close enough to fucking hinge on some bullshit like this, like a manifestation of my fucking stress dreams, and you’re asking me not to tell the president about it?”
“So,” she says. “Here’s the thing. I know I put a lot on you. But I do it because I trust you. You’re a dumbass, but I trust you, and I trust your judgment. I promised you years ago I would never tell you to be anything you’re not. So I’m not gonna be the president or the mother who forbids you from seeing him.”
Anyway, I found this part of a letter he wrote to Laurens, and it made me think of you. And me, I guess: The truth is I am an unlucky honest man, that speak my sentiments to all and with emphasis. I say this to you because you know it and will not charge me with vanity. I hate Congress—I hate the army—I hate the world—I hate myself. The whole is a mass of fools and knaves; I could almost except you … Thinking about history makes me wonder how I’ll fit into it one day, I guess. And you too. I kinda wish people still wrote like that. History, huh? Bet we could make some.
Alex, First Son of Masturbatory Historical Readings: The phrase “see attached bibliography” is the single sexiest thing you have ever written to me.
I think perhaps Hamilton said it better in a letter to Eliza: You engross my thoughts too intirely to allow me to think of any thing else—you not only employ my mind all day; but you intrude upon my sleep. I meet you in every dream—and when I wake I cannot close my eyes again for ruminating on your sweetness.
A three-line email, an excerpt dug up from an archived letter, Hamilton to Laurens, You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent, drafted and deleted.
“When have I ever, since the first instant I touched you, pretended to be anything less than in love with you? Are you so fucking self-absorbed as to think this is about you and whether or not I love you, rather than the fact I’m an heir to the fucking throne? You at least have the option to not choose a public life eventually, but I will live and die in these palaces and in this family, so don’t you dare come to me and question if I love you when it’s the thing that could bloody well ruin everything.”
I can love you and want you and still not want that life. I’m allowed, all right, and it doesn’t make me a liar; it makes me a man with some infinitesimal shred of self-preservation, unlike you, and you don’t get to come here and call me a coward for it.”
He fucks Henry slow and deep, and if it’s the last time, they go down shivering and gasping and epic, all wet mouths and wet eyelashes, and Alex is a cliché on an ivory bedspread, and he hates himself but he’s so in love.
He knows: One. Henry isn’t here. Two. Henry never said yes to any kind of future last night. Three. This could very well be the last time he gets to inhale Henry’s scent on anything. But, four. Next to the clock on the mantel, Henry’s ring still sits.
When Alex was a kid, before anyone knew his name, he dreamed of love like it was a fairy tale, as if it would come sweeping into his life on the back of a dragon one day. When he got older, he learned about love as a strange thing that could fall apart no matter how badly you wanted it, a choice you make anyway. He never imagined it’d turn out he was right both times.
“Diaz, you insane, hopeless romantic little shit,” says the voice of the President of the United States, muffled in the bed. “It had better be forever. Be safe.”
He’s cut off mid-sentence because Alex has stopped in the middle of the corridor and yanked him backward into a kiss. “Hello,” Henry says when they break apart. “What was that for?” “I just, like.” Alex shrugs. “Really love you.”
“Oh, yeah,” Alex says. “The top list of reasons to love you goes brain, then dick, then imminent status as a revolutionary gay icon.” “You are quite literally Queen Victoria’s worst nightmare.” “And that’s why you love me.” “My God, you’re right.
I wanna take you to Franklin Barbecue. You have to wait in line for hours, but that’s part of the experience. I really wanna see a member of the royal family wait in line for hours to eat cow parts.
P.S. Eleanor Roosevelt to Lorena Hickock—1933: I miss you greatly dear. The nicest time of the day is when I write to you. You have a stormier time than I do but I miss you as much, I think.… Please keep most of your heart in Washington as long as I’m here for most of mine is with you!
Now shut up and let me get some sleep before we have to deal with the rest of this. I’m running on nothing but black coffee, a Wetzel’s Pretzel, and a fistful of B12. Do not even breathe in my direction.”
“I told you to stay away—” Bea is saying as soon as the door is open, brandishing a guitar over her shoulder. She drops it as soon as she sees him. “Oh, Alex, I’m so sorry, I thought you were Philip.”
“But the thing is, jumping off cliffs is kinda my thing. That’s the choice. I love him, with all that, because of all that. On purpose. I love him on purpose.” Bea smiles gently. “Then you’ll do fine.”
“Fuck off, Philip, I love him,” Henry says. “Oh, you love him, do you?” It’s so patronizing that Alex’s hand twitches into a fist under the table. “What exactly do you intend to do, then, Henry? Hmm? Marry him? Make him the Duchess of Cambridge? The First Son of the United bloody States, fourth in line to be Queen of England?” “I’ll fucking abdicate!” Henry says, voice rising. “I don’t care!” “You wouldn’t dare,” Philip spits back.
“What are we even defending here, Philip? What kind of legacy? What kind of family, that says, we’ll take the murder, we’ll take the raping and pillaging and the colonizing, we’ll scrub it up nice and neat in a museum, but oh no, you’re a bloody poof? That’s beyond our sense of decorum! I’ve bloody well had it. I’ve sat about long enough letting you and Gran and the weight of the damned world keep me pinned, and I’m finished. I don’t care. You can take your legacy and your decorum and you can shove it up your fucking arse, Philip. I’m done.”
