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for the weirdos & the dreamers
The tabloids—the world—decided to cast Alex as the American equivalent of Prince Henry from day one, since the White House Trio is the closest thing America has to royalty.
His eyes lock on Alex’s, and something like annoyance or adrenaline spikes in Alex’s chest. He hasn’t had a conversation with Henry in probably a year. His face is still infuriatingly symmetrical.
“It’s cute how you think everything is about you.” “It should be, honestly.” “That’s the spirit.”
He’s too perfect. Alex wants to poke it.
“Am I offending you? Sorry I’m not obsessed with you like everyone else. I know that must be confusing for you.” “Do you know what?” Henry says. “I think you are.”
“As your mother, I can appreciate that maybe this isn’t your fault, but as the president, all I want is to have the CIA fake your death and ride the dead-kid sympathy into a second term.”
“I’m going to throw up on you,” Alex says as soon as Henry is close enough to hear him. “Hello, Alex,” Henry says. Alex really resents the extra few inches of height Henry has on him right now.
“Let’s get it over with.” “I’d rather be waterboarded,” Henry says, smiling back.
what kind of garbage country eats bland beans on white toast for breakfast? He can’t decide if his Mexican blood or his Texan blood is more offended.
Whatever, fine. Henry is annoyingly attractive. That’s always been a thing, objectively. It’s fine.
“Stop telling me what to do! You’re not the prince of me!” “Bloody hell,”
“Are you quite finished?” Henry says, sounding strangled. “Can you perhaps stop putting your sodding life in danger now?” “Aw, you do care,” Alex says. “I’m learning all your hidden depths today, sweetheart.” Henry exhales and slumps off him. “I cannot believe even mortal peril will not prevent you from being the way you are.”
Alex wouldn’t say he likes Henry, but he does enjoy the quick rhythm of arguments they fall into. He knows he talks too much, hopeless at moderating his feelings, which he usually hides under ten layers of charm, but he ultimately doesn’t care what Henry thinks of him, so he doesn’t bother. Instead, he’s as weird and manic as he wants to be, and Henry jabs back in sharp flashes of startling wit.
One does not foster a lifelong love of Star Wars without knowing an “empire” isn’t a good thing.
You are the thistle in the tender and sensitive arse crack of my life.
yo there’s a bond marathon on and did you know your dad was a total babe HRH Prince Dickhead I BEG YOU TO NOT
“Christ, you are as thick as it gets,” he says, and he grabs Alex’s face in both hands and kisses him.
But beneath it all, there’s the Prince of England kissing him under a linden tree in the garden, moonlight in his hair, and Alex’s insides feel positively molten, and he wants to throw himself down the presidential stairs.
Straight people, he thinks, probably don’t spend this much time convincing themselves they’re straight.
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.
Henry, the prince. Henry, the boy in the garden. Henry, the boy in his bed.
It shouldn’t work so perfectly—it makes absolutely no sense—but it does. There’s something about the two of them, the way they ignite at different temperatures, Alex’s frenetic energy and Henry’s aching sureness.
In an instant of sudden, vivid clarity, he can’t believe he ever thought he was straight.
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.
“I miss you,” Alex says before he can stop himself. He instantly regrets it, but Henry says, “I miss you too.”
“Oh my God, how are you so smart and so dumb at the same time?”
“Bisexuality is truly a rich and complex tapestry,”
How is a man to get anything done knowing Alex Claremont-Diaz is out there on the loose? I am driven to distraction.
The moment you first called me a prick, my fate was sealed. 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.
If Alex’s head is a storm, Henry is the place lightning hits ground.
“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?”
History, huh? Bet we could make some.
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?
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.
Tho I long for the actual sunlight contact between us I miss you like a home. Shine back honey & think of me.
Alex is so in love he could die.
He loves Henry, and it’s nothing new. He’s been falling in love with Henry for years, probably since he first saw him in glossy print on the pages of J14, almost definitely since Henry pinned Alex to the floor of a medical supply closet and told him to shut the hell up. That long. That much.
Dear Thisbe, I wish there weren’t a wall. Love, Pyramus
“I fucking love you, okay?” Alex half yells, finally, irreversibly.
“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.”
If he’s getting his heart broken tonight, he’s sure as hell going to make Henry have the guts to do it right.
“Fuck you,” Henry says, his voice breaking, and he gets a handful of Alex’s shirt collar, and Alex knows he’s going to love this stubborn shithead forever. “Tell me,” he says, a ghost of a smile around his lips, “to leave.”
He’s in stupid, unbearable love, and Henry loves him too, and at least for one night it matters, even if they both have to pretend to forget in the morning.
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.”
“The top list of reasons to love you goes brain, then dick, then imminent status as a revolutionary gay icon.”
“Come, hijo mío, de la miel, porque es buena, and the honeycomb, sweet to thy taste.”
At cruising altitude, he takes the chain off his neck and slides the ring on next to the old house key. They clink together gently as he tucks them both under his shirt, two homes side by side.
