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“Risk assessment: FSOTUS failing to check himself before he wrecks himself will result in greater than five hundred civilian casualties. Ninety-eight percent probability of Prince Henry looking like a total dreamboat. Seventy-eight percent probability of Alex getting himself banned from the United Kingdom forever.” “Those are better odds than I expected,” June observes. Alex laughs, and the plane soars on.
Beside him, he hears Henry mutter slowly, “Oh my fucking Christ.” He registers dimly that it’s the first time he’s ever heard the prince swear, before the flash from someone’s camera goes off.
“I really don’t think you can call tripping over a table a ‘violent’—” “Alexander,” Ellen says, her tone eerily calm. “Shut up.” He does.
“Sugar, I cannot express to you how much the press does not give a fuck about who started what,” Ellen says. “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.”
“You,” she says, “are going to make nice with Henry. You’re leaving Saturday and spending Sunday in England.” Alex blinks. “Is it too late to take the faking-my-death option?”
She gets up and heads for the door, stopping to kiss her hand and press it to the top of his head. “You’re a dumbass. Love 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.”
Whatever, fine. Henry is annoyingly attractive. That’s always been a thing, objectively. It’s fine.
He turns to Henry, extending his fist. Henry hesitates before stiffly bumping his own knuckles against Alex’s with the heavy air of an act of treason.
“Hmm,” Henry says, making a show of thinking hard. “I always liked Luke. He’s brave and good, and he’s the strongest Jedi of them all. I think Luke is proof that it doesn’t matter where you come from or who your family is—you can always be great if you’re true to yourself.”
“I cannot believe even mortal peril will not prevent you from being the way you are.” The weirdest part, Alex thinks, is that what he said was true.
We’re stuck with each other, like it or not, so I have a right to be clued in about what your deal is before it sneaks up on me and bites me in the ass.”
“To answer your question,” Henry says. “Yes, I do like Star Wars, and my favorite is Return of the Jedi.” “Oh,” Alex says. “Wow, you’re wrong.”
“How can I be wrong about my own favorite? It’s a personal truth.” “It’s a personal truth that is wrong and bad.”
Henry stares at him, expression blankly bewildered, and Alex wonders how this guy has any friends. “Right,” Henry says finally. “Thank you.” “No booty calls,” Alex tells him, and Henry chokes on a laugh.
“Come on. I’m trying to give you some advice, from one old man to a much younger version of himself.” “You’re thirty-nine.” “My liver is ninety-three.” “That’s not my fault.”
“They offer you a job too, Leo?” “No,” he says. “As usual, my duties as First Gentleman are to work on my tablescapes and look pretty.” “Your tablescapes are really coming along, baby,” Ellen says, giving him a sarcastic little kiss. “I really liked the burlap placemats.”
You are the thistle in the tender and sensitive arse crack of my life.
“I’m not putting the turkeys in your room.” “Put the turkeys in my room.” “No.” “Put them in my room, put them in my room, put them in my room—” That night, as Alex stares into the cold, pitiless eyes of a prehistoric beast of prey, he has a few regrets.
“Alex?” Henry’s voice sounds scratchy and bewildered across the line. “Have you really rung me at three o’clock in the morning to make me listen to a turkey?” “Yes, obviously,” Alex says.
“Jesus Christ, it’s like they can see into your soul. Cornbread knows my sins, Henry. Cornbread knows what I have done, and he is here to make me atone.”
“Have you ever even been turkey hunting?” “Alex, you can’t even hunt them in Britain.” Alex returns to his bed and face-plants into a pillow. “I hope Cornbread does kill me.”
“It’s just so soothing,” Henry says. “Everything’s all pastel-colored and the music is so relaxing and everyone’s so lovely to one another. And you learn so much about different types of biscuits, Alex. So much. When the world seems awful, such as when you’re trapped in a Great Turkey Calamity, you can put it on and vanish into biscuit land.”
“Alex,” Henry says firmly. “What?” “The turkeys are not going to Jurassic Park you,” he says. “You’re not the bloke from Seinfeld. You’re Jeff Goldblum. Go to sleep.”
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
Henry’s whole face grimaces in frustration, his eyes casting skyward like they’re searching for help from an uncaring universe. “Christ, you are as thick as it gets,” he says, and he grabs Alex’s face in both hands and kisses him.
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.
“Prince Henry is a biscuit,” Nora says, “let him sop you up.” “I’m leaving.”
“Well. Babe. You’ve been wanting him to dick you down forever, right?” Alex almost chokes on his tongue. “What?” Nora looks at him. “Oh, shit. Did you not know that either? Shit. I didn’t mean to, like, tell you. Is it time for this conversation?”
Nora’s eyes snap back up to him. “Oh, like, I thought we were already there with you being bi and everything,” she says. “Sorry, are we not? Did I skip ahead again? My bad. Hello, would you like to come out to me? I’m listening. Hi.”
“I need someone to just tell me. How did you know you were?” “I don’t know, man. I was in my junior year of high school, and I touched a boob. It wasn’t very profound. Nobody’s gonna write an Off-Broadway play about it.” “Really helpful.”
How dare Henry come into Alex’s house looking like the goddamn James Bond offspring that he is, drink red wine with the prime minister, and act like he didn’t slip Alex the tongue and ghost him for a month.
“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.”
God, if any ghosts of Founding Fathers are hanging around the White House tonight, they must really be suffering.
In an instant of sudden, vivid clarity, he can’t believe he ever thought he was straight.
“And to remind you,” she goes on, “I will chop my own tit off before I let you pull some idiotic stunt to cause your mother, our first female president, to be the first president to lose reelection since H fucking W. Do you understand me? I will lock you in your room for the next year if I have to, and you can take your finals by fucking smoke signal. I will staple your dick to the inside of your leg if that keeps it in your fucking pants.”
It used to be all bottles of cognac and shared malaise and ‘When will they notice us’—” “Don’t tell him that!” “—and now I just ask Henry, ‘What is your secret?’ And he says, ‘I insult Alex all the time and that seems to work.’” “I will turn this car around.”
He snatches a shirt and boxers at random from the floor, shoves them at Henry’s chest, and points him toward the closet. “Get in there.” “Quite,” he observes. “Yes, we can unpack the ironic symbolism later. Go,” Alex says,
That’s why you—Oh my God, I thought you were getting into international relations or something.” “I mean, technically—” “If you finish that sentence, I’m gonna spend tonight in jail.”
“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?”
An hour later, there are several cartons of Chinese food and a PowerPoint cued up. 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.
The next slide is titled: EXPLORING YOUR SEXUALITY: HEALTHY, BUT DOES IT HAVE TO BE WITH THE PRINCE OF ENGLAND? She apologizes for not having time to come up with better titles. Alex actively wishes for the sweet release of death. The one after is: FEDERAL FUNDING, TRAVEL EXPENSES, BOOTY CALLS, AND YOU.
Alex, First Son of Masturbatory Historical Readings: 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.
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.
“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.”
“Stop, are you kidding me?” Alex says. “Prince Consort Road? Oh my God, take a picture of me with the sign.” “Not there yet!” Henry says over his shoulder. He gives Alex’s arm another pull to keep him running. “Keep moving, you wastrel.”
“He stood in front of the Privy Council and said, ‘Christ had John, and I have George.’” “Jesus.” “Precisely.”
