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I’ll be damned but I miss you.
Listen: I’ll fly to London right now and pull you out of whatever pointless meeting you’re in and make you admit how much you love it when I call you “baby.” I’ll take you apart with my teeth, sweetheart.
God damn
stop putting SPELLS on my STUFF irl chaos demon BURN THE WITCH
Henry sends back, You are a delinquent and a plague, and then, Please come?
“I think I’ve proven that I can handle royals.” Henry looks doubtful. “You’re brave. I could use some of that.”
All those nights Henry can’t sleep, just knocking around these endless, impersonal rooms, like a bird trapped in a museum.
Alex has to be back on a plane for DNC prep in a matter of hours, but he can’t sleep. It’s jet lag. It’s just jet lag. He remembers, as if from a million miles away, telling Henry once not to overthink this.
“What about you?” the guy asks Alex. “If she’s not giving it to you, I’m not giving it to you,” Alex says. “She’s much nicer than me.”
Alex still feels wired, but when June looks up at him, he can see some of the brightness in her eyes has started to look like frustrated tears, and he softens a little.
“I think … I need to sleep. For, like, the next year. At least. Wake me up after the general.” “Okay, Bug,” Alex says. He leans down to kiss the top of her head. “I can do that.”
He’s contemplating texting Henry, even though he’s probably somewhere over the Atlantic, when a voice curls around his ear, smooth and warm. He’s sure he must be imagining it.
He looks like something soft and downy Alex wants to sink into, and he realizes the knot of anxiety in his chest has finally slackened.
It’s by his own design, mostly, a barricade of charm and fitful monologues and hard-headed independence. Henry looks at him like he’s not fooled by any of it.
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.”
“And now I’m sitting here thinking, that son of a bitch sold out, so maybe it’s all bullshit, and maybe I really am just a naive kid who believes in magical shit that doesn’t happen in real life.”
“You still are. Because you still bloody care so much.”
“And you are good. Most things are awful most of the time, but you’re good.”
If Alex’s head is a storm, Henry is the place lightning hits ground.
He is truly a picture, wearing an expression of bewildered panic and absolutely nothing else.
“I—” Zahra begins. “Do I even want you to explain to me what the fuck is happening here? Literally how is he even here, like, physically or geographically, and why—no, nope. Don’t answer that. Don’t tell me anything.” She unscrews the top of her thermos and takes a pull of coffee. “Oh my God, did I do this? I never thought … when I set it up … oh my God.”
“This has been going on for seven months? 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?”
“Every time I see you, it takes another year off my life. I’m going downstairs, and you better be dressed and there in five minutes so we can try to save this goddamn campaign. And you”—she rounds on Henry—“you need to get back to fucking England now, and if anyone sees you leave, I will personally end you. Ask me if I’m afraid of the crown.”
God i fucking love her
“Oh, that’s it, sugar? God, I was worried it was gonna be something worse!” She reaches across the table, covering his hand with hers. “That’s great, baby. I’m so glad you told me.”
CALENDAR REQUEST FROM MOM: 2 P.M. WEST WING FIRST FLOOR, INTERNATIONAL ETHICS & SEXUAL IDENTITY DEBRIEF.
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.
Alex actively wishes for the sweet release of death.
It’s agonizing, but eventually it’s over, and he doesn’t die, which is something.
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.”
History, huh? Bet we could make some. Affectionately yrs, slowly going insane,
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?
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.
Haplessly Romantic Heretic Prince Henry the Utterly Daft
I kind of can’t stop thinking about you all sunburned and pretty sitting out there in the country.
Tho I long for the actual sunlight contact between us I miss you like a home. Shine back honey & think of me.
Once, there was a young prince who was born in a castle. His mother was a princess scholar, and his father was the most handsome, feared knight in all the land. As a boy, people would bring him everything he could ever dream of wanting. The most beautiful silk clothes, ripe fruit from the orangery. At times, he was so happy, he felt he would never grow tired of being a prince.
“Hi, love,” he hears Henry say quietly, privately, right into the hair above his ear, and Alex’s breath forgets how to do anything but laugh helplessly.
“Also, fun fact: LBJ was obsessed with his own dick,” Nora adds. “He called it Jumbo and would whip it out all the time. Like, in front of colleagues, reporters, anybody.”
“Aw, Alex, remember when you got drunk for the first time out here?” June says. “Strawberry daiquiris all day.” “You threw up so much,”
Henry effortlessly lifts June’s cooler up onto one shoulder and Alex pointedly does not swoon about it.
Oscar slaps his hand into Henry’s. “Hope you’re ready to fucking party.”
“Have a little more faith in your old man than that, eh? A little appreciation for the patron saint of gender-neutral bathrooms in California? Little shit.”
I think we both knew it wouldn’t be forever. We’re both too fucking proud. But God, that woman. Your mother is, without question, the love of my life. I’ll never love anyone else like that. It was wildfire.
“Sometimes you just jump and hope it’s not a cliff.”
He and Henry drift to a swing at the edge of the porch, and he curls into Henry’s side, buries his face in the collar of his shirt.
Henry leans down to meet Alex’s mouth, and Alex is. Well, Alex is so in love he could die.
And he does understand, really. He loves Henry, and it’s nothing new.
He wants to match the new freckles across Henry’s nose to the stars above them and make him name the constellations.
In the morning, Henry is gone.
