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“Okay, I helped June decide which shoes to wear to the...” Behind him, Alex hears Henry’s footsteps slow as he walks back in. Open, half-filled moving boxes still dot the room, and Alex is sitting on his bed. When Henry left, Alex was cleaning out his desk. He obviously hasn’t made much progress.
“I knew if I left you alone you’d start slacking off.” Henry shuts the door and locks it. They’ve learned the hard way that they need to lock doors unless they’re completely alone, since they tend to have sex at the drop of a hat...or a shirt...or a sock...any piece of clothing, really.
Henry’s only in the U.S. for a few days. They’re both heading to Brooklyn the next day to move some things into their new home, and they’d decided they might as well take a load of Alex’s stuff with them. Now that Alex knows he doesn’t really have to move out entirely for four years, it’s not like he has to pack up everything he owns.
Alex looks back over his shoulder with a grin. “I got distracted, Your Highness. Sue me.”
Whenever Alex uses his title , whether he means it sarcastically or seductively, he’s noticed it always has the same effect on Henry. He drops a hand on Alex’s shoulder, growls a little, and peeks over his head. “Find anything interesting?”
“I did.”
Henry walks around Alex to see him flipping through an old People magazine. He sits down facing Alex, causing the antique bed frame to creak a little. Alex turns the magazine sideways between them so Henry can see. It’s a little spread on a Smithsonian exhibit about Ellen’s election, featuring Alex.
“Do you always keep the magazines with your photographs?” Henry asks, smiling. “Should I be concerned with how much you enjoy looking at yourself?”
“I mean, I am gorgeous,” Alex says with a smirk. He reaches forward and gently flips a few pages. “But that’s not why I kept this one, actually.” The magazine falls open to a set of pictures of Henry with a blonde girl.
“Oh.”
Alex hates the sadness Henry can infuse into that one syllable. The corner of his mouth tightens, like a reflex, and Alex reaches up to smooth it over.
“Hey, baby, don’t, okay? You don't have to do things like that anymore.”
Henry covers Alex’s hand with his own, holds it to his cheek. “It’s all right, love. I was so used to it then. I hadn’t had the full Alex Claremont-Diaz experience yet.”
When Henry smiles, Alex can relax a little. He drops his hand and reaches out to pet the picture of Henry on the page. With one finger, he smooths out a crease in the paper, feeling the heat of a faint blush coloring his cheeks. “That’s, um, from where I threw it.” He sighs.
“Man, I was so mad at you.” His voice drops to a husky whisper. “I was so jealous, baby.” He looks up at Henry with a crooked smile. “For about five minutes. Then I kind of figured it out.” He runs a hand through his messy curls. “Least I thought I did. It was something Nora said, too…”
Henry laughs loud enough that it echoes off the old plaster ceiling. “I feel like we owe an unreasonable amount of our relationship to Nora.” He grins at Alex. “I mean, if I hadn’t gotten jealous of the two of you on New Years, I might never have acted on my stupid, foolish crush.” Henry’s eyes dance over Alex’s face. “...Which turned out not to be so stupid or foolish after all.”
Alex runs his hand over the magazine pictures again. “So we were both jealous?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.
Henry nods. “It would seem so.”
“It just looked so...real,” Alex says, thoughtfully, stroking his finger over one of the Henrys on the page again. “It’s so...convincing.”
“Surely you aren’t still jealous, darling?”
“Aren’t I?” Alex asks, in a horrible British accent, laughing. “Of course I’m not,” Alex insists, but his forehead is still creased. He brushes the back of his hand over Henry’s cheek. “Um––can I ask you––how did––what did she know––about you, I mean?”
Henry shakes his head and shrugs. “I believe most of them were contacted by someone on Gran’s staff and told that I needed to be seen with ‘proper young women.’ They were also reminded that it was royal tradition to have arranged dates.” Henry laughs a little. “And if I was seen with more than my fair share….well, then it was also implied that I was a ladies’ man, sowing my wild oats and all that. Poor boy who just needed to find the right woman to help him settle down.”
Henry sighs. “And honestly, I truly believed that was going to be my life one day. I’d sit there while we were chatting and think about how I would ever get through day after day after day with one of these women, pretending to feel...anything.”
Henry reaches for Alex’s hand, weaves their fingers together. “When I told you I never felt I deserved to choose, I meant that. I didn’t even believe I’d have a say in which one of these random women I would end up marrying.”
“This particular date, though,” Henry drops Alex’s hand and taps the magazine spread, “I was still fully expecting you to out me and announce that I had accosted you in the Rose Garden, so I thought I should have some well-documented evidence to the contrary.” He clears his throat. “I arranged this one myself.”
Alex’s face falls. “Fuck, baby, I’m so sorry. I hate how much you had to sneak around and pretend to be someone you weren’t.”
Henry shrugs. “Fortunately, I could play the whole ‘Prince Charming’ role.” He lowers his voice, starts speaking in that slow, mesmerizing tone that makes Alex’s mouth water. “Chivalrous, chaste, every bit the proper gentleman. I’m quite capable of having a pleasant conversation, despite early reports that I’m boring.” He raises one eyebrow at Alex.
“And I’m an excellent listener. I’ve had practice at that, listening to various government figureheads blather on about things I find completely uninteresting. So I mostly let her talk.” Henry smiles. “I took it slow. I kissed her hand.” He picks up Alex’s hand and drops a kiss on his knuckles. “Then after a while, I chastely kissed her cheek.” He touches his lips to Alex’s face, warm breath hovering over Alex’s skin so he can feel every word Henry says.
“Then, after an appropriate amount of time,” he whispers, “and when the cameras were in range, I ‘got caught’ kissing her,” he touches the corner of Alex’s mouth with two fingers, “here.”
Alex’s breathing is rapid and shallow. “Show me,” he pants.
Henry pulls back a little, a questioning look on his face.
“Show me how you kissed her,” Alex says insistently, maybe a little desperately.
“For the cameras?” Henry asks.
Alex can only nod. He’s leaning forward on the bed, eager and thirsty.
Henry folds one of Alex’s hands gently in his own, rubs his thumb over soft skin, and gives an almost imperceptible tug.
“I took her hand, and I pulled her behind the cafe, telling her it would give us a little more privacy.” Alex shivers at the way Henry pronounces privacy , and at the idea of Henry dragging him somewhere, hiding from prying eyes so they could...
“And I put one hand on her waist, gently, like this,” Henry rests his other hand on Alex’s hip and slides it up, just under the hem of Alex’s t-shirt. After a moment, he starts massaging half-circles into Alex’s warm skin.
“And then I reached out and caressed her face, held it in my hand, delicately.” Henry drops Alex’s hand, reaches up to drag a thumb across Alex’s sharp cheekbone. He leans impossibly closer, hardly any space between their lips now.
“And then I leaned in, like this.” Henry’s breath wafts over Alex’s mouth, a dark, seductive whisper. They both lick their lips at the same time, teasing tastes of each other, just out of reach. Alex’s lips are parted, eager, waiting. “And I closed my eyes.”
Alex’s own eyes fall closed, always open to Henry’s suggestions, his orders. Alex shivers again, this time nothing to do with Henry’s accent.
“And I pretended she was you.”
Henry’s lips finally, finally melt onto Alex’s. But just before his brain goes offline, Alex’s eyes fly open and he gasps. He pulls back. “Wait, what?”
Henry doesn’t answer, just rests one finger on Alex’s lips.
“I thought about you.” He stares into Alex’s eyes. “It had to be convincing, passionate, so…” Henry leans his forehead against Alex’s. “I imagined it was you I was holding, you I was,” he touches their lips together again, “kissing.”
And Alex feels… everything , so profoundly and so deeply, all at once. Feels the desperation, the loneliness Henry must’ve held onto for years. Feels the force and the passion behind the bland facade of someone who wanted nothing more than to go unnoticed. Feels Henry’s love for him wash over him in waves, drowning him in the best possible way.
Alex meets Henry’s gaze, shakes his head a little. He takes Henry’s face in both hands, firmly, with none of the gentleness and delicacy that Henry used to pretend with those women, too many times. He leans into Henry and presses him down on the bed, first with his body and then with his hands. Glossy pages wrinkle and crumple under their combined weight. And they aren’t rough, not this time, but there’s also no pretense that either of them are fragile. They explore and push and pull and whisper and laugh and beg and moan, until they’ve filled the room, again and again, with curses and praise and I love you I love you I love you.
And when Henry drops to his knees in front of Alex, words like chaste and proper are nowhere in his vocabulary. Nowhere to be found in the soft, familiar heat of his mouth, in the swipe of his tongue, in the sweet, perfect suction of his lips.
When it’s his turn, Alex nuzzles Henry’s face, then starts moving down, down, wanting, needing to mark every bit of Henry’s skin that someone else’s lips and hands touched, removing any trace, until he’s certain Henry knows that he never has to pretend again.
Alex realizes someone is whispering “mine.”
He realizes it’s him.
Later, Henry curls up on the bed next to Alex, who is splayed out in sated exhaustion. He runs his hand under the chain, picks up the key and the ring and kisses them both before dropping them back to rest on Alex’s chest.
“Yours,” he agrees.
Alex drags his fingers through Henry’s hair before letting them travel down lower, slow and teasing. His lips trail after his fingers, dropping kisses down Henry’s sternum, his stomach, until he hits a ticklish spot that makes Henry giggle.
Alex looks at him with an immensely satisfied, slightly egotistical grin, remembering what started all this. “You really thought about me?” he asks.
Henry’s smiling at him, that infuriating, clever, delicious smile that Alex used to want to punch. “Well, it wasn’t hard to imagine, love. She was about your height.”
“Fuck off,” Alex laughs. He punches Henry’s bicep, then rolls right into his arms.
********************
Nora is home alone when one of her agents knocks on her door. She opens it to find an enormous fruit basket sitting at the agent’s feet. “This has been inspected, ma’am. Would you like help getting it inside?”
“No, thanks, I’ve got it.”
Nora heaves the heavy, plastic-wrapped basket off the floor and kicks the door closed with her foot. She plops it down on her foyer table and pulls off the gilded card.
Nora,
Thank you for absolutely everything.
--All our love,
Alex and Henry
Nora shrugs, pokes her fist through the plastic, and pulls out an expensive pear.
“About damn time.”