Red, White & Royal Blue(80)

Henry comes with his face turned into Alex’s open palm, his bottom lip catching on the knob of his wrist, and Alex tries to memorize every detail down to how his lashes fan across his cheeks and the pink flush that spreads all the way up to his ears. He tells his too-fast brain: Don’t miss it this time. He’s too important.

It’s pitch-black outside when Henry’s body finally subsides, and the room is impossibly quiet, the fire gone out. Alex rolls over onto his side and touches two fingers to his chest, right next to where the key on the chain rests. His heart is beating the same as ever under his skin. He doesn’t know how that can be true.

It’s a long stretch of silence before Henry shifts in the bed beside him and rolls onto his back, pulling a sheet over them. Alex reaches for something to say, but there’s nothing.



* * *



Alex wakes up alone.

It takes a moment for everything to reorient around the fixed point in his chest where last night settled. The elaborate gilded headboard, the heavy embroidered duvet, the soft twill blanket beneath that’s the only thing in the room Henry actually chose. He slides his hand across the sheet, over to Henry’s side of the bed. It’s cool to the touch.

Kensington Palace is gray and dull in the early morning. The clock on the mantelpiece says it’s not even seven, and there’s a violent rain lashing against the big picture window, half-revealed by parted curtains.

Henry’s room has never felt much like Henry, but in the quiet of morning, he shows up in pieces. A pile of journals on the desk, the topmost splotched with ink from a pen exploding in his bag on a plane. An oversized cardigan, worn through and patched at the elbows, slung over an antique wingback chair near the window. David’s leash hanging from the doorknob.

And beside him, there’s a copy of Le Monde on the nightstand, tucked under a gigantic leather-bound volume of Wilde’s complete works. He recognizes the date: Paris. The first time they woke up next to each other.

He squeezes his eyes shut, feeling for once in his life that he should stop being so damn nosy. It’s time, he realizes, to start accepting only what Henry can give him.

The sheets smell like Henry. 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.

The doorknob turns, and Alex opens his eyes to find Henry, holding two mugs and smiling a wan, unreadable smile. He’s in soft sweats again, brushed with morning mist.

“Your hair in the mornings is truly a wonder to behold,” is how he breaks the silence. He crosses and kneels on the edge of the mattress, offering Alex a mug. It’s coffee, one sugar, cinnamon. He doesn’t want to feel anything about Henry knowing how he likes his coffee, not when he’s about to be dumped, but he does.

Except, when Henry looks at him again, watches him take the first blessed sip of coffee, the smile comes back in earnest. He reaches down and palms one of Alex’s feet through the duvet.

“Hi,” Alex says carefully, squinting over his coffee. “You seem … less pissy.”

Henry huffs a laugh. “You’re one to talk. I wasn’t the one who stormed the palace in a fit of pique to call me an ‘obtuse fucking asshole.’”

“In my defense,” Alex says, “you were an obtuse fucking asshole.”

Henry pauses, takes a sip of his tea, and places it on the nightstand. “I was,” he agrees, and he leans forward and presses his mouth to Alex’s, one hand steadying his mug so it doesn’t spill. He tastes like toothpaste and Earl Grey, and maybe Alex isn’t getting dumped after all.

“Hey,” he says when Henry pulls back. “Where were you?”

Henry doesn’t answer, and Alex watches him kick his wet sneakers onto the floor before climbing up to sit between Alex’s open legs. He places his hands on Alex’s thighs, bracketing him with his full attention, and when he looks up into Alex’s eyes, his are clear blue and focused.

“I needed a run,” he says. “To clear my head a bit, figure out … what’s next. Very Mr. Darcy brooding at Pemberley. And I ran into Philip. I hadn’t mentioned it, but he and Martha are here for the week while they’re doing renovations on Anmer Hall. He was up early for some appearance or other, eating toast. Plain toast. Have you ever seen someone eat toast without anything on it? Harrowing, truly.”

Alex chews his lip. “Where’s this going, babe?”

“We chatted for a bit. He didn’t seem to know about your … visitation … last night, thankfully. But he was on about Martha, and land holdings, and the hypothetical heirs they have to start working on, even though Philip hates children, and suddenly it was as if … as if everything you said last night came back to me. I thought, God, that’s it, isn’t it? Just following the plan. And it’s not that he’s unhappy. He’s fine. It’s all very deeply fine. A whole lifetime of fine.” He’s been pulling at a thread on the duvet, but he looks back up, squarely into Alex’s eyes, and says, “That’s not good enough for me.”

There’s a desperate stutter in Alex’s heartbeat. “It’s not?”

He reaches up and touches a thumb to Alex’s cheekbone. “I’m not … good at saying these things like you are, but. I’ve always thought … ever since I knew about me, and even before, when I could sense I was different—and, after everything the past few years, all the mad things my head does—I’ve always thought of myself as a problem that deserved to stay hidden. Never quite trusted myself, or what I wanted. Before you, I was all right letting everything happen to me. I honestly have never thought I deserved to choose.” His hand moves, fingertips brushing a curl behind Alex’s ear. “But you treat me like I do.”