“Do you mind?”
“This is your fault!”
“How is this possibly my fault?” Henry hisses.
“Nobody ever tries to shoot me when I’m doing presidential appearances, but the minute I go out with a fucking royal—”
“Will you shut up before you get us both killed?”
“Nobody’s going to kill us. Cash is blocking the door. Besides, it’s probably nothing.”
“Then at least get off me.”
“Stop telling me what to do! You’re not the prince of me!”
“Bloody hell,” Henry mutters, and he pushes hard off the ground and rolls, knocking Alex onto the floor. Alex finds himself wedged between Henry’s side and a shelf of what smells like industrial-strength floor cleaner.
“Can you move over, Your Highness?” Alex whispers, shoving his shoulder against Henry’s. “I’d rather not be the little spoon.”
“Believe me, I’m trying,” Henry replies. “There’s no room.”
Outside, there are voices, hurried footsteps—no signs of an all-clear.
“Well,” Alex says. “Guess we better make ourselves comfortable.”
Henry exhales tightly. “Fantastic.”
Alex feels him shifting against his side, arms crossed over his chest in an attempt at his typical closed-off stance while lying on the floor with his feet in a mop bucket.
“For the record,” Henry says, “nobody’s ever made an attempt on my life either.”
“Well, congratulations,” Alex says. “You’ve officially made it.”
“Yes, this is exactly how I always dreamed it would be. Locked in a cupboard with your elbow inside my rib cage,” Henry snipes. He sounds like he wants to punch Alex, which is probably the most Alex has ever liked him, so he follows an impulse and drives his elbow into Henry’s side, hard.
Henry lets out a muffled yelp, and the next thing Alex knows, he’s been yanked sideways by his shirt and Henry is halfway on top of him, pinning him down with one thigh. His head throbs where he’s clocked it against the linoleum floor, but he can feel his lips split into a smile.
“So you do have some fight in you,” Alex says. He bucks his hips, trying to shake Henry off, but he’s taller and stronger and has a fistful of Alex’s collar.
“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.”
The weirdest part, Alex thinks, is that what he said was true.
He keeps getting these little glimpses into things he never thought Henry was. A bit of a fighter, for one. Intelligent, interested in other people. It’s honestly disconcerting. He knows exactly what to say to each Democratic senator to make them dish about bills, exactly when Zahra’s running low on nicotine gum, exactly which look to give Nora for the rumor mill. Reading people is what he does.
He really doesn’t appreciate some inbred royal baby upending his system. But he did rather enjoy that fight.
He lies there, waits. Listens to the shuffling of feet outside the door. Lets minutes go by.
“So, uh,” he tries. “Star Wars?”
He means it in a nonthreatening, offhanded way, but habit wins and it comes out accusatory.
“Yes, Alex,” Henry says archly, “believe it or not, the children of the crown don’t only spend their childhood going to tea parties.”
“I assumed it was mostly posture coaching and junior polo league.”
Henry takes a deeply unhappy pause. “That … may have been part of it.”
“So you’re into pop culture, but you act like you’re not,” Alex says. “Either you’re not allowed to talk about it because it’s unseemly for the crown, or you choose not to talk about it because you want people to think you’re cultured. Which one?”
“Are you psychoanalyzing me?” Henry asks. “I don’t think royal guests are allowed to do that.”
“I’m trying to understand why you’re so committed to acting like someone you’re not, considering you just told that little girl in there that greatness means being true to yourself.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and if I did, I’m not sure that’s any of your concern,” Henry says, his voice strained at the edges.
“Really? Because I’m pretty sure I’m legally bound to pretend to be your best friend, and I don’t know if you’ve thought this through yet, but that’s not going to stop with this weekend,” Alex tells him. Henry’s fingers go tense against his forearm. “If we do this and we’re never seen together again, people are gonna know we’re full of shit. 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.”
“Why don’t we start…” Henry says, turning his head to squint at him. This close Alex can just make out the silhouette of Henry’s strong royal nose. “… with you telling me why exactly you hate me so much?”
“Do you really want to have that conversation?”
“Maybe I do.”
Alex crosses his arms, recognizes it as a mirror to Henry’s tic, and uncrosses them.
“Do you really not remember being a prick to me at the Olympics?”
Alex remembers it in vivid detail: himself at eighteen, dispatched to Rio with June and Nora, the campaign’s delegation to the summer games, one weekend of photo ops and selling the “next generation of global cooperation” image. Alex spent most of it drinking caipirinhas and subsequently throwing caipirinhas up behind Olympic venues. And he remembers, down to the Union Jack on Henry’s anorak, the first time they met.
Henry sighs. “Is that the time you threatened to push me into the Thames?”
“No,” Alex says. “It was the time you were a condescending prick at the diving finals. You really don’t remember?”
“Remind me?”
Alex glares. “I walked up to you to introduce myself, and you stared at me like I was the most offensive thing you had ever seen. Right after you shook my hand, you turned to Shaan and said, ‘Can you get rid of him?’”
A pause.
“Ah,” Henry says. He clears his throat. “I didn’t realize you’d heard that.”
“I feel like you’re missing the point,” Alex says, “which is that it’s a douchey thing to say either way.”
“That’s … fair.”
“Yeah, so.”
“That’s all?” Henry asks. “Only the Olympics?”
“I mean, that was the start.”
Henry pauses again. “I’m sensing an ellipsis.”
“It’s just…” Alex says, and as he’s on the floor of a supply closet, waiting out a security threat with a Prince of England at the end of a weekend that has felt like some very specific ongoing nightmare, censoring himself takes too much effort. “I don’t know. Doing what we do is fucking hard. But it’s harder for me. I’m the son of the first female president. And I’m not white like she is, can’t even pass for it. People will always come down harder on me. And you’re, you know, you, and you were born into all of this, and everyone thinks you’re Prince fucking Charming. You’re basically a living reminder I’ll always be compared to someone else, no matter what I do, even if I work twice as hard.”
Henry is quiet for a long while.
“Well,” Henry says when he speaks at last. “I can’t very well do much about the rest. But I can tell you I was, in fact, a prick that day. Not that it’s any excuse, but my father had died fourteen months before, and I was still kind of a prick every day of my life at the time. And I am sorry.”
Henry twitches one hand at his side, and Alex falls momentarily silent.
The cancer ward. Of course, Henry chose a cancer ward—it was right there on the fact sheet. Father: Famed film star Ar
thur Fox, deceased 2015, pancreatic cancer. The funeral was televised. He goes back over the last twenty-four hours in his head: the sleeplessness, the pills, the tense little grimace Henry does in public that Alex has always read as aloofness.
He knows a few things about this stuff. It’s not like his parents’ divorce was a pleasant time for him, or like he runs himself ragged about grades for fun. He’s been aware for too long that most people don’t navigate thoughts of whether they’ll ever be good enough or if they’re disappointing the entire world. He’s never considered Henry might feel any of the same things.
Henry clears his throat again, and something like panic catches Alex. He opens his mouth and says, “Well, good to know you’re not perfect.”
He can almost hear Henry roll his eyes, and he’s thankful for it, the familiar comfort of antagonism.
They’re silent again, the dust of the conversation settling. Alex can’t hear anything outside the door or any sirens on the street, but nobody has come to get them yet.
Then, unprompted, Henry says into the stretching stillness, “Return of the Jedi.”
A beat. “What?”
“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.”
Henry huffs out the tiniest, most poshly indignant puff of air. It smells minty. Alex resists the urge to throw another elbow. “How can I be wrong about my own favorite? It’s a personal truth.”
“It’s a personal truth that is wrong and bad.”
“Which do you prefer, then? Please show me the error of my ways.”
“Okay, Empire.”
Henry sniffs. “So dark, though.”
“Yeah, which is what makes it good,” Alex says. “It’s the most thematically complex. It’s got the Han and Leia kiss in it, you meet Yoda, Han is at the top of his game, fucking Lando Calrissian, and the best twist in cinematic history. What does Jedi have? Fuckin’ Ewoks.”
“Ewoks are iconic.”
“Ewoks are stupid.”
“But Endor.”
“But Hoth. There’s a reason people always call the best, grittiest installment of a trilogy the Empire of the series.”
“And I can appreciate that. But isn’t there something to be valued in a happy ending as well?”
“Spoken like a true Prince Charming.”
“I’m only saying, I like the resolution of Jedi. It ties everything up nicely. And the overall theme you’re intended to take away from the films is hope and love and … er, you know, all that. Which is what Jedi leaves you with a sense of most of all.”
Henry coughs, and Alex is turning to look at him again when the door opens and Cash’s giant silhouette reappears.
“False alarm,” he says, breathing heavily. “Some dumbass kids brought fireworks for their friend.” He looks down at them, flat on their backs and blinking up in the sudden, harsh light of the hallway. “This looks cozy.”
“Yep, we’re really bonding,” Alex says. He reaches a hand out and lets Cash haul him to his feet.
* * *
Outside Kensington Palace, Alex takes Henry’s phone out of his hand and swiftly opens a blank contact page before he can protest or sic a PPO on him for violating royal property. The car is waiting to take him back to the royals’ private airstrip.
“Here,” Alex says. “That’s my number. If we’re gonna keep this up, it’s going to get annoying to keep going through handlers. Just text me. We’ll figure it out.”
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.
THREE
FROM AMERICA, WITH LOVE: Henry and Alex Flaunt Friendship
NEW BROMANCE ALERT? Pics of FSOTUS and Prince Henry
PHOTOS: Alex’s Weekend in London
For the first time in a week, Alex isn’t pissed off scrolling through his Google alerts. It helps they’ve given People an exclusive—a few generic quotes about how much Alex “cherishes” his friendship with Henry and their “shared life experience” as sons of world leaders. Alex thinks their main shared life experience is probably wishing they could set that quote adrift on the ocean between them and watch it drown.
His mother doesn’t want him fake-dead anymore, though, and he’s stopped getting a thousand vitriolic tweets an hour, so he counts it as a win.
He dodges a starstruck freshman gawking at him and exits the hall onto the east side of campus, draining the last cold sip of his coffee. First class today was an elective he’s taking out of a combination of morbid fascination and academic curiosity: The Press and the Presidency. He’s currently jet-lagged to all hell from trying to keep the press from ruining the presidency, and the irony isn’t lost on him.
Today’s lecture was on presidential sex scandals through history, and he texts Nora: numbers on one of us getting involved in a sex scandal before the end of second term?
Her response comes within seconds: 94% probability of your dick becoming a recurring personality on face the nation. btw, have you seen this?
There’s a link attached: a blog post full of images, animated GIFs of himself and Henry on This Morning. The fist bump. Shared smiles that pass for genuine. Conspiratorial glances. Underneath are hundreds of comments about how handsome they are, how nice they look together.
omfg, one commenter writes, make out already.
Alex laughs so hard he almost falls in a fountain.
* * *
As usual, the day guard at the Dirksen Building glares at him as he slides through security. She’s certain he was the one who vandalized the sign outside one particular senator’s office to read BITCH MCCONNELL, but she’ll never prove it.
Cash tags along for some of Alex’s Senate recon missions so nobody panics when he disappears for a few hours. Today, Cash hangs back on a bench, catching up on his podcasts. He’s always been the most indulgent of Alex’s antics.
Alex has had the layout of the building memorized since his dad first got elected to the Senate. It’s where he’s picked up his encyclopedic knowledge of policy and procedure, and where he spends more afternoons than he’s supposed to, charming aides and trawling for gossip. His mom pretends to be annoyed but slyly asks for intel later.
Since Senator Oscar Diaz is in California speaking at a rally for gun control today, Alex punches the button for the fifth floor instead.
His favorite senator is Rafael Luna, an Independent from Colorado and the newest kid on the block at only thirty-nine. Alex’s dad took him under his wing back when he was merely a promising attorney, and now he’s the darling of national politics for (A) winning a special election and a general in consecutive upsets for his Senate seat, and (B) dominating The Hill’s 50 Most Beautiful.
Alex spent summer 2018 in Denver on Luna’s campaign, so they have their own dysfunctional relationship built on tropical-flavored Skittles from gas stations and all-nighters drafting press releases. He sometimes feels the ghost of carpal tunnel creeping back, a fond ache.
He finds Luna in his office, horn-rimmed reading glasses doing nothing to detract from his usual appearance of a movie star who tripped and fell sideways into politics. Alex has always suspected the soulful brown eyes and perfectly groomed stubble and dramatic cheekbones won back any votes Luna lost by being both Latino and openly gay.
The album playing low in the room is an old favorite Alex remembers from Denver: Muddy Waters. When Luna looks up and sees Alex in his doorway, he drops his pen on a haphazard pile of papers and leans back in his chair.
“Fuck you doing here, kid?” he says, watching him like a cat.
Alex reaches into his pocket and pulls out a packet of Skittles, and Luna’s face immediately softens into a smile.
“Atta boy,” he says, scooping the bag up as soon as Alex drops it on h
is blotter. He kicks the chair in front of the desk out for him.
Alex sits, watching Luna rip open the packet with his teeth. “Whatcha working on today?”
“You already know more than you’re supposed to about everything on this desk.” Alex does know—the same health care reform as last year, the one stalled out since they lost the Senate in midterms. “Why are you really here?”
“Hmm.” Alex hooks a leg over one armrest of the chair. “I resent the idea I can’t come visit a dear family friend without ulterior motives.”
“Bullshit.”
He clutches his chest. “You wound me.”
“You exhaust me.”
“I enchant you.”
“I’ll call security.”
“Fair enough.”
“Instead, let’s talk about your little European vacation,” Luna says. He fixes Alex with shrewd eyes. “Can I expect a joint Christmas present from you and the prince this year?”
“Actually,” Alex swerves, “since I’m here, I do have a question for you.”
Luna laughs, leaning back and lacing his hands together behind his head. Alex feels his face flash hot for half a second, a zip of good-banter adrenaline that means he’s getting somewhere. “Of course you do.”
“I wondered if you had heard anything about Connor,” Alex asks. “We could really use an endorsement from another Independent senator. Do you think he’s close to making one?”
He kicks his foot innocently where it’s dangling over the armrest, like he’s asking something as innocuous as the weather. Stanley Connor, Delaware’s kooky and beloved old Independent with a social media team stacked with millennials, would be a big get down the line in a race projected to be this close, and they both know it.
Luna sucks on a Skittle. “Are you asking if he’s close to endorsing, or if I know what strings need to be pulled to get him to endorse?”
“Raf. Pal. Buddy. You know I’d never ask you anything so unseemly.”
Luna sighs, swivels in his chair. “He’s a free agent. Social issues would push him your way usually, but you know how he feels about your mom’s economic platform. You probably know his voting record better than I do, kid. He doesn’t fall on one side of the aisle. He might go for something radically different on taxes.”
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