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“Says Prince fucking Charming,” Alex answers, smirking.
Henry pulls a very unprincely face up at the clouds. “Hardly.”
His knuckle brushes the back of Alex’s hand at their sides, a little zip of warmth in the cold night. Alex considers his face in profile, blinking through the booze, following the smooth line of his nose and the gentle dip at the center of his lower lip, each touched by moonlight. It’s freezing and Alex is only wearing his suit jacket, but his chest feels warmed from the inside with liquor and something heady his brain keeps stumbling over, trying to name. The garden is quiet except for the blood rushing in his ears.
“You didn’t really answer my question, though,” Alex notes.
Henry groans, rubbing a hand across his face. “You can’t ever leave well enough alone, can you?” He leans his head back. It thumps gently against the trunk of the tree. “Sometimes it gets a bit… much.”
Alex keeps looking at him. Usually, there’s something about the set of Henry’s mouth that betrays a bit of friendliness, butsometimes, like right now, his mouth pinches in the corner instead, pins his guard resolutely in place.
Alex shifts, almost involuntarily, leaning back against the tree too. He nudges their shoulders together and catches that corner of Henry’s mouth twitching, sees something move featherlight across his face. These things—big events, letting other people feed on his own energy—are rarely too much for Alex. He’s not sure how Henry feels, but some part of his brain that is likely soaked in tequila thinks maybe it would be helpful if Henry could take what he can handle, and Alex could handle the rest. Maybe he can absorb some of the “much” from the place where their shoulders are pressed together.
A muscle in Henry’s jaw moves, and something soft, almost like a smile, tugs at his lips. “D’you ever wonder,” he says slowly, “what it’s like to be some anonymous person out in the world?”
Alex frowns. “What do you mean?”
“Just, you know,” Henry says. “If your mum weren’t the president and you were just a normal bloke living a normal life, what things might be like? What you’d be doing instead?”
“Ah,” Alex says, considering. He stretches one arm out in front of him, makes a dismissive gesture with a flick of his wrist. “Well, I mean, obviously I’d be a model. I’ve been on the cover ofTeen Voguetwice. These genetics transcend all circumstance.” Henry rolls his eyes again. “What about you?”
Henry shakes his head ruefully. “I’d be a writer.”
Alex gives a little laugh. He thinks he already knew this about Henry, somehow, but it’s still kind of disarming. “Can’t you do that?”
“Not exactly seen as a worthwhile pursuit for a man in linefor the throne, scribbling verses about quarter-life angst,” Henry says dryly. “Besides, the traditional family career track is military, so that’s about it, isn’t it?”
Henry bites his lip, waits a beat, and opens his mouth again. “I’d date more, probably, as well.”
Alex can’t help laughing again. “Right, because it’s so hard to get a date when you’re a prince.”
Henry cuts his eyes back down to Alex. “You’d be surprised.”
“How? You’re not exactly lacking for options.”
Henry keeps looking at him, holding his gaze for two seconds too long. “The options I’d like…” he says, dragging the words out. “They don’t quite seem to beoptionsat all.”
Alex blinks. “What?”
“I’m saying that I have… people… who interest me,” Henry says, turning his body toward Alex now, speaking with a fumbling pointedness, as if it means something. “But I shouldn’t pursue them. At least not in my position.”
Are they too drunk to communicate in English? He wonders distantly if Henry knows any Spanish.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Alex says.
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“You really don’t?”
“I really, really don’t.”
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.
Alex is frozen, registering the press of Henry’s lips and the wool cuffs of his coat grazing his jaw. The world fuzzes out into static, and his brain is swimming hard to keep up, addingup the equation of teenage grudges and wedding cakes and two a.m. texts and not understanding the variable that got him here, except it’s… well, surprisingly, he really doesn’t mind. Like, at all.
In his head, he tries to cobble a list together in a panic, gets as far as,One, Henry’s lips are soft,and short-circuits.
