Archive of Our Own

Henry hates flying back to London. It’s not visiting his home country that sours his mood. On the contrary, something tight unravels in his chest every time he sees the lights of the Eye shining like stars against the night sky. It’s the work; back-to-back meetings, photo shoots, and greeting lines with no chance to catch his breath or grab something to eat. He swears he’s busier than any other royal family member, despite being gone most of the calendar year.

“It’s because they actually like you,” Bea offers in the car ride back to the air base. Henry glances over from where he’s nearly fallen asleep against the window. “That’s why you hardly get to rest your feet when you’re here. Everyone thinks it’ll be the last time they see you.”

Henry is exhausted, but he reaches across the backseat anyways to grab Bea’s hand. “It won’t be,” he promises. His sister smiles, tangling their fingers together in a way they haven’t since they were young. “I’ll come back soon, no appearances, just us, alright?”

Bea nods, although Henry can see in her eyes that she doesn’t believe it. If he’s in London, he has to work. She doesn’t call him on it, which is a kindness he doesn’t deserve but loves her dearly for. “Have a safe flight, give Alex my love.”

He leans over to kiss Bea’s cheek, and that’s of course when his back spasms. He doesn’t make a sound because he’s been trained not to, but in an instant the column of his spine rebels against him. He barely brushes his mouth against Bea’s cheek before straightening, a smile plastering his face. Bea’s mouth tightens to a frown, but before she can ask, the back door opens. Henry squeezes her hand a final time and steps out of the car.

It nearly takes him to his knees when he stands straight. Pain radiates out from the space between his shoulders, the muscles tensing against his will. He stiffly walks up the stairs to the private plane he chartered for the trip, glad for once that someone insists on grabbing his suitcase. His laptop bag is like a stone weighing on his shoulder. He makes his way over to his seat and collapses into it.

Shaan takes the seat across from him with a raised brow. “Alright, your royal highness?”

“Perfectly fine, Shaan,” Henry answers. Shaan doesn’t buy it, his dark eyebrows pinched together. Henry relents a little. “Just tired. Haven’t had a moment to myself all week.”

Shaan hums and something smooths in his face. “Well, you can rest up now, nothing to do for the next few hours.”

Henry grimaces. His back was in tatters, and he couldn’t lie down for hours. He couldn’t even change out of his suit since he’d gone straight from an appearance with Bea to the airstrip. He wanted to be in bed at the brownstone with Alex, his own personal furnace, pressed up against his rotten spine.

“Are you sure you’re alright, Henry?”

Shaan using his given name snaps Henry out of his self-pitying spiral like a shot. Against his will, Henry’s spine straightens. He can hear Phillip hissing stop acting like a child in his ear. It’s just pain. Master it.

“I’m fine,” he says as cheerily as he can muster it. He folds himself properly into his seat, despite the bolt of agony that lances from the tops of his shoulders to the bottoms of his feet. He takes out his phone to let Alex know he’ll be home before bed. Alex replies almost instantly with a string of love hearts, which warms Henry enough to sit quietly for the next eight hours.

Barely.

—

By the time they land in New York, Henry thinks he might vomit on the tarmac. He doesn’t, but it’s a near thing. Sitting feels like someone wreathed his spine in barbed wire. Standing cinches the wire even tighter. He manages the few steps between the plane and the dark car that will take him home, nearly buckling when his shoulders touch the stiff leather seats.

“Should we stop for food-“

“That’s fine, no need,” Henry says, wincing when Shaan glances over. He never cuts the man off if he can help it. “Sorry. Excited to get home. I can eat there.”

Shaan looks him up and down. “Your royal highness,” he says, and from the line of his mouth Henry can tell he’s weighing each word carefully. “If something is wrong you can tell me.”

“I know, Shaan,” Henry says, deflating against the seats. They’re uncomfortable on a good day, and now they make him want to curl up and tear his spine out. “Honest, I’m just worn out from the trip. I don’t sleep well at Kensington, I’ve barely had time to eat, and I think Phillip was considering pushing me down every set of stairs we passed. I just need rest.”

The admission settles Shaan, at least a little. He nods to their driver and they start towards the brownstone. “You should take better care of yourself on these visits,” Shaan says after a few minutes. Henry opens an eye he didn’t realize he’d closed to look over. “They run you ragged.”

Shaan doesn’t know about Henry’s traitorous body. Almost no one does. He told Phillip first. It was a tremendously stupid idea he can only excuse by the fact that he was thirteen at the time. He thought his brother might help him talk to their parents. He didn’t know how to articulate it feels like there are hands closing around my spine and twisting or sometimes my legs hurt so bad that walking feels like I’ve got glass buried in my feet. He trusted his brother, and even more than that he wanted the desultory and relentless agony to go away.

Phillip didn’t tell their parents. He told their grandfather.

The next year was a nightmare he received no respite from in the waking world. He was taught to stand straight, even when the pain threatened to bowl him over. His grandfather would measure the bend of his spine with his cane, forcing Henry’s back against the wood until they were even. If he dared to limp, he was made to kneel on rice for hours to give him something real to moan about. His knuckles were beaten with a ruler if he complained about stiffness in his fingers. He wasn’t allowed days to rest when he could hardly stand. He played piano and rode horses and smiled even when he had to blink spots from his vision and race off to bathrooms to hide his vomiting.

Shame sealed his lips any time his parents asked why he seemed so exhausted after being in Buckingham all day. He lost whatever childhood he’d had, became a shell of himself hollowed by agony, and kept empty by lack of sympathy. He wanted to tell his parents more than anything, wanted them to hold him and soothe his hurts and just make it stop. Some stubborn vestige of the child he once was begged Henry to tell his parents so they could make it go away.

Then his father came home from the hospital with the words pancreatic cancer in his mouth and Henry realized they’d never make it stop.

He stopped resisting his grandfather’s painful lessons. He stood straight and walked properly , all the while learning the perfect balance of digging his nails into his palms hard enough to hurt but not bleed.

“They always have,” he tells Shaan, smoothing his thumb over the crescent-shaped scars he left behind by years of slow erosion. “I’ll live.”

—

Alex pulls him through the front door, almost leaving his bags in his hurry to bundle Henry inside. Henry would have let him. When Alex wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him in, something in Henry’s chest unfolds. His back still sings with aching, but he doesn’t bother standing straight. He slumps into Alex’s hold, face buried in the other man’s neck. Alex is warm and sturdy and smells like coffee and old books and home. Being in Alex’s arms feels like the way life did before the hurt came.

“Woah there big guy, you okay?” Alex leans back, and Henry could cry. He feels like he can’t stand at all, much less perfectly straight and proper. Alex raises the back of his hand to rest on Henry’s forehead. His hand is so gloriously cold. Henry has to shut his eyes to keep from sobbing on the doorstop like a child. “You’re a little warm. You feeling okay?”

That child Henry was rears his head again, and he wants to tell Alex everything. He wants to tell Alex about the pain that comes without warning and leaves him unmoored. About his grandfather’s cruel methods of correcting his weakness. About Phillip’s stinging words that still haunt him. He wants to scream because it hurts, because it always hurts. He goes as far as opening his mouth before he looks up and the words die in his throat.

Alex is beautiful. He’s always beautiful, but even in the low light of the hall Henry can see the stressed lines around his mouth and eyes. Midterms are coming up, and Alex is studying day and night to stay ahead of his coursework. He’s wearing one of Henry’s jumpers, and it’s rumpled enough that Henry can tell he’s been wearing it for a few days. The circles under his eyes are dark shadows against his usually warm skin, made pale by stress and overwork.

Henry can’t speak. He knows Alex would worry, would set everything aside to get to the bottom of Henry’s pain, all the while spiraling with stress about his finals and Henry’s illness and a million other worries. They’ve just settled into the brownstone together, and Henry is going to ruin it. When he was still young and desperate for someone to take his pain seriously, he asked Phillip why he told their grandfather instead of their parents. If he had some scrap of self-esteem then, it was shredded by Phillip’s sneer. You just want someone to coddle you, Phillip told him. You’re not hurting, you’re weak.

“I’m just tired, love,” he says, and he pulls up a smile, as weak as it must be. Alex’s hand stays on his forehead, the other going to cup Henry’s cheek. “I missed you.”

Alex laughs, a soft little sound that curls up in Henry’s chest and warms him entirely. “I missed you too,” he admits. He nods back at the stairs. “How about I run a bath?”

Henry would rather curl up under the furnace and sleep for a year, but a warm bath is a close second. He grabs Alex’s hand, needing the support. “Only if that’s for both of us.”

Alex’s smile is worth the agony of the stairs. It’s worth the whole world.

Two

Henry could handle the pain if that was all. He’s got enough good days sprinkled among the bad that he can cope, even if Alex has started to ask if he’s alright more than Henry’s used to . He’s able to work, even if he’s skipping lunches just to nap on the couch in his office. He spends his evenings with Alex helping him review while trying to find a position on the couch that doesn’t make his hips ache so bad he can’t see straight. That’s manageable, no matter what his therapist says about coping with unnecessary stressors to his own detriment.

When he wakes up Friday morning with a ringing in his ears and a purple haze in his vision, he wants to start screaming. He doesn’t have time for a migraine, he has a million things to do at the foundation for an event they’re hosting in a few days. Pez just got back from Edinburgh last night, so he won’t be in until after lunch. It’s not enough time; they need to get the florist, catering, and seating chart finalized by the end of the day. He curls up against his pillow and buries his face in the cover, trying to will the aura into submission. Already, his temples are starting to throb. The muscles in his neck feel taught as a rope. He has thirty minutes, at best, before he won’t be able to function. None of the painkillers they have on hand even touch the pain. He can’t-

“Hey baby, what’s wrong?” Alex’s warm hand settles over the back of his neck. Henry buries his face further into the pillow to hide the hot flush of shame that settles over his face. “Woah, that’s a lot of tension. Are you feeling okay, Hen?”

Henry desperately wants to tell Alex he’s got a migraine. He’d beg Alex to stay home and hold him, even if that’s more weakness than he can stand. Alex wouldn’t take much convincing. Henry’s sat with Alex through panic attacks and night terrors. He’s been happy to just be there and hold the love of his life even when he couldn’t do anything to help. Alex would do the same in a heartbeat. He would-

Alex’s alarm goes off. He swears and leans over to turn it off, warm hand leaving Henry’s shoulder. “I’ve got a final in an hour, Hen, can you tell me what’s going on?”

Right. Alex’s last final of the semester. He can’t miss it, even if Henry feels like his skull is going to crack open. He turns to face Alex, and even the light from Alex’s phone is bright enough to fill his vision with spots. “I’m okay, just thinking about what I need to do today,” he tells Alex. The other man doesn’t look convinced, squinting in the low light. “Pez is out, and the florist hates me. Literally despises me, Alex, I don’t understand how a person who grows flowers can be that spiteful.”

Alex smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He reaches over and smoothes a hand across Henry’s eyebrows. Henry didn’t realize they were furrowed , but once he relaxes them he gets a minute wave of relief from the building pain in his head. It’s short-lived, but it buoys him. He can make it through the morning and hand the work off to Pez when he gets in. Alex will be done with his final by then, so Henry can come home and get the comfort he’s desperate for. He’ll be fine. He’s got a plan.

“Okay,” Alex relents, leaning over to press a kiss to Henry’s temple. Henry leans into the touch. “I’m going to get ready. I can make you tea?”

On a good day, Alex’s tea makes him a little nauseous. He loves the other man to death, but he’s heavy-handed with the milk and sugar and too impatient to let the tea fully steep. When his stomach is rolling and he can see purple outlines around everything, the thought of drinking anything makes him feel like someone is trying to pull his stomach out through his nose.

“I’m going to grab breakfast on the way in,” Henry says, forcing himself to sit up. His stomach rolls, but Henry disguises his clenched teeth with a smile. “Annabelle showed me a new cafe that has proper tea.”

Alex laughs. He sits up and slings an arm around Henry’s waist, pressing his chest to Henry’s back. Alex hums and his warmth is a balm on Henry’s aching muscles. “What if we just stayed in bed all day?”

Don’t tempt me Henry thinks, reaching down to rest a hand on Alex’s. “You’ve got a final,” he reminds the man, leaning into Alex’s weight. “And I’ve got a wicked florist to deal with.”

Alex grumbles, mouth pressed to Henry’s neck. He presses a kiss to Henry’s pulse point, slow and lingering. It melts into another open-mouth kiss further up the side of his neck. Henry lets out a slow breath, head tipping to the side to give Alex more room to work. They’re still too public to leave obvious hickies, but they wear high-necked clothing. Alex sucks a bruise into the junction between Henry’s throat and shoulder, and for a moment, Henry thinks fuck it, I want him.

He turns to kiss Alex proper, but the movement rocks his brain in his skull. Instantly , he shifts from pre-migraine to fully realized agony, a lightning strike from one temple to the other. The world tilts beneath him, rocking like a ship in turbulent waters. He hides what must be a horrified expression by shoving his face into Alex’s neck. “We have to go,” he says, whines, begs. He doesn’t have the willpower to tell Alex to leave, even though he knows Alex needs to go take his test.

“I know,” Alex says, and he runs a hand down Henry’s spine. Henry nearly flinches from the touch; he doesn’t know how Alex ever touches him without feeling how broken he is. “I’ll be back after my final. You should take the afternoon off.”

Henry is a weak man. By lunch, he’ll be sick and exhausted, barely useful to the team. If Pez sees him, he’ll send him home with a stern word to tell Alex you’re hurting, ironic because even he doesn’t know the scope of Henry’s pain. As much as he wants to call off work for an amorous afternoon with his lover, it’s probably going to look more like Alex holding his hair back while throwing up for a few hours. The height of romance.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Henry says, leaning his head into Alex’s shoulder. “Good luck on your final.”

Alex hugs him tightly. “I’ll make you proud,” he promises.

Henry squeezes him back, hoping to take some of Alex’s strength with him. “You always do.”

__

By lunch, Henry’s thrown up three times, which is on par with how things go when he tries to push through a migraine. He’s managed to wrangle the florist and get the catering sorted, so he just needs to finish the seating plan. The place cards have been ordered, so it’s technically something that can wait. Pez has a better eye for seating charts regardless. Henry is still desperately undersocialized and struggles to remember the network of shallow alliances their partners keep.

The idea of trying to recall if Amanda Yates can or can’t sit next to Parker Donovan gets him to concede he can’t keep going. He types up notes on everything he did that day and waits in his office for Pez to appear. He’s not sleeping. His rolling stomach and throbbing head don’t allow him to get any meaningful rest, but laying on the couch with the lights off is the only relief he gets.

Pez appears sometime after noon with a loud whoop of delight that quickly goes quiet when he sees Henry face down on his couch. He shuts the door softly and walks over, dropping to sit on the floor by Henry’s head. “Hen,” he starts in a low voice, reaching up to lay a hand on the back of Henry’s neck. Henry turns to him, squinting in the dark. Pez sucks a breath in between his teeth. “You look rotten.”

Henry groans, shutting his eyes and digging the palms of his hands into them. “Feel rotten,” he agrees, although he’s not sure any of the sounds he made were actually words. His brain feels like he dropped it in a vice, and moving anything above his hips is excruciating beyond words.

“That’s it, I’m taking you straight home,” Pez says, standing up. Henry can’t open his eyes, but Pez is undeterred. He bundles Henry up and manages to somehow drag him out of the office and into the parking lot before Henry gives up on his pride and throws up in the bushes. It’s just stomach bile, since he hasn’t anything to eat all day, even the proper tea he stopped to get out of guilt. Pez is a good mate, holding him up and not commenting through it. When they get to his car, Pez slides a pair of sunglasses on Henry’s face and does his seatbelt for him. Henry will never stop being grateful to the man.

“Does Alex know you have a migraine?” Pez asks after a few moments of blessed silence. Henry groans into his hands. “I’ll take that as a no. What’s he doing today?”

“Taking a final,” Henry manages. “Don’t call him.”

“Mate,” Pez starts. Henry waves him off, earning a sigh from the other man. “He’s not going to be happy when he finds out you tried to work through a migraine, Hen.”

“I know,” Henry moans. “I just … didn’t want to worry him before his test.”

Pez was quiet for a long time after, and Henry dozed off against the far door. He shoots awake when Pez opens his car door, nearly falling out onto the sidewalk. Pez catches him, and Henry’s in such exquisite agony that he loses time between the sidewalk and Pez dropping him in bed.

Pez disappears for a few minutes, and Henry gets to appreciate the darkness of their bedroom properly. He never wants to leave their bed again, pressing his face into his pillow and grabbing Alex’s to hold to his chest. When Pez returns, he kicks off his shoes and climbs into bed next to Henry. He presses a cool washcloth to the back of Henry’s neck, which might b the kindest thing anyone has ever done to him. “You’re okay, Hen.”

It’s weak and ugly and worst of all cowardly, but Henry can’t help it. He’s in so much pain that he can’t hold back the deeply, achingly lonely part of him. He presses his forehead into Pez’s thigh, eyes screwed shut. “Please don’t leave.”

“I’m staying,” Pez promises, his hand burying itself in Henry’s sweat-damp hair. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

Every other migraine he’s had has been a lonely, painful experience. If Phillip or his grandfather caught wind of his migraines, he’d be forced to grin and bare it. If he couldn’t white-knuckle his way through it, he’d be locked in his room to deal with it by himself. Henry can’t imagine doing that right now, he thinks that would be the last spike in his frozen heart that takes him down for good. He grips the leg of Pez’s trousers, hot tears springing to his eyes. He hears a soft oh, mate above him. Pez holds him close, and Henry falls asleep in the man’s lap.

—

“Baby,” Alex whispers. Henry peels his eyes open, blinking against the dimmed light from the bedside lamp. He looks up and sees Alex’s concerned face, his dark eyebrows pinched together.

“‘lex,” Henry mumbles, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth with how dry it is. Alex gets an arm under Henry’s shoulders and helps him sit up. Alex presses a glass to Henry’s mouth and helps him drink some ice water. It’s heaven for his overheated head, and the return of a damp wash cloth to his neck is rapturous. Alex chuckles, a rumbling sound against Henry’s ear that’s weirdly comforting. He presses his face into Alex’s chest.

“Thanks for staying with him, Pez,” Henry says over Henry’s head.

“No worries, man. Tell him if he calls me tomorrow I’m locking him out of the office.”

Alex laughs, another rumbling soft sound. Henry’s brain still throbs intermittently, but he’s past the worst of it. Alex picks up where Pez left off, running a hand through Henry’s damp hair. “Hey baby,” Alex says, running a hand down Henry’s back. “How are you feeling?” Henry wraps an arm around Alex’s waist, holding him closer. “Hey, I’m not going anywhere, okay?”

Henry wants to believe it. He pushes his face further into Alex’s chest, hiding his face. Alex takes a breath like he’s going to say something, but Henry squeezes his waist again. Alex sighs, but settles in, holding Henry close. “Go back to sleep, baby,” he says, pressing a kiss to the top of Henry’s head. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Henry’s out before Alex can even finish his sentence.

Three

They take a trip at the end of June. Alex needs a break after his first year of law school and Pez says he’s going to lock Henry out of the office if he doesn’t take some time . They spend two weeks in the Maldives, finally fulfilling their runaway fantasies. They sleep until noon and drink sweet fruity cocktails on the white sand beaches. Their cabin is right on the white sand beaches, far enough from any other vacationers that they can take moonlit walks and dance under the stars together. They don’t look at their phones for the entire two weeks, no emails or texts or headlines.

Henry feels himself start to relax for what might be the first time in his entire life.

They plan to spend a third week in Texas to ease them back into dealing with people. Pez and Nora are going to meet them at the lake house. Henry’s looking forward to seeing them outside of the stress of D.C. He’s excited up until the moment they land at the airstrip outside of Austin and sees Pez waiting on the tarmac with a grim expression.

The pictures aren’t terrible, compared to the leaked emails, but they’re still a lot. Henry’s had pictures strategically leaked, usually of himself and a beautiful woman he was completely uninterested in wearing appropriately modest swimwear. He brought less modest clothing with him to the Maldives, and the photos aren’t the choreographed glamour shots Buckingham carefully planned.

It’s him in Alex’s lap on a chaise longue on the beach, an obvious hickey on his throat, and one of Alex’s hands in Henry’s swim trunks.

Henry goes straight to their room at the lake house. Alex finds him curled up under the duvet like a cocoon. He knows their lives are up for dissection, that anything they do might as well be done in Westminster for how visible they are, but he thought they could keep some things to themselves. They brought as few members of the Secret Service as they could get away with, booked a private cabin as far from the rest as possible, and barely left the safety of the patio during the daylight hours. They were careful.

His phone is on the bed in front of him. He has half a dozen missed calls from his brother and grandfather each, and twice as many texts. Alex wordlessly takes his phone and turns it off, setting it on the nightstand. He crawls into bed and pulls Henry close to his chest, cocoon and all.

The next morning, Henry’s legs don’t want to work.

It’s the most inconvenient of his pains. When his back hurts, he can lie down. He’s not expected to carry heavy things, so his shoulders and wrists are usually fine. Since he started doing some exercises Pez showed him when he thought Henry’s hands hurt from writing proposals his hands haven’t bothered him as much. When his hips and knees lock, there’s nothing he can do but sit and try to ignore it. There’s no way to sit that won’t hurt his hips, and his knees refuse to find a comfortable position. He’s miserable through breakfast, picking at his food. Nora keeps shooting concerned looks at him and Alex. Pez doesn’t bother hiding it either.

“Henry,” Pez starts, but Henry stands and walks out of the house without listening. His legs are killing him, darkening his already darkened mood. He stumbles down the path towards the lake, fighting to keep his even, practiced gait even when his ankles roll on every loose rock on the path.

"Baby.”

“What?” Henry snaps, turning sharply. It’s a bad move – the moment he whips around, his knee buckles and he falls, sliding off the rocky path and landing hard in the grass. He swears, his ankle throbbing beneath him, and Alex scrambles over. Henry’s eyes burn, hot tears stinging under Alex’s shadow. He drops to his knees, uncaring about the rocks beneath him, and reaches out to Henry. “I’m fine-”

"You’re bleeding,” Alex says, shaking his head. “Let me see.”

Unbending his knee feels like tearing his leg off with his bare hands. His hip throbs, his knee wobbles, and the torn skin on his shin stings. He can’t tell if the pain in his ankle is from the fall or if he woke up with it. Either way, he’s certain he won’t be walking back to the house. He wants to scream, to make his pain loud and big and impossible to ignore. He wants to scrub the world of every image of him and show them this, the ugly thing too terrible for them to see. He wants them to see the way he was trained to ignore his pain and smile even when something was being torn out of him.

“I hate them,” Henry says, and he means the people that leaked the photo, and he means his family, and he means the world. Tears cut paths down his cheeks, and he doesn’t scrub them away. He wants the ugly truth out there. “I hate them so much.”

“I know,” Alex says, and when Henry looks up, Alex’s eyes reflect back that hopeless anger. Alex, his dark hair loose from his usual styling routine, looks beaten down. He looks the way he did when their emails were splashed on every news site on the planet. “I hate them too.”

“My grandfather wants me back in London,” Henry says. His hands clench into fists in the dirt. His palms sting, scrapped raw from trying to catch himself. “He says I’ve embarrassed him, that I looked like a-”

“Don’t,” Alex says, and Henry’s teeth click shut. Alex reaches out and cups Henry’s face. “You don’t have to go. Fuck him, you’re on vacation.”

Henry laughs, a sound startled out of him. His leg throbs, and it must show in his face, because Alex returns to looking at it. He grimaces. “I don’t think it needs stitches, but we’re going to have to clean it before I know for sure. How’s your ankle?”

Henry can’t say it feels like something inside my bones is trying to break its way out, so he just shakes his head. “It’s not great,” he allows. Alex frowns, nodding for Henry to continue. “I can’t tell if it’s just twisted or not, but I don’t think I can walk back.”

Alex nods with a deep sigh. “Okay, that’s fine. I’ve got you.”

Henry opens his mouth to ask what Alex means, but he’s shocked to silence when Alex gets both arms under him and lifts Henry like he weighs nothing. His face heats, and he scrambles to get a grip on Alex’s shirt. “Alex, what-”

“You’ve lost weight,” Alex comments, eyebrows furrowed. Henry blinks. He supposes he has, considering he’s spent most of the last few months too tired or busy or hurt to eat. He didn’t think it would have such an obvious effect, though. Alex isn't even straining to hold him up. “I know this isn’t a great time to be asking, considering the all of it, but seriously Hen, are you okay?”

Henry should tell him. At this point, he’s a liability. He’s never fallen so hard because of his afflicting pain, but he might have actually hurt himself in a way that’s beyond sore joints. Dinner in the Maldives was the first time he finished a meal in months. He’s exhausted from hiding it, from smiling when it hurts, from walking around like he’s not burning from the inside out.

Pez comes tearing down the path, a thunderous expression on his face. He’s got a phone held to his ear, and Henry’s a little shocked to see one of the Royalty and Specialist Protection guards following on Pez’s heels. She’s tall, her hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. Henry can’t see her eyes through her thick glasses, but he can feel them on him.

“You’re being summoned,” Pez declares when he’s in earshot. Henry realizes, belatedly, that Pez isn’t coming after him, he’s trying to outrun the agent. Henry pales. The situation just went from bad to worse. “The king wants you back in London immediately.”

“Tell the king he has to wait,” Alex says, shifting Henry slightly in his arms. Henry moves his grip to hold himself up better, arms behind Alex’s neck. “Henry needs a hospital.”

The agent opens her mouth, but Pez lets out a loud, shocked exclamation. “You’re bleeding, Hen, shit!” He turns to the agent, holding the phone away from his ear. He points his phone at Alex and Henry instead, snapping a loud picture, flashing going off. “If you try and bundle him off to a plane right now I’m tweeting this out. #HenryWasKidnapped, you royalist scum.”

Henry spares a hand to bury his face in it. “Thank you, Pez, that’ll be all.”

“Come on Alex, I’ll drive!”

Alex stares at the agent, eyes harder than Henry’s ever seen them. Henry shivers just based on the icy intent the two are shooting off. It’s hard to tell who wins, but Henry was raised by the cold and emotionless British monarch. When the agent’s jaw clenches, he knows they’ve won. He squeezes Alex’s shoulder, and the other man doesn’t question him. He takes off after Pez, walking with a purpose that Henry couldn’t imagine anything short of divine intervention halting.

“You’re not going,” Alex says, conviction ringing in his words.

Henry leans into Alex, heart racing in his chest. “They’re not going to let me back if I go.”

“That’s why you’re not going,” Alex repeats. His hands tighten on Henry’s shoulder and knees, sending a painful spike down Henry’s knees. He must make a face, because Alex instantly eases up. “You’re not going anywhere.”

—

The only good thing about breaking his ankle is that he can’t fly for at least two days. He’s got a doctor’s note to attest to the fact and a lecture from his doctor about compartment syndrome to boot. He settles into his hospital bed and lets the RSP agent know he’s not going anywhere, with Alex glaring at her from his side. She walks into the hallway to take a call. Henry slumps, exhausted beyond belief. They gave him morphine before setting his ankle, so the pain is stuck under a layer of cloudy nothing. He tilts his head back against his pillow and looks over at Alex.

“Hey,” he says softly, getting Alex to look down at him instead of glaring at the door. Alex’s expression is still stormy, but it softens when his eyes land on Henry. “I’m okay, not going anywhere.”

Alex closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “You didn’t know your ankle was broken,” he says, slowly choosing each word. Henry feels, quite suddenly, like he’s on the edge of a very steep cliff. “Which is crazy, because you snapped your ankle in half-”

“It wasn’t in half,” Henry protests tokenly.

“In half,” Alex maintains, glaring at Henry. “Which had to have been incredibly painful.” He takes a deep breath, deflating as he lets it out. “And you didn’t even notice, Hen. And you’ve been having these awful headaches, and that migraine, and you’re not eating. So tell me what the fuck is happening, because I’m worried.”

Henry knows the perfect balance for how to dig his fingers into his palms without making them bleed. He knows how to keep his spine perfectly straight even when every vertebra is demanding he bow to the agony. He knows how to walk in a straight line when every joint in his leg is threatening to give out. He can do every single one of those things with a fucking smile because he’s the prince of England.

He doesn’t know how to tell his boyfriend that sometimes his body hurts so much that he wants to die.

“I,” he starts, but the words stick in his throat. He has to clear his throat, and Alex reaches out to hold his hand. Henry grips his fingers tightly, his own knuckles turning white. “I think I need help.”