Work Text:
The phantom grip of Alex’s hands on his hips is so fresh that he remains frozen at the mere haunting sensation as a sea of bodies ebbs and flows around him. He spies the top of Pez’s bright pink head in mid-rise from a folded position, a wink tossed his way as he continues the journey back to stand upright, hips finding the rhythm immediately.
Henry moves his head just a fraction, a habit his piano instructor had once attempted to stave off by stacking books atop it when he played but that he’d never managed to shake. Music had always had a way of soaking through his skin and seeping into his bones, each note drawn in inky black across the knuckles of his fingers when he played, each lyric a whispered secret in his ears that allowed him to claim the truth as his own, for the only time in his life.
The song currently playing, while more a joyous shout than a whispered secret, still finds its way beyond his carefully constructed defenses, forcing his muscles to move while a pair of brown eyes watches like it…like Henry…is the most fascinating sight they’ve ever beheld.
“Fuck it up, vato!” Alex exclaims, and Henry can’t help but laugh at the absolute absurdity of the situation in which he currently finds himself. Deciding to fully embrace what most certainly must be some sort of fever dream involving the very same person featuring entirely in Henry’s actual dreams over the course of years, most especially in the last several months since their late-night correspondence has found him dozing and waking with his phone still clutched in his hand, Henry allows the music to find its way to his hips with the smallest of motions.
The “formative American coming-of-age experience” eventually ends after what feels like a small eternity, and Henry slips quietly and carefully between sweat-soaked bodies back to the bar to secure further fuel for the fire burning somewhere behind his solar plexus, guiding him through a night designed to be a nightmare for someone who’d spent his entire life thus far avoiding the spotlight. Alex, on the other hand, seems to have been born in the light, taking up residence there and allowing its warmth to shape a smile blindingly bright all on its own. And for the first time, Henry finds himself wondering what it might feel like to step out of the dark.
Before he has the chance, however, one of his PPOs is at his side, whispering something about a security threat, and guiding him without fanfare out one of the glass doors and into the winter night. He’s deposited in the library on the first floor of the White House and instructed to remain there until further notice for his own safety. Before he has the chance to tell his security to seek out Pez, a flash of bright pink catches in the corner of his eye, and Pez and June enter together with several other members of the two combined security teams. Nora follows next before the door is clicked shut and the four of them are left alone.
“Where’s Alex?” June asks, glancing at Henry, who’s standing by the fireplace twisting his signet ring on his finger. “Weren’t y’all dancing together?” Henry’s stomach flips and drops all in the same instance as he tries to recall where exactly Alex was when he’d excused himself from the dance floor to procure another drink.
“We were, but I took a short break. Needed a bit of air,” he explains as he crosses the room to the door, turning the handle and immediately meeting the hulking back of a member of White House security. “Is there any news of Mr. Claremont-Diaz?”
“He’s being collected,” the man explains without turning his back, effectively filling the entire frame of the door with his body as he reaches back to blindly grip the handle, pulling the door shut with another resounding click.
“I’m sorry, June, I should have been with him. I–” Henry starts as June reaches out a manicured hand and places it on his forearm.
“You and I both know that Alex is a force of nature. Even with eyes on him at all times, he’d find a way to disappear. He’ll turn up,” June assures, seemingly more to herself than to Henry. She starts slowly pacing in front of the fireplace, the light casting a dramatic silhouette on the far wall that paces alongside her.
Henry deposits himself into a nearby high back chair, pressing his fingertips into his knees to keep his legs from bouncing violently. He’s sure to have 10 small bruises to contend with in the coming days, but there’s not a soul on earth who might see his bare legs, especially in the dead of winter, so he allows the grip to tighten even further, the bite of pain a welcome distraction from the worry gnawing at his gut.
Pez stands just at one far edge of June’s paced path while Nora posts up at the other, both of them passing sympathetic glances and near touches of their hands to her shoulders as she reaches one of them, turns on her heels, and starts back in the opposite direction once more, oblivious to their attempts to console her. Henry turns to meet Pez’s gaze for a brief moment, and the panic he’s attempting to conceal with every clenched muscle is read effortlessly by his best friend, who mouths “breathe” to him with a gentle nod. Henry sucks in a shaking breath, holds it for a beat too long, and blows it out through his mouth just as the door opens and the group’s collective attention snaps in the same, singular direction.
Alex stumbles inside with a crooked grin on his face and what appears to be seven open bottles of champagne nestled in his arms.
“Hey, guys!” he says, as if nothing at all is amiss. The member of the security team who escorted him into the room rolls her eyes, albeit fondly, and starts to pull the door closed. “Thanks, Amy!” Alex adds, a thumbs up poking through the crack in the door before it’s finally shut.
“Alex, where the fuck have you been?” June asks, crossing the room in several long strides. She takes each bottle from his grasp and shoves them towards Henry, now standing in front of the chair, who sets them onto a nearby table with care. When all seven bottles have been accounted for and Alex’s arms are empty, June grasps a handful of his velvet suit and yanks him against her chest, embracing him tightly. One of her hands comes to rest on the back of his head, cradling it, and Henry immediately recognizes the gesture. It’s precisely the way that Bea has always held him, like he’s something precious and fragile and hers to keep safe and whole. It was an embrace he’d shrugged off when he reached his rebellious teen years but had longed for every day after their father had passed, like perhaps his sister was capable of holding him together as he felt himself coming undone. What he hadn’t known was that he couldn’t allow himself to fall apart. Not when he seemed to be the glue that held what was left of his family together.
“This is Henry’s second time trapped in a room with me for an undetermined amount of time,” Alex explains as June continues to crush him against her chest. “I thought I’d be a better host than he was and at least provide refreshments.” He winks at Henry over June’s shoulder, and Henry feels his cheeks flush.
“How, pray tell, was I meant to find alcohol in a hospital storage closet?” Henry asks in spite of himself. June finally releases Alex from her grip and he shrugs as he strolls past Henry, smelling of whiskey and smoke, seizes one of the champagne bottles, and presses it into Henry’s hand, wrapping his fingers around Henry’s to ensure a safe transfer of weight before he releases him to grab a champagne bottle of his own. Henry’s grip tightens around the neck of the bottle reflexively.
“Never say that the Americans don’t have great hospitality, at least,” Alex quips, falling back onto an empty couch by the fire.
“If you had great hospitality, there perhaps would have been food as well,” Henry retorts after a long pull from the champagne, lowering himself back down into the chair as Nora pushes against Alex’s back, forcing him to sit up for a moment so that she can sit before his head is back in her lap.
“Oh shit!” Alex says then, digging into his jacket pocket before pulling out a small bag of peanuts. “Your in-flight meal.” He tosses them onto the table as Henry chuckles and Pez pulls up a chair opposite him, next to Nora’s end of the couch. June pokes Alex’s shoulder and gestures for him to sit up, and both surprisingly and begrudgingly, he does, scooching himself to the end of the couch nearest Henry as June slots herself between Alex and Nora on the middle cushion. They each claim a bottle of champagne and settle in to await the all-clear.
With champagne flowing, it isn’t long until they’re all laughing loud enough that it’s lucky there are countless security guards outside the door, or else whatever threat was being investigated would have long located them. Henry says as much before Nora launches into an explanation about the history and logistics of White House soundproofing that starts with “because matters of international safety and security are for the ears of the meeting attendees only” and ends with “also any clandestine meetings could be carried out without anyone being the wiser.”
The latter explanation launches them into a Q&A session with one another about whether they think they could be loud enough to be heard from outside a soundproof room. Pez’s answer is a resounding “absolutely, in perfect key as well”. Nora doesn’t think so, instead explaining that she opts for a more “word heavy” approach. Alex affirms her statement only to be met with an “oh, babe, it’s so cute you think that you would have earned that sort of reaction at all” and a round of raucous laughter from everyone except Henry, who’s gazing between Alex and Nora while trying to read the veritable book of history evidently written there. June’s answer is a simple “yes” that earns the quirk of an eyebrow from both Nora and Pez simultaneously. Alex leans back, drapes one leg over the other, and grins, his lack of answer providing enough explanation for all of them. And then, all eyes in the room turn to Henry, who can already feel the warmth creeping up his neck and into his cheeks and ears. He buries his head in his hands and says “it’s been known to happen” before they all cheer and drink heartily from their bottles, as if losers in the latest round of a drinking game Henry wasn’t privy to.
One question leads to another, and then to another, until they’re ensconced in a circular round of queries that they’re each required to answer. In this case, it’s less a game of truth or dare and more a collectively tipsy attempt at getting to know one another by asking utterly ridiculous questions. It’s Alex, however, that asks a question Henry isn’t entirely certain how to answer. At least, not in the company of this particular crowd.
“Who’s the best New Year’s Eve kiss you’ve ever had?” Alex asks, gesturing with the mouth of his champagne bottle to the fireworks still exploding in the sky across D.C. He presses the bottle to his lips, and Henry can’t help but track the way he wraps them around the glass, slipping the tip of his tongue inside as the muscles in his neck work through a long swallow.
They all consider for a moment before the attention turns to Pez to kick things off.
“The next one,” Pez answers with a charming wink at June and Nora, who both grin.
“Definitely not Alex,” Nora offers immediately, the champagne in her bottle sloshing violently as she gestures in Alex’s direction.
“Definitely Nora,” Alex says at the same time, his jaw dropping in immediate offense when he catches what Nora said. Henry, once more, glances between them, squinting through the haze of too much alcohol as he tries to envision the two of them in a romantic relationship and coming up with nothing. As an aspiring writer, he’s found that he’s quite adept at building scenarios in his head. He’s certainly been caught in more than one daydream by Philip during his early morning meetings, with more than a few of those imagined situations involving the person sitting directly to his left, whose curls are now hanging limply over his eyes and getting caught on his eyelashes every time he blinks. But, Henry thinks as he suddenly decides to inspect the pattern of the carpeted floor, it seems that even his active imagination can’t parse the idea of Alex and Nora together.
“Also definitely Nora,” June’s matter-of-fact response cuts his thoughts short, and his head snaps back up, catching the sudden and frantic motion of Alex’s and Pez’ heads turning towards her out of the corner of his eye as well.
“Excuse me?” Alex says, setting his champagne bottle on the side table as he physically shifts his body in her direction, one knee pressed into the back of the couch as his foot dangles off the side.
“What, you can kiss my best friend but I can’t?” June offers as Nora clinks their bottles together in a show of solidarity. Pez offers his fist and Nora bumps it automatically.
“Our best friend,” Alex clarifies a little too quickly.
“Okay so we’ve both kissed her and liked it. And?” June says, the firelight dancing dangerously in her dark eyes as she waits for Alex to swallow and process her words, though they don’t seem to be going down quite as smoothly as the champagne. He chews on his bottom lip and fumbles with his fingers, pressing his nails into his palms in quick succession as he stares, unseeing, into the fireplace before jerking back to attention.
“Rock, paper, scissors,” he says, and June scoffs, but her hands twitch into position anyway, the telltale sign that this is not the first nor the last time the two Claremont-Diaz siblings have engaged in this particular game.
“What are they playing for?” Henry asks, glancing sideways at Nora, who shrugs and rolls her eyes.
“Bragging rights? Who knows with these two,” she says.
The rules, apparently, are the best two out of three rounds of the game. June takes the first, throwing scissors over Alex’s paper, while Alex crushes June’s repeat scissors with rock in the second. The third round comes to a stalemate twice in a row before June finally stands victorious, her flat-palmed paper blanketing Alex’s white-knuckled rock fist. And with that, Alex melts into the back cushion of the couch, defeated, swiping his champagne bottle back from the table and taking an abnormally long swallow, but he falls silent. Until, it seems, he remembers what Henry had silently hoped they’d all forgotten: the question of the New Year’s Eve kiss still hanging like unwanted Christmas mistletoe over Henry’s head.
“What about you?” Alex asks, kicking at the toe of Henry’s loafers with his sock, having discarded his shoes at some point during the evening.
“Me?” Henry asks as Pez leans forward with what can only be described as an expression of utter mischief on his face. Henry’s stomach churns as he swallows, hard, a combination of rising bile and nerves climbing up his throat.
“Best New Year’s Eve kiss. Spill,” Alex says as he tips the champagne bottle up on its end and the last few drops fall into his waiting, open mouth. Henry tugs at his tie, suddenly sweltering, and shifts in his seat, readjusting his trousers.
“Well,” he begins, before pressing the champagne bottle to his lips and gulping down enough that he briefly hopes he might drown before he has the chance to answer. When he comes up for air a moment later, his entire body buzzing, the attention of the room is still set intently on him. “I don’t have a favorite, because I’ve never had one with someone I cared about.” His cheeks automatically flush and he tugs his tie a bit looser still, finally pulling it from ‘round his neck and winding it around his hand to keep his fingers busy.
When he looks up, Pez’s expression has shifted to one of sympathy, but somehow also hope, as if he knows something that Henry doesn’t. June’s head is on Nora’s shoulder, the two of them staring at him with understanding and almost knowing eyes. But Alex. Alex looks…angry?
“What about the French supermodel from three years ago? There was a whole spread on the two of you at that party in Paris,” Alex asks, as nonchalantly as if they’re discussing the frightful weather outside, and not a party he was forced to attend with a young woman who was beautiful on the outside but clearly only seeking the publicity of being photographed with a royal. And who was, also, very much a woman while he is and always has been very, very gay.
“It simply wasn’t a good fit,” he offers, straightening his spine in the plush chair. What he hadn’t and couldn’t reveal was the staggering amount of medication that he was on that night to simply get through it without the panic attack that still lingered at the blurry edges of his vision. What he hadn’t and couldn’t reveal was that he barely even remembered the night as a whole, but the taste of the strawberry daiquiris on the woman’s lips was still with him, even today, which is why he claims to be allergic to strawberries when the truth of the matter is that he very nearly vomits at the mere thought of them.
“Okay, and there was that actress two years ago. The one from those indie films, with the nose ring,” Alex clarifies, leaning forward to the edge of the couch now, his fingers drumming together. On reflex, Henry leans forward, too, lacing his fingers together over his knee, crossed over his leg. He raises an eyebrow at Pez, who shrugs so imperceptibly that Henry’s the only person who catches the movement, as well as the wink that follows. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes with Alex’s attention still on him, Henry sighs long and deep.
“She spent the entire evening telling me what she would do if she became queen, including but not limited to, abolishing the monarchy entirely. I politely informed her that a marriage to me likely wouldn’t end in her ever becoming queen consort, and as noble as her intentions may have been, the abolition of the monarchy is not, generally, a responsibility of the monarch. Also, she reeked of cigarette smoke.”
Pez chokes on a sip of champagne, no doubt recalling the sheer amount of mouthwash Henry had used in his desperate attempts at removing the taste from his throat, where the woman had so forcefully shoved her tongue when the countdown to midnight concluded.
“Jesus,” Alex says, finally appearing to understand the point that Henry is trying to make, although thankfully not catching on to the reason why the point itself must be made. “But last year…you can’t possibly tell me that opera singer smoked. There’s no fucking way, with how she sings. And she was exactly your type.”
“What, pray tell, is my type, Alex?” Henry asks, with a bit more bite than he intended. Alex draws back, clearly not expecting the show of emotion, and throws his open palms out in defense.
“I don’t know! She seemed…nice. I was there, too, remember, and I chatted with her for a bit earlier in the night. She was sweet. Reserved. Definitely passionate about singing, and damn good at it. She seemed to fit the bill for what a future princess ought to be, anyway. And from what I know about you, your personalities seemed to match.”
Henry slides his fingers through his hair, his free hand gripping tight to the edge of the armrest as he uncrosses his legs and stands, suddenly, before crossing the room over to the window, his back to the group now. He clenches his fingers into fists, slamming his eyes shut as the threat of angry tears burns and blurs his vision. He tries, and fails, and tries once more to pull in a deep, grounding breath, but his lungs rebel against his efforts, outright refusing to pull in more than small sobs that he clamps down in his throat, biting down so hard on his bottom lip that he can taste blood.
He knows that he’s a bloody fool, with a reaction entirely unequal to a seemingly harmless topic of conversation. But the fizzing of champagne is in his veins and in his ears, and as much as he wishes that he could explain why none of the people who have kissed him as one year gives way to the next have ever made him feel a damn thing, he simply can’t. Because the one person he wants has spent the last several minutes chastising him for not being attracted to three stunning women with absolutely no clue that he is the most beautiful sight Henry has ever beheld.
“So what are you looking for, then, Henry?” Pez asks, breaking the stunned silence of the room. Henry turns and makes brief eye contact with his best friend, his watery gaze softening an already subtle expression of complete understanding from the only person besides his sister who knows him beyond the crown and the cage and the concealment. Pez knows …about who he is and why he cannot be that person, especially not here. Not now.
Still, there’s a resolve that lives inside Percy Okonjo. A firm, unyielding anchor that has tethered him to Henry’s side through painful days and sleepless nights. Pez has been there through it all, with a bottle of wine to drown his sorrows in, however temporary, with a comforting hand over a trembling form, or with words of hope that someday, perhaps, it all might be different. But hope died with Henry when he said goodbye to his father for the final time. When his mother curled in on herself and shuttered herself from the world. When the gleam in his brother’s eye as he stared at their grandmother’s crown turned hungry rather than proud. When he pulled his sister back from the brink of destruction by his fingernails, clawing and scraping for purchase as she threatened to fall over the edge and he refused to let her go, dragging himself and Bea up bloodied and bruised but still, at the very least, alive.
He drags a ragged breath in, searching for the acceptable answer. The answer that a perfectly proper prince might say, when asked what his heart yearns for. Henry has spent the better part of his life learning how a heart should beat. Slow and steady, when standing beneath the world’s spotlight, carrying the weight of centuries. A skip or a jump, perhaps, when dancing with a beautiful woman. But never racing. Never pounding a frantic rhythm against your ribs, like if you just press a hand to your skin you might feel it there, fighting to burst free. Never how he feels every time Alexander Claremont-Diaz enters a room.
So in this moment, with the champagne burning through the carefully crafted filter between the perfectly proper prince’s brain and his exposed and racing heart, he chooses truth…or, as much truth as he can give without ripping his chest wide open and bleeding onto the White House floor at Alex’s sock-covered feet.
“Someone who isn’t doing it for the photo op,” he starts, his lips moving before he’s consciously aware that he’s started speaking aloud. He can feel their eyes on him, all of them, as he turns back to the window, gazing through flurrying snow at a cloud-covered sky. He plays a silent tune on an invisible piano, his fingers dancing along the windowsill. “Someone who would just as soon kiss me in a darkened room with no one else present to bear witness simply because they couldn’t imagine for another moment breathing air into their lungs that hasn’t also been in mine.”
“Goddamn,” he hears Alex whisper softly, as if he hadn’t meant to say it.
“Perhaps we ought to toast to that,” Pez begins, and Henry turns to see him holding up his champagne bottle, a gentle smile curving his lips. “To magical, private moments in darkened rooms.” He winks, and June and Nora clink their bottles with his. Alex, he takes quick notice, has not reached for one of the two remaining bottles of champagne on the table, but tips an empty bottle to his lips instead as Henry raises his own bottle into the air, swallowing what remains and grimacing at the burn of bubbles down his throat.
They fall back into quiet conversation then, June and Nora and Pez making small talk about the various projects they’re engaged in, and Henry’s grateful for the reprieve from prying questions that were never at all intended to pry. Alex, he notices, is silent for a long time, longer than he’s ever known someone with Alex’s capacity for incoherent speech to be silent, in fact.
He’s very nearly built up the courage to apologize for his outburst and ask if Alex is all right when the New Year’s Eve program that Nora pulled up to watch on her phone starts the infernal countdown from ten. He closes his eyes, curling his fingers against the windowsill and pressing his forehead to the cool glass to ground him in the present. He’d just as soon be alone than back in Paris, with the sickeningly sweet taste of strawberries on his tongue. He lays a hand over his stomach, willing the nausea away as the countdown ends and he hears the telltale sounds of lips meeting behind him. Nora and Alex, plus June and Pez, if he’s guessing.
Suddenly, a warm hand covers his and he jumps, his eyes springing open as he finds Alex staring back at him, his brown eyes wide but dark, pupils blown out and an expression Henry can’t parse painted across his features.
“I think this might be their best one yet,” he says, gesturing in the direction of the couch, where June, Nora and Pez are all tangled in each other’s arms, each of their lips seeking the others’ in a round robin style. Henry chuckles in spite of himself, but it comes out far sadder than he intended. Alex grimaces, but there’s amusement gleaming in his eyes, too, like the information gleaned on this night could echo out beyond the walls of this room and into their lives. It’s hope, Henry realizes. The emotion that he couldn’t quite read. The same hope he’s seen in Pez’s eyes for years.
Before he has a chance to say or do anything more, the door opens and Amy, the security guard from earlier who’d been the one to fetch Alex, is there. June, Nora, and Pez are entirely unfazed at her sudden entrance, not even bothering to look up, while Alex and Henry immediately turn.
“All clear. Had to sweep the grounds for the threat, but we eventually traced it back to a hoax.”
With that, Alex wraps his hand around Henry’s wrist and pulls him from the room, brushing past Amy as they go. Henry mutters a quick apology as he stumbles behind Alex, who finds the first open door, wrenches it open, and shoves Henry inside.
The only light in this room is spilling through the small window on the opposite wall, and even that is sporadic as fireworks burst in the sky only to fizzle out moments later. Alex is there one moment and gone the next in Henry’s vision, shrouded in darkness despite the grip he maintains on Henry’s wrist.
He crowds Henry up against the closed door, until he’s so close that each unsteady inhale presses his chest against Henry’s. His breath smells like champagne, the scent tickling Henry’s nostrils as he breathes deep and catches something else, something familiar and inherently Alex that sets his noncompliant heart beating so rapidly he swears they’re both close enough to hear it. As if reading his mind, Alex releases Henry’s wrist and slides his hand up to a spot just below Henry’s ribs where it slots into place like it was made to fit there in the first place. Henry sighs, and Alex’s eyelashes flutter at the sound.
There’s a voice, somewhere inside Henry, the perfectly proper prince’s voice that sounds vaguely like his brother, saying that he shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t do whatever it is that they’re currently doing. Already searching frantically for a suitable excuse like they’re drunk, which Henry might be inclined to believe, were it not for the vivid memory of Alex refusing to seek out a second bottle of champagne and the clarity with which Henry is staring at him now, committing to memory every tiny freckle dotted across the ridge of his nose. So, with the least amount of respect possible, fuck that voice, Henry thinks for the very first time, in a new voice that sounds quite a bit like Percy Okonjo.
Alex tips forward until their foreheads are pressed together, the space between them closing from an endless chasm that Henry felt he may spend his life traversing, as Sisyphus with his boulder, into nearly nothing.
“Please stop me if I misread something earlier,” Alex breathes into Henry’s parted lips, and Henry lets his fingers dance up Alex’s back and into his curls.
“You didn’t,” Henry whispers back, the ghost of Alex’s lips on his as he speaks. With a final collective breath in, they both lean forward, closing the infinitesimal gap left between them until their lips meet.
It’s nothing like strawberries or cigarette smoke or even the kind opera singer, who had merely stood up on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek at such an angle that the cameras in the room couldn’t tell the difference. It’s the sticky sweetness of champagne on their lips, with a hint of the bite of lingering whiskey when Alex’s tongue licks into Henry’s mouth. It’s the insistent cut of Alex’s teeth and the handful of Henry’s now untucked shirt in Alex’s fist, urging him closer even than they already are.
“Okay, so…definitely not straight,” Alex finally says as a small laugh dies in his lungs.
“Is that an observation of me or a self realization?” Henry asks in spite of himself.
“Both,” Alex answers before leaning back in once more.
They remain there, pressed into the wall like a permanent art fixture to be gazed upon for years to come, two unlikely lovers captured in the split second burst of colorful light in the midnight sky as the snow falls outside the window and the earth continues to spin on its axis, not a single soul but their two carrying the knowledge that the First Son of the United State and the Prince of England are here, in this room, exposed and open and wanting for the very first time. Their lips are kiss-bitten and bruised, their lungs gasping for air as they continue to lean into one another, and the realization of it all finally sets in. Alex’s questions, Henry’s answers, and Alex’s silence. And Henry knows, distantly, that there will come a time when the perfectly proper prince will have to reckon with all of it, to make sense of it all and to figure out a path forward that the tiny voice of Pip in his mind is warning him will only end in the shattering of his too-fast, too-raw heart. But the louder voice, the hopeful voice of his best mate, is raising a champagne bottle in a toast. And it’s those words that he speaks aloud into the breath of space between them.
“To magical, private moments in darkened rooms,” Henry says.
“I’ll drink to that,” Alex answers.