Work Text:
It’s something adjacent to happenstance that Alex is even at this particular Okonjo Foundation charity gala.
He only just had the distinct pleasure of meeting Pez a month before, although he’d seen and heard the name Percy Okonjo too many times to count: in conversation with his sister, in headlines on newspapers, in a collection of downright inexplicable Instagram posts. The man was a mystery and an enigma—the eventual heir to an enterprise in biomedical enhancements, current philanthropic head to their charitable foundation. Alex had presumed the man was a force, but there was no preparing for the reality.
Pez had breezed into the firm one day with a variety of questions, and Alex had simply been the one junior attorney not on lunch available to field them. It had been thirty minutes of a rapid-fire, lightning round interrogation, sprinkled liberally with deeply personal inquiries, and then Pez had nodded his head and declared, perfect, babes, I’ll be in touch. He got the email five hours later, that he’d just landed the biggest client in the firm’s history. Alex had known that being a civil rights attorney wouldn’t pay like corporate law would, that the value would be in the good he was doing for the world—but getting the contract as the on-retainer attorney for the Okonjo Foundation’s civil cases sure as shit bridged the gap.
The invitation had come gilded with fucking gold flake on it, no expense spared by Okonjo Enterprises, and the ballroom is just as opulent and absurd. The cover charge is also exorbitant, a fundraiser for the foundation that seems to be going swimmingly, judging by the people in attendance: big names and deep pockets. Alex should probably be schmoozing; instead, he’s just trying to take a breath and enjoy it, the way Pez had told him to with a wicked grin and a wink when he’d caught Alex first coming in the doors, already holding an entire bottle of champagne in each hand.
The point is, Alex hardly knows the guy, has only met him a handful of times. He can be excused for not grasping just how expansive and wildly encompassing the guest list would be. Alex has caught sight of models and senators, A-listers and Nobel Prize winners, an Olympic gold medalist and the head of a promising tech startup. He can never tell June or Nora the details of this—they’ll both roast him alive for not offering to take either of them as his plus one. For a second, he wishes he would have, instead of erring on the side of not overextending his new employer’s generosity; he could use someone to make conversation with so as not to feel so fucking awkward.
He’s just had the thought when he sees him across the room, standing stiffly with a glass of champagne in one hand next to the largest tiered cake Alex has ever seen in his life. And Alex promptly almost chokes on his recently acquired, very expensive whiskey.
Jesus fucking Christ. No fucking way.
His brain, at the best of times, is like a flip picture book in the hands of a child hopped on too much sugar to be reasoned with; thoughts and ideas moving at such speed that a lot of the finer details can get lost in the process. He’s had a sneaking suspicion for a while now that he has ADHD, after a stint of stealing Adderall in high school that he isn’t proud of resulted in making his brain reasonable instead of granting any of the Google-promised side effects of abusing the prescription drug. He’s never sought out diagnosis or treatment of his own, mostly too afraid that the magic of what makes him feel like him would be lost in the process.
His brain, in this moment, is just as fast and chaotic, simultaneously trying to curate two very specific lists: reasons to go up and introduce himself, and reasons he absolutely should not.
The reality is that the most pressing factor on both is the same thing: the game.
He’s still arguing with himself, even as he pushes away from the high-top table he’s been nervously lingering at, even as he crosses the ballroom with what can only be described as deliberate purpose, pausing only to offer smiles and handshakes to people who engage him. The delay ultimately doesn’t matter; his target doesn’t move so much as an inch.
“Hey,” Alex says, once he’s within five feet. He holds out a single hand, and he doesn’t miss the way the suited man lingering against the nearest wall tenses attentively. Alex makes sure to show his open palm, to move slowly enough to be non-threatening. “I’m Alex Claremont-Diaz.”
The guy blinks at him, perplexed, like he’s never been on the receiving end of such a casual introduction. He probably hasn’t, on account of being actual royalty and all.
“Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor,” he says carefully, slow to take Alex’s hand but returning the proffered shake all the same; like he’s too hard-wired by his own no doubt rigorously conditioned manners to deny him the pleasantry. Up close, Alex has to admit he's a disarmingly good-looking guy, either the years have been kind to him or that video coverage did him no favors. He's all broad shoulders, feather soft blond hair and distractingly pink lips and a perfectly smooth complexion. Alex can't help but wonder if he's ever dropped his skin care routine. He probably uses face masks.
Alex lets the handshake drop, takes a quick sip of his whiskey and says, “Sorry, I’ve never met actual royalty before. I’m pretty sure there’s a formal title in there somewhere I should probably be using, but I don’t know it, Your”—he hazards a guess—“Majesty?”
Henry’s placid expression falters just slightly, his mouth going a little pinched at the corner. Alex can’t tell if it’s amusement or annoyance, two reactions he typically inspires in strangers in equal measure.
“It’s Your Royal Highness, actually. Your Majesty is reserved for the King or Queen.”
“How fancy,” Alex says, knowing he’s still missing polite decorum by a mile, but, well—if he goes through with this, this could still be the least offensive part of this entire interaction. Henry blinks at him. “That’s my bad. If you don’t mind me asking, how on Earth does Pez know a Prince?”
The mention of Pez, at least, seems to thaw the icy exterior Alex has been received with. Henry cracks an approximation of a smile. “Ah, well. We’ve been mates since we went to Eton.” Alex is certain his expression shows absolutely no comprehension, because Henry tacks on belatedly, “Boarding school.”
“Oh, so you go way back then,” Alex muses. He’s trying to imagine Henry as a child at boarding school, and Pez as a child at boarding school, and then just Henry and Pez as friends at all. It’s hard to reconcile the way Henry’s standing like his body has been stretched to never allow a muscle an ounce of slack that would enable slouching, with the way that, when Alex stopped by Pez’s office to drop by his signed acceptance of the retainer position, Pez offered him celebratory Jell-O shots he’d already had prepared and ready in his office mini fridge and after imbibing three of them, proceeded to do the worm right there on the floor.
“How”—Henry starts haltingly, like he’s unsure he actually wants to encourage this particular conversation to go on longer than it absolutely must—“do you know Pez?”
“Oh, he came into the firm I work for with some questions for the LGBTQ youth shelters,” Alex says, still adapting to the reality of knowing Pez at all, in all honesty, and kind of stuck on that image of him in full Gucci doing the worm on his office floor. It’s a lot to actively repress once you’ve summoned the mental picture. “I’m a civil rights lawyer here in the city.”
Henry is nodding along, expression fixed and neutral. Alex knows the monarchy has some outdated viewpoints, but he can’t imagine a man friends with Pez—and close friends, for so long—could possibly have a single homophobic bone in his body and still be here, tonight. It’s bolstering.
“That’s admirable work,” Henry says eventually, after the silence has toed its way into awkward. He’s still just holding his champagne flute, the bubbles working their way up unperturbed; he hasn’t taken a sip the entire time Alex has had him in his sight. He’s not really looking at Alex anymore at all, actually, rather some point over Alex’s right shoulder when he says, voice level. “If you’ll excuse me, I should probably get back to making the rounds—”
Back sort of implies he had been making the rounds at all before Alex approached him, and not actually just standing as still as possible like a man using the barest of Jurassic Park knowledge not to be spotted by who could possibly turn out to be Tyrannosaurus rexes masquerading as party guests. Henry moves to step around him, and Alex has this one moment of clarity where his last two competent brain cells engage in sudden death. This situation goes one of two ways: Alex lets Henry walk away and laughs off the fact that he ever considered saying a word, or Alex opens his fucking mouth and admits to something only two other people on Earth even know, for no other reason than how fucking funny the story will be when he calls June and Nora later.
He does the latter, because of course he does. Alex loves a fucking funny story.
“So, I actually came over here for a reason,” Alex rushes to say, and Henry dutifully stops edging his way around him. He blows out a long exhale through his nose, though, like it’s a huge inconvenience that Alex is still talking. Maybe he’s kind of an asshole, and maybe this story won’t be all that funny to tell later after all, but Alex is in too deep now to just back out. “When I was in college, my girlfriend and I used to play this game—”
Henry’s attention shifts to Alex properly then, even though his face is stuck in bemusement, like he doesn’t understand what this could possibly have to do with him or this increasingly bizarre interaction he’s been forcibly dragged into. Alex, however, powers through, bulldozing forward like the conversational wrecking ball he’s always been.
“I guess it’s not that rare of a thing, ya know. People in relationships do it all the time, they make lists of the celebrities they’d get a free pass to have sex with, and it wouldn’t be cheating,” Alex continues casually. Henry just… blinks at him. “Usually it’s just a few—three or five or whatever, but Nora and I used to throw them out to each other every couple of days, just for fun. We kept a running tally, and whenever one of us named somebody, the other would always spitball somebody too, the first person we could think of, to keep the lists even. We probably came up with like, twenty, in the entire month we tried dating.”
Henry opens his mouth like he might interrupt, but no words come out. His brow is starting to pinch, like he’s equally flummoxed by his own silence as he is by Alex’s unfiltered rambling.
“Anyway, she and I broke up a million years ago, and she’s actually dating my older sister now—has been for years, and I’m very happy for them, they’re the best—but see, the thing is, neither of us have ever actually met any of them, even living in New York City.” Henry's eyes skirt briefly to the side where the watchful man in a suit is lurking, like he might consider calling in reinforcements to check out of this conversation by any means necessary, so Alex just drops the bomb already. “The point to this whole story—because I’m sure by now you’re desperate for it—is that I sort of came out as bisexual to both Nora and myself when we were watching that fucking snoozefest of a Royal Wedding years ago, and I told her with no hesitation that you were on my list.”
Suddenly, Henry looks very present in this previously one-sided conversation, eyes boring into him even if he sounds a little choked as he clarifies, “I was on—”
“My No Consequences Sex List,” Alex confirms brazenly. “Yeah. You were wearing this suit with a stupid fucking sash, and we were absolutely fucking roasting the hell out of you about it. Honestly Nora and I were halfway to blitzed out of our minds on the couch, we’d been taking shots every time your brother looked constipated, and it’s a miracle neither of us required a stomach pump by the end of it, ya know, and I just told her, Prince Henry, no consequences.” Alex takes a cautious sip of his whiskey, watching as Henry’s face travels through various stages of shock as he tries to digest this information. “Nora looked at me and goes, did you just put a guy on your list, and I told her yeah, and we sat there for a minute in total silence until I said, I’m pretty sure I’m bisexual. And then Nora got pissed, because one of the rules we had was that once one of us claimed somebody, the other person couldn’t have them, otherwise it was just a wasted opportunity for a threesome, which was even more selfish than cheating when you think about it, and I told her it was too late because I already had dibs, even though—and I quote—if she was going to go for a rich white boy, that was the rich white boy she’d go for.”
Henry’s jaw drops. He’s looking at Alex not unlike how someone might stare at a particularly exotic zoo animal—something they know they shouldn’t be seeing, yet has been presented to them anyway. Alex takes another steadying sip.
“So, honestly, what this boils down to is can we take a selfie?”
“Pardon?” Henry asks faintly, “How is that what this boils down to?”
“Did you miss the part about how neither of us have ever met anybody on our lists?” he asks rhetorically. “It was somewhere in the middle, though I do think your eyes were starting to glaze over at that point while you desperately looked for escape.” Henry looks flustered, pink-cheeked and faintly guilty. It’s a good look on him, in a way that Alex will resolutely not reflect on until this interaction is safely in the rearview mirror. “It boils down to me asking for a selfie because I love my sister and Nora to death, but they’ll definitely think that I’m lying without photographic evidence, and honestly, I want to watch them lose their fucking minds over the fact that not only did I actually meet one, but that of everybody I could have possibly found, it was my goddamn bisexual awakening. You wouldn’t know this, obviously, but Nora’s good with numbers, and I bet you if I asked her to run the odds on me running into any of them, your chances would be the lowest. I mean, statistically, a Prince of England in New York—that’s fucking wild. So, what do you say?”
“Sorry?” Henry says, sounding just as distant, like he’s struggling to keep up; dragged bodily behind the speeding vehicle that is Alex’s brain and the boost of nitrous oxide that is his mouth. “What do I say to what, exactly?”
Alex sighs, trying to make it as long-suffering as possible. “The selfie.”
Henry’s attention flits briefly to the suited man against the wall. Alex wonders if it’s a member of his security team—the guy is lean, in an expensive suit, and has none of the stereotypical markings of security: no sunglasses or earpiece or visibly bulging, barely concealed weapons. Alex then wonders if there are some sort of rules against photographing royalty, and how exactly that would work in a world where the royal siblings are papped almost constantly, even if they’re doing nothing more exciting than eating a sandwich.
“Yes,” Henry says cautiously. “That would be… fine.”
He shuffles, gripping tight to his untouched champagne, as Alex fumbles his phone out of his pocket. His lockscreen is a photo from the Lake House, Alex with Nora and June, mid leap off the dock into the pristine surface of the lake water. June’s in a tank top and denim shorts, Nora in a pair of shortalls over a flimsy bikini top, both of them too eager to jump in to wait to change out of their clothes. Alex is in an almost offensively small pair of swim trunks, his short sleeve chambray completely unbuttoned and flapping behind him, leaving the full expanse of his chest and abs visible. He doesn’t really think about all the reasons it’s probably not the best photo for this purpose when he says, “Oh, this is all of us. That’s my sister June, the infamous Nora, and me obviously.”
He angles the phone towards Henry briefly, hears the choking sound he tries to cover with a polite cough, and ignores it in favor of opening up the camera to the front facing lens. He steps closer to make sure they both fit in frame, perhaps a touch too close, really—Henry’s body a long line of warmth against Alex’s other arm where he presses them together. Alex is a master in the modern art of selfie taking, knows all his own most flattering angles, so it’s easy to pay more attention to how Henry’s responding on the screen: impossibly straightening already offensively straight posture, arranging his face meticulously into a smile not quite what Alex has seen all over magazines, carefully curated for the press, but still something small and reserved, not the way Alex imagines he smiles in reality. Still, he looks good, and Alex looks good, and he can’t fucking wait to see the looks on June and Nora’s faces as he takes three selfies in rapid succession; waiting until the very last one to stick the tip his tongue out between his teeth, wink, and throw up a peace sign.
Henry’s faintly blinking back his surprise from the veritable shotgun blast of photos when Alex steps back, scrolling through them for a quick review: Henry identical in all of them in a way that’s practiced and refined; Alex with his own minute changes to be sure he has one he likes. He already knows the first—two completely polite smiles—will be the one he sends his mom and dad later, in separate chats so that his meeting a prince cannot possibly devolve into a text-based screaming match; the last, where Alex looks like a bit of a smug idiot with his cheeky pose, is the one Nora and June’s group chat will be seeing real soon.
“Thanks, Your Majesty,” Alex says, grinning, basking in the way Henry huffs at the deliberately fumbled title. Alex pauses to stare at the last picture a moment longer before locking his phone, tucking it back in his pocket. “This was really cool of you. Thanks for letting me talk your ear off, I’ll let you get back to the party.”
Alex takes a step back with a smile, turning to go, and stops only when Henry clears his throat and asks, “Is there still a list?”
Alex pauses, confused. “I mean, the list exists in perpetuity in Nora and I’s minds, but it doesn’t really matter much now, since we broke up. None of it would be considered cheating regardless, and I’m single anyway.” Alex shrugs. “Plus, I don’t think anyone else on Earth would ever let that sort of shit slide like Nora did. We were just kids having fun, you know? No consequences. That was the whole point.”
Henry’s nodding, looking rather resolutely at the floor halfway between them. “As a lawyer, what are your thoughts on NDAs?”
The abrupt change in subject is enough to give him whiplash, but as a person whose brain is usually three topics of conversation ahead at any given time anyway, Alex prides himself on being excellent at rolling with the punches. “They can be a very necessary legal document, especially when ironclad.”
Henry is still nodding. Alex has the insane urge to reach out and put his fingers to his forehead, just to see if he can stop it; or maybe flick him like a bobblehead to see if he’ll keep going. He does neither, because he’s not sure of the legal ramifications of such an action even if they are currently in the States, and he’s not risking time in a dungeon by letting his impulsive thoughts win.
“Would you sign one if I asked?” Henry posits.
Alex blinks at him incredulously. “What, now?”
Henry, predictably, nods. The front of his blond hair escapes its careful styling, a few soft strands draping in an artful wave over his forehead—and Alex is a goner. Truly fucked.
He is also, just as predictably, intrigued.
“I would have to read it,” he tells him. “You know, lawyer. Occupational hazard and all that.”
“I would expect nothing less,” Henry says seriously. “If you’ll excuse me for one moment, perhaps we could… reconvene, on the seventeenth floor?”
Alex opens his mouth. Shuts it. Then nods. He isn’t really sure how else to respond.
Henry nods too, then finally succeeds in ducking past Alex. Instead of going deeper into the party, he retreats behind the massive cake, to where the maybe-security-guard is still lurking; not close enough to hear them, but definitely close enough to watch them unashamedly. Henry speaks to the man in a low voice, and the guy’s expression gives absolutely nothing away. Alex gets the distinct impression that Henry could have inquired about the weather or confessed to having committed first-degree triple-homicide and the man’s face would react in exactly the same way.
They leave together, Henry abandoning his still untouched flute of champagne on the nearest available surface, and Alex stands there lingering by the cake for two full minutes before his brain kicks into gear. He stares contemplatively at his whiskey, wonders if it’s possible he’s drunk and this was all some kind of elaborate mirage. Opens his phone and stares just as contemplatively at the selfie still open on the screen, decides if it is a mirage, it’s a fucking detailed one, and shoots the rest of his drink back in one go.
He leaves out the same door, into a nondescript hallway he senses he isn’t supposed to be in. He picks a direction at random and follows it until he finds the lobby, just as extravagant as the ballroom. No one pays him much mind as he heads to the nearest elevator, jabs the button for the seventeenth floor, and reclines back against the mirrored wall to wait.
It doesn’t take long.
The man from before is standing centered in front of the elevator doors the second they open, like a Stephen King jump-scare in an impeccably fitted designer suit.
“Mister Claremont-Diaz,” he greets, like this is a normal interaction that normal people would be conducting on any normal day. “If you’ll follow me, please.”
He turns on his heel, leading the way down the hall. Alex stands there baffled long enough for the elevator to give a warning ding, for the doors to start to slide closed, until he has to dive through them inelegantly to avoid being banished back to the lobby. His handsome tour guide doesn’t turn around to notice the spectacle, but still looks faintly judgmental when he reaches the door of their apparent destination.
It is, somewhat predictably, a hotel room. A suite, perfectly impersonal with a king-sized bed and an ostentatiously marbled en-suite bathroom and a wholly superfluous sitting area. He has to revise his thoughts on the last bit when the man leads him directly to it, opening a waiting briefcase and procuring a thick sheaf of papers that he lays out deliberately in front of one chair. He takes a pen—ballpoint, expensive, fucking monogrammed—from his breast pocket that he rests atop them.
“Please sign,” are his only further instructions.
Alex sits and sets to the monumental task of reading them in their entirety. He meant what he said downstairs; Alex is a lawyer, he doesn’t sign on the dotted line without knowing the exact terms and conditions he’s agreeing to. He also meant what he said about Non-Disclosure Agreements, and the royal one sets a bar Alex hadn’t thought possible to achieve, managing to be all at once completely vague yet all-encompassing. It isn’t even just ironclad; Alex gets the distinct impression by the end of it that people who even consider violating it in the safety of their own minds wind up mysteriously deceased thanks to convenient accidents.
Still, the terms don’t outweigh Alex’s own crippling curiosity, so he signs and initials on all the indicated lines. Once he’s flipped the last page, the man collects them up, reviews them all with the same degree of detail Alex had paid it, then sets them back in the briefcase and bolts it closed.
“His Royal Highness is in the suite across the hall,” he says, apropos of nothing. “He’s expecting you.”
Alex takes it for the dismissal he’s relatively certain it is, wandering out of the suite and to the door opposite. After a beat, he lifts a hand and knocks.
The door opens immediately, and the detailed mirage takes a turn.
Henry’s lost his jacket, his shoes and socks, and his tie is pulled a few inches loose at the neck. The sleeves of his dress shirt are rolled up to the elbow to release the full force of his truly devastating forearms. Two buttons are undone at his throat to tease at his collarbones. He looks unexpectedly casual, though perhaps that’s why Alex had to sign an NDA—so he can’t sell any riveting commentary about the prince’s bare feet to any forums deep in the internet gutters.
Alex, still in his full, bold burgundy velvet suit, cannot resist commenting, “Well, now I just feel overdressed.”
Henry masks a cough as an intentional act of clearing his throat, opening the door wider to let Alex pass. The suite is identical to the one across the hall, the only differences being the signs it’s actually occupied; a phone charger plugged into the wall, a shaving kit and prescription bottle left out on the nightstand, a suitcase with painstakingly arranged contents left open on the dresser.
“So, you gonna tell me why I just had to sign the longest NDA I’ve ever seen in my entire life?”
Henry shuts the door, slipping past Alex and deeper into the room. Once he’s there, he doesn’t actually look like he knows what to do with himself. He glances at his own unnecessary sitting area, then at the foot of his still immaculately made bed, then ultimately seems to decide just to remain standing and hovering awkwardly in between.
“Er, well, without it, I couldn’t really… comment on your story,” he says cautiously. Suddenly, he looks like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands either, settles for tucking them against his sides as he crosses his arms almost defensively. “I asked if there was still a list—”
“Right, which I explained would be unnecessary—”
“Because I’m gay,” Henry continues, like Alex didn’t interrupt him at all. The rest of Alex’s aborted sentence is clearly lost in the abrupt punctuation that is his teeth clacking audibly as he forcibly closes his mouth.
He blinks rapidly, letting the entirety of the purposefully-vague-but-all-encompassing royal NDA play back through his head like the introductory text to a Star Wars movie, only on fast forward, two times speed. He practically hears the song in his head as he says faintly, “Okay, yeah, that would explain why they’d never find my body.”
Henry’s head cocks just slightly to the right, almost dog-like in its curiosity. “Excuse me?”
“Nothing,” Alex replies, shaking his head abruptly to clear the last of the dramatic background music threatening to lodge itself in his brain, then, “So, you’re gay.”
“As a maypole,” Henry says gravely, like that quantifies literally anything to Alex at all, and adds, “So, if, perhaps… you had wanted to cross someone off your, how did you put it? No Consequences Sex List, as unnecessary as it may now be… I wanted you to know that I’m… amenable… to that.”
If Alex revisits the metaphor about his brain at the best of times, this is the moment where the toddler holding the flipbook exchanges their sugar addiction for straight cocaine. The good stuff. High quality. This is Alex’s brain on drugs. He has, quite possibly, every thought he’s ever had in his entire life all at the same time in a raging cacophony, and then there’s the screeching of the emergency brakes being pulled by one of those two final braincells, and there’s nothing but absolute blissful silence.
Well, blissful silence and the total life-altering reality shift that Prince Henry of Wales would be amenable to having sex with him.
The list isn’t relevant, hasn’t been for years. It’s been gathering dust, only brought out in rare nostalgia hours when he’s on June and Nora’s couch, getting drunk on the cheap shit like they did during the Royal Wedding fiasco; occasionally referenced during the odd brunch when June brings along one of her trashy magazines, and Alex nudges Nora in the side and jokingly adds whoever’s on the cover to the imagined list neither of them even need anymore, and Nora throws out one of her own to keep the lists even, in good spirit.
The list may be irrelevant, but what isn’t irrelevant is the fact that Prince Henry of Wales would be amenable to having sex with him.
Alex bites his bottom lip, slowly pulls it until it pops out from his teeth, watches the way Henry watches the whole thing unabashedly. Alex might not need the list anymore, but like hell is he saying no to that.
“Well,” Alex manages, thankful that his voice isn’t breathier than it already is. “Like hell am I saying no to that.”
It’s like a switch is flipped, and the Henry that doesn’t know where to stand in the room or what to do with his hands is traded out for a new model, one that walks over to Alex with breathtaking confidence, crowds him up against the dresser behind him, and threads a hand through the back of his hair.
“I’ve wanted to do this since the moment I laid eyes on you,” Henry breathes into the space between their lips, and then there is no space between their lips—mouths meeting in a kiss that consumes him, all the way down to his toes curling the best they can in his dress shoes. It’s a complete one-eighty from the buttoned-up prince from downstairs, open-mouthed and wet and just a little too dirty to be proper for a first kiss, and Alex loves it.
Henry pulls back, looking satisfied, and Alex tells him just as confidently, “So have I. The only difference is I’ve got a few years on you.”
The response is immediate, Henry’s hands pushing Alex by the hips, his own hands dropping to the surface of the dresser to help boost himself up when it's clear that's what Henry's after. They’re already kissing again, heated and deep, but like they’ve got all the time in the world; at odds with the frenetic energy Alex feels trembling his hands as Henry grabs the lapels of his suit jacket and pushes it off of his shoulders. His dexterous fingers are already working Alex’s tie loose by the time he pulls back and asks, “How would you like to do this, love?”
The pet name makes something stutter in Alex’s chest, makes the foundation beneath him even more unsteady than it already was, and thank god his legs aren't currently responsible for supporting him. It’s so fucking unfair that Alex doesn’t second-guess the impulse to say back, “What did you have in mind, baby?”
There’s no hiding how Henry feels about that—not with his skin tone. The flush spreads from his neck over his cheeks, and Alex has to fight the urge to reach out and touch, see if it feels as warm as it looks.
“Yes, well,” Henry responds slowly. “As you pointed out, you have years on me here. Certainly, you have had something in mind all this time.”
“Back then, everything was free game,” Alex says, shrugging. The motion makes the tips of their noses bump, a reminder of how close they are, that they’re speaking directly into one another’s mouths. Alex tries to look down at Henry’s plush lips, goes a little cross-eyed from it, looks back up into his eyes instead.
“And if I told you everything was still free game?” Henry muses.
Alex has never been a person with decision paralysis, always with a fire under his ass for no good goddamn reason. It was high school AP classes designed to maximize transferable college credits all the way to Georgetown for undergrad; a major and minor all meticulously laid out and planned to a tee. Even when he had to pivot from going straight into politics, the LSAT and NYU for law school was an easy choice. The specialty, the BAR exam, the internship, the job, the firm, taking on the foundation—all a series of boxes he’s diligently arranged and checked off. He plans. He makes lists. He makes decisions, and he hardly ever regrets them. He knows what he wants, always, and he goes for it.
In this moment, Alex wants. He wants everything. It’s debilitating.
But, if everything’s really, truly on the table—
He nips Henry’s lower lip, asks, “Top or bottom, sweetheart?”
Henry’s eyes dilate. He swallows, and Alex wants to follow it down his throat with his fingers, with his tongue, with his—
“Bottom,” Henry whispers, like a confession. And Alex—
Alex is the one who asked. He should have been prepared, after giving two options, to hear either one of them. He categorically was not, even though he’d had no expectation of the answer. He thinks he’d feel just as winded, as gut-punched, no matter what Henry said.
“Fine by me.”
By unspoken agreement, their hands find each other’s ties, then shirt tails and buttons; land on belt buckles and zippers. Henry gets Alex’s pants open first, and he boosts himself accordingly to allow himself to be stripped. Henry pulls them down in the same fluid motion as he drops to his knees, yanking them off his ankles as he knocks Alex’s dress shoes to the floor. And then he’s leaning forward, pushing Alex’s knees wide and open and desperately latching his mouth to the head of Alex’s cock through his underwear, sparing Alex the embarrassment of the steadily growing wet spot right at the tip.
“Fuck,” Alex gasps, hands falling to Henry’s shoulder, to Henry’s hair. It’s thick and lush, soft even though it was styled to within an inch of its life downstairs, and Alex doesn’t realize he’s been passively wondering at least the entire night how it would feel between his fingers until he gets his answer. Henry sucks at the damp cotton, and Alex’s hips jerk in answer, he stutters out, “Baby, please.”
Henry pulls off, tucking his face against Alex’s hip to catch a steadying breath. When he stands, he crowds into the space between Alex’s spread knees, his open suit pants resisting gravity thanks only to the curve of his ass holding them up in defiance of the laws of physics. Alex barely nudges them with his fingers, and they slink a slow, sensual retreat down thick, muscled thighs to the floor.
Alex has not ever, in his entire time on this green earth, given a shit about polo. In this moment, though, feeling each of Henry’s thighs push Alex’s own legs open wider simply by having the audacity to exist; thinking about the way they’d flex as Henry rode him, how they might feel wrapped around his waist—Alex resolves to Google the bastard responsible for such a ridiculous game, and send some nice fucking flowers to his grave.
Expensive ones.
And then, blissfully, they’re kissing again; Henry’s tongue a modern marvel capable of slowing even Alex’s runaway train of chaotic thoughts, his hands sliding up Alex’s own thighs, trailing beneath them until his palms are almost curved to Alex’s ass—hauling him bodily off the dresser.
“Oh—” Alex is, well, sturdy. He definitely hasn’t spent a not insignificant amount of time getting into really great shape to compensate for the fact he’s under six foot, a cardinal sin in the internet dating world. He isn’t four years old, so he doesn’t go through life anymore expecting to be picked up, but Henry lifts him with relative ease, which does something to him on a primal level that he’s already adding to the growing list of things to reflect on later. When he isn’t being carried to bed.
Henry backs up without looking, mouth angled for another kiss that Alex wholeheartedly bestows, only for it to break as he drops weightlessly backwards; Alex’s knees digging into the soft mattress where he lands bracketing Henry’s hips. Gravity brings the crux of their bodies together, and they both moan reflexively—devolving rapidly into the instinct of rutting against each other.
“Kit on the nightstand,” Henry gasps, when Alex drags his mouth down the line of his jaw towards his neck.
“What?”
“Kit on the nightstand,” Henry repeats nonsensically, hands squeezing Alex’s hips when he finds a particularly promising spot behind Henry’s left ear. “Lube. Condom.”
“Oh.” Alex stretches his arm as far as he can manage without detaching his mouth from Henry’s neck, until his fingers have blindly located the opening to the shaving kit. He tosses the lube on the bedspread followed closely by a condom; another landing on the nightstand, one more dropping to the floor.
“Optimistic, are we?” Henry muses on a laugh that evolves just as quickly into a groan as Alex catches his earlobe with his teeth.
“I love a challenge,” Alex whispers, and Henry only moans in answer. “Spread your legs.”
Henry does without argument, letting Alex slide between them into the cradle of his hips. The contact is electric, a shot of pure want and adrenaline flooding his veins, pushing him recklessly down Henry’s body; an open-mouthed kiss to his shoulder, the swell of his pec, a single pebbled nipple, the hard plane of his sternum, the soft space between his ribs, the softer space beneath his navel. And then he’s tugging on Henry’s boxer briefs, and Henry’s lifting his hips to accommodate, and then Henry is naked.
Totally, gloriously, naked, and all laid out for Alex’s eyes—flushed and panting and desperate and pretty.
“Alex,” he says, all at once a demand and a plea, and Alex answers by pressing a kiss to the bend of Henry’s closest knee, up the soft inside of his thigh, all pale and sparse blond hair. He wants to stop and suck on it, leave a mark that would turn scandalously dark, a lush regal purple on porcelain white skin—but he doesn’t know the rules. Henry swallows hard and Alex hears it, smiles into the crease where thigh meets hip.
“Yes, baby?” Alex asks, exhaling the words hotly and watching Henry’s cock twitch in response, a fresh bead of precome dripping to his belly. It’s magnificent.
“Please,” Henry says, like a full sentence. Alex finds the lube in the duvet, pops it open blindly, unable to pry his eyes away from Henry’s body—the inviting tilt of his hips drawing Alex’s eyes lower and lower.
He hums. “I didn’t think a prince would know how to beg.” He watches, enchanted, as a soft pink flush rises to the surface of his skin, travels up Henry’s chest and neck and cheeks. “You’re full of surprises, Your Majesty.”
“You’re a menace,” Henry rasps, “and a plague.”
“And you want me,” Alex says confidently, slicking and warming his fingers, trailing them down between Henry’s fat cheeks to the place they both want them. “And for the record, flattery will get you everywhere.”
Henry laughs, breathless—and then startled—by the first touch of Alex’s fingers to his rim. He arches a little, a flirtatious promise, and Alex rewards him by mouthing at the base of his cock.
“Christ, Alex.” Henry’s hands land on the sheets, pulling them into tight fists, and Alex finds himself wishing Henry would have grabbed his hair instead. Alex breaches him with a single fingertip, gives the rim a flirty tug, lets his tongue run up the shaft in a long flat lick. “You’re incredible.”
The praise drips down from the center of his head, an alluring tickle that’s impossible to ignore, tying his insides in familiar knots of pleasure. It makes him warm, and soupy, and also impatient enough to slide his finger in to the next knuckle, and then the next. Henry takes it beautifully as Alex slides in and out, pants yes when he nudges a second against it, slides them back in together; spreads them and curls them and drags them; lets his legs open a little wider when Alex adds in a third, whines when he touches that spot, just barely, a promise.
Henry’s taking his fingers so easy, lip caught tight between his teeth as he nudges Alex’s ribs with his toes. “Good, love. I’m good. Fuck me.”
Alex wants those words in Henry’s refined, posh accent tattooed into his brain.
He pulls his fingers free, and Henry takes the initiative to try rolling over onto his front, but Alex catches his hip halfway, forcing him back onto the bed.
“Don’t you dare,” he breathes, his other hand pulling one of the overwhelmingly abundant pillows down to push under Henry’s hips. “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I’m passing up the opportunity to watch your pretty face as you come.”
The pink on that pretty face in answer spreads all the way to his ears. It’s endearing. Alex, frankly, doesn’t think he’ll ever be over it—not the hair trigger blush or the stammering, both so easily swept under a sea of unexpected confidence; not the lazy swoop of his hair across his forehead or fanning across the pillow in a golden halo, or the reality of Henry’s body carved like stone, laid out and waiting on thousand thread-count luxury sheets.
Henry nods, catches his own bottom lip between his teeth and pulls, and Alex fumbles for the condom still somewhere on the duvet—rolling it on with as little contact as possible to his own erection, achingly hard with neglect and ready to cut fucking steel.
“Are you ready?” he asks, adding lube so hastily that the amount is, perhaps, excessive, considering he doesn’t want to touch himself to spread it and risk humiliation. Henry nods again, and Alex says, “Words, please and thank you.”
“Yes,” Henry affirms, “I’m ready.”
In point of fact, he spreads his legs a little more, offers Alex one last tantalizing peek before he’s leaning over him, one hand catching himself by Henry’s head, the other still holding the base of his cock to guide himself in. It’s slow, methodical; Alex tries counting backwards from one hundred by seven in Spanish just so that one of his recurring preteen nightmares about premature ejaculation doesn’t become a very inopportune reality. Henry is breathing in, deep, and out, slow, in a way that Alex can latch onto; a way that grounds him in reality.
Here, on this night. Here, in this bed. Here, with this man.
He bottoms out, and Henry’s plush lips are parted enticingly around a wordless pleasure, his eyes hazy and half-lidded; his body is white hot euphoria, bliss that Alex thinks man was never meant to touch, the closest Alex has come to belief in god since he stopped attending mass in his teens—which he’s sure Catholicism would have some pretty strong opinions on, all things considered.
Hysterically, it occurs to him at this moment for the first time in what feels like hours that he’s having sex with Prince Henry. More hysterically, he wonders what 21-year-old Alex—day drinking and half wasted on that shitty couch Nora found on the sidewalk, lying on his back with his feet in her lap, loudly criticizing the antiquated concept of a monarchy at all while they watched the future king of England deliver his constipated vows in perfect monotone—would think about the fact that in just a matter of years, he’d be balls deep in the Prince of Wales. Impossibly more hysterically, he wonders if Henry still has that fucking sash, and what his face might look like if he suggested Henry wear it while he rides Alex’s dick.
All in all, this day is gonna be one for the books.
Henry bears down, squeezing him in a way that threatens the entire integrity of Alex’s lofty plans here, and Alex grits his teeth to keep it all from ending before it starts. “You can move, love.”
“Great,” Alex says, wanting desperately to maintain some element of levity, of confident banter, but instead only sounding painfully earnest as he adds, “Because you feel so fucking good, I honestly might die if I don’t.”
“Dramatic,” Henry teases, but he clutches at Alex like he understands, like he feels it too. He pushes a hand into the curls on the back of Alex’s head, draws him down to those fucking lips that hold Alex’s higher cognitive functioning distressingly hostage; kisses him with a kind of intensity that Alex can’t help but match with the pace of his hips.
Henry’s body welcomes him in, clings to him on every retreat, gives and gives and gives under every thrust. He hikes a thigh up around Alex’s waist, the muscle flexing against him, heel digging into Alex’s ass in encouragement; and Alex can’t resist moaning brokenly as he sinks impossibly further.
“Alex,” Henry gasps. “You’re so deep.”
“Fuck,” Alex pants, because he doesn’t really need that confirmation, not when he’s already on the knife’s edge of embarrassing himself as it is. He wants this to last forever. He never wants to leave this night, this bed, this man— “Baby.”
With his leg up, Alex can feel where Henry’s cock is dragging between their bellies, the added friction enough to make Henry squeeze his shoulder, as Alex shifts deeper. He nudges Henry’s prostate, his surprised inhale and stuttered exhale Alex’s best clue—and he absolutely pummels it as he picks up his rhythm. Henry’s whole body locks up, arching to meet his every thrust; his blunt nails raking down Alex’s back, pulling his hair hard at the root.
“Right there Alex, please—ngh—right there, don’t stop.” Alex doesn’t think there’s a force on earth that could convince him to stop this now, and Henry just keeps running his mouth, like Alex has unlocked the real thoughts he hides behind that perfect, princely persona; and then, like he isn’t absolutely reading Alex for goddamn filth, he says, “You’re so good, love. So good for me.”
It’s back, the hot sensation of that praise pooling in his gut and finger-walking up his spine with refined purpose—and its instinct that hooks his fingers into the soft hollow of Henry’s knee and pushes it up past his ribs without losing his rhythm or his aim. Henry’s mouth drops open, so shocked and overwhelmed by the pleasure that he chokes out a soft laugh that turns soundless—
And then, quite abruptly, he’s practically screaming.
Alex wonders, somewhat manically, as Henry draws blood in sharp lines down his shoulder blades, as Henry’s cock jerks untouched between them and shoots his load across their chests, as Alex keeps fucking desperately into the impossibly tight squeeze of Henry’s pulsating body—if that guy with his briefcase is still across the hall, listening to his boss getting absolutely railed and falling to fucking pieces on Alex’s cock.
It’s some combination of that intrusive thought, of riding out the waves of Henry’s orgasm, of the tiny mewl of overstimulation Henry lets loose on Alex’s next erratic thrust yet he still grips tight to his waist like he’s afraid Alex might stop— that finally tips him over the edge and drops him down the side of a fucking cliff.
He thinks he might have died. Or at least briefly reached the kind of spiritual enlightenment that lets him see god. All he really knows is that he’s never came so hard in his fucking life. He feels wrung out, completely fucking dry, like he may never be capable of coming ever again. If this is really some sort of elaborate mirage, sign him the fuck up; reality hasn’t got shit on this.
Henry guides their mouths together, and Alex indulges him in a long kiss until his arms start to shake, and he genuinely thinks he might drop at any second and crush him. He pulls out, softening the blow of Henry’s little whine with a kiss to the curve of his neck, then his shoulder; then drops beside him on the bed. His fingers are slow to abide his brain as he pries off the condom, ties it off, and slings it inelegantly towards the wastebasket on the floor.
He's still catching his breath, chest heaving and sweat cooling and mind reeling, when the thought occurs to him almost uncontrollably, and he’s too compromised to even consider filtering it out.
“Fuck.”
Henry turns towards him on the pillow, concern pulling his brow that Alex hopes isn’t killing his afterglow. “What?”
“The NDA,” Alex says to the ceiling. “I can’t even send June and Nora that picture anymore, can I?”
Henry’s lips twitch into a smile, surprisingly and undeservingly fond. Alex can practically see him thinking, this is his first thought? After all that? And honestly, he isn’t wrong to be incredulous. Alex grins at him, unrepentant.
“I’d be willing to make an exception,” Henry tells him with an air of generosity, “and let you share that we met. I would prefer that you not share… any more intimate details—”
“Of course not,” Alex says, stepping all over his words. “I wouldn’t out you, even to them. NDA or no NDA.” Henry nods, hair fluffing up beneath his head against the pillow as he does so. “June wouldn’t want to know details like that anyway, obviously, because she’s my sister and she prefers to pretend I’m pure as driven snow. Nora"—he winces—“Nora would prefer to know everything, in excruciating detail, honestly, but I’ve been denying her that for years, so no biggie.” He carefully maps out Henry’s face. “Are you sure you wouldn’t mind me telling them that we met? I don’t mind keeping it a secret if that's what you need—”
“It’s okay,” Henry says firmly, and Alex believes him, especially when he leans down and presses a soft kiss to Alex’s sweat damp shoulder. “Tell them. I know how excited you were to see their reaction.”
Alex smiles at him. “Do you want to see it too?”
Henry seems surprised by the offer but nods again, and Alex leans sideways off the bed until he can locate his suit pants with a blindly questing hand. He fishes his phone out, laying right beside Henry and pulling up his group chat with June and Nora. He hears the soft snort and knows Henry’s read the name across the top: Two Geniuses and Alex.
The only thing he does is attach the photo—complete with peace sign and shit-eating grin—to a message, sending it without commentary. Immediately, the thread floods with responses: June’s oh my god WHAT?? and Nora’s are you shitting me and June’s what the fuck how?? and Nora’s asindlsakndslakbfa classic keyboard smash stepping one right on top of the other until the picture is pushed all the way off the screen. The last message to pop up is from Nora: Alejandro you better fuck that white boy or I will!!!
Alex taps out a response, waiting until he feels the puff of Henry’s laughter against his shoulder, feels the infinitesimal nod of consent, then sends it—dropping the phone back over the edge of the bed to the floor.
Alex: No you won’t, I had dibs.