Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s something adjacent to happenstance that Henry is even at this particular Okonjo Foundation charity gala.

Henry has known Pez for most of his life, so attendance of Okonjo-related events is not, in and of itself, a rarity. It’s just that his grandmother usually prefers that those events be black tie, and that the headlines associated with the inevitable photograph of him and Pez standing side-by-side, an intentional and diligently maintained six inches of space between all parts of them, be focused on the biomedical enhancements that Okonjo Enterprises are pioneering; and decidedly not about the homeless, queer youth that their philanthropic foundation is working tirelessly to provide for.

Pez is, as always, the reason he’s even here. Here in the States. Here in this ballroom. He was the one who went before a live television interview, a morning show where he was charming and effervescent and so very Pez, and pretended to accidentally let slip that Prince Henry of Wales would be becoming a regular fixture of the foundation’s charitable efforts, taking on a hands-on role at bettering the lives of those in much more dire-straits than he had ever been. Pez had, in a move that still chilled Henry to his very core with shock and respect, done the unthinkable: he'd independently forced Queen Mary’s hand, had played mind games with the monarchy and won. He had painted the Crown into a corner with a few well-placed words; had presented two paths forward where the only one that was truly viable was the one that Pez himself had wanted taken. And he had done it all without batting an eye.

Truthfully, Henry may never stop being in awe of him.

After all, what was the royal family going to do? Release a statement that Percy Okonjo had misspoken, was ill-informed? That Prince Henry of Wales was not actually going to be taking on an active role in bettering the lives of at-risk youth? Announce to the country, and the world as a whole, that charity, that needy children, were an unworthy focus for a prince?

Imagine the headlines. 

So he’s here. In the States. In this ballroom. Attending a charity gala that he quote-unquote helped Pez plan, if the word helped is used both loosely and quite generously. Party-planning is just one of Pez’s innumerable talents. He has an unmistakable eye for color schemes, for dress codes, for venues and menus and open bars and the best ways to wine and dine the notoriously stingy elite into opening their pocketbooks. All of that—the party-planning and the wining and the dining—is not Henry’s forte. Perhaps because every party he’s ever hosted has been planned for him, by people who were employed expressly for the purpose of planning those parties. Or, possibly, because all he’s ever been expected to do was show up places and validate events sheerly as a result of being there.

So he’s here. 

But even here, Henry knows the rules of the Crown like they’ve been lobotomized into his brain, his frontal lobe scrambled to fit a very specific code of conduct. Be seen and admired. Command respect. Stand up straight. Nice, firm handshakes. Smile, but not too much. Have a drink in your hand, but never be drunk. Participate in conversation, be eloquent, but stick to the approved talking points, and never express anything as radical as an original thought or opinion. Make a good first impression—

There’s a man walking straight towards him.

Even from a distance, Henry can tell he is a noticeably good-looking man. A noticeably good-looking man who is walking straight towards him. Undeterred. Across the full length of the ballroom. With intent, a single-minded focus that makes Henry feel hot beneath his collar, like he’s pinned beneath a magnifying glass from half a room away and that man is the sun. He's got a glass of something in his hand—whiskey maybe, top shelf definitely, knowing Pez—and god, Henry wishes he could drink this champagne, preferably all in one swallow, for the liquid courage this is obviously going to require. 

He should move. He should—he should go. 

But princes don’t flee.

“Hey,” the man says warmly, once he’s close enough to have Henry trapped in place by the expectations of decorum. He says it so informally, like they know each other, and know each other well at that; an actual impossibility now that he’s close enough for Henry to see properly. By virtue of his very existence, Henry meets a lot of people, an innumerable amount of people, entirely too many people, if anyone bothered to ask him his opinion on the matter, which they do not. So many people, in fact, as to make all of those names and faces into arbitrary information his brain simply does not possess the space required to store long term.

But this man. This face. Henry would know. He would remember.

He feels like he will still remember on his deathbed.

“I’m Alex Claremont-Diaz,” the man tells him. He holds out a hand. In Henry’s periphery, Shaan tenses, paying careful attention. Henry is sans PPOs in the ballroom, a concession only allowed because the guest list was so vetted, and because of the security protocol just to enter, and because Shaan is standing within twenty feet at all times like a vigilant, better dressed Eye of Sauron. Some people might find it suffocating, but with Shaan, Henry only finds it comforting.

Alex must catch on to Shaan’s movement, his focus, because he moves slowly and intentionally, hand always angled for Shaan to see. An open palm. Casual. Non-threatening. It’s an admirable degree of situational awareness that most people do not exhibit.

Alex.

Henry’s going to remember that, too.

Alex is looking at him, rather expectantly, and Henry manages to say belatedly,  “Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor.” 

It is, in fact, his name—but it still feels almost odd to say. Henry doesn’t often have to introduce himself in the way Alex appeared to be waiting for. It’s a novelty to go anywhere and not be presented formally to the room at large, not to be paraded through like a prize-winning show dog, made to sit and stay and heel for the entertainment of the crowd. He reaches out to take the offered hand without consciously deciding to—a lifetime of receiving lines activating like a reflex test, muscle memory. Nice, firm handshake: check. He vaguely wishes he could have subtly wiped his own hand on his trousers first, but thankfully his palms haven’t seemed to have received the memo from his brain that they’re currently touching the most perilously attractive man Henry has ever seen with his own eyes.

It’s a blessing. Both the touching and the lack of nervous sweat. 

Alex releases his hand after a perfectly acceptable duration of time, and Henry lets it fall back to his side, uncertain what to do with it now that the handshake portion of the proceedings is over and bloody hell—he does this all the time. He meets people all the time. He listens to introductions and he holds pleasant, relatively pointless conversation and he does it all without feeling like he may swallow his own tongue. Which does not explain the state of nervous affairs that appear to be gripping him in a panic now that he’s come face-to-face with Alex Claremont-Diaz.

Except for the fact that Alex is… handsome. Distractingly handsome. His eyes are mischievous, like he knows a secret the entire world doesn’t that could bleed the Earth dry; framed by long eyelashes and truly devastating curls that would look so pretty tangled up in Henry’s fingers. He’s got a strong build that Henry’s brain clocks immediately even in formalwear and he wears the sodding hell out of a suit; burgundy, velvet, daring—the kind of thing that’s striking and fashionable and would never find itself within five miles of Henry’s own closet. He has a mouth made for wide smiles and wicked smirks and Henry would quite like to kiss him. He would also quite like to die, just a little. They’re probably not strictly mutually exclusive.

“Sorry, I’ve never met actual royalty before,” Alex is saying, like that isn’t painfully clear by every element of this interaction. Alex stands with loose hips and an easy posture, cocksure and confident and like he owns the room. Like he owns every room he’s ever been in, possibly. But he’s talking to Henry like they’re mates at the pub, and not like Henry was born into one of the most prestigious family lineages of political figureheads on the planet. It’s… disorienting. He can only imagine Philip’s reaction to this. Apoplectic. The vein in his forehead might actually burst. Christ, the sneer might become permanent, sticking in that way parents always tease their children that a silly face would. Henry can't help but picture it. Alex is still talking. “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 pauses deliberately, but also with the air of a man throwing a mental dart at a board and committing to the results admirably—“Majesty?

Henry grimaces, even if—strictly speaking—princes should not grimace. He’s got it down to something of a refined art, only letting his mouth go taut and pinched, lips pressed tight. It’s a natural reaction when the topic of his grandmother is broached in any situation where it’s less than ideal; which is, in his humble opinion, most situations. And certainly all situations involving men that look like this. 

“It’s Your Royal Highness, actually,” he says, doing his level best to sound informative and not like the stuck-up prick that sentence makes him out to be. “Your Majesty is reserved for the King or Queen.”

“How fancy,” Alex replies, dragging the word out unnecessarily long, making absolutely no effort to put into practice the etiquette that he just asked Henry to teach him, acknowledging it only so far as to say, “That’s my bad. If you don’t mind me asking, how on Earth does Pez know a prince?”

Across the room, Pez is holding court beside two overly ostentatious champagne towers, head thrown back in raucous laughter, commanding all the attention within a fifty foot radius—with the exception, apparently, of the pair of them. Henry smiles, small and private and completely without intending to, an effect that Pez has been known to have on him. “Ah, well. We’ve been mates since we went to Eton.” Henry pries his eyes from the spectacle of Pez retrieving an overfilled champagne glass from the nearest tower without spilling a drop, linking arms with a woman twice his age, and throwing it back in one go, to the delight and merriment of his captivated audience. Henry catches the way Alex’s face has gone quite suddenly blank and adds, “Boarding school.”

Participate in conversation: check. 

“Oh, so you go way back then,” Alex says brightly. He looks Henry up and down, considering, from the top of his hair to the base of his dress shoes and back; and Henry feels it traveling along every inch of his body like a physical caress, finger-walking up the length of his spine, completely inappropriate for a public setting. He almost shivers. And Henry—

Henry needs to say something. Or to leave. Or, preferably, to say something and then leave, so he doesn’t make an arse out of himself in front of a stranger who could be, in some manner, beneficial to the foundation’s welfare; could be as influential or powerful or venerable as he is debilitatingly charismatic and charming and—

And Henry needs to bloody say something. And then leave.

“How,” he starts, then regrets the fact that his traitorous brain has apparently chosen a question. A question that is bound to only prolong this interaction that Henry is realizing with an unsteady heartbeat and belatedly but increasingly sweaty palms is a bad idea. He subtly wipes the hand still hanging uselessly by his side against his trousers. He doesn’t know why, it’s not like he’s expecting to need it again anytime soon, but it offers a small degree of comfort regardless. “Do you know Pez?”

Be eloquent: admittedly, a work in progress.

“Oh, he came into the firm I work for with some questions for the LGBTQ youth shelters,” Alex says easily, smiling. Henry’s stomach flips. “I’m a civil rights lawyer here in the city.”

And, of course he is. That’s just Henry’s luck, isn’t it? That a man with a face like that would also be kind, be a voice for people who do not always have the voice to speak to their own defense. A man out to change the world for the better and doing so not only with his hands, and his bloody smile, but with his heart and his intellect. That he would be as passionate and driven and singularly good as he is bright and lovely and utterly out to destroy Henry, personally.

It seems patently unfair that Henry be the one to pay for his entire bloodline’s storied history of sordid crimes; all of the colonizing and the brutality resting solely on Henry’s shoulders to answer for, and that fate would be so cruel as to choose Alex Claremont-Diaz as it's sword. 

If this ballroom was on a high enough floor to make it worth his while, Henry might consider jumping out the window. Toys with it anyway, briefly, for catharsis. 

Except, princes don’t jump out of windows.  

And Christ, how long has he just been standing here—

“That’s admirable work,” he says, because it is. Because sometimes, a lot of time, more of the time than Henry would ever be permitted to admit to—he doesn’t feel like he’s doing much of anything to help anyone. He has all of this supposed power, this influence, and his grandmother has all but ensured he can’t do a damn thing with it to make a difference besides stand here and be seen. 

That’s changing though. Henry is going to change it. This foundation work, being able to actually help people, it’s going to be something. Something meaningful. The first meaningful thing he’s ever done in his entire life, possibly.

It has to. 

And he should start doing it. Should preferably start now. Preferably at this exact moment, somewhere as far away from the enticing heat of Alex Claremont-Diaz as he can physically get. In a moment of weakness, he muses that perhaps Alex truly is the sun, and this is how Icarus must have felt—so bloody close, but still not close enough.

“If you’ll excuse me, I should probably get back to making the rounds,” he says, fixing his eyes not quite on Alex’s face, unwilling to take the chance of looking at him directly and promptly going blind from it. He shuffles on his feet, finally primed to make a proper escape, and then—

“So, I actually came over here for a reason,” Alex tells him, all in a rush, like the declaration has just been sent down an Olympic luge at full speed from his brain to his mouth and they aren't just hoping to make the podium, they’re going for the sodding gold. Henry’s feet stop before his brain does, trained too meticulously, physically incapable of walking away in the midst of polite conversation. He lets out a long, deep sigh.

So close.

He hasn’t said anything, but that doesn’t deter Alex in the slightest from carrying on. “When I was in college, my girlfriend and I used to play this game—”

Henry has been through extensive and rigorous etiquette training. Private tutors. The whole lot. He’s been thoroughly and expertly edified to remain impassive, attentive, unruffled, in even the most extreme of circumstances. But if this gorgeous man is about to tell him about some sort of perverted royal roleplay he engaged in with his college girlfriend, Henry’s going to revisit his decision about not jumping out of the bloody window.

“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. 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.” His tone is so… casual. Like he hasn’t walked up to a total stranger, shook their hand, and apparently decided it’s completely appropriate to start talking to them about sex games. Alex’s face is animated and expressive but not over the top. It isn’t performative, it’s just… him. Henry does not, at any point in the onslaught of words, detect where he takes a breath to get through them. It would be impressive were it not so dizzying.

He opens his own mouth, just barely, like he might reply, though he hasn't the foggiest idea what he may say. No response is forthcoming. 

That doesn’t dissuade Alex, either.

“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 tries, as subtle as possible, to locate Shaan in his periphery. Shaan is, typically, a master of detecting Henry’s moods, sometimes even before he’s registered them himself. The man is worth every penny the Crown pays him for that alone—the number of times Henry has felt a sudden onset spiral of anxiety, and Shaan has swept him off to safety with apologetic and placating words to his company about other engagements that the prince simply must attend to, so sorry.  He’s wondering if Shaan is watching, if he’s moments away from intervening on Henry's behalf, of finally coming to his rescue. “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.”

And—

What?

Henry, who just moments before had felt like his hands had finally found the ripcord on this very interaction, fully prepared to pull and launch his parachute, now feels it slip from his grip. His attention jerks from seeking out Shaan and back to Alex, who is watching him with a sort of attentiveness that has sweat springing up fresh and mortifying under the collar of his shirt and—did he black out somewhere in there, or was Alex actually insinuating—

“I was on—” he starts, having to fight the words up his resistant throat, sounding more choked than he'd like by the implication alone.

“My No Consequences Sex List,” Alex says with complete and utter seriousness, like he's totally unaware that a more ridiculous sentence has never before been spoken in the English language. “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 pauses to take a sip of his drink, his eyes never leaving Henry, who fears he may have lost the entire plot on controlling his own expression. He’s… bewildered. No amount of etiquette training or private tutors could have possibly prepared him for this. Alex could write a how-to guide on making such a lasting first impression that it is physically impossible to forget, but Henry prays he does not—if for no other reason than to selfishly go through life never experiencing this particular brand of social horror ever again. Henry isn’t convinced he has it in him to endure this once, he certainly would never survive a repeat performance. “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 actually drops. In public. Princes’ jaws do not drop in public.  

He takes back that bit about the most ridiculous sentence ever spoken in the English language, because Alex keeps arranging new hurdles in the midst of an already record-breaking, championship performance, just to clear them seamlessly, without even breaking a sweat. In point of fact, Alex takes a casual sip of his drink, completely easy-going, like nothing about the last ten minutes has been quantifiably absurd. He must be parched from breathlessly navigating that winding labyrinth of words, but he's showing absolutely no signs of it. Really, Henry should probably hold all his questions and comments until the end, when he’s certain he has all the necessary information to form a concise, articulate, and well-thought-out response. Be eloquent, for the love of—

At which point Alex, without missing a beat, says, “So, honestly, what this boils down to is can we take a selfie?”

“Pardon?” Henry asks. He feels faint. Like he might need to lie down expeditiously. The edges of the room are starting to go a little fuzzy, and he cannot reasonably blame the champagne he has yet to so much as sip; no, this is the effect of pure Alex Claremont-Diaz to the bloodstream. “How is that what this boils down to?”

Not quite the response Henry had in mind.

“Did you miss the part about how neither of us have ever met anybody on our lists?” Alex asks, but it must be rhetorical because he doesn’t even pause to entertain the idea of an answer. “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.” Oh, so his expression is actually worse than he thought, if Alex has managed to pick up on all that. He would make a mental note to present this exact scenario to the royal etiquette trainers so that future generations could be better equipped to handle it, except for the fact that he has already resolved to take every scrap of detail regarding this incident directly to his grave. Henry has to physically resist shooting a glance at Shaan, who he thinks would finally take it coupled with Henry’s confused body language as a concrete indicator to intervene. “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?” He sounds miles away even to his own ears. He’s still trying to process the verbal equivalent of a devastating landslide, and he keeps finding himself under progressively more rubble before he can so much as fathom beginning to dig himself out. He thinks, quite clearly, that he might be having a stroke.  He doesn’t know the diagnostic protocol to be certain. Even if he isn’t, maybe he could fake a medical emergency. Except princes do not fake medical emergencies. “What do I say to what, exactly?”

Alex sighs, long and impatient, and it should probably make him less attractive. Henry is rather chagrined to find it does not. Really, Henry thinks he should be afforded a bit of slack here. The most beautiful man he’s ever seen in his entire life has just walked up to him, introduced himself, and then promptly started talking about wanting to have sex with him. For years. It is hardly a daily occurrence. 

“The selfie.”

Right. Somewhere in all this mental dust and chaos was a request for a photograph. Henry gets asked for pictures all the time. He stands in front of professional grade lenses shaking hand after hand. He stops at the behest of people gathered behind barricades for trembling mobile phone photos that inevitably turn out blurry. A picture is not, in and of itself, too outlandish of an ask, even if the journey getting there was nothing shy of Homer’s Odyssey, and just as rife with emotional upheaval. Henry shoots a look, very briefly, towards Shaan, who is in fact watching them with outright attentiveness. He’s still leaning against the wall, body tense like he suspects he might be needed, but won’t make the judgment call on his own; at the ready, but awaiting orders. His eyebrow moves, a question, undetectable by anyone who wouldn’t be looking for it, and Henry schools his face back into that of the prince, and not a man desperate for rescue by any means necessary.

“Yes,” he replies finally. “That would be… fine.”

In front of him, Alex shoves his free hand into the pocket of his suit trousers, pulling out an iPhone that he taps to wake. He pauses on the locked screen, then angles it towards Henry informatively. “Oh, this is all of us. That’s my sister June, the infamous Nora, and me, obviously.”

Henry is relatively certain that the photo contains three people, operating only on the context clues of Alex’s introductions. Henry is also relatively certain that under penalty of actual death or dismemberment, in a dirty basement somewhere with a single bare bulb swinging over his head and with an actual, real life gun pressed to his actual, real life temple, safety off, he could confidently describe absolutely nothing about the women in question.

Because Alex in this photo is a vision of sun-kissed brown skin stretched tight over defined abs, an unbuttoned shirt billowing out behind him as he leaps off a dock and into a lake, in a downright salacious, miniscule swimming costume that leaves very little of his lower half to Henry’s imagination. And Henry’s imagination rises to the challenge. It supplies. It delivers. It over delivers.

He almost chokes on his own tongue, passes it off as a cough and mentally congratulates himself for the smooth save. The Alex that’s here, in the ballroom wearing that burgundy velvet suit that Henry is now much more equipped to imagine stripped off of him, is wedging his body closer to Henry’s side, warm and solid and real where he presses their sides together. Alex says nothing, just taps open his camera and raises his arm for a selfie.

On the screen, Henry sees himself transform in an instant into the man he sees in every camera lens, practiced and poised and without so much as a trace of personality. It’s hollowing in a way he can’t face, so he allows himself the satisfaction of watching Alex instead. He changes his angle between one picture and the next—just barely, little changes to ensure he gets exactly the look that he wants—and then he’s sticking his tongue out and winking and silly, fingers raised into a peace sign held up between them. 

He really smiles. He has dimples. Henry is physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually unwell.

He’s still blinking from the shock of it as Alex lowers the phone, thumbing back and forth through the three images in rapid succession, measuring them against an unknown litmus test. 

“Thanks, Your Majesty,” he says, grinning, visibly relishing in the way Henry ruffles at the words. He pauses a little longer on the last picture, then tucks the phone back out of sight. “This was really cool of you. Thanks for letting me talk your ear off, I’ll let you get back to the party.”

Alex steps back. Still smiling, so visibly pleased. He turns as if content to just retreat the way he came. Like it’s commonplace for him to just careen through people’s lives, destroying every expectation of a proper first impression, and then go about his business like it never even happened. Just a blip on his own radar, but a tactical undersea missile that’s sinking Henry right here in this room and leaving him to drown.

If Henry revisits the metaphor about the unpulled ripcord, then at this exact moment the Earth is still coming towards him at perilous speed. He’s free-falling, getting closer and closer, heart beating fast and hard enough to burst in his chest; an act of mercy before the ruinous collision. But Henry isn’t even looking to deploy the parachute anymore. No, he’s bracing for impact. 

After all, princes do not flee.

The most beautiful man Henry has ever seen in his entire life has just walked up to him, introduced himself, and promptly started talking about wanting to have sex with him for years. It is not only not a daily occurrence, it is likely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And Henry, while perhaps not always bold or daring, does not consider himself a man foolish enough to let that slip. He clears his throat, and forces out the words ricocheting through every fibre of his being.

“Is there still a list?”

Alex stops abruptly, turning back to afford Henry the full force of his attention. Henry, quite deliberately, does not dwell on how startlingly empty he’d felt in those brief seconds that passed without it.

“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, confused, but still open to entertaining the conversation. Like he was never raised with the concept of shame, or oversharing. It is painfully unrelatable on a fundamental level. “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.”

No consequences.

Henry has never known such a thing.

“As a lawyer,” he starts, eyes dropping down to a spot just inches from Alex’s dress shoes, shiny on a shinier ballroom floor, “what are your thoughts on NDAs?”

If Alex is thrown at all by the sudden left turn in conversation, he handles it with remarkable aplomb. “They can be a very necessary legal document, especially when ironclad.” 

It sounds like something he’s said before, practiced but no less honest for it. Henry realizes, suddenly, that he’s nodding. That the muscles in his neck are tiring in a way that suggests he may have been nodding for some time, without even noticing it.

And right here is when Henry has a moment of clarity. This situation goes one of two ways: Henry lets Alex walk away and laugh off the entire bizarre interaction they shared, while Henry lives the rest of his life knowing he’s a coward for not saying anything; or Henry opens his fucking mouth and does what he wants, for once in his godforsaken life.

In a rare moment of courage, he does the latter. He chooses himself.

No bloody consequences.

“Would you sign one if I asked?”

Alex is blinking back obvious surprise. Henry feels, for the first time in their admittedly short but incredibly memorable acquaintance, like he has the conversational upper hand. It’s downright thrilling.

“What, now?”

Henry nods. He can’t actually stop himself. He’s been at it long enough that he feels the front of his hair drifting down, succumbing to gravity, ghosting over his forehead in a way that tickles but that he refuses to reach up and touch; a flaw he won’t draw attention to by acknowledging it.

Alex swallows. Henry isn’t sure he notices.

“I would have to read it,” Alex tells him, like he thinks that might be a dealbreaker and not the entire point of a sickeningly thorough Non-Disclosure agreement. “You know, lawyer. Occupational hazard and all that.”

“I would expect nothing less,” Henry says, and he means it. The sweat under his shirt is prickling up again. His palms are a total lost cause. It’s a miracle he hasn’t lost his grip on this flute of champagne. Last chance, the weakest parts of him whisper unhelpfully, once you do this, there’s no going back—“If you’ll excuse me for one moment, perhaps we could…  reconvene, on the seventeenth floor?”

Alex opens his mouth. Shuts it without actually speaking for once. Then nods. 

Henry doesn’t stick around to watch if he changes his mind.

At long last, Henry manages to step away from Alex, heading determinedly to Shaan, who straightens up attentively at his approach. It is not physically possible, but Henry still feels like Shaan has one eye fixed to him and the other still on Alex. Henry doesn’t speak until he’s close enough to be absolutely certain he will not be overheard, asking no louder than a murmur, “Do you still carry the Non-Disclosure Agreements?”

Which Non-Disclosure Agreements he means is painfully obvious. He’s surprised to register the tickle of embarrassment in himself at the question. This is far from the first time he’s asked Shaan those exact words, far from the first time that the implication dangled over them, unsaid but no less heavy for it. He thought, by this point, that he was beyond feeling shy with Shaan. 

But—well, Henry isn’t nineteen and at Oxford anymore. He’s grown out of the slag phase he had in Uni, when the thrill, however brief, outweighed the concessions. And he may still be forcibly closeted by the hanging guillotine of his grandmother’s outspoken disapproval, but the upsides of this arrangement have not eclipsed the downsides in quite some time. It is not as often that he… indulges.

And Alex Claremont-Diaz… is an indulgence waiting to happen.

Shaan doesn’t blink. There isn’t so much as a twitch of a muscle in his face or his jaw. Absolutely no reaction. It’s a bloody shame that Shaan wasn’t born a prince, Henry knows he would hold his own. Wouldn’t even need the lobotomy. 

“Of course, Your Royal Highness,” Shaan says, without a modicum of judgment. Henry straightens a little, clears his throat, indicates the door off to the side of the ballroom. It is, technically speaking, staff only—but also the easiest way to navigate the hotel without risk of being bombarded. And… discretion is of the utmost essence here. 

“Excellent, Mister Claremont-Diaz will be coming up to the floor.” He is, once again, looking just to the left of Shaan’s actual face, grateful his back is to Alex because of the faintest bit of warmth he can feel rising to his cheeks that he’d prefer not be seen, even if the likelihood he makes it through this evening completely unscathed in that regard is distressingly minimal. “If you could sort that out with him, please.”

“At once,” Shaan confirms, falling into step beside him. At the last possible moment, Henry abandons his glass of untouched champagne on the nearest table, then allows himself to be ushered into the wings.

They take the lift up, apprehension tightening his throat in a way that has Henry’s hands itching to undo his tie, fingers twitching against his thigh. He forces them to stay lax at his sides, well-trained in the art of masking his discomfort in even the most private of public spaces. The arrow rises to indicate the current floor with tortuous slowness—five, six, seven—and Henry tries not to think about Alex Claremont-Diaz downstairs in the ballroom—eight, nine, ten—perhaps already accosting some other unsuspecting soul—eleven, twelve, thirteen—wondering what on Earth could have possessed Henry to invite him upstairs in a fashion requiring a legally binding agreement—fourteen, fifteen, sixteen—

The entire seventeenth floor has been booked by the Crown, a necessary but pretentious accommodation when Henry stays anywhere away from home, even though the vast majority of the rooms will ultimately go unoccupied. The lift dings for their arrival, doors sliding open to reveal a small lobby, empty hallways branching off, unsettlingly devoid of any signs of life. Technically speaking, the PPOs are supposed to be sweeping the floor, standing vigil at all the entrances and exits, from before Henry even steps foot upstairs. But, technically speaking, Henry’s not supposed to be upstairs, at present; is, in fact, supposed to be down in the ballroom for another two hours at a minimum.

“I will send him your way when everything is in order,” Shaan tells him professionally. Henry nods, trying not to show exactly how embarrassingly grateful he is, and instead steps out of the lift and heads down the hall to his suite. His hand shakes, just a little, as he pulls the keycard from his jacket pocket, presses it against the reader on the door. His head is already so far in the clouds that he doesn't register the way it blinks red twice, until he's already trying the knob and almost walking into the still defiantly locked door on autopilot. He takes a deep breath, holds the keycard with a steadier hand, watches the light turn green and tries the door again.

As soon as he steps into the room, he's immediately prying off his suit jacket, pulling at his tie until it’s loose, until he can move and breathe a little easier. Christ, he isn’t going to have a bloody panic attack over this—Alex is just a man. 

But Henry is not so far detached from his own past to have forgotten how this feels: the waiting, the tension, the nerves. He never had to watch any of the men he had vaguely propositioned be presented with the paperwork, hadn’t added the pressure of his expectant stare to an already unspeakably uncomfortable situation. He still remembers every rejection acutely, every night he spent waiting in a hotel room for a knock that never came; a man who signed over his silence under the implied threat of bodily harm, but never made it across the threshold because of the spectacle of it all. And then, the men that did, but only to wind up getting cold feet, backing out once it was happening, once it was real. He still remembers the disappointment, the hurt, the sting, the shame. 

He steps out of his shoes, lining them up against the wall; stares down at his feet, then pulls off his socks, too. He toys around with the idea of changing entirely, but decides against it. Considers taking another anti-anxiety pill for his racing heart, but decides against that, too. 

It will be fine, he tells himself. It will be fine if Alex doesn’t knock. It will be fine if he does knock, only to tell Henry that everything he said downstairs was an elaborate joke, some sort of internet trend that Henry isn’t caught up on. He’ll run a hot bath. He’ll make a cup of tea. He’ll tell Pez in the morning he buggered off because of a headache after his long flight in and Pez will understand, Pez will be sympathetic. Henry will make eye contact with Shaan again tomorrow and he will resolutely not ask what it was that proved too great a hurdle for Alex to clear when the time came, where it was that Henry lost this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It will be fine. Everything will be fine. He will be fine. 

What’s important is that he tried, he tells himself, as he unbuttons the cuffs of his shirt, folds his sleeves and starts to roll them methodically up his arms, just for something to do with his faintly trembling hands. He hasn’t tried, in a while, is the thing. Since he realized it wasn’t the act of rebellion that he always thought it was, that he wasn’t getting what he wanted, that he was merely playing the game set out for him, one he was always fated to lose. He simply hasn’t found the idea of meaningless sex with perfect strangers as alluring as he did in his youth. 

But Alex—

He’s known Alex for twenty bloody minutes, but he knows him, somehow. In that deluge of words and nonsense and that chaotic, white-water rapid stream of consciousness that rose over the banks and flooded their entire interaction, Alex told Henry so much about himself without reservation. Alex let him in on his secrets, his desires, let Henry see him for exactly who he is—

Alex doesn’t feel like a stranger. 

There’s a knock at the door. 

Henry goes to it, opens it already convinced that it’s Shaan, informing him that Alex never arrived, or that he did, and subsequently got cold feet. Or that it’s Pez, half drunk and all smiles, here to drag him back to the party.

It turns out to be neither, and all at once everything Henry could have hoped for, if he had allowed himself to hope at all.

It’s Alex. Standing in the otherwise desolate hallway in his full burgundy suit, staring at Henry’s anxious, partially stripped form, all the way down to his bare feet and back up again; still a look that Henry can feel traveling along his skin like a touch, intimate and branding. And good lord—Henry only undid a couple of buttons, he still has his trousers on for Christ's sake. Alex’s hot stare shouldn’t be capable of making him feel so naked and exposed. 

“Well, now I just feel overdressed.”

It’s a joke, clearly; something of an icebreaker. Henry almost coughs nervously, covers it the best he can by clearing his throat, and turns to the side to let Alex step into the room. He doesn’t require a more formal invitation, breezing right in and leaving Henry to shut the door in his wake. He rather deliberately does not flip the deadbolt on the hotel door, just in case. 

“So, you gonna tell me why I just had to sign the longest NDA I’ve ever seen in my entire life?” Alex asks airily, sliding his hands into the pockets of his trousers, giving the room a cursory once-over. He's remarkably nonchalant, like nothing about finding himself in Henry's hotel suite strikes him as an unexpected turn of events. Though, perhaps, it doesn't—if this is what Alex was after all along with his outrageous introduction.

Henry takes a deep breath, walks past where Alex has stopped alongside the suite’s long dresser and deeper into the room. He really is a touch out of practice with this part, or maybe it’s just something about Alex making him feel so out of control. With him here, now, the room feels too small. Hell, with Alex pressed against his side downstairs, the ballroom felt too small. He is just slightly—and irrationally—afraid that simply knowing Alex exists in the world will make the entirety of the planet itself feel too small. Henry doesn’t know how he ever expected to be able to breathe in confined to just this suite. He glances briefly at the sitting room space, decides it’s too formal, then down at the foot of the bed, decides it’s too casual; even if Alex must have some idea why he’s up here, and is just out for some sort of glib satisfaction out of making Henry say it out loud. 

“Er, well, without it, I couldn’t really… comment on your story,” he starts slowly, hoping that Alex might jump in and spare him the awkwardness of putting it into words. Suddenly, he is very aware of his own hands hanging down at his sides, his previous mastery of masking his discomfort abandoning him in a moment of need. He raises them, then tucks them against his sides, arms crossed; a defensive posture he’s used since childhood, protecting his weak spots. “I asked if there was still a list—"

Now is when Alex finally chooses to interject, just in time for his best odds of derailing Henry’s tremulous attempt to force out the words. “Right, which I explained would be unnecessary—”

“Because I’m gay.”

The thing is, Henry doesn’t get to say it out loud, very often. Sometimes in his private appointments with his therapist; more often in occasional conversations with Pez that feel cathartic. Once, of course, to Shaan, when a plan was outlined with how to proceed. Once, even more memorably, to his older sister on the dirty steps outside some club when she was high as a kite; a handful of other times, after, when it came up again, her eyes sad and knowing as he buckled himself up and put on a smile. 

He never found the right moment, never summoned up the bravery to say it to his father before he died; never took the chance—or even saw the point really—in telling his mother, who did too, in a sense. He’s never said it to Philip, for reasons both obvious and innumerable. Never even had to breathe a word of it to his gran to catch her shrewd stare, to get that lecture at eighteen years old about duty, and about royal obligation, and about what it meant to be a part of his own family. 

What he owed them. A price for being born. 

He has never said it to any of these men, either. A conscious decision to let them draw their own conclusions from a very apparent presentation of facts, but never confirm anything one way or another. To never surrender the truth in his heart, not in exchange for something meaningless, that barely qualified as a connection; something that would—by the very virtue of his title—be over before it could even properly begin. 

Not until Alex. 

Alex, whose mouth shuts audibly around whatever he was about to say, teeth actually colliding hard enough for Henry to hear from halfway across the room. Alex, who has fallen abruptly silent in a way that’s pressing firmly on Henry’s frayed nerve endings. Alex, who is now blinking fast, visibly appearing to reorient to this information like it is, in fact, a monumentally unexpected declaration, even given how this evening has transpired so far. 

Henry was alone, just moments ago, in this very room, for an indeterminate amount of time—but he's realizing now that his brain was too busy to notice the quiet. He’d forgotten what silence —true silence—was like since meeting Alex Claremont-Diaz and his endless wealth of words. 

He finds, quite unsettlingly, that it’s not as comfortable as he remembers it. 

Blessedly, it also doesn’t last. 

“Okay, yeah, that would explain why they’d never find my body,” Alex says, but more like the thought has slipped unbidden from his mouth, a surprise only in that it suggests he is actually capable of filtering some thoughts out, and has thus far been making the conscious decision not to. 

Henry tilts his head. “Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” Alex says quickly. He does a little shake of his head, like his brain is an Etch-a-Sketch that requires the actual physical motion to clear his thoughts in order to start again fresh. And then, as casual as anything else so far, he says, “So, you’re gay.”

That’s it. That’s the whole reaction. 

“As a maypole,” he confirms seriously. Alex just blinks. And, well, Henry had kind of thought Alex would have put together what was happening here, especially considering Alex was the one who opened their conversation with great big discoveries regarding his own sexual orientation and, more specifically, the key part Henry played in it; and, even more specifically than that, his own long-documented desire to have sex with Henry. With the way Alex had looked at him downstairs—well, Henry might not have bolstered up the courage for this if he hadn’t already thought Alex might be, in a roundabout way, testing the waters on propositioning Henry himself. 

But even if that wasn’t his intention all along—Alex came all the way up here, he read and signed the thorough, extensive Non-Disclosure agreement, and he hasn’t left the room in horror or with empty apologies yet. That… has to count for something.

Hopefully.

“So, if, perhaps…” Henry starts haltingly, wishing the words could come out bolder, more certain; that he could just be sure of the outcome before he said it, so he wouldn’t have to pause and hold in the threat he might cringe. “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.”

Alex is, once more, painfully silent. Henry digs his own fingertips hard into his ribs beneath his crossed arms, a stimulus to distract himself from dropping them and reaching for his ring, succumbing to the urge to anxiously twist it. He cannot, for the first time, read Alex’s expression; his face a slate wiped clean of all of his previous animated energy as he processes exactly what Henry’s just said. 

He bites his lip. Henry wishes he was a strong enough man to resist the temptation to watch as it slides, achingly slowly, out from beneath the torment of his teeth. But, well—Henry has never claimed to be a particularly strong man, and he’s memorized every agonizing second of it in vivid detail by the time it pops free. 

“Well,” Alex says, a steady exhale. “Like hell am I saying no to that.”

The relief that courses through Henry starts from the crown of his head and drips, icy hot, all the way down to his toes; lights up nerve endings and fires synapses and uncoils muscles he hadn’t realized were tensed hard enough to snap. 

Alex is saying yes. 

Henry clears the space between them in a few, measured steps. He may not have done this recently, but he knows how it’s done; he remembers it, remembers feeling good about it, remembers being good at it—in a way that was so rare for him in every other element of his life. A skill he’d honed and refined but could never show, could never tell. He crowds Alex up against the dresser behind him, reaching a hand up into those curls, the way he’d imagined an hour ago. It’s even better than he could have thought, to feel the silky tangle of them between his fingers, to cradle Alex’s head in his palm. He pulls him in close, their foreheads, their noses, their lips—all almost touching, the barest of space between them, and Henry feels that bolt of long-forgotten confidence surge through him at the way Alex goes with his touch, lets himself be pulled by Henry’s hands, right to where he wants him.

He’s still good at this. 

“I’ve wanted to do this since the moment I laid eyes on you,” Henry says, an admission in exchange for all of the secrets Alex paid upfront, laid out in tribute at Henry’s feet with nary an expectation in return. He leans in without hesitation, pressing their lips together; catching that smart, whip-fast mouth with his own, pushing into Alex’s to chase that clever tongue, to see if he can taste the sweetness of his words. 

He pulls back, sharply inhaling the woodsy smell of Alex’s cologne in a way he fears might condition his mouth to water after just one exposure, and catches the way Alex smirks so self-assuredly. “So have I. The only difference is I’ve got a few years on you.”

It’s undeniably intoxicating—a reminder that a man like this has simply existed in the world all this time, and has wanted Henry, has desired Henry in some capacity. That Alex may have thought of Henry, in his bed at night, naked, when he—

He grabs Alex by the hips, firm, pushing him back against the dresser, letting Alex boost himself up to sit on it properly. They’re kissing again, deep and wet, with a rhythm like they’ve been kissing for years instead of seconds, born from a lifetime passed in the blink of an eye. Henry grips the lapels of Alex’s suit jacket, pushes it down his arms and off his body, fingers pulling eagerly at the knot of his tie. He breaks the kiss, regretfully, but only to ask, “How would you like to do this, love?”

It just trips out, his brain already slipping down the dangerous slope of romantic whimsy; caught in the rush of a beautiful man like something from his novels. It’s fine, he reasons with himself, it’s very British, perfectly common. Alex will not react like Henry has said anything strange. 

Never mind that Henry has never called another person that even once in his life. It’s not like Alex could possibly know that.

“What did you have in mind, baby?”

Not for the first time, Henry wishes he was a strong enough man not react to that; to not give away what that does to him, viscerally, in a way that he does not expect and could not possibly have predicted. But, not to beat a dead horse, Henry has never claimed to be a particularly strong man. Evidenced, to his growing horror, by how hot his face has started to feel. “Yes, well,” he manages to force out of his uncooperative mouth. “As you pointed out, you have years on me, here. Certainly, you have had something in mind all this time.”

Anything, Henry thinks desperately, you can have anything. 

“Back then, everything was free game,” Alex says simply. He shrugs. With the movement, the tips of their noses brush and hold. They’re so close, so close to still kissing, speaking so quietly into one another’s mouths. Sharing secrets, laying them out at each other’s feet, expecting nothing in return.

Everything, Henry thinks desperately, you can have everything. 

“And if I told you everything was still free game?”

He can’t see Alex properly from this close, but he can feel him, the line of tension that only relaxes, ever so slowly, as he nips at Henry’s bottom lip, catches it quick and sharp between his teeth, lets it go just as fast. “Top or bottom, sweetheart?”

Christ. 

He won’t minimize the undeniable appeal in either—in having bright, spitfire Alex beneath him and seeing just how many words he has in his extensive vocabulary to beg, but Henry is a man who knows what he likes, what he would choose, if only he were to let himself have it. And if Alex is offering, if this is his only chance, he isn’t turning it down for anything.

“Bottom,” he whispers.

“Fine by me.”

They don’t say anything else, fevered hands reignited to strip one another bare; ties dropped to the floor, shirts yanked open, sleeves pulled down arms, hands fighting belt buckles and snaps and zips. Henry succeeds in getting Alex’s trousers open first in a way he hopes doesn’t speak to his degree of eagerness, and Alex obliges him with another boost up from the dresser so Henry can yank them down, falling to his knees as he does, pulling off Alex’s shoes—letting it all pile up, thoughtlessly discarded.

Alex wears the hell out of a suit, but Henry finds he quite likes it better on the floor.

He’s in just a pair of boxer briefs, clinging tightly to the perfect shape of him where he’s already obscenely hard; a heather gray turned dark charcoal where the tip of his cock has already started to leak enough to soak the fabric. It pulls Henry in like a sailor to a siren’s call, happily to his death, if it means what it promises. He leans forward, pushing Alex’s knees wide with his shoulders, mouths over his cock through the confines of his pants, presses the flat of his tongue down, traces the tip, tastes the clean cotton and the salt of him. 

“Fuck,” Alex pants above him, dropping a hand to his shoulder, another landing in his hair. His fingers card through it delicately, the gentle touch of a proper lover, not the desperate grip of anonymous hands. Henry latches on to the head of his cock through the material and sucks. “Baby, please.”

It happens again, the intrinsic sort of reaction to baby, to the warmth and the unearned familiarity of it; the aching fondness, something Henry’s never experienced in a situation like this. Those men were… brief, insignificant, scratching an itch in the way that was allowed, only after jumping through every last meticulous hoop to earn it. But this—

Henry tucks his face against Alex’s hip and breathes in the smell of him straight from warm skin, trying to center himself. The way Alex speaks to him is dangerous. It feels… too real. This is—it’s still brief, a one time thing, it’s still scratching an itch. Alex will be gone in an hour, and Henry will feel better for having had him, no matter how little time it may last.

And Henry needs it to last.

He stands, pushing himself closer to Alex’s body on the dresser, his legs framed by Alex’s open knees. He watches Alex reach for him, the waistband of his trousers, inching the fabric down over Henry’s hips, so they can puddle slowly on the floor; leaving them both stripped down to just their pants. 

Alex’s fingers twitch, just slightly, against the skin of Henry’s thighs. He looks… entranced; the weight of his stare so flattering, and bolstering, and still somehow too much for Henry to handle. 

So he doesn’t.

He leans in, pulling Alex into another deep kiss that he welcomes, reciprocates in full. Alex kisses like he speaks—no holds barred, nothing held back, with absolutely everything he has—kisses like they’ll never have to stop, like no one can possibly make them stop. Henry’s hands land on Alex’s thighs in turn, feeling the shape of them, curving around the outside, fingers flirting beneath him to the swell of his arse, and then he lifts.

“Oh—” Alex exclaims, soft and surprised, his knees pinching Henry’s hips to hold on, hands at his shoulders. He glances down between them at the flex of Henry’s body, how easily he carries him, looking awestruck and confused as Henry takes a step back, then another. Henry tilts his chin up, an invitation, a request, and Alex leans down to match it, to shape and reshape the perfect kiss until gravity is shifting under them both.

Henry lands flat on his back, the duvet puffing up beneath them like the flutter of wings, the mattress firm enough that he bounces up, just a bit, as Alex drops down—perfectly aligning the place they’re both achingly hard. Alex gasps against his lips, rocking forward as Henry pushes up, until they’re just thrusting against one another, caught in the rush of how good they feel together.

Alex’s mouth drifts, kissing the corner of Henry’s lips, his cheek, his jaw—following the path of bone towards his neck, leaving a line of chills in his wake. The hold it has—every hint of lips and teeth and tongue—is all-encompassing of Henry’s attention, but he manages to force out the words, “Kit on the nightstand.”

“What?” Alex asks, distracted. Henry feels the words more than he hears them, right at the hinge of his jaw, Alex’s hot breath ghosting beneath his ear. Henry’s hands flex tight on his hips, pushing them together again, just for the thrill of it.

“Kit on the nightstand,” he repeats, even though it clarifies nothing. Alex has made it to just below and beneath Henry’s ear, a bit of skin that makes his toes curl under Alex’s treatment. “Lube. Condom.”

“Oh,” is exhaled in much the same way, right against skin made damp by Alex’s mouth. Henry expects him to pull back, but he doesn’t. He leans in, leaving his mouth to beautifully torture that same spot even as he reaches for the kit without looking. Henry can’t see what Alex is doing, but he feels as the bottle of lube lands near his elbow, a condom to follow; hears as others scatter in their wake.

“Optimistic, are we?” he jokes, even as he thinks about it properly; about Alex opening him up and having him, and then, having him again—and once more maybe, for good measure. He’s never had a night like that in his life, a lover so insatiable they wanted him over and over, like they could never get enough. Alex, firm and solid under his hands, still pressing hot, all-consuming kisses to his neck—feels like that kind of insatiable, feels like he could take and take and give and give and still have more left in him.

And Henry—Henry hasn’t wanted anything that badly for as long as he can remember. He hasn’t let himself. His life was simply less complicated that way. He had learned over time that it was less painful if he did not allow the desire to creep in, if he did not ruminate on all of the things that he could never have. Perhaps it was not better, but it was easier to endure.

And now, tonight—the floodgates have opened, and no amount of scrambling could ever force them closed. Since the moment he saw Alex, Henry wants. He wants it all. He can’t help it, and he cannot stop it. He wants everything. It’s debilitating.

Alex catches his earlobe in his teeth, a sharp nip, and pulls. It catches the tail end of Henry’s little laugh at his own joke in his throat, turns it into a groan with frightening efficiency. He squeezes Alex’s hips again, tight, just to feel him; a reminder that he’s real.

“I love a challenge,” Alex whispers, right there against the teeth marks he’s probably left on Henry’s ear, and he’s helpless not to moan. “Spread your legs.”

Those words in that voice, the promise of them, are almost enough to undo him alone.

He lets his legs fall open without a word of complaint, Alex shifting in between them properly. It’s a new kind of contact, the way he lays his weight into Henry, and he wants to keep him there, doesn’t want to let Alex pull away, even as he does—

But the path he blazes is a trail of fire, spreading hot as it burns up the acres of Henry’s bared skin. Alex kisses open-mouthed and wet, a swipe of his tongue in each one, over Henry’s shoulder, his pec, his nipple, his sternum, between his ribs, beneath his navel. Henry feels all of them like a new ignition point, spreading to the next until no barrier could possibly contain the blaze left behind—a full scale evacuation too late to spare his senses from the force of nature that is Alex Claremont-Diaz.

Fingers hook into the elastic of Henry’s pants, and he plants his feet and angles his hips to allow Alex to strip him bare. And then, he’s naked—completely at the mercy of Alex’s clever hands and he’s just… looking at him.

“Alex,” Henry murmurs, and he wants it to be a command, but it sounds just as much an appeal to his own ears. Alex, at least, stops just staring, pressing a quick kiss to Henry’s knee, following it up the inside of his thigh. He hesitates for a breath and Henry thinks he might bite, might leave behind something Henry can press his fingers to and remember him there until the dull ache fades in a way he’s certain the memory never will. He swallows and waits for it, but Alex only smiles against the skin instead, right where Henry’s thigh meets his hip.

“Yes, baby?” Alex asks, breath hot and humid where it hits Henry’s cock, the answering twitch a deep, personal betrayal, as is the precome it elicits.

“Please,” Henry responds. If his goal was to distract from his own desperation, he misses it by lightyears. Alex is rooting around in the covers, hand finding the lube bottle, the snick of it opening a welcome promise of what’s to come.

“Mmm,” Alex hums thoughtfully. “I didn’t think a prince would know how to beg.” The way Alex says it, so pleased, sounds nothing shy of filthy; like he wants to hear Henry beg in every way he knows how, like he plans to make him. Henry wishes he could say it was a turn-off, but the flush he feels rising up his chest, painfully visible, gives him up in an instant. “You’re full of surprises, Your Majesty.”

Henry clenches his jaw, fights off the immediate reaction to the title that threatens the sanctity of his erotic buzz, tells Alex honestly, “You’re a menace, and a plague.”

“And you want me,” Alex teases, bright and sure. Henry can hear the wet sounds of his fingers rubbing together, can feel them trailing between his legs, between his cheeks, so close. “And for the record, flattery will get you everywhere.”

And Henry… laughs.

It’s just so—unexpected. In every one of Henry’s sexual experiences, it’s been rushed; a man who met his—sometimes embarrassingly limited—criteria, there for the thrill of having sex with a prince, getting off in a hurry before the reality of the paperwork and the secrecy and the lies could push all the arousal out of the act itself. Categorically, Alex should be the same; the only difference being that he hardly made Henry work for it. He didn’t have to find a way to subtly feel out the potential of his interest, to test his openness to the idea. Alex walked right up to him and laid out the information like a five course meal, the single greatest thing Henry has ever been served on a silver platter.

But Alex isn’t the same, because Alex is… joking, teasing, taking his time. Kissing Henry, touching featherlight but intentional over every inch of him like he means something to him, like he matters. Not the idea of him, not the idea of fucking a prince—but Henry.

Alex’s fingers press against his rim, circle it barely, the laugh in Henry’s chest going startled, his back arching in reflex, and Alex mouths at the base of his cock like he’s pleased by the entire wanton display. 

“Christ, Alex.” Henry grabs at the sheets, tightening the material into fists almost strong enough to strip the corners from the mattress as Alex slides in a single fingertip, gives a little tug, licks his way up the length of him. It’s only just begun, but Henry’s already stuttering out, “You’re incredible.”

Alex pauses at the tip of his cock, panting as the words seem to settle over him, loosening his shoulders. Henry clocks it immediately, refuses to be distracted even when Alex pushes his finger in deeper, another knuckle, then to the base. He opens Henry up meticulously, adds a second finger beside the first and waits to press in until Henry has gasped out a resounding yes, does the same for the third, that he spreads and curls just right to brush his prostate, a tease, a vow.

Henry’s been chewing his own lip in anticipation, sure it’s gone red and swollen by the time he pries it free, kicks his foot gently into Alex’s side. “Good, love,” he says, too late to catch it this time, either, and much too far gone to worry about it now. “I’m good. Fuck me.”

Alex looks fundamentally changed by the words but he doesn’t have a smart-mouth response, for once; a moment Henry feels he should perhaps have noted down for the annals of history. He doesn’t, not before Alex twists his fingers out, an acquiescence. When Henry feels them slip free, he turns, intent on rolling over onto his front, the way these things are done.

Only Alex catches his hip, grip firm and unyielding as he guides Henry flat onto his back again, leaving him blinking up at Alex’s intent expression. “Don’t you dare,” he whispers, his other hand rooting around by Henry’s head, pulling down one of countless, superfluous throw pillows and wedging it beneath Henry’s hips, tilting them to an accommodating angle. “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I’m passing up the opportunity to watch your pretty face as you come.”

All of his etiquette training applied over a thousand lifetimes could not prevent the blush that rushes over him at that, conquering his cheekbones and his ears in a tactical advance. He’s—well, he’s never been spoken to that way. Even in a situation such as this, the faceless men from before had never dared. The fantasy of being with a prince left them all hyper aware that he was a prince, and what it really meant to speak out of turn; usually, it seemed best they not speak at all.

Henry doesn’t think Alex has ever been formally introduced to the concept of not speaking.

It’s a brief moment of lucidity through the crescendoing heat of the moment. Henry may have reminded himself earlier that Alex is just a man, but this is when it clicks, just like it did downstairs in that ballroom when Alex greeted him without a scrap of decorum—that that is how Alex sees him, too. Henry, not the prince, but the man that Alex has wanted for years. And Henry feels laid bare beneath him in more ways than one, stripped not only of every stitch of clothing, but of his title, too.

It’s perhaps the most human he’s felt in his entire life.

He nods, unable to stop himself from biting his bottom lip once more, accepting that this is how this is going to be done, this time. On his back, with Alex cradled between his legs, agonizingly visible and within his reach the entire time, capable of seeing straight into Henry’s eyes; past the facade, and into his soul. Another tortuously new experience in a long line of new experiences the day has unexpectedly brought to him. Alex kicks off his boxer briefs, finally exposing himself to Henry’s eyes in turn. His cock is long and achingly hard, already dripping and shiny from precome after all this time spent neglected. Henry’s mouth waters for it, to touch it, to have it any way he can get it, to have it every way he can get it—

Alex scrambles for the condom wrapper, bringing it to his mouth and hastily tearing it open with his teeth, looking every bit as eager as Henry feels down to his bones. He rolls it on with two fingers like he can’t bear the contact of touching himself any more than that. Then uncaps the lube again, upends the bottle over himself, using entirely too much but spreading it only with gravity and not with his hands.

“Are you ready?” he asks, quiet and serious. Henry nods again, and Alex says plainly, “Words, please and thank you.”

It sounds less like he’s making Henry say it than that he just needs to hear it for himself, which makes it all too easy to tell him, “Yes. I’m ready.”

He drives the point home by spreading his legs just a little more, angling his hips just right in bold invitation, giving Alex a final, enticing peek. He leans forward, a rush of air that ruffles their hair as he drops over Henry, catching himself with a palm by Henry's ear, his other hand aligning his cock carefully with Henry’s hole, and then, he’s pushing in.

It’s different this way— so different, so much more than Henry could have ever prepared for. Alex is careful, going centimeter by centimeter, unhurried, like he wants Henry to feel every last bit of him in aching detail; for his body to know Alex by feel, to remember, to never be able to forget the shape of him. He blankets every last bit of Henry’s body with his own, all that skin an endless stretch of dizzying heat as he slides in, deeper, and then deeper still.

Henry isn’t breathing, he realizes, staring wide-eyed up into Alex’s blissed out expression, at his eyes pinched tight as he tries to hold back from succumbing to the pleasure of simply sinking in. Henry’s lungs ache with the lack of oxygen, and he forces himself to breathe in and then out, deeply and slowly, a rhythm to guide them, never taking his eyes off Alex’s face.

He’s beautiful. Even like this. Especially like this, with sweat starting to stick his curls to his temples, with his face gone slack with ecstasy, with his arms already trembling faintly from the euphoric feel of them together. He’s the loveliest thing Henry’s ever seen. And considering the upbringing he’s had, the life he’s led, the places he’s been— Henry has seen a great deal more than most. He’s seen everything.

Nothing compares to this. Henry would trade it all for this in a heartbeat.

Alex bottoms out, opens his eyes like he’s only just realized he’d closed them, catching the way Henry’s breath trembles between parted lips. He bears down, just to tighten around him, to properly feel all of Alex and how they’re joined, and watches as Alex clenches his jaw, a call and response. Henry whispers, “You can move, love.”

“Great,” Alex replies, strained but still so incredibly honest. “Because you feel so fucking good, I honestly might die if I don’t.”

“Dramatic,” Henry replies, trying to be playful, trying not to give away what the unbridled awe in Alex’s voice is doing to him; a lost cause, he assumes, when he follows it up by reaching for Alex so desperately. An arm looping under his and around his shoulders, a hand pushed up and into that hair, tangling those pretty curls around his fingers again like he’s thought about all night, using the grip to pull Alex down to his mouth.

They kiss just the same as before, like it’s all that matters, a pace that builds and builds and heats and heats until Alex is rocking his hips in answer to the rhythm; until Henry feels how his body gives way to it, tries to pull Alex in as far as he can get, tries to keep him there, needy and wanting and—

And, god—it never really felt like this before, did it? Henry would remember if this was what sex had always been like. He would never have been able to go so long without it. He feels so… present in his body. Not like he’s doing something shameful, something he shouldn’t be, not like he’s acting out in defiance, or like he’s sprinting to achieve a means to an end, to fulfill an urge so it may once again lay dormant. The way Alex touches him feels so real, so purposeful, so intentional; for the both of them, equally. Like every point of contact designed to bring Henry pleasure brings Alex himself that much closer, too.

Henry lifts his thigh up, wrapping it around Alex’s waist, his heel landing against Alex’s arse, as much to feel every bit of his next thrust as to spur him on. The angle changes with it, Alex sinking in even more, further and further, into places Henry didn’t think he could possibly reach.

“Alex,” he inhales sharply. “You’re so deep.”

“Fuck,” Alex gasps, Henry’s words or Henry’s body or some combination of the two punching the words from his chest, another devastatingly whimpered, “Baby.”

It slows. They’re impossibly closer this way, with Henry’s leg around him pulling him in, and every rock of Alex’s hips bring their chests closer, their abs together, Henry’s cock trapped between them alighting with the new friction. Henry holds tight to Alex’s shoulder, feeling the moment he shifts just enough to brush Henry's prostate, and it’s like he’s fired up a flare, the way Alex responds like it's a call to action.

He picks up his pace like it was never lost, the interlude past, and absolutely abuses that spot with unerring precision. Henry loses his grip over Alex’s shoulder, hand dragging down his back, nails catching skin; the fist in Alex’s hair drawing tight and pulling hard. “Right there, Alex, please—ngh—right there, don’t stop.” Alex doesn’t, not for a second, and Henry remembers with startling clarity exactly what it is that Alex needs. “You’re so good, love. So good for me.”

The effect is immediate, astounding. Alex grabs Henry’s knee without a beat of hesitation, pushes it up past his ribs without so much as a stutter of his hips, the shift so immediate and overwhelming as Alex hammers his prostate, ruts up against Henry’s leaking cock, and holds him open to take it that Henry can’t help but gasp, but laugh, but—

Scream.

Princes do not—

He screams.

His eyes roll back, body locking up tight around Alex to hold him in, to keep him pressed right against his prostate as he comes between them, all over their bellies and chests; nails digging deeper, hair pulled even tighter. And Alex is still going, hard and deep inside him in a way that’s sharp and blinding and too much—

But he doesn’t want it to stop. He doesn’t want to let him go.

He doesn’t really know what embarrassing noise he makes to that effect as he holds tight to Alex’s rocking body, only that whatever it prompts Alex to finally, finally, come—a moan close to Henry’s mouth that rattles him down to his bones, that Henry wants to hear, and feel, and taste a thousand more times, and maybe even a thousand more after that.  

Alex’s eyes are unfocused with pleasure, his body trembling with the force of staying upright, as Henry gentles his hand in Alex's hair and pulls him down to his mouth. This kiss is different, yet so hauntingly the same. There’s no rush of what’s to come, only the rush of what has been, the afterglow singing through their veins, tingling through their extremities, through the place they’re still joined. He feels as Alex starts to shake more obviously, overexerted, until he pulls back, pulls out; kissing the curve of Henry’s neck in apology for the wounded little noise he makes at the loss without his conscious permission. Alex drops heavily beside him, fumbling to strip off the condom, ignorant to the way Henry clenches his body, presses his legs together, tries to hold on and commit it all to memory; so he'll never be able to forget the shape of him.

Henry wants to remember this with all the certainty that he knows he’ll remember Alex’s name, his face. On his deathbed, even.

Alex is laid out beside him, chest rising and falling distractingly, still completely naked and unashamed when he says, abruptly, “Fuck.”

Henry turns his head, staring across the pillow to where Alex’s eyes are fixed on the ceiling, and he feels a cold sense of dread sweep through him, pulling his brow down, wondering if Alex is already eking out of his orgasm and into reality, realizing what a colossal mistake he’s just made, already grappling with the regret. It twists his stomach, how much he doesn’t want to ask, but he does. “What?”

“The NDA,” Alex tells the ceiling, and Henry feels the dark pit inside of him widen and yawn. “I can’t even send June and Nora that picture anymore, can I?”

And—

What?

This—this is his first thought? After... all of that?  

Against his better judgment, Henry feels his lip twitching, a smile, not performative, but small and real. “I’d be willing to make an exception,” he offers, “and let you share that we met. I would prefer you not share… any more intimate details—”

The NDA is supposed to cover that, extensively, but the way that Alex spoke of his sister and his best friend, it’s clear he trusts them with anything. With everything. It’s not impossible to think he may play a little fast and loose and tell them—

“Of course not,” Alex says immediately, cutting Henry off mid-sentence. “I wouldn’t out you, even to them. NDA or no NDA.” Henry nods, feeling the pillowcase drag softly over his cheek, his hair. He’s known this man, generously, for an hour or so, but he finds he believes him. Believes the honesty and integrity in his tone. “June wouldn’t want to know the details like that anyway, obviously, because she’s my sister and she prefers to pretend I’m pure as driven snow. Nora”—he pauses, almost imperceptibly, to grimace—“Nora would prefer to know everything, in excruciating detail, honestly, but I’ve been denying her that for years, so no biggie.” Alex is looking at Henry closely, probingly, his eyes jumping over every detail of his face like he’s mapping out a reaction. “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 interrupts him, firmly. After all, Henry thinks he owes this mysterious June and Nora a great deal more than a selfie, if they’re the one reason that Alex approached him with such unwavering confidence and landed them both in this bed. A few dozen fruit baskets, maybe, to start. He bridges the gap between them on the pillow and presses a kiss to Alex’s shoulder, tasting the salt of his cooling sweat straight from his sex-warmed skin. “Tell them. I know how excited you were to see their reaction.”

Alex smiles. It’s breathtaking. The dimple is out in full force. If Henry wasn’t already laid out, he doesn’t think he would have endured it remaining upright.

“Do you want to see it too?”

Henry blinks back his surprise but nods all the same, watching as Alex tilts sideways to the edge of the bed, one arm draping down and groping along the floor without looking. He pulls up his trousers, fishing out the mobile phone inside and navigating through the screen. Henry takes the brief moment of post-orgasm clarity to observe June and Nora in the background image properly this time, should he ever be snatched off the street and forced to identify them in public to save his life from an inexplicably specific hostage scenario. He likes his odds a little better, now.

Alex opens a group chat, the title across the top reading Two Geniuses and Alex, and Henry can’t stop himself from reacting, a quiet snort he hides in Alex’s shoulder. He watches as practiced fingers tap through the screens, attaching the last photo he’d taken of them—tongue between his teeth, dimple out, peace sign up and winking, cheeky—and sends it without commentary. It toggles to delivered and then read in an instant, and then the screen is alight with new messages popping up one after the other, shoving the previous out of the way like those horrifying viral videos of American Black Friday sales. 

Henry only latches on to the content of the last message, from Nora: Alejandro you better fuck that white boy or I will!!!

Alex doesn’t hesitate, thumbs typing out a quick and witty response until the cursor is at the end, blinking in anticipation. He doesn’t send it, even when Henry reads it and laughs, not until he nods his consent, watching as the words woosh up into their own bubble at the bottom.

Alex: No you won’t, I had dibs!

He drops his phone over the side of the bed to the floor, the vibrations dull but still audible against the thick carpet as the responses continue to pour in. Alex is grinning, lazy and sated and still naked, making no move to get up, to get dressed, to disappear.

It’s part of the deal. Henry knows the rules of the Crown like they’ve been lobotomized into his brain, his frontal lobe scrambled to fit a very specific code of conduct. A signed Non-Disclosure Agreement. A single heated encounter. The men leave. No repeat performances. No getting attached. Nothing resembling anything as audacious as a relationship. Nothing that puts any ideas in anyone’s heads about what this is, about what it could be, Henry’s included.

The men leave. They always leave. Henry never offers them an alternative.

He turns his head, pressing his mouth against the curve of Alex’s shoulder again, a soft kiss, all lips.

“Stay?”

It’s a risk. It goes against everything—every constraint that Henry’s ever been put under, every word decreed as law that he’s been forced to abide; every rule he’s had no choice but to obey even though the game he’s playing has always been rigged. 

Henry may have always been fated to lose, and Alex Claremont-Diaz may be an indulgence that he can only ever have this once, but Henry’s never felt like this—alive with the very idea he was never supposed to allow in his head. And he’s going to savor it. Every last second. Even if it means leaving himself open at his most vulnerable. Even if it means having to sneak Alex out in the morning past a floor of PPOs, or endure the awkward humiliation of having to ask him to stay back in the room until Henry has left the hotel with his entire security team in tow. Even if it means having to face Shaan in the morning and every day after, the both of them knowing that Henry defied every term he ever agreed to in one fell swoop. 

In a rare moment of courage, Henry chooses himself. He chooses… this. For just a little longer. For as long as he can have it. 

Alex turns towards him, pressing a matching kiss to the line of Henry’s hair, the closest place he can reach, the place right where his coronet would sit. Henry closes his eyes. 

“Yeah.”

Alex reaches for the lamp on the bedside table, and Henry grabs a handful of tissues from the other. He wipes up their stomachs with warm cheeks, lets Alex pull up the bedding to cover them both, neither bothering to dress. They curl towards one another like yin and yang—Alex, a rare bright spot in the relentless darkness that Henry knows with gnawing familiarity, a balance of harmony that he’s never felt before, that puts his treasonous heart at ease deep in his chest. They stay close, almost sharing a pillow; Henry's left hand resting on the mattress between their chests, Alex's landing beside it, the only point of contact where their pinkies overlap, interlocked just above Henry's signet ring. The light fades through shades of dim to dark, but Henry can still make out the comforting shape of Alex's features, the slow blinking of his eyes. In what feels like an unpredictable twist of plot, they don't speak—but the silence isn't sharp, isn't heavy, it doesn't hurt. It’s just another blanket that rests over them, together. Ultimately, he doesn’t know which one of them falls asleep first, only that for once, he actually sleeps through the night, the sky just starting to lighten with a rising sun when he next opens his eyes.

Alex is asleep on his front, his face turned towards Henry, breathing deep and even, arms crammed under the pillow beneath his head. The duvet has shifted to the small of his bare back, the jagged lines from Henry’s dull nails a sharp contrast of raw pink against a sea of smooth, brown skin; his dark curls an absolute riot of chaos against the white pillowcase, his long eyelashes a delicate fan against his cheekbones.

Beautiful. Impossibly beautiful. Still here, and still real, and—

Alex is… brave. Shameless. Fearless. Dangerous. The kind of man that leans in to any impulse, that does nothing halfway, that takes what he wants and apologizes for none of it. Henry feels changed just for knowing him, for having met him, for having met him specifically the way that he has—for having touched his blazing warm skin, for having kissed his molten hot mouth. For knowing how they feel, together—what they could be together, if only Henry was brave, was shameless, was fearless.

They would be dangerous—not just to him, but to everything; to the fine-tuned persona of the picture-perfect prince, the code of conduct for what it means to be worthy of his birthright, the reality of the life laid before him, hand-picked by everyone but himself. They would be dangerous—not just to him, but to the monarchy as a whole. 

They’re a spark and flash paper; together, a bright and brilliant flame, completely consuming. All that Alex is, capable of igniting everything Henry has ever known, until his entire, delicate house of cards has gone up in smoke; lost and remade in Alex, no trace left behind. Henry is playing with fire, and Alex would make it an absolute pleasure to burn.

Alex opens his eyes, a devastating flutter of lashes, half-lidded but still mischievous, now more than ever the gateway to a secret that could bleed the Earth dry. He stretches, an alluring arch to his back that rustles the sheets, that pulls the duvet just the slightest bit lower, that teases at even more of his tempting skin; golden in the first light of dawn, something out of countless poems tangled around Henry’s heart that stutters helplessly at the sight. His face is still half buried in the pillow, but Alex smiles at him, easy and charming and dimpled. Beautiful.

And Henry—Henry wants to burn with him.