It’s all still so new to Alex, but it’s not difficult to follow through on what’s been playing out in elaborate detail in his head for the past hour. When he looks up, Henry’s face is flushed and transfixed, his lips parted. It almost hurts to look at him—the athlete’s focus, all the dressings of aristocracy laid wide open for him. He’s watching Alex, eyes blown dark and hazy, and Alex is watching him right back, every nerve in both bodies narrowed down to a single point.

It’s fast and dirty and Henry is swearing up a storm, which is still disarmingly sexy, but this time it’s punctuated by the occasional word of praise, and somehow that’s even hotter. Alex isn’t prepared for the way “that’s good” sounds in Henry’s rounded Buckingham vowels, or for how luxury leather feels when it strokes approvingly down his cheek, a gloved thumb brushing the corner of his mouth.

As soon as Henry’s finished, he’s got Alex on the bench and is putting his kneepads to use.

“I’m still fucking mad at you,” Alex says, destroyed, slumped forward with his forehead resting on Henry’s shoulder.

“Of course you are,” Henry says vaguely.

Alex completely undermines his point by pulling Henry into a deep and lingering kiss, and another, and they kiss for an amount of time he decides not to count or think about.

They sneak out quietly, and Henry touches Alex’s shoulder at the gate near where his SUV waits, presses his palm into the wool of his coat and the knot of muscle.

“I don’t suppose you’ll be anywhere near Kensington anytime soon?”

“That shithole?” he says with a wink. “Not if I can help it.”

“Oi,” Henry says. He’s grinning now. “That’s disrespect of the crown, that is. Insubordination. I’ve thrown men in the dungeons for less.”

Alex turns, walking backward toward the car, hands in the air. “Hey, don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Paris?

* * *

A <[email protected]>????????????????3/3/20 7:32 PM

to Henry

His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Whatever,

Don’t make me learn your actual title.

Are you going to be at the Paris fund-raiser for rainforest conservation this weekend?

Alex

First Son of Your Former Colony

Re: Paris?

* * *

Henry <[email protected]>????????????????3/4/20 2:14 AM

to A

Alex, First Son of Off-Brand England:

First, you should know how terribly inappropriate it is for you to intentionally botch my title. I could have you made into a royal settee cushion for that kind of lèse-majesté. Fortunately for you, I do not think you would complement my sitting room decor.

Secondly, no, I will not be attending the Paris fund-raiser; I have a previous engagement. You shall have to find someone else to accost in a cloakroom.

Regards,

His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales

Re: Paris?

* * *

A <[email protected]lare45.com>????????????????3/4/20 2:27 AM

to Henry

Huge Raging Headache Prince Henry of Who Cares,

It is amazing you can sit down to write emails with that gigantic royal stick up your ass. I seem to remember you really enjoying being “accosted.”

Everyone there is going to be boring anyway. What are you doing?

Alex

First Son of Hating Fund-raisers

Re: Paris?

* * *

Henry <[email protected]>????????????????3/4/20 2:32 AM

to A

Alex, First Son of Shirking Responsibilities:

A royal stick is formally known as a “scepter.”

I’ve been sent to a summit in Germany to act as if I know anything about wind power. Primarily, I’ll be getting lectured by old men in lederhosen and posing for photos with windmills. The monarchy has decided we care about sustainable energy, apparently—or at least that we want to appear to. An utter romp.

Re: fund-raiser guests, I thought you said I was boring?

Regards,

Harangued Royal Highness

Re: Paris?

* * *

A <[email protected]>????????????????3/4/20 2:34 AM

to Henry

Horrible Revolting Heir,

It’s recently come to my attention you’re not quite as boring as I thought. Sometimes. Namely when you’re doing the thing with your tongue.

Alex

First Son of Questionable Late Night Emails

Re: Paris?

* * *

Henry <[email protected]>????????????????3/4/20 2:37 AM

to A

Alex, First Son of Inappropriately Timed Emails When I’m in Early Morning Meetings:

Are you trying to get fresh with me?

Regards,

Handsome Royal Heretic

Re: Paris?

* * *

A <[email protected]>????????????????3/4/20 2:41 AM

to Henry

His Royal Horniness,

If I were trying to get fresh with you, you would know it.

For example: I’ve been thinking about your mouth on me all week, and I was hoping I’d see you in Paris so I could put it to use.

I was also thinking you might know how to pick French cheeses. Not my area of expertise.

Alex

First Son of Cheese Shopping and Blowjobs

Re: Paris?

* * *

Henry <[email protected]>????????????????3/4/20 2:43 AM

to A

Alex, First Son of Making Me Spill My Tea in Said Early Morning Meeting:

Hate you. Will try to get out of Germany.

x

SEVEN

Henry does get out of Germany, and he meets Alex near a herd of crêpe-eating tourists by Place du Tertre, wearing a sharp blue blazer and a wicked smile. They stumble back to his hotel after two bottles of wine, and Henry sinks to his knees on the white marble and looks up at Alex with big, blue, bottomless eyes, and Alex doesn’t know a word in any language to describe it.

He’s so drunk, and Henry’s mouth is so soft, and it’s all so fucking French that he forgets to send Henry back to his own hotel. He forgets they don’t spend the night. So, they do.

He discovers Henry sleeps curled up on his side, his spine poking out in little sharp points that are actually soft if you reach out and touch them, very carefully so as not to wake him because he’s actually sleeping for once. In the morning, room service brings up crusty baguettes and sticky tarts filled with fat apricots and a copy of Le Monde that Alex makes Henry translate out loud.

He vaguely remembers telling himself they weren’t going to do things like this. It’s all a little hazy right now.

When Henry’s gone, Alex finds the stationery by the bed: Fromagerie Nicole Barthélémy. Leaving your clandestine hookup directions to a Parisian cheese shop. Alex has to admit: Henry really has a solid handle on his personal brand.

Later, Zahra texts him a screencap of a BuzzFeed article about his “best bromance ever” with Henry. It’s a mix of photos: the state dinner, a couple of shots of them grinning outside the stables in Greenwich, one picked up from a French girl’s Twitter of Alex leaning back in his chair at a tiny cafe table while Henry finishes off the bottle of red between them.

Beneath it, Zahra has begrudgingly written: Good work, you little shit.

He guesses this is how they’re going to do this—the world is going to keep thinking they’re best friends, and they’re going to keep playing the part.

He knows, objectively, he should pace himself. It’s only physical. But Perfect Stoic Prince Charming laughs when he comes, and texts Alex at weird hours of the night: You’re a mad, spiteful, unmitigated demon, and I’m going to kiss you until you forget how to talk. And Alex is kind of obsessed with it.

Alex decides not to think too hard. Normally they’d only cross paths a few times a year; it takes creative schedule wrangling and a little sweet-talking of their respective teams to see each other as often as their bodies demand. At least they’ve got a ruse of international public relations.

Their birthdays, it turns out, are less than three weeks apart, which means, for most of March, Henry is twenty-three and Alex is twenty-one. (“I knew he was a goddamn Pisces,” June says). Alex happens to have a voter registration drive at NYU at the end of March, and when he texts Henry about it, he gets a brisk response fifteen minutes later: Have rescheduled visit to New York for nonprofit business to this weekend. Will be in the city ready to carry out birthday floggings &c.

The photographers are readily visible when they meet in front of the Met, so they clasp each other’s hands and Alex says through his big on-camera smile, “I want you alone, now.”

They’re more careful in the States, and they go up to the hotel room one at a time—Henry through the back flanked by two tall PPOs, and later, Alex with Cash, who grins and knows and says nothing.

There’s a lot of champagne and kissing and buttercream from a birthday cupcake Henry’s inexplicably procured smeared around Alex’s mouth, Henry’s chest, Alex’s throat, between Henry’s hips. Henry pins his wrists to the mattress and swallows him down, and Alex is drunk and fucking transported, feeling every moment of twenty-two years and not a single day older, some kind of hedonistic youth of history. Birthday head from another country’s prince will do that.

It’s the last time they see each other for weeks, and after a lot of teasing and maybe some begging, he convinces Henry to download Snapchat. Henry mostly sends tame, fully clothed thirst traps that make Alex sweat in his lectures: a mirror shot, mud-stained white polo pants, a sharp suit. On a Saturday, the C-SPAN stream on his phone gets interrupted by Henry on a sailboat, smiling into the camera with the sun bright on his bare shoulders, and Alex’s heart goes so fucking weird that he has to put his head in his hands for a full minute.