(But, like. It’s fine. It’s not a whole thing.)

Between it all, they talk about Alex’s campaign job, Henry’s nonprofit projects, both of their appearances. They talk about how Pez is now proclaiming himself fully in love with June and spends half his time with Henry rhapsodizing about her or begging him to ask Alex if she likes flowers (yes) or exotic birds (to look at, not to own) or jewelry in the shape of her own face (no).

There are a lot of days when Henry is happy to hear from him and quick to respond, a fast, cutting sense of humor, hungry for Alex’s company and the tangle of thoughts in Alex’s head. But sometimes, he’s taken over by a dark mood, an unusually acerbic wit, strange and vitrified. He’ll withdraw for hours or days, and Alex comes to understand this as grief time, little bouts of depression, or times of “too much.” Henry hates those days completely. Alex wishes he could help, but he doesn’t particularly mind. He’s just as attracted to Henry’s cloudy tempers, the way he comes back from them, and the millions of shades in between.

He’s also learned that Henry’s placid demeanor is shattered with the right poking. He likes to bring up things he knows will get Henry going, including:

“Listen,” Henry is saying, heated, over the phone on a Thursday night. “I don’t give a damn what Joanne has to say, Remus John Lupin is gay as the day is long, and I won’t hear a word against it.”

“Okay,” Alex says. “For the record, I agree with you, but also, tell me more.”

He launches into a long-winded tirade, and Alex listens, amused and a little awed, as Henry works his way to his point: “I just think, as the prince of this bloody country, that when it comes to Britain’s positive cultural landmarks, it would be nice if we could not throw our own marginalized people under the proverbial bus. People sanitize Freddie Mercury or Elton John or Bowie, who was shagging Jagger up and down Oakley Street in the seventies, I might add. It’s just not the truth.”

It’s another thing Henry does—whipping out these analyses of what he reads or watches or listens to that confronts Alex with the fact that he has both a degree in English literature and a vested interest in the gay history of his family’s country. Alex has always known his gay American history—after all, his parents’ politics have been part of it—but it wasn’t until he figured himself out that he started to engage with it like Henry.

He’s starting to understand what swelled in his chest the first time he read about Stonewall, why he ached over the SCOTUS decision in 2015. He starts catching up voraciously in his spare time: Walt Whitman, the Laws of Illinois 1961, The White Night Riot, Paris Is Burning. He’s pinned a photo over his desk at work, a man at a rally in the ’80s in a jacket that says across the back: IF I DIE OF AIDS—FORGET BURIAL—JUST DROP MY BODY ON THE STEPS OF THE F.D.A.

June’s eyes stick on it one day when she drops by the office to have lunch with him, giving him the same strange look she gave him over coffee the morning after Henry snuck into his room. But she doesn’t say anything, carries on through sushi about her latest project, pulling all her journals together into a memoir. Alex wonders if any of this stuff would make it into there. Maybe, if he tells her soon. He should tell her soon.

It’s weird that the thing with Henry could make him understand this huge part of himself, but it does. When he sinks into thoughts of Henry’s hands, square knuckles and elegant fingers, he wonders how he never realized it before. When he sees Henry next at a gala in Berlin, and he feels that gravitational pull, chases it down in the back of a limo, and binds Henry’s wrists to a hotel bedpost with his own necktie, he knows himself better.

When he shows up for a weekly briefing two days later, Zahra grabs his jaw with one hand and turns his head, peering closer at the side of his neck. “Is that a hickey?”

Alex freezes. “I … um, no?”

“Do I look stupid to you, Alex?” Zahra says. “Who is giving you hickeys, and why have you not gotten them to sign an NDA?”

“Oh my God,” he says, because really, the last person Zahra needs to be concerned about leaking sordid details is Henry. “If I needed an NDA, you would know. Chill.”

Zahra does not appreciate being told to chill.

“Look at me,” she says. “I have known you since you were still leaving skid marks in your drawers. You think I don’t know when you’re lying to me?” She jabs a pointy, polished nail into his chest. “However you got that, it better be somebody off the approved list of girls you are allowed to be seen with during the election cycle, which I will email to you again as soon as you get out of my sight in case you have misplaced it.”

“Jesus, okay.”

“And to remind you,” she goes on, “I will chop my own tit off before I let you pull some idiotic stunt to cause your mother, our first female president, to be the first president to lose reelection since H fucking W. Do you understand me? I will lock you in your room for the next year if I have to, and you can take your finals by fucking smoke signal. I will staple your dick to the inside of your leg if that keeps it in your fucking pants.”

She returns to her notes with smooth professionalism, as if she has not just threatened his life. Behind her, he can see June at her place at the table, very clearly aware that he’s lying too.

* * *

“Do you have a last name?”

Alex has never actually offered a greeting when calling Henry.

“What?” The usual bemused, elongated, one-syllable response.

“A last name,” Alex repeats. It’s late afternoon and stormy outside the Residence, and he’s on his back in the middle of the Solarium, catching up on drafts for work. “That thing I have two of. Do you use your dad’s? Henry Fox? That sounds fucking dope. Or does royalty outrank? Do you use your mom’s name, then?”

He hears some shuffling over the phone and wonders if Henry’s in bed. They haven’t been able to see each other in a couple weeks, so his mind is quick to supply the image.

“The official family name is Mountchristen-Windsor,” Henry says. “Hyphenate, like yours. So my full name is … Henry George Edward James Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor.”

Alex gapes up at the ceiling. “Oh … my God.”

“Truly.”

“I thought Alexander Gabriel Claremont-Diaz was bad.”

“Is that after someone?”

“Alexander after the founding father, Gabriel after the patron saint of diplomats.”

“That’s a bit on the nose.”

“Yeah, I didn’t have a chance. My sister got Catalina June after the place and the Carter Cash, but I got all the self-fulfilling prophecies.”

“I did get both of the gay kings,” Henry points out. “There’s a prophecy for you.”

Alex laughs and kicks his files for the campaign away. He’s not coming back to them tonight. “Three last names is just mean.”

Henry sighs. “In school, we all went by Wales. Philip is Lieutenant Windsor in the RAF now, though.”

“Henry Wales, then? That’s not too bad.”

“No, it’s not. Is this the reason you phoned?”

“Maybe,” Alex says. “Call it historical curiosity.” Except the truth is closer to the slight drag in Henry’s voice and the half step of hesitation before he speaks that’s been there all week. “Speaking of historical curiosity, here’s a fun fact: I’m sitting in the room Nancy Reagan was in when she found out Ronald Reagan got shot.”

“Good Lord.”

“And it’s also where ol’ Tricky Dick told his family he was gonna resign.”

“I’m sorry—who or what is a Tricky Dick?”

“Nixon! Listen, you’re undoing everything this country’s crusty forefathers fought for and deflowering the darling of the republic. You at least need to know basic American history.”

“I hardly think deflowering is the word,” Henry deadpans. “These arrangements are supposed to be with virgin brides, you know. That certainly didn’t seem to be the case.”

“Uh-huh, and I’m sure you picked up all those skills from books.”

“Well, I did go to uni. It just wasn’t necessarily the reading that did it.”

Alex hums in suggestive agreement and lets the rhythm of banter fall out. He looks across the room—the windows that were once only gauzy curtains on a sleeping room for Taft’s family on hot nights, the corner now stacked with Leo’s old comic book collectibles where Eisenhower used to play cards. The stuff underneath the surface. Alex has always sought those things out.

“Hey,” he says. “You sound weird. You good?”

Henry’s breath catches and he clears his throat. “I’m fine.”

Alex doesn’t say anything, letting the silence stretch in a thin thread between them before he cuts it. “You know, this whole arrangement we have … you can tell me stuff. I tell you stuff all the time. Politics stuff and school stuff and nutso family stuff. I know I’m, like, not the paragon of normal human communication, but. You know.”

Another pause.