Back in high school in Texas, Alex was the most cultured of the jock crowd because he was a book nerd, a politics junkie, the only varsity letterman debating the finer points of Dred Scott in AP US History. He listens to Nina Simone and Otis Redding, likes expensive whiskey. But Henry’s got an entirely different compendium of knowledge.

So he just listens and nods and smiles a little while Henry explains that this is what Brahms sounds like, and this is Wagner, and how they were on the two opposing sides of the Romantic movement. “Do you hear the difference there?” His hands are fast, almost effortless, even as he goes off into a tangent about the War of the Romantics and how Liszt’s daughter left her husband for Wagner, quel scandale.

He switches to an Alexander Scriabin sonata, winking over at Alex at the composer’s first name. The andante—the third movement—is his favorite, he explains, because he read once that it was written to evoke the image of a castle in ruins, which he found darkly funny at the time. He goes quiet, focused, lost in the piece for long minutes. Then, without warning, it changes again, turbulent chords circling back into something familiar—the Elton John songbook. Henry closes his eyes, playing from memory. It’s “Your Song.” Oh.

And Alex’s heart doesn’t spread itself out in his chest, and he doesn’t have to grip the edge of the settee to steady himself. Because that’s what he would do if he were here in this palace to fall in love with Henry, and not just continuing this thing where they fly across the world to touch each other and don’t talk about it. That’s not why he’s here. It’s not.

They make out lazily for what could be hours on the settee—Alex wants to do it on the piano, but it’s a priceless antique or whatever—and then they stagger up to Henry’s room, the palatial bed. Henry lets Alex take him apart with painstaking patience and precision, moans the name of God so many times that the room feels consecrated.

It pushes Henry over some kind of edge, melted and overwhelmed on the lush bedclothes. Alex spends nearly an hour afterward coaxing little tremors out of him, in awe of his elaborate expressions of wonder and blissful agony, ghosting featherlight fingertips over his collarbone, his ankles, the insides of his knees, the small bones of the backs of his hands, the dip of his lower lip. He touches and touches until he brings Henry to another brink with only his fingertips, only his breath on the inside of his thighs, the promise of Alex’s mouth where he’d pressed his fingers before.

Henry says the same two words from the secret room at Wimbledon, this time dressed up in, “Please, I need you to.” He still can’t believe Henry can talk like this, that he gets to be the only one who hears it.

So he does.

When they come back down, Henry practically passes out on his chest without another word, fucked-out and boneless, and Alex laughs to himself and pets his sweaty hair and listens to the soft snores that come almost immediately.

It takes him hours to fall asleep, though.

Henry drools on him. David finds his way onto the bed and curls up at their feet. Alex has to be back on a plane for DNC prep in a matter of hours, but he can’t sleep. It’s jet lag. It’s just jet lag.

He remembers, as if from a million miles away, telling Henry once not to overthink this.

* * *

“As your president,” Jeffrey Richards is saying on one of the flat screens in the campaign office, “one of my many priorities will be encouraging young people to get involved with their government. If we’re going to hold our control of the Senate and take back the House, we need the next generation to stand up and join the fight.”

The College Republicans of Vanderbilt University cheer on the live feed, and Alex pretends to barf onto his latest policy draft.

“Why don’t you come up here, Brittany?” A pretty blond student joins Richards at the podium, and he puts an arm around her. “Brittany here was the main organizer we worked with for this event, and she couldn’t have done a better job getting us this amazing turnout!”

More cheers. A mid-level staffer lobs a ball of paper at the screen.

“It’s young people like Brittany who give us hope for the future of our party. Which is why I’m pleased to announce that, as president, I’ll be launching the Richards Youth Congress program. Other politicians don’t want people—especially discerning young people like you—to get up close in our offices and see just how the sausage gets made—”

i want to see a cage match between your grandmother and this fucking ghoul running against my mom, Alex texts Henry as he turns back to his cubicle.

It’s the last days before the DNC, and he hasn’t been able to catch the coffeepot before it’s empty in a week. The policy inboxes are overflowing since they released the official platform two days ago, and WASPy Hunter has been firing off emails like his life depends on it. He hasn’t said anything else to Alex about his rant from last month, but he has started wearing headphones to spare Alex his musical choices.

He types out another text, this one to Luna: can you please go on anderson cooper or something and explain that paragraph you ghostwrote on tax law for the platform so people will stop asking? ain’t got the time, vato.

He’s been texting Luna all week, ever since the Richards campaign leaked that they’ve tapped an Independent senator for his prospective cabinet. That old bastard Stanley Connor flat-out denied every last request for an endorsement—by the end, Luna privately told Alex they were lucky Connor didn’t try to primary them. Nothing’s official, but everyone knows Connor is the one joining Richards’s ticket. But if Luna knows when the announcement’s coming, he’s not sharing.

It’s a week. The polls aren’t great, Paul Ryan is getting sanctimonious about the Second Amendment, and there’s some Salon hot take going around, WOULD ELLEN CLAREMONT HAVE GOTTEN ELECTED IF SHE WEREN’T CONVENTIONALLY BEAUTIFUL? If it weren’t for her morning meditation sessions, Alex is sure his mom would have throttled an aide by now.

For his part, he misses Henry’s bed, Henry’s body, Henry and a place a few thousand miles removed from the factory line of the campaign. That night after Wimbledon from a week ago feels like something out of a dream now, all the more tantalizing because Henry is in New York for a few days with Pez to do paperwork for an LGBT youth shelter in Brooklyn. There aren’t enough hours in the day for Alex to find a pretense to get there, and no matter how much the world enjoys their public friendship, they’re running out of plausible excuses to be seen together.

This time is nothing like their first breathless trip to the DNC in 2016. His dad had been the delegate to cast the votes from California that put her over, and they all cried. Alex and June introduced their mother before her acceptance speech, and June’s hands were shaking but his were steady. The crowd roared, and Alex’s heart roared back.

This year, they’re all frizzy-haired and exhausted from trying to run the country and a campaign simultaneously, and even one day of the DNC is a stretch. On the second night of the convention, they pile onto Air Force One to New York—it’d be Marine One, but they won’t all fit in one helicopter.

“Have you run a cost-benefit analysis on this?” Zahra is saying into her phone as they take off. “Because you know I’m right, and these assets can be transferred at any time if you disagree. Yes. Yeah, I know. Okay. That’s what I thought.” A long pause, then, under her breath, “Love you too.”

“Um,” Alex says when she’s hung up. “Something you’d like to share with the class?”

Zahra doesn’t even look up from her phone. “Yes, that was my boyfriend, and no, you may not ask me any further questions about him.”

June has shut her journal in sudden interest. “How could you possibly have a boyfriend we don’t know about?”

“I see you more than I see clean underwear,” Alex says.

“You’re not changing your underwear often enough, sugar,” his mother interjects from across the cabin.

“I go commando a lot,” Alex says dismissively. “Is this like a ‘my Canadian girlfriend’ thing? Does he”—he does very animated air quotes—“‘go to a different school’?”

“You really are determined to get shoved out of an emergency hatch one day, huh?” she says. “It’s long distance. But not like that. No more questions.”

Cash jumps in too, insisting he deserves to know as the resident love guru of the staff, and there’s a debate about appropriate information to share with your coworkers, which is laughable considering how much Cash already knows about Alex’s personal life. They’re circling New York when June suddenly stops talking, focused again on Zahra, who has gone silent.

“Zahra?”

Alex turns and sees Zahra sitting perfectly still, such a departure from her usual constant motion that everyone else freezes too. She’s staring at her phone, mouth open.

“Zahra,” his mother echoes now, deadly serious. “What?”

She looks up finally, her grip on her phone tight. “The Post just broke the name of the Independent senator joining Richards’s cabinet,” she says. “It’s not Stanley Connor. It’s Rafael Luna.”

* * *