Red, White & Royal Blue: A Novel

You are a dark sorcerer

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Henry <[email protected]>                6/8/20 3:23 PM

to A

Alex,

I can’t think of a single other way to start this email except to say, and I do hope you will forgive both my language and my utter lack of restraint: You are so fucking beautiful.

I’ve been useless for a week, driven around for appearances and meetings, lucky if I’ve made a single meaningful contribution to any of them. How is a man to get anything done knowing Alex Claremont-Diaz is out there on the loose? I am driven to distraction.

It’s all bloody useless because when I’m not thinking about your face, I’m thinking about your arse or your hands or your smart mouth. I suspect the latter is what got me into this predicament in the first place. Nobody’s ever got the nerve to be cheeky to a prince, except you. The moment you first called me a prick, my fate was sealed. O, fathers of my bloodline! O, ye kings of olde! Take this crown from me, bury me in my ancestral soil. If only you had known the mighty work of thine loins would be undone by a gay heir who likes it when American boys with chin dimples are mean to him.

Actually, remember those gay kings I mentioned? I feel that James I, who fell madly in love with a very fit and exceptionally dim knight at a tilting match and immediately made him a gentleman of the bedchamber (a real title), would take mercy upon my particular plight.

I’ll be damned but I miss you.

x

Henry

Re: You are a dark sorcerer

A <[email protected]>                6/8/20 5:02 PM

to Henry

H,

Are you implying that you’re James I and I’m some hot, dumb jock? I’m more than fantastic bone structure and an ass you can bounce a quarter on, Henry!!!!

Don’t apologize for calling me pretty. Because then you’re putting me in a position where I have to apologize for saying you blew my fucking mind in LA and I’m gonna die if it doesn’t happen again soon. How’s that for lack of restraint, huh? You really wanna play that game with me?

Listen: I’ll fly to London right now and pull you out of whatever pointless meeting you’re in and make you admit how much you love it when I call you “baby.” I’ll take you apart with my teeth, sweetheart.

xoxo

A

Re: You are a dark sorcerer

---

Henry <[email protected]>                6/8/20 7:21 PM

to A

Alex,

You know, when you go to Oxford to get a degree in English literature, as I have, people always want to know who your favorite English author is.

The press team compiled a list of acceptable answers. They wanted a realist, so I suggested George Eliot—no, Eliot was actually Mary Anne Evans under a pen name, not a strong male author. They wanted one of the inventors of the English novel, so I suggested Daniel Defoe—no, he was a dissenter from the Church of England. At one point, I threw out Jonathan Swift just to watch the collective coronary they had at the thought of an Irish political satirist.

In the end they picked Dickens, which is hilarious. They wanted something less fruity than the truth, but truly, what is gayer than a woman who languishes away in a crumbling mansion wearing her wedding gown every day of her life, for the drama?

The fruity truth: My favorite English author is Jane Austen.

So, to borrow a passage from Sense and Sensibility: “You want nothing but patience—or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.” To paraphrase: I hope to see you put your green American money where your filthy mouth is soon.

Yours in sexual frustration,

Henry

Alex feels like somebody has probably warned him about private email servers before, but he’s a little fuzzy on the details. It doesn’t feel important.

At first, like most things that require time when instant gratification is possible, he doesn’t see the point of Henry’s emails.

But when Richards tells Sean Hannity that his mother hasn’t accomplished anything as president, Alex screams into his elbow and goes back to: The way you speak sometimes is like sugar spilling out of a bag with a hole in the bottom. When WASPy Hunter brings up the Harvard rowing team for the fifth time in one workday: Your arse in those trousers is a crime. When he’s tired of being touched by strangers: Come back to me when you’re done being flung through the firmament, you lost Pleiad.

Now he gets it.

His dad wasn’t wrong about how ugly things would get with Richards leading the ticket. Utah ugly, Christian ugly, ugliness couched in dog whistles and toothy white smiles. Right-wing think pieces about entitlement thrown in his and June’s direction, reeking of: Mexicans stole the First Family jobs too.

He can’t allow the fear of losing in. He drinks coffee and brings his policy work on the campaign trail and drinks more coffee, reads emails from Henry, and drinks even more coffee.

The first DC Pride since his “bisexual awakening” happens while Alex is in Nevada, and he spends the day jealously checking Twitter—confetti raining down on the Mall, grand marshal Rafael Luna with a rainbow bandana around his head. He goes back to his hotel and talks to his minibar about it.

The biggest bright spot in all the chaos is that his lobbying with one of the campaign chairs (and his own mother) has finally paid off: They’re doing a massive rally at Minute Maid Park in Houston. Polls are shifting in directions they’ve never seen before. Politico’s top story of the week: IS 2020 THE YEAR TEXAS BECOMES A TRUE BATTLEGROUND STATE?

“Yes, I will make sure everyone knows the Houston rally was your idea,” his mother says, barely paying attention, as she goes over her speech on the plane to Texas.

“You should say ‘grit,’ not ‘fortitude’ there,” June says, reading the speech over her shoulder. “Texans like grit.”

“Can y’all both go sit somewhere else?” she says, but she adds a note.

Alex knows a lot of the campaign is skeptical, even when they’ve seen the numbers. So when they pull up to Minute Maid and the line wraps around the block twice, he feels beyond gratified. He feels smug. His mom gets up to make her speech to thousands, and Alex thinks, Hell yeah, Texas. Prove the bastards wrong.

He’s still riding the high when he swipes his badge at the door of the campaign office the following Monday. He’s been getting tired of sitting at a desk and going through focus groups again and again and again, but he’s ready to pick the fight back up.

The fact that he rounds the corner into his cubicle to find WASPy Hunter holding the Texas Binder brings him right the fuck back down.

“Oh, you left this on your desk,” WASPy Hunter says casually. “I thought maybe it was a new project they were putting us on.”

“Do I go on your side of the cubicle and turn off your Dropkick Murphys Spotify station, no matter how much I want to?” Alex demands. “No, Hunter, I don’t.”

“Well, you do kind of steal my pencils a lot—”

Alex snatches the binder away before he can finish. “It’s private.”

“What is it?” WASPy Hunter asks as Alex shoves it back into his bag. He can’t believe he left it out. “All that data, and the district lines—what are you doing with all that?”

“Nothing.”

“Is it about the Houston rally you pushed for?”

“Houston was a good idea,” he says, instantly defensive.

“Dude … you don’t honestly think Texas can go blue, do you? It’s one of the most backward states in the country.”

“You’re from Boston, Hunter. You really want to talk about all the places bigotry comes from?”

“Look, man, I’m just saying.”

“You know what?” Alex says. “You think y’all are off the hook for institutional bigotry because you come from a blue state. Not every white supremacist is a meth-head in Bumfuck, Mississippi—there are plenty of them at Duke or UPenn on Daddy’s money.”

WASPy Hunter looks startled but not convinced. “None of that changes that red states have been red forever,” he says, laughing, like it’s something to joke about, “and none of those populations seem to care enough about what’s good for them to vote.”

“Maybe those populations might be more motivated to vote if we made an actual effort to campaign to them and showed them that we care, and how our platform is designed to help them, not leave them behind,” Alex says hotly. “Imagine if nobody who claims to have your interests at heart ever came to your state and tried to talk to you, man. Or if you were a felon, or—fucking voter ID laws, people who can’t access polls, who can’t leave work to get to one?”

“Yeah, I mean, it’d be great if we could magically mobilize every eligible marginalized voter in red states, but political campaigns have a finite amount of time and resources, and we have to prioritize based on projections,” WASPy Hunter says, as if Alex, the First Son of the United States, is unfamiliar with how campaigns work. “There just aren’t the same number of bigots in blue states. If they don’t want to be left behind, maybe people in red states should do something about it.”

And Alex has, quite frankly, had it.

“Did you forget that you’re working on the campaign of someone Texas fucking created?” he says, and his voice has officially risen to the point where staffers in the neighboring cubicles are staring, but he doesn’t care. “Why don’t we talk about how there’s a chapter of the Klan in every state? You think there aren’t racists and homophobes growing up in Vermont? Man, I appreciate that you’re doing the work here, but you’re not special. You don’t get to sit up here and pretend like it’s someone else’s problem. None of us do.”

He takes his bag and his binder and storms out.

The minute he’s outside the building, he pulls out his phone on impulse, opens up Google. There are test dates this month. He knows there are.

LSAT washington dc area test center, he types.

3 Geniuses and Alex

June 23, 2020, 12:34 PM

juniper

BUG

Not my name, not anyone’s name, stop

leading member of korean pop band bts kim nam-june

BUG

I’m blocking your number

HRH Prince Dickhead

Alex, please don’t tell me Pez has indoctrinated you with K-pop.

well you let nora get you into drag race so

irl chaos demon

[latrice royale eat it.gif]

BUG

What did you want Alex????

where’s my speech for milwaukee? i know you took it

HRH Prince Dickhead

Must you have this conversation in the group chat?

BUG

Part of it needed to be rewritten!!! I put it back with edits in the outside pocket of your messenger bag

davis is gonna kill you if you keep doing this

BUG

Davis saw how well my tweaks to the talking points went over on Seth Meyers last week so he knows better

why is there a rock in here too

BUG

That is a clear quartz crystal for clarity and good vibes do not @ me. We need all the help we can get right now

stop putting SPELLS on my STUFF

irl chaos demon

BURN THE WITCH

irl chaos demon

hey what do we think of this #look for the college voter thing tomorrow

irl chaos demon

[Attached Image]

irl chaos demon

i’m going for, like, depressed lesbian poet who met a hot yoga instructor at a speakeasy who got her super into meditation and pottery, and now she’s starting a new life as a high-powered businesswoman selling her own line of hand-thrown fruit bowls

 …

HRH Prince Dickhead

Bitch, you took me there.

alskdjfadslfjad

NORA YOU BROKE HIM

irl chaos demon

lmaoooooo

The invitation comes certified airmail straight from Buckingham Palace. Gilded edges, spindly calligraphy: THE CHAIRMAN AND COMMITTEE OF MANAGEMENT OF THE CHAMPIONSHIPS REQUEST THE PLEASURE OF THE COMPANY OF ALEXANDER CLAREMONT-DIAZ IN THE ROYAL BOX ON THE 6TH OF JULY, 2020.

Alex takes a picture and texts it to Henry.

1. tf is this? aren’t there poor people in your country?

2. i’ve already been in the royal box

Henry sends back, You are a delinquent and a plague, and then, Please come?

And here Alex is, spending his one day off from the campaign at Wimbledon, only to get his body next to Henry’s again.

“So, as I’ve warned you,” Henry says as they approach the doors to the Royal Box, “Philip will be here. And assorted other nobility with whom you may have to make conversation. People named Basil.”

“I think I’ve proven that I can handle royals.”

Henry looks doubtful. “You’re brave. I could use some of that.”

The sun is, for once, bright over London when they step outside, flooding the stands around them, which have already mostly filled with spectators. He notices David Beckham in a well-tailored suit—once again, how had he convinced himself he was straight?—before David Beckham turns away and Alex sees it was Bea he was talking to, her face bright when she spots them.

“Oi, Alex! Henry!” she chirps over the murmur of the Box. She’s a vision in a lime-green, drop-waist silk dress, a pair of huge, round Gucci sunglasses embellished with gold honeybees perched on her nose.

“You look gorgeous,” Alex says, accepting a kiss on his cheek.

“Why thank you, darling,” Bea says. She takes one of their arms in each of hers and whisks them off down the steps. “Your sister helped me pick the dress, actually. It’s McQueen. She’s a genius, did you know?”

“I’ve been made aware.”

“Here we are,” Bea says when they’ve reached the front row. “These are ours.”

Henry looks at the lush green cushions of the seats topped with thick and shiny WIMBLEDON 2020 programs, right at the front edge of the box.

“Front and center?” he says with a note of nervousness. “Really?”

“Yes, Henry, in case you have forgotten, you are a royal and this is the Royal Box.” She waves down to the photographers below, who are already snapping photos of them, before leaning into them and whispering, “Don’t worry, I don’t think they can detect the thick air of horn-town betwixt you two from the lawn.”

“Ha-ha, Bea,” Henry monotones, ears pink, and despite his apprehension, he takes his seat between Alex and Bea. He keeps his elbows carefully tucked into his sides and out of Alex’s space.

It’s halfway through the day when Philip and Martha arrive, Philip looking as generically handsome as ever. Alex wonders how such rich genetics conspired to make Bea and Henry both so interesting to look at, all mischievous smiles and swooping cheekbones, but punted so hard on Philip. He looks like a stock photo.

“Morning,” Philip says as he takes his reserved seat to the side of Bea. His eyes track over Alex twice, and Alex can sense skepticism as to why Alex was even allowed. Maybe it’s weird Alex is here. He doesn’t care. Martha’s looking at him weird too, but maybe she’s simply holding a grudge about her wedding cake.

“Afternoon, Pip,” Bea says politely. “Martha.”

Beside him, Henry’s spine stiffens.

“Henry,” Philip says. Henry’s hand is tense on the program in his lap. “Good to see you, mate. Been a bit busy, have you? Gap year and all that?”

There’s an implication under his tone. Where exactly have you been? What exactly have you been doing? A muscle flexes in Henry’s jaw.

“Yes,” Henry says. “Loads of work with Percy. It’s been mad.”

“Right, the Okonjo Foundation, isn’t it?” he says. “Shame he couldn’t make it today. Suppose we’ll have to make do with our American friend, then?”

At that, he tips a dry smile at Alex.

“Yep,” Alex says, too loud. He grins broadly.

“Though, I do suppose Percy would look a bit out of place in the Box, wouldn’t he?”

“Philip,” Bea says.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, Bea,” Philip says dismissively. “I only mean he’s a peculiar sort, isn’t he? Those frocks he wears? A bit much for Wimbledon.”

Henry’s face is calm and genial, but one of his knees has shifted over to dig into Alex’s. “They’re called dashikis, Philip, and he wore one once.”

“Right,” Philip says. “You know I don’t judge. I just think, you know, remember when we were younger and you’d spend time with my mates from uni? Or Lady Agatha’s son, the one that’s always quail hunting? You could consider more mates of … similar standing.”

Henry’s mouth is a thin line, but he says nothing.

“We can’t all be best mates with the Count of Monpezat like you, Philip,” Bea mutters.

“In any event,” Philip presses on, ignoring her, “you’re unlikely to find a wife unless you’re running in the right circles, aren’t you?” He chuckles a little and returns to watching the match.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Henry says. He drops his program in his seat and vanishes.

Ten minutes later, Alex finds him in the clubhouse by a gigantic vase of lurid fuschia flowers. His eyes are intent on Alex the moment he sees him, his lip chewed the same furious red as the embroidered Union Jack on his pocket square.

“Hello, Alex,” he says placidly.

Alex takes his tone. “Hi.”

“Has anyone shown you round the clubhouse yet?”

“Nope.”

“Well, then.”

Henry touches two fingers to the back of his elbow, and Alex obeys immediately.

Down a flight of stairs, through a concealed side door and a second hidden corridor, there is a small room full of chairs and tablecloths and one old, abandoned tennis racquet. As soon as the door is closed behind them, Henry slams him up against it.

He gets right up in Alex’s space, but he doesn’t kiss him. He hovers there, a breath away, his hands at Alex’s hips and his mouth split open in a crooked smirk.

“D’you know what I want?” he says, his voice so low and hot that it burns right through Alex’s solar plexus, right into the core of him.

“What?”

“I want,” he says, “to do the absolute last thing I’m supposed to be doing right now.”

Alex juts out his chin, grinningly defiant. “Then tell me to do it, sweetheart.”

And Henry, tonguing the corner of his own mouth, tugs hard to undo Alex’s belt and says, “Fuck me.”

“Well,” Alex grunts, “when at Wimbledon.”

Henry laughs hoarsely and leans down to kiss him, open-mouthed and eager. He’s moving fast, knowing they’re on borrowed time, quick to follow the lead when Alex groans and pulls at his shoulders to change their positions. He gets Henry’s back to his chest, Henry’s palms braced against the door.

“Just so we’re clear,” Alex says, “I’m about to have sex with you in this storage closet to spite your family. Like, that’s what’s happening?”

Henry, who has apparently been carrying his travel-size lube with him this entire time in his jacket, says, “Right,” and tosses it over his shoulder.

“Awesome, fuckin’ love doing things out of spite,” he says without a hint of sarcasm, and he kicks Henry’s feet apart.

And it should be—it should be funny. It should be hot, stupid, ridiculous, obscene, another wild sexual adventure to add to the list. And it is, but … it shouldn’t also feel like last time, like Alex might die if it ever stops. There’s a laugh in his mouth, but it won’t get past his tongue, because he knows this is him helping Henry get through something. Rebellion.

You’re brave. I could use some of that.

After, he kisses Henry’s mouth fiercely, pushes his fingers deep into Henry’s hair, sucks the air out of him. Henry smiles breathlessly against his neck, looking extremely pleased with himself, and says, “I’m rather finished with tennis, aren’t you?”

So, they steal away behind a crowd, blocked by PPOs and umbrellas, and back at Kensington, Henry brings Alex up to his rooms.

His “apartment” is a sprawling warren of twenty-two rooms on the northwest side of the palace closest to the Orangery. He splits it with Bea, but there’s not much of either of them in any of the high ceilings and heavy, jacquard furniture. What is there is more Bea than Henry: a leather jacket flung over the back of a chaise, Mr. Wobbles preening in a corner, a seventeenth-century Dutch oil painting on one landing literally called Woman at her Toilet that only Bea would have selected from the royal collection.

Henry’s bedroom is as cavernous and opulent and insufferably beige as Alex could have imagined, with a gilded baroque bed and windows overlooking the gardens. He watches Henry shrug out of his suit and imagines having to live in it, wondering if Henry simply isn’t allowed to choose what his rooms look like or if he never wanted to ask for something different. All those nights Henry can’t sleep, just knocking around these endless, impersonal rooms, like a bird trapped in a museum.

The only room that really feels like both Henry and Bea is a small parlor on the second floor converted into a music studio. The colors are richest here: hand-woven Turkish rugs in deep reds and violets, a tobacco-colored settee. Little poufs and tables of knickknacks spring up like mushrooms, and the walls are lined with Stratocasters and Flying Vs, violins, an assortment of harps, one stout cello propped up in the corner.

In the center of the room is the grand piano, and Henry sits down at it and plucks away idly, toying with the melody of something that sounds like an old song by The Killers. David the beagle naps quietly near the pedals.

“Play something I don’t know,” Alex says.

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.”

“No,” June is saying. Her heels are dangling from her hand, her eyes bright in the warm light near the hotel elevator where they’ve agreed to meet. Her hair is coming out of its braid in angry spikes. “You’re damn lucky I agreed to talk to you in the first place, so you get this or you get nothing.”

The Post reporter blinks, fingers faltering on his recorder. He’s been hounding June on her personal phone since the minute they landed in New York for a quote about the convention, and now he’s demanding something about Luna. June is not typically an angry person, but it’s been a long day, and she looks about three seconds from using one of those heels to stab the guy through the eye socket.

“What about you?” the guy asks Alex.

“If she’s not giving it to you, I’m not giving it to you,” Alex says. “She’s much nicer than me.”

June snaps her fingers in front of the guy’s hipster glasses, eyes blazing. “You don’t get to speak to him,” June says. “Here is my quote: My mother, the president, still fully intends to win this race. We’re here to support her and to encourage the party to stay united behind her.”

“But about Senator Luna—”

“Thank you. Vote Claremont,” June says tightly, slapping her hand over Alex’s mouth. She sweeps him off and into the waiting elevator, elbowing him when he licks her palm.

“That goddamn fucking traitor,” Alex says when they reach their floor. “Duplicitous fucking bastard! I—I fucking helped him get elected. I canvassed for him for twenty-seven hours straight. I went to his sister’s wedding. I memorized his goddamn Five Guys order!”

“I fucking know, Alex,” June says, shoving her keycard into the slot.

“How did that Vampire Weekend–looking little shit even have your personal number?”

June throws her shoes at the bed, and they bounce off onto the floor in different directions. “Because I slept with him last year, Alex, how do you think? You’re not the only one who makes stupid sexual decisions when you’re stressed out.” She drops onto the bed and starts taking off her earrings. “I just don’t understand what the point is. Like, what is Luna’s endgame here? Is he some kind of fucking sleeper agent sent from the future to give me an ulcer?”

It’s late—they got into New York after nine, hurtling into crisis management meetings for hours. Alex still feels wired, but when June looks up at him, he can see some of the brightness in her eyes has started to look like frustrated tears, and he softens a little.

“If I had to guess, Luna thinks we’re going to lose,” he tells her quietly, “and he thinks he can help push Richards farther left by joining the ticket. Like, putting the fire out from inside the house.”

June looks at him, eyes tired, searching his face. She may be the oldest, but politics is Alex’s game, not hers. He knows he would have chosen this life for himself given the option; he knows she wouldn’t have.

“I think … I need to sleep. For, like, the next year. At least. Wake me up after the general.”

“Okay, Bug,” Alex says. He leans down to kiss the top of her head. “I can do that.”

“Thanks, baby bro.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Tiny, miniature, itty-bitty, baby brother.”

“Fuck off.”

“Go to bed.”

Cash is waiting for him out in the hallway, his suit abandoned for plainclothes.

“Hanging in there?” he asks Alex.

“I mean, I kind of have to.”

Cash pats him on the shoulder with one gigantic hand. “There’s a bar downstairs.”

Alex considers. “Yeah, okay.”

The Beekman is thankfully quiet this late, and the bar is low-lit with warm, rich shades of gold on the walls and deep-green leather on the high-backed barstools. Alex orders a whiskey neat.

He looks at his phone, swallowing down his frustration with the whiskey. He texted Luna three hours ago, a succinct: what the fuck? An hour ago, he got back: I don’t expect you to understand.

He wants to call Henry. He guesses it makes sense—they’ve always been fixed points in each other’s worlds, little magnetic poles. Some laws of physics would be reassuring right now.

God, whiskey makes him maudlin. He orders another.

He’s contemplating texting Henry, even though he’s probably somewhere over the Atlantic, when a voice curls around his ear, smooth and warm. He’s sure he must be imagining it.

“I’ll have a gin and tonic, thanks,” it says, and there’s Henry in the flesh, sidled up next to him at the bar, looking a little tousled in a soft gray button-down and jeans. Alex wonders for an insane second if his brain has conjured up some kind of stress-induced sex mirage, when Henry says, voice lowered, “You looked rather tragic drinking alone.”

Definitely the real Henry, then. “You’re—what are you doing here?”

“You know, as a figurehead of one of the most powerful countries in the world, I do manage to keep abreast on international politics.”

Alex raises an eyebrow.

Henry inclines his head, sheepish. “I sent Pez home without me because I was worried.”

“There it is,” Alex says with a wink. He goes for his drink to hide what he suspects is a small, sad smile; the ice clacks against his teeth. “Speak not the bastard’s name.”

“Cheers,” Henry says as the bartender returns with his drink.

Henry takes the first sip, sucking lime juice off his thumb, and fuck, he looks good. There’s color in his cheeks and lips, the glow of Brooklyn summertime warmth that his English blood isn’t accustomed to. He looks like something soft and downy Alex wants to sink into, and he realizes the knot of anxiety in his chest has finally slackened.

It’s rare anyone other than June goes out of their way to check on him. It’s by his own design, mostly, a barricade of charm and fitful monologues and hard-headed independence. Henry looks at him like he’s not fooled by any of it.

“Get moving on that drink, Wales,” Alex says. “I’ve got a king-size bed upstairs that’s calling my name.” He shifts on his stool, letting one of his knees graze against Henry’s under the bar, nudging them apart.

Henry squints at him. “Bossy.”

They sit there until Henry finishes his drink, Alex listening to the placating murmur of Henry talking about different brands of gin, thankful that for once Henry seems happy to carry the conversation alone. He closes his eyes, wills the disaster of the day away, and tries to forget. He remembers Henry’s words in the garden months ago: “D’you ever wonder what it’s like to be some anonymous person out in the world?”

If he’s some anonymous, normal person, removed from history, he’s twenty-two and he’s tipsy and he’s pulling a guy into his hotel room by the belt loop. He’s pulling a lip between his teeth, and he’s fumbling behind his back to switch on a lamp, and he’s thinking, I like this person.

They break apart, and when Alex opens his eyes, Henry is watching him.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

Alex groans.

The thing is, he does, and Henry knows this too.

“It’s…” Alex starts. He paces backward, hands on his hips. “He was supposed to be me in twenty years, you know? I was fifteen the first time I met him, and I was … in awe. He was everything I wanted to be. And he cared about people, and about doing the work because it was the right thing to do, because we were making people’s lives better.”

In the low light of the single lamp, Alex turns and sits down on the edge of the bed.

“I’ve never been more sure that I wanted to go into politics than when I went to Denver. I saw this young, queer guy who looked like me, sleeping at his desk because he wants kids at public schools in his state to have free lunches, and I was like, I could do this. I honestly don’t know if I’m good enough or smart enough to ever be either of my parents. But I could be that.” He drops his head down. He’s never said the last part out loud to anyone before. “And now I’m sitting here thinking, that son of a bitch sold out, so maybe it’s all bullshit, and maybe I really am just a naive kid who believes in magical shit that doesn’t happen in real life.”

Henry comes to stand in front of Alex, his thigh brushing against the inside of Alex’s knee, and he reaches one hand down to still Alex’s nervous fidgeting.

“Someone else’s choice doesn’t change who you are.”

“I feel like it does,” Alex tells him. “I wanted to believe in some people being good and doing this job because they want to do good. Doing the right things most of the time and most things for the right reasons. I wanted to be the kind of person who believes in that.”

Henry’s hands move, brushing up to Alex’s shoulders, the dip of his throat, the underside of his jaw, and when Alex finally looks up, Henry’s eyes are soft and steady. “You still are. Because you still bloody care so much.” He leans down and presses a kiss into Alex’s hair. “And you are good. Most things are awful most of the time, but you’re good.”

Alex takes a breath. There’s this way Henry has of listening to the erratic stream of consciousness that pours out of Alex’s mouth and answering with the clearest, crystallized truth that Alex has been trying to arrive at all along. If Alex’s head is a storm, Henry is the place lightning hits ground. He wants it to be true.

He lets Henry push him backward on the bed and kiss him until his mind is blissfully blank, lets Henry undress him carefully. He pushes into Henry and feels the tight cords of his shoulders start to release, like how Henry describes unfurling a sail.

Henry kisses his mouth over and over again and says quietly, “You are good.”

The pounding on his door comes much too early for Alex to handle loud noises. There’s a sharpness to it he recognizes instantly as Zahra before she even speaks, and he wonders why the hell she didn’t just call before he reaches for his phone and finds it dead. Shit. That would explain the missed alarm.

“Alex Claremont-Diaz, it is almost seven,” Zahra shouts through the door. “You have a strategy meeting in fifteen minutes and I have a key, so I don’t care how naked you are, if you don’t answer this door in the next thirty seconds, I’m coming in.”

He is, he realizes as he rubs his eyes, extremely naked. A cursory examination of the body pressed up against his back: Henry, very comprehensively naked as well.

“Oh fuck me,” Alex swears, sitting up so fast he gets tangled in the sheet and flails sideways out of bed.

“Blurgh,” Henry groans.

“Fucking shit,” says Alex, whose vocabulary is apparently now only expletives. He yanks himself free and scrambles for his chinos. “Goddammit ass fucker.”

“What,” Henry says flatly to the ceiling.

“I can hear you in there, Alex, I swear to God—”

There’s another sound from the door, like Zahra has kicked it, and Henry flies out of bed too. He is truly a picture, wearing an expression of bewildered panic and absolutely nothing else. He eyes the curtains furtively, as if considering hiding in them.

“Jesus tits,” Alex continues as he fumbles to pull his pants up. He snatches a shirt and boxers at random from the floor, shoves them at Henry’s chest, and points him toward the closet. “Get in there.”

“Quite,” he observes.

“Yes, we can unpack the ironic symbolism later. Go,” Alex says, and Henry does, and when the door swings open, Zahra is standing there with her thermos and a look on her face that says she did not get a master’s degree to babysit a fully grown adult who happens to be related to the president.

“Uh, morning,” he says.

Zahra’s eyes do a quick sweep of the room—the sheets on the floor, the two pillows that have been slept on, the two phones on the nightstand.

“Who is she?” she demands, marching over to the bathroom and yanking open the door like she’s going to find some Hollywood starlet in the bathtub. “You let her bring a phone in here?”

“Nobody, Jesus,” Alex says, but his voice cracks in the middle. Zahra arches an eyebrow. “What? I got kinda drunk last night, that’s all. It’s chill.”

“Yes, it is so very, very chill that you’re going to be hungover for today,” Zahra says, rounding on him.

“I’m fine,” he says. “It’s fine.”

As if on cue, there’s a series of bumps from the other side of the closet door, and Henry, halfway into Alex’s boxers, comes literally tumbling out of the closet.

It is, Alex thinks half-hysterically, a very solid visual pun.

“Er,” Henry says from the floor. He finishes pulling Alex’s boxers up his hips. Blinks. “Hello.”

The silence stretches.

“I—” Zahra begins. “Do I even want you to explain to me what the fuck is happening here? Literally how is he even here, like, physically or geographically, and why—no, nope. Don’t answer that. Don’t tell me anything.” She unscrews the top of her thermos and takes a pull of coffee. “Oh my God, did I do this? I never thought … when I set it up … oh my God.”

Henry has pulled himself off the floor and put on a shirt, and his ears are bright red. “I think, perhaps, if it helps. It was. Er. Rather inevitable. At least for me. So you shouldn’t blame yourself.”

Alex looks at him, trying to think of something to add, when Zahra jabs a manicured finger into his shoulder.

“Well, I hope it was fun, because if anyone ever finds out about this, we’re all fucked,” Zahra says. She points at Henry. “You too. Can I assume I don’t have to make you sign an NDA?”

“I’ve already signed one for him,” Alex offers up, while Henry’s ears turn from red to an alarming shade of purple. Six hours ago, he was sinking drowsily into Henry’s chest, and now he’s standing here half-naked, talking about the paperwork. He fucking hates paperwork. “I think that covers it.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Zahra says. “I’m so glad you thought this through. Great. How long has this been happening?”

“Since, um. New Year’s,” Alex says.

“New Year’s?” Zahra repeats, eyes wide. “This has been going on for seven months? That’s why you—Oh my God, I thought you were getting into international relations or something.”

“I mean, technically—”

“If you finish that sentence, I’m gonna spend tonight in jail.”

Alex winces. “Please don’t tell Mom.”

“Seriously?” she hisses. “You’re literally putting your dick in the leader of a foreign state, who is a man, at the biggest political event before the election, in a hotel full of reporters, in a city full of cameras, in a race close enough to fucking hinge on some bullshit like this, like a manifestation of my fucking stress dreams, and you’re asking me not to tell the president about it?”

“Um. Yeah? I haven’t, um, come out to her. Yet.”

Zahra blinks, presses her lips together, and makes a noise like she’s being strangled. “Listen,” she says. “We don’t have time to deal with this, and your mother has enough to manage without having to process her son’s fucking quarter-life NATO sexual crisis, so—I won’t tell her. But once the convention is over, you have to.”

“Okay,” Alex says on an exhale.

“Would it make any difference at all if I told you not to see him again?”

Alex looks over at Henry, looking rumpled and nauseated and terrified at the corner of the bed. “No.”

“God fucking dammit,” she says, rubbing the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Every time I see you, it takes another year off my life. I’m going downstairs, and you better be dressed and there in five minutes so we can try to save this goddamn campaign. And you”—she rounds on Henry—“you need to get back to fucking England now, and if anyone sees you leave, I will personally end you. Ask me if I’m afraid of the crown.”

“Duly noted,” he says in a faint voice.

Zahra fixes him with a final glare, turns on her heel, and stalks out of the room, slamming the door behind her.