Red, White & Royal Blue

by Casey McQuiston

  “What’s this?”

  Alex huffs impatiently. “The key to my mom’s house in Texas,” he says, winding a hand back into Henry’s hair. “I started wearing it when I moved here. I guess I thought it would remind me of where I came from or something—did I or did I not tell you to quit stalling?”

  Henry looks up into his eyes, speechless, and Alex tugs him down into another all-consuming kiss, and Henry bears down on him fully, pressing him into the bed. Alex’s other hand finds that dip of Henry’s waist, and he swallows a sound at how devastating it feels under his palm. He’s never been kissed like this, as if the feeling could swallow him up whole, Henry’s body grinding down and covering every inch of his. He moves his mouth from Henry’s to the side of his neck, the spot below his ear, kisses and kisses it, and bares his teeth. Alex knows it’ll probably leave a mark, which is against rule number one of clandestine hookups for political offspring—and probably royals too. He doesn’t care.

  He feels Henry find the waistband of his pants, the button, the zipper, the elastic of his underwear, and then everything goes very hazy, very quickly.

  He opens his eyes to see Henry bringing his hand demurely up to his elegant royal mouth to spit on it.

  “Oh my fucking God,” Alex says, and Henry grins crookedly as he gets back to work. “Fuck.” His body is moving, his mouth spilling words. “I can’t believe—God, you are the most insufferable goddamn bastard on the face of the planet, do you know that—fuck—you’re infuriating, you’re the worst—you’re—”

  “Do you ever stop talking?” Henry says. “Such a mouth on you.” And when Alex looks again, he finds Henry watching him raptly, eyes bright and smiling. He keeps eye contact and his rhythm at the same time, and Alex was wrong before, Henry’s going to be the one to kill him, not the other way around.

  “Wait,” Alex says, clenching his fist in the bedspread, and Henry immediately stills. “I mean, yes, obviously, oh my God, but, like, if you keep doing that I’m gonna”—Alex’s breath catches—“it’s, that’s just—that’s not allowed before I get to see you naked.”

  Henry tilts his head and smirks. “All right.”

  Alex flips them over, kicking off his pants until only his underwear is left slung low on his hips, and he climbs up the length of Henry’s body, watching his face grow anxious, eager.

  “Hi,” he says, when he reaches Henry’s eye level.

  “Hello,” Henry says back.

  “I’m gonna take your pants off now,” Alex tells him.

  “Yes, good, carry on.”

  Alex does, and one of Henry’s hands slides down, leveraging one of Alex’s thighs up so their bodies meet again right at the hard crux between them, and they both groan. Alex thinks, dizzily, that it’s been nearly five years of foreplay, and enough is enough.

  He moves his lips down to Henry’s chest, and he feels under his mouth the beat Henry’s heart skips at the realization of what Alex intends. His own heartbeat is probably falling out of rhythm too. He’s in so far over his head, but that’s good—that’s pretty much his comfort zone. He kisses Henry’s solar plexus, his stomach, the stretch of skin above his waistband.

  “I’ve, uh,” Alex begins. “I’ve never actually done this before.”

  “Alex,” Henry says, reaching down to stroke at Alex’s hair, “you don’t have to, I’m—”

  “No, I want to,” Alex says, tugging at Henry’s waistband. “I just need you to tell me if it’s awful.”

  Henry is speechless again, looking as if he can’t believe his fucking luck. “Okay. Of course.”

  Alex pictures Henry barefoot in a Kensington Palace kitchen and the little sliver of vulnerability he got to see so early on, and he thrills at Henry now, in his bed, spread out and naked and wanting. This can’t be really happening after everything, but miraculously, it is.

  If he’s going by the way Henry’s body responds, by the way Henry’s hand sweeps up into his hair and clutches a fistful of curls, he guesses he does okay for a first try. He looks up the length of Henry’s body and is met with burning eye contact, a red lip caught between white teeth. Henry drops his head back on the pillow and groans something that sounds like “fucking eyelashes.” He’s maybe a little bit in awe of how Henry arches up off the mattress, at hearing his sweet, posh voice reciting a litany of profanities to the ceiling. Alex is living for it, watching Henry come undone, letting him be whatever he needs to be while alone with Alex behind a locked door.

  He’s surprised to find himself hauled up to Henry’s mouth and kissed hungrily. He’s been with girls who didn’t like to be kissed afterward and girls who didn’t mind it, but Henry revels in it, based on the deep and comprehensive way he’s kissing him. It occurs to him to make a comment about narcissism, but instead—

  “Not awful?” Alex says between kisses, resting his head on the pillow next to Henry’s to catch his breath.

  “Definitely adequate,” Henry answers, grinning, and he scoops Alex up against his chest greedily as if he’s trying to touch all of him at once. Henry’s hands are huge on his back, his jaw sharp and rough with a long day’s stubble, his shoulders broad enough to eclipse Alex when he rolls them over and pins Alex to the mattress. None of it feels anything like anything he’s felt before, but it’s just as good, maybe better.

  Henry’s kissing him aggressively once more, confident in a way that’s rare from Henry. Messy earnestness and rough focus, not a dutiful prince but any other twenty-something boy enjoying himself doing something he likes, something he’s good at. And he is good at it. Alex makes a mental note to figure out which shadowy gay noble taught Henry all this and send the man a fruit basket.

  Henry returns the favor happily, hungrily, and Alex doesn’t know or care what sounds or words come out of his mouth. He thinks one of them is “sweetheart” and another is “motherfucker.” Henry is one talented bastard, a man of many hidden gifts, Alex muses half-hysterically. A true prodigy. God Save the Queen.

  When he’s done, he presses a sticky kiss in the crease of Alex’s leg where he’d slung it over his shoulder, managing to come off polite, and Alex wants to drag Henry up by the hair, but his body is boneless and wrecked. He’s blissed out, dead. Ascended to the next plane, merely a pair of eyes floating through a dopamine haze.

  The mattress shifts, and Henry moves up to the pillows, nuzzling his face into the hollow of Alex’s throat. Alex makes a vague noise of approval, and his arms fumble around Henry’s waist, but he’s helpless to do much else. He’s sure he used to know quite a lot of words, in more than one language, in fact, but he can’t seem to recall any of them.

  “Hmm,” Henry hums, the tip of his nose catching on Alex’s. “If I had known this was all it took to shut you up, I’d have done it ages ago.”

  With a feat of Herculean strength, he summons up two whole words: “Fuck you.”

  Distantly, through a slowly clearing fog, through a messy kiss, Alex can’t help marveling at the knowledge that he’s crossed some kind of Rubicon, here in this room that’s almost as old as the country it’s in, like Washington crossing the Delaware. He laughs into Henry’s mouth, instantly caught up in his own dramatic mental portrait of the two them painted in oils, young icons of their nations, naked and shining wet in the lamplight. He wishes Henry could see it, wonders if he’d find the image as funny.

  Henry rolls over onto his back. Alex’s body wants to follow and tuck into his side, but he stays where he is, watching from a few safe inches away. He can see a muscle in Henry’s jaw flexing.

  “Hey,” he says. He pokes Henry in the arm. “Don’t freak out.”

  “I’m not freaking out,” he says, enunciating the words.

  Alex wriggles an inch closer in the sheets. “It was fun,” Alex says. “I had fun. You had fun, right?”

  “Definitely,” he says, in a tone that sends a lazy spark up Alex’s spine.

  “Okay, cool. So, we can do this again, anytime you want,” Alex says, dragging the back of his kn
uckles down Henry’s shoulder. “And you know this doesn’t, like, change anything between us, right? We’re still … whatever we were before, just, you know. With blowjobs.”

  Henry covers his eyes with one hand. “Right.”

  “So,” Alex says, changing tracks by stretching languidly, “I guess I should tell you, I’m bisexual.”

  “Good to know,” Henry says. His eyes flicker down to Alex’s hip, where it’s bared above the sheet, and he says as much to himself as to Alex, “I am very, very gay.”

  Alex watches his small smile, the way it wrinkles the corners of his eyes, and very deliberately does not kiss it.

  Part of his brain keeps getting stuck on how strange, and strangely wonderful, it is to see Henry like this, open and bare in every way. Henry leans across the pillow to Alex and presses a soft kiss to his mouth, and Alex feels fingertips brush over his jaw. The touch is so gentle he has to once again remind himself not to care too much.

  “Hey,” Alex tells him, sliding his mouth closer to Henry’s ear, “you’re welcome to stay as long as you want, but I should warn you it’s probably in both of our best interests if you go back to your room before morning. Unless you want the PPOs to lock the Residence down and come requisition you from my boudoir.”

  “Ah,” Henry says. He pulls away from Alex and rolls back over, looking up to the ceiling again like a man seeking penance from a wrathful god. “You’re right.”

  “You can stay for another round, if you want to,” Alex offers.

  Henry coughs, scrubs a hand through his hair. “I rather think I’d—I’d better get back to my room.”

  Alex watches him fish his boxers from the foot of the bed and start pulling them back on, sitting up and shaking out his shoulders.

  It’s for the best this way, he tells himself; nobody will get any wrong ideas about what exactly this arrangement is. They’re not going to spoon all night or wake up in each other’s arms or eat breakfast together. Mutually satisfying sexual experiences do not a relationship make.

  Even if he did want that, there are a million reasons why this will never, ever be possible.

  Alex follows him to the door, watching him turn to hover there awkwardly.

  “Well, er…” Henry attempts, looking down at his feet.

  Alex rolls his eyes. “For fuck’s sake, man, you just had my dick in your mouth, you can kiss me good-night.”

  Henry looks back up at him, his mouth open and incredulous, and he throws his head back and laughs, and it’s only him, the nerdy, neurotic, sweet, insomniac rich guy who constantly sends Alex photos of his dog, and something slots into place. He leans down and kisses him fiercely, and then he’s grinning and gone.

  * * *

  “You’re doing what?”

  It’s sooner than either of them expected—only two weeks since the state dinner, two weeks of wanting Henry back under him as soon as possible and saying everything short of that in their texts. June keeps looking at him like she’s going to throw his phone in the Potomac.

  “An invitation-only charity polo match this weekend,” Henry says over the phone. “It’s in…” He pauses, probably referring back to whatever itinerary Shaan has given him. “Greenwich, Connecticut? It’s $10,000 a seat, but I can have you added to the list.”

  Alex almost fumbles his coffee all over the south entryway. Amy glares at him. “Jesus fuck. That is obscene, what are you raising money for, monocles for babies?” He covers the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand. “Where’s Zahra? I need to clear my schedule for this weekend.” He uncovers the phone. “Look, I guess I’ll try to make it, but I’m really busy right now.”

  * * *

  “I’m sorry, Zahra said you’re bailing on the fund-raiser this weekend because you’re going to a polo match in Connecticut?” June asks from his bedroom doorway that night, almost startling another cup of coffee out of his hands.

  “Listen,” Alex tells her, “I’m trying to keep up a geopolitical public relations ruse here.”

  “Dude, people are writing fan fiction about y’all—”

  “Yeah, Nora sent me that.”

  “—I think you can give it a rest.”

  “The crown wants me to be there!” he lies quickly. She seems unconvinced and leaves him with a parting look he’d probably be concerned about if he cared more about things that aren’t Henry’s mouth right now.

  Which is how he ends up in his J. Crew best on a Saturday at the Greenwich Polo Club, wondering what the hell he’s gotten himself into. The woman in front of him is wearing a hat with an entire taxidermied pigeon on it. High school lacrosse did not prepare him for this kind of sporting event.

  Henry on horseback is nothing new. Henry in full polo gear—the helmet, the polo sleeves capped right at the bulge of his biceps, the snug white pants tucked into tall leather boots, the intricately buckled leather knee padding, the leather gloves—is familiar. He has seen it before. Categorically, it should be boring. It should not provoke anything visceral, carnal, or bodice-ripping in nature in him at all.

  But Henry urging his horse across the field with the power of his thighs, his ass bouncing hard in the saddle, the way the muscles in his arms stretch and flex when he swings, looking the way he does and wearing the things he’s wearing—it’s a lot.

  He’s sweating. It’s February in Connecticut, and Alex is sweating under his coat.

  Worst of all, Henry is good. Alex doesn’t pretend to care about the rules of the game, but his primary turn-on has always been competence. It’s too easy to look at Henry’s boots digging into the stirrups for leverage and conjure up a memory of bare calves underneath, bare feet planted just as firmly on the mattress. Henry’s thighs open the same way, but with Alex between them. Sweat dripping down Henry’s brow onto his throat. Just, uh … well, just like that.

  He wants—God, after all this time ignoring it, he wants it again, now, right now.

  The match ends after a circle-of-hell amount of time, and Alex feels like he’ll pass out or scream if he doesn’t get his hands on Henry soon, like the only thought possible in the universe is Henry’s body and Henry’s flushed face and every other molecule in existence is just an inconvenience.

  “I don’t like that look,” Amy says when they reach the bottom of the stands, peering into his eyes. “You look … sweaty.”

  “I’m gonna go, uh,” Alex says. “Say hi to Henry.”

  Amy’s mouth settles into a grim line. “Please don’t elaborate.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Alex says. “Plausible deniability.”

  “I don’t know what you could possibly mean.”

  “Sure.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “Yep.”

  “Enjoy your summit with the English delegation,” she tells him flatly, and Alex sends up a vague prayer of thanks for staff NDAs.

  He legs it toward the stables, limbs already buzzing with the steady knowledge of Henry’s body getting incrementally closer to his. Long, lean legs, grass stains on pristine, tight pants, why does this sport have to be so completely repulsive while Henry looks so damn good doing it—

  “Oh shit—”

  He barely stops himself from running headfirst into Henry in the flesh, who has rounded the corner of the stables.

  “Oh, hello.”

  They stand there staring at each other, fifteen days removed from Henry swearing at the ceiling of Alex’s bedroom and unsure how to proceed. Henry is still in his full polo regalia, gloves and all, and Alex can’t decide if he is pleased or wants to brain him with a polo stick. Polo bat? Polo club? Polo … mallet? This sport is a travesty.

  Henry breaks the silence by adding, “I was coming to find you, actually.”

  “Yeah, hi, here I am.”

  “Here you are.”

  Alex glances over his shoulder. “There’s, uh. Cameras. Three o’clock.”

  “Right,” Henry says, straightening his shoulders. His hair is messy and slightly damp, color still high in his cheeks from exertion. He’s going
to look like goddamn Apollo in the photos when they go to press. Alex smiles, knowing they’ll sell.

  “Hey, isn’t there, uh, a thing?” Alex says. “You needed to. Uh. Show me?”

  Henry looks at him, glances at the dozens of millionaires and socialites milling around, and back at him. “Now?”

  “It was a four-and-a-half-hour car ride up here, and I have to go back to DC in an hour, so I don’t know when else you’re expecting to show it to me.”

  Henry takes a beat, his eyes flickering to the cameras again before he switches on a stage smile and a laugh, cuffing Alex on the shoulder. “Ah, yes. Right. This way.”

  He turns on his boot heel and leads the way around the back of the stables, veering right into a doorway, and Alex follows. It’s a small, windowless room attached to the stables, fragrant with leather polish and stained wood from floor to ceiling, the walls lined with heavy saddles, riding crops, bridles, and reins.

  “What in the rich-white-people-sex-dungeon hell?” Alex wonders aloud as Henry crosses behind him. He whips a thick leather strap off a hook on the wall, and Alex almost blacks out.

  “What?” Henry says offhandedly, bypassing him to bind the doors shut. He turns around, sweet-faced and unbelievable. “It’s called a tack room.”

  Alex drops his coat and takes three swift steps toward him. “I don’t actually care,” he says, and grabs Henry by the stupid collar of his stupid polo and kisses his stupid mouth.

  It’s a good kiss, solid and hot, and Alex can’t decide where to put his hands because he wants to put them everywhere at once.

  “Ugh,” he groans in exasperation, shoving Henry backward by the shoulders and making a disgusted show of looking him up and down. “You look ridiculous.”

  “Should I—” He steps back and puts a foot up on a nearby bench, moving to undo his kneepads.

  “What? No, of course not, keep them on,” Alex says. Henry freezes, standing there all artistically posed with his thighs apart and one knee up, the fabric straining. “Oh my God, what are you doing? I can’t even look at you.” Henry frowns. “No, Jesus, I just meant—I’m so mad at you.” Henry gingerly puts his boot back on the floor. Alex wants to die. “Just, come here. Fuck.”