Work Text:
i.
Henry looks beautiful under the faint moonlight, hair haloed around the pillow. Alex ghosts a hand over the golden strands, imagining just how soft they felt under his skin merely an hour ago, tangled together so tight it was impossible to tell where he started and Henry ended. Henry had kissed him then—with Alex’s fingers in his hair, with his hand wrapped around the flimsy shirt covering Alex’s chest they’d kissed, too lost in each other to count the minutes.
Henry’s lips are parted now, swollen where Alex’s teeth snagged against the skin. Alex wants to dip down now, to taste the warmth of them just so it lingers when he has to leave. Just so he can press his fingers over his lips when he’s in his own bed and think back to this one moment—separated from the past and the future, a moment just for him and Henry where a boy can kiss the Prince of Wales and it’s okay.
Alex traces Henry’s lips before forcing himself to move away. He doesn’t dip down; he doesn’t steal one final kiss. The door shuts silently when he leaves.
ii.
Henry’s palms are warm against Alex’s cheeks.
He tugs Alex close, lips ghosting over his for a brief moment before Alex is tugged into a kiss. His fingers scramble to hold onto something—the doorframe, the wall, and then eventually Henry’s shoulders, clasped around the fabric of his shirt like a lifeline. Alex shuts his eyes and lets himself get lost in the feel of Henry’s lips over him, one last taste he’s allowed before it slips from his fingers.
Henry presses his forehead against Alex’s, breaths mingled between them. Time stops and Alex thinks, in the haze of the night, that Henry will ask him to stay. Fingers locked under the cover, face pressed against his shoulder, he’ll lead Alex back to the sheets they already trashed and pull him to his chest.
“Good night, love,” he whispers instead. The warmth slips away and Alex finds himself staring at the wood, Henry already lost behind the thick surface.
iii.
Henry’s hair smells like his shampoo.
Alex presses his face into the soft strands, closing his eyes to inhale the scent. Apples and cinnamon, his favorite, wafting from the damp strands, shining golden under the dim light of the moon. His arm comes up around Henry to pull him close, achingly close, naked bodies pressed together.
It’s late into the night, seconds ticking by until the clock hits midnight, the spell broken like a glass shoe left behind. Alex clings onto Henry in the meantime and lets himself linger in that limbo of timelessness, in the arms of the man he’s beginning to fall for.
In the morning, he’d never face it. It’s entirely too easy under the cover of the night.
He falls asleep, somewhere between eleven and twelve. He falls asleep, midnight strikes and Henry is gone, leaving the shape of himself behind on Alex’s heart like a carving. He wakes up to an empty bed, with only a faint reminder of Henry left behind.
iv.
Alex counts the colors in Henry’s eyes, pixelated on the screen.
Blue and green, teal and cerulean, and everything in between, mixed and matched in two bright irises that look like home. Alex counts them, cuddled under his blankets on a bed that feels too empty without Henry to hold him. “You should come over,” he whispers, watching the crinkles deepen around Henry’s eyes.
“Right now?”
It’s impossible, yet Alex says it anyway. “Yeah. Miss your face.” Entirely too vulnerable, yet when Henry smiles Alex doesn’t quite care. He moves his thumb so he can trace Henry’s face, 3000 miles away and achingly close at once. Stay, he thinks, even as his eyes drift close. Stay. I want you.
“Sleep, love,” Henry whispers instead. The call is over by the time Alex wakes up.
v.
The room feels too cold as Alex watches Henry grab his clothes from the floor.
Shirt thrown across the room, pants dangled from the bed. Underwear, and then tie, the fabric smooth under Alex’s fingers. He wants to grip it tight but instead he lets is slide, wrapped around Henry’s throat even now, past midnight, getting ready to leave the room.
A hazy halo surrounds Henry where he stands. He looks angelic, and for once when the word comes to the tip of his tongue Alex doesn’t stop himself. “Henry,” he whispers, reaching for the smooth skin of his wrist he knows so well. His fingers fit snug around his hand, two pieces made exactly for each other.
Henry comes when Alex tugs him close, and he stays when Alex frames his face, blue eyes wide and vulnerable under the light of the hotel room. “Stay,” Alex whispers, watching his lips. It’s ill-advised yet Alex aches for it anyway, for one moment they can pretend they’re more than what the crown and the White House affords them.
Alex’s eyes flicker up when Henry hesitates. “Please.” It’s quiet and broken, a hopeless plea to the universe to let him keep this. “I need you.”
And, impossibly, the universe hears.
+i.
The last rays of the evening sun cover the bed in a warm, red glimmer.
One side of the sheets is sleek, David sprawled over the cover like he owns the place. The other side is a mess of wrinkles and lumps like someone rolled over it, the pillow askew to the side, two distinct dips on the surface. When Henry tugs Alex into the room hours later, their heads fit perfectly on the spots, two crescents wrapped around each other.
Three thousand miles turn into none, pixelated screens turn into damp curls and the faint scent of a cologne that clings to Henry’s skin. Alex buries his face into them and holds Henry tight, like he’s done a thousand times before.
“Stay?” he asks, all over again. This time, Henry smiles. He kisses Alex’s hand.
“Forever.” It’s a promise of a redo for all the times they weren’t allowed.