Orion || RWRB fanfic || Henry's POV

Extra Scene: *Obtuse Fucking Asshole*

A/N- okay so I know it's been a while, but I'm re-reading rwrb right now and their love is so beautiful that I couldn't NOT write something about it. This is the scene after the lake house, where Alex flies to England to call Henry an obtuse fucking asshole.

***

Rain beats a stuttering heartbeat on the weeping windowsill of Henry's bedroom.

A washed-out ochre light diffuses into the dusty blue shadows from the lamp huddled over his desk. His fingers are stained with smudges of ink, aching from clenching around his pen for hours. He can feel his pulse echo deafeningly through the silence, feel it reverberate through his bones like it's going to shake him apart from the inside.

He twists the signet ring on his finger around and around and around until it cuts into the skin, until it leaves a red, raw brand there.

He's not sure what he's writing, but words are welling up inside him, throbbing in his veins and spilling out onto the crumpled pages, because here, right now, in the soft quiet with the rustling trees and the whisper of the wind and the rain, all tinny and distant... it's the only place he can stop pretending.

Alex is... well, Alex is everything.

When they're together, nothing else ever existed and nothing else will ever exist. There's just his crooked, all-American smile; the one stray curl of hair that refuses to stick down, right at the nape of his neck, impossibly soft; and he touches Henry like he knows him. Like he's mapped out all of the tangled thorns digging into his heart, and doesn't care if his fingers get torn to shreds unravelling them.

When they're apart, he's never fully there. Prince Henry is there – his artificial smiles, his head thrown back in plastic laughter, his scripted words and planned-out performances. Henry Fox, however, is somewhere in America – wherever Alex is.

He wishes he didn't lose himself every time they part.

He wishes he didn't have to choose – his country, or his life. It isn't much of a choice, because he's never truly belonged to himself. His life isn't his to gamble away on some boy, no matter how the boy makes him feel like helium is bubbling up inside his chest every time their eyes lock.

He belongs to England. To the crown.

He can't have Alex and his people at the same time.

The nib of the pen splutters out a spray of ink, and he glances down with blurry eyes and realises it's snapped, realises his knuckles are whitened and the paper torn.

He thinks of Pyramus and Thisbe, of their wall –

'And through wall's chink, poor souls / they are content / to whisper...''

It had worked – they had worked – when they were a secret; clandestine meetups in empty rooms, concealed text messages typed out under tables, private smiles away from the flashing cameras and blinding lights.

Alex – he wants more than that. He wants to break down the wall. He wants more than Henry can give him, and the worst part is that Henry knows that's what he deserves.

He can't give Alex what he deserves. He can't bear to hurt him by letting him go.

So he's switched his phone to silent, buried it under a heap of cushions in the parlour, and written and written and written. It's all he can do, right now, because everything else reminds him of bronze skin sliding over his like silk, like home.

The piano keys are scattered with dust. He's slept at his desk, head on his papers, because if he presses his nose into the pillow, he can still smell Alex's ghost in the fabric, can picture him breathing into the hollow of Henry's neck beside him, can feel the lingering kiss of his fingers knotting with his.