Orion || RWRB fanfic || Henry's POV

Extra Scene: *A Literal Closet- Part 2*

A/N- hey guys! Here's the second part to this chapter! May or may not do a third part, let me know what you guys want :) enjoy!

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Cash, dressed in plainclothes for once, ushers him down a flight of polished marble stairs, into the hotel's dimly lit bar.

Candles flicker on the tables, wax puddling amidst pools of flickering orange light. The low hum of voices lingers at the edges of his hearing, but most seats are empty, most booths bare of occupants.

The walls are bathed in a rich gold, painted with the shifting shadows of flames, in between the exposed beams that sag from the ceiling, the wood worn smooth with time. The bar glistens with rows and rows of glinting bottles and wine glasses hanging from racks overhead, and a single bartender lurks at the back, polishing the insides of a shot glass with a rag.

At first Alex doesn't turn around when Henry enters, padding softly across the floorboards. He stays slumping over his drink, eyes fixed on the clinking ice as he stirs it round and round, spinning the glass in his hands. His feet are hooked around an emerald-green leather barstool, his shoulders crumpled and the set of his back taut, and tense. The back of his hair is a mess, curls frantic and unkempt, like he's been tearing it out in fistfuls, and his collar is untucked, askew.

He looks like a Greek melodrama. Or, more accurately, he looks like a man clinging onto himself by a single, fraying thread.

Henry's hands fizz with restless energy, tugging at the hem of his heather-grey button-down – he'd scrambled out of his suit in the hotel bathroom, minutes before – and his eyes dart from face to face around the room as he sidles up beside Alex, dips his head in close, and breathes in deeply. Liquor and woodsmoke and black coffee. Home.

"I'll have a gin and tonic, thanks." He smiles blindingly up at the bartender, turning up the royal charm to full volume, and slips onto the seat beside Alex's with a silent click like a puzzle piece locking into place, like a key turning in a lock. "You looked rather tragic drinking alone," He murmurs, voice lowering out of instinct, a smile curling one corner of his lips.

Alex starts, jolts around and stares across at Henry, and, God. He's so beautiful that Henry could almost stop breathing. 

Even with his eyes smudged and dark and rimmed red, stubble ghosting his jawline and lips chewed and cracked, he's bloody gorgeous. Maybe even more so, for all his sorrow – because Henry knows that if he'd been anyone else, Alex's masquerade-ball mask would have been slid back into place, and he would have drawn himself up tall and stuck himself back together with sticky tape and pretended everything was fine. 

But he – he gets to see him like this. And his heart is aching and his arms are cold and empty and itching, but it's still a thrill, seeing Alex Claremont-Diaz destroyed. It makes Henry want to destroy him even more. With his teeth.

"You're – what are you doing here?" There's a faint slur to Alex's words, a haziness to his gaze as he blinks blearily, finally focuses in on Henry and frowns, the lines beginning to wear into his cheeks.

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

He knows Alex won't buy it. Biting the inside of his cheek, he holds his breath and waits – prays, even – for an Alex-like remark, a snappy retort about colonialism and slavery and the fragile ego of the British monarchy. Something to tell him Alex is going to be okay. 

All he gets in return is an arched eyebrow, but it's enough. Ducking his head down, Henry grins bashfully, and heat sears along his cheekbones, even after all this time.

"I sent Pez home without me because I was worried," He admits, and Alex shoots back an inside-melting victory wink.

"There it is," He smirks, but his mouth trembles and crumples and folds halfway through, and he shakily grabs his drink, tipping it back. Ice clinks against the glass rim. "Speak not the bastard's name." 

And Henry thinks, for a moment, that he sees a mirror-image of himself, caught in those words.

 It's been happening more often than not, lately. Fragments of Henry, reflected back at him in Alex's hand-written annotations down the margins of Pride & Prejudice; in the rustle of a Jaffa Cake packet, splitting open down a face-time call at midnight; dialects and phrases mingling, merging together. 

And, no doubt, Alex's horrendously posh, fake British accent is coming along tremendously, too.

This is love, he thinks, at the back of his mind. When you can't tell where you stop, and they begin.

"Cheers," He mutters absently, to the bartender, as he sets a sloshing glass heavily down in front of him. 

Threading his fingers around his drink, he lets the cold sink into his knuckles for a long moment, before he takes the first sip. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Alex watching him, something red-hot flashing in his eyes as Henry sucks lime juice off his thumb, and his heart gives a bone-shaking jerk inside his chest. 

All at once, the few eyes scattered around the room seem to stick to him like glue. His spine straightens, back tensing against the stares he knows aren't really there, are only inside his head, are only ever inside his head. But all the same. Best to be careful – here, and everywhere else.

"Get moving on that drink, Wales," Alex smiles, and there's something looser to the set of his shoulders and the curve of his lips, now; like he's unwound a few coils. "I've got a king-size bed upstairs that's calling my name." 

His knee grazes Henry's under the bar, nudging his thighs apart, and Henry's jaw hangs slack, for a moment. So much for subtlety. 

He guesses that he is only a prince, and if the bed is king-sized... well, that must leave room for one more.

"Bossy," He chokes back, finally, fumbling for smoothness and failing miserably.

And so Henry finishes his drink, in sips stolen between murmurs about different brands of gin, half-remembered from countless tasting sessions enforced upon him by Bea and Pez – 'mandatory fun,' they called it. He does his best to fill every heartbeat of silence with a quiet hand slipping onto a leg, or feet locking between their stools, or an endless flow of meaningless words to distract Alex, to keep him afloat. 

It is, however, rather difficult to stay focused on the specific undertones of a specific alcohol, when every time that Alex nods and his curls tumble across his eyes and they blink, all long, curling eyelashes and wicked glints, up at him from the shadows, or when he attempts a grin and his teeth gleam beneath the lights, all he can think about it finding this man a bed, and joining him in it.

And so they do that, too. 

Except, this time, something feels different. It feels like everything he thought his title would cost him. It feels like the confirmation of everything that Henry has ever wanted; someone to lean on, and someone who knows they can lean on him, in turn. Someone to love, and someone to be loved by.

(Even if it's only in secret.)

(Even if no one else can ever know.)

(Even if Henry spends half of their time together checking his back, locking the door twice over.)

(Even though he's terrified; more terrified than he'll ever admit.)

Isn't that more than enough, for anyone?

***

A/N- hope you enjoyed the chapter, and thank you so much for reading! let me know what you thought in the comments, and any requests (not you, charlie) for scenes you'd like me to write in the future!

- Blue