Chapter Text
“Miss Claremont-Diaz,” says the man, who looks like his name is probably Reginald or Bartholomew or something. He bows, and miraculously his hairpiece doesn’t fall off into June’s plate. “His Royal Highness Prince Henry wonders if you would do him the honor of accompanying him for a dance.”
“Oh,” replies June.
“Oh, she’d love to,” says Nora.
Oh, well, that’s fucking rich, Alex thinks.
He keeps his thoughts to himself. A gulp of very expensive whisky helps. At least June looks appropriately mortified.
“I—” says June, still holding onto Alex’s gaze like a life preserver “—Of course. That would be lovely.”
Alex snorts. June lands a spectacular kick to his anklebone. He clatters his silverware to hide the yelp.
“Excellent,” replies Reginald-Bartholomew. Alex has a feeling that he’d call a handful of dogshit excellent as long as it came from the appropriately pedigreed spaniel. And speak of the devil: here comes Prince Henry himself.
“Hello, June,” says Prince Henry. Alex sips noisily at his drink. “Do you know how to waltz?”
She knows how to write circles around DC’s most silver-tongued wonks, Alex wants to snap; can do it in perfect Spanish. Who give a shit if she can waltz? He watched hours of Youtube videos on the very topic the night before and they’ve got toddlers who can do it, for chrissakes.
“I’m sure I could pick it up,” says June. She is summarily whisked away with a nod, a proffered elbow, and a smile.
Traitor.
Alex drains his drink. The ice conspires with the Crown. It sticks to the bottom of the rocks glass for a second before it plummets against his mouth. He coughs and does his best to play it off. A perfectly transparent ice cube falls into his lap and immediately begins to melt.
“Oh, honey,” says Nora.
“Shut up.”
He rips his napkin— folded into a swan, which he crushes headfirst against his crotch —from the table and tries his best to pat himself dry.
“I can’t believe she did that,” he adds with a huff, tossing the damp napkin on top of the charger plate in front of him. Nora hums and takes a sip of wine. She manages it without spilling a single drop. Show off.
“I’m pretty sure that rejecting a Prince of England qualifies as an international scandal,” she replies, "which I vaguely remember is against the rules tonight.”
“Yeah, sure, ignoring the fact that their wedding cake would’ve fed every household below the poverty line from here to Glasgow for a goddamned month. And look at it.” He waves at the monstrosity. “It’s ugly as shit.”
“Mhm.”
If Alex wasn’t so distracted by his sister’s betrayal he might’ve noticed that Nora’s distracted, too: her lips in a flat line, fingers crumpling the edges of her pressed parchment name card, heel clicking against the floor while her knee bounces like a metronome.
But he is distracted, because June has allowed herself to be involved in a distracting thing. Alex wishes (hardly for the first time) that they were twins. Surely that would’ve allowed for the telekinesis required to trip Prince Henry in front of every pug-nosed viscount in the entire British Empire and wipe that dumb, empty smile off of his dumb, perfect face.
Unfortunately June was born three years too early, so he’s forced to watch Henry’s ballroom proficiency in action instead. And it’s not like Alex doesn’t recognize that Henry’s no doubt received professional instruction on the waltz— he’s pretty certain that they’ve managed to train actual rats to do this, too, so woo-fucking-whoo —but it’s still absolutely infuriating that he does it so well. Even June seems to be having a good time. She’s been laughing and smiling since the violinists started sawing away up on their dais next to the goddamned champagne tower. Real laughter. Real smiling. Her. His June.
“Who the hell does he think he is?”
“Golly, I don’t know, Alex. The Prince of England?”
“If he thinks dancing with June is gonna shut me up, he’s even dumber than I thought and that,” he adds mincingly, “is a serious accomplishment.”
“I don’t think a coma would shut you up.”
“Of course it wouldn’t.”
Nora knows this. He talks in his sleep. Their brief love affair might not have ended in happily-ever-after but it’s not like they’ve ever pretended that it didn’t happen. She’s seen what he’s like in bed. He’s pretty sure he could sing the national anthem without a single beep of brain function.
“Do you seriously think that he’s dancing with June to annoy you?”
Alex doesn’t like her tone. “I don’t like your tone.”
Nora rolls her eyes. “Tough shit.”
“Wow. Language, Nora.”
It is a little weird. She’d been very into the idea of playing Bridgerton in Buckingham Palace earlier and now all of a sudden she’s decidedly not.
Nora crosses her arms. “You are aware that the entire universe does not, in fact, revolve around you, are you not?”
Alex grunts and leans his chair backwards onto two legs so that he can snatch a glass of champagne from a passing tray. The move earns him a reproachful glare from some old walrus in a dress coat. Bastard probably thinks that the waitstaff is getting a bit too uppity. Surely a royal wedding’s never boasted guests like him and Nora before. Alex winks at him before he turns to their table. His chair clatters back onto all fours.
“I’ve seen no compelling evidence to the contrary,” he says into the flute.
Nora opens her mouth for what Alex is certain will be a brilliantly cutting reply. Unfortunately, this is also the exact moment at which the string quartet has finished whatever it was that they were playing (Mozart; Beethoven; maybe something slutty from Haydn). Seconds later the prince has escorted June back to her chair with a smug look on his face like he’s just rescued her from a bear.
“Thank you, June. It was a pleasure,” says Henry, like he’s just allowed to say something like that to her. “I do so hope to have the chance again.”
“Likewise, Your Royal Highness,” says June, a little flustered, and what the fuck?
Henry dips his head first at June and then at Alex and Nora. A feather of golden hair escapes from his perfect coiffure and sticks to his forehead. Nora catches Alex’s eye.
Oh yeah. There it is.
He’s not sure what’s ruined her mood so utterly and irrevocably, but at least she’s on his level now. They’re gonna drink every damned glass of champagne in that stupid tower.
They’re back on a jet bound for DC before the sun rises the next morning. Alex would be grateful for the dark if not for the fact that the sensation of flight has made a very compelling argument with his stomach regarding the topic of vomit.
Nora doesn’t look any better. She’s curled in her seat, wrapped in one of the plush blankets that always seem to be hidden somewhere on these ridiculous things, nothing but a pair of sunglasses peeking through faux fur.
June looks great. She’s had her phone shoved under her nose for hours and apparently whatever’s on the screen is the best thing that she’s seen since she’d found that video compilation of swan-diving corgis dressed in little lifejackets out on some lake somewhere.
Alex chucks a pistachio at her. The lump in the blanket formally known as Nora doesn’t say anything. Good. He launches pistachio #2. That one nails June right in the middle of her forehead.
“Alex,” she says sweetly, “I’m going to stuff you into the toilet and launch you into the Atlantic if you don’t stop.”
He usually wouldn’t fall for such a lazy threat but he’s, like, super hungover. He might even still be drunk. “Pay attention to me.”
“Jesus Christ.” She lets her phone sag in her grip and glares at him so brightly that he’s somewhat surprised that he doesn’t catch fire. “No. Read. Didn’t you bring a book?”
He brought Ulysses. If the flight doesn’t make him lose his breakfast Joyce definitely will, so that’s out of the question. He fishes another pistachio from the bag in his lap while slumping in his seat so that he can stretch across the aisle and jab his big toe at his sister.
She earns herself a gold medal for ignoring every poke. Alex nearly gives up until she suddenly makes an annoyed noise (bingo) and rolls her eyes at her phone (false alarm).
“Oh my God. You don’t get anything for this one,” she says, wagging her phone in Alex’s direction until he takes it to see what she’s talking about.
“Bullshit,” he replies once he spots the headline: London Calling! Norex Back with a Vengeance?
And firstly, for the record, Norex has to be the worst portmanteau that Alex has ever seen. It sounds like a discount condom brand. If he and Nora were ever to go into the contraception business it would absolutely be on the luxury end of the spectrum (or, well, shit, no, it probably wouldn’t be; it’d probably be part of a larger program on universal sex education, which would require the absolute opposite of luxury advertising— but at least with a better name; for chrissakes, Alora is right there).
And secondly, June definitely has to pay for this one, because them’s the rules. The picture staring back at him from her phone more than qualifies for their longstanding bet. In it, Alex and Nora are sprawled across a set of stairs, apparently not nearly as well hidden from view by the long skirt of a nearby cocktail table as they’d thought at the time. Alex’s bowtie is undone, as are the first few buttons of his dress-shirt, open enough that he can just spot the chain that he always wears underneath his clothes. Boring as it is, black and white has always suited him. He’s absolutely nailing windswept drunkard.
Nora looks equally spectacular (or, as some commenters have already supplied, hot as fuck). Her head is thrown back in laughter and one of her legs is slung into Alex’s lap, shiny and bare, splitting open the slit along her gown a bit too much to meet dress protocol. It’s almost a shame that the gossip rag has got it all wrong. It would’ve been a lot easier if they’d actually fallen into the lusty kind of love four years ago instead of realizing that they were destined to annoy the shit out of each other for the rest of their lives instead.
“Fifty bucks, Junebug,” he tells her while he reads the last few sordid words at the end of the article. Her snort is adequately comprehensive a reply. “And be quick about it. Very, very high interest rate. Predatory lending. Oh, come on,” he adds, this time accidentally, when he scrolls to the next related story titled First Daughter Charms Prince Charming and finds himself glaring at a picture which much more sincerely substantiates the headline.
“Give me that,” June snaps, snatching the phone away from him before he can turn his sneer into words. His brain grinds into a screeching halt.
She’s embarrassed.
What the fuck.
Alex cannot believe that she’s seriously sitting there, staring at her phone like it’s made of solid gold, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear like they can’t see what she’s doing. She just can’t. It shouldn’t be possible. Maybe he’s having a stroke.
“Gross, June,” he groans.
Nora burrows deeper into her blanket until even her sunglasses disappear.
“Your mother would like to thank you for representing the American people with your usual grace and charm,” Zahra says a few hours later when she catches Alex and his sister alone in the Residence. June shrugs, visibly annoyed that their mother is incapable of passing along the message personally. Zahra endures the look with her usual apathy before turning on Alex and donning withering bemusement. “Alex, the White House acknowledges that, in your time abroad, you have neither set anything on fire nor have you urinated in public.”
Alex wrinkles his nose. “Gross. Don’t talk about urination with my mom.”
“Because certainly I see it as a highlight of my professional career.”
It’s one of those strange days under a jet lag haze in which neither Alex nor June have anything too pressing to accomplish. They’ve thrown themselves across a pair of uncomfortable couches in one of the Residence’s many lounges. Alex’s hair is still wet from the shower. He’s nursing a bottle of blue Gatorade. June has been withholding any form of affection or concern regarding his persistent hangover for nearly an hour and has, instead, been focused entirely on her phone. It is both cruel and unusual.
Zahra, sharing June’s sentiment, hovers in the open space between the siblings’ twin perches and says nothing further, thumb hunting out complicated shapes across the screen of her phone. Alex returns his attention to the weird painting of a bowl of fruit hung on a far wall. There’s a dead fish in between the oranges. That can’t be hygienic. Is it supposed to be symbolic?
Alex tilts his head to the side.
Maybe it has something to do with bipartisanship.
“Hey, Zahra,” June says, startling them both. “Has the guest list for the New Years party been finalized yet?”
“General headcount is set,” Zahra replies succinctly, as if she isn’t smart enough to know where this is going, which she is, and Alex can’t believe that she isn’t glowering along with him at June. “You have a request?”
June doesn’t meet Alex’s eyes. He is going to kill her.
“Could we invite the royal family?”
Alex very nearly stains the fancy carpet the color of Gatorade Cool Blue™. Invite the royal family. The Queen of fucking England is not going to attend the Legendary Balls-Out Bananas White House Trio New Year’s Eve Party. Neither is Philip, Prince of Wales, nor his new Princess, who has already become an appendage to the former party, for all that Alex is concerned. Princess Beatrice is decent enough and would probably look great in sequins, but Alex isn’t so stupid as to believe that she’s June’s angle.
“Oh my God,” he groans, putting all of his nausea into it.
“I can extend an invitation to the ones who might feasibly attend,” is how Zahra responds. She sounds like she’s as excited to take on the duty as she’d be if their mother had ever gotten around to selecting a White House dog to clean up after.
“That works. Thank you, Zahra.”
Zahra shrugs, taps on her phone like a velociraptor, and offers them both a completely emotionless look of nothing before she turns on her heel and leaves the room.
“Oh my God.”
“Oh my God, Alex,” June yells. “Chill the fuck out!”
Alex launches himself across the coffee table and shoves June’s feet off from the end of her couch so that he can sit more threateningly beside her. “I cannot believe that you’re gonna bring the worst person in the universe to the B.O.B Party.”
“I’m not bringing anyone anywhere,” June growls. “And it’s weird that we didn’t already invite them. We went to Prince Philip’s wedding reception, for chrissakes.”
“Well, no, clarification,” Alex snaps, waving a finger at her for emphasis, “we got dragged into going to what must’ve been, based on every conceivable metric, the saddest, whitest, most wasteful wedding in human history because Ma couldn’t go—”
“—Because Mom knew she could make us go,” June clarifies with a sniff, and Alex doesn’t love that she always snipes his term of endearment because yeah, sure, Ellen Claremont is as white as that wedding was, but she still has two Mexican kids—
“—because our mother is the President of the United States of America—”
“—gee, really? I forgot—”
“—and while that wedding was always going to be a shit show, the B.O.B. has not and does not need to be anything less than amazing,” Alex interrupts petulantly. June gives him a very stinky eye.
“Define ‘shit show’. Last year you swapped clothes with Ariana Grande—”
“—her coat,” Alex clarifies, because it’s important to note that he is not of similar stature to the smallest pop singer on the planet. “I borrowed her coat.”
It was a big coat.
“Oh my God, shut up,” June groans, smashing the butt of her palms against her eyes. “You got that coat so stuck in the rosebushes after you fell into them that they had to cut you out. So don’t talk to me about shit shows, dumbass, and don’t pretend that Prince Henry is going to act even a little bit like you at a party.”
“Of course he won’t. He’ll show up in a three piece suit from the 1800s and make some comment about ‘all of this terribly vulgar music’,” Alex replies, ramping up his best British accent for the tail end of the accusation. “And I knew this was about Henry. You are such a fucking traitor.”
That last bit is too much. Even Alex knows that. He cringes when June knocks the pillow from her lap and stands quickly to her feet, her curly hair wild in the way that it always somehow morphs to match her mood.
“You’re so wrong about him,” she snaps. Alex feels himself gawping at her. He shuts his mouth.
“Jesus Christ, you get one photo op with the guy and now he’s perfect.”
“I didn’t say that he’s perfect. He just isn’t some stupid caricature.”
“He’s literally a blue-eyed, blond-haired prince. He’s Disney, June. Come on.”
June towers over him with tightly crossed arms. Alex tries to summon a threatening aura and comprehensively fails. He was probably a bit stupid for trying it out on her, of all people.
“I’m inviting Beatrice and Henry to the B.O.B.”
Her words leave little room for argument. Alex’s everlasting headache doesn’t help. He does manage to shout “I know you’re texting him!” at June when she storms down the hall, but the middle finger she waves back at him from over his shoulder doesn’t make him feel much like he’s won.
“This is ridiculous.”
Nora flips through the pages again and hums her agreement. Even June has the decency to squint down at the folders spread out across the table in front of the trio, each one with their own names penned across the front.
“Basic protocol,” Zahra replies.
Alex bends back the first page of the massive NDA, eyes skimming across an entry about proprietary and financial information regarding HRH Prince Henry’s personal wealth and estate.
“He’s part of the British monarchy” Alex continues flatly. “You know. Golden palaces. Blood diamonds.” Zahra’s eyes flick up from her phone for a single millisecond. It’s long enough for him to feel like he’s been sunburned. “What else could we possibly disclose about their financial information?”
“Sign it, Alex.”
He flips to page four and glares at a phrase about information regarding or involving HRH Prince Henry’s personal or private life not previously released by official Royal documents, speeches, or approved biographers. As if he has a single fucking clue about the extended work of the Crown’s approved biographers. He huffs and snaps the folder closed as noisily as one can with a pile of the administrations’ grey, recycled, eco-friendly paper.
“Why? I’ve already met the guy a dozen times— your fault, by the way,” he adds, waving the folder at Zahra with a distinct absence of self-preservation. “I can genuinely guarantee you that I won’t upgrade our interactions anytime soon. I’m not the one who needs an NDA. June’s the one who’s sexting him all the time.”
June looks up from scratching her signature into page two and skewers him with a venomous scowl. “What is wrong with you? I’m not sexting Prince Henry.”
“Bull-fucking-shit,” Alex replies. He’s not sure why he’s talking so loud. He also isn’t sure why Nora looks like she’s just read the dead-dog parts of Where the Red Fern Grows. It’s weird. It’s been a weird month. “Your bedroom has been across the hall from mine since we were five years old, Bug. Nixon wasn’t the only one in D.C. who ever had the bright idea to pay attention to shit.”
June signs off her next signature with a particularly violent flourish. “Uh-huh, great role model, Dick.”
“Zee, come on,” he pleads, turning at the waist to stare her down. “This is dumb.”
Zahra shuts her eyes, draws in a deep breath, and lets it whistle from between her teeth. Then she neatly slips her phone into a pocket and leans forward to snatch a pen from the center of the table to slam on top of Alex’s folder.
“Non-negotiable. No kissing and telling in the White House. You got a problem with it, bring it up with the Queen.” Zahra snaps her mouth shut too late. She grits her jaw and stares Alex directly in the eye. “That was facetious. You make contact with the Queen of England and I will introduce you to the inside of an iron maiden, capiche?”
“Like the band?” Alex asks, batting his lashes. This time he can see Zahra’s pulse in the vein on her forehead.
“Try me, shitbird.”
“Jesus Christ,” Alex groans. “Fine. Fine!” He flicks open the folder again and scribbles a petulant ALEXANDER on the first line he finds. “This is so stupid.” He turns the page. “Does His Royal Hardon get one of these, too, or are we on more of an honor system?”
June stands abruptly from the table and shoves her folder at Zahra. “You are a child,” she tells her brother. “Henry is just a friend.”
“No one calls someone just a friend when they’re just a friend!” Alex yells at the back of her head. “Nora! Nora, back me up on this.”
He expects Nora to mirror his crooked smirk back at him, but finds her staring morosely at her folder, strangely subdued while she sketches out her signature in far neater cursive than he’s ever seen her use before. It’s enough of a surprise that June nearly makes it to the door.
He raises his voice to a proper shout. “I know what you’re up to!”
Alex doesn’t know what June is up to.
His quip about Watergate-ing her room earlier that afternoon was a total bluff. June herself is always the first one to point out his general obliviousness regarding the world around him, and although he hates any sort of concession just for the general principle of the thing, she usually has a point as it relates to his interpersonal relationships.
June doesn’t share this particular shortcoming, of course. He still isn’t totally sure how to compartmentalize his teenaged sleepovers with Liam, for instance, but she’d figured the whole thing out the very first morning after he’d first crossed over that particular not-so-heteronormative-after-all Rubicon. And worst of all, she’d been totally decent about the whole thing, even if she had made it clear that she’d always take Liam’s side on the matter once it invariably blew up (and she did, after the rubble settled into awkward radio silence).
So he knows that he should feel guilty about sneaking into the linen closet that shares a wall with her bedroom and pressing his ear between the struts of one of the shelves. It’s a gross invasion of privacy that June would never stoop to— but, to be clear, somehow she wouldn’t have to; if their roles were reversed she would already know exactly what was going on, which means it’s only fair for him to level the playing field.
Maybe.
He winces. It doesn’t stop him from flattening his cheek against the cool plaster wall. Anyway, he’s always been better at asking for forgiveness instead of permission. No point in stopping now.
“…think that Pez is right,” he hears after a moment spent perfecting the seal between his ear and the wall. June’s voice is quiet but clear. Good. He’d been certain that she’d been eyeballing her phone that morning during breakfast. By some grace of Abuelita’s Catholic God, he’s managed to catch her mid-call. And, by the grace of Nora’s Statistical Probabilities, that call is almost certainly international. Alex holds his breath. “There’s nothing wrong with having a good time for once in your life.”
She pauses for what must be a reply. Alex shifts so that his chin rests more comfortably against a tower of tissue boxes.
“Please come. No one can get in without handing in their phone. It’s our guest list. I promise, it’s not a problem. Look. We’ll set up some couches. Call it bottle service. You don’t even have to mingle. Just have a couple of drinks and put an ocean between you for awhile. Mhm. Mhm.”
Another pause.
“That’s different. I do want to talk to you about it, though. I’ve given it a lot of thought. No, I know. I know, Henry. I’m not saying it’s going to be some permanent thing. I just think that there’s nothing wrong with relieving some pressure for awhile.” He hears the floorboards creak and imagines the sight of his sister collapsing into the soft cloud of her down-filled duvet. She suddenly says, loud enough that he doesn’t need to keep himself pressed against the wall: “Because you deserve it!”
Alex’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. He knows that tone. He’s just never heard her use it before without sticking his own name in the mix.
“Shit,” he whispers. The pile of Whitehouse memo pads he’s staring down doesn’t reply. It doesn’t matter. He already knows the answer. June Claremont-Diaz is a brilliant, empathetic woman, but she’s not totally selfless. She only protects those who she thinks really deserve protecting, which really means that she’ll do anything for the people she loves— and evidently this list of people now includes Henry, Prince of Wales.