Orion || RWRB fanfic || Henry's POV

Part 21- The Great Turkey Calamity

"You know what, you little shit." Alex's voice echoes tinnily out of his phone's speakers. "You can hear it for yourself and then tell me how you would handle this-"

"Alex?" Henry rubs his forehead wearily, voice croaky and hoarse, words scratching at his throat.

With anyone else, he would have felt self-conscious, tips of his ears aflame with shame and embarrassment, but with Alex, it was so, so different.

It always was, with him.

"Have you really rung me at three o'clock in the morning to make me listen to a turkey?" He feels a wild laugh bubble up in his throat, and he looses it, muffling the speaker and feeling his cheeks flush red with amusement.

"Yes, obviously." Henry pictures Alex- lying down on his side in bed, a smirk curling those impossibly soft lips of his.

He rolls over, curling around the phone, and tears open the packaging on one of the packets of Jaffa Cakes that surrounds, dislodging an indignant Mr Wobbles from where he's snuck through the bedroom door and lies purring happily in his lap.

At the foot of Henry's bed, perched atop a couple dozen Ellen Claremont campaign buttons, is his laptop, the screen paused on a scene from Bake-Off, the camera angled down in a close up of a tray of cinnamon cookies. Henry can almost smell them.

There's a pause from the other side of the phone, and Henry imagines Alex- as he does so frequently- but this time, crouched over the turkey's large cage with his eyes wide and terrified; a flicker of mirth dancing in his gaze just the same. Alex's humour truly is a flame that never dies. Resigning himself, Henry takes a bite of Jaffa Cake and mumbles.

"Let's hear the cursed gobble, then."

"Okay, brace yourself," Alex says, grim.

Henry waits. And waits. There's ten long seconds of nothing. He counts them off in his head. When his count reaches ten, he sighs.

"Truly harrowing."

"It- okay, this is not representative." Alex huffs indignantly; Henry believes him, but feigns doubt, attempting to weasel a spark of anger out of him. He loves it when Alex gets cross about something; the way a small crease appears between his eyebrows when he scowls, the way his voice gets louder and louder, and he speaks faster and faster, as if his mind moves faster than his mouth. To be honest, there isn't much Henry doesn't love about Alex.

Not that he's going to tell him that. Ever.

Henry imagines it for a second; a life where he isn't living a hundred lies, where he can be himself instead of some stranger. Where he could tell Alex how he feels... He'd take him to the V&A, he decides. It would be late at night, or very early in the morning, with the horizon just deepening with pink and dew still frosting the half-deserted London streets. Henry would show him the statues, and Alex wouldn't try to interrupt, wouldn't tell Henry he's stupid or that it's weird. He'd just listen. He'd let Henry do the talking for once.

Henry imagines this, and he thinks sadly: he's found the right person. the right person to share his secrets with, to let down his mask, the right person to let see the real Henry- the one trapped inside this stranger's body, the one he struggles to keep afloat in the raging flood of his life- the one that comes so strangely easily to the surface when he's around him. Alex just doesn't know it yet.

"They've been gobbling all night, I swear." Henry is jerked harshly back to the present by Alex's continued protests about the infinite evil of turkeys. He responds numbly, feeling an empty, gaping hole somewhere deep in his chest, left by the knowledge that his fantasy, though lovely, is impossible. It can never happen. Not for a prince. Not for him.

"No, hang on," Henry can hear shuffling noises from the phone; Alex hopping off the bed and padding over to the edge of the turkey's cage, no doubt.

"Um. How do you get a turkey to gobble?" Henry almost laughs out loud again, picturing the bewildered expression on Alex's face.

"Try gobbling, and see if he gobbles back?"

"Are you serious?" He's not, but he's enjoying this; teasing Alex, joking with him. It feels right. Like this is where he's meant to be. So he continues, smirking at the screen and continuing sagely, waving a hand eloquently in the air, though he knows Alex can't see him.

"We hunt loads of wild turkeys in the spring. The trick is to get into the mind of the turkey." He forces back a laugh and allows his face to spread in a broad grin.

"How the hell do I do that?" Alex demands.

"So," He instructs, "Do as I say." Henry continues, forming the blatantly fictional instructions on the spot, flipping onto his back and staring up at the mountains of campaign buttons gazing back down at him reproachfully, as if embarrassed on behalf of the face printed on their sides.

He finishes with a flourish, unable to stop the laughter building in his throat.

"Buy a summer home in Majorca with the turkey..."

"Oh I hate you!" Alex cries out, laughing despite himself, and Henry feels a small glow of pride- that he made Alex Claremont-Diaz, First Son of the US, laugh.