The Royal Scandal | Prince William |

Stained Red

May 19, 2018

William smells the air before he sees the room, the sweat of bodies mixing with stale scent of alcohol. It burns his nose, and hazes his eyes as they blink open to the ceiling above, only shocking him when it's not the musty pipes of the bar, but the elegant white carvings of his room.

There's a moment of confusion as the sun blinds him. Why am I here? How did I get here? And then finally: why am I shocked to be here in the first place?

The previous night comes back in close up flashes. Harry's cheeks flaming red, so warm they matched his hair. Shots spilling down chins. Booming drunk laughter. Small hands looping around his neck. Jaclyn standing, hail and strong, but then it's not Jaclyn, and he's pushing away hands that he doesn't truly know. Because he knows every freckle on his wife's hand, every hangnail she pulls. He knows the distance between her fingers and knuckles, and what it's like to swallow her palm in his own. 

He sits up, feeling the stiff button up restrict against his damp skin, and finds Jaclyn, his Jaclyn, clinging to the edge of their bed trying to ease herself into her chair. She looks spooked, and only jumps when he tries to reach for her.

"Jac..." he starts confused, but her eyes are glued not to his own, but somewhere along his neck, angry fingers clenching at their sheets to keep her standing.

Slowly he looks down, trailing a path to where she's stuck, finally finding a scathing smeared imprint of red stained lips right across the collar of his shirt. He jolts back as if the mark won't follow him, but then gapes openly at it.

He racks his mind for an explanation, a memory, anything to soften the hard line of her jaw, but the more he thinks the more his head throbs. There's nothing more than a few foggy glances of his friends, his brother, and alcohol. Maybe a blonde woman, the bartender maybe?

When he finally looks up her eyes sober him up enough to force him to stand, leaping from the bed. Her glare wars with brimming tears and burning fury, and her hands are not clenched to keep her up. He imagines she's picturing strangling him.

"I don't know-" His hand just slides up her arm when she pulls back stubbornly stumbling to her chair.

Her hiss is venomous. "Don't you dare touch me."

He gapes at her, lost because he doesn't understand, doesn't even remember, but he hates himself too. The hate so bone deep it's almost numbing to the shirt that burns his skin. There was once a time when could make her glow like a golden flame from a candle, and now here he is pressing the last of her embers between his fingers.

"Let me explain, I don't remember what even happened," he says, but he knows it's wrong the second he starts. He falls to his knees before her chair, but her tears are even more pronounced from this angle, falling down her face in fat drops.

She scoffs, a mix between a sob and a hiccup. "As if that makes it better," and before he can move her fists are twisted in his white shirt pulling it open. "As if that is justification enough for me to wake up to this."

With his shirt as an anchor she's pulled him into her nose, weak arms trembling to keep him in place, but her fingers press into his skin where something else stirs. A throb of pain, and when he looks once again she's stabbing gruesomely into another stain of red lips smeared across his chest.

When she releases him and leaves William allows himself to fall.

-----

"We're watching now as The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cambridge arrive at the Galilee Porch. Now this is a break in protocol, usually it's the Duchess of Cornwall who would arrive here, but it was announced a few weeks ago that The Prince of Wales would be escorting his daughter in law into the church because Jaclyn cannot make it up the stairs in her wheelchair, and thus Camilla offered to take her place escorting Princess Amelia and Prince Phillip James into the church with the other bridesmaids and page boys."