Union Jacked

Two

Unfortunately, Henry had only been half right. The press did in fact have a field day with the pictures of him and Alex laying on the ground at the royal wedding covered in cake. Thankfully, however, the British tabs been quick to blame Alex for the altercation, an assumption due in part for their general disdain for Americans and Alex's own previous tabloid scandals. (Like that time he allegedly spammed the entire Congressional list serve with Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer memes for a week straight.) The most unfortunate part overall though was that Phillip hadn't put him out of his misery after all. The only contact they'd had since the wedding was a curt text from Phillip that read "Man up and fix this." Somehow this was worse.

Phillip was always telling Henry to "man up" and to "stop being a coward." They were some not so subtle reminders Henry was a bit too fruity to be a royal. Phillip didn't actually know that he was gay, but he was also not a complete twit. Henry had never quite had that stiff upper lip commonly associated with the British nobility. Henry also suspected that Phillip had been paying closer attention than he'd realized at the time when he'd slipped away with Phillip's mate from college, Arthur, after a night of whiskey. He'd never mentioned it, because if he did Henry might be bold enough to confirm his concerns. So he settled for jabs at Henry's manhood.

That night, even before he'd gotten the text from Phillip or gotten all of the frosting out his hair, he'd grabbed his royal equerry, Shann, and said "Fix this. Whatever it takes." Before Shann could even reply he'd stomped off to his bedroom and locked the door. He was absolutely sure Bea (with whom he shared his apartment inside Buckingham Place) would want to come talk to him and that was the absolute last thong he wanted to do. After ensuring that the door was well locked, he stormed into the en suite, turned on the shower at full blast, and sobbed until he could not summon more tears.

It was midday on Tuesday and Henry hadn't left his room in three days. Well, no had seen Henry leave his room at least. He had snuck out a few times at ungodly hours of the night to grab more Cornettos and Jaffa Cakes out of the kitchen. Bea had knocked many, many times and left trays of food for him at his door. It was touching, the staff would have handled the meals without a second thought but she wanted to do it herself. He still hadn't worked up the nerve to talk her though. It wasn't that he thought she would be upset with him—God knows she's had her fair share of bad press—he just could stand to look in her eyes and see the pity he knew would be present. She knew he hated being in the press more than anything and how hard he fights to keep up royal appearances, and he couldn't bear to see his failures and shortcomings reflected back at him in her eyes.

Bea once again knocked at his door. "Henry, I've got some of that falafel you like and some papers for Shann here. Do you want to come eat with me and we can go through them together?" Henry said nothing. After about a minute of silence, she continued "Okay, I guess I'll just leave them here then." When he heard her quiet footsteps pad away down the hall, he got up to retrieve the falafel. He really did love it. It came from this super nice man who parked his cart down the street. He would often send his staff to get it for him. It truly was in his opinion, the best savory food on the planet. He wouldn't just say best as he had quite a soft spot for sweets, but it of all savory foods it ranked at the top of his list. 

As he shoveled the falafel down (no need to eat like a royal when you haven't showered in days), he glanced at the papers from Shann. Oh. He felt something twist inside of him and promptly set the food down. he'd suddenly lost his appetite. When he told Shann to fix it, this option had not had occurred to him. To be fair though, he'd spent this entire time trying not to think about the consequences of the cake-tastrophy. So it never occurred to him that Shann would try to fix it by making him and Alex pretend to be best friends. But there it was in front of him in black and white. Alex would be back in England on Saturday. They had a joint schedule of press events and then Alex would fly back to DC on Sunday. Henry suddenly regretted eating the falafel in such an undignified manner, because suddenly, it felt like it might come back up.