Red, White and Royally fucked

-20-

Henry

"Who are you really?" A whirlwind of dark curls and santal 33 pushes past me and inside my apartment. My heart is suddenly in my throat, but I have to compose myself.

"Well, hello to you too, love. How's your day been going? Mine was going very well, thank you for asking." I slowly close the door while pining him with my glare.

"Yeah, yeah. Hello, hi; Can we move along now?" He says impatiently.

"You seem rather frantic today, love... Is something bothering you?"

"You are bothering me right now, Henry." Alex is pacing back and forth in his usual Alex way when something is nagging him. And today It seems as if I'm the one nagging him. How he found out my secret before I could muster up enough courage to tell him myself, I do not know. "Why didn't you tell me? You promised no secrets."

"I did promise that, and I am very sorry. I didn't mean to not tell you. I just wasn't ready for it... for you to look at me differently."

"You just have to trust me at some point, Henry. Or this will never work." His arms are flailing around as he speaks, and I can tell he is not kidding at all. If I don't tell him what he wants to know, he will end things with me.

"Alright, alright." I grab his hands and make him sit down on the couch with me. "I'll tell you... I just don't know where to start..."

"You can start by telling me what you do all day, and why you led me to believe you went to the college."

"I never said I was in college. I haven't been for a while. Barely finished my first semester."

Alex blinks at me a couple of times in realization.

"Fine, that might actually be true. I just couldn't remember if you told me, and I wanted to see what you would say."

"Manipulator" I murmur, and he smiles vaguely at me. At least he doesn't hate me. Yet.

"What do you do all day, Henry? I mean it must be something illegal, because how else could you afford this fucking place, which by the way, wow!" he whistles low as he looks around, "and you bitched about the apartment In Paris."

"That one was my mothers, not mine. I don't like to have anything to do with my mother's money."

"Which leads me back to my question, how do you have the money for this?" I narrow my eyes at him. Why haven't he asked me the most important question? Unless he doesn't know yet. Which means I still have time to find a way to tell him. The sigh of relief that escapes me seems to confuse Alex a lot. "You are a gigolo, aren't you? I mean it would make sense, you are incredible hot and extremely talented in the sex department, and..."

"Alex, dear... shut up." I put two fingers under his chin and turn his face to look at me, "you really have a great imagination, but as usual, you use your brilliant mind to get to the wrong conclusion. I am not a gigolo, or any other kind of sex-worker. I'm a writer."

"Wait what? No, you can't be. To have money enough for this place, you would have to be a bestselling author, and I would know if your name...."

"I write under a pseudonym. Due to the nature of these books."

"What nature?"

"Some people would probably call it Erotica. I call it explicit details of a young gays sexual journey."

"You write porn... about yourself?"

"Not exactly, but not wrong either. I draw from my experiences and use it in the books. It is quite a long series, as you would imagine..."

"What's your writer-name?"

"I'm not telling you that. There is no way I will ever let you read it."

"You can't stop me. I want to read it."

"No, you don't. Trust me. It contains very explicit details of every sexual encounter I have ever had... it's not for the faint of heart."

"Are you calling me faint of heart?" Alex pushes me back against the backrest on the couch, "I thought you'd figured out by now, that I am just every inch as dirty minded as you." He straddles me and rocks his hips on me the second he is seated.

"I know you are a sexual beast, Alex. No need to prove your point." I put my hands on his hips and enjoy every second of his slow torture. "But no one should ever have to read everything about their partners sexual history."

"Then why did you write it?"

"I hadn't met you yet." He stops the torture for a moment, and I open my eyes to look into his. "I thought I would never care. That I would never get a partner, so it didn't matter at all. I just wanted somewhere to put all the thoughts I had in my head, so I put it in writing, and one of the guys I slept with was an editor and he saw a glimpse of it. He wanted to publish me. I jumped at the chance. Writing for a living? That has always been my dream."

"Then why didn't use you own name? If you aren't embarrassed over it."

"I didn't want it associated with my name." I keep things as close as I possibly can to the truth. I know that now should be the time to tell him, but I'm afraid that one more secret this instance, will make him leave.

"Why not?"

"In case I wanted to do something different one day... I wanted to be taken seriously. My novels aren't exactly a great work of fiction..."

"Someone seems to think so." He gestures to my apartment.

"Yes, well... gay erotica does have a very large reader base. It doesn't make it the next great novel..."

"Wait... Alex suddenly says and tips forward on me - making me groan with pleasure as his body is pressed directly against my dick - while digging out his wallet form his back pocket. "Is this poem a part of your books?" He hands me that stupid piece of paper, that I kind of owe everything too. If it hadn't been for that, we wouldn't have started this thing.

"No... that," I gently unfold the paper, glance at the words and shakes my head at it with a lopsided smile. "That is a part of a lyric... I wanted to write a song... you inspired me to write a song. To write something with more meaning to it... something different than sex."

"Oh... so this is about me?"

"Of course, it is..."

"Sing it for me."

"Can't." I lift him of me and puts him down on the couch before getting up. "Didn't finish... it seems my writing abilities doesn't go further than writing sex-scenes." I head to the kitchen and begin to boil some water for tea. I don't want Alex to see the failure I feel like, written all over my face.

"Henry, this is beautiful. Don't abandon it. Try again." He puts his arms around me and hugs me from behind and it still baffles me exactly how well our bodies fit together. "Just not on this paper." He gently picks it out of my hand, "This one is mine."

"I don't like failing." I admit. "And if I try again, I will."

"No, you won't. You will succeed. Because I believe in you."

My heart starts fluttering like a lovesick schoolboy. No one has ever really told me they believe in me before. Everyone has always had their own ideas of what I should do with my life. My brother, my mother, my grandfather... and it definitely has never been writing, that they had in mind. Not even Bea approves of my writing, but that might be the nature of my books.

"Fine... I reluctantly say. "I'll try again."