Chapter Text
Alex Claremont-Diaz does not give a fuck about the royal family.
At least, that’s what he tells himself as he clicks through the channels to find the live broadcast of the royal wedding. He knows he’s found the right one when he sees a sea of people crowding outside of Westminster Abbey waving Union Jacks and banners with the bland, forgettable faces of the happy couple. Alex tosses the remote to the couch carelessly, padding into the kitchen and rummaging through the cabinets, pushing aside Nora’s health food granola bars that she won’t admit contain as much sugar as a candy bar and June’s wide selection of tea. He victoriously retreats back to the couch and plops down on it, an entire sleeve of Ritz crackers in hand.
They’re still playing footage of carriages and the cheering crowd when Alex hears June and Nora’s door quietly click shut. Alex looks over his shoulder to see June squinting in the blue light of the television, crossing her arms over her fluffy bathrobe that she’s wearing over a pink pajama set, her curly hair piled atop her head. “Don’t you have a paper to write?” she asks, her voice hoarse from sleep.
He did, but he was resolutely ignoring it. “Aren’t you on deadline?” he shoots back in self defense.
She ignores his question, instead falling onto the cushion next to him and stealing a cracker from the sleeve, stuffing the entire thing in her mouth and chewing with some difficulty. “Did you make coffee?” she asks groggily, covering her mouth so no crumbs escape while she chews. Alex shakes his head, making June roll her eyes and rise from the couch with a huff.
“Cinnamon and sugar!” Alex calls after her when he hears the coffeemaker gurgle from the kitchen.
“I know!” June calls back to him.
A few minutes later, Alex accepts a steaming mug of coffee from his sister and takes a long, grateful sip. June falls back into her spot on the couch with her coffee and a bowl of popcorn despite the early hour. June’s presence at his side is familiar and comforting, as it’s not unlike dozens of other mornings they’ve had over the years with neither being able maintain a normal sleep schedule.
“Why are we watching this?” June asks, leaning forward and hypocritically picking up a magazine with Prince Philip and soon to be Dutchess Martha pictured on the cover, Prince Philip Says I Do! scrawled in giant letters across the page. “Did you know that they spent $75,000 just on the cake?”
“That’s depressing,” Alex replies. “Don’t they have poor people in Britain? Someone should destroy that cake in protest.”
June snorts, still looking down at the open magazine. No matter how much June harps on about journalistic integrity and serious reporting, she can’t resist a trashy tabloid. “That’s a waste,” June comments. “We could break in and steal it, distribute it to the hungry commoners.”
Alex laughs. “Let them eat cake,” he recites in a truly terrible English accent. He claims to make his accent intentionally terrible for the purposes of righteous mockery, but that is a filthy, blatant lie.
“Why the fuck are you guys being to loud?” Nora grumbles from the doorway of her and June’s room. She shuffles over to the couch and drops on the other side of June, throwing her legs over June’s lap, who moves her bowl of popcorn to accommodate her. “It’s ass o’clock.” She leans her head against the back of the couch and closes her eyes.
“Royal wedding,” Alex and June say in unison, and Nora opens her eyes to look at the screen as the carriage containing the royal family stops in front of the Abbey and the door swings open.
The first person to step out is Princess Catherine, looking regal and beautiful as always, though her smile looks forced even from a distance. She is followed by her eldest son Philip, then Princess Beatrice and Prince Henry. Nora hums neutrally as the family greets the people lined up outside the church, with Philip in his dress military uniform, and the rest of the family in color coordinated, but not matching outfits. A few minutes before six, the carriage carrying Philip’s bride, Martha, pulls up and the woman’s father assists her as she steps down.
June hums appreciatively as she stuffs a handful of popcorn into her mouth. “Damn,” she says, “that dress is gorgeous.” Alex agrees, and pointedly doesn’t think about how much it probably costs.
“Yeah,” Nora agrees, “she looks surprisingly hot and not at all like a nun considering this is the royal wedding. What do you think Alex,” she leans over June to look at him, “smash or pass?”
“Nora!” June exclaims, swatting Nora on the shoulder; Nora looks unrepentant. “She’s literally getting married,” she chastises predictably. Alex smiles to himself. ‘Smash or pass’ is a game that Alex and Nora play only when they’re around June because they know that it annoys and confounds her.
Alex makes a noise as if in contemplation. “Pass,” Alex answers dismissively, completely ignoring June’s protests. “Rich, white, blonde,” he counts the characteristics off on his fingers, “I can find that in literally any NYU classroom.” He takes a long pull of his coffee as the bride waves at her admirers. “What about you?”
“Smash,” Nora says in a tone that suggests this is the obvious and only acceptable answer. “We’ll have a lurid affair and then I’ll be able to use our lesbian adultery to blackmail the royal family and milk them for all they’re fucking worth.” She taps her index finger on the side of her head haughtily.
“And what does Martha get out of all of this?” June cuts in, amusement hidden in her skeptical tone.
Nora shrugs casually, but a wide smile spreads across her face. “Her first ever orgasm?”
Alex laughs and, despite her best efforts, June hides her small giggle behind her hand. They all fall silent to watch Martha make her slow march down the aisle, the long, intricate lace train trailing behind her. She steps up to the altar and doesn’t turn to face her soon to be husband, instead facing the front of the church and the priest. The three of them settle in and pull blankets into their laps to wait out what is undoubtedly going to be the longest and most boring wedding ceremony ever.
“What about Philip?” Nora asks, breaking the silence. “Smash or pass?”
Alex grimaces. “Pass,” Alex answers emphatically. “He is about as interesting as a wet piece of cardboard. I’d probably fall asleep in the middle of him fucking me.”
June scrunches up her nose as Nora’s eyebrows shoot up. “You would bottom for the Prince of England?”
“Please,” Alex says, flapping his hand dismissively. “His fragile masculinity would never allow him to bottom,” he argues. “And you know I’m vers.”
Nora’s smirk turns mischievous. “Indeed I do Alejandro.”
“Can we not discuss my little brother’s sexual preferences?” June begs, groaning into her hands. “It’s too early for this.”
“But I agree—pass,” Nora says, obediently moving on. “ Prince Henry on the other hand. He could get it.”
The camera pans around to the audience in the church, most of whom look bored, but are trying to look touched and moved by the power of true love. As the camera lands on the royal family, Alex’s eyes drift to His Royal Highness Prince Henry, wearing a lush waistcoat embroidered with gold thread under a perfectly tailored suit jacket with not a single hair out of place. He looks as disinterested and aloof as always, his polite facade cracked only by the tight pinch at the corner of his mouth. Alex scoffs. “Sure,” he says sarcastically, “if you’re into prince fucking charming.”
“You mean you wouldn’t take the chance to have hot, steamy hate sex with your arch nemesis?” Nora says, looking at him as if he’s the crazy one. “Enemies to lovers, Alex. Have we taught you nothing?”
“Gonna have to agree with Nora on this one,” June chimes in. “He is a mysterious young royal and you’re the tempestuous ingenue who will come to see him in a new light. It practically writes itself.” Alex rolls his eyes, thinking that the only mysterious thing about the prince is how he’s managed to become the physical embodiment of the color beige.
“Stop trying to Jane Austen my life,” Alex says, pushing at June’s shoulder. “And Henry is not my arch nemesis. He is a prince and an international figurehead,” he motions to the TV despite that Henry is no longer pictured on screen, “and I,” he motions to himself, “am some guy. That is not the makings for a rivalry.”
“Whatever,” June says, flapping her hand at him. They settle into silence again, blinking drowsily at the screen as the sun rises over Brooklyn, shining through their windows and casting their living room in warm morning light. Why did people watch this shit? This was boring as fuck.
Alex’s mind wanders back to Henry unbidden. It’s not that Alex really had a lot of reason to hate Henry—they only met one time during his mom’s campaign almost four years ago. When his mom lost the election, their lives went on with Henry as a prince and Alex as a…student and waiter at a diner. They never had reason to cross paths and they likely never would again—at least that was one teeny, tiny, minuscule silver lining to the nightmare that was Richards’ administration.
The infernal ceremony finally ends and the happy couple retreat down the aisle, her hand demurely placed in his. Martha’s smile is small and polite, and Philip looks…respectable. Alex shakes his head to himself—it’s their literal wedding day and they're touching each other like siblings—it's passionless and about as sexy as a business transaction. Was there anyone in the royal family that wasn’t boring as shit?
The camera follows them as the newlyweds thank their guests for coming—foreign leaders and diplomats and the A-list of the A-list celebrities, most of whom the couple has probably never even met before. Alex thinks he can almost feel the temperature drop in the room as the couple steps up to President Jeffrey Richards and his First Lady—why can’t she just smother him in his sleep? Alex knows she wants to; you can see it in her eyes—smiling and shaking their hands as if their citizens didn’t literally protest in the streets the last time Richards entered the country.
The screen goes dark as June lifts the remote and turns the television off. “At least we don’t have to be there,” June says lightly, looking to either side at Alex and Nora. “Right?”
“Yeah,” Alex agrees, throwing his head back and draining the final dregs of coffee that remain in his mug. “Thank fucking god.”
———
Alex swipes his MetroCard to step onto the relatively empty subway platform and looks up to see that the Q train wouldn’t be leaving in a few minutes. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and checks the news.
2 Dakota Pipeline Protesters Face Federal Charges Over 2017 Damages
Why Richards Voters Stick With Him
Bernie Sanders Will Participate in Next Debate, His Campaign Says
Pete Buttigieg Bets His Campaign on Breakthrough in Iowa
Alex pockets his phone and shakes his head to himself—the first primaries don’t even start until February, but there are already about a million Democratic candidates determined to vanquish Richards, completely ignoring the fact that what they’re really doing is splitting the democratic vote. Not that Alex is going to say anything about it.
Alex is grateful when he steps into his 9:30 philosophy class, where he can be free of the interminable talk of politics and the impending election for an hour and a half.
It’s not that Alex doesn’t follow politics anymore—it would be irresponsible not to, and it’s basically impossible with his family—but he doesn’t have the same hopes and dreams of participating in politics anymore. Those dreams basically died when the final state turned red, pushing Richards over the required 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. The corpse of his dead dreams were then mercilessly mutilated in the months following the inauguration, in his first few months at Georgetown.
He wrote papers on how the Electoral College is at odds with democracy, using the election that his mom lost as an example and thought ‘Why am I doing this?’ He had debates against white guys playing ‘devil’s advocate’ to argue for conservative policies that everyone knew they actually agreed with and thought ‘Is this really what I want to do with my life?’ He walked to class, reading the news on his phone that only frustrated and angered him and thought ‘What am I even doing here?’ It was a no brainer when he applied to transfer to NYU the following semester as a philosophy and sociology major, pointedly avoiding political science.
———
Alex has two jobs, but one isn’t technically a job since they didn’t pay him—one was to pay his, admittedly small, portion of the rent and utilities, the other was to make him feel like he wasn’t a useless piece of shit.
After Alex’s two Friday classes end, he takes the train back to Brooklyn to his volunteer job at the Okonjo Foundation Center for LGBTQ+ Homeless and Disenfranchised Youth. Queer people make up for around forty percent of the homeless youth in New York, an already pervasive issue that was only exascerbated by Richards’ endless and very pointed attacks against the LGBT community, especially trans people. Every headline made him want to put his fist through a wall or burn down a fucking building, preferably the White House. This job makes him feel about twenty percent better.
The shelter is relatively small, having only been opened a few years ago, so everyone helps where they can. Alex prefers the legal department as he has a brain for reading and interpreting laws and guidelines that pertain to all kinds of services that the shelter provides, from emancipation to name change to welfare applications, and it comes with the added bonus of looking good on his law school application. Today, however, the director Juliet stops him before the door even falls closed behind him.
“Alex! Thank god you’re here,” Juliet calls from her place behind the front desk as she waves him over. Juliet Costa is a lesbian woman from Indiana with a public administration degree from Harvard and an ever changing hair color; right now it was purple. She’s kind and patient and her default state is stressed, so Alex basically did whatever she said, mostly without complaint.
He approaches the desk warily—usually when Juliet said something like ‘thank god you’re here’ it meant that she was going to pass off a task that was too time consuming or too gross for her to handle. “Hey Jules, what’s up?”
She releases a deep sigh as she stands, straightening out a stack of papers. “The owner’s coming today with a donor. I need you to show him around.” She shoves the stack of papers at him, and Alex has to fumble to grab them from her hand. “Sign those.”
Alex looks down at the paper atop the pile and sees the words at the top of the page: Non-Disclosure Agreement. Alex’s eyebrows shoot up. It wasn’t unusual for large donors to want to see the shelter. It was unusual for them to send a fucking NDA.
“You know the drill: show him around, explain the day to day, let him interact with the more outgoing kids—” She cuts herself off as Alex turns to the last page and scrawls his signature on the dotted line. “You should actually read that.” He shrugs and hands the papers back to her—it’s not like he’d talk to anyone other than June and Nora—and she takes them, albeit reluctantly.
It’s only a few minutes before the door opens, letting in the sounds of the city street and two men. One Alex recognizes from the shelter’s website as the owner Percy Okonjo. He was tall and dark with his buzzcut dyed a very nice shade of lavender. He reaches out his ring laden hand to hold open the door for the person behind him. The other man steps inside and, after the door falls shut behind them, he pulls down the hood of his navy blue sweatshirt to reveal an infuriatingly familiar face. Alex’s brain stutters, trying to reconcile that what he sees in front of him is in fact reality. It’s a face that he’s memorized from the covers of magazines and photos on a screen and his own memory of their first meeting—a day that plays over and over in Alex’s mind; it still makes him angry, even over three years later.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Alex mutters under his breath.