Chapter Text
The stiff upper lip stiffened further as a pointy finger traveled down the clipboard. It really was a pointy finger. Pointy and pale and likely sharp enough to have the guy substituting as the Queen’s letter opener when he wasn’t busy frowning at guest lists.
“There’s no Claremont-Diaz here.”
“No,” Alex agreed in what he thought was an admirably polite tone given the ongoing drums that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in his head that morning. “Like I’ve already told you, I’m a plus one. Nora Holleran’s plus one.”
“Ms. Holleran has already arrived.”
Alex smiled. Politely. “Yes,” he said, and no, his perfectly polished dress shoe was absolutely not tapping against the carpet. “We came in separate cars.”
Of course, they weren’t supposed to arrive in separate cars. Alex had just happened to be tied up that morning. Not literally – unfortunately – but there had been an exceptionally lovely English woman with legs that fitted just wonderfully around Alex’s lower back as he pounded her into the mattress. Truly. Even Buckingham must appreciate the excuse of a magnificent orgasm.
Stiffy looked down at him. “I see.”
Great. Now he probably thought Alex and Nora were in the midst of some tremendous lover’s spat, as if Nora had deemed him touch-worthy since their small and rather uneventful escapade when they were sixteen. Alex vaguely remembered coming prematurely in his pants and then finding it dreadfully difficult to locate Nora’s clitoris when he, red-faced, tried to make up for it. Nora had laughed herself into a coughing fit and Alex had died just the tiniest bit. In other words, when Alex said he vaguely remembered, it was code for ‘desperately tries not to’.
“Can’t you just –” Alex gestured towards the large double doors from which he could hear the dull tune of what the British considered ‘uplifting’ music “– find her and bring her out here?”
If possible, the man’s lips stiffened further. Botox had nothing on this guy. “I’m not in the habit of disturbing the guests, Mr. Diaz.”
“Claremont-Diaz,” Alex corrected. He lifted a brow, then lifted it further when the man continued to look at him stoically. “You know? Claremont? The President?”
He considered adding ‘of the goddamn United States of America’, but he supposed the accent gave that away.
Looking supremely unimpressed, the man finally moved towards the doors and opened them, his expertly tailored tux as stiff as the rest of him. Alex went to move ahead, only to be stopped by a finger – a finger! – as if he was some unruly toddler trying to escape through the child-proofing only to fall down the stairs. Ridiculous. It had been at least two years since Alex fell down any form of stairs, and he solely blamed that on Lisa’s tequila. She must have spiked it with something. Something like fucking absinthe. Or Molly.
Alex watched, and he wasn’t even trying to withhold the foot-tapping now, as the man exchanged words with another penguin of a servant. Finally, two excruciating minutes of silence and a desperate need for Lisa’s spiked tequila later, Nora’s curly head peeked out the door.
“Oh yeah,” she said with a dazzling smirk. “He’s with me.”
Having recently turned forty-two, Alex refrained from blowing a raspberry at the man with the clipboard. Even if it required the kind of mental fortitude people should receive Purple Hearts for.
“I was beginning to wonder if you’d make it at all,” Nora said as she took his arm in her own. Clad in a dark brown dress, she looked just the right kind of understated that would have the Brits nodding approvingly over their tea.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Alex said dryly. “It’s not like I’m doing this as a favor to you or anything.”
Nora squeezed his arm, smiling delicately at a passing couple as they made their way to one of the many tables people were chattering by. “And I do love you for it. I know you were terribly busy back in L.A. with –” she put her free hand to her lower lip, tapping it thoughtfully “– what again? Making the front page of the gossip mags?”
They pulled to a stop at a thankfully unoccupied table. “You underestimate my hard work.”
Nora snorted, earning her a narrowed-eyed glare from a woman aged approximately two-hundred-and-four. Whatever animal was adorning her fur-hat seemed to be at least twice that age. Actually, most of the guests in the overly decorated ballroom appeared to be closer to dying than birth, an interesting observation given the event they were gathered for.
Alex grabbed three champagne glasses from a nearby waiter, expertly holding them in one hand as he deposited one in front of Nora and kept the other two for himself. Nora eyed him dubiously as he downed the first glass. She didn’t comment though. It had been a long time since she’d bothered.
“I am grateful, you know,” she said, lowering her voice. “I know this –” she waved a hand “– isn’t really your scene anymore.”
No, Alex’s scene had moved far past the kind that required fitted suits and enviable posture. And yet.
“It’s fine,” he said, only partly lying. “I still can’t believe Marcus ditched you last minute.”
Nora’s lip quirked. “Yes, it’s called ditching when you’re flown across the continent to attend to a one in a million brain surgery that only you can –”
“Yeah, yeah,” Alex drawled into his second glass before emptying that too. “Your husband is immensely talented and also charming, handsome and great with kids.”
“Good to have that established,” Nora chirped, lifting her chin to gaze over the heads of ancient guests. “Still can’t see them anywhere. Guess you weren’t alone in being fashionably late, but then again, they’re the hosts. They’re sort of allowed.”
“And in the meantime,” Alex said, then waved a waitress over, grinning at her when she came closer. “Hello, darlin’. You don’t happen to know where I could find any of that delicious scotch you Brits seem to be so fond of?”
The woman blinked, then blushed. Alex was unfazed. Even with silver licking his temples and the somewhat softened features of a man who didn’t say no to a second portion of dessert, he was an above average looking guy. After all, Nora wasn’t kidding about the gossip magazines. Too bad for the waiter that Alex had drawn a firm line where he wasn’t allowed to ogle anyone less than a decade younger than him. He wasn’t going to be one of those kind of creeps thank you very much.
“Oh,” the waitress said, clearing her throat. “Uhm, that would be over by the bar, sir, though it won’t open until the Prince has held his speech.”
“And when will that be?” Alex asked, looking over at Nora when her hand fell to his on the table. He must have been tapping his fingers. He did that. Leo had once said he’d be a highly proficient tap dancer with his constant fidgeting. That, of course, was when anyone in his family still talked to him, even jokingly, about such things as careers.
“Ignore him,” Nora said to the waitress, leaning over Alex so her arm bumped his shoulder. Even in heels as sensible as the classic but boring pair she was currently sporting, she was taller than him. “His patience isn’t his best characteristic.”
And then she promptly pressed one of those heels onto his toes, just in case he decided to make a quip about his much better characteristics. He wasn’t planning to. Really.
The waitress curtsied before hurrying off, leaving Nora and Alex to sigh in unison – him as a result of the continuing lack of liquor and her because of… well, him, probably.
“Have you seen the cake?”
“People in China can see that cake,” Alex said, standing on his tiptoes to take in the monstrosity in its entirety. “It’s humongous. Pretty sure it could feed the entire African continent.”
“Yes, you’ve never been known to exaggerate.”
“Not about things that matter,” he countered, then met her gaze with a wink that she promptly responded to with the kind of eye-roll that would send Alex straight into a migraine.
“Seriously though,” she said, propping her chin on her fist. “Dad will be so sad when he sees the pictures. I can feel his diabetes weeping all the way from Washington.”
“How is your dad?”
Nora shrugged, a one-shouldered thing that held more than the gesture would suggest. “He’s fine. Still working too hard, even home-bound and recovering from hip surgery.” Her lips thinned. “He’s getting old, Alex.”
The ‘as are we’ was hidden somewhere in that statement, though thankfully deep enough down that Alex didn’t feel the need to address it. After all, he didn’t feel old. Beside the aforementioned silver hair, he could easily still be in his twenties. He certainly drank like he was in his twenties. Fucked like it too.
“Still a senator though,” Alex said consolingly, then added, “One of the only few good ones that’s left.”
Smiling up at him, Nora nodded. “Yeah, I suppose.” Rolling her lips around her teeth, she turned to watch the guests again, giving him the courtesy of a modicum of privacy as she continued with, “and your mom?”
His mom.
“I tried to use my name out there,” Alex said, fiddling with the stems of his empty glasses. “To get me inside?” He clicked his tongue. “Dude didn’t know it.”
Nora hummed, still not looking at him. “And does that bother you?”
It was a good question. Twenty years ago, he’d laugh in the person’s face and ask if their cave had indoor plumbing. Back then, you couldn’t not know the name Claremont. Naturally, that was before his mother lost her attempt at a second term to Jeffrey Richards, then again four years later, and again, and again, until her voice had to grow louder and shriller to be heard in a political climate increasingly less inclined to listen. Things had turned ugly after that.
Let’s just say there were a few years there where Alex only introduced himself with one of his two hyphenated last names. Not that it mattered much anymore. Everyone that meant anything knew his name by now, a list including all the best clubs between Manhattan and Tokyo, approximately ninety-six percent of the female public beneath the age of fifty-five, and all the workers on Wall Street having to watch the ever-increasing growth of what eighteen years ago was Alex and Liam’s tiny investment firm.
It was Liam’s firm. Alex just gave him money and whatever leftover value his name held, and then Liam did the rest. Now, Alex’s name was on the board despite his physical body appearing only at the necessary once a year attendance, and Liam updated him quarterly by email. Or Spencer did. Alex didn’t actually think he’d exchanged a single message with his old best friend since their mid-thirties.
He should send him a gift basket or something.
“Oh!” Nora exclaimed, her question long forgotten as she grabbed Alex’s arm with a grip confirming how she was secretly raised by bears. “There they are!”
It didn’t take exceptional observation skills to find what she was looking at.
There, below a high arch delicately decorated with flowers, came the first members of the Royal Family.
Normally, or so Nora had told him on the flight over when she’d rattled on about everything from Prince Philip’s hair transplant (quite successful apparently) to Queen Mary’s five Bichon Frisés (thankfully absent), they would enter in order of their right to the throne, from last to first in line. On a normal day, that would have the Queen entering last. Alex also surmised this was to give the old bat time to make it to the entrance, not that anyone can blame her slowness at the ripe age of ninety-two.
Today, however, they were changing it up.
“It really is uncommon,” Nora whispered, leaning over the table as if to get a better view of the queen as she snail-paced herself through the door. As her husband caved (from exhaustion apparently, Mary was quite the formidable woman in her time) and greeted his death more than three decades ago, she was led by her daughter Catherine. “They’re definitely making a point, having James walk in last with his family.”
“Well,” Alex said, distractedly eyeing the bar to check if they’d decided to open early after all. “It is the kid’s birthday after all.”
“Well yes,” Nora acquiesced impatiently. “Which they’re making a much bigger deal of than they would if… well.” She glanced at Alex and then back. “You know.”
Alex didn’t actually know. Not in any detail. Despite his numerous appearances in varyingly distinguished newspapers around the globe, he didn’t pay much attention to things that wouldn’t directly serve him. Those he paid plenty attention to, as those were the kind of things that would have him invited to Taylor Swift’s wedding – which was a blast by the way, thank you for asking.
Catherine looked almost as tired as her mother, gaze vacant in a way even the ravenous British media had stopped commenting on years ago. It had been a shock to absolutely no one when it was publicly announced that the throne would neatly surpass her and go straight to her son Philip when Mary eventually called it quits. Almost as unsurprising as when Ex-Princess Beatrice had abdicated and ran off to California to marry an actor.
“Ugh,” Nora said.
“What?” Alex whispered, taking his eye off the champagne-carrying waiter who was completely ignoring Alex’s request for attention in lieu of wearingly watching the archway as the volume in the room increased. “What is it?”
“Thank God the press isn’t here,” Nora continued, sounding disgusted. “Just look at them.” She nodded towards the guests, all whispering between themselves as Prince Philip and his wife Princess Martha glided beneath the arch. “Bloody vultures. All staring at her, waiting for something to gossip about.”
There was something about a pot and a kettle, but Alex only hummed before staring along with the rest of them.
While Prince Philip looked as he usually did (vaguely constipated if now with an impressive head of dirty blonde hair), Martha looked radiant. Her dress was a gorgeous pale blue that heightened her reddish blonde hair and natural makeup, her button-up nose and modern style belying her forty-three years.
She also, to the delight of some and the despair of others, very much did not look pregnant.
“It’s never going to happen,” Alex said, finding himself utterly neutral to the fact, though even he’d seen enough of The Crown on Netflix to know the ramification of it. “They’ve been together for twenty years.” He shrugged. “Maybe they just don’t want kids.”
Nora shot him a glare. “I like to remind you that before you turned into Hefner junior, you actually managed to finish a college degree.”
He did, not that he’s gotten much use of international relations. “Meaning?”
“Meaning,” Nora continued, “that there’s not a question of not wanting kids when you’re the heir to the throne of goddamn England. It’s like the monarchy. You either fuck off, as Beatrice did, or kindly pop out the expected two to three children.” She nudged his shoulder. “And speaking of.”
Alex could easily remember the first and only time he met Prince Henry George Edward James Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor.
In truth, that shouldn’t have been the first time they met each other. After those long days back in 2016, when Alex had been sweating through the Rio heat and looking ceaselessly for the young man’s face he’d only seen in J-14, Alex had stopped thinking about him. Despite his mother getting elected, despite listening to Zahra go on and on about gallons of tea, their paths never crossed. Not until Alex and June were invited to Philip and Martha’s wedding, and even then it had been nothing more than a polite handshake in a line-up.
Perhaps Alex didn’t follow the gossip mags, but he knew one thing. Parenthood had been hard on Henry.
The man, once considered Britain’s golden boy, was a ghost of his younger self as he walked into the room with his wife on his arm. The suit, though decidedly dashing with the red, white and blue sash, seemed to hang off him precariously, like it was desperately trying to cling the way it must have when it had been fitted. His hair was gelled back in a way that enunciated the v’s of his hairline. Even Stiff-Upper-Lip outside seemed soft and cuddly compared to the hard lines holding the Prince’s face in a smile made from paint long gone dry.
Alex wondered when Henry last had fallen down a staircase drunk on dodgy tequila.
“Now that’s a dress,” Nora said on a whistle.
She wasn’t wrong. Claire, though equally stiff, was as stunning as she had been when her face first started popping up next to Henry’s in the kind of respectable British tabloids that made it obvious the pictures had been leaked by Buckingham itself. Her chestnut hair flowed down her chest, neatly framing the neckline of a lovely red number. The dress was just modest enough not to have the critics gaping, while still giving a hint of mischief. With a heart-shaped face and the best plastic surgeons in the country, she appeared a decade younger than her husband.
Even as she looked down at her son with a sharp glare.
“God, look at him,” Nora whispered, applauding politely with the rest of the room as Henry and Claire’s two children were loudly introduced. “He’s just a baby.”
“It’s his eighteenth birthday,” Alex reminded her, though he was inclined to agree. Alex had a hard time looking at anyone beneath the age of twenty without wondering if they were out after curfew. “And he looks like he’s having a jolly good time.”
Nora snorted. “At least Elizabeth looks like she’s having fun.”
Eleven and teetering on that age where you weren’t fully self-aware enough to cave to the constant embarrassment of being a teenager, the young redhead seemed to bask in the applause, the smiles, the clear adoration. Unlike her surly older brother who kept pulling at his limp chin-length hair and looking like he, too, would love to raid the bar for a whisky or two.
“They’re adorable,” Nora said, pouting hard. “I miss my babies.”
“You know they have more fun running around June and Evan’s garden then they would in a stuffy New York apartment,” Alex said as he watched Claire discreetly swat James’ hand away from his hair. “And dad will probably visit and give them half his dinner portions each night only to regret it when they fart all over his bed.”
A woman by the table next to them let out an affronted gasp.
“They’re dogs,” Nora told her, making the elderly lady scoff.
“What kind of language is –”
“Actual dogs,” Nora amended. “Labradoodles.”
Somehow, this didn’t seem to make the woman feel better, or at least Alex assumed that’s why she picked up her half-finished glass and her equally finished-looking husband and dragged them both over to another table.
Nora wrinkled her nose, then took another sip of her own glass. “Oh well. I’ll see them tomorrow, won’t I? You got the flight details, right?” Her look was frighteningly close to pleading as it turned towards him. “It’s 11AM English time, so please don’t –”
“I won’t,” Alex said hurriedly, then pointed at the podium. “Look. Speech.”
Hopefully the kind that would last less than the five minutes he had left of his sanity. Those champagne glasses might have taken the brunt of his pounding head, but it wasn’t enough. He pulled at his collar, trying to get more air in as Henry stood to his highly unnecessary height and spoke directly and clearly into the microphone without doing the tapping and 1-2-3-testing thing that Alex always thought was obligatory before his own few and equally tedious speeches.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Friends. Family.” He smiled down at his wife and children, genuine and oh-so-tight. “Thank you for coming from all over the world to celebrate one of my two proudest achievements –” he gestured to his son while the ‘aaws’ made their course through the room. Prince Philip looked fractionally more constipated where he stood to the left of the podium as Henry continued, “My dear James.”
Applause from the audience as the boy, clearly aware of his upbringing, gave a polite nod of acknowledgement. Alex managed a few foot taps. It would do.
Even from a distance, he could see the tightening of Henry’s eyes. There were worryingly few laugh lines around those dull blues. All his wrinkles had seemed to congregate into one firm furrow between his brows.
“Helen Keller once said; ‘I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.’” Henry kept looking partly at the audience, partly at his son. “You, James, are a product of many small tasks.”
Alex leaned towards Nora, whispering, “Is he seriously comparing his son to a chore?”
Nora hushed him. She, though Alex couldn’t possibly understand why, looked captivated. Fascinated even, like she was solving some kind of puzzle. What was there to solve? The only solution was for Alex to buy the poor birthday boy a stiff drink, because Jesus. Oscar may have had a hard word or two for Alex during his youth, but there were limits.
Alex grabbed Nora’s champagne and drank the rest of it. She didn’t seem to notice.
“We are proud of you,” Henry continued, though there might have been something else in there too. Alex wasn’t really paying attention anymore. They were finally opening up the bar and he was putting on the charm to make the waitress from earlier notice him in the hopes that she remembered his earlier request for scotch and decided to be diligent enough to bring it over. “And James –”
Later, Alex couldn’t be sure what made him turn at those two words. Perhaps the cadence to Henry’s voice. How it cracked in the middle. Whatever it was, it was enough to leave the promise of a neat, smoky Lagavulin to stare at the Prince along with the rest of the room.
He looked straight at his son now. Everyone appeared to be watching. Even Catherine, with her permanently displaced face, seemed to be following the interaction that was taking place between father and son.
“Though history is heavy,” Henry said, almost quietly. “Your shoulders are capable.”
Luckily, the applause drowned out Alex’s gag.
“Oh, come on!” Nora said, laughing at Alex’s expression. “He’s the Prince! What did you expect him to say? He can’t exactly pour his feelings out and cry all over the carpet, that’s just not done.”
“Not done,” Alex repeats. “You’re starting to sound like the Brits. They’re all so emotionally and –” he waved towards Philip “– likely physically constipated that their feces are lodged up their throats. Did you hear that shit?” He stuck out his tongue, drink forgotten. “All about history and duty and, and… and chores.”
“He didn’t actually say the word chores,” Nora argued good-naturedly, dragging Alex with the crowd as they turned away from the podium.
“Whatever,” Alex said dismissively, taking her arm. “It’s like he doesn’t know how to have fun.”
“If by fun you mean getting shitfaced and boning half the American female population, then I’m inclined to agree with you.”
Alex huffed. “He certainly boned enough women before he met Claire, even I remember those magazines.”
All those pictures of a twenty-something Henry splattered across the pages with various good-looking ladies on his arms, his bare chest blindingly pale despite his rosy pink nipples. And then there were the moles. God, the moles.
Nora made a noncommittal noise. “I suppose. They’re guiding us towards the dining room, we should –”
“Get a drink?” Alex interrupted, letting go of her arm. “Excellent idea as always, Nora, your intellect continues to astound me.”
Nora’s brows were furrowed. “There’ll be wine with dinner, you know.”
“English wine? I think not.” He lifted his chin to leave a wet kiss on her cheek, delighting in the grimace that split across her face. “I’ll come find you.”
“Alright,” Nora said doubtfully, a thumb stuck over her shoulder to point to the dining hall. “I’ll be the one sitting alone.”
Alex blew her an air kiss, then sprinted towards the bar where he caught the eye of the waitress from earlier. “Sweetheart!” he whisper-yelled. “Now, how about that scotch?”
She was busy rummaging through the impressive collection when Alex saw him. And yes, he might have only had two and a half glasses of champagne, but it was merely noon and he was feeling just tipsy enough to throw up his hands and yell, “Kid!”
The kid, meaning Prince James, slowly swiveled his head around. As did the man behind him, who looked exactly like every other penguin-impersonator that had been roaming the room with drinks and canapés, and yet he held a different confidence to the rest of them. He must be in his fifties, if not his sixties, but the bronze glow of his skin and sharp lift of one eyebrow could easily cast him as James Bond.
“Yes?” Prince James said, his overly polite voice at odds with the long gangly limbs and confused expression.
They must have been to the bathroom or something. The ballroom was almost emptied out now, only Alex, the waiters and the Prince with his distinctly unimpressed assistant-butler-bodyguard-something remaining.
Alex gestured to the bar. “Can I get you something?”
If possible, the butler-dude looked even less impressed. James, however, couldn’t seem to help the faintest quirk of his mouth.
“That won’t be necessary,” he said, still with that polite voice. “It’s an open bar.”
Alex looked at the waitress who was now pouring a substantial amount of Lagavulin into a glass. Definitely her first time, not that Alex was complaining.
“Right,” he said, turning back to James, “and as a prince, I’m sure you get whatever you ask if you just –” he snapped his fingers.
James’ smile flickered. “Right.”
“Thank you, doll,” Alex said to the blushing waitress, taking the generously filled tumbler between his thumb and index finger before once again addressing the prince. “It’s your birthday though, and the eighteenth at that. Big day on your side of the pond, isn’t it?” Alex gave the kid his most charming smile, going for disarming. “I hope for your sake you’re celebrating with something other than all this glorified nonsense.”
Mr. Lookalike-Bond cleared his throat. Alex and James both ignored him.
“I’m having some friends over this weekend,” James said, though his cheeks, heart-shaped and full like his mother’s, had gone a soft shade of pink.
“Ah.” Alex took a large sip of his drink, relishing the burn. “That’s good. Some actual partying.” He glanced at the pinched expression on the butler-dude’s face before grinning widely at James. “I could get you some weed?”
James’ eyes widened, making it obvious that he very much had been gifted with his father’s coloring.
Of course, that’s when Mr. Bond stepped forward. “Sir, this is not –”
“What’s going on?”
Everyone – including the waiter who had been eyeing the conversation with the unprofessional stare of the recently-employed – turned their heads to see Prince Henry marching towards them from the dining room. Despite his skinny frame, his footsteps were cannonballs against the floor, commanding attention as his gaze swiveled from James to Alex to the butler-dude who’d managed to stand even taller at Henry’s entrance.
“Shaan?”
“The American was offering your son drugs, sir.”
“Woah,” Alex said, lifting his hands defensively. “It was just a… friendly suggestion.”
In hindsight, this would probably not be his finest hour, but the kid looked so utterly bored, and Alex just wanted to hand him a beer and the coordinates to the closest respectable strip club and tell him to get some goddamn life experience before this palace swallowed him whole.
Henry stared at Alex. “I’m sorry,” he said, though he didn’t remotely sound like it. “Who are you?”
Something twisted in Alex’s chest. “Who –” he paused. “What? I’m –”
“Inconsequential,” Shaan said, and Alex would under no circumstances akin him to James Bond ever again, the good-looking traitor. “Dinner will be served any moment, sirs, I suggest you head inside while I take care of the drug dealer.”
“Hang on!”
“It’s fine,” James said hurriedly, looking up at his dad. Though taller than Alex, James was nothing standing next to his looming father. “He was just being nice.”
Henry, still with a long-fingered hand on James’ shoulder, gazed imploringly at his son.
Listen to him, Alex thought desperately as he glanced towards the dining room where a dark-skinned man was leaning against the door frame, watching the display. Alex couldn’t be bothered with their audience, far too busy thinking about how Nora would kill him (and then resurrect him just to do it all over again in a more drawn-out fashion) if he was thrown out on his ass from Buckingham Fucking Palace for offering weed to a freakin’ teenager.
Though it would be consistent with what the magazines usually wrote about him.
“Fine,” Henry said, though it clearly wasn’t. “Shaan?”
“I’ll escort the American to his table,” Shaan confirmed.
“I don’t need –”
“Good,” Henry said firmly, and he really shouldn't be allowed to look that prissy and posh and still have a voice deep enough to communicate with yet-to-be-known ocean species. “See that you do.”
And then he walked off, still with that firm grip on his son’s shoulder. James looked over it once, limp hair falling into his face as he watched Alex, and then they were out of view, the dark-skinned man following.
If Henry’s grip had looked firm, Shaan’s was deadly.
“Hey!” Alex said indignantly as he was jerked forward so harshly his drink sloshed over the sides of the glass. “I can walk!”
“I’m sure you can, sir,” Shaan said, though he didn’t relent his grip until they passed the threshold to the dining room. “I trust you can find your way to your table as well, or do I need to draw you a map?”
Alex narrowed his eyes. Shaan’s expression didn’t change in the slightest, the bastard.
Huffing, Alex strode across the room, drawing more than one pair of eyes as he slumped onto the chair next to a despondent-looking Nora.
“Do I want to –”
“No,” Alex said, “You don’t.”
Stupid Henry and his stupid inability to get the fucking stick at of his flat ass. Couldn’t he see that his son was going to end up the same stiff shit-filled body suit as the rest of his family if he didn’t let the kid have some fucking fun for once? The way he’d blushed when he told Alex he’d be having friends over, Alex would guess those friends were either expertly picked out by his parents or he didn’t have any at all.
As he watched the first course of seven being put down before him, an image of long days stuck in stuffy offices invaded his veins. Books scattered around him. Social media showing him picture upon picture of long-lost friends enjoying nights out while he was stuck inside with takeaway pizza, nothing to keep him company but the words of better men as other words scattered his mind. His mother’s words. Dad’s. Zahra’s. Words of reputation and decorum and duty.
There was only one thing to do.
“Uh-oh,” Nora said quietly, soup spilling from her hovering spoon. “I know that look.”
Alex turned to her. “Nora,” he said decisively, even as her face fell further. “About that flight tomorrow.”
Nora sighed and turned to the closest waiter, waving him down. “We’re going to need more wine.”