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Buckingham Palace is full of secrets.

Alex has known this ever since he found out the dumb, giant painting in the State Dining Room swings open like Scooby-Doo to reveal a hidden corridor full of dusty wigs and a Victorian-era dildo. But nothing could have prepared him for the day he stumbled upon what Henry later whisper-calls The Secret Royal Pool™, with a look of childhood sin and scandal in his eyes.

It starts with a lemon tart.

Henry’s been on a bender of spoiling him lately, gifts, gourmet lunches, sending him weird poems written in medieval French (“This one’s about armpits,” Henry had said proudly), and today’s gift is from the palace pâtissier, who apparently makes lemon tarts that can destabilize governments. Alex is wandering through one of the lesser-known hallways in search of somewhere to eat this perfect bite of citrus glory in peace (and avoid a sudden tour group of middle-aged Americans whispering “Is that the gay one?” at him like he’s a goddamn fossil), when he sees it.

A tiny brass plaque. No bigger than a hotel room keycard. Hidden behind an antique bust of Queen Adelaide that’s seen better centuries.

POOL ACCESS - STAFF ONLY

“Staff only,” Alex mutters, already pushing open the hidden panel. “Bitch, I’m married to the Prince of England. I have people now.”

The corridor smells like lavender and generational wealth. The floor tilts downward into a spiral staircase, and by the time Alex emerges at the bottom, he’s absolutely sweating, lemon tart still clutched in hand, and—

“Oh my God.”

It’s a cathedral of a room. Vaulted glass ceiling. Marble tile floors. A massive Olympic-length indoor pool with royal crest mosaics on the bottom, steam curling off the surface like a Regency fever dream. There’s a tray of neatly folded navy towels. A swim-up bar with an untouched bottle of 50-year-old Scotch. A fucking gondola, inexplicably.

Henry has never mentioned this pool. Which means:

“TREASON,” Alex yells into the vaulted chamber. His voice echoes. “CONSPIRACY. HIDDEN PLEASURES OF THE ARISTOCRACY.”

He strips off his shirt dramatically, someone has to, and flings himself into the water in his jeans like a man on a mission from God. The lemon tart floats briefly. He catches it, dripping wet, and eats it anyway. It is, as promised, transcendent.

He’s still lounging at the edge of the pool twenty minutes later, soaked, bare-chested, humming Taylor Swift’s Cruel Summer and pretending to be the Lady of the Lake, when a door slams open.

"WHAT—" comes a voice like someone has swallowed gravel and titled a Scottish manor. “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN HERE.”

Alex looks up. Blinks water out of his eyes.

“Oh, hey, Philip.”

Prince Philip, heir to the British throne, dressed in navy slacks, a button-down, and what appears to be sheer disgust, is staring at him like Alex is a dog that’s peed on the Royal Rug.

“I’m sorry,” Alex says, flicking water at him with a toe. “Is this your sacred bathhouse?”

“This pool is for senior royals only!”

“I am a senior royal,” Alex replies, fluttering his wet lashes. “I’m literally the Duke of Sussex. And your brother’s husband. And also a diplomatic wildcard from across the ocean. So technically I outrank you.”

“You’re not even British!”

“Not with that attitude,” Alex chirps.

Philip turns a shade of plum not found in nature. “You’re going to rot this family from the inside out, Claremont-Diaz.”

“Good,” Alex says, standing up in his jeans, which are now clinging obscenely to everything. “Rotting’s what I do best, baby. Wanna see my cannonball?”

Philip storms out muttering something about bloodlines and decorum. Alex wonders if there’s a trapdoor hidden in the floor that leads to a secret hallway of disappointment just for him.

When Henry finally finds him, an hour later, after a very confusing text that simply read “I made out with the ghost of Prince Albert, tell no one”, he’s still lounging poolside, wearing nothing but one of the navy towels around his waist and holding a pineapple cocktail he definitely didn't have permission to make.

“You found the pool,” Henry says with a sigh, a grin curling on his lips.

“You hid the pool,” Alex says, scandalized. “From your own husband. That’s gay treason.”

“It’s not my fault you have the instincts of a truffle pig for royal decadence.”

Alex leans back, stretching lazily. “Philip called me the rot in the bloodline.”

“Oh,” Henry says, sitting down beside him. “Well, to be fair, you did once eat jam directly from a Buckingham tea spoon.”

“Only because your mother dared me.”

Henry hums. “You also did unspeakable things to me during the Jubilee fireworks.”

Alex leans in. “And I’ll do them again.”

They clink stolen cocktails. Somewhere far above them, Philip is probably drafting a ten-page memo to the Privy Council about “the American menace.” Alex, towel and all, feels like the smug gay Bond villain of his dreams.

“Next week,” he says, “we find out if there’s a royal dungeon.”

“There is a royal dungeon,” Henry says mildly.

Alex nearly drops his drink.
“Oh my God.”

Henry grins, the picture of smug domestic villainy. “And you’re absolutely not allowed in it.”

Alex’s smile turns downright feral. “Bet.”

He’s already halfway through mentally planning an outfit, possibly something involving a whip and his “Duke of Sussex” silk robe, when Henry kisses his temple and stands to go take a call with the Lord Chamberlain or the Minister of Corgis or whoever needs a royal nod today.

Alex sinks back into his chair, still damp from the Secret Buckingham Pool™ scandal, towel dangerously low on his hips, and stares up at the steam swirling around the vaulted ceiling. He's married into the most ancient institution in Britain, and yet he’s still not allowed in the damn dungeon.

Ridiculous. He's the Duke of Sussex, for Christ’s sake. Well. Kind of. Technically. Legally. Socially? He’s still working on that part.

Because here’s the thing: as the months go on, Alex realizes something, being a royal is a full-time job only if you were born to it. If you marry into it? Especially if you’re American? Brown? Loud? Bisexual? You become... ornamental.

A museum piece. A political talking point in fabulous tailoring. The hot bisexual accessory to the monarchy.

Which, like, great. He’s hot. He knows he’s hot. But it gets a little old when every time he tries to do something, the royal schedule responds like he’s asked to publicly stage a coup via musical theatre.

So one rainy Tuesday, once Henry came home from shaking hands and opening hospitals and listening very intently to a dairy farmer explaining cow feed ratios, Alex wrapped himself around his husband like an overly affectionate koala and said, “Babe. I have a law degree.”

Henry, unbothered and in his dressing gown, says, “I know, darling. I’ve seen the student debt numbers.”

“And I’m bored.”

“I’ve seen the Amazon cart.”

“And I want to work.”

Henry pauses, turns, lifts an eyebrow. “You want to go to court?”

“I want to sue bitches.”

Henry kisses him on the mouth and says, “Then sue them all, my love. I’ll be in the gallery, weeping with pride.”

Thus begins Alex’s second coming: Duke of Sussex, Esquire.
He enrolls in the necessary U.K. conversion courses, passes the exams, completes the bar training, and at 26, is sworn in as a proper barrister, wig and all. There’s even a Daily Mail headline: “THE DUKE WORE PRADA... TO COURT.” (He did.)

He takes on pro bono immigration cases, queer asylum claims, tenant rights, and every cause that makes Queen Mary’s thin lips tighten into a line that could slice marble. He’s fast-talking, grandstanding, and extremely good at his job.

Which is exactly the problem.

Because, naturally, the Lord Chamberlain tattles.

The message is clear: “Her Majesty would like a word.”

Alex shows up to Buckingham in a burgundy suit and Ferragamos, just to be annoying. He finds Queen Mary sitting beneath a ten-foot portrait of herself holding a scepter like she’s about to declare war on France.

“Your Majesty,” Alex says, bowing just enough to be legal.

“I spoke to your husband about your degeneracy,” she says, skipping all pleasantries.

Alex tilts his head. “And what did my beloved husband say?”

“That he cannot control you,” she snaps. “He said, and I quote ‘You try, Gran. It’s positively impossible.’”

Alex smiles like he’s just won a particularly stupid prize at a carnival.

Then she says, with all the subtlety of a brick: “There is the issue of children.”

And oh, here we go.

Alex sits down without being asked. “I am doing my very best to put a baby in your grandson. Truly. But the issue remains, he doesn’t have a uterus.”

“INSOLENCE.”

“He also doesn’t ovulate,” Alex adds cheerfully. “Real shame.”

Queen Mary turns an actual color. It’s sort of violet. The color of wrath and sugar plums.

“You are not to joke about the royal succession.”

“Why not? It’s a joke already. Philip’s first in line. He has, like, three kids. I think one of them’s named Peregrine. I can’t keep track. Why does Henry need to produce a child?”

She slams a gloved hand down on the armrest of her throne. “Because tradition dictates—”

“Oh, tradition dictates?” Alex leans forward. “Tradition also dictated powdered wigs, outlawing Catholics, and refusing to refrigerate milk until the '50s.”

She glares.

He goes in for the kill.

“Also, I’ve seen the prenup.”

She narrows her eyes.

“You thought I wouldn’t?” Alex scoffs. “I went to Georgetown Law. You really thought I wouldn’t read every line of the contract you made us sign under threat of cancellation?”

“It was a necessary clause.”

“‘None of the heirs are to be of Claremont-Diaz blood due to hereditary incompatibility with the Royal Constitution.’” He recites it perfectly. “Incompatibility meaning—you couldn’t handle a brown baby with curls and my nose, huh?”

Her silence is louder than any insult.

Henry had raged over that clause. Screamed. Threatened to walk. Had torn the pages out with trembling hands. But in the end, he had come to Alex crying “They’re going to take it all away. The wedding, the title, everything”, and Alex had kissed him and said, “Then we’ll fight. But I’m not leaving.”

It had been a test. Alex knows that now. A trap. A final push to see if the loudmouth Texan would pack up and run.

But Alex Claremont-Diaz is all over his man like a fucking cockroach. He doesn’t leave. It would take Henry cheating to get rid of him. And Henry would rather drown in tartan than cheat.

“I see,” Queen Mary says now, like she’s chewing thorns. “So you will persist.”

“I always do.”

“I’ll have you thrown in the Tower.”

“I’ll redecorate it.”

“You’re banned from the royal pool.”

Alex leaps to his feet, scandalized. “NOW THAT’S TOO FAR.”

She lifts her chin, imperious and eighty-six years of royal judgment condensed into one upright vertebra. “There must be consequences.”

“I was doing laps! I was hydrating! It’s part of my self-care regimen!”

“You are a disgrace to this family,” she says, low and poisonous. “First those vulgar emails exposed to the entire world, and now this.”

And just like that, the temperature in the room drops.

Alex doesn’t flinch, but his fingers curl tightly against the back of the armchair, knuckles white. Because that, that’s the low blow, the weaponized memory, the one thing he doesn’t joke about.

2020. The Great Email Leak. 

The whole world had read them, Alex and Henry's private messages, flirtations, confessions, late-night declarations of love, the one where Alex drunkenly quoted Star Trek during phone sex. All of it. Published in full by a right-wing site three weeks before the presidential election.

He’d been in the White House, standing in the Roosevelt Room, surrounded by staffers, when it hit the news cycle. The Secret Service had physically blocked the door to keep the press out. His phone had melted. Zahra had burst into the room swearing in six languages. Nora had cried. June had been on a plane. And Alex had sat down, shaken, trying to remember if he’d said anything in the emails that would get Henry excommunicated or him deported.

Across the Atlantic, Henry had been in Kensington, alone. Bea had later said he didn’t speak for an hour. He just stared at the television and then quietly threw his phone in the koi pond.

And who had leaked them?

Jeffrey Richards. Ellen’s Republican opponent. A man who smiled like a tax audit and smelled like inherited oil money. The campaign had tried to deny it, of course, but Alex knew. That smug little rat-faced bastard had hacked into his private government account, pulled every message between him and Henry, and dumped them for the world to see.

The goal had been obvious: destroy Ellen’s campaign by exposing her son’s sexuality and weaponizing it against her. He hadn’t cared that Henry wasn’t American. He hadn’t cared about the consequences to the monarchy, or to Alex’s safety, or to Henry’s sanity. He’d just wanted to make them suffer.

And oh, they had.

Alex remembers waking up the next morning to headlines screaming:
PRINCE OF ENGLAND IN SECRET GAY AFFAIR WITH FIRST SON OF THE UNITED STATES
“I love your mouth,” writes Alex in X-rated leak
Royal Shame: Queen Refuses to Comment on Homosexual Scandal

His father had called him in tears. His mother had released a statement that sounded like it had been ghostwritten by three lawyers and a team of damage control specialists. Henry had gone dark for three days. Alex had barely slept, eaten, or breathed.

It was the worst week of his life.

And now this fossil in a tiara wants to bring it up over a swimming pool ban?

“I see,” Alex says slowly, “we’re playing dirty now.”

Queen Mary doesn’t blink.

Alex walks to the window, breathes once, twice, and then spins on his heel, hands on hips, voice sweet and poisonous.

“Let me ask you something, Your Majesty. Do you remember what happened after those emails leaked?”

She doesn't answer, but her eyes narrow.

“I’ll tell you,” Alex says, pacing now. “The approval rating for my mother’s presidency skyrocketed. Gen Z turned the leaked love letters into TikToks. I was declared bisexual icon of the decade by Out Magazine. Henry trended worldwide. I LOVE YOUR MOUTH was printed on T-shirts. The public shipped us harder than they ever shipped Will and Kate.”

He steps closer.

“And Henry? That quiet, beautiful man you tried to hide away in marble palaces and silent suffering? He came out. To the world. On his own terms. He stood in front of a press conference, held my hand, and said ‘This is the love of my life.’”

Alex’s voice sharpens.

“So yes, I am a disgrace to your family. Because I love your grandson loudly, unapologetically, and in full technicolor. Because I told him I would stay even when the world watched us bleed. Because I married him with full knowledge of this family’s bullshit, and I’m still here.”

Silence.

Queen Mary sips her tea. The cup clinks softly in the saucer.

Then she says, “I should have had you sent back to America the minute you stepped foot on British soil.”

Alex smiles, savage. “You tried. I filed for indefinite residency status and got it approved in forty-eight hours. Diplomatically bulletproof, babe.”

She narrows her eyes. “Don’t call me babe.”

“Would Gran be better?”

She stands. Slowly. Like a haunted doll in a horror movie that cost eighty million dollars to produce.

“We will revisit this discussion,” she says coldly, like the concept of warmth has never once occurred to her. “Once you stop behaving like a reality television contestant in a tiara.”

Alex grins like a man about to drop a chandelier just for the drama of it. “I’d win that show,” he replies instantly. “America would vote for me. And the gays. And at least three of the corgis.”

“OUT.”

He salutes with two fingers, technically respectful, deeply disrespectful in tone, and turns on his heel like a drag queen leaving a particularly unworthy panel of judges. As he swans dramatically out of the room, he mutters just loud enough for Her Majesty to hear: “She’s obsessed with me.”

• • •

When Henry returns home later that afternoon, the first thing he sees is his husband sprawled across their antique French velvet settee like a Roman emperor in exile, sipping red wine straight from a goblet (where did they get goblets?) and reading a slim pamphlet with a royal seal on the cover.

The title reads, in immaculate serif font:
So You’ve Been Threatened With the Tower: A Beginner’s Guide.
There’s a cartoon raven on the front. It’s wearing a little crown.

Henry blinks. “Darling,” he says, stepping into the lounge and loosening his tie, “what did you do?”

Alex doesn’t look up. “Got banned from the pool. Also possibly started the next War of the Roses. You’ll have to check the tabloids to confirm.”

Henry groans, sinking into the armchair opposite him. “Did you call her babe again?”

“She hates it.” Alex finally glances up, eyes glittering with mischief. “So I’m doing it forever.”

Henry sighs. He’s wearing that soft, resigned smile Alex has come to love, a mix of fondness, exasperation, and unshakeable loyalty, like a man who’s adopted a particularly beautiful feral cat and refuses to give it up no matter how many priceless rugs it pees on.

Alex holds out a hand. “Come here, my sleepy kitten.”

Henry raises an eyebrow. “You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?”

Alex smiles innocently. “Not since the Tower Guide suggested I hydrate between threats.”

Henry sighs again, but he stands anyway, walks over, and lets Alex pull him into his lap like a very elegant, very exhausted Victorian ghost.

Henry fits there perfectly, long legs folding up over Alex’s like he belongs there, and maybe he does. He smells like cologne and something sweet from the royal kitchens, and Alex instantly curls both arms around him, wine glass abandoned.

“I love you,” Alex murmurs against Henry’s shoulder.

Henry hums. “You do say that often.”

“I’ve decided to make you laugh every day for the rest of your life.”

Henry laughs now, softly. “I thought you’d already decided that.”

“Well, I’ve recommitted to the cause. Like a New Year’s resolution, but sexy.”

“I see.” Henry shifts, head resting against Alex’s collarbone. “And how exactly do you plan to make me laugh when we’re eighty?”

Alex kisses his forehead. “By learning how to operate a Rascal scooter recklessly.”

Henry snorts. “You’re going to be thrown out of every assisted living community in the UK.”

“Just as God intended.”

They sit like that for a while, tangled together, their limbs a mess of warm muscle and velvet upholstery. Alex strokes Henry’s hair with one hand and idly flips through the pamphlet with the other.

“Did you know the Tower of London has a cafe now?” Alex says. “You can get scones. They even do oat milk.”

“How comforting,” Henry says. “Perhaps you can do your legal briefs from the dungeon.”

“Ooooh, dungeon office. Hot.”

Henry lifts his head. “You’re not allowed to redecorate any medieval imprisonment facilities.”

“Just one throw rug. And maybe a succulent.”

“No.”

“You’re lucky I love you so much I’m willing to be imprisoned for you.”

Henry smiles softly. “You’re lucky I love you so much I’m willing to help you pick out the throw rug.”

Alex leans in and kisses him, slow and smiling.

He’s so gone for this man.

It never fails to hit him in moments like this, quiet, domestic, absurd, that he’s married to the love of his life. He’s married to the reserved, poetry-reading, tragically British man who spent years pretending he didn’t have feelings for him just to avoid rocking the royal boat. The man who cried in his arms after coming out to the world. The man who sometimes whispers “I’m yours” in the dark like a secret.

And Alex gets to spend his whole life trying to make the man he loves smile.

“I’m going to love you so annoyingly well,” Alex whispers. “Like... suffocatingly. You’re never going to know a moment of peace again.”

Henry chuckles, burying his face in Alex’s shoulder. “Promise?”

“Cross my heart.”

They sit in silence for a beat before Alex says, “Also, just so you know, your grandmother definitely tried to trap me with the prenup again today. She brought up the ‘no biological heirs’ clause.”

Henry stiffens. “She what?”

“I told her I’m still doing my absolute best to put a baby in you,” Alex says proudly. “But you’re being very inconvenient by not having a uterus.”

Henry groans into Alex’s chest. “She’s going to exile us.”

Alex kisses the top of his head. “Let her. We’ll start a little republic on the French Riviera. President Me. First Gentleman You. Our flag will be a rainbow and feature your abs.”

Henry laughs again, the sound all muffled and happy. “You’re completely mad.”

“I’m completely in love,” Alex corrects. “It’s worse.”

Later, when Henry’s asleep on his chest and the goblet is empty and the Tower pamphlet has become a coaster, Alex closes his eyes and whispers, “I’ll keep making you laugh, okay? Every day. Even when you’re old and grumpy and yelling at squirrels from the window.”

Henry doesn’t respond. He’s already gone under, curled against him like he’s always belonged there.

Alex smiles into his hair.

Mission: Ongoing.