Red, White & Royal Blue Quotes
That's the choice. I love him, with all that, because of all that. On purpose. I love him on purpose.
Straight people, he thinks, probably don't spend this much time convincing themselves that they're straight.
Should I tell you that when we're apart, your body comes back to me in dreams? That when I sleep, I see you, the dip of your waist, the freckle above your hip, and when I wake up in the morning, it feels like I've just been with you, the phantom touch of your hand on the back of my neck fresh and not imagined? That I can feel your skin against mine, and it makes every bone in my body ache? That, for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all?.
The next slide is titled: 'Exploring your sexuality: Healthy, but does it have to be with the Prince of England?' She apologizes for not having time to come up with better titles. Alex actively wishes for the sweet release of death.
To every person in search of somewhere to belong who happened to pick up this book, I hope you found a place in here, even if just for a few pages. You are loved. I wrote this for you. Keep fighting, keep making history, keep looking after one another.
Alex snatches a shirt and boxers at random from the floor, shoves them at Henry's chest, and points him towards the closet. "Get in there."
"Quite," he observes.
"Yes, we can unpack the ironic symbolism later. GO.
The moment you first called me a prick, my fate was sealed. O, fathers of my bloodline! O, ye kings of olde! Take this crown from me, bury me in my ancestral soil. If only you had known the mighty work of thine loins would be undone by a gay heir who likes it when American boys with chin dimples are mean to him.
The next slide is titled: EXPLORING YOUR SEXUALITY: HEALTHY, BUT DOES IT HAVE TO BE WITH THE PRINCE OF ENGLAND? She apologizes for not having time to come up with better titles. Alex actively wishes for the sweet release of death. The one after is: FEDERAL FUNDING, TRAVEL EXPENSES, BOOTY CALLS, AND YOU.
I hate this so much. I know. But we’re gonna do it together. And we’re gonna make it work. You and me and history, remember? We’re just gonna fucking fight. Because you’re it, okay? I’m never gonna love anybody in the world like I love you. So, I promise you, one day we’ll be able to just be, and fuck everyone else.
You see, for me, memories are difficult. Very often, they hurt. A curious thing about grief is the way it takes your entire life, all those foundational years that made you who you are, and makes them so painful to look back upon because of the absence there, that suddenly they’re inaccessible. You must invent an entirely new system.
Hey, have I told you lately that you're brave? I still remember what you said to that little girl in the hospital about Luke Skywalker. 'He's proof that it doesn't matter where you come from or who your family is.' Sweetheart, you're proof too.
Every person who bears a legacy makes the choice of a partner with whom they will share it with, whom the American people will hold beside them in hearts and memories and history books. America: He is my choice.
In an hour, every person in America will be able to look at a screen and see their First Son and his boyfriend.
And, across the Atlantic, almost as many will look up over a beer at a pub or dinner with their family or a quiet night in and see their youngest prince, the most beautiful one, Prince Charming.
This is it. October 2, 2020, and the whole world watched, and history remembered.
But the first time I saw you. Rio. I took that down to the gardens. I pressed it into the leaves of a silver maple and recited it to the Waterloo Vase. It didn’t fit in any rooms.
As your mother, I can appreciate that maybe this isn’t your fault, but as the president, all I want is to have the CIA fake your death and ride the dead-kid sympathy into a second term.
What are we even defending here, Philip? What kind of legacy? What kind of family, that says, we’ll take the murder, we’ll take the raping and pillaging and the colonizing, we’ll scrub it up nice and neat in a museum, but oh no, you’re a bloody poof? That’s beyond our sense of decorum! I’ve bloody well had it. I’ve sat about long enough letting you and Gran and the weight of the damned world keep me pinned, and I’m finished. I don’t care. You can take your legacy and your decorum and you can shove it up your fucking arse, Philip. I’m done.
What?" Henry shouts over the noise when he sees the look on Alex's face.
"My life is a cosmic joke and you're not a real person," Alex says, wheezing.
"What?" Henry yells again.
"I said, you look great, baby!.
He kisses Henry until it feels like he can’t breathe, until it feels like he’s going to forget both of their names and titles, until they’re only two people tangled up in a dark room making a brilliant, epic, unstoppable mistake.
I think perhaps Hamilton said it better in a letter to Eliza:
You engross my thoughts to intirely to allow me to think of anything else- you not only employ my mind all day; but you intrude upon my sleep. I meet you in every dream- and when I wake I cannot close my eyes again for ruminating on your sweetness.
The first slide says: SEXUAL EXPERIMENTATION WITH FOREIGN MONARCHS: A GRAY AREA. Alex wonders if it’s too late to swan dive off the roof.
On the map of you, my fingers could always find the green hills, Wales. Cool waters and a shore of white chalk. The ancient part of you carved out of stone in a prayerful circle, sacrosanct. Your spine's a ridge I'd die climbing.
If I could spread it out on my desk, I'd find the corner of your mouth where it pinches with my fingers, and I'd smooth it away and you'd be marked with the names of saints like all the old maps. I get the nomenclature now- saints' names belong to miracles.
Jesus Christ, it’s like they can see into your soul. Cornbread knows my sins, Henry. Cornbread knows what I have done, and he is here to make me atone.
Are you quite finished?" Henry says, sounding strangled. "Can you perhaps stop putting your sodding life in danger now?"
"Aw, you do care," Alex says. "I'm learning all your hidden depths today, sweetheart."
Henry exhales and slumps off him. "I can't believe even mortal peril will not prevent you from being the way you are.
I’ve always thought of myself as a problem that deserved to stay hidden. Never quite trusted myself, or what I wanted. Before you, I was all right letting everything happen to me. I honestly have never thought I deserved to choose.
When Alex was a kid, before anyone knew his name, he dreamed of love like it was a fairy tale, as if it would come sweeping into his life on the back of a dragon one day. When he got older, he learned about love as a strange thing that could fall apart no matter how badly you wanted it, a choice you make anyway. He never imagined it’d turn out he was right both times.
I don’t give a damn what Joanne has to say, Remus John Lupin is gay as the day is long, and I won’t hear a word against it.
fat and sexually conquered, snuffed out in the spring of my youth. Here lies Prince Henry of Wales. He died as he lived: avoiding plans and sucking cock.
He's not afraid of anything he feels. He's not afraid of saying it. He's only afraid of what happens when he does.
I'm really going to have you offed," Henry tells him. "You'll never see it coming. Our assassins are trained in discretion. They will come in the night, and it will look like a humiliating accident."
"Autoerotic asphyxiation?"
"Toilet heart attack."
"Jesus."
"You've been warned."
"I thought you'd kill me in a more personal way. Silk pillow over my face, slow and gentle suffocation. Just you and me. Sensual."
"Ha. Well." Henry coughs.
Just so we're clear, I'm about to have sex with you in this storage closet to spite your family. Like, that's what's happening?'
'Right.'
'Awesome, fuckin' love doing things out of spite.
The class is Ethical Issues in International Relations. He really has got to stop taking classes so painfully relevant to his life.
He rolls onto his side and listens, trails the back of his hand across the pillow next to him and imagines Henry lying opposite in his own bed, two parentheses enclosing 3,700 miles.
He wants to match the new freckles along Henry's nose to the stars above them and make him name the constellations.
Henry lets Alex take him apart with painstaking patience and precision, moans the name of God so many times that the room feels consecrated.
Diaz, you insane, hopeless romantic little shit," says the voice of the President of the United States, muffled in the bed. "It had better be forever. Be safe.
So, you can hate the heir to the throne all you want, write mean poems about him in your diary, but the minute you see a camera, you act like the sun shines out of his dick, and you make it convincing.
The crowd pushes him back into Henry's chest, and after absolutely everything, all the emails and texts and months on the road and secret rendezvous and nights of wanting, the whole accidentally-falling-in-love-with-your-sworn-enemy-at-the-absolute-worst-possible-time thing, they made it. Alex said they would- he promised. Henry's smiling so wide and bright that Alex thinks his heart's going to break trying to hold the size of this entire moment, the completeness of it, a thousand years of history swelling inside his rib cage.
A curious thing about grief is the way it takes your entire life, all those foundational years that made you who you are, and makes them so painful to look back upon because of the absence there, that suddenly they’re inaccessible. You must invent an entirely new system.
Er," Henry says, adding to the list of vowel sounds he has to show for himself. It is, unfortunately, also sexy. After all these weeks, the bar is low.
Oh, like, I thought we were already there with you being bi and everything. Sorry, are we not? Did I skip ahead again? My bad. Hello, would you like to come out to me? I'm listening.
Here,' Alex says, moving his own hips, 'watch me.'
With a grave gulp of champagne, Henry says, 'I am.
Anderson Cooper's face looms on the screen overhead like a disgustingly handsome Hunger Games cannon, announcing they're ready to call Florida.
'Come on, you backyard-shooting-range motherfuckers,' Zahra is muttering under her breath beside him when he falls in with his people.
'Did she just say backyard shooting range?' Henry asks, leaning into Alex's ear. 'Is that a real thing a person can have?'
'You really have a lot to learn about America, mijo,' Oscar tells him, not unkindly.
As usual, the day guard at the Dirksen Building glares at him as he slides through security. She’s certain he was the one who vandalized the sign outside one particular senator’s office to read BITCH MCCONNELL, but she’ll never prove it.
Alex makes a mental note to figure out which shadowy gay noble taught Henry all this and send the man a fruit basket.