Log -- Prince Henry || Alex Claremont-Diaz ‣ WHO: Prince Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor ||Alex Claremont-Diaz ‣ WHAT: Alex accepts Henry's invite to the not-party-pool-party ‣ WHEN: September 26th, 2020 ‣ WHERE: Phillip's place ‣ RATING | WARNINGS: Low || None ‣ STATUS: Complete || Log
Our similarities bring us to a common ground; our differences allow us to be fascinated by each other.
Henry & Alex
The not-party-pool-party was going well, friends had turned up as promised with food and drinks enjoying the pool and the many areas of Philip and Martha’s ridiculous mansion and Henry was for the first time that week not thinking about the still unfinished manuscript taunting him from the glaring depths of his computer.
It helped that once he and Daphne had got everything setup he’d changed into a pair of blue swimming trunks and lost himself in the pool. The only thing he had noticed that it was past twelve and there was still no sign of Alex, maybe he had decided against it? It was a possibility after all. Also, talking via Tinder and the network was one thing but meeting face to face? Entirely different.
Of course then heard a holler of his name and as he turned his head he saw one of his friends escorting Alex in from the front door. Immediately his face broke into a bright grin, and he took a few strong strokes across the pool, pulling himself out of it, water dripping from his figure. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming,” he shared as he reached for his towel.
Alex lifted a shoulder, pushing his shades up into his hair from where they have been resting on his nose. He had a bag on his shoulder and a six pack of beer in his hand, which he put down on a nearby table and then chuckled. “I said I’d be here,” he replied, eyes lingering for just a moment too long on a droplet of water running down Henry’s chest, “so here I am. Fashionably late. It’s only half an hour.”
In truth, he had debated not coming at all but knew that was rude and unkind after such a nice invitation. That being said, he had not been prepared for Henry to look like his Tinder profile picture. He had also not been prepared for the way that his body flushed a little and he felt a hot sensation run through him, a bit like when he was embarrassed or angry.
Alex was just as cute in person as he was in his Tinder profile picture, but he was straight and Henry respected the hell out of everybody’s right to enjoy their sexuality openly and without any form of harassment so he was going to be on his best behavior.
“Clearly you love to make an entrance,” he replied with a smooth grin.
He rubbed at his hair with his towel. “Thankfully you haven’t missed much except for the tour so that you know where everything is. Luckily for you I’m feeling generous so you get a one on one tour.” Henry winked, put his towel over his shoulder and crooked a long index finger for Alex to follow him.
“A one on one tour, huh?” Alex drawled with a lazy smirk.
He followed as Henry beckoned him with a curl of his finger that struck him as being a lot more sensual than it needed to be, but maybe that was just how Henry was? Effortlessly handsome and charming. Which sort of sucked, Alex didn’t need someone else effortlessly charming and handsome in his life: he was in his own life.
“Do you say that to all the boys you talk about Star Wars on Tinder with or am I just special?”
Henry chuckled. “I don’t talk to many boys about Star Wars on Tinder.” Or on Grindr for that matter, but that was the app for your causal hook up after all. Nobody cared enough about who you were or what you were into as long as you were down for fun and lots of it. “So consider yourself special in that regard.”
He began the tour with the standard kitchen, bathroom, living room and general communal areas before he expanded it into the floors and multiple rooms that led off more rooms. Honestly, did Phillip and Martha really need all this space? It just felt like a waste especially when there were people living on the streets.
“My ridiculous brother insisted on a steam room and a hot tub,” he explained as they rounded on those facilities. “Something stupid about how the steam helps his chest in winter. Never mind the fact we live in LA.”
“LA is pretty smoggy,” Alex said after a moment. He lifted his shoulder and then laughed. “Your brother sounds really pretentious, dude.” But living in a house like this, had he expected anything different? Henry, too, the way he typed - and spoke - he was clearly from some kind of posher upbringing than the rough and tumble Texas stock that Alex himself came from.
“So if you don’t talk to boys about Star Wars,” he looped back to their previous conversation, leaning against the wall of the hot tub which looked pretty appealing, “on Tinder, then what do you talk to boys on Tinder about? I struggle to imagine you just swapping dick pics and aubergine emojis.”
“I agree with you,” Henry shared with a smile. “He’s always been like that. Even when we were kids. Unfortunately age has done nothing but make him worse.” He turned his head to watch Alex as he reclined against the nearby wall, admiring the arch of his neck though not too obviously as well, he wasn’t that predatory.
“Surprisingly enough I don’t actually talk to many boys on Tinder.” He smirked. “I made that profile so that when my family asks me how my love life is going I can say that I’m on Tinder or whatever other heterosexual appropriate and accepted dating sites there are and they won’t think anything of it.”
He curled his hands in the fabric of the towel. “And most boys who ‘accidentally’ swipe right on me are quick to run in the opposite direction.”
“Dumb heteronormative dating apps,” Alex said with a breezy grin. It faltered only slightly when Henry’s hands curled around the edges of his towel and drew attention to the lines of his biceps, the curve of his hands.
Alex looked away, instead critically eyeing the long boards that made up the walls of the room. It was pretty warm, even just on the outside of the steam room. And he was by the hot-tub which was bubbling away behind him. He could feel the warmth of the air as it rose up caressing his lower back. It made him shiver a little.
“It’d make more sense to open most of the apps up to everyone and then just filter it out based on sexual preference within the app configuration, right? Rather than have twelve different types of app just so that fragile white dudes can be kept safe from potentially maybe seeing a penis.”
“If only,” Henry remarked with a smirk. “So, Alex, where do you want to start? The pool, the steam room or the hot-tub?” His head tipped and his eyes swept over Alex’s lithe build, appreciatively of course.
“You are definitely not dressed for any of those activities.”
“Oh ye of little faith,” Alex said, reaching up to pull his shirt off over his head. He was tanned, a lifetime in the Texan and Californian sun making his skin bronze. “I came prepared.”
He glanced at the hot tub, how there was no one in it and how this area felt almost private. He had his hands on the button of his jeans, belt hanging loose. “Don’t you have to go be a good host?”
Well, that was a sight and Henry for all his sins allowed himself a good look before he finally caught himself, glancing away when Alex’s hands strayed to the button holding his jeans in place.
“Mm, there is that,” he said, nod being given. “And I mean if you wanted to get rid of me, Alex, you could have just said.”
He smirked and turned on his heel, to head back to the rest of the party.
“Wait!” Alex fell right into the tease, missing it for what it was. “That wasn’t-”
His cheeks flushed a little. “You jerk, I don’t know anyone else. If you wanna go be all social and shit by all means. But I’m gonna get in the hot tub and wait for you to come join me.”
And with that, he slid out of his jeans and tossed them onto a nearby flat surface, leaving him in his board shorts. He toed off his shoes, pulled off his socks and then, without further ado, climbed in.
Henry let out a warm heartfelt laugh at Alex’s reaction to his tease and turned back around. The towel was rested over the back of a nearby chair and Henry like Alex climbed into the hot tub, sinking down into it with an appreciative sound. He stretched his arms across the sides of the hot tub and looked over at Alex.
“Yeah, no, I’m not about to abandon you especially as you correctly pointed out you don’t know anybody else. Daphne will take care of the rest of the guests, she’s amazing like that.”
“Oh, so I get the VIP treatment?” Alex teased, stretching his own arms out across the hot tub on the other side, opposite to where Henry had sunk into the water. That was good: Henry was very handsome (objectively speaking), and Alex found it was a little easier not to think about it while most of him was under the water.
He smirked, tipped his head back and letting out a slow breath. The water bubbled softly underneath them and he enjoyed the way he felt the water rippling against his skin. “Don’t I feel special.”
“Well it would be rude to abandon you when I was the one who invited you here,” Henry pointed out with a smirk. He tipped his head and sunk his fingers into his still damp hair, eyes flicking up to regard the golden skinned Texan.
“Besides, it’s not often I meet somebody of any interest on Tinder.”
Grindr was different, that was where he went when he had needs that required attention.
“Well, we’ve already agreed that Tinder’s a really dumb place full of heteronormative bullshit,” Alex pointed out, lifting his head again to look at Henry, right as he pushed his hair back from his face. “But I’m glad to not have disappointed you, Henry.”
He smirked a little, rolled his shoulders and sank a little further into the water. “I can’t believe your brother owns this house, it’s fucking huge.”
“That’s my brother for you.” Henry glanced up briefly and turned his head to look at the room they were in. “Ostentatious until the very end. Phillip does like to put his or rather the family’s wealth on show.”
Henry on the other hand lived comfortably but not to the same extreme as his brother.
“There’s only two of them at the moment so they literally don’t need all this space.”
“Well, how else can he show that he’s better than everyone if he lives in a house that’s the right size for him and his wife?” Alex drawled with a chuckle, ducking down lower so his shoulders got wet too. “I don’t get it, living somewhere this big. It probably feels really empty when you’re on your own. How big’s your place compared to this? If he’s rich, you must be too, right?”
“My place is a matchbox in comparison to this place,” Henry offered, lift of shoulders. “I don’t have the same penchant for showing off.” He lightly traced the nearby bubbles with the tips of his fingers. “And yes, I suppose you could say that. My parents' careers did afford us a very good comfortable upbringing with more than a little to see us over into adulthood.”
“At least you didn’t say ‘I’m not rich, my parents are’ which is standard rich kid speech for tryna say they’re rich without showing off.”
Alex dunked his head under the water and when he emerged again, his curls were flat against his head, skimming around his ears. He raked a hand through his hair and blinked away the water clinging to his eyelashes.
“Not being a show off is the better way to be, if you ask me. Ain’t no need to put on such a show. Just asking to get robbed.”
Henry didn’t fixate on Alex’s ridiculous eyelashes. That was not a thing that was happening. He threaded his fingers into his hair and snorted softly. “You are not wrong there.”
He sunk deeper into the water, letting the warm water and bubbles run over the length of his arms and across his chest.
“He does have state-of-the-art security though.”
Alex snorted. “Some criminals really are just that good,” he pointed out, flicking water over towards Henry with an easy movement. “So… your brother’s older than you? Do you have any other siblings or is it just the two of you?”
“I also have a sister who is also older than me.” Henry retaliated with a water flick of his own in Alex’s direction. “She’s nothing like Phillip, thankfully. Much more level-headed and down to earth. Beatrice also calls Phillip out on his shit which is amusing to watch.”
He tipped his head to look at Alex. “And you? Any siblings?”
“Older sister,” Alex said, flicking water back. “But wow, Henry, Beatrice and Phillip? Your family went in hard on the posh-person naming conventions, huh?”
“Does the older sister have a name?” Henry asked, smirking as a bigger flick of water was given in Alex’s direction. “And what can I say, my mother was hearkening back to a time when she was still living in England and hadn’t been in her words ‘dragged over to America by her husband for him to seek fame and fortune’.”
“Famous parents too, huh?” Alex asked, eyebrow arching and lips tugging into a smirk. “No wonder your brother’s house is stupidly big.”
He thought of his sister and the smirk turned into a fond smile. “June,” he said. “Her name’s June. She’s still in LA.”
“Both a bane and a blessing,” Henry remarked sagely.
He watched as the smirk on Alex’s face turned into a smile, fond at the edges. “Are you and your sister close?”
“As close as the children of diametrically opposed, but desperately in love parents can be,” Alex said with a shrug. “They divorced when I was a teenager, June and I kept each other sane. I’m guessing you're closer to your sister than your brother?”
Henry nodded. “Yeah, Beatrice is great. Nothing like Phillip.”
And that’s how Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor and Alex Claremont-Diaz discovered that they had more than just Star Wars and Tinder in common.