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In general, Henry didn’t much like the loo.
Not because he had any particularly bodily issue. Or at least, not usually. This was a rare exception, an uncomfortable one, certainly, but not the source of his discontent.
In his fevered delirium, his thoughts unwillingly drifted towards the past, the painful places Henry hated to go. Places of cracking his eyes open at midnight at the sound of sickness and hushed murmuring, places of padding silently across the hallways of a beloved cottage in Wales in his woolen socks to investigate the sounds emanating from the master bathroom. Even at the tail end of his adolescence, he hadn’t really grown out of his Sherlock Holmes phase. He knew to hide it from Philip—that, and other proclivities—who was now perhaps half a head shorter than him, but loomed large in Henry’s anxious mind. Such fascinations would earn him a disdainful eye roll at best, and a condescending Shouldn’t a prince be reading some of his country’s more current works? at worst.
Philip tended towards the worst, most times.
But Philip wasn’t here, so Henry put on his metaphorical Holmes-ian deerstalker cap and carefully pushed the oaken door of his parents’ bedroom open with a single finger, wincing at the slight creak from the hinge. A flicker of warning appeared in the back of his mind that maybe the noise coming from his parents’ room was something else entirely, something he should not be witnessing. But at the last moment, he concluded that the sound had seemed to be one of distress, not euphoria. He grimaced at the path his mind had went down before stepping across the threshold into the room.
The plush duvet lay rumpled and empty on top of their bed, like his parents had risen in a scramble. Henry had always liked this room. Memories of bouncing around on their bed as a chubby-cheeked toddler danced through his mind—” like the kangaroos from Australia, mum! ”—before being ousted by the pit of dread in his stomach.
When Henry was young, he had always wanted to visit the pyramids in Egypt, thrilled at the prospect of traipsing through tombs like the dashing Indiana Jones—honestly, how could anyone have ever thought he was straight—unafraid of the overhang of death. But now, he could see that tombs were a difficult place to be brave. This room, once full of kisses and bedtime stories from his parents, wasn’t supposed to feel like one, wasn’t supposed to be cold and foreboding.
The sliver of light from under the door to the toilet pulled him out of his thoughts.
Henry swallowed. He had been right about the distress. The sound of vomit froze him in place, panic seizing control of his body and locking his limbs rigid. The gentle soothing of his mother’s voice did nothing to quell the painful squeezing of his heart as his father emptied the contents of his stomach, of which Henry was sure there were few, into the toilet bowl.
In the back of his mind, he’d always known that chemotherapy was a difficult process. He’d known that there were inescapable side effects, and that his dad was hardly going to be the exception.
But in his heart of hearts, he’d hoped . Hoped that the untouchable James Bond, swashbuckling hero of Henry’s childhood, loving dance partner to the Princess, would escape this, like he’d escaped all manner of plights and foes. If he could jump chasms, duck lasers, survive shootouts unscathed, then what was a little tumor or chemical injection against Double-O-Seven?
Except Henry wasn’t a toddler anymore. He knew those weren’t real, and that this was. That it wasn’t just a little tumor.
Without realizing it, tears had begun to trickle down his cheeks. Angrily, he swiped them away with the back of his sleeve. He wasn’t the one collapsed over a toilet bowl, puking his guts out as the heir to the Crown wiped flecks of vomit from his pale lips.
“—get you some water, my love.”
Panic shot through Henry like a bullet. There was nothing improper, objectively with being caught here. He’d been woken up by a noise and came to investigate. But there was something so viscerally wrong with seeing his parents this way, seeing his father crumpled helplessly on the floor, seeing his mother with unshed tears glistening in her eyes as she tried desperately to save her lover. Even without seeing her, he knew the tears would be there. He could hear the quiver in her voice that she had tried to quell. He didn’t want to see them.
So he just wouldn’t, he decided. Or rather, his body decided for him as he bolted from their bedroom, racing back to his room and burying himself under the covers. Hiding from the truth like it would make it not the truth anymore.
Then the tiled floors of the loo had turned into the crisp white linoleum of the hospital. The somber birdsong of Welsh nights morphed into the shrill beeping of a heart monitor, and his father’s face had fallen from golden James Bond to a mask of sunken eyes and papery white skin, a man losing his battle for a last grasp at life. And then it was over.
Loos and hospitals, he decided, were two decidedly unfavorable places.
Which was why, Henry thought with some irritation, it was a cruel twist of fate that one often wound up on the floor of the loo while they were sick. As if vomiting his guts out wasn’t bad enough. At least it wasn’t bad enough to merit a hospital. Undoubtedly uncomfortable, and seemingly interminable, but not deathly.
Henry pressed his forehead against the cool porcelain, searching for any reprieve. Stomach bugs didn’t make much sense to him—after a certain point, how could one keep throwing up if there was nothing left in their belly? He was certain that he had already puked up the entirety of what he’d eaten before, but the nausea refused to let up. He squeezed his eyes shut as tears of frustration threatened to escape him. Wondered if his father had cried that night.
With his last shred of energy, Henry lay back on the floor, half of his back against the plush bath mat, the other half against the tile. Henry could not have been more uncomfortable than he was anyways, so he didn’t bother shifting, nor did he muster up the energy to dim the light. Tenuous sleep would find him regardless.
The hand against his forehead was warm, but strangely comforting.
Henry honestly hadn’t meant to fall asleep on the bathroom floor. In fact, considering how tricky his relationship with sleep was, he was surprised he had managed to at all. But as his eyes sluggishly fluttered open, he realized he had been slumbering.
“—you with me? Baby?”
Henry inhaled. The warm scent of Alex was like a soft blanket on a December night, all woodsiness and boyishness and spice. His curls was soft and ruffled, like he had rolled right out of bed. He nodded lethargically.
“Let’s get you back to bed.” He felt Alex’s hands reach around his shoulders and pull him slowly into a sitting position, wary of worsening Henry’s nausea by moving too fast. Henry was no help, but Alex didn’t seem to struggle. He was certainly in shape, but had a more lithe frame—a runner’s body. But Henry had noticed frequently that he was even stronger than he looked, and he was grateful for it now, as he flopped around pathetically. Half hysterically, he thought to himself that this was not the time to ogle his boyfriend, but he couldn’t help himself.
“What’s funny, baby?” Alex was looking at him with half a smile, worry still sketched faintly in the lines on his forehead. Henry hadn’t realized that a faint smile had reached his lips, the first smile in the hours since he felt the first hints of stomach flu. His tongue was heavy in his mouth, and he could still taste grit and traces of bile. So he just shook his head, leaning into Alex’s shoulder and pressing his face against the black cotton of his T-shirt.
Alex’s hand moved in comforting circles on his back. He stopped for a moment to brush the sweat-dried locks of hair away from Henry’s forehead before resuming his ministrations, crouched down with Henry for forever and not enough time.
“Let’s go to bed, Wales. Come on.” He patted him on the back softly, a gentle way of spurring him into action. Reaching his arms under Henry’s, Alex pulled him up unhurriedly, as if he was content to patiently wait for him as he rose centimeter by centimeter. Once he was up, he smoothly slipped his arm around his back, helping Henry inch towards the bed. Promptly, almost lazily, he flopped onto the rumpled covers, still warm from Alex’s body minutes before. Had he fallen on Alex’s side of the bed? He hadn’t realized.
Alex was completely unperturbed. He pulled the duvet over Henry, and Henry couldn’t help but marvel at how different this was to that night in Wales. This was being tucked into bed, not hiding your tears in the darkness. This was relief from misery, not running from it.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been navel-gazing, but it must have been long enough for Alex to go downstairs and fill a cool glass of water from the pitcher, because he heard a clink against the nightstand next to him.
“Use a coaster,” he croaked. Even indisposed, old habits died hard.
Alex snickered without heat, and Henry could feel his eye roll on a cellular level, even with his own eyes shut. “Try again, smartass.”
Henry cracked one eye open to find the cup sitting on a gleaming coaster, a photo of David wearing Mickey Mouse’s Fantasia hat, overlaid by a smooth square of glass. A trash can had also been thoughtfully placed in front of him, nearly flush against the side of the bed.
Whatever. He had the stomach flu. He could forgo an apology this once. With a newfound calm, Henry found himself drifting off again, now snug under the covers he had thrown off in feverish desperation an age ago. His eyes closed as the lights dimmed. As the black edges of exhaustion closed in around him, he felt Alex’s warm lips press against the side of his head, a ward against nightmares, a good luck charm.
In the last moments before he drifted off, Henry wondered if, at the end of his agony and sickness, his father had felt as he did—grateful to have someone see you at your weakest and love you all the same.
He hoped so.