Chapter Twenty-Four
Kensington Palace was not, despite what tourists believed, a single building.
It was a sprawl of apartments and courtyards and state rooms connected by corridors that hadn’t been meaningfully updated since Victoria decided she’d rather live somewhere else.
James’s private apartments were in the south wing, accessed through a side entrance guarded by two Metropolitan Police officers who nodded at Barnaby and ran their gaze over Lex.
Lex had not spoken since the entrance hall.
His mouth was open. His eyes were travelling across the ceiling, which was gilded and painted with allegorical figures.
Barnaby followed his gaze upward. The painted sky was deep cobalt, threaded with gold leaf, and the figures had been sharpened by the restoration work recently done on it. It really was gorgeous. He’d forgotten.
“Close your mouth, Lex.” Lex closed his mouth. He opened it again three seconds later when they turned a corner and encountered an eight-foot portrait of George III in full coronation regalia. “And avert your eyes. All the gilt can get a bit much.”
“There’s a bloke on a horse on the ceiling, Barns.”
“That’s William III. He’s been there since 1700.”
They passed through a set of double doors held open by a page, down a corridor lined with paintings. Lex walked with the careful, wide-legged caution of someone terrified of destroying something that cost more than his flat.
James’s sitting room was at the end of the corridor.
It was the one room in the apartment that felt lived-in rather than curated, featuring deep sofas in faded blue linen, a coffee table stacked with books and briefing papers, and a rug that had been walked on by enough protection officers and Jack Russells to have lost its original pattern.
The windows looked out over the gardens, and the late afternoon light came in grey and even through the glass.
An afternoon tea had been laid on the low table, with a cafetière beside it for anyone who preferred coffee. Lex went at it immediately. He dropped onto the sofa, pulled the sandwich stand toward him, and ate two egg and cress triangles in the time it took Barnaby to sit down.
James was not eating. He was standing at a side table near the window, where Benton had deposited the armload of fan offerings collected outside the school.
There were letters, drawings, printed images, and a handmade card shedding an alarming quantity of glitter onto the mahogany.
James was flicking through the stack with the attention he typically reserved for documents from his red box.
Barnaby registered the danger of this a fraction too late.
James had stopped flicking through the pile. He was holding a single sheet of paper, A4, printed on both sides, the text dense and tightly packed. His hazel eyes moved across the first paragraph and his mouth twitched.
“No.” Barnaby set his coffee down. “James. Put it down.”
James did not put it down. His expression took on the particular gleam that Barnaby had last seen the night before James’s coronation, when Vidal had presented him with a crown made entirely of Haribo gummy rings and demanded he rehearse his vows wearing it.
“James, whatever that is, I am asking you, as your oldest friend—”
“Benton.” James didn’t look up from the page. His voice was pleasant and measured. “Would you mind terribly closing the door?”
Benton, who had been arranging the remaining fan mail into neat stacks, crossed to the door and pulled it shut with a soft, final click. Barnaby’s dread intensified.
James cleared his throat. He held the page at a distance that suggested he was about to deliver an address to Parliament.
“‘Chapter One,’” he read. “‘The Locker Room. By BLEXual_Healing.’”
Barnaby lunged off the armchair. James sidestepped him easily, having had lots of practice dodging Barnaby’s attempts to snatch things from him since they were thirteen, and continued reading in his plummiest, most formal register.
It was the voice he used for the annual King’s Speech, and it made the words coming out of his mouth sound all the more obscene.
“‘Lex pressed Barnaby against the cold tile wall. Water from the showers cascaded over their entwined bodies. “You want this, don’t you, my lord?” Lex growled, his voice husky with desire. Barnaby could only nod, his aristocratic composure crumbling—’”
“Give me the paper, James.”
“’—as Lex’s strong, calloused hands, hands that had won two Olympic golds and also apparently several MMA championships—’” James paused. “They’ve given you a mixed martial arts career, Lex. Congratulations.”
“Cheers.” Lex, who had not stopped eating, bit into a scone. The cream shot out on the other side, and Lex licked at it in a way that Barnaby was pretty sure he didn’t mean to look obscene, but did, in the context of what was being read aloud at that moment.
“’—calloused hands travelled down the pale, quivering—’” James’s voice achieved a register of such crystalline seriousness that it could have been carved into marble. “’—the pale, quivering plane of Barnaby’s aristocratic abdomen.’”
“My abdomen doesn’t quiver.”
“It is here. It’s doing quite a lot of quivering, actually. Your whole body is, by paragraph three.” James scanned ahead. “‘His quivering thighs. His quivering lip. His quivering—’ ah.” James’s eyebrows rose. “Even your arsehole is quivering, Bash.”
Barnaby stopped lunging. He stood in the middle of the sitting room, breathing hard, his hands at his sides. Lex was watching them from the sofa with his legs spread wide, a smoked salmon sandwich in one hand, and another in his mouth.
“‘Lex positioned the turgid length of his manhood—’” James paused, and Barnaby watched him make a decision about whether to continue.
“’—the turgid length of his manhood at Barnaby’s entrance.
“Are you ready, my lord?” he breathed. “I was born ready,” Barnaby whispered, his grey eyes glistening with unshed tears and barely contained lust.’”
“I have never in my life said ‘I was born ready.’ I would sooner die.”
“‘With one powerful thrust, Lex drove home—’” James held the pause with the timing of a man who had been trained since birth to command a room. “’—deep into his warmth.’”
The sitting room was silent. Lex bit into his second scone.
“‘Their bodies moved together in a passionate rhythm, Barnaby’s moans echoing off the tiled walls of the locker room as Lex claimed him, body and soul, his turgid—’”
“You’ve already said turgid.”
“BLEXual_Healing has said turgid. I’m just the vessel through which their words flow.
” James turned the page. “There’s more. Shall I continue?
There’s a section where Lex carries you to a bench and does something that I believe contravenes at least two laws of physics, and then you say ‘harder, my champion’ while gripping his—”
Barnaby crossed the room in four strides. He tackled James around the midsection with the full force of a man whose dignity had been dismantled paragraph by paragraph, and they went sideways into the sofa. The page flew from James’s hand and drifted to the carpet. James was still laughing.
Benton bent, picked up the fallen page, and placed it on the side table with the rest of the fan mail. “Shall I refresh the tea, sir?” he asked, addressing the room at large.
Lex, still on the sofa, reached for the Victoria sponge. “Yeah, go on.”
“I am going to stuff those pages down your throat, James.” Barnaby snarled.
“Benton will protect me.”
“I will not, sir,” Benton said, from the side table. He met Barnaby’s eyes with the steady, unblinking solidarity of a man who had chosen his side and made peace with the constitutional implications.
James peeled himself off the floor, straightened his polo shirt, and crossed to the sofa where Lex was sitting. He dropped onto the cushion beside him and immediately reached for the sandwich stand.
Lex smacked his hand away.
“Oi.” Lex pulled the stand closer to his own knees. “Get your own. There’s a whole tray over there.”
“That tray is twelve feet away, and I’ve just been physically assaulted.”
“There’s cucumber sandwiches on that tray. The little ones with the crusts cut off.”
“I don’t want those. I want the smoked salmon.”
“Tough.” Lex ate a smoked salmon triangle while maintaining eye contact. “These are mine. I claimed them. Benton’s my witness.”
James laughed. It was short and bright and full of surprised pleasure.
Barnaby stood in the middle of the sitting room watching the two of them bicker over sandwiches.
They’d found a frequency between them that had nothing to do with Barnaby, and everything to do with two men who recognised something in each other that they liked.
James leaned back against the sofa, conceding the sandwich battle, and turned to Lex. “How does it feel, then? Being a pop culture phenomenon?”
Lex snorted. “Mate, I was a pop culture phenomenon before BLEX was even a thing. Two Olympic golds, a Nike deal. I was on the cover of GQ in nothing but boxing shorts and baby oil a few months back.” He jerked his chin toward Barnaby. “It’s Barns who’s new to it all.”
“I am not new to it.” Barnaby crossed back to the armchair and sat down. “I’ve been in the public eye my entire life. I was photographed at Royal Ascot when I was four.”
James’s mouth curved. “So you think there was fanfiction about you before the BLEX phenomenon, then?”
Barnaby opened his mouth to respond, and then closed it, because there was no version of that answer that ended well.
James was already on his mobile. His thumb moved across the screen with a fluency that belied the fact that he had three separate private secretaries whose entire job was to manage his digital existence. His eyes widened.
“Barnaby.” His voice had gone very quiet. “There’s fiction about you and me.”
Barnaby made a sound. It came from somewhere deep in his diaphragm, a noise of soul-deep anguish that bypassed language entirely and expressed, in a single exhalation, the full weight of his suffering at the hands of the internet, the Crown, and every person who had ever owned a laptop and a romantic imagination.
He crossed the room and collapsed onto the sofa beside Lex, folding forward until his forehead rested on Lex’s thigh.
Lex’s hand found his hair. His blunt fingers pushed his fringe aside, slow and easy, and Barnaby closed his eyes and let the touch settle over him.
“Punch him,” Barnaby said into Lex’s leg. “I want you to punch him right in the mouth.”
“Can’t punch the King, Barns. Pretty sure that’s treason.”
“You have enough money to see you through a lawsuit.”
“Eat something.” Lex lifted a smoked salmon sandwich and held it against Barnaby’s mouth.
Barnaby bit into it without raising his head, chewing sideways against Lex’s thigh, which was undignified and uncomfortable and he did not care.
The salmon was good. Lex’s hand was still in his hair, his fingers massaging his scalp.
The room quieted. James set his mobile aside and watched as Barnaby sat up, brushing crumbs from his lip with the back of his hand.
“I’m getting it from every side,” Barnaby said.
He leaned back against the sofa, his shoulder pressed to Lex’s arm.
“The public. You. My parents. Perry’s sent me a twenty-page social media strategy with a monetisation framework. ”
James’s expression shifted. The amusement drained from it, leaving something careful and still. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped between them. “What did your parents say to you about Lex?”
The question was gentle, but it had edges. James knew the Duke and Duchess. He knew how they communicated, and the oblique architecture of their affection.
“They told me to ring Tarquin Acaster,” Barnaby said. “Lord Ickworth’s eldest. He’s had a baby with his partner David, through surrogacy. My mother wanted me to know that David has settled in marvellously.” He paused. “In spite of his Australianness.”
James’s eyes went soft. “That’s basically a seal of approval, Bash.”
“I know what it is.”
Lex grunted beside him. Barnaby glanced sideways. There was a smear of cream on Lex’s cheek, a pale crescent caught in the hollow beneath his cheekbone from the scone he’d demolished three minutes ago. Barnaby wiped it away with his thumb, his hand steady.
“Your father gave me a flat cap,” Lex said. “From the cloakroom. Said it was his spare. And that there’s a walking stick waiting for me at Chatham House.”
“A walking stick,” Barnaby repeated.
“Blackthorn. From the hedge where he gets the sloes.” Lex stretched his arm along the back of the sofa, behind Barnaby’s shoulders. “He said every man who walks the estate needs a proper stick.”
James picked up his tea. He held the cup in both hands, his thumbs resting on the rim, and looked at Lex with the direct, steady attention that the Crown deployed when it was making a decision of state.
“Good,” James said. “Bring it when you come down to Highgrove. The footpaths are murder in October.”
The words landed and Barnaby swallowed.
Highgrove in October. When, not if. As though it were already in the diary.
Barnaby looked at James. His eyes were hot. James returned his gaze without a twinkle in his eye, or any performance at all. This was just the face of a man who was telling him that Lex Murphy was welcome, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
Barnaby breathed. Lex’s arm was warm behind his shoulders.
Everyone he loved had said yes to Lex.
His heart had said yes in a common room in Tokyo, watching this man eat squid ink crisps out of spite. His head had said yes on a walk across his father’s parkland.
But his body, which had seized and locked and refused to let Lex inside him in any of the ways that mattered — his body was still the limiter. The one door that hadn’t opened. The one yes he couldn’t give.
He leaned into Lex’s side. Lex’s arm came down from the back of the sofa and settled across his shoulders, heavy and warm. Barnaby pressed his face into the curve of Lex’s neck and breathed him in.
Lex’s mouth pressed against his temple. “All right, Barns?”
“Yes,” Barnaby said. He closed his eyes. “I’m fine.”
He wasn’t. Because the distance between where he was and where he wanted to be had never felt so precisely, agonisingly narrow.