Casey McQuiston

Je repense à l'histoire, et je me demande si (et comment) elle se souviendra de moi. Et de toi aussi, d'ailleurs. Au passage, ca aurait de la gueule si on écrivait toujours comme ça aujourd'hui, tu ne trouves pas ?
L'histoire, hein ?
Elle est en marche ! Et je te parie qu'on pourrait changer les choses, si on essayait...

Parfois, justement, il faut ouvrir la porte au chagrin, l'éprouver, parce qu'il mérite de l'être.

— Ce n’est qu’une hypothèse, bien sûr… Mais tu n’as jamais remarqué que c’est toujours toi qui m’abordes, et jamais l’inverse ? poursuit Henry d’un ton scrupuleusement poli. Et qu’à chaque fois, je me montre toujours d’une parfaite courtoisie ? Et pourtant, te revoilà encore collé à mes basques. C’est toi qui viens me chercher. (Il avale une gorgée de champagne.) Simple remarque, bien sûr.

"Right, because it's so hard to get a date when you're a prince."

Henry cuts his eyes back down to Alex. "You'd be surprised."

"How? You're not exactly lacking for options."

Henry keeps looking at him, holding his gaze for two seconds too long. "The options I'd like..." he says, dragging the words out. "They don't quite seem to be options at all."

Alex blinks. "What?"

"I'm saying that I have... people... who interest me," Henry says, turning his body toward Alex now, speaking with a fumbling pointedness, as if it means something. "But I shouldn't pursue them. At least not in my position."

Are they too drunk to communicate in English? He wonders distantly if Henry knows any Spanish.

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," Alex says.

"You don't?"

"No."

"You really don't?"

"I really, really don't."

Henry's whole face grimaces in frustration, his eyes casting skyward like they're searching for help from an uncaring universe. "Christ, you are as thick as it gets," he says, and he grabs Alex's face in both hands and kisses him.

Ci-gît Henry, Prince de Galles. Il périt comme il avait vécu, fuyant les responsabilités et suçant des queues.

Je ne sais pas quoi faire de ma vie, comment être une adulte, en somme. C’est quand même dingue : on démarre tous avec une vague idée de ce qu’on aime faire, des passe-temps, des passions, et puis, un jour, chacun finit par trouver le métier qui le fait vibrer. Prends un individu normal, par exemple : il vit sa vie tranquillement et puis, un jour, il décide de se faire architecte ou banquier, ou avocat, ou tueur en série qui fabrique des bijoux à base de dents humaines. Tout ça pour dire qu’on finit tous par être définis par ce que l’on fait. Et si ce n’était pas mon cas ? Et si je n’avais jamais voulu être autre chose qu’August, tout simplement?

Once, there was a young prince who was born in a castle. His mother was a princess scholar, and his father was the most handsome, feared knight in all the land. As a boy, people would bring him everything he could ever dream of wanting. The most beautiful silk clothes, ripe fruit from the orangery. At times, he was so happy, he felt he would never grow tired of being a prince.

He came from a long, long line of princes, but never before had there been a prince quite like him: born with his heart on the outside of his body.

The next thing he knows, he's tripping over his own foot and stumbling backward into the table nearest him. He notices too late that the table is, to his horror, the one bearing the massive eight-tier wedding cake, and he grabs for Henry's arm to catch himself, but all it does is throw both of them off-balance and send them crashing together into the cake stand.

He watches, as if in slow motion, as the cake leans, teeters, shudders, and finally tips. There's absolutely nothing he can do to stop it. It comes crashing down onto the floor in an avalanche of white buttercream, some kind of sugary $75,000 nightmare.

The room goes heart-stoppingly silent as momentum carries him and Henry through the fall and down, down onto the wreckage of the cake on the ornate carpet. Henry's sleeve still clutched in Alex's fist. Henry's glass of champagne has spilled all over both of them and shattered, and out of the corner of his eye, Alex can see a cut across the top of Henry's checkbone beginning to bleed.

For a second, all he can think as he stares up at the ceiling while covered in frosting and champagne is that at least Henry's dance with June won't be the biggest story to come out of the royal wedding.

His next thought is that his mother is going to murder him in cold blood.

On peut toujours essayer. On peut toujours se démonter pour se reconstruire en partant de zéro, se transporter aux quatre coins du globe, se confectionner une nouvelle enveloppe en cousant les restes de milliers d'autres individus et lieux. On peut chercher à changer qui on est, mais quand tout est dit, il reste un endroit au pied du lit où laisser tomber ses bottes, et c'est le même chaque soir.
Toujours le même.

You're literally putting your dick in the leader of a foreign state, who is a man, at the biggest political event before the election, in a hotel full of reporters, in a city full of cameras, in a race close enough to fucking hinge on some bullshit like this, like a manifestation of my fucking stress dreams, and you're asking me not to tell the president about it?