The Unravelling

Author's Note: This piece contains references to sexual assault. While the act itself is not explicitly portrayed, the events preceding and following it are discussed. I crafted this work as a form of emotional outlet, and some aspects are loosely informed by my own experiences as a victim of assault. I spent many years wrestling with untreated mood swings, denial, guilt, and anger, which I have since come to understand may be symptoms of Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS). Please proceed with caution and prioritise your emotional well-being. The Unravelling refers to the difficult journey Alex has in front of him, which are set up by the events of this first chapter. I am not sure if I will continue this or not, but here is the introduction.

…..

The neon lights of New York City shone through the apartment's windows, casting an erratic dance of colours onto the sticky, hardwood floor. Alex tapped his untouched gin and tonic against his lips, not really tasting, not really swallowing. The glass felt cold, alien in his hand.

His eyes swept the room: laughter collided in the air and people clinked their glasses in toasts he wasn't part of. Faces blurred into a wash of artificial joviality. And through it all, the bassline from the music system throbbed, distant and intrusive.

He hadn't wanted to be there. But James, his persistent puppy-dog of a classmate, had left him with little choice. "Come on, it'll be fun," James insisted, eyes alight with that desperate sort of enthusiasm that Alex couldn't easily ignore. With Henry tied up in family business in England and June visiting friends in Texas, the walls of his own apartment seemed on the verge of closing in. So, he had caved, convincing himself that the loneliness would be more bearable surrounded by strangers than haunted by empty rooms.

Outside, the imagined silhouette of Cash hovered. The meticulous security sweep before letting him in had been a robotic ordeal, Cash's stern eyes scanning the place as if looking for flaws in a masterpiece. It was an embarrassment Alex could have done without, a glaring signpost that said: "You don't belong here, not really."

Around him, a few heads turned, conversations paused and resumed; he knew they recognised him. The intense public outing he and Henry went through might as well have been yesterday for how bright the spotlight still felt. He had wondered how many guests resented his presence, perhaps their parents' conservative beliefs trickling down into quiet, judgemental stares. The queer Mexican kid fucking an English Prince doesn't belong, not even in New York.

"Hey, you're Alex, right?" A voice punctured his thoughts, too eager, too expectant.

"Yeah, that's me," Alex replied, and for a moment, he allowed himself a thin smile, a minor surrender to the world around him.

"Can I get you another drink?" The stranger asked, gesturing to the gin in Alex's warm, brown hand. "You don't seem to be enjoying what you've got so far."

"Sure," Alex said, relieved at the offer. He had begun to think his role at this party was to be the famous freak in the corner to be gawked at but too dangerous to approach. Maybe — he had thought with a grim smile — all their parents were Republicans. He was pretty sure this party had become his worst nightmare. He was a stark contrast to the bold, loud, confident, brazen partier he had been only a year before. Alex had put on a brave face for Henry and his family, but the way they had been outed, the way their inner secrets and feelings had been exposed to the whole world, left him feeling more vulnerable than he had ever felt before- even now. This party, all these eyes, reminded him of that more than ever. At least this stranger had had the nerve to approach him still, which Alex was grateful for.

The young man flashed Alex a grin and sauntered off to the bar, his tall frame floating easily through the crowd. He manoeuvred himself through the sea of faces with an ease that seemed almost predatory. Alex had taken the opportunity to size him up: blonde, handsome, exuding a sense of laid-back confidence. In some strange way, he reminded Alex of Henry, but rougher around the edges, less polished.

Alex watched him weave through the crowd, fluid as water, comfortable in a space that had felt like a noose around Alex's own neck. He had looked like he could belong anywhere — and for a fleeting moment, Alex hated him for it.

He had thought of Henry — his Henry — immaculate, loyal, loving; away in England tending to unavoidable family obligations. Alex's hands had clenched around his untouched drink. "I wish you were here, love," Henry's voice echoed in his head, a thread of a memory from their phone call earlier.

And for the first time that evening, Alex had taken a sip of his gin and tonic. It had tasted bitter, and that had felt right.

When the stranger returned, he presented Alex with a cocktail, its colour a mesmeric blend of coral and rose.

"Something sweet and complex. Reminds me a bit of you," the stranger declared, handing him the glass.

Alex laughed, surprising himself. "Nice line, man."

"Only the best for the best," the young man quipped, winking. "I'm Blake, by the way."

As they talked, Blake had to lean in closer to make himself heard over the pounding music.

"How's New York treating you compared to, say, royal life?"

"It's like comparing Dickens to Fitzgerald—both have their grandeur, their tragedies," Alex mused. "I'd say a royal palace is Shakespearean—a timeless setting where you play your part."

"A world you're part of now, thanks to Henry," Blake quipped, resting an elbow against the wall.

"Yes, a world of tiaras and tapestries," Alex gestured at the discordant symphony of New York life around him. "But also this—a city of skyscrapers and subways. They're different."

Blake, now noticeably more intense, seemed to tunnel into Alex's psyche. "Doesn't that duality weigh on you? The dichotomy of being with a royal and yet also being a creature of this chaotic city?"

Alex allowed himself a sliver of vulnerability. "Yes, sometimes. But I think there's a liminal beauty in that tension. It makes both worlds more meaningful."

Blake scoffed softly. "Meaning is overrated. You should chase what you truly want."

"I didn't realise I was talking to such a postmodernist. Henry will be thrilled; he loves a bit of philosophy at fun, casual parties."

"Oh, I don't do casual," Blake winked at him again.

Alex blushed. His head started to spin. How strong was this cocktail? Alex tried to refocus his eyes and knew he needed to remind Blake that he had a gorgeous boyfriend he was waiting for. "Casual is off the cards with Henry and me. We had to do official royal portraits when the family officially announced that he was courting me. I mean, what century are we in?"

Blake smirked. "Sounds exhausting. Ever feel like ditching it all and going off-script?"

"Who says we haven't thought about it? Running off together and leaving everything behind in flames? We love each other though, and that's enough. Life's not simple, but we make it work," Alex admitted.

"Maybe we complicate things more than we need to," Blake said, locking eyes with Alex as if challenging him to defy this notion.

Alex looked around the room, frowning. Alex was a natural flirt, but Blake was quite intense. Alex guessed he probably was used to getting what he wanted, being ludicrously good-looking. He didn't have Henry's sweetness, though. Not seeing any outs, Alex told himself he was being silly and took another sip of his ridiculously strong, sugary drink. He was there to have fun and, as Nora and June kept telling him, he needed more friends than just them and Henry.

As the night wore on, Blake assumed the role of Alex's personal bartender, keeping the drinks coming, orchestrating a crescendo of inebriation that enveloped Alex in a velvet haze of euphoria. The New York evening, once defined by its neon luminescence, now blurred into a dreamlike tapestry of swirling colours and indistinct laughter. In other less prattish words – prattish, a fun new term he had learned from Henry: He was pretty sure he was drunker than he had ever been in his entire life. How many had he had? Seven? Eight? Surely more than that; he couldn't remember ever being such a lightweight. Everything started to blur together, and there was a buzzing in his head, a feeling he wasn't sure he had ever felt before—what on Earth was in these drinks?

Alex leaned forward, about to tell Blake that he needed to go—but Blake did something unexpected— at least Alex thought it was unexpected.

The kiss was wet, sloppy, and rough.

And blurry.

Where was he again?

The music was so loud.

Alex opened his mouth to the kiss and moaned; he had been missing this, dreaming about it all day.

Henry smiled at him, looking different in the light. He wanted to kiss Henry back, but the kiss left Alex unsettled for some reason.

Something was off, and he couldn't quite figure out what.

"I'm not feeling very well," Alex was surprised at how slurred his voice sounded. How many drinks had he had? Nine? Ten? Not enough to be feeling like this.

"I need to go," he tried to push past Henry and stumbled, tripping over his own feet. Something didn't feel right; he couldn't remember ever feeling quite this dazed or drunk. He felt strong arms catch him as he started to fall.

"Whoa there love, you can't go anywhere, not in a state like this," Henry's voice was soft, full of concern.

"I'm going to be sick," Alex moaned, his voice not sounding like his own.

"I live here too; James is my flatmate. Come up; let's get you upstairs, away from this music," Henry's voice was soft but commanding, and his hand had felt strong and sure as he pulled Alex up the stairs behind him.

…

When morning light invaded through the gaps of unfamiliar curtains, Alex's head felt like it was splitting open. He winced, momentarily disoriented, and then reality sank in like a stone in deep water. The naked man in bed beside him wasn't Henry. He looked down, dreading what he already knew. He was naked and felt the ache, the burn of sex that had been rushed, like when he and Henry were in too much of a state to prep properly and their bodies regretted it the next morning. He already knew what he would see when he turned his head to the nightstand.

As expected, lube and an open condom wrapper. Not Henry's brand. Alex gingerly picked up the discarded wrapper, yellow and tacky, not a brand Henry would have bought in a million years. What had he done? Alex couldn't remember.

Alex felt sick to his stomach. How could he do this to Henry?

Parts of it started coming back. The naked stranger—Blake—introducing himself, the flirting, the drinks—too many drinks, and then blank. Nothing. How had he ended up in someone else's bed?

Why couldn't he remember it? He could feel it—the ache, the burn, the phantom touches on his skin—but he couldn't remember it. He didn't understand.

Panic set in, each heartbeat pounding in his skull like a drum. His stomach churned; bile rose in his throat. Clutching his hands over his mouth, he scrambled out of bed and bolted for the bathroom.

He barely made it in time. Doubling over the toilet, he vomited violently, as if his body wanted to expel more than just the alcohol and bad decisions of the night before. When the retching finally stopped, he flushed, looked at himself in the mirror, and felt another wave of nausea.

There were at least two hickeys on his neck. He couldn't remember how they got there. This wasn't him. He had made mistakes before, but nothing like this—nothing that cut into the core of who he was and what he wanted. And he wanted Henry. God, how he wanted Henry.

Shakily, he washed his face, rinsed his mouth, and stumbled back into the room, where Blake was now awake, looking tired but otherwise unbothered.

"Morning," Blake drawled, a hint of satisfaction in his voice. He looked like Henry, in a bland kind of way. Was that why Alex had done it? Had he been so horny that any man who vaguely looked like Henry would do?

"I have to go," Alex said, his voice flat. He dressed in a hurried frenzy, each movement a stab at his pounding headache and an ache in his heart. He couldn't find his boxers; his eyes quickly darted over the room, but he couldn't see them—he was still foggy. He shoved his jeans on anyway without them and winced; he could feel a tear—how rough had they been last night? He and Henry weren't really into the rough stuff.

"Bit early for the walk of shame, isn't it?" Blake called after him, but Alex was already out the door, leaving behind a room and a mistake he wished he could erase from existence.

As Alex emerged from James and Blake's apartment, the fading resonance of laughter and music leaked into the early morning air- the party was still going it seemed, even in the early hours of the morning. Cash, slumped against the wall, straightened abruptly as his eyes surveyed Alex from head to toe as the front door slammed shut behind him—taking in his dishevelled hair, rumpled clothing, and particularly the unsteady gait that was not entirely free of a limp. Cash's brow furrowed, his professional demeanour visibly wrestling with his personal concern for Alex.

Cash watched as Alex limped a step closer, clearly agitated. "You alright there, bud?" He probed cautiously.

Alex fixed a sharp glare on Cash. "I'm fine," he replied tersely, leaving an icy pause in the air.

Not convinced, Cash took a half-step closer, his eyes tracing Alex's disarray before pausing on the limp. "Alex, you don't look right. Are you sure you're okay?"

"Did I stutter? I said I'm fine," Alex snapped, his voice now serrated with an edge of hostility that Cash was unaccustomed to hearing. This was not the Alex he knew. Had he taken something? Party drugs were not Alex's thing. Well not normally. At least not for the Alex he knew.

Ignoring the tension, Cash persisted, his eyes locked onto Alex's. "It's not typically my job to pry, but —you're limping, for Christ's sake."

A flare of anger ignited in Alex's eyes. "Alright, you really want to know? I'm a slut, Cash. I cheated on Henry, the love of my life. Satisfied? Now stop fucking prying. It's none of your business," he spat out, each word landing like a jab.

Cash recoiled as if slapped, his eyes widening in disbelief. The line between his professional duty and his personal concern for Alex blurred perilously in that moment. "Alex, I—"

"No 'Alex, I' anything," Alex cut him off, seething. "You've got your answer, so let's drop it."

Both men were momentarily anchored in an oppressive silence, a storm cloud hanging over them. Cash turned away stiffly, every muscle taut as if ready for combat. Alex followed, each step heavier than the last.

They made their way back to Alex's apartment in a silence so thick it was almost tactile. Cash wanted to speak, to offer some thread of comfort, but held his tongue. The unspoken tension was an invisible barrier neither was willing to cross, each step a punctuation mark in a conversation that hung suspended in the charged air.

As Alex navigated the streets, ignoring Cash's insistence that they should take a car, the New York skyline looked oppressive, its towering heights a cruel reflection of how low he had just sunk. His phone buzzed: a message from Henry. "Is it too early for me to be thinking about your cock?"

His eyes stung.. He had thought the distance between them was hard, but now he added an immeasurable weight—an emotional distance that felt like a chasm.

His phone buzzed again. "Missing you. Call me when you're awake."

Alex couldn't answer.

He got back to their—Henry's—brownstone and sat on the edge of their bed, phone still in hand. His thumb hovered over the screen, wrestling with whether to call Henry and confess everything or keep it buried, to avoid the man he loved hating him for the rest of their lives. The thought of lying to Henry twisted his insides, but the idea of confessing, of hurting Henry with the truth, felt equally unbearable. He was stuck, weighed down by the magnitude of his mistake and the uncertainty of how to make it right—if making it right was even possible.

Taking a shaky breath, he opened his phone and hovered over Henry's number. He was about to break the heart of the love of his life over a dumb fling he couldn't even remember.

Alex hesitated, his thumb hovering over Henry's contact name on the screen before sliding away. He just couldn't do it.

A gut feeling he couldn't explain washed over him.

His thumb swerved, almost of its own accord, to tap on Senator Rafael Luna's name instead. He hesitated for a moment, then pressed the dial button before he could talk himself out of it. He couldn't face the guilt and shame of admitting to Henry he had cheated on him yet. He couldn't face calling his parents, Nora, or June. Their betrayed, horrified faces wouldn't leave his mind, of them finding out he is not the man they thought he was. Rafael would listen and not judge; Rafael had seen him at his worst and best already.

The phone rang four times. Just as Alex was about to hang up, thinking Luna wouldn't answer, his friend's voice broke through.

"Alex? It's five in the morning. Is everything alright?"

His voice trembled as he spoke. "Fuck, Rafael. It's far from alright. I've fucked everything up."

There was a pause on the other end of the line, a breath as Luna took in the weight of Alex's words. "Okay. Deep breaths. I'm here. Tell me what happened."

Summoning up the courage, Alex recounted the night's events, not sparing himself from the grim details. He rambled on and on, for about twenty minutes. Rafael didn't interrupt; he just listened. "... And now there's this emptiness inside me, and I can't face Henry. I can't even face myself. What do I do, Rafael?"

When Alex finally stopped talking, he wasn't even sure he was coherent and was pretty sure he had repeated the same details at least five times. Luna remained silent for what felt like an eternity. The quiet was so pervasive that Alex heard his own frenetic breathing filling the space between them.

"Alex, listen to me carefully. What you're describing doesn't sound like you. You couldn't remember anything after you stumbled, you said?"

"Right, it's all a blur. I feel sick just thinking about it."

"Alex, a few things don't add up here," Luna spoke carefully, slowly. "You've described a situation where you're not even certain what you've done, yet you woke up in pain and disoriented?"

"Yes," Alex choked on the word. "I thought perhaps it was the alcohol. Or maybe some sort of emotional blackout."

"Or perhaps, you were drugged," Luna said slowly, weighing his words carefully. "What you're describing doesn't sound like being drunk. It sounds like you might have been incapacitated."

A chill ran down Alex's spine. "Are you saying that Blake might have—" Alex couldn't finish the sentence.

Luna paused before he spoke. "I'm booking a flight to New York, first thing. You need to go to a doctor, Alex. The gaps in your memory, the disorientation—it doesn't add up."

Alex bit his lower lip, hesitating. "You think I need a doctor for a hangover?"

There was a pause on the phone. Alex felt confused, dazed. He felt like he was zoning in and out of the conversation, like he was only half there. He didn't understand what Luna was saying.

"Alex, I'm not talking about a hangover. I'm saying it sounds like you've been drugged, possibly assaulted," Luna's voice remained calm and controlled, with no hint of frustration at having to repeat himself.

"Assaulted?" Alex muttered the word as though it was foreign. "No, no, it can't be. I must've just—"

"Done what? Magically forgotten your actions?" Luna's voice was gentle. "That night with Richards, I blamed myself, buried myself in shame and guilt. I won't let you make that same mistake."

Alex's eyes began to sting again, and he blinked back tears. "You think I'm a victim here?"

Luna sighed, the sound heavy with emotions Alex couldn't quite place. "Look, I'm no psychologist, but what you're describing doesn't sound consensual. It doesn't sound like you, and I think you need to confront the possibility that you were taken advantage of."

"But what about Henry? How can I even look him in the eye?" Alex felt his voice waver.

"We'll deal with that, Alex, but one step at a time," Luna's voice softened. "For now, just promise me you'll go to the doctor. Get the tests done."

Alex took a shaky breath. "Okay, Senator, I promise."

"And Alex?" Luna's voice took on an intimate tone that Alex had rarely heard. "You're not alone. Understand that it's not your fault, and don't let the shame bury you like it buried me for years."

Alex felt a lump rise in his throat. "I can't tell you how much this means to me right now."

"Words aren't needed, kid. Just take action. Go to the doctor. We'll deal with the rest when I get there. Alright?"

"Alright, Senator. See you soon."

"I'm glad you called me Alex. Stay safe, okay?"

"Okay."

As the line went dead, Alex leaned back onto the bed. He wasn't a victim. This wasn't the same as what had happened to Luna. He knew this was his fault. He had let Blake get him a drink. He had known Blake was flirting with him and had flirted back. It had seemed harmless at the time, a bit of fun. But how many people had told him over the years that his big mouth was going to get him into trouble? Henry, June, Nora, Mum—the list went on and on and on. This was his fault, his fault, his fault. Alex started to sob and didn't know if he would ever be able to stop. His fault, his fault, his fault.