Chapter Text
The dark circles around Alex’ eyes seemed to intensify under the dimness of the dining room, and in this light, his pale skin felt grayer and grayer as the minute went on. 3:54 now.
“I don’t understand, it should’ve started at 3:53 sharp, right?” Alex asked, his eyebrows furrowed so aggressively.
“The timestamp is just a guide sometimes, it varies for different people,” Carolyn said, her voice soothing and confident. Strong. “We get these cases all the time over at the hospital. People make ten-minute appointments all the time so we can help them with the burning, only for the color shift to happen too early or too late. The energy isn’t perfect. You just gotta be patient with it, okay, honey?”
Alex turned to his father, who was unmistakeably much worse at concealing his emotions than his mother, and he looked every bit as perturbed as Alex did. Bill tried to smile upon seeing Alex staring at him, but it didn’t reach his eyes, and Alex decided to turn his focus back on his unshifted mark.
3:55.
He began to believe it. It was either of two things: that he was meant for the earth, to be a vagabond or a gypsy, a bohemian, and lead a life that brought him closer to the land and the sea, to his music, to God, away from the baggage of human relationship, or, he was too fucked up to have earned the other half of his soul - that he’d done too much and been deemed too dishonorable, too immoral to even be considered someone who’d make someone’s life better. Or whole.
4:06
The crickets had grown louder through the ringing silence in the room. It had drowned out the quickening pace of Alex’ heart, thankfully, but his eyes would soon betray his desperation. He looked to his parents, shifting his gaze between them so slowly that neither of them could tell if Alex would even listen if they told him anything now, and his stillness did well to unnerve his parents, getting Carolyn’s grip on the cold pack to stiffen, and Bill to get antsy in his seat right across the table from his son.
“Listen kid, that day was the most stressful day for all of us,” Bill said. “Your mom’s water broke during a shift, then we were in the hospital for over a day, and then she was in active labor for god knows how long, I don’t even remember. It felt like we were all awake for two days. Everyone looked god-awful and tired, none of us saw the light of day.” Alex hadn’t responded. His focus was trained somewhere past him when he chose to look in Bill’s direction, the dull glimmer in his eye slowly fading.. “Any number of things could’ve gone wrong, kiddo. But it’ll come, okay bud?”
Alex’ eyes shifted from desperation to resolution right in front of Bill, and he watched along as his son looked back at his pale mark, weakly closing his fist as if the muscles there could jolt it awake, only for the mark to remain unchanged, and Alex released his hand with a sigh. He was looking for answers, but he had given up on getting them.
“Oh honey,” Carolyn said sweetly, lifting her hand up to Alex’ cheek, “It’ll come, don’t you worry.”
-
The food truck had stationed at a far away enough park that they were confident they wouldn’t be caught by anyone from Liberty. It looked old and greasy, but Alex couldn’t deny that the food looked like venial sin on a plate.
Zach had ordered two burgers, the first of which had disappeared in a record three minutes, much to the concern of his friends who had barely gotten in two bites each of their own meals. He chugged down half his giant orange soda and popped the cap off the paper cup in one practiced motion, then reached into his jacket pocket, bringing out a familiar silver flask, and unscrewed it. The other boys exchanged looks between them as Zach lifted the flask up into the air in the middle of the table.
“A toast! The happiest fucking birthday to Alexander Dean Standall,” Zach said loudly enough that it caught the attention of most of the diners nearby and left Alex to hide behind his hands. “You’re eighteen now. My man’s a… a man now! So what if you don’t have a soul mate, you never needed one anyway! You’re a strong, independent, well, white man, and you don’t need no man! Or woman! Or, you know, gender non-binary lover. Because fuck soul mates, you’ve got the rest of your life to live! Amen!” He then began to empty the contents of his flask into his soda cup, putting the lid back on, and then taking a few forceful sips of the new mixture before slamming the empty cup back down on to the table with a smack.
Once he had come back down from his soliloquy, he’d looked back at the boys to find Alex staring at him with mortified eyes, and Charlie and Tyler looking back at Alex with fluster and confusion.
“Zach,” escaped Alex’ lips moments later, but only in a broken whisper, and it was as if Zach had immediately sobered up. “What the f-“
“Zach, can I get your help please?” Charlie interrupted with a commanding tone, grabbing Zach’s arm and lifting him as they both stood,. “I can tell we’re gonna need more fries for the table, come on.” Charlie looked to check on Alex one last time before leaving the table with Zach, who agreed reluctantly. Alex gave him a small, but grateful smile which Charlie eagerly returned.
Once they were left alone, Alex couldn’t even look at Tyler. And the quiet that followed didn’t particularly please Alex. It was as if everyone had been walking on eggshells around him, and he absolutely hated how nobody could seem to just talk to him. To ask him.
This thought, however, was immediately contradicted when Tyler lifted his burger to his mouth, and before he took a bite, asked, “So… what did Zach mean by… all that?” He immediately stuffed his face, and Alex rolled his eyes, but Tyler’s effort tugged his cheeks into a smile anyway.
Alex took a deep breath and lifted his sleeve to reveal his mark to Tyler, and the second Tyler saw it and its color, he choked on his food. Coughing in a fit of shock, he spit the food back out into a napkin and took a few seconds to compose himself before acknowledging the gesture with a timid, “oh,” and a few more seconds before the follow-up, “I’m sorry.” Alex shook his head.
“It’s not your fault,” he said simply. “It’s my fault.” He took a sip of his drink and missed the expression of vehement disagreement on Tyler’s face.
“What do you mean it’s your fault?” Alex looked up, surprised by the question.
“Oh, I think it’s… kind of obvious. Don’t you? You’ve been there for basically everything, Ty. It seems to me, Karma had its way with me, has seen all the stuff I’ve gone through, the stuff I’ve done, and honestly? I think it’s right. And I… totally fucking deserve this, so there. It’s my fault. And, I’ll just learn to live with it, I guess.”
He tried his best to act unaffected, to pass it off as a trivial, inconsequential thing, and almost thought he’d sold the sentiment until Tyler threw up his camera and snapped a photo of Alex, the loud shutter giving him away. Tyler looked down at the viewfinder, amused, turning the camera to show Alex. The boy was seen staring at his food, and yet his eyes had been glazed over, his focus clearly scattered and blurred.
“I call it Stage Five,” Tyler said.
“Stage Five?”
“You know, of grief,” he said, smiling smugly. “Acceptance,” he clarified, and earned a light punch in the arm from Alex. "You really skipped past the first four, huh?" Alex's eyes brightened up out of the haze immediately.
“Fuck you,” Alex said through his chuckles. “When did you become such an asshole?” he asked with a smile, and Tyler looked quite proud of himself. Tyler just shrugged and kept his camera right back in his bag, its purpose for this lunch evidently fulfilled.
The two returned to their burgers, Alex, for the first time, actually revelling in his bite of food and closing his eyes. “God, this is good,” he groaned. “At least I’ll get to kill my diet for the day. I’ve missed all this.” He quickly stuffed a fry in his mouth, and his eyes lolled back into his head. “Holy shit, how is this thing this good?”
“You’re in the moment, I don’t know.” Tyler shrugged. And Alex was sure it was one of those off-handed comments that Tyler indulged in every now and then, but it had hit a little too close to Alex nonetheless. He’d spent the last 9 hours of his life brooding over what he felt he lost. It was a tough pill to swallow, of course, but with a spoonful of honey, and maybe a burger and some home fries, it was certainly a little easier to take.
It seemed fitting then, at the moment, that Charlie came back with a huge grin and a big tray of fresh-out-of-the-oil fries and a sheepish looking Zach in tow closely behind him. The two sat down, and Zach guiltily peered up at Alex through stray locks of hair, mouthing “I’m sorry,” which Alex readily waved off, acknowledging the apology with a tilt of his head, and the four went back to eating, with Zach getting back to ravenously scarfing down his second burger.
-
“SURPRISE!” The group shouted once he entered through the door of Clay and Justin’s little backyard apartment later that evening. Alex was, as expected, not surprised in the slightest, but the smile on his face was a surprise to everyone else. He was bombarded with loud birthday greetings and compliments on his appearance, hugs going all around and him being pulled straight to the candlelit cake in the middle of the room.
“Make a wish,” Jessica cheerily said, hugging him from behind. “And make it good because they say the soul energy works best on your 18th to manifest what you wish for.”
He looked around him, the rest of the group huddled around the table with phones lifted and ready to film, and faces a little too close for comfort. He thought for a second while he stared at the tiny flames in front of him. I’m alive with one thing on mind right now, but it feels pretty useless, doesn’t it? Do I even want anything else that much? It felt like too much of a waste to wish for good fortune, or good health, or a good life. Too vague, yet it felt equally weird to wish for anything for someone else, this being the only day he thought he deserved to be even a little selfish. He could get away with a little wish.
It didn’t escape everybody’s notice that Alex was taking his time with this, and they turned off their cameras and kept their phones one at a time, all of this much to Alex’ dismay. He then felt the light touch of a hand wrap around his arm, and he turned to see that Charlie had found his way to his side.
“Hey, just whatever you feel,” he said, smiling encouragingly. “You can wish for whatever you could possibly want.” Charlie never failed to fill Alex with an overwhelming sense of calm. His cheeks tinged at the closeness of him, and his eyes started to glisten, turning back to the cake. Why the fuck not?
He took in a big gulp of air and blew all the candles in one fell swoop, earning whoops and cheers from his friends and a squeeze of his arm.
The little gathering of cake, party food, and casual conversation had turned into a full on rager some time during the night. Alex attributed it to the borderline morose beginning of it, and his friends must’ve taken the mood as personal challenges. Slowly but surely the music grew louder, the table was pushed to the side of the room in favor of a dance floor, and the soda corner suddenly had bottles of liquor and beer, care of Zach, Alex suspected.
Alex sat in the corner of the room with cake in hand to observe for a bit, speaking with Clay (who had historically been just as awkward at parties, if not even more than him), until Zach bounded over with a red solo cup shoved in front of his face.
“For you,” Zach yelled above the music and noise. Alex eyed the cup suspiciously. “Your very own A-Man Rocks!”
Alex’ face immediately scrunched up in disgust, knowing full and well about the kind of seedy, toxic scum Zach was able to concoct in a disposable plastic cup. The thought on its own nearly brought Alex to gag.
“Oh calm down, it’s just a rum coke,” Zach said, offended, forcing the cup into his hands. “Now come on, your ex is waiting for a dance with you.” Without warning, he lifted Alex by the elbow up to his feet and dragged him to Jessica who greeted him with an elated yell and open arms.
To everyone’s delight, Alex had joined them through it all – the dancing, the drinking, the drinking games involving some unattached making out with blurred faces, and hollering in a cacophony of noise that would most likely ellicit complaints from the neighbors and headaches for the Jensens. He found that it felt like an escape, and that was something so horribly rare to find between him and his friends. So he basked in the feeling of losing himself, of the lightness he experienced in being around people he cared about, in dancing recklessly, in kissing someone who didn’t need to matter to him in any specific way. He liked getting carried away in the heat of the moment.
And yet, nature be damned, he would catch himself looking for those connections with every kiss, with every sip and refill of his A-Man Rocks, and with every step to the beat that brought him closer to speckled skin and warm breath. It was when, drunk on his sixth full cup, he started to dance too closely to Charlie, tall, infectiously warm Charlie, that he fully recognized he had found himself again, and had woken up in all of his obsessively lonely glory. This close to Charlie, the rest of the dancers on the floor closing in on him quickly, and hearing the music slowly warp into something he knew it actually wasn’t, he needed to slip away. He finessed himself through the floor, and weaving himself through the small sea of his friends that he made sure were too preoccupied to notice him quietly walking out the door. Finally, he took a breath of the cold night air, resolving that he’d been holding it in for hours, and fell to the floor bringing his knees up to his chest.
-
The music spilled out of the open door a while later before quickly disappearing once again. Alex hadn’t noticed the first time whoever had just come out tried to get his attention as he sat on the grass in his sobering state,. It was only when he saw a pair of sneakers over blue poodle-patterned socks that he heard, “Alex?”
He slowly looked up at Charlie, whose face etched with worry upon looking at his blank expression. “You okay?” Charlie asked. “I haven’t seen you for like… half an hour or something.”
“’m kinda drunk,” he replied, murmuring low. “And I needed to… step out. Catch my breath and stuff.” He rubbed aggressively at his nose, the cold of the late evening air filling it and turning it a bright pink.
“Did something happen?” Charlie knelt on the ground in front of him, his hands landing on Alex’ knees, and Alex realized that he had stayed seated in the same position the whole time he was outside.
“I think… I think I started to hear voices in the music.” He brought his hand up subconsciously, and scratched the side of his head. “It kinda freaked me out.”
“It’s the TBI, right?” Charlie said softly, putting pieces together. “Like… you get autocratic hallucinations?”
“Auditory,” he corrected, a defensiveness in his voice, and he swiftly brought his hand back down at the mention of his injury. “How’d you know about that?”
“Oh, I just read about it a while back,” Charlie explained, speaking cautiously. “I just wanted to understand it more, like, what you were going through.”
“Oh, yeah…” Alex looked back, disappointed. “I’m a freak,” he said under his breath, and Charlie looked immediately taken aback, his hands lightly squeezing where they rest on his knees.
“No…” Charlie whispered. “Just… no.” He turned his palms up and offered them to Alex, who returned the gesture with a look of pure skepticism. Just a while before, he was making out with half his friends, and suddenly the concept of holding someone’s hand seemed preposterous. “Oh, come on, they’re not gonna bite,” Charlie teased.
Alex hesitated, but took them one by one. The pads of his palms buzzed at the touch, and he concentrated on the feeling of Charlie’s skin against his. His hands were a little sweaty, but they were still just so warm. It felt as if his blood flowed in through his hands right into the rest of his body, and it baffled Alex how much these little gestures of his did so much to ease him and his mind. Alex squeezed back, and it brought a smile to Charlie’s face which Alex returned with a relaxed sigh, the muffled sounds of the continuing music filling the air.
He looked at their clasped hands, and it was the first time he paid attention to Charlie’s soul mark. A thin line so perfectly wild and jagged with strokes of all lengths, Alex thought back to his long, excruciating time in the hospital, the beeping heart monitor echoing throughout the small, sterile room, even in the darkness. Just like this. The color of his mark hadn’t shifted, of course, because Charlie was still 17. But Alex couldn’t help but imagine what it could look like, and just how goddamn lucky Charlie’s soul mate was.
“Do they all know?” Alex asked after a few moments, and Charlie’s lips trained to a straight line.
“Zach told us,” he said. “He sat everyone down and told us to not talk about it tonight.”
Alex nodded, and squeezed again.
“Thank you guys for taking care of me,” he said, eveidently uncomfortable and averting his eyes from Charlie’s. “You’ve rescued me more than once today. You don’t have to do that, but thank you.”
“Hey,” Charlie said, lowering his head to catch Alex’ gaze again. “Absolutely any time.”
“I think I wanna go home,” Alex told him quietly, his mood slowly dropping in once more after letting it disappear for a few moments.
“I can bring you,” Charlie replied, determined.
“You don’t have to d-,”
“I’d like to, very much.” Charlie reassured. “Dad’s expecting me back home soon anyway.” He released his hands, and Alex immediately missed the comfort he received from them, bringing his hands back tucked in between his legs and willing them to warm back up on their own.
“I’ll just go back inside to tell Zach, then we can go, okay?”
-
He tiptoed back in through the front door, but not stealthily enough it turned out, his mother summoning him from the dining room. He surrendered, walking in with his head hanging low, and turned the corner, surprised to see all the lights turned on with his mother seated at the table in a robe with a half-empty coffee cup and her laptop plugged in.
“Mom? Do you have an early shift today?” he asked, eyes adjusting to the light.
“No honey, I’m just… researching,” she said with a tired smile. “Did you have fun tonight?” Alex walked over to her side of the table and kissed her cheek.
“Yeah it was good. What are you researching?” he asked, trying to peer at her screen.
“Um, well,” she angled the laptop to him, “about you actually.” Alex’ eyes widened, and Carolyn’s voice picked up in volume slightly. “I’m finding a lot of stuff about cases of late-bloomers. Apparently these cases are more common than I thought, and there are a lot of explanations for it that are health related, and I figured we could go take a look togeth-,”
“I’m sorry mom,” Alex interrupted with a hand on her shoulder and a sad shake of his head. “Thanks for this, but I think I’m just too tired right now to think about that. It… really messed me up today,” he admitted. Carolyn immediately conceded, closing the laptop.
“Of course, honey, I’m sorry,” she said.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” he assured. “I’ll talk to you about it soon, I promise. I just can’t do that right now.”
Carolyn lifted up her hand to pat his. “Take your time. Talk to me whenever you want to, alright?” Alex nodded. “I love you,” she said, turning to him to caress his cheek, and Alex closed his eyes at the touch.
“Love you too, mom.”
The second Alex entered the threshold of his bedroom, he threw his shoes off and he plopped down onto his bed with a huff, refusing to remove any of the rest of his clothes. He adjusted his position over the sheets, and he couldn’t find the spot that felt just right. The bed felt more empty than it normally did, and Alex grunted in frustration, his mind racing and refusing to let him sleep.
He didn’t want to be alone. The idea of being predestined, of people belonging to other people, and yet, of all people, it was he who didn’t belong to anyone - it was all he could latch on to.
He looked out the window to the dark sky, the moon nowhere in sight, and decided, well, it was late enough to wait for it. And he had to know. So he whipped out his phone, and waited out the minutes.
3:53. 3:54. And nothing once again.