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Alex’s fingers trail over the picture, counting the black marks peeking from the boy’s collar.
They’re evenly spaced, a crescent on the leftmost side that slowly fills in like the phases of the moon, until the perfect circle disappears behind the white fabric. Even though the rest of the mark is hidden, Alex’s mind fills it in from what he’s seen online—the perfect symmetry of each crescent, the delicacy of the curves, the beauty of a never-ending cycle. Alex’s own mark burns on his wrist, the thick lines of the unbalanced scale harsh and imperfect in comparison.
Soulmarks determine your soulmate—whoever shares your mark is the person you’re meant to be with for the rest of your life. Alex’s nails dig into the picture as he remembers the words from all those years ago, the pamphlet he’s read so often it’s etched into his mind. He turns his wrist and places his own mark next to the boy’s.
The scale mocks him in its asymmetry. Regardless of Alex’s wishes, it didn’t morph into the stages of the moon in the last five minutes.
Alex stares at the boy a few seconds longer, the bright blue eyes and sandy blonde strands so beautiful he inadvertently likens it to sunshine. His lips are curled into a secret smile and just for a moment, Alex dreams that the smile is for him, reaching across the ocean, warming the secret parts of his heart he’ll never admit he has. He allows himself another moment with the boy before he moves away, leaving the magazine on his sister’s desk.
Princes don’t fall in love with boys anyway.
i. The White House, New Year’s Day
There, under a tree in the snow, exhaling little puffs of steam, is a tall, lean, broad-shouldered figure that can only be Henry.
He slips out onto the portico without really thinking about it, and the instant the door closes behind him, the music snuffs out into the silence, and it’s just him and Henry and the garden.
The edge of the soulmark peeks from the collar of Henry’s shirt, only vaguely visible under the dim moonlight.
Alex openly stares at it, emboldened by the amount of alcohol in his blood. The small crescent, barely the size of his pinky nail, curves out from underneath the fabric; it’s tempting to pull Henry’s shirt open just enough, to peek at the rest of the mark for the first time. Outside of the pictures circling online, Alex hasn’t seen it in person—lately, Henry prefers turtlenecks and buttoned shirts to V-necks, the tattoo hidden behind layers of fabric like walls built around his heart.
Alex’s fingers twitch at his sides. But before he can reach out Henry moves, and the crescent disappears from view.
“Do you ever wonder,” Henry starts, distracting Alex from the strange loss he feels at the hidden mark, “what life would be like if we didn’t have soulmarks?” He doesn’t turn to Alex, his profile hidden in shadows. Alex frowns.
“What do you mean?”
“Just, you know.” Henry shrugs, but the question feels anything but nonchalant. “If we weren’t bound by this vague idea that we belong with one special person that bears our mark, the one with just the right edges to fit our soul. What’d it be like then?”
“Ah.” Alex’s fingers drum on his wrist unconsciously, right over the jagged lines of his own soulmark. He hasn’t thought, in all the years the mark taunted and tempted him, a life without one. It’s been etched into his world, ever since he understood what the strange image on his wrist meant, that there exists someone out there who’ll know every broken piece of his heart, every flaw and shortcoming and jagged edge, and love him anyway. In the haze of alcohol, he struggles to let go of the idea, even if it’s for an imaginary world far from their own.
“Well,” he thinks, waving his hand in a faux dismissive gesture, “I mean, obviously I wouldn’t be single. Have you seen this face? Girls would be lining up in front of me to have a piece of me.” It’s a joke, but when a smile flickers through Henry’s face he calls it a win. With a nudge of his elbow, Alex turns the focus away from him. “What’s brought that on?”
Henry’s blue eyes hold his, and suddenly Alex feels too bare, even with the sleeves hiding his soulmark. “Wouldn’t it be easier?” he asks slowly, not quite an answer to Alex’s question. “You could love anyone you wanted. Date anyone. There wouldn’t be this unknown future partner looming over your head.”
“Yeah, but…” Alex thinks of his short-lived relationship with Nora, how it ended the moment June came into picture. For a moment, he struggles to come up with the right words. “But why would you want to date anyone that isn’t right for you? That can’t love you for who you are?”
“We love people outside of soulmarks all the time. Our parents. Siblings. Children.”
“That’s different.” Doubt shines in Henry’s eyes, and Alex feels the sudden need to push on, to explain himself under Henry’s judgmental gaze. “It’s like… Sure, you love your family and friends, but soulmate is something else. They’re chosen for you, made just the right way to love you with all your imperfections and flaws. You can’t just love someone random the way you love a soulmate.”
“You could,” Henry whispers, and Alex barely bites back a snort. The only thing that keeps him silent is the intensity in Henry’s eyes. “You could learn. You could choose to love someone.”
“But it wouldn’t be the same.”
“You can’t know that.” Henry looks away, chin jutted out into a hard line. Alex realizes hazily that he must’ve said something to hurt Henry, though he can’t exactly figure out what. Soulmates—soulmarks—are their reality; there’s no reason to doubt the system when it works. No reason to seek someone else when you already have someone just right for you.
“It’s been tested, Henry,” he tries to argue, but Henry only makes a non-committal noise. He throws his hands in the air desperately. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“You don’t?” Henry’s eyes flicker to him. Alex rolls his eyes.
“No. Should I?”
“You really don’t?” This time, the hard line of Henry’s face is smoothed by the surprise in his voice. Finally, Alex thinks. He gets it.
“I really, really don’t.” He stares at Henry, searching for an answer, but Henry only grimaces and shakes his head. His eyes flicker up as if he’s looking for a heavenly answer, and then, back down to Alex.
“Christ,” he whispers, and the darkness in his tone sends a shiver down Alex’s spine. “You’re as thick as it gets.” And then, quite without a warning, he grabs Alex’s face and kisses him.
Alex thinks, vaguely, as the world stops spinning around him, that he should push Henry away. He thinks of his soulmark, the unbalanced scales, the stark difference from the elegance of Henry’s moons. The meaning he’s held onto for years, the perfect future with a perfect partner that doesn’t include Henry. There are a million reasons, he thinks, that he should push Henry away; instead, he parts his lips experimentally and forgets about all of them.
Later, after Henry lets go of him, after he sways into the White House and finds him gone, after he closes the door of his room behind him, that the reality sinks in. He curls on the floor and presses his forehead against his knees.
One, Henry kissed him.
Two, he kissed Henry back.
Three, he really, really wants to kiss Henry again.
Four… Henry isn’t his soulmate.
The picture of a boy on a baseball field comes back to mind. For the first time since then, Alex wishes his soulmark looked different.
ii. Alex’s bedroom, end of January
“What on God’s earth are you doing?” Henry demands.
“Shut up, shut all the way up, oh my God,” Alex hisses, and if he weren’t already hell-bent on destroying Henry’s infuriating idiot face with his mouth right now, he would consider doing it with his fist. He’s focused on the burst of adrenaline carrying his feet over the antique rug, Henry’s tie wrapped around his fist, the flash in Henry’s eyes. He reaches the nearest wall, shoves Henry against it, and crushes their mouths together.
The soulmark is bright under the sheen of sweat covering Henry’s body.
Vaguely, Alex thinks it’s the first time he’s seen the whole thing, without a camera lens in the way, without any pictures covering it, right here and in person, as real as the scale on his wrist. Somehow, he expected it to be more monumental; this piece of Henry, so integral to who he is, bared to Alex.
Instead, he wants to cover it up and forget it exists at all.
His eyes flicker to Henry. Despite the bliss of just moments before—and Alex knows Henry enjoyed it too, his body searching Alex’s touch, his throat making small noises Alex wants to carve into his memory, his laugh as he falls apart—a muscle in his jaw ticks, set in a tight line. Impulsively Alex reaches forward to smooth out the lines.
“Hey,” he whispers and cups Henry’s cheeks. Desperately, he wishes he could take back time to just moments ago, where all that mattered was having Henry’s body underneath him, the simple pleasure of having something he’s wanted for years enough to soothe every thought. Now, in the light of the bedroom, the thorns of reality threaten to burst the bubble around them.
His eyes flicker to the soulmark. He ignores it. “Don’t freak out,” he says, poking Henry in the cheek before he realizes the strain in Alex’s voice himself.
Henry makes a face. “I’m not freaking out.”
“Of course not.” Alex laughs, and it doesn’t quite sound real, but Henry doesn’t say anything. He wriggles close to his body and rests his head on Henry’s shoulder, where the phases of the moon are hidden underneath his curls. His eyes meet the deep blue ones, unreadable under the bright lines of the room.
The words should come easy to Alex. Instead, it takes him a few tries to get them out. “It doesn’t have to be anything serious, you know?” He tucks his head under Henry’s chin so he doesn’t have to face him and opts to draw absentminded circles on his collarbone. Henry’s breath stutters under his ear, a sharp exhale Alex ignores in favor of protecting the deep corners of his heart he’s not willing to open up.
“Right,” Henry says, voice devoid of any emotion. Alex feels the sudden urge to explain.
“I mean,” he notices his fingers drawing a pattern of crescents and suddenly stops, “I mean, it’s not like it’s gonna last anyway, right? We’re not soulmates.” The word that’s once brought so much peace to him leaves his mouth like it’s a curse. He hopes Henry doesn’t notice.
“Yes, you’ve made that quite clear a few weeks ago.”
“Hey.” Alex punches Henry on the shoulder, but it feels weak. The joke feels shallow, undercut with the sadness brewing right underneath. Alex meets Henry’s eyes and lifts his fingers up to his face, tracing his eyelashes, the curve of his nose, all the way down to his lips. He can’t help it; he leans in for a kiss, shoving the sadness all the way down to the deep corners of his heart, where it has no chance of swallowing him hole. “It doesn’t mean we can’t have fun,” he whispers against Henry’s lips, meeting his gaze again. “Right? Tonight was fun,” he moves his fingers down to Henry’s neck and draws a circle over his pulsepoint, “and I’d really, really like to do it again. Sort of like friends with…blowjobs.” For some reason, the word benefit feels too wrong on his lips; whatever this is gonna be with Henry, he doesn’t want Henry to think he’s doing it for some advantage. He wants Henry. Soulmark or not, he can’t let him think he’s just another hookup. “How does that sound?”
Henry’s silence stretches until Alex braces himself for rejection. Instead, Henry curls his fingers around Alex’s hair. “I’d like that.” Then, he leans in for a kiss, and Alex quite forgets about anything but his lips.
Later, after Henry kisses him goodbye and leaves, Alex absentmindedly traces the lines on his wrist, the scale continuously unbalanced, the harsh lines digging into his skin like they’re real. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine his soulmate; the perfect person for him, the one who’ll know all of him and love him regardless, the one who can make him the happiest in the world. He thinks of black hair and green eyes and olive skin, red hair and hazel eyes, shoulder-length curls and long black strands.
Instead, he falls asleep to light freckles and blonde strands, and a laugh he wants to wrap his soul around.
iii. Paris, Early March
He’s so drunk, and Henry’s mouth is so soft, and it’s all so fucking French that he forgets to send Henry back to his own hotel. He forgets they don’t spend the night. So, they do.
Alex wakes up to the warmth of Henry surrounding him.
Awareness creeps slowly into his mind—first the scent, the tinge of Earl Grey and rain that he’s begun to associate with Henry. Light comes next, soft through the pulled curtains. And then, when he opens his eyes, the bottomless blue of Henry’s eyes, looking down at him with a kind of softness that belongs only to the quiet hours of the morning. His hair is tousled over his forehead, lips curled into a secret smile, fingers tracing absentminded lines over his side. The rightness of the whole thing threatens to knock the breath out of Alex.
Instead, he reaches for Henry and presses a closed-mouthed kiss on his lips, savoring the fresh smell of him. “Morning,” he whispers in a sleep-heavy voice; Henry smiles, unbothered, and pulls him into another kiss that lingers longer this time.
“Morning, darling.” Henry’s fingers tangle in his hair, and Alex thinks he could quite stay here all morning. He vaguely remembers their arrangement doesn’t include this—staying the night, morning cuddles, sunlit kisses and lingering smiles—but it’s hard to think when Henry’s hand fits in his like it was made for him. It’d take a disaster to get Alex out of this bed, and even then he might stay behind just for one more kiss. “Sleep well?”
Alex blinks and focuses on Henry. “Yeah,” he says, stretching his muscles in an attempt to wake them up. He doesn’t remember the last time he didn’t wake up with the first light of the day, too stressed to stay still under the covers. With Henry, anxiety melts into a puddle of safety and comfort. “You weren’t up for long, were you?”
“Just a few minutes.” Something in Henry’s eyes suggests it might’ve been longer, but Alex doesn’t push. Instead, he lets Henry pull him closer again, lips searching for Alex’s as he shifts to pull him on his lap. “We have some time before we have to leave,” he whispers, teeth skimming the edge of Alex’s chin, and Alex can never say no to him.
“What does it mean?” Henry asks later, fingers brushing over Alex’s wrist.
They’re seated in front of the windows, a copy of Le Monde on Henry’s lap and crusty baguettes half-eaten on the coffee table. Alex arches a brow. “What does what mean?”
“Your mark.” Alex’s eyes follow Henry’s touch, and something heavy settles in his stomach when he sees pale fingers skimming his soulmark. Somehow, in the rush of having Henry in the same city as him after aching for his touch for weeks, he’s forgotten the existence of it entirely. Even last night, when his lips memorized every inch of Henry’s skin, he didn’t linger at the crescents on his collarbone—just like the soft points of his spine and the freckles dusting his nose, it felt more like a piece of Henry instead of a finality dangling in front of them. Alex fights the urge to hide his mark and lets Henry turn his wrist. “I’ve read online that it can have a special meaning.”
“Oh.” For all his research on soulmates, Alex hasn’t actually thought about that. He tilts his head and studies at the unbalanced scale, the jagged and uneven lines smoothing out under Henry’s touch. Somehow, it doesn’t feel as ugly as before when Henry holds his hand so reverently. “I guess it could be about justice?” he says, seeing the scale with a different eye for the first time. “Like… I’ve always wanted to fight the injustices in the world, some of which I faced myself. That’s why I wanted to go into politics. To make an actual change. To help people.” He doesn’t mention that the dream feels unreachable now, the realities of his mother’s presidency and the future stretching out in front of him too daunting. Yet when he meets Henry’s eyes, he only sees awe in them.
“Lady Justice?” he offers, and the corners of Alex’s lips curl into a smile.
“Something like that.”
“You know you could’ve told me if you weren’t cis. I would’ve understood.” Alex makes a face at Henry and punches him on the shoulder, but he doesn’t quite let Henry go, hand sliding into his. The scale presses into Henry’s wrist and disappears, and Alex lets it. A comfortable silence settles over them as Henry flips through Le Monde and Alex watches him, the sunlit face beautiful under the soft morning.
He really is beautiful, Alex thinks, and not for the first time. Just months ago, Alex would’ve been jealous that the kind of beauty standards Henry set that felt unachievable—the perfection so associated with his skin and hair color made Alex want to punch him in his symmetrical face. Now he knows it’s just a smokescreen, the kind of beauty Henry let the cameras capture. He knows the tuft of hair that refuses to stay in place, the freckles that are aligned just slightly to the right, the lopsided smile and soft eyes he hides from the press. The flaws, Alex thinks, doesn’t take anything from his beauty—just the opposite. Every imperfection adds another brushstroke to the painting of Henry in his mind, filling in the details, not to make a flawless masterpiece but to understand Henry, in everything that he is and he’s not. The image, he wagers, is more beautiful than any surface level photograph he’s seen.
“What about yours?” he asks, breaking the silence, and Henry’s gaze lift from the magazine. “Your mark.” The crescents are hidden behind the t-shirt, but Alex thinks he could draw a map of them blindfolded if asked. “Don’t tell me you dreamed of being an astronaut.”
Henry’s lips twitch at the joke but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He stares down at the magazine. “Not quite.” His fingers absentmindedly draw circles on the paper. “I like to think… Not quite about me, really, but when I was young, my dad used to joke that it took only a cycle of the moon for him to realize he wanted to spend the rest of his life with my mother. ‘I knew her from new moon to new moon, and then wanted to have the rest of her new moons.’ He joked that maybe my mark meant I’d meet my partner under a new moon too.” He doesn’t say it, but Alex notices how carefully he avoids the word soulmate, like his parents chose each other instead of being destined for each other.
Arthur Fox and Catherine Mountchristen-Windsor. They were already married when Alex was born, yet he remembers the soulmarks on their necks, each bearing half of a star, so sickly in love that they’d convert any skeptic of soulmates. An image of Henry appears in his mind—blonde hair bright even under the new moon, a strange man by his side, the cycles of the moon bright on their collarbones, and his stomach twists painfully. He shoves the feeling deep down.
“That’s beautiful,” he whispers, and Henry’s lips curl into a sad smile. Alex doesn’t have anything else to say, but when Henry tugs him into a hug and buries himself in his hair, he thinks nothing else needs to be said. It’s easy to forget about soulmarks when he’s safe in Henry’s arms.
Still, once Henry slips out of the room, the image of a new moon follows him for the rest of the day.
iv. Los Angeles, summer
“I know we haven’t,” Henry says quietly. “But, er. I have, before, so, I can show you.”
“I mean, I’m familiar with the mechanics,” Alex says, smirking a little, and he sees a corner of Henry’s mouth quirk up to mirror him. “But you want me to?”
“Yeah,” he says… “Yes. Absolutely.”
Alex is in love with Henry.
It comes to him suddenly as he watches Henry under the cover of the night, the crescent moon not enough to brighten up his face. Henry’s eyes are closed, though Alex knows he isn’t sleeping; he knows Henry, the dip and rise of his chest, the skip of his heartbeat, the softness of his breaths, knows the difference in his rhythm when he falls asleep. Henry is awake and letting Alex watch him, Alex’s fingers trailing the parts of him from memory, and Alex realizes—he’s in love.
Though, he thinks, it isn’t really a surprise. The moment Henry kissed him under for the first time his fate has been sealed; the months of push and pull, late night calls and emails stretching over days, good morning texts and good night facetimes, smiles and kisses and sex have all been leading up to this. This moment where Alex watches Henry, truly allows himself to see all of him for the first time, and he’s so in love it feels impossible Henry doesn’t feel it right now. Yet Henry’s eyes stay closed, heart thrumming under his skin with the same rhythm, and Alex follows it with his fingers as his own heart settles to match Henry’s beats.
Henry isn’t his soulmate. Yet Alex loves him, and maybe unexpectedly, he’s okay with it.
It’s strange, considering just how fervently he believed in soulmates mere months ago. He’s watched June fall in love with Nora in an instant and ached for his own love at first sight, watched his mother find his stability with Leo and wished for the same unyielding support watched Oscar stand by Raf through thick and thin and wanted his own unconditional love. He’s wanted that person, the one with the same jagged soulmark so badly for so long that he’s forgotten the true purpose of it all—finding the one your soul can’t live without, the person to love you for all your uneven pieces and fit around them like a glove.
He stares at Henry, the perfect fit of his hand against Henry’s cheek, and he can’t imagine a life without him. He loves him, through unmatched marks he loves him, through the three thousand miles stretching between them he loves him, through the impossibility of their future he loves him. He’s the first son of the United States, Henry is a Prince of Wales, they’re not soulmates, yet Alex loves him despite it all, and at that moment, that’s the only thing that seems to matter. Henry, melted into the sheets under his touch, lips curled into a soft smile only Alex is allowed to see. His eyes fly open, bright even under the dark blanket, and Alex is so in love with him that he thinks it shouldn’t be allowed.
His soulmark peeks from under the blankets. Alex doesn’t give it a second glance before he turns to Henry’s face. “Hey.”
“You’re thinking too loud,” Henry whispers, and a laugh escapes Alex’s lips. He cradles Henry’s chin and shuts him up with a kiss. Miraculously, Henry lets him, smiling through the interruption as if it’s a secondary concern, as if a kiss from Alex is worth every single unfinished sentence. And Alex is so in love that he thinks, if Henry had let him, he’d cut every word with a kiss.
A smile pulls Alex’s lips when he finally manages to tear himself from Henry. “My thinking woke you up?” he asks, though his tone isn’t apologetic. Henry lets out an ugly snort and Alex has to kiss him again, simply for letting himself be open with Alex, letting himself be ugly and imperfect and flawed in a way no one else is privy to.
“And I was having such a good dream, too.”
“About my ass?” Alex quirks a brow and Henry’s shoots him an unimpressed look. Alex lets his fingers trail down Henry’s shoulder. “Because you can have it, baby, whenever you want—”
“Alex.”
“I’m just putting the offer out there—” Then, they’re kissing again, and the offer doesn’t quite matter. Henry pushes him into the mattress and kisses him again, kisses him as he reaches between them, kisses him when they fall apart again a second time that night, and this time Alex lets himself feel all of it, the love threatening to burst out of his chest with every touch between them. He can’t say the words, just on the off chance that they ruin everything, but he shows Henry in the press of his fingers, in the tug of his lips, in the way their eyes meet under the blanket of darkness. I love you, he thinks, and it feels more real than anyone with a jagged scale could.
“Everything okay, right?” Henry asks later, curled behind Alex like an unyielding blanket, breath ghosting over Alex’s neck. “You seemed to be thinking about something important.” There’s a shake in his voice, a timbre of fear Alex is able to recognize; he tightens his grip around Henry’s hand and presses a kiss on all of his knuckles until the tension in his shoulder dissipates.
“Yeah.” A smile pulls his lips. He slides his fingers through Henry’s. “Everything’s perfect.”
With Henry smiling behind him, it doesn’t take long for sleep to claim him.
v. Lake LBJ, August
“Hey,” he says, his mouth right up in a breath’s space from Henry’s. he watches a drop of water roll down Henry’s perfect nose and disappear into his mouth.
“Hi,” Henry says back, and Alex thinks, Goddamn, I love him. It keeps coming back to him, and it’s getting harder to look into Henry’s soft smiles and not say it.
Henry looks heavenly under the surface of the lake.
It’s a marvel, Alex thinks, that he gets to have Henry like this—bare in the moonlight, hair so pale it looks blonde, freckles dancing over his nose and lips curled into a heavy smile. It’s a far cry from the image of Henry that he allows to the press, all pressed shirts and timid smiles, a life’s worth of personality hidden under the obligations to the flimsy wishes of the crown. Luck doesn’t even begin to describe what it feels like to have Henry just be himself.
Vaguely, Alex remembers what he told Henry about soulmates that fateful New Year’s Eve party. Someone to love you for all your flaws, see you and choose you not despite them, but with every imperfection, hidden or otherwise. The kind of love that can’t be broken by anything or anyone.
Stupid of him, thinking that kind of love was exclusive only to soulmates. So stupid in the face of the love he feels for Henry now; he loves him, loves his secret scars and bleeding wounds, loves his prickly jabs and stormy moods, loves his quiet and his loud and his cheeky, loves him in the way June loves Nora and Ellen loves Leo, in the way he’s heard Arthur loved Catherine. He knows there’s someone out there with the same jagged scale as on his wrist, someone supposedly meant for him, yet Alex can’t imagine a world he could love anyone quite like he loves Henry. He doesn’t want to imagine a world Henry isn’t the person by his side, forever.
He’s in love with Henry. And here, as the million stars as his witness, he aches for Henry to know.
“Did you ever put your soulmark on one of those matchmaking sites?”
Henry’s eyes flicker to him, a perfect brow arched to his forehead. “Right, because the Queen is so fond of marrying her family to anyone but nobility.” A snort escapes Alex’s lips. He tries to flick Henry’s shoulder but he ducks away from his hand, instead wrapping his fingers to pull him into a kiss. And Alex can’t really be mad at Henry when he’s so warm and solid next to him.
“I was just asking, you asshole.”
“Here I thought you liked my arse.” This time, Alex does punch him on the shoulder. A grin flickers on Henry’s face, but then it dissolves into a frown, fingers wrapped around Alex’s wrist absentmindedly rubbing circles over his soulmark. “I did think about it,” he starts, and his voice is so hesitant that Alex has a feeling he hasn’t even admitted that to himself, “but they’re tightly regulated for age, and by the time I could… Well, I didn’t particularly care about finding my match if I couldn’t be with them anyway.”
Alex, for not the first time, wants to punch Mary in the face. A broken nose would match her complexion well. “I’m sorry.” Henry offers him a small smile. His eyes are darker when he turns back to the sky.
“It’s in the past now,” he says with a dismissive shrug. Alex’s heart skips. Yeah, he thinks. The past, with unmatched marks and wishes for a soulmate when his perfect match has been with him already.
“I have,” he blurts out, watching Henry’s reaction. One corner of his lips quirk into a smile. He doesn’t look surprised at all, and Alex supposes that’s to be expected. Signing up for a stupid soulmate site is not out of character for him. “Kinda botched the age restriction a bit. My mom still doesn’t know I used her phone.”
“Of course you did.” Henry’s eyes are twinkling when they meet Alex’s, and Alex feels the sudden urge to erase that look from his face. With his lips. So he does.
“I was fourteen, you bastard—”
“Incorrect, but go on,”
“And I was curious.” He lies on his stomach and pokes Henry on the arm. “I wanted to see if I could find my match before anyone else. Did you know there’s hundreds of people on earth with scale marks? I didn’t.” Henry makes a noncommittal noise. His eyes don’t move but Alex feels the tension climb up his spine, shoulders set in a tight line. He pokes Henry again. “None of them matched mine, in case you couldn’t tell,” he says softly before Henry can spiral. “Whoever my soulmate is, they’re either not fond of dating sites, or I’m supposedly gonna match a prince held tight under his grandmother’s thumb.” He grins when Henry rolls his eyes. “Do you think I should ask Philip for his mark?”
“You demon.” Henry shakes his head, but he’s smiling, and when Alex reaches up to kiss him he doesn’t push him away. Alex lets his lips linger over his for a few seconds longer, just savoring this moment with him, this moment that means more than any mark could, before he opens his eyes. Henry looks at him with a curious expression on his face. “Is there a reason you’re telling me this now?” he asks, and Alex’s heart stutters. His fingers curl around Henry’s hair.
“Just,” he starts, trying to come up with the right words to make Henry see just how much he loves him. He’s never been good with his words, and before this he didn’t care much, but nothing before felt as important as Henry. Nothing felt as important as showing him he didn’t care about soulmates anymore. “I used to think soulmates were the end all, be all of everything. I spent so long looking for mine, to have the kind of love I thought only a soulmate could give me, that I… I think I lost my way a bit.” The corners of his lips curl into a smile. He looks up at Henry, blue eyes completely unreadable, and he loves him so much that he’s ready to burst at the seams if he doesn’t say the words. “Until I met you.”
Henry’s breath hitches in his throat. “Alex—” he whispers, but Alex doesn’t let him get far. He needs to say this. Henry needs to hear it, needs to know just how much he means to Alex.
“So maybe I was wrong.” His fingers move to cup Henry’s cheek and feels the shakiness of his breaths. “Maybe you don’t need matching soulmarks to have the love of a lifetime. Maybe you were right, and we can choose to love someone as deeply as we would if they were our soulmates. Because baby, I—”
“Stop.” Henry’s nails dig into Alex’s skin, and abruptly, Alex’s words trail off into nothing. He feels his throat build into a knot. “Don’t say it.”
Alex thinks he must be dreaming. “Henry?” he tries but his voice is cracked; he’s not even sure if Henry understood when he scrambles away from Alex’s arms, keeping his hands in front of him as if to stop Alex from coming any closer. Alex thinks he couldn’t move even if there was a lion chasing after him. He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. Henry is faster anyway.
“I’m not your soulmate,” he whispers, and Alex wants to argue, wants to tell him he doesn’t fucking care, but he doesn’t have the words. “This isn’t… We aren’t meant to be, Alex.”
“You don’t know that,” is all he manages, and somehow Henry’s face breaks further. He climbs onto shaky knees, shivering even under the warmth of the night; his arms wrap around himself as if he can chase away the cold. Even now, Alex feels the sudden urge to throw a blanket around him so he doesn’t get sick.
“I do,” he says, and all the argument Alex has left in him is to shake his head. “We don’t share a soulmark. That’s what it means.” His blue eyes hold Alex’s for another second, too long and too short at the same time, before he turns away. “This was a mistake.”
That’s the last thing he says before he spins around; Alex watches until he disappears into the house, and then some more, just in case he turns back and hauls Alex into his arms like in a fairytale, but the door stays closed. The door stays closed, the night stays warm, and yet Alex finds himself trembling all over, the kind of cold no blanket could chase away.
By the time he gathers the courage to go back inside, Henry’s gone.
+i. Kensington Palace, August
“Henry! Your Royal fucking Highness!”
Shaan touches a finger to his earpiece. “Team Bravo, we’ve got a situa—”
“For Christ’s sake, Alex, what are you doing?”
Alex freezes, his mouth open around another shout, and there’s Henry standing behind Shaan in the doorway, barefoot in worn-in sweats. Alex’s heart is going to fall out of his ass.
The door clicks behind Alex, trapping him with Henry, and it feels quite like he’s just walked into his doom.
Alex’s eyes flicker around the room, taking in the sights that’s familiar and strange to him at the same time. It’s the same room he’s seen through Henry’s phone, the same bed he’s had Henry in, the blurry edges and muted colors etched in his memory. Yet, like every single time, it feels too far away, like a display on a museum, so far from the Henry he knows that the blonde feels out of place in the room.
Alex’s eyes flicker to him. He’s turned away, but Alex sees the taut line of his shoulders, the kind of tension he hasn’t seen there in a while—at least, not when it came to Alex. A knot builds up in his throat, but he pushes through it; the words he’s kept to himself, the confessions he hasn’t had the chance to say have built up into knives in his lungs, threatening to tear him apart, and Alex thinks he’ll bleed out if he doesn’t get it out. “Henry,” he whispers, a crack in his voice. Henry’s fingers curl into a fist, but that’s all the reaction he offers Alex, and something in Alex snaps. “At least have the fucking decency to look at me.”
It’s excruciatingly slow, but finally, Henry faces him. It’s his eyes Alex sees first; the bottomless blue ones so full of love and care before, now red-rimmed and tight, the crinkles Alex loves all too much smoothed into nothing. Then, the purple circles underneath them; Henry’s cheeks are sunken and pale, making them stand out like flashing lights, advertising the multiple sleepless nights he must’ve had. A petty part of Alex wants to believe he deserved it for what he put Alex through, but most of him—the parts that love Henry unconditionally, the part that wants him to be happy regardless of their relationship status—wants to wrap Henry in his arms until he falls asleep, just like he knows Henry likes, just like they’ve always slept last week, even though it feels like another lifetime. Henry looks utterly exhausted, carrying too much at once, and for once Alex isn’t sure if he’d let him take some of the weight off.
His fingers tighten in a flare of anger. “You’re so fucking stupid,” he spits, and in a moment of impulse throws the wet clumps of paper in front of Henry. The product of hours spent online, every single thing Alex has managed to put together about soulmates, unceremoniously fall on the floor like it’s nothing more than the scribbles of an immature child, and Alex suddenly feels like crying. “You didn’t even fucking look, did you?” he whispers, quite out of energy to talk louder, as he watches Henry gingerly pick up the papers. With robotic movements, he smooths out the front page. His lips tighten into a thin line.
“Alex, you can’t feel—” he tries, and his voice sounds so defeated already that bile rises in Alex’s throat. He doesn’t let Henry continue.
“Don’t you fucking dare.” Unforgivably, his voice cracks at the last word; he digs his nails into his palms and takes a deep breath, trying to ground his palpitating heart so he doesn’t feel like he’s seconds from a heart attack. He doesn’t even realize he’s closed his eyes; he opens them, and when he meets the bottomless blue across the room, the same kind of pain and desperation in them Alex has seen in the lakehouse when Henry cut his confession short, the last of his restraints crumble into dust. “I fucking love you, okay?” he rushes out, a half yell, before Henry can stop him again. Henry goes incredibly still; if not for the papers crinkling in his hands, Alex would think he froze.
He runs a desperate hand through his hair. “You’re so fucking…” He can’t even find the right word. “Fuck. It’s not been fucking easy, but I love you. I’m in love with you.” He breathes, for the first time in the entire speech, and lifts his gaze again, meets Henry’s eyes in a challenge.
This time, it’s Henry who looks away first. His fingers lift up to his collarbone, where Alex knows his soulmark is—impossibly, Alex loves it, loves the shape of it on the curve of Henry’s skin, loves what the crescents symbolize for Henry, but he feels the sudden urge to burn it off. “Alex,” Henry says again, so slowly that Alex knows what it’s coming before he says it, “I know you believe that, but it won’t be the same as—”
“You can’t fucking know that.” Alex means to sound angry, but desperation tints his voice, spilling over the well it’s been building in ever since Henry left him alone in the lakehouse. Henry opens his mouth again, but he doesn’t let him continue. “You don’t… I looked into it, okay? Every single fucking thing I could find, because guess fucking what, soulmates have been a point of interest for centuries. And it’s possible, Henry. It’s happened before. People have fallen in love without sharing a soulmark, they’ve been happy with someone that’s not their soulmates. There are records of it, fucking letters professing undying love to each other and their soulmarks are even less similar than…” Ours, Alex thinks, and then, is that even a thing anymore? His eyes start to burn; his voice, once he finds it again, is much too weak for his liking. “Don’t tell me what I’m feeling isn’t real. I know what this is. This is it for me.” The realizations that’s always been near the surface bursts through, and Alex feels, deep in his heart, the truth of it. It’s bigger than love, bigger than anything he could’ve felt; he thinks maybe he should be scared, but a strange calm settles over him. He meets Henry’s gaze again, voice dropping into a whisper, and he says the words he feels with his entire being. “This is forever.”
Henry’s face pinches painfully. He looks away, papers crumbling in his hands. “Don’t. Please.” The pieces fall to the floor, the painstaking notes in his crumbly handwriting lost under the force of the rain and the tight grip Henry has over them. A large knot settles in Alex’s throat as he stares at the papers. “I can’t do this, Alex. No matter how much you like me—” Alex’s eyes snap up.
“You mean I love you.” His voice shakes at the last word, but he doesn’t take it back. A muscle ticks in Henry’s jaw.
“You…love me,” he corrects, but Alex sees it—even now, after Alex has borne all his heart to him, he doesn’t believe it. He doesn’t fucking see Alex’s bleeding heart through his glass skin. “This won’t last. You must know it won’t last. Our soulmarks—”
If Henry mentions the marks again, Alex thinks he’ll jump out the window. “I don’t care about the fucking soulmarks!” he snaps, voice half broken; Henry looks like he might argue again, but Alex doesn’t let him. He steps forward—there’s only a foot between them now, so close that Alex feels heat radiating off of Henry’s body. Desperate tears prickle his eyes. “It doesn’t matter to me. None of it does.”
“You don’t mean that—”
“Fucking try me.” Alex juts his chin out and meets Henry’s gaze head on—his eyes, the blue he loves so much looks so bright under a sheen of tears, and Alex aches to hold him close but he stands his ground. He waits instead of pushing Henry because he needs him to see, he needs Henry to know he means every single fucking word he says. He needs Henry to understand he’s not letting them go without a fight.
Henry’s throat bobs. “Even if you do mean—Alex, please, give me a chance—” He lifts a hand when Alex opens his mouth, and reluctantly Alex presses his lips together into silence. “Even if you do mean that, what happens when you meet your soulmate? When you find the one you’re meant to be with?”
“It won’t fucking matter,” Alex says, and the truth of it doesn’t even faze him. “I’ll have you.” Alex takes another step forward, letting his toes brush Henry’s, and a breath hitches in Henry’s throat. He has to look away.
“Alex,” Henry says, quieter this time—his voice sounds so broken that Alex gives in to the urge, reaching out to take Henry’s face in his hands. His thumbs smooth the wisps of hair fallen over his forehead, smooths over the circles under his eyes until Henry melts under his touch, until the conviction in his eyes melts into something raw, something real. “You’ve wanted your soulmate for years,” he whispers, and Alex sees it for the first time. Sees the real reason behind Henry’s reluctance.
Fear. Henry’s terrified. Of losing him, of Alex finding his soulmate, and the idea is so ridiculous that Alex feels like laughing. Instead, he tips Henry’s head and finds his eyes. “I wanted my soulmate because I wanted to feel loved unconditionally.” He doesn’t mention just for how long he’s believed he’d never be just right for anyone, though he doesn’t need to. Henry knows his heart already. “And I have that now. Henry, this isn’t me giving up on a soulmate or settling because I think I can’t find mine. This is me giving the universe a big fuck you and choosing someone I love. Someone who loves me for who I am.” Suddenly, he has to stop. A weight settles on his heart at the reminder that Henry, through it all, hasn’t actually said those three words. “Or at least, I hope he does.”
Henry’s face melts into incredulity. “Of course I love you, Alex,” he whispers, like it’s so simple, like it’s a fact of the word; if Alex didn’t feel like he’s on the verge of a breakup, he thinks he might’ve kissed Henry. Instead, he settles for a smile, fingers tracing the lines of Henry’s lips.
“You think I’m not scared, too?” His gaze turns blurry through a sheen of tears, but he doesn’t fight them. “Like, what if you meet your soulmate and decide I’m not enough? What if sparks fly and fireworks explode and suddenly I’m a nuisance?”
“That’s not gonna happen,” Henry says softly, and Alex’s smile quirks up. He digs his thumb to one corner of Henry’s lips.
“Then believe me when I tell you I’m not gonna let it happen to me either, okay?” His voice drops into a whisper; he came into the room angry, ready to punch some sense into Henry—potentially with his lips—but it’s been over twenty-four hours since he last slept properly, and he’s completely spent. All he has left is this moment—if Henry pushes him away now, he doesn’t think he’ll have the energy to stay. “Please, Henry. Trust me. Choose me, like you said you wanted to on New Year’s.” The first tear slips from his eyes. “Please.” He waits, breath held, heart in Henry’s hands, to see if he’ll keep it or break it. He waits and watches, Henry’s face morphing into desperation, and pain, and then finally defeat, the tears he’s been holding back falling down his face onto Alex’s fingers. He takes Alex’s face in his hands.
“I’m not strong enough,” he whispers, quite vaguely, but then his lips are on Alex’s, and Alex forgets to ask for a clarification. He forgets as Henry drags him into the bed with desperate hands, forgets as his hands roam on Henry’s skin to memorize every detail he can manage, forgets as he collapses into Henry’s arms at the very end, clinging onto him with the desperation of a man finding water in drought.
He forgets to ask as he falls asleep in Henry’s arms, sleep claiming him with the images of crescent moons and blue eyes burned into his eyes.
Alex wakes up to a body slipping next to him in the bed.
Instinctively, he tenses, until the scent of the person fills his nose, the ever familiar mix of Earl Grey and rain that seems to follow Henry even after a shower. A warm arm slips around his waist and pulls him close, Henry’s chest solid behind him. “Just sleep,” Henry whispers into his ear. “I’m with you.”
Alex believes him. He falls back asleep not too long after.
When he wakes up again, it’s with a rhythmic thud that beats under his ear. He immediately identifies it as Henry’s heart—somehow, in the intervening hours, he’s managed to wrap himself around Henry’s body, practically using him as a body pillow, tangled up so tightly together that Alex doesn’t know where he ends and Henry starts. A knot settles in his throat, threatening to spill over and break the fragile bubble around them.
I’m not strong enough. Alex still doesn’t know whether that means Henry’s leaving him or fighting with him, and if the answer is the latter, he’s quite sure he doesn’t want to get out of the bed to find out.
“Darling?” Henry’s fingers tangle in his hair. Alex immediately closes his eyes, but it’s too late—his body’s too tense to feign sleep, and besides, Henry knows him all too well to believe him. He feels Henry’s hand move through his hair, untangling the no doubt messy curls, and he has to look up at him even if just to see the expression on his face like that. It’s no secret Henry loves his hair, and Alex needs to know if his eyes still crinkle just so whenever he runs a hand through the dark curls.
A familiar expression greets him. “You look quite like you lost a fight with the blanket,,” Henry says, but he sounds so fond that Alex can’t even be mad about it. His lips curl into a soft smile; his hand stops long enough for him to lean in and press a lingering kiss on Alex’s lips, tilting his world right back into the place he’s uprooted a week ago. For just a moment, Alex dares hope.
“You seem…” He doesn’t have the right word. Happy doesn’t feel enough after everything, though he sees it in Henry’s eyes, and Alex is afraid hopeful is too much. “Less pissy,” he settles finally, an easy joke that won’t shatter his heart if the morning isn’t going where he thinks it is. Henry laughs, a genuine laugh he saves only for those he truly cares about, and Alex thinks that maybe he shouldn’t have doubted.
“You could say that, I guess.” He smiles and sets his hand back on Alex’s hair, unknotting the curls in just the right way that Alex loves. “Let’s just say I’ve got a chance to think over what you said and got some clarity.”
“Clarity,” Alex parrots, brow arched. Henry’s smile turns bashful.
“That part was mostly Bea,” he admits, and Alex loves him so much, but that makes infinitely more sense. He doesn’t interrupt, though, letting Henry speak with his heart in his throat, clinging into every word that comes out of him. “She made me realize that I’ve been quite stupid when it comes to my feelings for you.”
Alex has to snort. “That’s putting it mildly.”
“Shush, I’m not done.” But even that sounds fond, and fuck him, Alex is so in love it hurts. “Just…” Henry’s face suddenly turns serious. “It wasn’t fair for me to claim you’d leave me at the first sight of your soulmate, especially when I knew for a fact I wouldn’t be able to fall in love with anyone else, matching soulmarks or not. I shouldn’t have assumed your feelings weren’t strong enough just because I was scared, and for that I’m sorry.” Henry’s blue eyes are so honest and vulnerable that Alex doesn’t even have to forgive him; Henry might be an idiot, but he’s Alex’s idiot, and even if he fucked up Alex knows he’d follow Henry to the ends of the world.
Instead, he says, “you should be,” and Henry shoots him an unimpressed look. A cheeky grin spreads on Alex’s face. “I’m just saying, sweetheart. I had to tell you I loved you, like, a hundred times—”
“More like ten.”
“I would’ve thought you’d believe me already.” It’s a joke, really, but Alex feels something dissolve in his chest, the worry that Henry would never accept his love, and suddenly nothing matters more than making sure Henry knows. He shifts just enough to take Henry’s face in his hands and holds his bright blue eyes. “I love you, Henry,” he says, and Henry positively melts under him, lips tilting into one of his secret smiles. And, fuck, “I’m so fucking in love with you. Like, an obscenely, disgustingly, romcom on steroids—”
“Steroids?”
“Kind of love.” Alex’s smile turns cheeky. “That good enough?” Henry makes a desperate noise, and then suddenly he’s being hauled into a sitting position, blanket falling off his shoulders as Henry’s lips ghost over his—
“What’s that?” Alex makes a desperate noise when Henry pushes him away, ready to fire a retort, but then he takes in Henry’s expression and stops. Henry is looking at his chest like his heart is on fucking display; Alex follows his gaze with arched brow, right over his heart. He didn’t know what to expect, really, but the smooth lines of a balanced scale were surely not it.
A scale. Alex’s heart truly jumps this time; he scrambles to pull his wrist close and turn it around, just to see if he’s dreaming or not, looking for the familiar jagged lines, but instead—nothing. He turns over his other wrist, too, just for the sake of covering all his bases, but smooth skin greets him again. His wrist is empty, the soulmark that’s been a source of hope and desperation at equal parts gone, disappeared without a trace.
Alex’s mind is spinning. He stares at his wrists, and then turns to his chest, and thinks—not quite without a trace, at the end. But the mark on his chest is different. The angle makes it hard, but even from his point of view Alex can tell the lines are thinner and smoother, the scale balanced perfectly, with a crescent on each side, like a mirror to Henry’s mark. Alex’s heart stops briefly, and then rushes into overdrive, making him feel hazy. “Henry,” he whispers, finally managing to tear his gaze away. “Henry, I think—” and that’s as far as he gets. His eyes fall onto Henry’s bare chest, but all he really sees is his mark, like some kind of a beacon luring Alex in.
Except it’s not the crescents he’s been so familiar with. It’s a scale, right over Henry’s heart, and Alex doesn’t have to check line by line to know it’s an exact match to his. A laugh bubbles out of his chest. It should be impossible—the soulmarks, for all intents and purposes, are supposed to be fucking forever—and yet…
It comes back to Alex, then, what he told Henry that first night Henry kissed him.
Sure, you love your family and friends, but soulmate is something else. They’re chosen for you, made just the right way to love you with all your imperfections and flaws. You can’t just love someone random the way you love a soulmate.
Except…he and Henry did, didn’t they? They loved each other unconditionally, not through the flaws but with them, with every caveat and imperfection that comes with a relationship. They loved each other like soulmates even when they weren’t supposed to be a match, and somehow, by some miracle, the universe listened to them, giving them the one thing Alex already knew deep in his heart—that they belonged together.
“Baby,” Alex whispers, face split into a smile. A tiny part of him wants to say I told you so, but the rest, the majority of his heart just wants to embrace Henry, wants to yell from the top of the world that they’re soulmate, that he’s Henry’s and Henry is his, that they chose each other even when the odds were stacked so against them and showed the universe what’s possible. He meets Henry’s blue eyes, luminous under a sheen of tears, and has to laugh again. “I told you,” he whispers still, because he’s still a fucking asshole even in the face of life-changing revelations, “I fucking told you we could choose—”
That’s as far as he gets before Henry’s lips crashes into his with a level of desperation that Alex hasn’t seen. Not that he minds it; he matches Henry, beat by beat, losing himself in the press of his lips, in the caress of his fingers over his chest, in the heady feeling that he’s kissing his soulmate; not born but made, through love and tribulations instead of obligatory matching. Vaguely, Alex wonders if he could’ve truly loved his old soulmate the way he loves Henry; it simply feels impossible with the enormity of his feelings ready to burst from his chest, and he thinks he doesn’t care anyway. He has Henry, and that… That’s all that matters.
“I love you,” he whispers to Henry’s lips, because he can, because he’s allowed to. Henry makes a desperate noise and kisses him again, “I love you,” and again, “I fucking love—” and again. “I love you so much.”
Henry pulls back just enough to meet his eyes and cups his cheeks. “I’m in love with you,” he whispers, like he’d say the sun rises from the east and sets from the west; then, they’re kissing again, and Alex thinks he could definitely get used to it.
Forever doesn’t feel quite long enough to get tired of Henry.
(“I was terrified,” Henry whispers much, much later, with his face pressed into Alex’s curls and an arm thrown around his waist. “That you’d love someone else. Someone…better.”
Alex drags his fingers through Henry’s hair. For once, he can’t joke. “Me too, baby.” Then, with a level of finality, “too bad I’m gonna love you forever, huh?”
Henry’s lips curl into a smile. He drops a kiss on Alex’s skin, right where their shared soulmark is, and Alex thinks…yeah. Yeah, he’s quite fine loving Henry forever.)