Chapter Text
Henry had, by and large, given up on ever getting a soulmate when they had first met. He was all the things he shouldn’t be - the second spare, a secretly gay royal meant to be a heartbreaker and beloved by teen girls the world over, grieving his dead father. At that time, he often found himself wondering what was even the point of soulmates, since mum seemed to have become more statue than human since dad died.
And then a boy around his age had stumbled into him, and his grin was huge, and Henry saw colour again for the first time in months.
He has a soulmate, and it’s a guy, and his grandmother hates it and his brother hates it but Henry is so, so glad it’s them against the world.
He doesn’t know what he’d do without Pez.
—
The British royal family don’t really do soulmate announcements. Nobody even knew his parents were soulmates until Arthur died; only then was it deemed appropriate, by Catherine’s private secretary, to emphasise the amount of grief the princess was experiencing and to explain her absence from several notable events.
Pip’s engaged. Henry hasn’t had the courage to ask him if he and Martha are soulmates. It’s not as if anything changes to tell other people when you find them, no secret mark or new sense. Just people who are happier than before - unless they’ve had years of media training. And Martha is blandly happy all of the time, from what Henry’s seen. She finds something nice to say about everything. If she heard the Queen was hosting a dictator she’d probably say something like, ‘How nice for her to show him what a functioning democracy is like!’
Pez and Henry live together. It seemed like the logical next step, after being thick as thieves since they first met. Whatever his grandmother thinks, face turning purple, they don’t share a bedroom. They don’t even kiss. Henry knows his parents had a great love, but there have to be other kinds of soulmates, right? Ones where there’s no romance there but you know each other’s preferences down to the brand of chocolate button they like. (His: Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, conjuring up memories of sharing them as prizes during board games with Dad. Pez’s: Montezuma’s Mandarin and Dark Chocolate.) Someone who you can always be glad to see and spend time with, who you can tell almost anything. Henry never wants their dynamic to change.
So it’s a horrible shock when, one night, about three weeks before his brother’s wedding, it does.
Henry isn’t a good cook - far from it, in fact - but Pez insisted he at least know how to heat things up properly and use the rice cooker when they moved in together. Now he can defrost frozen curries with the best of them, even if his rice always teeters on the edge of unevenly seasoned. He’s watching the golden chicken in the pan closely when Pez comes in, face grey, David following with all the worry his beagle body can manifest.
“Haz,” he says hoarsely, forestalling Henry’s greeting. “I think we need to talk.”
“Are you okay?” Henry wants to know. “It’s not Darren, is it?” Darren is the grade-A wanker who smashed into Pez’s car last year and has, instead of paying up on insurance, been engaged in a dick-waggling contest with the lawyers. His last message was that he was “going to come down there and smash your face in”, which the police had deemed “not a credible threat”.
But Pez just shakes his head, so Henry abandons the hob and sits at the table. It’s clear Pez is in agonies over something.
“I found him,” he eventually says, voice a thousand miles from here.
“Found who?” Henry pushes, as the smell of boiling, burning chicken curry begins to permeate through the kitchen.
Pez’s eyes are faraway, a dark night sky dotted with stars.
“My soulmate.”
—
In two days, Henry’s back at Kensington Palace. His mother has shown concern, but he’s fibbed and said he wants to be around properly for Philip’s wedding. Bea knows something is up, but he hasn’t been cornered by her yet, so he’s safe.
It was sudden, and interminable. Pez switching off the hob and dumping the rubber remains into the bin as Henry sat there, too stunned to form a sentence. Telling him about this guy, this Liam, showing him around in Texas as part of some corporate nicey-nice effort, but the moment they shook hands they felt it.
Because there’s something to feel. There’s a ‘zing’, or close to it - Pez has tried to describe it a few different ways, like ‘eating a lemon first thing’, or ‘static electricity in your whole body - but good’. Henry can’t fathom it.
Because he’s never felt it before. Because Pez isn’t his soulmate.
He knows they both cried, and then Henry cried again when Pez says he’s got another flight in two days, but he had to come, and tell him in person, because he loves him.
“If you loved me,” the horrible goblin in his brain whispers, “You’d stay. You’d ball up all your doubts and hide them away from me. Because I’m the prince, who doesn’t want to be my soulmate?”
The goblin arrived after the death of his father. Normally, he’s able to ignore it. It’s louder today.
Henry remembers when his grandmother’s private secretary showed him a magazine, when he was a boy. Maybe eleven or twelve. It was a magazine for tween girls, and above a smiling picture of him, taken on his birthday, there was a quiz on ‘what % Prince Henry’s soulmate are you?’
“See,” the secretary had said, “This is why we get you to tell us things like your favourite music and books. It makes you relatable.”
Even back then, they’d changed his answers. Rudyard Kipling? He was reading Tamora Pierce. The answers were the worst of all - from “10-30% :(: Sorry girls, it looks like he just won’t be interested! Don’t worry, though, you’ll find your soulmate soon!” to “80-100%: WOWEE! You’re just what the prince wants!”, it was all a lie. Because even then, he’d known his soulmate wouldn’t be someone anyone expected. When he’d found Pez, it felt like a vindication.
Shaan is happy he’s in the same building - makes it easier to do status updates. He definitely knows something has happened between Pez and Henry, and he doesn’t say a word, just ticks off to dos and makes sure his suit is perfect. He’s Best Man, apparently. Henry knows both Pip and his real friends would have preferred it if he were just another guest.
David misses Pez horribly. His tail droops when Henry sits down to eat alone; although he always slept at Henry’s feet, his favourite playmate was Pez. The worst is when he takes his favoured, frayed tug-of-war toy and lays it in front of the door, like maybe Pez is just on the other side of it and the toy is the magic key to make him step in.
“He’s not coming back,” Henry has to keep saying, over and over. “He’s not, David.” But David still stares up at the door handle, like it’s going to happen– any moment now–
___
They all have a perfectly polite dinner together, the night before the wedding. The Queen was too busy to come, and everyone, even Martha, is a little bit relieved about it.
Martha’s parents, Wing Commander Bernard Bright and the Lady Eleanor Bright, are in good humour, the Wing Commander’s face getting ruddier with every sip of wine. Martha smoothly brokers conversation between them and Catherine, with Philip playing the part of the besotted groom. It leaves Henry and Bea free to speak quietly at the other end of the table.
“You don’t exactly look well,” she tells him over their fig starter. “What’s the matter?”
He shakes his head. “Not before the wedding, Bea.”
Her eyebrows go up. “When?”
His hair is a little long, he notices. He’s probably got a trim booked before he gets into his suit tomorrow. Shaan will know; Shaan probably has it booked in his diary this very moment, if he bothered to look at it.
“Midway through the reception,” Henry replies. “When all the formal portraits are done and I can head off for the night.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” she tells him in an undertone, and turns her attention to Martha’s mother, who’s asked what Bea will be wearing tomorrow. Henry hears her coo in delight over Bea’s reply - a spring-green gown, with lilies-of-the-valley embroidered at the shoulders. “Martha’s favourite flower,” Bea continues, lightly. “What better way to pay our respects to the bride?”
God. He’s behaving so badly that even his sister is papering over the cracks for him. Henry forces himself to sit up properly and smile when Philip adds in that the groomsmen are wearing red roses, England’s flower, which will be further highlighted in Martha’s bouquet. Martha makes a joke about how she didn’t know grooms paid attention to the flowers, and everyone laughs as though this is a hilarious and unique insight.
Henry’s both surprised and not that his brother has paid so much attention to the optics of the wedding. In another life, he’d be a fantastic marketing consultant. This wedding is the first major happy Royal event since Henry’s birth, and he’s the heir to the throne; everything is a photo opportunity, everything is propaganda.
Henry’s heartily sick of the whole thing, but as with so many things in his life, he can’t just decide he doesn’t want to be a part of it. So he claps his brother on the back as they leave the meal, Martha waving goodbye, and promises to be there and help him tomorrow.
“Didn’t know you cared,” Philip says, somewhat caustically, as they walk to their apartments.
There a million things he could reply with: ‘I don’t,’ perhaps, or ‘Try not to be an arsehole for five fucking seconds’. But instead, he shrugs, key in his hand, and says “You’d do the same for me.” He leaves his brother gibbering somewhat in the corridor and then heads straight for his phone.
He doesn’t know if it’s better or worse that Pez is still texting. If he has a silver tongue, it extends to his writing too; his texts are effortless, breezy, yet still with a weighty note in there that says “we shared something, and it meant something to me.”
Pez has sent a picture of a beagle outside a barbecue joint; it’s hideously cute. He responds with a snap of David looking out of the window, chin resting on the sill, wishing he had the energy to hate Pez or even a reason to. It would be so much easier to act like he’d been betrayed if he actually had been, but all Pez is guilty of is not knowing what soulmates felt like. And, since Henry himself mistook friendship for more, he can’t exactly be angry.
There’s a quiet knock at the door, and Shaan enters. “Sir,” he says, and passes over a sheet of A4, detailing times and obligations for tomorrow.
David gets off his bed and trots over to Shaan, who scratches his head as Henry runs his eyes over the timeline. He was right - haircut at 9am.
“First look?” he asks, looking up at Shaan. “What’s that?”
“Miss Bright’s request,” Shaan says lightly. “The bride and groom to see each other before the journey to the Abbey. I understand the pictures are not to be seen by anyone other than close family.” He pauses for a beat. “The Queen will not be told about this.”
“Every so often, Philip behaves like a human,” Henry muses, not missing Shaan’s quirk of a smile.
“There was one other thing,” Shaan says. “Your guest. Percy Okonjo. Is–”
Henry rarely cuts people off. He did when he was younger, trying to get a word in edgeways with his siblings, but training put paid to all of that.
“He is no longer attending,” Henry says quickly. “My apologies. I thought I’d mentioned this.”
They had a lot of people to tell. Well, Henry had a lot of people to tell, because he was the one changing living arrangements. Pez had said they could both stay, the apartment belonged to both of them, but - aside from the fact it absolutely does not, the place being owned by Okonjo Enterprises - Henry couldn’t bear the thought of Pez bringing his soulmate there. Liam. Not while Henry was around.
“I see,” Shaan says, and he doesn’t linger, exactly. He makes a note, and nods. “I’ll see you in the morning, sir. David’s been let out already this evening and I’ll bring the pet-sitter with me when you wake up.”
Shaan knows Henry rarely sleeps, but neither of them make a quip about it. Besides, Henry sees a pack of zopiclone set discreetly on his bedside table when he enters his room. Even he can’t fight those for very long.
___
He gets maybe five hours. He wakes at three, haunted out of dreams by a nightmare, and David nudges him with a wet nose until he remembers he’s human. Mostly human.
Bea, in one of the serious chats they had before dad died, said she didn’t want a soulmate. That she wanted to be her own person. Henry had scoffed, saying that she’d find someone and eat her words. But she never has. Two years ago she’d sent him an article in the British Medical Journal about deliberately soulmateless people. He didn’t feel smart enough to understand the paper, just the abstract, but the gist was that she’d been right. Or, at least, the evidence said she was right. Of course, the papers reported on this like any person who was single past 45 was trying to bring down Western civilisation.
But Henry isn’t like her. He’s never felt particularly whole by himself, even if the therapist he saw after dad died said that wasn’t a soulmate thing, that was a Henry thing. The point is - he thought he saw his life going some way, and he was ready for it, and now it’s going another and he feels adrift in space.
He really shouldn’t be going to a wedding in his position.
David eventually lay on top of him, and Henry must have slept a little more because he wakes up with Shaan opening his curtains and the hum of chatter coming from outside the door. Not for them the excited chatter of groom’s parties; well, maybe Pip will have some small and sensible sherries with the friends he actually wants by his side. In the here and now, the groom's brother swallows some SSRIs, has a piece of toast, gets his hair cut, has his makeup applied and is dressed in his suit. He feels watery and colourless when he looks in the mirror, and if it weren’t for his hair and eyes he’d think he was seeing in black and white.
Shaan steps forward to fix the little rose decoration on his lapel, and then it’s a short walk to the cars. Bea is already waiting for them, her hat a little pillbox, tilted to the side, daringly chic against her auburn hair. Henry stands next to her and makes a face as she smiles at him.
“Oh, come on,” she says lightly as they wait for Philip. “You look like Prince Charming.”
“How lovely,” Henry grumbles back. “I’m a man who makes out with an unconscious woman so hard she wakes up and marries me.”
A look of worry darts over her face. “And you’re sure whatever’s wrong with you can wait til the reception?”
“Well,” says Henry, “I’m the Best Man, and it’s televised. So I think it has to.”
She wrinkles her nose at that, but it’s true. She knows it as well as him. So she nods, and then Philip shows up in full dress uniform, projecting full confidence. Bea sends a look Henry’s way, though; neither of them fully believe him.
The route they take is lined with screaming people, waving flags and cheering. Henry wonders how many are here just to get a glimpse of Martha’s dress. He’s just grateful he’s in a car, really; Henry never knows how to interact with them. He supposes it’s not their fault; if you grow up thinking you have to idolise the royals, you’re going to become a weird parasocial superfan. Grown women can tell him his weight at birth, his shoe size, what he wore in his second birthday portrait. You’ve got to admit it’s weird. When they get out of the car, the crowd whoops and cheers, and Henry pastes on his best smile and holds a hand up as they head inside.
“Pez isn’t coming, is he?” Bea asks in an undertone as they make their way through to the anteroom. In the main chamber, where the wedding will actually take place, there are dignitaries everywhere, cameras hosted on every pillar Henry can see.
“No. He’s not,” Henry manages, through a taut not-quite smile, aware of the millions of eyes on him. Maybe wondering when he’ll get married. Maybe asking why there haven’t been any rumblings of young ladies.
Bea doesn’t ask him to explain. She links her arm in his and they stroll through to the room together, where the Archbishop of Canterbury is already speaking to Philip.
The wedding goes well. Catherine walks alone, as does the Queen. She holds Henry’s hand for a moment before she sits down, kisses Philip on the cheek. And then the service happens.
Martha looks splendid, in a word; her dress is an absolute dream, exposing creamy shoulders, blooming out to a full skirt and accessorised with a tiara. Henry brings the rings forward and doesn’t miss the smile of absolute devotion Martha gives her new husband. It makes his heart twist inside his chest, and he looks down quickly so people will think he’s tearing up rather than insanely jealous and mixed-up inside.
And then… the cameras are gone. He’s greeting people politely, wondering if the next handshake might be the ‘zing’ he’s apparently missing, or the one after that. Just as the son of the American president is going up the line, Shaan lets him know that he’s got a phone call. Henry makes his apologies to the daughter of the president, who nods in understanding, and goes to take it.
“Henry,” comes Pez’s voice. “I watched it. You all looked wonderful.” There’s a pause; he wonders if that was left on purpose or if it’s just long-distance being tricky. “I - er - I’m going to be here a little longer. If you wanted to sleep in your own bed tonight.”
“I have a bed,” Henry points out. “At Kensington. It’s fine.” He doesn’t want to hear why Pez might be gone for longer than he anticipated. “I hope you’re having a good time?”
(He absolutely doesn’t.)
“Well, nobody here knows how to make tea,” Pez sighs. “And while some food has been transcendent, some of it is absolutely shocking. Have an extra roast dinner and think of me.” He’d usually call Henry ‘darling’, there; he’d usually call anyone darling, but there’s weirdness there now, weirdness that only bloomed a few weeks ago, and Henry hates it.
“I’ve got to go,” Henry lies. “They’re bringing the cake out.” And then he ends the call abruptly and hands the phone back to Shaan, who is far too well-trained to bring up any of what he just saw. Sure, he might schedule another therapy appointment for Henry soon; that’s by the by.
He gets through the meal, watching jealously as his mother leaves discreetly midway through. Bea is attentive, making sure he’s drinking enough water; and then it’s dancing and drinks and if he can just make it through this he’s going to go and lie down.
It’s then that the son of the president shows up, sharp in his suit, a glint in his eye. Henry tries to stifle a groan, but he really doesn’t want to play diplomatic relations right now, and the guy’s – not drunk. Tipsy, perhaps. He totters over to him and almost spills his drink; Henry tries to steady him. Get him away from the cake, too; it’s a towering monstrosity of buttercream and fondant, and if they’re not careful they could jostle the table.
It’s very difficult to do that while also holding a champagne flute, as it turns out; after two minutes of excruciating conversation with the admittedly extremely handsome man, Alex steps backwards and into the table, causing it to shift and wobble alarmingly. So much so that it collapses.
The cake doesn’t survive.
It’s hard to tell, lying there in the wreckage of a £60,000 cake, if that zing was the glass breaking in his hand or something else.