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Alexis always believed in soulmates. The concept seemed fitting, even in a perfectly imperfect world. Someone made just for you? A person who fit beside you easily, making you just a little bit more full and whole and happy. He loved stories about them… people who found their person in every lifetime, no matter the difficulties or trials or tribulations. Fantasies with words or names or times written on your skin, just in the off chance that you may find someone that said those things to you. Or had that exact name. Or came into your life at that time.
It was romantic.
It was a fantasy.
Something Alexis knew wasn't really real, but something he could always convince himself of, just to make himself feel a little bit better about being alone.
Childish dreams…imagining a person at his side that was perfect… not in the conventional sense of the word of course. They would be human, so they would be imperfect, flaws and all. But they would be perfect for him.
For no one else but him.
It wasn't exactly like he had many great examples.
If his grandparents were soulmates, he never got to see it. By the time he was conscious enough to observe, one or more of his grandparents had passed away, and he couldn't really tell if they were in love, or if they had simply married young and didn't know what else to do with their life, so staying together just made more sense.
And his parents?
He asked his mother once, when he got to an age where thinking about romance and love and finding a partner was appropriate. Did she think that she and her husband were soulmates?
They met in university. Studying science, of course. They spent long hours together, working on projects and research and they just fit. Similar ideas. Similar scientific methods. Alexis isn't even sure they really had a first date, or if they just accepted that this was the best they would ever get and went with it. They got married after graduation. They had their perfect little scientists, and their disappointment, and now they could move on. Alexis sometimes questioned if they even liked each other, but they very so rarely fought that it didn't make any sense to question it further. It was a union of similar interests and academic curiosities and it worked well enough.
Alexis didn't want that.
He hated that.
He didn't want to settle.
So, he was content in being alone. At least for a time. At least until he found someone to make his heart ache with longing that he had only ever read about or watched in movies. He'd never seen it in real life, but he knew it could be out there.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
That spark that he longed for came to him sooner than he expected, but the man who caused it was not his soulmate.
He thought he might be.
He made Alexis feel seen. Needed. Wanted… well. Maybe not wanted.
No matter how desperately Alexis wanted him, Michael Kaiser didn't return those same feelings.
He was his friend. His closest and dearest friend. Maybe that was why Alexis got the feelings confused with love.
But really… is it even fair to himself to try to pretend it wasn't that?
Love.
The feeling Alexis had been craving for most of his life.
He wanted so terribly to be loved. By his family, who were never quite satisfied with the person he had grown into. He was too soft. Too sensitive. He played make believe and he cried whenever he scraped his knee. He wasn't even loved enough to be comforted with a kiss on the forehead and reassurance that it would be alright. Love couldn't exist in a household where cold emotions and science reigned, and maybe that was why he had gotten so excited when he felt something new.
The warmth of being seen.
The power of being useful.
The comfort of having someone to spend time with, rather than playing with his imaginary friends in the snow.
Michael Kaiser had given him a purpose. He had seen his potential. He had complimented Alexis's skills and was receptive when Alexis found the courage to share something with Kaiser that he didn't know.
Was it really such a bad thing that he loved him once?
Maybe he stilled loved him, somewhere in the darkest recesses of his heart that was reserved for the first.
The first love that left him hollow. His chest aching when he realized… Michael wasn't what he thought, and that he wasn't the love he was craving. Alexis still cared about him. He wanted to let him go… he wanted Michael to grow. They were still the closest things each other had to a best friend, and they would forever be intertwined, but the release of Michael Kaiser into the universe… It was traumatic and all consuming and healing all at once.
Alexis wasn't sure if he'd ever have another chance. He watched Michael closely, waiting to see who he would find next. He wanted Michael to find someone who lit a fire under him. Who reminded him he was important. Who loved him just a fiercely and deeply as Alexis once did. Does.
Alexis didn't see himself finding another. He wanted it, of course. It had been one of his many dreams from his childhood… when he realized a husband suited him better than a wife, and the magic of football was still fresh and definitely didn't have an influence on the developing stages of his sexuality.
He simply wanted to love someone and be loved in return.
Maybe there was never any magic to begin with, and it just happened when you least expected it. Nothing supernatural tied them together, nothing out of the confines of this world. He had dreamed for years of finding the one. He kept his heart open. He tried to be patient and not to fall for the first man who was kind to him after he accepted that Kaiser was not the soulmate he had been seeking.
And when it finally happened… Alexis was wary, for it felt the same as it had before.
The same. Yet so very different.
Once he had thought he could draw a line between the freckles on his arm to draw the constellation of Capricorn. He thought maybe soulmates were real if it was painted so clearly on his skin.
But no… the lines had never been quite right. They bent in a way that was not stars he sought, but rather, lined up just perfectly for another.
Sae Itoshi was very much a surprise. Alexis hadn't expected to fall for him at all, much less so quickly and so hard. It was like he had fallen right out of heaven… like a meteor… crashing into the ground and leaving a huge crater that only he could fill.
Alexis loved him the same.
Sae was lonely, just as Alexis was. He was strong and cold like Michael, but underneath that was a warmth that didn't exist in Michael's universe. He had experienced love before, but that love had been tainted by the journey Sae had been on. He didn't have all of the details yet, because he simply didn't want to push. Sae closed up again, covering up his heart and refusing to let Alexis in when he pushed. But Alexis knew.
He loved his brother.
He loved football.
He had loved his parents once, and maybe he still did, but he also blamed them a bit for letting him go off to Spain alone and turning the hopeful young striker into a jaded midfielder.
And somewhere amongst all of the hatred and spite and mixed emotions for those he was meant to care about, Sae had found a place for him.
Falling in love by happenstance.
Two wallflowers, falling into an easy conversation at an event that they never wanted to be at, but had to show their faces for at least a little while due to some contractual obligation that Alexis already regretted agreeing to. They ended up staying much longer than they had planned, though they didn't go home together. Not that night at least.
Sae had demanded his number. He didn't give Alexis the option.
As if Alexis would've said no at that point.
The excitement was tangible, as if he could peel it off of his skin and work it with his hands into something beautiful and amazing and perfect.
Was it strange to say that loving Sae was easy?
Sae tried. This was completely foreign territory for him. While he had loved others before, he had never been in love with another person.
He had dated and kissed and fucked but never once had Sae fallen in love. Or, rather he had never let himself fall.
Alexis really wasn't sure why Sae had deemed him special. He wasn't sure why Sae wanted to love him. He had asked, on more than a handful of occasions, because he just wanted to know.
Was it his personality that so many others had called annoying? He talked too much and shared too much about things others didn't care about. Sae listened. Always. Even when he didn't have much to add. But he listened.
Was it his looks? Alexis had never really considered himself particularly good looking, but he supposed that was a matter of opinion because other people tended to call him handsome. Alexis was insecure about his full lips and wished his hair lay a bit flatter on humid days, but Sae never mentioned anything negative about them. He called Alexis cute, when Sae barely described baby animals as anything other than disgusting. He stared at him when they were alone, their time not punctuated by the nervous chatter that Alexis was prone to during moments of extended silence. Sae's eyes roamed, from his face and his lips to his full hips and strong legs. When Alexis asked if something was wrong, because Sae's face never really changed from something between bored and irritated, Sae shook his head.
Everything is perfect.
Counting on his fingers, Alexis could narrow down the possibilities of why Sae loved him to no more than that. Sae rolled his eyes every time Alexis said something negative about himself. A habit, he assumed, that he picked up from spending time with the master of self-praise and self-deprecation. Sae agreed with none of his assessments, telling Alexis 'that's stupid' when Alexis asked him if he looked bad in an outfit he chose.
You make me want to try.
Sae's answer was always the same when Alexis asked.
To try. To give a piece of himself to Alexis that he had given no one else before.
It was easy to love Sae, even when Sae was being Sae.
He texted him regularly, and called him even more frequently. He never had to think about if Sae was thinking of him. If he missed him. Sae simply told him, as if it was the easiest thing in the world.
He scolded Alexis's eating habits, letting him know when his meals had too many carbs or too much fat or sugar. If he hurt Alexis's feelings with his comments, as he often did through no fault of his own due to Alexis's fears of being judged and rejected again, he apologized. Not in a straightforward way, of course, but by offering Alexis an explanation of why he said the things he did. Alexis understood. Sae never was deliberately trying to be mean.
Well, if he was, he at least felt bad about it and back tracked to make sure Alexis's eyes where never full of tears just because of something Sae said.
Sae was Sae and Alexis was Alexis and together they were a mess of two people who so desperately wanted this. But they never were quite sure if it was right. Or how to figure out if they were right.
Sae said they would figure it out. Alexis believed him, because he simply needed something to believe in again.
Sometimes, Alexis felt guilty. It was a force of habit, once again, to feel guilty for seeing so many similarities in himself. In Sae.
If Sae knew how he felt, what he thought about, he was afraid Sae might give up on him. So he kept the thoughts to himself.
The thoughts about how similar this love that he was experiencing now felt to the love he had at one point experienced for Kaiser.
It was raw. Emotional. His chest ached when thinking about living life without Sae in it. He felt the same way about Michael once upon a time. Like he might just die if Kaiser cast him aside and didn't need him anymore.
But Kaiser did cast him aside.
He survived.
He may actually die if Sae left him. But maybe… that was where the similarities ended.
Alexis felt the same. He loved deeply, and that was a personal flaw on Alexis's part, but there was really nothing to be done about it. He loved so hard that it was ingrained on his bones and tattooed onto his heart.
Sae traced the freckles on his arm with a gentle finger. Libra. Did Sae even know?
Alexis had found Pisces on Sae's back once. On his left shoulder, hidden away from the world. Just for him.
Sae loved him too. Deeply. Fiercely. Protectively. He didn't let it distract him from his day to day pursuits, but it ached in his stomach when his flight was delayed and he now had three less hours to spend with Alexis. Sae nearly bit Michael's head off once when Michael had teased Alexis by calling him mediocre.
Alexis had no doubts.
Fear and excitement were one in the same at times, making his skin shiver and his heart waver. But the fear subsided when Sae took him into his arms and hid his face in Alexis's hair. Inhaling. Breathing him in. Like he hadn't taken a proper breath since they last held each other.
Alexis knew that Sae loved him. Even when he didn't explicitly say it. He knew that Sae held on to him just as tightly as Alexis did.
Sae was that missing piece. The hole of his heart that was not reserved for someone else. It was a snug fit, just like how their hands just seemed to match perfectly when Sae grabbed his to hold when no one else was looking.
Alexis still wasn't sure if soulmates existed.
He had yet to see a perfect example of two people who were perfect for each other.
But… he still wanted to believe in it. In the concept of having someone who was made just as perfectly for you, as you were for them.
What a lovely thing, even if the magic of it wasn't real, to be so loved. So fully. And to love Sae just as fully in return.