Chapter Text
Alex doesn’t know it’s coming.
School prepared him in a lukewarm sense—he knows a Soul Sleep is when a soul calls out to its match when their hosts fail to follow the pull, too tired to live another day apart, and he knows of the warning symptoms. Temperature fluctuation, flu-like body aches, fatigue, dizziness, brain fog, rapid heart rate—Alex usually calls all that your average Tuesday morning.
Social media and life taught him the after effects—drama unfolds over all corners of the internet. Tiktoks of people spontaneously collapsing circulate his feeds or “AITA for leaving my girlfriend of 7 years because I found my soulmate?” or pictures on instagram of a couple engaged after only one month because they lived what manifested as years together Soul Sleep or Twitter comments speculating on if the way two people leaned together in a movie meant the actors had some unconscious soulmate pull or books upon books of main characters finding The One.
A happy ending, in every book and movie, always equates to the main character finding their soulmate. Alex is sick of it, the same boring thing over and fucking over.
His mother’s Soul Sleep haunts Alex more than any TikTok of a stranger fainting. Sure, he knew, back then, that his parents’ marriage was rocky. He remembered listening to the shouting from the narrow hallway between his and June’s room, back against the wall and knees tucked under his chin, like any other night. His bags were packed for Boy Scout camp in the morning and he was relishing in the fantasy of being anywhere else but here.
“I can’t do this right now,” his mom’s panicked voice cut through his dad’s argumentative case for why she wasn’t enough anymore. Ellen was always painted as not enough: by the media, by Congress, by June, by Oscar, and even by Alex sometimes when he let his thoughts wander. He tampered his little pre-teen rage down; that wasn’t fair. That was misogynistic, putting the pressure of raising a family solely on her shoulders when she already had so much else weighing her down with her House seat. Ellen was doing her best.
His mother’s voice cut through Oscar’s filibuster on Ellen’s distant behavior. “Stop–I have to go–sit—I can’t—Oscar, I… Leo .”
At the thud of something falling and the rattling of their kitchen table, Alex immediately rose to his feet. June’s door swung open just as fast, her eyes wide as their bodies collided.
Ellen Claremont laid on the kitchen floor, limps sprawled at awkward angles, and Alex’s first thought was that Mom’s dead . She wasn’t—her chest rose and fell with shallow breaths—but that millisecond of doubt knocked all ability to breathe from Alex’s lungs.
June sprung to action while Alex stilled in the doorway, rearranging their mother so her arms weren’t bent. Tears gathered in Alex’s eyes and June cradled Ellen’s head in her hands. “What happened?”
Oscar knelt to the ground, sliding an arm under Ellen’s back and knees, and heaved her up. “Get the car keys, mija.”
“¿Adónde vas?” June questioned with narrow eyes, blocking him. Alex watched their father’s face break at her suspicion, but June didn’t waver.
“To the hospital,” Oscar answered. “They’ll need to hook her up to fluid.”
“Why?” Alex asked, his voice cracking. “What’s wrong with her?” She’s dying she’s dying she’s dying still controlled his train of thought, steering him into a dark place that didn’t allow him to breathe.
Oscar looked down at Ellen’s peaceful face, the finality in his expression one that will always live in Alex’s nightmares. “She’s in a Soul Sleep.”
Alex spent that week in the hospital watching over their mother with June instead of going to camp, keeping her company even though she wasn’t awake to witness it. He used that week to research obsessively on Soul Sleeps. Soulmates weren’t a new concept at twelve, because of the aforementioned media. They plagued even the PG movies and books. Boy meets girl, they’re soulmates, they love each other instantly. End of story.
Except for when they don’t fall in love instantly; that was where Soul Sleeps came into play. Mediocre Sex Ed class warned kids of the signs; some people crack their heads open when they fell, apparently, and in all cases where one person died entering a Soul Sleep the other part of the soul never woke from the coma. A century ago, before modern medicine, Soul Sleep was a death sentence. Alex used his mother’s time in the hospital to read every horror story. People’s spouses falling into a Soul Sleep with another, children tied to adults, those who are soulmates with murders and rapists and horrible people. The people who died, the people who stayed trapped in their own minds. The rich history of Shakespearean level tragedy. It’s a vile thing, soulmates. Alex spent his nights filled with seething anger while curled in a chair surrounded by the smell of overpowered cleaner.
Then Alex dived into medical research, learning how to read peer-reviewed journals in a hospital room before he’d even made it to high-school science class. Some studies said that the conversations around the person stuck in Sleep would ease their ways into their dreams, but normally in muddled, confusing ways. He and June talked often, hoping their presence in whatever crazed reality her brain created would remind her that she had a family with someone else. Alex thought it was cruel of them, but June found it necessary—”come back to us,” she would whisper over and over in Ellen’s ear. And, according to the studies, she would. Probably.
That was before Ellen ran with Holleran for President and Vice President, respectively. Before they knew Nora. Now Alex knows the math of that dreadful week: the probability Ellen would wake and leave their father for her soulmate was 89.2%. The probability she would wake at all was 97.8%. Good odds, but never close enough to 100 to allow Alex to sleep peacefully at night.
When Ellen woke, eyes still a thousand miles away as she blinked back to reality, she demanded a nurse to unplug her from the IV and readied to depart the hospital within the hour. She spoke worryingly of all the work she missed and re-election campaigns for her House seat and bills she needed to review and how to control the press on this matter. She was on the phone with Zahra before the needle was out of her vein.
She never addressed the issue at hand as she signed herself out of the hospital.
When they returned to the house, Oscar’s things were gone.
Under a year later, the emptiness in their home got replaced with a golden retriever of a man. Alex learned to love brilliant, optimistic Leo in his own bittersweet way eventually, but the pre-teen Alex standing in a half-empty home was distraught.
No, Alex doesn’t care much for soulmates.
Soulmates mean the end. Dad and Mom. Him and Nora, too—not that he doesn’t think June and Nora are perfect, of course, and they are both his favorite people in the world. Still, there is something utterly humiliating that lingers when he thinks too long about it, left over from that night his girlfriend admitted she felt a soulmate pull toward his sister . It was a Diaz men special, to find that person that just irrevocably gets you only to have them connected to someone else.
Nearly a decade later, the Austin heat beating down on him a few blocks away from the hospital his mother stayed at when she found Leo in her mind, Alex dons a UT shirt over a deliberately worn pair of jeans in front of the Capital. Texans don’t need the fancy suits that DC politicians prefer; the people of his hometown aren’t picky like that. Still, the sturdy blue jean fabric hangs heavy on his hips and his body flushes under the intensity of the summer sun. A drop formed from sweat rolls across his sheen-glowing forehead, pauses at the furrow of his eyebrow, and drips down to the concrete below.
“You good?” Cash asks. Alex shakes away the compilation of sudden exhaustion, an oncoming flu, and dizziness. He forgot to eat earlier this morning—there’s too much to do in Texas and his mother needs his Texas plan to work. After the way he harassed Zahra to give him his way, Alex can’t let everyone down. He can eat later. He can fill his body with a ridiculous amount of Sudafed later. Rest is for the dead or wicked or whatever the saying is. He can’t think right now.
Still, standing to the sidelines of a rally protesting the Texas governor and encouraging younger citizens to vote, he really wishes he had eaten earlier. Well, fuck. “Here,” Cash sighs. “Water.”
Alex drains the plastic container quickly, willing the wave of tingles that line his body too cease. “What would I do without you?” The cheeky smile doesn’t quite reach Alex’s eyes, earning him a concerned look from Cash instead of an exasperated one. That’s worrying. The previous speaker starts into their ending words; show time is nearly upon him. One: he needs to run his speech through his head one more time. Two: he needs to calm his breathing. Three: he needs to avoid Cash’s uneasy stare or that sickness burning up his nerves. Four: he needs to…
He needs Henry.
The foreign thought interrupting his list isn’t novel—he’s been plagued with that want dozens of times since New Years. The intensity of Henry’s eyes as the fireworks blasted in the distance. Christ, you are as thick as it gets. The way Henry leaned in, the heartbeat in Alex’s throat when he thought Henry was going to kiss him, the disappointment when he didn’t. The panic that ensued after that went something like okay so maybe I’m not as straight as I thought and then the embarrassment of why didn’t I figure this shit out during Liam.
When Henry’s texts and emails dwindled down to nothing it stung Alex more than breakup ever had, even Nora’s. That “what if” lingered, begging to be explored but the wind blew out the flames before it even kindled. Were you going to kiss me? Alex types an infinite amount of times into his phone, only to delete it and punch out some obnoxious text instead, geared to get Henry’s attention. It rarely works.
Pulling out his phone, Alex swipes away the 12 text messages from the group chat with June and Nora, who probably sent those texts to each other from opposite sides of the same couch, and scrolls until HRH Prince Dickhead 💩 appears.
The last text reads Happy Birthday Alex three months ago; Alex’s nearly dozen texts afterwards are left unanswered. The last being a month ago, with a simple okay fine, message fucking received asshole.
Why did you act like you were gonna kiss me then you DIDNT you fucking dick?????????? is left as a placeholder in the typing field, never dared sent.
“You’re up,” the blue haired person who runs University Democrats at UT tells Alex as they passes him a mic. Alex closes his phone before he accidently hits the send button.
This isn’t normal, honest to God. With the blur of campaigning, Alex barely thinks of HRH anymore. Really. After all, they aren’t even friends. Henry’s just some dude that shoved him into a cake, faked a friendship with him, texted him daily for four months, almost kissed him, then ghosted him. Yet for some reason as Alex walks onto the stage, every muscle in his body screaming and the edges of his vision blaring, he thinks of Henry again. Get yourself together, Alex commands silently as his mouth opens.
“We’ve reached a pivotal point in our story,” Alex starts, gripping the sides of the podium. His hands don’t work as he brain commands, his fingers not curling as he expects them to. They shake instead. No time to analyze that. “How do we want the history books of our country to read? Will we travel the road Governor Abbott desires, banning rights for thousands of people of color, women, trans youth, and LGBTQIA+ members? Will we be the nation known for keeping immigrant children in cages”–his voice cracks and his body feels dry of all moisture–“the nation that refuses to answer the global climate crisis that could change life as we know it in a few decades, stopping your futures because the old men in charge today refuse to act? Will the history books look back on today and speak of a time that stripped freedom away from every group but cis white men? Or, there’s another road we can walk. One where we spring to action now to…” The words he plans to say erase from his brain. His phone vibrates in his pocket, over and over, and the supportive shouting of the crowd turns to a consistent buzz in sync with the shake of his pants pocket. Probably June and Nora, still texting each other in the group chat. He can’t worry about that now; he has to get his shit together before he ends up in the paper. ACD CHOKES AND LOSES CLAREMONT HER RE-ELECTION, the news will say if he can’t get his words out and walk off this stage like he remembers how to move his limbs.
It almost feels like a panic attack or any other day he forgets to take care of himself, but there’s something sharper in his heart this time. Is he having a heart attack? Alex presses his knuckles into his chest clumsily, begging the feeling to subside with the pressure, and pushes forward to the most important part of his speech. “You hold the control. The ballot—it’s in your hands… choose our futures. Every name on that list… it matters…”
His brain blanks again. A hand grabs his arm, a voice in a language he no longer understands speaking urgently in his ear. “No,” Alex shakes the restraints away. He can do this; don’t they understand he just needs a minute? Just a minute. “I can—just some water—I can finish, I just…” The light stings his eyes, the sun too bright and the flashes too strong, but when the hot white colors all merge in his vision he can make out one shape amongst the fading faces of the crowd. His head tilts, a reverent smile on his face. Is he here to watch Alex give his speech? “Henry?”
—————————————————————
Henry knows this day would come for him eventually. Since the tug in his chest at Rio, Henry knows his soulmate is Alex.
Of course it would be him, of all the blasted people in the world. Unapologetically loud, always go-go-go, true to himself Alex. The world was dark and devoid of color after his father passed and Alex walked into the room as if he was the sun personified, shining colorful light on Henry for the first time in eighteen months. He’d been too bright back then, too beautiful, and Henry wasn’t capable of leaving the darkness he hid in without being burned. Running away was what he was best at, but it was too late. One glimpse was all Henry’s soul needed to be left seeing sunspots for the rest of his life.
Alex must not have felt the tug of their souls like Henry did; that much was obvious. Every event they were forced into the proximity of the same room, all Henry received was looks of disdain. He accepted every glare with a steady breath of acceptance; this was the burden he was meant to bear. He could never love openly or truly, so it was only fitting that his soulmate would hate him without even fully comprehending his inadequacies.
And then he pulled Henry into a cake and shared sarcastic quips at staged appearances and texted him every week until it transitioned to texting him every day and called him when he needed support and oh God that was so much worse . Because Henry could handle watching his only chance of happiness despise him from a distance, but it was so much worse when the love of his live was smiling and happy and oblivious right in front of him.
Henry still isn’t ready, so Henry runs again. Maybe he has some abnormal one-sided soulmate bond that will kill him–that sounds about like Henry’s luck, really.
Henry slathers on a layer of mortar and builds that wall once more, leaving Alex’s plethora of messages unread and canceling appearances that he knows Alex would be at. He weasels his way out of the State dinner with the PM and changes the weekend he goes to New York with Pez to avoid being in the same city. If Henry could keep dodging the inevitable for the rest of his life, he would.
Except, fate has other plans. A Soul Sleep is bound to happen; that’s just the way soulmates work. Souls are like Mother Nature: a beautifully cruel force that acts how it wants with no consideration of the people. Henry doesn’t blame his yearning soul needing its other piece; he hasn’t given his soul any consideration in return, either, has he? A Soul Sleep is revenge, in a sense, for defying what it naturally needs.
The symptoms begin like the flu. Aches and heat flashes as if his body fights a virus. Alex, in a way, is an infection. Henry thinks of Alex campaigning in little towns across Texas, because of course Henry follows his every appearance like an obsessive ex. Is Alex experiencing the effects, too, or is he still oblivious to this much like he was with the pull of their hearts that tried to tie them together before reaching this extreme? Does Alex not feel anything because Henry is wrong this entire time and his soulmate is, in fact, someone else entirely? Is Henry’s soul unrequited and not have a mate at all?
No, he can’t think any more of that or else he’ll cry, and he definitely doesn’t have the energy for tears today.
“You’re coming,” Philip argues, despite Henry’s pleas of illness. “Really, Henry, as if I can’t tell when you malinger to skive your responsibilities.”
“I am sick,” Henry shouts, the desperation leaking through his anger and the fuzzy feeling that’s taken home in his brain causing his next steps to waver. “Please, Pip—“
“It’s Gran’s 80th birthday. You know how the media will react—“
“I have been Soul Sick for days, Pip,” Henry says as his last ditch effort. If the partial truth can’t be enough, then the full truth is his last hope. “I don’t know when Sleep will come but it could be anytime now. Please, I need to stay.”
For a second, Henry believes he’s won Philip’s cooperation. Martha and Philip aren’t soulmates, so the older Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor isn’t familiar with the crippling weight of finality that comes with Henry’s symptoms. Talk of souls are like talks of menstruation to Pip; he treats them with equal queasiness which he shows in his face now as he assesses Henry.
Then Philip laughs, clapping Henry’s clammy back and ordering him to get proper clothes on and to quit with his fibs.
Bea stands by his side in the ballroom, guarding dutifully at his elbow as they listen to speaker after speaker honoring the Queen. “You can make it,” Bea whispers encouragingly. “Another hour.”
Another hour until they’re off this stage in front of hundreds of cameras, sure, but there’s still the hour long dinner with Gran and some other important nobles, then the hour of pleasantries and dwindling before it would be socially acceptable to leave. “I don’t get to pick when it happens,” Henry grinds out lowly. Pip, on his other side, elbows him for talking.
Henry pulls his phone from his pocket, ignoring Pip’s scandalized gasp at Henry’s impropriety. They’re standing behind the Prime Minister on the dais, a slideshow rolling behind the PM’s overly generous language on Queen Mary’s character. Queen Mary sits in a large chair not far away from her grandchildren, smiling her polite media smile. Bea takes a step forward, blocking Gran’s view to Henry as he scrolls for the message thread he long ago muted to keep from hurting himself.
Find somewhere private now, he texts Alex. Pip looks over his shoulder, a scoff as he reads the contact. “Are you really texting the American right now?”
Please Alex lay down, he sends. “Henry, God, put your phone away.”
I’m so sorry, he taps.
“Next, we have Prince Philip, Princess Beatrice, and Prince Henry to speak on the caring and love of their Grandmother.”
Pip steps forward, covering Henry as the cameras all swiveled to them. Henry’s long since lost control of his body, his text to Alex the last movement he is able to make. His hands still rest on either side of his phone but he can’t move a single finger to return the device to his pocket, let alone will his legs move forward. His brain exists in an environment completely separate, every signal it sends unconnected to the nerves that spread across the rest of his body. Now that he thinks about it, he can’t feel anything at all. A drop of sweat lands on his screen and cold air conditioning blows against his neck and there are most definitely shouts—someone, shouting at him—but he can’t feel any of it really. The podium where the Prime Minister once stood now holds Alex, his arms supporting his weight and his eyes squinted as if his vision hurts him. His skin glows with sunlight, even though they are indoors on a rainy London evening, and he wears a ratty burnt orange t-shirt. He’s perfect; he’s here.
Henry smiles, the lids of his eyes heavy with a never-ending exhaustion but he refuses to look away for a second and miss the easy grin on Alex’s face.
“Henry?” Alex asks.
“Alex,” Henry breathes.
They fall together.