Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s too loud at the Olympics.

Which, of course it is—but Alex didn’t expect it to be this loud.

And from the way June and Nora are glancing at him, thinly veiled concern on their faces, he’s clearly not handling it too well.

He’s mostly gotten used to dealing with the extra sensory input he gets from being in crowds, but no election rally they’ve been to can really compare to an Olympic stadium, and the soulmate resonance is giving him a headache.

A neuroemotionalist he saw when he was young said he had “extraordinary soulmate resonance capabilities”, his mom calls him “her sensitive kid”, and Nora calls him really statistically unlikely.

June doesn’t call him anything because she knows he hates it—she’s seen how hard it is on him, to focus when he’s constantly stimulated by resonance and possibilities, how he’s furiously paddling underneath the surface to make everyone think he’s perfectly okay.

And he has to be okay, because he’ll be damned if he’s the reason his mom doesn’t get elected, especially over some stupid soulmate bullshit.

She already deals with enough over having divorced her soulmate; he knows how hard it was for her to step away from a potential relationship with anybody other than Oscar, but she couldn’t afford the scrutiny, and Alex isn’t going to be the one to make that sacrifice worthless.

He won’t lie, though, the headache is getting sharper as time goes on and he’s desperately wishing, not for the first time, that his brain was less concerned with showing him the different possibilities for soul connections he and everyone around him has, and more concerned with, like. Focusing on the swimmers in front of him.

At this point he’s never going to make it to rhythmic gymnastics.

He’s guzzling down another bottle of water when June nudges him.

“Prince Henry just arrived,” she says.

Their mom gave them clear instructions to greet every foreign head of State they ran into, and while usually Alex might put up a token protest—Prince Henry isn’t actually a head of State and he’s not going to be, unless more than one person dies—he feels a little too dizzy to even try.

So he obediently shuffles after June and Nora to say hello, trying his very best not to get distracted by all the connections his brain is shouting at him about.

He’s actually trying so badly not to get distracted that he ends up not realizing it’s his turn to say hello to Prince Henry until he’s right there in front of Alex, holding out a hand, and it means he doesn’t have time to register much outside of wow, are his eyes really that blue? and that’s less of a smile and more of a grimace before their hands touch.

And for the first time since puberty hit, it’s not a sensory shock, it doesn’t feel like someone’s soul is shouting at him.

It’s peaceful. It’s—

“Quiet,” Alex whispers. “Your soul is so quiet.”

Prince Henry jerks his hand back, looking at Alex with a confused frown, and, oh, right—Alex probably, definitely, shouldn’t have said that.

“Uh, I mean—” Alex tries, and fails, to find anything he could have reasonably meant. “It’s nice to meet you, Your Royal Highness.”

“I’m sure,” Prince Henry returns.

His confused frown has smoothed over into a remote, inaccessible expression, one that's a little too close for comfort to the disgust Alex is used to receiving when people realize just how very soul receptive he is.

And, listen, Alex knows he screwed up, but it still feels pretty horrible when he overhears Henry ask someone to get rid of him—it makes him want to protest, to try to get Henry to understand why Alex was so flustered, but he knows it would be useless.

Whatever.

Who even needs to be friends with someone that judgemental, anyway?

Alex decides, then and there, that he’ll stay as far away from Prince Henry as he can if they’re ever in the same place again.

PEOPLE
Meet the Soon-to-Be First Family: President-Elect Claremont and her children, June and Alex Claremont-Diaz

By Anna Johnson | Published on December 8, 2016

You probably think you know all there is to know about our new First Family, but after spending a few hours with President-Elect Claremont and her kids by the shores of Lake LBJ in Texas, we realized there were still a few things we had to learn.

The first thing is that you definitely want to invite Ellen Claremont over for your cook-outs, because she is an expert griller! According to June, twenty years old, her mom is usually found tending to the steaks while younger brother Alex, eighteen years old, whips up some amazing sides in the kitchen.

The second is that, contrary to rumors that crop up every once in a while, the President-Elect and her soulmate, while indeed divorced, maintain a very close relationship: the lake house we’re in was actually Senator Oscar Diaz’ idea so the family could have a place to take a break over the summer.

“We were both very lucky to find our soulmate so young, but maybe a little less lucky that our sense of duty and careers weren’t quite as forgiving of soul resonance,” President-Elect Claremont says with a wry smile.

She also shoots down any idea of getting re-married, a right that is protected and legal under soulmate regulations, but still provokes raised eyebrows in many parts of the country since most people still firmly believe that if people cannot stay married to their soulmates they should never marry again.

As for the future First Children, June Claremont-Diaz actually found her soulmate in the Vice-President’s grand-daughter, Nora Holleran, which, in the words of the President-Elect, was an “unexpected gift.” For his part, FSOTUS-to-be Alex Claremont-Diaz still hasn’t found the match to his soul resonance, but from what we saw, any girl or boy will be very lucky to be the one!

CONFIDENTIAL
Medical Examination Report

Patient name: AGCD [full name redacted under Section 2.5.63 Soulmate Medical Information Act and Non-Disclosure Agreement signed on 02/12/19)
DOB: 03-27-98
Sex: Male
Soulmate Status: Unbonded

Patient presents with frequent migraines, including photosensitivity and nausea, and reports serious struggle with focus on daily activities. Initial soul resonance psychometric examination shows patient within the 85-95% sensitivity range with insufficient shielding capacity, indicating resonance hypersensitivity disorder.

Potential treatment options discussed include controlled bonding, isolation and shielding training, or a daily dose 54 mg methylphenidate HCl.

Patient is resistant. Additional appointments suggested.

The last thing Alex wants is to go to the Royal Wedding.

He still remembers, all too well, exactly how Henry looked at him in Rio—the coldness, the dismissal—and he’s never quite managed to get that disdainful glance out of his head.

Which is why he’s actually pretty proud of the fact that he’s managed to avoid running into the Prince again for the last three years, using increasingly thin excuses, but his luck and ideas seem to have totally run out, because his mom and Zahra are not budging on this one.

“I just don’t know about this, Z—I got a horrible headache last time I was in a crowd like that, remember?”

“And I thought you said you were absolutely ready to do more events for the re-election campaign,” Zahra shoots back immediately. “Are you saying you can’t handle them? Or do we need to look at additional treatment options again?”

Alex winces.

The thing is, he really was a mess when he came back from Rio.

One of the doctors he saw thought it might’ve been the trigger for the headaches that quickly spun into really horrible migraines: soul resonance over-exposure, basically, with so many people crowded into stadiums from all over the world, hoping over and over again that they’d meet their soulmates because what better place than the fucking Olympics?

The problem was the migraines didn’t go away after he got back from Rio; the over-sensitivity he’d developed not getting a chance to go away before the final campaign events, the election, and then starting college at Georgetown.

His first semester had nearly been a total disaster.

Constant pain, throwing up, missed deadlines.

He’d been close to giving up on going to class and just doing all of it online until Zahra came up with a list of neuroemotionalists that were all under NDAs and dragged him to one of them.

The doctor figured Rio had been a trigger, sure, but also the fact that he was older and also the level of scrutiny he was under, as FSOTUS. More eyes on him apparently translated to more souls reaching out to him.

The best treatment they offered was controlled bonding, which, absolutely the hell not—Alex knew controlled was just another way of saying forced—or isolated training, which was the opposite of what Alex wanted.

He wanted to stay in the world, be a part of it, even if it hurt.

He ended up with what amounted to ADHD meds, which he took sparingly because the other side of feeling too much soul resonance was feeling an odd numbness that he didn’t love, and additional coping mechanisms that included too much running, too much coffee, and a really cool eye-mask June found for him that had resonance-blocking which he used for power naps when he felt especially overwhelmed.

Given all that, he’d needled his mom into promising he could do more campaign events this time around, considering he’d been pretty useless toward the end of the last election cycle, and she’d made him swear he was ready.

So he can’t actually push the migraine thing too hard, here, or they’ll take him off the campaign schedule.

He’s in a catch-22, and he and Zahra both know it.

“Fine, but I’m definitely not wearing a tux.”

He does, of course, wind up wearing a tux.

And it’s the tux and only the tux he blames for the fact that he feels like can hardly breathe while they’re at the cathedral waiting for Prince Philip to get married, and not the jittery feeling of too many souls reaching out over and over again to find a connection, all concentrated in one place.

Fuck, he’s supposed to be over this.

Or, at least, better at controlling it.

“Alex, are you okay?” June whispers next to him. “Do you want to step outside for a bit?”

And maybe Alex would, if the damn wedding wasn’t televised, but the second he walks out he knows there will be about a million different Twitter threads and at least two think pieces on what his rude behavior will mean for US-UK relations.

“No, I’m okay, Bug,” he replies. “Just—if you see the cameras pointed our way, nudge me?”

He figures he can control his face a little better with some advance warning, and in the meantime focuses on breathing deeply and squeezing his hands open and closed.

He only has to get through the ceremony, is all.

The party probably won’t be so bad, since people will be more distracted and hopefully more spread out.

The party is worse.

A lot worse.

Alex isn’t sure if it’s because people are drunk or because, having seen a prince marry, every person invited who is still single is convinced their soulmate is whatever other prince or duke or viscount is present and available—and what even is a viscount, anyway—so Alex feels a little bit like he’s a piece of paper caught in the middle of a fucking hurricane.

He’s also impossibly aware of Henry.

The younger prince is standing next to his brother, his brother’s new bride, and Princess Bea, looking utterly perfect and unbothered, greeting everyone with a charming smile that looks entirely fake to Alex’s eyes, and the only thing Alex wants more than to be near him is to be as far away from him as possible.

Alex knows it’s a little nuts—he doesn’t need Nora’s side-eye to realize he’s probably looking a little constipated about it all—and it’s maybe why he’s so fast to reach for the champagne flute in front of him and practically downs it in one go, then immediately asks for a refill.

“I don’t know if we’re gonna get something more substantive than cucumber sandwiches, Little Bit, you might want to slow down,” June says quietly, looking at the little stack of sandwiches in front of them dubiously.

“Don’t worry, Bug, champagne doesn’t really do much to me,” Alex reassures her, and downs a second flute nearly as quickly as the first.

He’s working on the third, absently listening to Nora and June discuss one of the articles June is researching for Teen Vogue and trying to figure out where Henry went, since he’s no longer next to his family, when a royal attendant shows up at his shoulder, startling him.

“Mr. Claremont-Diaz,” he says, bowing obsequiously, and nearly making Alex laugh when he meets Nora and June’s incredulous glances behind him. “His Royal Highness Prince Henry wonders if you would do him the honor of joining him for a dance.”

Alex stares at the attendant open-mouthed.

It’s got to be some sort of joke, right?

Henry can’t stand Alex, just like Alex can’t stand him, this has been obvious since Rio and the subsequent many, many ways Alex has avoided him since while subtly shading him in interviews (or, according to June and Zahra’s increasingly exasperated discussions with him, not that subtly).

“He’d love to,” Nora pipes up, her prior incredulity giving way to her natural state, which is sheer goddamned chaos.

The attendant raises an eyebrow and Alex can’t very well say no now, so he clears his throat and nods.

“Yeah, of course,” he says. “Uh. Would love to, and all that.”

“Marvelous,” the man says, and then turns and gestures to where Henry has apparently been lurking during this whole awkward interlude.

Up close, Henry looks even more perfect than he did from far away which should be totally impossible, but there he is: a real-life fairytale prince in ways his brother doesn’t even come close to, despite the fact that this whole ostentatious shindig is about him.

Alex hates that he can’t stop staring, but between the three-piece suit that Henry’s wearing so perfectly—like he was born to it, in ways Alex very emphatically was not—the fact that he’s making an actual sash look good instead of stupid, and the way his hair is perfectly coiffed and gleaming golden like they adjusted the light in the ballroom just for that, it’s hard to look away.

Henry steps closer, quirking an eyebrow, and Alex blinks quickly, glancing down before looking up again.

“Shall we?” Henry says, extending a hand out to Alex.

Alex swallows as he takes it, letting Henry pull him to his feet and lead him towards the dance floor, and, well.

Maybe champagne actually does do something to him.

It’s gotta be the reason why he feels like he can’t quite breathe all of the sudden—the champagne of it all, and definitely not Henry.

Alex stumbles just a little when they start dancing, wishing desperately this was Payaso de Rodeo and not a fucking waltz, but Henry effortlessly turns Alex’s misstep into proper dancing and it infuriates Alex as much as it impresses him because it so clearly exemplifies the differences between them.

Henry is a literal actual Prince who has never taken a bad photograph or said anything remotely controversial, whereas Alex, unfortunately, has more than a few old terrible Facebook and Instagram pictures which are floating around the great wide internet and has had more than one off-hand remark turn into a whole day of Twitter and Fox News hot takes.

Most of the time Alex is fine with how different they are—he leans into it. But every once in a while it just stings.

They dance in silence for a few beats, Alex’s eyes getting drawn to Henry’s face almost helplessly even as he tries to look past his shoulder as much as he can and ignore the way his heart is racing.

“You know, Alex, it is customary for people who are dancing to actually look at each other,” Henry eventually says. “You don’t need to keep looking away as if I have some sort of terrible skin disease.”

“Oh, thank you so much for the etiquette lesson, Your Majesty,” Alex shoots back, stung, but forces himself to meet Henry’s eyes.

Henry pauses for a moment, his brow furrowing. “It’s actually His Royal Highness, since Your Majesty is reserved for the Queen,” he says after a second, almost like it pains him.

And come on.

“Seriously?” Alex huffs. “It’s like you can’t help yourself, you always have to make me feel inferior.”

Henry leads Alex into a complicated whirl before responding, and Alex didn’t realize dancing could be passive-aggressive but, hey, you learn something new every day.

“I had absolutely no intention of making you feel inferior, Alex,” Henry says, once he’s pulled him back from the turn. His cheeks are suffused red and his eyes are narrowed and he finally, finally, looks like a person and not a cardboard cut-out of generic hot white guy. “I was simply sharing information, and hoping to have a dance that wouldn’t turn into some sort of fight, but I guess it was simply too much to ask.”

With that, the song comes to an end, Henry gives him a jerky bow, drops his hand, and turns to leave.

And it’s as Henry is leaving that Alex realizes that for the duration of the dance his head has been perfectly, blessedly clear. No noise, no random bits of resonance intruding on his thoughts: just Alex in his own head, for the first time in what feels like years.

Alex blames what happens after on the sheer contrast of going from that unexpected peace to the cacophony that takes over as soon as Henry’s walking away.

He’s really got no other explanation for the fact that he practically leaps after Henry, grabbing him by the shoulder, and in the ensuing push and pull, in the “Wait, Henry!” and “What are you doing, let me go!”, they lose their balance and stumble right into the table where the world’s most excessive wedding cake is displayed.

After they fall and the cake falls on top of them, but before what Alex knows is going to be a goddamned shit-storm, he turns to Henry.

“Do you think they noticed?” he asks quietly, trying to ignore the buttercream burrowing into his ear.

Henry rolls his eyes and doesn’t answer, and he probably thinks Alex is being a shit on purpose but.

The thing is, they’re touching.

They’re covered in cake, and they’re basically right on top of each other, and Alex can’t actually tell if people’s attention is focused on them like he’d usually be able to, because his brain is quiet again.

And he’ll never, ever tell anyone this, but he’s pretty sure he’d crash into fifty more cakes if it meant Henry would keep touching him, if it gave Alex ten more seconds of peace inside his own head.

The New York Times @nytimes
Battle Royal: FSOTUS and Prince Henry topple over cake at Royal Wedding and create diplomatic chaos.

The Washington Post @washingtonpost
Is it a Second Pastry War? How a simple, PR-friendly event turned into a possible catastrophe for the Claremont re-election chances.

Daily Mail Online @MailOnline
Inside source at the Palace says Cakegate may have been caused over disagreement regarding soulmates: should the UK be silent in the face of this affront?

Fox News @FoxNews
FSOTUS creates a diplomatic disaster: is it time to limit the public appearances and responsibilities of non-soulbound ACD?

The Guardian @guardian
Palace and White House dismiss soulmate-related reasons for cake controversy; Alexander Claremont-Diaz and Prince Henry to have joint appearances in the coming week.

NONDISCLOSURE AGREEMENT
Regarding His Royal Highness Prince Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor

The words “Confidential Information” as used in this Agreement shall include the following:

1. Such information as HRH Prince Henry or any members of the Royal Family may designate to the Guest as “Confidential Information”;
2. Any architectural details of the Royal Residences and personal effects found therein;
3. All information regarding HRH Prince Henry’s soulmate status or the soulmate status of any member of the Royal Family;
4. Any information regarding or involving HRH Prince Henry’s personal or private life not previously released by official Royal decree, including any personal or private relationship the Guest may have with HRH Prince Henry, up to and including soulmate resonance, soulmate status, or any related condition;
5. Any information found on HRH Prince Henry’s personal electronic devices…

Alex expects a lot of things, from the stupid PR thing they have to do.

He expects to get a completely bland list of facts about Henry that Alex is somehow supposed to spin into quippy talking points, and he’s not disappointed.

He expects to be paraded around like a marionette by White House and Royal Palace staff-members that don’t seem to realize there’s a human being underneath the media strategy, and who needs some pretty basic stuff like, y’know, food and water and hey, maybe even a little bit of sleep, and that’s pretty much what he gets.

He expects to basically spend four days on the cusp of a migraine because the effects of soulmate resonance are always way worse when mixed with jetlag, and the amount of ibuprofen he has to down bears out his concerns.

What he doesn’t expect, not in a million years, is to be stuck inside a cleaning closet in a hospital with the fucking spare Prince of England—heart racing, body shaking slightly with the muscle memory of too many active-shooter drills—and find that the figurehead is an actual person.

The shots ring out, Amy pushes them into the cupboard, and after the shoving and shifting, elbows and knees being pushed in exactly the wrong places, he can’t stop himself from asking.

“God, Henry, why do you even hate me so much?”

Henry turns to look at him, eyebrows raised, the outrage on his face more real than all the fake smiles he’s been doling out.

“Do you not recall that you called me soulless when we first met?”

Alex frowns, confused. “What? I didn’t—”

And then he remembers.

The Olympics, the insane fucking headache he was dealing with, the relentless, suffocating resonance, and then the blissful silence when he shook Henry’s hand.

“—oooh. Yeah, uh. I didn’t call you soulless, I said—I said your soul was quiet?” Alex says, tentative.

“How is that any better?” Henry shoots back, and, well.

Fair.

Alex guesses that if they’re going to get anywhere here, he’ll have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known, etcetera, etcetera, and if Henry’s weird about it all, then Alex can, like, reverse NDA him or whatever.

“Right, so. The thing is I have RHD,” he says, letting out a breath.

At Henry’s blank face, he continues.

“It’s, uh. It’s resonance hypersensitivity disorder, which means that since puberty I’ve been able to see potential soul resonance connections for everyone, like, all the time. It’s kinda like I’m always hearing a badly tuned radio I can’t ever turn off.”

Henry’s indignation has bled away from his face, and instead Alex can see curiosity and even sympathy in his blue, blue eyes—which, seriously, they’re a little too blue, it’s distracting.

“That sounds really difficult, Alex, I’m so sorry,” Henry says softly. “I had no idea.”

“Yeah, we don’t, uh. We don’t really talk about it publicly,” Alex says, shrugging. “People are already so weird and traditional about soulmates, if they found out I have, like, soulmate ESP or whatever Fox News would never shut up.”

Henry barks out a laugh, and it’s pretty much the first time Alex has heard him do that. It makes his chest feel warm.

“Anyway, when I met you—when I shook your hand—it’s sort of like the radio dial finally turned down. I have no idea why, but you’re just—”

“—quiet,” Henry completes, eyes a little wide. “Of course.”

“Right,” Alex says, nodding. “Anyway, after that you sort of looked at me like I was a particularly gross bug or something and I decided you didn’t like me, and, um. I kinda historically don’t take it well when I think people don’t like me.”

Henry raises an eyebrow. “So you mean to say I’m not the first person you’ve shoved into a cake? I’m heartbroken, Alex, I thought what we had was special.”

It’s Alex’s turn to let out a surprised laugh, and hey, who knew. Henry’s got jokes.

Amy opens the door to the closet then, startling them a little, and as they clamber to stand up and finally make their way out of the hospital, exchanging numbers before saying goodbye, Alex feels a new, unusual sort of lightness.

It takes until he’s back in the car and driving to the airfield to pin it down: this was the first time he’s ever told anybody outside his family about his RHD— Nora knows, but Nora’s been family since Alex caught that tendril of resonance heading towards him and the tidal wave heading towards June—and Henry didn’t judge him even a little bit.

And it opens the floodgates.

At first it’s a text to make fun of an article in Hello Magazine where alleged Royal insiders discuss the necessary traits Henry’s soulmate is bound to have and wondering if he’ll start to actively search for them—they include a helpful guide of every blue-blooded girl or guy Henry could be soulmates with, because of course it couldn’t be a normal person.

Henry shoots back with a link to an InTouch Weekly alleged exposé about Alex’s tragic addiction to ice-cream—all because some paparazzi shot a blurry, unflattering picture of Alex really enjoying a fucking ice-cream cone and, paired with his Instagram post about late night Cornettos with Henry, it’s apparently an addiction now—and apologizes in the most obnoxious way possible about being an enabler for offering ice-cream when Alex stayed at the Palace.

The jokes give way to real conversation soon enough: Henry shares his frustrations at the way any potential impact he may have in the world has to be totally anonymized and funneled through Pez’s charities, because god forbid a British Royal is seen caring for anything but trout conservation.

Alex, in turn, talks about the complexities of trying to finish school and be a “normal kid” while living in the White House, which means he’s also a role model and not a normal kid at all. The delicate balance he has to follow, how frustrating it is to see soulmate resonance like he does and know there’s a sheer universe of possibility and connection between people, but face the reality that the world has winnowed it down into only one acceptable configuration.

They share jokes and they share truths and they share themselves, and it’s like nothing Alex has ever had before.

He has an actual friend.

Someone who isn’t related to him either by blood or soul resonance, someone who gets it.

He can talk about the pressures of his mom’s job and Henry understands because, like. His entire family has a job like that.

He can pout about the barista not putting cinnamon in his coffee and Henry sends him a tiny cinnamon shaker by mail—probably the world’s most ridiculous and amazing package to ever be sent between Kensington Palace and the White House—instead of Alex being the Twitter main character of the day for being ungrateful or something.

He can talk about his migraines and the isolation he feels so much of the time, seeing souls connect with everyone but not really with his own, and Henry shares how he feels like he’s behind glass, too, something to be looked at but never really touched, and none of this ends up leaked to TMZ.

He can call Henry up in the middle of the night—near dawn, in London—and confess that a couple of turkeys are waging a war of attrition against him in his own damn bedroom, and Henry makes fun of him, but talks him through it.

Cornbread is still his enemy for life, though.

And the very next night, when Thanksgiving goes to absolute hell, he can call Henry again, and Henry actually picks up.

“Well, now, this is starting to look like a habit, Alexander,” Henry answers, his voice warm and a little sleepy. “I might start to get the idea you like me after all.”

Alex wants to say something clever, wants to follow along the sharp back and forth they trade every day, but the fight still rings in his ears, the hopelessly dissonant soul resonance of his parents still battering his brain.

“Alex?” Henry asks cautiously, after Alex is quiet a little too long.

“Hi,” is all he manages to croak out.

“What’s wrong?” Henry asks, immediately reacting to Alex’s tone, and his concern washes over Alex, manages to quiet his brain down just a little, which should be impossible considering he’s so far away.

It’s enough to let him try to explain.

“My parents,” he says. “Even with the divorce, they try to do the holidays together every year, all the big ones, anyway, and tonight was Thanksgiving.”

“Try?”

Alex smiles humorlessly. “Yeah, you caught that, huh? It’s—it’s the kindest way of putting it, I guess. That they try. But maybe it’d be more realistic to say that they suffer through them every year, and bring June and I along for the shitshow.”

Today it was a fight over the car.

A car they don’t own anymore, a car neither of them drove much even back then, but apparently talking about a bill Raf’s pushing on electrics and hybrids was as good a segue as any to start picking at long ago wounds, never properly healed.

“I thought they were soulmates,” Henry says, after a moment.

“Soulmates can fight just like anyone else, trust me,” Alex tells him, because he’s seen it more than he can count. He shuts his eyes for a moment, tries to figure out if he can explain what he sees shining out of his parents. “And they are soulmates, of a sort. It’s just—soul resonance is so much more complicated that anyone wants to believe, or admit.”

He can see the connection between his parents, he’s seen it clear as day since he turned thirteen.

But he’s also always seen it’s stronger on his dad’s side; that there’s a part of his mom’s soul unreachable to Oscar, a part still looking for someone else. Someone she’ll never actively try to find, because she already married someone who was her soulmate and trying again isn’t something that would poll well.

“I’m starting to understand that,” Henry says softly, and it means so much, that he just accepts this part of Alex, that he doesn’t make him feel like a freak. “So I take it that tonight was another, ah. Shitshow?”

The word sounds charmingly foreign in his polished accent, and it makes Alex smile again but in earnest.

“Yeah. They started fighting about a late car registration payment back from when I was like eight years old,” Alex says. “I mean, it wasn’t really about that, of course—it was about the fact that my dad is still in love with my mom and my mom loves him too but not enough, and neither of them really know how to deal with that.”

“And you and June got caught in the crossfire,” Henry says, voice knowing, a little sad.

“June’s a little bit better at handling it than me,” Alex tells him. “She doesn’t get headaches, anyway.”

“I’m sorry, Alex. Is there anything I can do?”

Henry means it, is the thing. Alex can tell he does.

It makes tears spring to his eyes because, fuck.

He’s gone through so many of these fights—he’s tapped out so many times before, ever since he came back from camp to the echoing absence of his dad’s resonance—but nobody’s ever unambiguously just been there for Alex.

It makes sense, really: his mom and dad carry their own hurt and June hers, and they all more or less agree to ignore whatever was said and pretend it won’t happen again next time.

But Henry is Alex’s friend, so he can say sorry and be there for Alex and give him the space to ache without having to pretend at all.

“Thank you, H,” Alex says. “Talk to me about anything but soulmates?”

And as Alex settles in to listen Henry relay the enmity between David the beagle and Mr. Wobbles the cat—born from, it seems, both wanting to lay claim to the same old blanket—he hopes against hope that he’s a space for Henry to be without pretense too.

The opportunity for it comes soon enough, about two weeks later, when Henry stops replying to his texts for three days.

Alex’s first impulse is to be angry, to revert back to the Alex he was right after Rio, convince himself Henry was always going to disappoint him and get tired of him because he’s too much.

But then he looks at his tiny cinnamon shaker and thinks back to Henry answering his texts and calls over the last few months even when it’s the middle of the night, and he can’t hold on to any anger—worry replaces it immediately.

So he pulls out his phone, and shoots off one more text.

h, whatever it is, i’m here when you’re ready

you’re not alone

And then he sets about trying to figure out how to get Jaffa Cakes delivered to Kensington Palace, which he manages after nearly a full day of bugging Zahra and agreeing to give a speech at a local high school.

It’s absolutely worth the dose of methylphenidate HCl he has to take to get through the intensity of teenage soul resonance when Henry finally texts back a couple of days later.

HRH Prince Dickhead
Thank you, Alex. I suspect you won’t know exactly how much this means to me, your patience, your kindness. But I promise I’ll explain when I can.

you don’t have to share anything you don’t want to, h

i’m here anyway

HRH Prince Dickhead
I’m starting to believe it.

That night, June forces Alex out of a research spiral—he’s been collating the voting records and demographics of Texas Congressional districts for reasons he’s not ready to share out of his head yet—and convinces him to have pizza and watch movies.

They hit on a Bond marathon as soon as they turn the TV on, and it hits Alex like a ton of bricks when he reads the chyron: Remembering Arthur Fox.

Of course Henry was quiet and sad, of course. It’s been five years since his dad died, and Alex imagines it feels like yesterday but also like an eternity.

He figures the last thing Henry wants to do is to talk too much about it, but Alex resolves to be extra present in whatever way he can: sharing more songs and memes and random observations of his day than usual, and sending another Jaffa Cake delivery through Zahra’s mysterious contact.

What he’d really like most, frankly, would be the chance to see Henry, to be there for him physically—how often do Princes get hugged? Probably not nearly as much as they should—but he thinks it’ll be harder to make that happen than horrible-tasting snacks.

And then, like an unlooked for answer, an invitation shows up to the Okonjo New Year’s Gala in London.

It’s well-known that Henry always goes to the Gala, and it only takes the lightest of suggestions by Alex that it fits into the post-Cakegate PR plan before his attendance is confirmed, alongside June and Nora’s.

Alex figures he’s gonna need to stock up on his stupid meds to make it through something as intense and resonance-filled as a New Year’s Party—there’s a reason his mom immediately shut down her media team’s suggestion that the White House Trio host annual New Year’s parties back when she first took office—but getting to be in the same room as Henry will be worth it.

June and Nora, for their part, are taking outfit planning to another level and Alex resigns himself to getting random pieces of color swatches flung at him at different moments of the day.

“Alex, I love you and all that, but if you and Prince Henry have a friend breakup, I can’t promise I’ll side with you,” Nora tells him seriously, at the same time as she’s putting together an Excel pivot table to collate the best dressed people at the Okonjo Gala for the last five years.

Alex hates to argue with Excel people in general and with Nora in particular, but he has to protest.

“Nora, I thought we were bros!”

“We are, but the Okonjo Gala goes before bros, and hoes, and pretty much anything else,” she replies, shrugging.

Alex turns to June, who tilts her head.

“I mean, she’s not entirely wrong, Little Bit,” she says.

“Betrayed! Bereft! Befuddled!” Alex exclaims, theatrically throwing himself on the couch, only very narrowly avoiding falling on the floor instead.

Nora rolls her eyes. “Whenever you’re done being a V for Vendetta cosplayer with clearly terrible spelling, come over here so I can check if you’re more of a summer than an autumn.”

And so the next few days of Alex’s life continue.

He’s actually pretty grateful—not that he’ll actually tell that to Nora and June and their color schemes—because it helps keep his growing nerves at bay.

It’s hard to pinpoint why, exactly, he’s feeling so nervous: the Gala is far from the first extremely high-profile event he’s gone to, considering, y’know, a Presidential Inauguration and a Royal Wedding.

But when he’s finally walking into the ballroom and feels his breath stutter the moment he catches sight of Henry, it makes sense.

“Alex!” Henry exclaims, smiling wide and waving him over—clearly a more enthusiastic greeting than most people get from the Prince, from the surprised glances people throw their way.

It’s also probably not exactly normal friends stuff that Alex thinks Henry’s smile outshines the truly staggering glitz and glamor of the decoration.

He doesn’t have too much time to panic about it though, because right on cue, he starts feeling the increasing pressure of soul resonance whirling out of the crowd, his brain helplessly tracking all the near-connections and near-misses and sheer intensity of a whole bunch of people who really want to meet their soulmates before the year counts down to zero.

The pressure builds and builds and builds, forcing Alex to shut his eyes for a moment, and then it pops, just like that.

He has no idea why, until he feels the warmth of someone very close to him, a hand gripping his forearm, catches the scent of bergamot and clean linen.

“I’m okay,” he says quietly.

“I know,” Henry replies, voice steady, but he still doesn’t let go of Alex’s forearm.

Alex feels okay enough to open his eyes, already cringing at the thought of everyone staring at him, praying that the NDAs people must’ve signed to get past the door are enough to stop the weird tweets and blind items about how the First Son can’t deal with crowds.

But it turns out nobody is paying attention, because Henry has expertly maneuvered them so that his body is blocking Alex from the rest of the room.

Next to them, Percy Okonjo is exuberantly greeting June and Nora, demanding to be called Pez and to allow him to wait on them hand and feet, grabbing the attention of anyone and everyone, and Alex is safe.

No eyes, no questions, no worried suggestions that maybe he should just leave.

“Drink?” Henry asks.

“A whisky would be perfect,” Alex replies.

Henry nods briskly, waves his hand, and in what seems like a second a waiter is there, holding out a tray with a whiskey for Alex and what looks like a gin and tonic for Henry himself.

Alex finally manages to fully relax as they sip their drinks, and soon enough, between the whisky and Henry’s proximity, the flashes of soul resonance are easy to ignore—one more thing alongside the music and the laughter and the ease of having Henry right next to him, whispering ridiculous stories and gossip about the rest of the guests.

He sticks by Henry’s side most of the night, but then Get Low comes on and Nora and June drag him to the dance floor and he can’t refuse—the power of Lil Jon is hard to resist.

So he’s dancing and he’s laughing and he knows the countdown for the new year is pretty close, can feel the anticipation of it building all around.

He feels young and happy and full of possibility, and then he catches sight of Henry out of the corner of his eye, right on the edge of the dancefloor, and almost crashes into Nora.

Because Henry is talking to a tall, striking man and he doesn’t look a little impatient and blank, the way he’s looked with most people that have come up to him throughout the night. He’s laughing, actually, at whatever the man just said, and the man’s soul is nearly blinding white, the way it’s reaching towards Henry—seeking connection, certain of its reception.

And before Alex can process any of it, the DJ cuts the music and the countdown starts, and he knows he can’t stay here.

He can’t be in this room when the man pulls Henry into a midnight kiss, hoping for a soulmate. He can’t be there to see Henry kiss him back and witness his soul reaching back, too.

So Alex untangles himself from the crowd and heads towards the doors in the back that lead to a terrace, figures he can go outside, wait it out and come back when the whole thing’s over.

The terrace feels shockingly quiet once he makes it outside, the air stingingly cold, and Alex would think he was utterly alone except that he can still feel the buzz of soul resonance nearby, rising to a fever pitch right along with the 3-2-1, Happy New Year!.

He stares up at the fireworks above, grateful that they’re loud enough he can’t really distinguish the noise outside of his head from the noise inside it, tries to take deep, relaxing breaths and can’t quite manage it.

He doesn’t actually hear the door to the terrace open, but he feels it when the constant buzz in his brain lowers to a gentle hum and then dies down entirely, and knows he’s not alone anymore.

It can only be one person.

“Is everything alright, Alex?” Henry asks, genuine concern in his voice.

And Alex has no idea how to answer because everything is very much not alright—he can’t stop thinking about the handsome man leaning close to Henry and how stingingly clear it was to Alex that the man’s soul was reaching out to Henry in every possible way because it was inescapable to Alex’s stupid sensitive brain—but also, Henry’s here.

Henry’s here, outside with him, standing close.

Which means Alex feels like he can breathe again, like he has room in his own head again, and he just doesn’t know how to square any of it.

How to square the way Henry makes him feel with the fact that Alex doesn’t really want a soulmate; hasn’t wanted one since puberty hit and it turned out soulmates and everything related to them meant migraines and weird pitying glances and doctor’s appointments and meds.

How to square that even if he got over all of that and wanted a soulmate, he’s clearly not Henry’s, given the fact that Alex feels the opposite of soul resonance buzzing around in his brain whenever Henry’s around.

“Alex?”

The soft voice pulls him out of his spiral, the way it has now for the last six months, over text and over the phone, and, damn it.

He doesn’t quite know what to do.

So he goes a little bit nuclear—the only way out is through—and turns to where Henry has stepped even closer.

He meets those endless blue eyes, concerned and beautiful and entirely focused on the trembling mess that Alex is, and kisses Henry before he can ask any more questions.

The kiss is perfect peace.

The sort of peace Alex hasn’t known since he was a teenager and his brain started turning on him; the sort of peace Alex has never known touching another person for years.

He immediately wants more; wants to stay pressed against Henry forever, if possible, and it’s that thought that has him wrenching back.

Because, fuck, Henry has a soulmate out there somewhere, and it’s obviously not Alex, and Alex can’t just kiss him because he makes his brain quiet—Henry deserves better than having one more person use him.

Alex refuses to be like Henry’s grandmother or his brother, or the endless, heavy weight of the Crown.

So Alex turns and walks as fast as he can out of the opulent hotel and towards where Cash and Amy are waiting, and asks to leave for D.C. as soon as possible, texts June and Nora in the car.

The entire flight home, he resolutely ignores the fact that Henry kissed him back.

HRH Prince Dickhead
Alex, where are you?

HRH Prince Dickhead
Please, Alex, answer your phone. Please. Just let me know if you’re alright.

HRH Prince Dickhead
I wanted to kiss you, too.

irl chaos demon
okay, i’m gonna ask. are we ever talking about why alex ran away from the okonjo gala like his ass was on fire???

BUG
Nora! We said we’d wait until he was ready. You don’t need to tell us anything you don’t want to, Alex. But we’re here for you, remember that.

irl chaos demon
and we could be here for you MORE if you actually told us what the hell is up

BUG
Nora… (she does have a point, though, Alex)

i’ll tell you

but i need a little more time

BUG
Of course, Little Bit. I’ll have the kitchen make you some quesadillas okay? Please eat them this time.

Alex knows Henry is coming to the White House for the dinner thing with the British Ambassador and that Alex himself is also expected to be there, and he’s firmly, deliberately ignoring it.

He can’t allow himself a single second of going down that path, is the thing.

Not a single second, because if he starts thinking about it, about Henry, about seeing him again—about how it feels to be close to him, about the warmth and the peace and the way his lips were incredibly soft and how his waist felt when Alex clutched it in his hands…

If he starts he’ll never stop.

And Alex is many things: he’s June’s brother, and FSOTUS, and Mexican-American, and a former Salutatorian and substitute lacrosse captain and Student Body Vice-President, and one of the very few people with resonance hypersensitivity disorder, but the one thing he is clearly not is Henry’s soulmate.

So he can’t start.

He resists June and Nora’s various attempts at getting him to talk about what happened on New Year’s Eve, even though at some point they try to tempt him with Pulparindos that June has somehow finangled from one of their cousins back in Mexico.

He navigates away from his text thread with Henry, even though he finds himself opening it over and over again, eyes caught by the last message he never replied to, Henry’s confession.

He tries to bury himself in reading ahead for the semester, in trying to do as much as he can while he’s alone in his room and not on campus, dealing with intermittent headaches because of soul resonance and the general feeling of people always staring at him.

And then the Ambassador’s Dinner is here, and Alex—Alex can’t do it.

He can’t dress up in a tux and take his ibuprofen and pretend that he’s fine.

So he does what he’s tried never to do, since he got his diagnosis: he goes to his mom, and says he has a bad headache, and he really doesn’t want to deal with wayward soul resonance on top of it. Since Zarah isn’t there to call bullshit—he made sure to get into the Oval when she was off dealing with some recalcitrant Senators—his mom buys it.

“Oh, darlin’, of course you can stay in your room tonight, don’t worry. June and Nora will be enough,” she says, looking at him with soft concern.

He really never complains about the RHD to her, is the thing, so she’s probably a little freaked out.

Alex is sorry for worrying her, of course, but not sorry enough to take it back, because now he can stay in his room and not face the agony of being near Henry but not as near as he wants to be.

So he goes back up to his room, closes the door, and turns off his phone.

He staunchly ignores June knocking, trusting that she won’t come in without permission after the Great Battle of the Doors during the summer of 2014 and subsequent truce, and does his level best to distract the hell out of himself with research on Texas congressional voting records for the past fifteen years.

Of course, Alex’s level best is really pretty fucking good, which is why he barely notices time passing or basic things like needing to rest his eyes or go to the bathroom or have a drink of water or, y’know, Henry the prince of England walking into his room.

“Alex,” Henry says behind him, and Alex spins out of his chair so fast he nearly falls to the floor instead of standing up.

It’s not his finest moment.

Once his balance has been somewhat—somewhat—regained, Alex takes a moment to look at Henry, and, well.

There’s a reason why he wanted to stay as far away as he could from the Ambassador’s dinner.

Because Henry looks absolutely beautiful.

He’s in a tux that makes it absolutely clear why British tailors are a thing, and his hair falls just so across his forehead, and his eyes are even bluer than Alex has been remembering, whenever his brain stops listening to his orders and replays that damn kiss, and the corner of his mouth is as devastatingly tempting as ever.

“Henry,” Alex manages to say. “What—what are you doing here?”

“I’m truly sorry for intruding, but I just—I had to see you, Alex,” Henry replies, and he visibly swallows, takes a step forward. “I had to see you. And when June told me you weren’t going to be at dinner, I… well, I don’t quite know what my face did, but she took pity on me, gave me directions to your room.”

Alex wants to be mad at June finding a workaround for the truce, he really does, but it’s very hard to hold on to any anger when you have Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor right in front of you looking at you like he’ll die if you tell him to leave.

“It’s—it’s okay, H,” Alex says softly. “I shouldn’t have skipped the dinner, anyway.”

“Why did you?”

Alex opens his mouth, closes it, and finally gives a helpless shrug.

“Because I didn’t know how to even begin to act around you, I guess,” he says, eventually. “I felt—I feel—embarrassed, and weird, and I didn’t want most of D.C.’s diplomatic corps and a bunch of reporters to overhear me figure out how to apologize for trying to kiss you.”

Henry tilts his head, and he frowns a little.

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t make it to the dinner, then,” he says.

“It… is?” Alex asks, confused.

Henry steps even closer, then, not stopping until he’s so close to Alex that Alex can feel the warmth of his body, can see the curve of his eyelashes, feels enveloped by the clean scent of bergamot and linen.

“It is,” Henry confirms, a smooth, incredibly attractive confidence suddenly rounding out his voice. “Because the last thing I’d want is for you to apologize for kissing me, seeing as I intend to do the exact same thing to you.”

And with that, Henry leans down and kisses Alex, his hands going to the back of Alex’s head, immediately gripping his hair, and if the first kiss they shared was perfect peace, this one is a perfect storm.

Alex feels overcome, carried away, like there’s nothing in the room—in the world—outside of Henry’s lips on his, Henry’s hands on his hair, his own hands on the dip of Henry’s waist.

It’s nearly impossible to pull back, but he does, because he has to know.

“What—what is this?” he gasps.

Henry’s lips quirk into a smile. “I told you, Alex: I wanted to kiss you, too. I want you, desperately.”

That’s more than enough for Alex to be the one to lean up and resume the kiss, getting lost in the storm all over again.

Eventually, Alex starts walking backwards until his legs hit the couch and then he’s unceremoniously pulling Henry on top of him, kissing all the while, because he needs more—he needs Henry covering every bit of him.

“I’m going to suck your cock, now,” Henry tells him, after a while, the word obscene and amazing in his clean, British accent.

“Uh, yeah, go for it,” Alex says, overwhelmed and dizzy with it, hardly able to believe his eyes as Henry pops open his jeans and pulls down his briefs, and then proceeds to suck his brains out.

It’s not that Alex has never gotten a blowjob before, but—but it’s never been like this.

He’s never been able to be in his own body like this for it, only feeling what’s actually happening and not the push and pull of soul resonance. With other people, his brain has always been distracted by the sense of almost but not quite, his body uncomfortable with the increased buzzing.

With Henry, there’s no buzz of soul resonance, there’s no confusion: nothing but Alex and Henry and the way their bodies are responding to each other.

Alex has no idea how much time has passed when they’re finally panting side by side, Henry’s hair unusually ruffled, his shirt unbuttoned, and Alex himself a sweaty mess.

“I, uh—I really wouldn’t mind doing this again,” Alex says, as he tries to button up his jeans again, hoping his voice doesn’t betray how much of an understatement it is.

“Ah, right. Me too,” Henry agrees. “We just—we need to keep this casual, of course.”

Alex’s stomach sinks a little at his words, but he gets it. It makes sense, even if it sucks. He sits back, getting a little bit of distance between him and Henry on the couch.

“Yeah, I figured,” he says, with a self-deprecating shrug. “I know I’m not really soulmate material for the Prince of England…”

Henry frowns a little. “No, it’s not that, it’s—” he pauses, bites his lip. “Alex, nobody in the British Monarchy has been able to have soulmates for hundreds of years,” he explains, voice careful, as if he’s scared of spooking him.

To be fair, Alex is a little spooked.

More than a little, actually. He’s never, ever heard of something like this.

“But I thought—your mom and dad, they—”

It had been one of the reasons why their love story had felt so inevitable, why there hadn’t been too much grumbling about a commoner, even one as uncommon as the man who went on to play James Bond, had married the Crown Princess. Every news story, every magazine, every book, made great pains to highlight that they had been soulmates.

“Ah,” Henry says. “Yes, I see. No, that was a rather deft bit of PR, once my grandmother realized there would be no swaying my mother and she risked her heir abdicating. They never really confirmed it outright, but let slip enough hints that the press took it and ran, and then they sealed it with an official proclamation once the public was suitably convinced.”

“So they weren’t—they really weren’t soulmates?”

It’s what they’d looked like, whenever Alex saw a picture of them.

Like what soulmates were supposed to be like, smiling and utterly in love with each other, not screaming the house down in the middle of the night.

Henry lifts a shoulder. “My father’s soulmate died young, apparently, and my mom couldn’t actually have one,” he says. “But my father used to say that they’d made each other into soulmates, anyway. I sometimes wonder if that’s why his death shook her so terribly hard—maybe she’d felt safe, thinking losing him wouldn’t hurt so badly because they weren’t predestined, cosmic soulmates, and… and then it turned out to hurt just as much.”

Alex has now come to know enough of Henry that he can see the spiral of sadness the conversation will lead them to, and tries to think of a way to pull them into safer waters.

“You said hundreds of years? So there was a time when the British Monarchy did have soulmates?” he asks, and Henry blinks quickly, sadness put away while his nerd self activates.

“Yes, certainly, and it led to more than one crisis—a good chunk of the War of the Roses might have been avoided if Edward IV hadn’t seen Elizabeth Woodville across a field in a cold morning and realized she was his soulmate,” Henry begins, quickly warming up to the subject the way he always does when he realizes Alex is always happy to hear him talk. “But it was more or less handled until, well. Until the Boleyn affair.”

And while Alex doesn’t really know too much about the War of the Roses, everyone’s heard something about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn and the controversy around the whole soulmate issue.

“She was his soulmate, though, wasn’t she?” he asks.

“Oh, she was, as much as subsequent propaganda pushed by Bloody Mary tried to pretend otherwise,” Henry says, nodding. “But her being Henry’s soulmate didn’t manage to solve the issue of succession, and heirs are rather more important to monarchies than soulmates. So, much as he did everything else that he was requested to do, Thomas Cromwell solved it. Found a way to do away with soulmates entirely for anybody who would ever be in the line of succession to the British throne.”

It’s delivered in a stark, matter of fact tone, as if Henry isn’t sharing something that does away with most of whatever Alex knows of British history, world history, and probably something Alex isn’t supposed to know at all.

“So ever since then, British royals have just—never really had soulmates?” Alex asks, genuinely blown away.

“No,” Henry confirms, with a strange smile on his face. “The idea of soulmates has been used, of course, whenever it’s been convenient and often to great effect, but… it hasn’t been real since Anne Boleyn.”

Alex shakes his head. “Jesus. I had no idea. Like—no idea.”

“Well, you weren’t supposed to,” Henry says. “It’s a very, very well-guarded secret. I also wager we’re not the only royal family that’s done something similar—I’m also fairly certain the Catholic church did the same. There really aren’t that many people who conveniently have God as their soulmate as the politics of the Church have required for the Papacy throughout the years.”

Alex lets his head fall back against the headrest of the couch. His brain feels like mush, and also, he kind of needs to go down a historical research spiral, like, yesterday.

Something Henry says makes him sit up again, though.

“Wait, if I’m not supposed to know, how come you told me?”

Henry gives a small shrug. “I suppose it’s because I trust you, Alex,” he says, devastating and simple.

And Alex has to kiss him again.

Eventually, Henry has to go back before his PPOs declare him missing, but before he leaves, he invites Alex to a charity polo game—which, truly, what in the white people things—and pulls Alex into one final, knee-weakening kiss.

So maybe Alex isn’t Henry’s soulmate, because apparently Henry can’t have one.

But maybe they can have this.

Alex Claremont-Diaz, [email protected]
3/24/2020 01:38 AM
to HW
rambling thoughts on souls and soulmates

H,

So I’m still awake even though I told you when we hung up that I was going to sleep (I know, I know, but I’ll try to sleep after, promise) because I keep thinking about what you asked me, about what soul resonance even looks like or feels like.

I told you it was sort of a buzz, and it is, but it’s not just that. There’s a weight to it, a fluid kind of heaviness that’s really hard to describe… did you ever watch that movie Donnie Darko? Where like there’s time travel and time-crossed soulmates and a dude in a weird bunny suit? Anyway in the movie Donnie starts seeing the way people are connected with those weird, like, whooshing tunnels of air, and I think that’s maybe the closest I’ve ever seen to what soul resonance looks like to me.

The thing is – there’s so many more connections than people seem to notice. I don’t really get why everyone’s so obsessed with this idea of like the ONE TRUE SOULMATE because from where I’m looking: everyone has so many more? Like, people are always buzzing with all sorts of potential connections of different levels and strengths and it’s kinda sad they only focus on one, like it’s the only one that matters.

Nora had soul resonance with me – she still does, in a way, even if she can’t really seem to see it. The one with my sister is strong enough that she could actually sense it, they both can, but it didn’t take away our connection. Liam also had it, a bit.

And like with my mom and dad, after I started seeing resonance… I could see where their connection was, and sure, they’re soulmates, but my mom has this whole other connection flying off to somewhere else that she refuses to follow because splitting from the person you designate as a legal soulmate “doesn’t poll well”.

I don’t know where I’m going with this except to say: you’re not missing that much, H, without the soulmate business.

Can’t wait to see you in Paris.

Yrs,

Alex

Henry, [email protected]
3/24/2020 01:46 AM
to Alex
RE: rambling thoughts on souls and soulmates

Alex,

I would attempt to scold you for still being awake, but I would be an utter hypocrite because here I am: awake as well, and as usual, enraptured by your thoughts.

Thank you for sharing how soul resonance looks and feels for you. I’ve never actually watched Donnie Darko, but I just saw a couple of clips and I see what you mean. I also rather do feel like watching it properly, though – would you be up for watching it with me on another night of our mutual insomnia? I have a feeling your thoughts on it will only make me like it more.

It’s interesting what you say, about how people only seem to focus on this one soulmate relationship when many possibilities abound and I do wonder when precisely things became that strict.

It seems unthinkable now, but James I certainly claimed he had more than one soulmate, back in the day, even though he actually couldn’t have any. He had his wife, who was of course proclaimed to be his soulmate as per the Cromwell protocol, but then he fell in love with a beautiful, dim knight and went ahead and said he was also his soulmate. He even quoted scripture about it! “Christ had John as well as Mary Magdalene, and I have George as well as my beloved Queen.”... can you imagine? And people mostly seemed to accept it, although the French wrote some mocking poems.

I can’t even imagine what would happen now if my brother Philip suddenly claimed he had a second soulmate after marrying Martha – I suppose my grandmother would simply declare she was planning to live forever to avoid the horrible scandal.

I suppose I can understand why you say I’m not missing too much with regards to soulmates, but I do wish I could be well rid of the pretense of it, too. It’s a strange double bind: I can’t actually have a soulmate, but I also can’t say I don’t have one. And one day, I’ll have a false proclamation of my own, at the behest of the Crown and never of my own real desires.

At least soon: Paris in the Spring, and you.

I’ll be damned, Alex, but I miss you.

Yours,

Henry

Journal of Social Sciences
Twisting Fate: Soulmate-based Control and Oppression in Western Societies

Anne Stamford, Marion Jones and Juan Rolaes
Published: 20 April 2020

Abstract: Soulmates and soulmate-resonance based connection have become the primary means of organization of relationships both at the legal and personal level since the edicts of the First Vatican Council. This research aims to explore the social consequences of such an emphasis and the way binary soulmate-based romantic relationships have taken a level of precedence in ways that have had oppressive consequences for other types of relationships as well as for persons who do not identify their soulmates at all.

Keywords: Soulmates, Soul Resonance, Soulmatism, Soulmate Oppression, Soulmate Control

Alex tries hard to keep things casual, he really does.

He thinks about texting about twenty times a day but only texts him about ten or eleven.

He feels the urge to write love letters, suddenly, so he sends quotes over email—hoping against hope his stupid, reckless heart will manage to keep something back if it’s not his own words he’s using, and failing miserably.

He finds every possible excuse and event his mom or Zahra will send him to, but rationalizes it as work for the campaign. Anyway, using a little too much ibuprofen is okay because he doesn’t need to use it at all when he’s actually in the same room as Henry.

So he’s keeping it as casual as he can, he really, truly is, but then Paris happens.

After Alex gets his brains sucked out of his dick by goddamned royalty—and that it’s becoming a habit is insane if he lets himself think about it for too long—then Henry and he fall asleep in the same bed for the very first time, and somehow that feels even more intimate than the blowjobs.

He doesn’t quite know what to do, with the way Henry’s mouth curls around a French accent as he orders breakfast for the both of them, doesn’t quite know how to put away sharing croissants while half-naked as Henry translates the first page of Le Monde for him.

He thinks he can maybe shove it away, file it as an outlier because it was Paris, after all.

He’s pretty sure things are just always a little too intense in the city where soulmates were first properly documented as such during the Middle Ages. It’s not called the “City of Love” for no reason, and Alex figures he can just blame the way he feels on the aftereffects of the sheer weight of resonance teeming in every cobblestone of its streets.

About a month later, though Henry shows up with Pez and Bea for his birthday, and if Alex could try to rationalize Paris away, there’s simply no way he can do that with LA.

It’s not just that Pez presents Alex, June, and Nora with specially embroidered jackets, or that Bea hugs Alex like she knows him already, or the fond way Henry looks at the joyful chaos engendered by the people they both love most.

It’s also that, when they walk inside the karaoke bar where they’re meant to celebrate, Alex realizes immediately that he can’t sense any soul resonance whatsoever.

His brain is utterly quiet, even beyond what it usually is when he’s with Henry—it’s like he’s eleven or twelve years old again, before his brain went more than a little wonky on him.

He comes to a stop by the entrance, shocked, and turns to Henry.

“Pez helped me find this place. It’s a bit of an underground thing, apparently, bars or restaurants with soul resonance shielding,” Henry explains with a smile. “I hope it’s alright—I simply wanted to make sure you could properly enjoy yourself.”

And it’s so unbelievably kind, so goddamned thoughtful, that Alex has to actively stop himself from blurting out the three words that immediately come to mind.

He nods, says, “It’s more than alright, H, thank you,” and walks into the bar.

It’s loud and chaotic—music mixing with less-than-perfect singing, flashing colored lights, people dressed in sequins and bold colors—but it’s still one of the more restful places Alex has been in years.

The subtle paneling covering every wall is barely noticeable except for a faint sheen, but Alex knows it’s extremely expensive, and just as controversial: resonance shields.

He’s heard of places like this, but he’s never been in one, mostly because it doesn’t poll well or whatever.

Tonight is his birthday, though, and for once, he refuses to worry about polling and voter preferences and pundits, so he grabs the tequila shot Nora offers him when they make it to their table, and he downs it in one go.

“More tequila for everyone!” he declares, and Nora whoops while June laughs wildly.

“I do like the way you think, Alexander,” Pez says, with a wide smile, and calls for vodka shots after, which makes Henry groan.

“Pez, I cannot drink vodka in front of my sister and my, uh—” Henry pauses, then, and when he sees that they’re all looking at him, clears his throat. “Alex.”

Bea snorts a laugh, nearly spraying them with the cranberry juice she’s sipping. “Oh, Henry, really, d’you think I don’t know about your slutty vodka-induced Oxford phase? It’s perfectly alright. I’m sure your Alex doesn’t mind either, right?”

She turns to Alex with a gleeful sparkle in her eye, and of course Alex has to agree with her. It’s the law.

“I absolutely don’t believe in slut-shaming,” he agrees solemnly. “Free the nipple, free the vodka, free the Henry, etc, etc.”

“You’re all terrible,” Henry says, but does drink the vodka shot Pez offers him when it arrives.

The rest of the night unfolds in laughter and drinks and unrelenting dares to sing harder and harder karaoke songs, culminating in Alex belting out “Si Te Vas” by Shakira alongside June, and then Henry frankly killing it with “Don’t Stop Me Now.”

As Bea shrieks with laughter next to him every time Henry hip thrusts, and Pez yells out, “More thrust! More thrust!” Alex glances around and thinks, this is what it would’ve been like..

If his brain hadn’t turned into a grenade when he hit puberty, if his impulse to be right in the middle of every crowd—dancing and laughing and talking and just being—hadn’t turned into endless migraines and entirely too confusing glimpses into people’s relationships.

He feels a sudden pang of grief for that Alex that could have been and never was: an Alex who might’ve been loud without reservations, an Alex who could’ve been at the very center of a hurricane and not flinched.

“All right, love?” Henry asks, speaking close to his ear, one of his hands around Alex’s waist.

Alex turns to look at him, and lets the grief go.

He doesn’t want an Alex that might have been to take from the Alex who is.

“Why didn’t I know you could sing like that?” he asks Henry, with a raised eyebrow.

“I can’t, not really, it’s just the vodka,” Henry says with a laugh, and the way the multicolored lights reflect off his hair and the sweat in his collarbones and his perfect cheekbones make Alex feel fully insane.

He leans as close as he can, revels in the way he can feel Henry’s breath stutter.

“Well, how about you and the vodka come make a supersonic man out of me in the bathroom?” he says, pitching his voice low.

“You’re an utter demon,” Henry hisses, and grabs him by the wrist to lead him in the direction of said bathroom.

The stall is small and a little dingy but it feels like a a fucking palace when Henry gets down on his knees and swallows Alex in one go, his blue eyes incandescent. Alex pulls him up into a filthy, heated kiss after he comes into his mouth and then returns the favor, feeling more drunk on Henry’s dick than on four tequila shots.

When they make it out again, Alex figures he’s gonna have trouble meeting Cash’s eyes for at least a couple of weeks, but it’s worth it.

TMZ @TMZ
Spotted: ACD, JCD and British Royals out in LA in controversial club Born Free | Click to read more…

The New York Times @nytimes
Bold night out: Whitehouse Trio visit a shielded bar with UK’s Royals and philanthropist Percy Okonjo.

POLITICO @politico
Fostering Royal ties or a royal disaster? Read our analyst’s thoughts on whether the First Children’s night out to resonance-free nightclub is a hit or miss for the Claremont campaign.

Fox News @FoxNews
Richards: “When the children of the people who lead our nation don’t respect our traditional values and flaunt their rejection for something as fundamental as soulmates, it tells you what a danger they are to this great country.”

“This is not good,” June says.

Alex, Nora, and June are in the music room to go through their media mentions like they usually do once or twice a month, but the mentions are a little less than great this time around.

“Fuck Richards, seriously,” Alex says, frowning. “What traditional values is he even on about, having a debilitating migraine?”

“There’s unfortunately a pretty sizable percentage of people who disapprove of shielded establishments,” Nora says, not looking up from where she’s simultaneously scrolling through Twitter on her phone and doing projections on her laptop. “I’m a little more worried by the fact that they got so much information about us being there—Pez said the NDAs were worked out before we arrived.”

Alex’s phone pings with a message from Zahra, and he already knows without having to even open it that it’s an instruction to go to some event or do an interview and swallow a whole mea culpa about the bar.

But, for once, he just doesn’t want to.

He’s spent so many endless days, now, forcing himself into a less complicated mold: less Mexican, less unbonded, less messy. And it’s gotten him nowhere because according to some focus group somewhere, people still don’t get him.

June thinks it’s because the White House doesn’t really let him talk about his RHD and all the obfuscating they’ve done around the topic of soulmates and Alex has affected his trustworthiness in the eyes of the public, which, y’know.

Fucking great.

His phone pings again.

“I don’t want to apologize about this,” he says softly.

“So don’t,” Nora says bluntly.

“What?”

He glances up to catch June and Nora exchanging charged glances, and then June takes a deep breath and looks at him.

“Little Bit, I know how much you pride yourself on being useful to mom’s goals, and to the campaign, and to people in general,” she says. “But​​ we’ve just seen you twist yourself into knots for so long and I just—I don’t know that it’s been worth it for you.”

Alex blinks quickly. “What are you saying, Bug?”

“You looked happier in that bar dancing with Henry than you’ve ever, ever looked getting ready to give a speech for mom,” June says. “So I guess what I’m saying is that you don’t always need to put being useful first. And you don’t deserve to have to apologize or be raked over the coals for going out and having fun one night.”

It hits Alex hard, because he sees how careful June is not to diminish how much he cares about their mom’s administration, how seriously he’s taken being an asset for it even when his success has been a little mixed.

It’s never been easy for him to hear it when she worries about it, because some part of him always feels it’s because she thinks he can’t do it.

But he knows—he always has, deep inside—that it just comes from how much she loves him.

“Thank you,” he tells her, reaching out to take her hand. Then his phone pings, one more time, and he sighs. “What do I do about that?”

“I’ll do the damage control,” Nora offers.

Both Alex and June turn to look at her.

“I was there too,” she shrugs. “And if they want an explanation, I’ll give them enough numbers and statistics to never want an explanation again.”

Nora’s almost right: the only outlet that asks for more information after her first interview with them is The Economist.

A few weeks later and yet another set of probably too-intense emails exchanged, Alex realizes it’s almost time for the usual Fourth of July trip to Lake LBJ, and decides two things.

First, he’s asking Henry to come, along with Pez and Bea if they want to.

Second, he’s going to convince his dad to install soul-shielding at the lake house by the time the trip is done.

He wants a place that feels safe, a place that feels entirely his own and free of expectations.

And when Henry and Pez arrive—minus Bea, since she stayed behind to cover for Henry in exchange for an eventual, to-be-determined favor—he knows it isn’t only for him.

Alex can’t look away from Henry wearing swim trunks and a loose chambray shirt, laughing his head off while eating watermelon slices without any regard for the juice dripping down his fingers, chasing Pez across the grass like he’s a little kid again, kissing Alex whenever the mood strikes him because there are no paparazzis or royal attendants lurking.

He can’t look away from the way June and Henry stay at the table for hours after breakfast is over, talking about their favorite novels, or how Nora teases Henry and Henry feels comfortable enough to tease her right back, or how Oscar pulls Henry into the kitchen and gently coaches him through making sopes. How Pez looks at all of it with indescribable fondness in his eyes, like he’s been waiting for his friend to finally properly relax for years.

It’s addictive and perfect and it confirms over and over again that this isn’t casual anymore. Alex is in love with Henry, and he’s ready to tell him—soul resonance can go fuck itself.

“So he’s the inspiration behind this soul-shielding push, then?” Oscar asks Alex, when they’re together in the kitchen putting together various fixings for tortas—Alex is partial to huevos con chorizo.

Alex glances up to see Oscar looking out to the porch, where Henry is fully absorbed in a book and decidedly not paying attention to June and Pez playing two-person charades on the lawn.

“Why do you say that?”

Oscar gives Alex a wry smile. “Mijo, after you got the RHD diagnosis, I would’ve installed soul-shielding everywhere—would have pushed for it in the White House, too, optics and Republicans be damned—and your mom would have agreed, don’t think she wouldn’t have. But you were so determined to handle it the hard way, almost like you felt you deserved to feel bad about the whole thing…”

He pauses, shrugs.

“Hell, kid, you’re a Claremont and you’re a Diaz—stubborn is in your DNA twice-over. But you’ve started saying no to things, finally, and asking for things, and maybe I’m wrong but I think it lines up with you spending more time with the prince over there,” he says.

Alex swallows hard.

Things with his dad, things with his mom, haven’t been exactly easy since they split up. But he forgets, sometimes, among all the fights and the awkward dinners, that his parents really are paying attention. And that they love him.

“Yeah,” he finally says. “It does have a lot to do with him.”

“Well, good,” Oscar says. “You should bring him around more often, then.”

“Even if—even if he’s not my soulmate?” Alex asks tentatively.

Oscar stops whisking the eggs, puts the bowl down entirely, and looks at Alex seriously.

“Kid, you know the hard way soulmates aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. People can be yours with no soul resonance at all, and they can be wrong for you even if the soul resonance is there,” he says. “So if you feel like Henry makes your life better, if you love being around him, if he’s someone you don’t want to live without—why isn’t that more important than some arbitrary vibe?”

Alex feels kinda pummeled, honestly, but not in a bad way.

“Even if he’s royalty?” he asks after a moment, clearing his throat.

“Well, nobody’s perfect,” Oscar replies, tone philosophical. “Now pass me that chorizo, it’s definitely properly fried by now.”

The conversation stays in Alex’s head for the rest of the day: for the tortas, and the impromptu game of drunken hide-and-seek that comes after, and the inevitable end of the game where they all end up in the lake, and the slightly inexplicable group decision to set up a bonfire as the way to get dry.

And then eventually Oscar heads back to the house to sleep, and Nora, June, and Pez stumble to someone’s room together—Alex very much refuses to figure out whose, or in which particular configuration—and Alex and Henry are left alone by the bonfire, and Alex just can’t stop staring.

He can't, because Henry’s hair glistens like spun gold in the light of the fire, and he eats s’mores with the careless relish of someone who’s never found dried, sticky marshmallow in the strangest places afterwards, and his eyes are so blue they pierce Alex’s chest.

In the face of all that, Alex doesn’t think he can really be blamed for what he does, for what he says, he really doesn’t.

“H?”

“Hmm?”

“I’ve been thinking,” Alex starts, a little haltingly.

“I seriously doubt that,” Henry interrupts, grinning.

Alex grins back, helplessly. “I seriously doubt that,” he repeats, mocking Henry’s accent. “No, I’m being serious. I—I’ve been thinking about soulmates.”

Henry’s demeanor changes, then, and Alex knows it’s because Henry’s learned how hard it can be for Alex to talk about soulmates and soul resonance, how the thousand little cumulative cuts of RHD have made it a topic that still aches to talk about.

“Tell me,” he says, looking at Alex earnestly.

And if Alex wasn’t in love with him already, he would’ve fallen in love right here—just because of the way Henry looks right now, golden hair disheveled, a smudge of melted chocolate on the corner of his lips, endless blue eyes focused only on him.

“I’ve told you that soul resonance has made me realize how much more complicated soulmates really are and all that, but what I’ve been thinking lately is about me and soul resonance,” Alex says.

He knows he’s gesturing quite a bit and probably talking a little too fast, but he still doesn’t expect it when Henry’s face goes from attentive to slightly scared.

Alex is committed to getting this out, though—he feels like he leaped off a cliff, starting the conversation, and there really isn’t any other way but to keep going.

“And, like. I get that we said this was going to be casual and that soulmates wasn’t—couldn’t—be on the table, but, well, that was a while ago, and, I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t actually want a soulmate, H. I want y—”

And Henry stands up, suddenly, slapping a hand on his own upper arm.

“I’m sorry Alex, I think I need to go inside—the mosquitoes are eating me alive,” he says, and walks toward the house faster than Alex can manage to get a word out.

Alex is left alone by the dying embers of the bonfire, love unspoken in his mouth.

He stays outside, replaying what just happened in his head, trying to figure out how and where exactly it went so wrong. The smoke keeps the mosquitoes away, like it has for most of the night.

Eventually, there’s enough of a chill in the air that he trudges toward the house, despite the fact that he hasn’t gotten too much out of the replays beyond feeling dumb for charging forward even after he clocked that Henry was looking freaked.

He figures things will be better in the morning.

They’ll both sleep, rest, and he can try again tomorrow—figure out how to say what he wants in a better way.

He brushes his teeth, slips as quietly as he can into the room he and Henry are sharing and gets into bed slowly.

Alex thinks sleep will be hard to come by, that his brain is going to run endlessly through the words that were said and the words that weren’t, but he feels himself relax like he always does when Henry is near, the quietness of his presence soothing regardless of everything else, and between one thought and the next, he’s asleep.

It’s the buzzing in his head that wakes him, not too long after.

The contrast between the calm silence he fell asleep to and the low-level but relentless drone of soul-resonance from his dad and June and Nora and Pez, the Secret Service agents not that far off.

He’d gone to sleep without his eye-mask, is the thing, without any of the things he uses in the White House to get a good night’s sleep because Henry is his good night’s sleep here, or has been, anyway.

Except that Henry isn’t in the room anymore.

Before he really knows what he’s doing, Alex scrambles out of bed and walks out of the room to try and figure out where Henry went, half instinct and hope, and half just following the lessening of the buzz in his head.

He catches sight of a lone, pale figure almost at the end of the driveway, and something in Alex knows that if Henry gets there, if Henry makes it to the car probably waiting outside, Alex might just never see him again.

“Henry, wait!” he calls out, walking so fast toward him he’s almost running.

Henry turns and Alex can tell he’s been crying.

“Alex, how—” he gasps out.

“I woke up,” Alex says hoarsely. “You were gone, so the noise of the soul resonance…” he trails off, shakes his head. It’s not important, why he woke up. There’s only one question that really matters, right now. “Why were you leaving? Is it—is it because of what I said? What I was going to say?”

“Alex, you know it is,” Henry replies, his voice plaintive and sad.

“Is it—is it really so bad? To be loved by me?” Alex asks, the words punching out of him.

“Oh, darling,” Henry breathes out, reaching out a tentative hand, then pulling it back. “Of course not. But you deserve better than the mangled, locked-up thing that I am. You deserve to find your actual soulmate.”

Alex feels torn between punching and kissing the self-sacrificing asshole.

“But a soulmate wouldn’t be better for me, H!” he exclaims, tugging at his own hair. “I—I know it sounds crazy because everyone calls soulmates and soul resonance the best thing in the world but for me, ever since I was like thirteen, it’s been a fucking nightmare. Soulmates give me a headache—I have the actual medical prescription that proves it. So I don’t want some imaginary, potential soulmate, Henry—I want you.”

He steps closer, takes Henry’s shaking hand in his, looks deep into the blue eyes that have felt like the beginning and end of him since the very first time.

“Do you want me, too?” he asks.

“Christ, Alex—when have I ever, for one second, acted like I didn’t want every last shred of you?” Henry replies, sounding a little pissed, and then he pulls Alex forward for a kiss that erases everything from Alex’s head except the simple reality of his lips and Henry’s lips and the perfect fucking heat between them.

And so Henry stays.

The next morning, Oscar, June, and Pez try pretty hard to act normal during breakfast, but as soon as Nora walks in she looks at them and raises an eyebrow.

“Was last night’s running and shouting and kissing thing a one time show, or should we all get earplugs for the rest of the week?” she asks.

Oscar coughs out a laugh, and Pez and June look a little too interested in the answer for two people who were pretending everything was business as usual.

Alex turns to Henry, who is bright red and looking very much like he wants to crawl underneath the table, and then back to Nora.

“I think the running and shouting is done, but definitely not the kissing,” he says with a grin. “And, hey, who knows where that may lead, so sure, get some ear-plugs.”

Nora rolls her eyes and June throws a roll of bread at him and Oscar groans out a despairing “mijo” and Henry looks even more bright red, if possible.

But Pez leans across the table to high-five him, and Alex feels so incredibly fucking happy it’s like he could float.

The Washington Post @washingtonpost
Breaking News: Independent Senator Rafael Luna joins Richards Campaign.

POLITICO @politico
How bad is the Luna move for Claremont’s chances? Is it connected to reported disagreements about alleged upcoming legislation proposals on soul resonance? Our analysts weigh in.

Fox News @FoxNews
Richards: “We welcome Senator Rafael Luna to our campaign and we’re certain that it shows how much everyone, regardless of ideology, supports going back to traditional values.”

Henry, [email protected]
08/02/2020 7:04 PM
to Alex
I’m so sorry

Tell me what you need, darling. I’m here.

Yours,

Henry

Alex Claremont-Diaz, [email protected]
08/02/2020 7:06 PM
to HW
RE: I’m so sorry

Oh god, H. Make it go away? Turn back time, maybe?

I don’t even know.

I have no idea what Raf was thinking. He hasn’t replied to my dad’s texts, or to mine.

I just - I still can’t believe that the guy who let me work in Senate campaign and asked absolutely no questions about the pills I took or the fact that I always wanted to work in the tiny office way at the back where nobody else wanted to sit and who made it a fucking point to erase any soulmate status questions from the employment forms we signed, who instructed his press office to never take any resonance questions… the idea that that guy jumped ship suddenly because my mom’s campaign platform was going too far in enshrining barriers against soul control?

I don’t know what Richards promised him. People are saying that it’s maybe Secretary of State or maybe even Attorney General, but I don’t know how it’s worth it.

Isn’t it ridiculous that everyone in the world is so goddamned focused on soulmates but nobody finds it strange that people sell their souls and call it a smart, political move?

When this election’s over, whatever happens, can we go back to the lake house? Just you and me.

Henry, [email protected]
08/02/2020 7:08 PM
to Alex
RE: RE: I’m so sorry

We’ll make it happen, no matter what.

And amidst all this turmoil, in case it helps: I love you, Alex - never forget that.

I love you beyond souls or preordained destinies. I love you because you are smart and beautiful and incandescent and have made every second of my life since I met you better, even when you were accidentally calling me soulless, even when you were pushing me into a cake (and yes, love, it was YOUR fault).

I love you on purpose.

Yours,

Henry

hey you know how after henry and i whatever i joked that queen mary might throw me in the dungeons and shit

and we laughed but agreed that mary is scary as hell

irl chaos demon
“whatever” - YOU’RE NOT BEATING THE DISGUSTINGLY IN LOVE ALLEGATIONS ALEJANDRO

irl chaos demon
and yeah

BUG
Queen Mary really is like peak evil white lady vibes.

right, well, we’re being “summoned to buckingham” whatever the fuck that means

so like if you read about my untimely accidental death it was probably murder by those dudes with the furry hats who can’t talk

BUG
The Queen’s Guards?? And what do you mean summoned?!

irl chaos demon
“summoned” - queen mary never beating the evil WITCH white lady vibes allegations

Alex is prepared for a lot, when Henry asks him to please come to London because the Queen has issued both of them an invitation to tea at Buckingham, and which apparently translates to you are absolutely ordered to show up.

He’s prepared for Phillip to be kind of a dick and more than a little dismissive.

He’s prepared for Catherine to be totally absent, and for the corner of Henry’s mouth to do that little downturn at the side that makes Alex want to kill whoever provokes it (a real problem when the person who does it happens to be Henry’s mom and, like, the heir to the throne and shit).

He’s prepared for Queen Mary to be racist, and classist, and to probably spout off about how he’s not at all suitable for Henry.

What Alex isn’t expecting, not even for a second, is for the first thing that she tells them both—after they’ve been shown in by a man who looks, quite frankly, like he’s the goddamned crypt-keeper but in a fancy red velvet outfit—is,

“Henry. Mr. Claremont-Diaz. I am in the unfortunate position to currently have all your private,” a pause, a grimace of distaste, “ah, correspondence.”

Alex takes a beat.

Then, he freaks out.

“You have our emails?” he exclaims. And then clears his throat, adds, “Your Majesty.”

He doesn’t want to be murdered by the furry black hat guys so soon.

“That is indeed what I said,” Mary says, but clearly means something along the lines of Yes, you dreadful, half-Mexican idiot darkening my sitting room.

Honestly it makes Henry’s sheer goodness even more remarkable, considering how long he’s been having to face the Queen alone.

“Why do you have our private emails, Grandmother?” Henry interjects, bringing them around to the more germane issue at hand. “I’m assuming there was some bad faith actor involved.”

“Quite,” Mary replies, raising a steely eyebrow. “It’s not as if I sought them out for myself, Henry. It appears as though Mr. Claremont-Diaz here was targeted by hackers hired by his mother’s political opponents—American politics truly are so gauche—but, given the contents, the criminals rightly guessed it would be the Royal Crown who would be willing to pay more for the information than some American politician.”

Alex is speechless, too horrified by the idea that goddamned Richards targeted him to get to his mom to even begin to process the not too subtle insult made by Queen Mary against his family, so he doesn’t really know what to say, maybe for once in his life.

Henry, though, even while he’s pale and Alex can see his hands are shaking just slightly, seems to speak Queen Mary-ish well enough to react.

“The soulmate issue,” he says, voice hollow and pained. “Henry VIII and the Cromwell protocol.”

“Right again,” Mary says. “And I must say I am utterly aghast, Henry, at your lack of forethought and propriety in discussing such a private matter outside the Royal family, and with a commoner, no less. But while we will be discussing that further, the focus right now is on the imminent crisis at hand.”

“How much money are they asking for?” Henry asks immediately. “My father—”

“The matter of payment has been settled,” Mary interrupts. “It was a significant amount—likely more than whatever negligible estate your father left you, of course—but not out of reach for our private Royal accounts. No, the issue is no longer how to pay the hackers, Henry. The issue at hand is how you shall repay me.”

Alex reaches forward just the tiniest, tiniest bit—he’s immediately incensed by Mary’s dig at Arthur, how dare she—but Henry seems to notice and places a quelling hand on his arm.

He also seems to understand Mary isn’t talking about money.

“Very well, grandmother. What am I expected to do?” he says, looking as if he’s more or less waiting for a death sentence.

“Not just you, Henry—both of you,” Mary says. “You will begin an official courtship, and we shall handle the distasteful male part of your coupling by issuing the Royal soulmate proclamation for the two of you. This is what you must accept, in exchange for the significant trouble I have gone to in order to protect the Royal family from your unacceptable indiscretion.”

And there has to be something more to it, there has to be, because Henry doesn’t look thrilled at the fact that they’re apparently getting Royal permission to be together.

He looks as if the death sentence was actually handed down.

“May we take a day to discuss it, ma’m?” he finally asks, serious and correct.

“You may,” Mary says, with a careless wave of her hand. “But no longer than a day, Henry.”

Henry nods and stands up, shooting an eloquent glance at Alex which makes him nearly scramble to stand as well, and then they’re pretty much saying their goodbyes and getting out of Buckingham Palace like their asses are on fire.

Alex knows enough not to ask anything while they’re in the car, but he does text June and Nora to say he’s survived the summoning—he’s alive, anyway, which is as much as he could ask for from a private discussion with Queen Mary, he thinks.

Henry stays conspicuously silent all the way until they’re finally in the sitting room of his private quarters, and it’s only once tea, coffee, and David have been delivered and they’re alone that he turns to Alex and asks,

“Are you alright? I can’t imagine that hearing what Richards has done was easy, especially when coming from such a singularly unsympathetic source.”

“I—I’m not great?” Alex replies, frankly. “I’m probably going to have a pretty major freak-out and will have to write a not insignificant number of lists about it, but, H—are you okay? Your grandmother just basically threatened you with, like, arranged marriage.”

Henry looks up from where he’s running a slightly trembling hand over David’s soft fur, a heartbreaking indication of how affected he is, and gives Alex a humorless smile.

“Ah, you caught the undertones, then,” he says.

Alex raises an eyebrow. “I mean, when the person who is peak evil white lady, according to June, suddenly turns around and offers us something that sounds too good to be true? It’s gotta be too good to be true.”

“Well, both June and you are exactly right,” Henry says. “My grandmother has never given anyone anything that doesn’t have strings. Her backing our relationship, a public courtship—it’s a poison pill. The rest of our lives would be hers to do with what she will, because she’ll always hold the truth over our heads.”

“The truth?”

“The fact that we’re not actually soulmates, because I can’t actually have one,” Henry replies, with a jerky shrug that looks almost painful. “Always, always waiting in the wings will be the possibility that, should we step out of bounds, a convenient actual soulmate will be found for me, and our relationship condemned.”

“Excuse my French, H, but you’re grandmother is a fucking piece of work,” Alex says, disgusted.

“Peak evil white lady,” Henry agrees. He glances down at David, sighs. “I don’t know where we go from here, Alex. I feel entirely caught in her web.”

He looks so defeated, so hurt, and Alex can’t stand that it was a member of Henry’s own family that made him feel like that, that anybody in the world can make Henry feel like that. Alex feels like he could burn the world down and call it justice, just to take away the sheer pain that’s bearing down on Henry's shoulders.

And then he thinks, well. Why the hell not?

“Let’s leak the emails ourselves.”

Henry looks up, eyes wide. “What?”

It sounds crazy, probably, and maybe it’s too much, but Alex is tired of being cautious.

His life since puberty, since soul resonance started messing with his head, has been about pulling back, about making himself smaller, making himself less of a problem.

He can see how easy it would seem, to take Queen Mary’s ultimatum as a warning shot and, rather than agree to her demands, disappear from Henry’s life forever, remove himself to spare him any more trouble.

But the thing is, he doesn’t fucking want to.

He loves Henry, and he loves the person he’s re-discovered inside himself since he and Henry got together, and he’s done with being forced to feel like he’s a problem to be solved. And he’s pretty sure Henry is, too.

“Let’s go through them, take out the ones that we really, really can’t bear to be out there—when you told me about your dad dying, the incomplete list of reasons, for me—and let’s leak the rest,” Alex says, leaning forward, taking Henry’s hand in his. “The Queen can’t hold a bomb over our heads forever if we set the bomb off ourselves.”

“Christ, Alex—just when I think I couldn’t possibly love you more than I do, you go ahead and propose treason,” Henry says, shaking his head and smiling a beautiful, reckless smile.

“Well? Wanna do some treason with me, baby?” Alex asks, tilting his head invitingly.

“I’d love to.”

nora, you have a reddit account right

irl chaos demon
who exactly do you think i am, alejandro?

irl chaos demon
i have 13

thecromwellletters.zip

TMZ @TMZ
ACD and Prince Henry break the internet after their emails are leaked | Click to read more…

The Washington Post @washingtonpost
Breaking News: FSOTUS and England’s Prince Henry have been in a relationship since New Year’s, and the British Royal Family has been misleading the public regarding soulmates, leaked emails show.

The New York Times @nytimes
“I love you on purpose” and the Cromwell protocol: the personal and the political in the leaked emails of Alexander Claremont-Diaz and Prince Henry.

The Guardian @guardian
The Cromwell letters: a betrayal, or an opportunity for re-examining the relationship between the Royal family and the British people, and the relationship between soulmates and mankind as a whole?

POLITICO @politico
What’s next for the Claremont Campaign after the leak of ACD’s emails? Is FSOTUS apparent disregard for soulmate status a career ender for the President? Our political analysts give us their predictions.

Daily Mail Online @MailOnline
The Cromwell Letters: an inexcusable intervention into the privacy of the Royal Family and clear evidence of Prince Henry’s irresponsibility.

BuzzFeed @BuzzFeed
12 lines in the Cromwell Letters that BLEW OUR MINDS, from the romantic to the literally history-altering | Click HERE

Fox News @FoxNews
Richards: “These emails clearly show how unsuitable Ellen Claremont is for the Presidency: leadership is demonstrated in the family first, and she is clearly not a family leader.”

[MUSICAL INTRODUCTION: 10 SECOND INSTRUMENTAL FROM TAYLOR SWIFT’S SONG “LOVE STORY” ]

VOICEOVER: Shakespeare once famously wrote “Let me not to the marriage of true souls admit impediments”, a line used the world-over to talk about how special soulmates are. But what if Shakespeare meant more than just romantic soulmates, or the kind of soulmates that could actually get married in the 16th Century? What if soulmates as we understand them aren’t the be-all and end-all of human relationships like we’ve been led to believe? You’re listening to “Impediments”, a podcast from Wondery hosted by Jenna Martin and Isabel Alarcón.

[END MUSICAL INTRODUCTION ]

MARTIN: Well, Isabel, how to even begin? Today’s episode was originally planned as a critical look at the Ian McEwan novel “Atonement” and the movie of the same name and the issues around soulmates and class structures, but, well. We’re very much not going to talk about that.

ALARCÓN: That’s right, Jenna. With all due respect to “Atonement”, I think there’s no way we can talk about anything but the Cromwell letters and everything they entail—both what they outright state, like the fact that First Son Alexander Claremont-Diaz and Prince Henry of England have been in a romantic relationship for some months, but also what they imply, which is that the whole soulmate-based legal structure might be kind of bogus?

MARTIN: I mean, listen, we’ve talked for over fifteen episodes now about different points of view on soulmates, from the totally gung-ho to the extremely critical, and we’ve discussed some of the personal and the academic views that have been posited to complicate the usual, binary understanding of soulmates. But having this clear text which states that, actually, the British Royal Crown—and probably a whole lot of other Royal families, as well as the Vatican—have manipulated the entire concept and structure of soulmates and soul resonance since at least the 16th Century…

ALARCÓN: … and the lived experience of someone with acute RHD who’s telling us so clearly that what we understand as soul resonance is as nuanced and complex as every individual person is! You just have to wonder, why people with RHD have been branded as, like, “oh, poor things, they’re just so disturbed” and have been constantly forced to medicate when they were actually providing clear, empirical evidence that soul resonance isn’t what the Vatican, or the Royals, or even our legislation pretends it is.

MARTIN: Exactly, exactly. So, like, I do get why people are so fixated on the fact that Alex Claremont-Diaz and Prince Henry are in love, because they’re public figures, etcetera, but honestly, to me, the real shocker in the Cromwell letters is what they mean for how we consider soulmates going forward. Like, I’m so happy for those two guys, truly wish them well and all, but let’s focus on the history-altering, revolutionary part of it all.

ALARCÓN: Agreed! Like, Harold, they’re not soulmates but they’re in love, that’s great, let’s move on to the big leagues, like—what does this mean for the legislation on soulmate status discrimination currently being discussed by Congress?

The night is calm, but not entirely quiet.

Alex can hear the sound of cicadas and the rustling of leaves, the soft lapping of water against the shore; the ongoing soundtrack of any given night in the lake house.

It feels miraculous, that they made it here. But it also feels entirely deliberate.

Through misunderstandings, through migraines and unexpected respite, through cake. The path he and Henry have walked through was so riddled with obstacles and risks, sometimes illuminated and certain but more often than not a hanging bridge buffeted by the wind, it’s not a path they could have walked without making the choice, every single day, to do it.

Now that the election is over and his mom is President again, reporters feel a little more secure to ask questions they were too shell-shocked to ask before, like, “Do you think you and Prince Henry would be soulmates, if the Cromwell protocol hadn’t been enacted?”

Alex doesn’t entertain any questions about his relationship, though, a red line made extremely clear by Zahra revoking a number of press credentials.

If he were to answer, though, he’d probably tell them that it doesn’t matter.

You don’t go through what he and Henry did without choosing it. Without wanting it. Whether Henry and he are soulmates is immaterial—what’s important is that they’ve chosen each other, and they’ll keep choosing each other, for the rest of their lives.

“Everything alright, love?”

Alex startles a little, looks to the side to see Henry standing on the door to the porch, looking relaxed and appealingly sleep-rumpled—he’d clearly needed the after-sex nap even more than Alex, probably because he’s still a little jet-lagged.

He hadn’t felt Henry approaching, no tell-tale reduction of the buzz in his head, because his head doesn’t buzz anymore, at least not at the lake house—not since the resonance shielding was completely installed.

It doesn’t buzz much at the White House anymore, either, because shielding is almost fully set up there, too, and it won’t buzz at the brownstone Henry bought in Brooklyn because he deliberately chose one that had shielding already installed.

A bunch of universities, NYU included, are incorporating shielding into their classrooms. Stores are, too.

Things are changing, slowly but surely.

Alex reaches up to pull Henry into the porch swing with him, and then into a deep kiss.

“Everything’s perfect,” he says, into Henry’s lips.

He means it.