Love Is Impossible (Suavarro Soulmates AU)

Love Is Impossible

Zero.
Nate kisses like he's drowning and Alex is his air. He twists his fingers in the hair at the back of Alex's neck and holds on with both hands like he'll float away if he doesn't, and he wraps his legs around Alex's waist vice-like, clinging on for dear life. The bunk is practically steamed up, and Nate can feel the sheets underneath him clinging to his skin.
"It's okay," Alex breathes against Nate's lips, hands strong and steady on Nate's hips like anchors. "I'm not going anywhere. Never again."
"Good," Nate gasps shallowly, and his hands unclench from Alex's hair, moving to trail over his shoulders, the thick scar on Nate's left wrist pressing into Alex's skin as he lays them flat before involuntarily digging his fingertips in as Alex loses his rhythm briefly. "Because I lost you before I had you, and I never want to feel like that again."
-
One.
The day before Easter, the overworked bakers in the patisserie course beg some of the chef and kitchen ops students to help with their massive holiday workload, and Alex finds himself manning the deep fryers on donut duty. He's not really sure when donuts became an Easter food, but a sweaty girl with bun glaze and mixed spice all up her arms, and a protective wrap around her Soul Mark explains that the donuts get drizzled in yellow, pink, and white fondant like Easter eggs and they sell them in packs of four. Then at least seven oven timers start to beep, each one a semi-tone out from the next, and she winces, rushing off to pull the fresh lot of Hot Cross Buns out of the ovens, so Alex fills the industrial fryer with the next round of donuts, careful not to squeeze the raspberry centres out with the tongs.
It's not exactly a difficult job, but he takes his time making sure the donuts are all evenly golden on each side, and that they haven't split while he's turning them gently. It takes great precision to get each one out of the fryer and onto the large racks of paper-towel lined trays beside him without the others burning or flipping in the process, but he gets through the first batch and only botches two. The same girl – who he suspects is possibly the senior pastry chef of the class if the way the other bakers treat her says anything – says he can have them for lunch, if he wants.
"Taste testing is always important," she says like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "But be quick about it. I've got an order for three hundred of those little fuckers and we've got through fifty so far. And they still need to be sugared and iced."
So Alex sits in the little break room that's out the back of the on-campus bakery, back pressed to the wall it shares with the freezer room in an attempt to cool down after being slowly steamed to death by the fryer, and he licks the jam off his fingers when he's done. They're fucking good donuts, even if one of them was kind of burnt, and the other one had grease-wet jam smeared all over one side. A splotch of red drips out of the donut in his hand and goes down his sleeve. Cursing, Alex rolls it up, and licks the jam off his wrist, stilling as he catches sight of the blank patch of skin there.
It's been itching like crazy for the past few days, and Alex smiles softly. His Soul Mark is finally starting to develop. When his fifteenth birthday had come and gone, and no Mark had appeared on his wrist, his parents had been extremely worried. But Alex knew that his soulmate was out there somewhere, he just had to be patient. And now, the Mark is finally starting to come through, just a faint pink blur under the delicate skin over the veins of his wrist. Alex is kind of really excited to see what it looks like – what it says – when it's finally done.
When he's finished his donuts, Alex gets to his feet and heads back to the main kitchen, where it looks like even more chaos has broken out because the twenty five litre mixer is jammed with a full batch of bun dough inside, and the ovens are full to bursting with trolleys of uncooked product waiting beside them. "Oh fuck!" someone shrieks, and Alex gets to witness the truly distressing sight of an entire tray of chocolate Easter buns end up on the floor as two people with their arms full collide on their way to and from the storage room.
"Suarez!" the senior pastry chef yells frantically across the room. "I don't want to rush you because you're here voluntarily, but could you get to frying because we really need those trays, and if we don't cool the donuts down we're to waste a whole lot of expensive fondant!"
"Yes, Chef!" Alex barks automatically, adjusting his sleeves and heading back to the fryer, checking the oil temperature before pulling out the next tray of uncooked donuts. "Alrighty, let's get cracking."
Alex does much better at donut frying the longer he's at it. Of course, then he starts to get complacent with it. He thinks he's at the two hundred mark when it happens. He's taking the cooked donuts out, scooping them up with the tongs and transferring them to the draining rack and thanking the odds that made him left handed so he doesn't have to transfer fried goods dripping boiling oil over his other arm, when the cool room alarm goes off, closely followed by the freezer.
The alternating beeps shock him, and he jerks, flicking the tongs up in surprise. In the chorus of people yelling, 'shut the fucking doors!' Alex's scream of pain as oil runs down the tongs and onto his hand and under his sleeve drowns them out completely.
"Shit!" someone yells. "Fuck!" Alex vaguely recognises his own voice as the one yelling, but all he can see is the skin on his hand rapidly turning red as his vision starts to blur at the edges. "Ow," he whimpers, tongs clattering to the floor, closely followed by Alex's body as he passes out.
-
"I can't do it," Alex whispers, so softly that he's not sure if Ryland even heard him. "Ry, I can't do it. I don't want to look."
Ryland's face goes through a series of emotions that all revolve around pity and empathy, and he scoots a little closer to Alex on the couch, carefully taking Alex's bandaged hand in his long fingers. "It's okay. Do you want me to do it?" When Alex looks up at him with big scared eyes, Ryland nods, and pulls the safety pin out, untucking the end of the bandage and starting to unravel it.
It takes him several excruciatingly long minutes, unwinding the bandage from Alex's wrist, around his fingers, across his palm, finally uncovering the gauze over the heel of his hand and the fresh pink skin around it, shiny and raw-looking. Alex's face is turned stubbornly away, not willing to see the mess the oil caused to his hand as Ryland uses the tweezers from the first aid kit to peel the gauze off. It's been on too long already, the edges gummy and curling slightly at the corners, and the side of Alex's face he can see flinches as it catches at scabs and sores slightly.
"Oh," he breathes when he has Alex's naked hand in his, the almost-healed wound staring up at him in an ugly welt, Alex's palm scabbing over and his wrist a mess of bubble-edged scars that Alex had been told to apply burn-salve to once the gauze was off. Ryland thinks Alex's right hand is probably shaking too hard to do that, so he picks up the tube and gently swipes the salve over the burn, cautious of causing his friend more pain than necessary. It's only then that he sees what's underneath the wound; the remnants of Alex's Soul Mark. It had been in its early stages before Alex's accident, and now, several weeks later, it's finished. "Alex," he says. "Oh Alex, I'm so sorry." It slips out before Ryland can even think of the consequences of it.
Alex's voice stutters over the, "What?" he utters. "What's wrong?"
Ryland shakes his head, even though Alex isn't looking at him, and he lets go of Alex's arm, subconsciously pulling his sleeve down over the name of his Soul Mark, inscribed under the skin of his own pristine wrist.
Both hands shaking now, Alex turns his head to stare at his damaged hand. When the tears start trickling down his face, Ryland can't think of anything to say, so he wraps his arms around Alex's shoulders and pulls him in close, lets him shudder in his grip, crying silently as he stares at the completely illegible black blur under his burn, floating just under the new skin like someone injected a pool of ink there with a syringe.
Not a single letter of his Soulmate's name had been spared by the oil, and Alex curses himself for such a stupid, rookie mistake.
-
Two.
Nate Novarro looks like a dwarf amongst giants when they're all standing together, and Alex thinks it's hilarious. In hindsight, laughing at the boy's height probably wasn't the best first impression he could have made, and that thought is only confirmed when Nate retaliates by punching Alex in the stomach. It's more of a friendly warning than an intent to injure, but Alex still walks away from it rubbing the reddened skin and pouting down at Nate, who gives him a big megawatt grin while Gabe and Ryland laugh all creepy and in sync with each other, fingers locked loosely together, sleeves rolled up proudly to display their names on each other's wrists.
Alex has had a good four and a half years to get over his accident, and accept the fact that he'll never know what the butchered Soul Mark under his sleeve says, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel a little pang of jealously in his chest when he sees their Marks in neat little loops of black under tanned and pale skin. When he looks at his, he can't even make out how many letters there are, let alone what letters they are.
"So," Nate drawls, slight Southern twang entertaining Alex far more than it probably should. "Provided you don't insult my perfectly respectable height," and he puts great emphasis on the words, "we should be good friends, Mr ...?" he trails off, flushing adorably. "Shit. I don't think Gabe ever told me your name."
Alex smiles serenely. "Alex Suarez, at your service." He gives a little mock bow, expecting another giggle from the drummer. Instead, he's met with suddenly stony silence. He stands upright, and notices that Nate isn't even looking at him. In fact, the boy is now giving Ryland and Gabe a sour look, and he flicks his eyes down to see a faint flash of black on Nate's left wrist before the boy yanks his hoodie sleeve down violently.
"Pleasure to meet you, Alex Suarez." Nate says his name strangely, like he's said it many times before, tone clipped. He holds out his right hand, and Alex awkwardly takes it with his own for a shake. "I have a feeling that we're going to be the best rhythm section ever."
"Agreed."
-
The burn on Alex's wrist hasn't ached in years, but that night, curled up on the couch in Gabe's lounge room and hungover beyond compare, it starts to hurt. It burns like he's spilling oil on it all over again, and he reaches down in the dark to cradle his wrist, thumb pressing into the puckered scars dotted over his palm and fingers and wrist where the oil had done its damage before it could be treated. Nothing. There's nothing there. But it hurts. It's almost torturous, like the time he'd run his fish knife over the knuckle of his ring finger accidentally and taken the skin off almost down to the bone.
His heavy gasping wakes Ryland, who had passed out on the floor between his tenth and eleventh tequila slammer the night before, and Gabe couldn't be bothered carrying him into his room, so he'd just sprawled out beside him. Ryland reaches out blindly until his hand is clasped in Alex's, clearly not fully grasping what's going on. "Ssshh," he hums soothingly, not even opening his eyes. "It's just a dream." His words slur together, and then he's out again, bringing his arm back to his chest to wrap around Gabe's like it's a teddy bear.
Shaken and in pain, Alex settles back into the cushions of the couch and tries to go back to sleep. He can hear either Nate or Elisa banging around in the bathroom or the kitchen or whatever, but his eyes slip shut before he can think about it too hard.
In the morning, his wrist still stings, but his head hurts worse so he doesn't notice it so much. He does notice that Nate is almost naked aside from his boxers and a neon wrist cuff that he hadn't been wearing the day before, and it's quite an appealing sight. Nate snickers at Alex as the older man squints and groans as Nate throws the living room curtains open to welcome in the late-noon sun.
"Come on, grandpa," he teases. "Thought you culinary types could hold your liquor better than that." There's something slightly off about him, Alex thinks vaguely, like his skin is a little greyer than yesterday, but Nate had downed almost an entire bottle of vodka shortly after their rather violent meeting, so Alex chalks it up to that.
"Shut your face," Alex mutters, throwing his arm over his eyes. "If you're so fucking chipper, you can make breakfast. I was going to make waffles, but now you've annoyed me."
Gabe snorts on the floors. "D' someone say waffles?" he rasps, moaning as he gets assaulted by the light and hiding his face in the back of Ryland's neck. "The Cobra demands someone makes me waffles!"
Alex is still highly sceptical of the whole peyote-induced future cobra, but it's a hallucination that's offering him a job so he won't complain. He fixes Nate with a beady-eyed stare. "How about I make waffles and you can make the coffee?"
Nate offers him that bright smile again, but it's slightly left-of-centre this time. "Sounds like a plan."
Which is how Alex accidentally falls in love with a nineteen year old over marginally over-cooked, misshapen waffles – hey, hangovers fuck with his depth perception even if he is wearing his glasses – and the best damn cup of coffee Alex has ever had in his entire life.
"Marry me," he demands of Nate one sip in. "Seriously."
"Wow," Elisa mutters, sidling into the kitchen. "Marriage proposals already? I thought we'd have to go to Vegas before that happened."
Nate makes a face at her, but doesn't say anything, just gives Alex another smile – brighter than the other one – and takes two mugs into where Gabe and Ryland are insisting that they've partially melted into the carpet and the others will just have to leave them there.
-
Interlude.
Somewhere along the road, Alex kisses Nate. For the life of him, he can't remember what led up to that perfect moment where he held Nate's face and pressed their lips together, and Nate responded by surging up on his tip-toes to loop his arms around Alex's neck, but he's pretty sure it will forever be one of his favourite memories. Closely followed by the one of Nate climbing into Alex's bunk for the first time, to do nothing other than cuddle up beside Alex because he felt lonely.
Alex smiles as he thinks about that night, and brings his arm up from Nate's waist to brush the boy's hair off his peaceful face. Nate sighs in his sleep and curls in closer to Alex, the blanket twisting around him further. This is a relatively new thing, the sex. Again, Alex isn't really sure how it happened the first time, but he thinks that there might have been wine involved. Somehow, it's become a regular thing, and Alex is so happy he can't even feel guilty that Nate has a Soul Mark.
He might be a little bit in love with Nate. A ruined Mark means Alex can love whoever he wants.
Nate sighs again, the soft sound breaking Alex out of his train of thought, and Alex absently kisses Nate's temple, smiling faintly as Nate's lips curve up at the corners. Alex knows that Nate doesn't love him back though, knows that Nate can't love him back because Nate has a Soulmate somewhere in the world, even if he covers their name with his cuff.
"Love you," Alex murmurs.
Nate mumbles something in his sleep. To Alex, it sounds like, "Love is impossible," but he can't be sure. An overwhelming sense of calmness and serenity washes over him. It's a sensation Alex has come to associate with being close to Nate, and Nate alone.
-
Three.
A week into her first tour with them, Victoria corners Nate and Alex in the back lounge, pinning them with a suspicious stare. "What's going on with you two?" she asks shrewdly, a firm hand on each of their shoulders.
Alex looks down at Nate, who's giving him an unreadable look. Alex isn't sure if that means, 'tell her we've been screwing around' or 'tell her we've been screwing around and you'll be sleeping alone for the rest of tour.' Instead he says, "What do you mean?"
Victoria narrows her eyes at them. "Ever since this," and she holds her left arm up, "happened, you've both been all withdrawn and shifty. Why?"
The pang of jealousy is back in Alex's chest as he stares at the fresh Soul Mark on Victoria's wrist, Gabe and Ryland's names stark on her skin. He was there when her name had appeared suddenly on Ryland's wrist, and he'd felt it again then too. Subconsciously, he curls his fingers into the scars on his palm and sighs. "No reason," he says.
"None at all," Nate adds, picking at the cuff he hasn't taken off since Alex met him.
"Sure," Victoria mutters. "Is it because you two haven't met your Soulmates yet and we make you uncomfortable?" She looks so earnestly concerned that Alex feels bad, and he shakes his head, rolls his sleeve up to show her his burns. "Oh my god," she breathes, and holds a finger out questioningly for permission to touch. "You can't even read it."
"I know," Alex whispers.
Beside him, Nate makes a weird choking noise in the back of his throat and Victoria turns her attention on him. "What about you, Nate?" Nate shakes his head silently and shrugs her off, shuffling down the bunk corridor dejectedly. Victoria hums thoughtfully before rounding back on Alex. "And don't think I haven't noticed you crawling out of his bunk every morning, either!" Alex thinks briefly that she's going to hit him – she'd developed a very maternal streak for their young drummer and was very protective of him, despite all his protests that he was a grown up and didn't need it – but she just laughs. "Oh! Maybe you two can become each other's Soulmates!"
Victoria, Alex has noticed, is a bit of a romantic. Which is probably why she fits with Gabe and Ryland so well – they're hopeless romantics too.
-
When Alex pulls back the curtain of Nate's bunk, Nate has his back to him, curled around his pillow and tucked under his blankets. "Go away Alex," he says hoarsely, shoulders pulling inwards even further. "I'm not in the mood for seeing your face right now."
"Well that's a bit rude," Alex jokes, but Nate just shuffles further away from the edge of the bed.
"Hey, is this about the thing with Victoria?" When Nate goes tense, Alex bites his lip. His back is protesting being bent so strangely so he can see into Nate's bottom bunk, so Alex slips inside, laying on his side next to Nate, who sighs agitatedly. "Why do you cover your Mark up?" he asks quietly after a few minutes of just lying there silently enjoying the calmness that Nate brings him, reaching out and fitting his fingers around Nate's elbow where he has his arm resting on top of the blankets.
Nate makes to pull his arm away, but stops, resigned. "Because my Soulmate doesn't want me," he says simply, finally relaxing back into Alex's body as Alex slips his arm around his waist. "Not like that, anyway."
"How do you know?" Alex asks as he cards the fingers of his other hand through Nate's hair. "How could you know that if you've never even met them."
"He destroyed his Mark," Nate mutters, and Alex doesn't miss the fact that Nate specifies 'he'. "I felt it when it happened but didn't know what it was until I actually met him."
Alex doesn't know how to respond to that appropriately, so he says, "Oh," like he understands, and holds Nate a little tighter. He feels one of Nate's fingers trailing over his burn, and he kisses the top of Nate's head. "I'm sorry," he whispers, in the same tone Ryland had all those years ago when he was removing Alex's bandages.
Nate freezes up again. "Get out," he breathes.
"What?" Alex is confused.
"Get out!" Nate squirms in Alex's grip until Alex lets him go, shocked. "Just fuck off and leave me alone! Stop fucking with my head." He puts his hands over his face, and Alex can see his shoulders start to shake.
"Nate," Alex starts gently, but Nate just puts his hands over his ears instead. "I don't know what I did to make you sad, please..."
"Just go away," Nate whispers. "Please."
-
Four.
It takes Alex three days to fully understand what, exactly, is going on in Nate's head. And it takes an altercation with a few overenthusiastic fans to spark his epiphany. It's been awkward between him and Nate ever since he was unceremoniously thrown out of Nate's bunk, and the young drummer had been avoiding Alex wherever possible on a cramped bus with six other people on there with the two. And yet, on their way from the venue to the bus after the show that night, they manage to get caught together by the masses of kids still hanging around the buses in the hopes of running into band members.
Alex is fine with it – he loves meeting fans. He talks to a few of them, signs whatever gets shoved under his nose, and even steals one girl's video camera and turns it around on her and her friend while they giggle and blush at him. Nate, on the other hand, is still in a kind of shitty mood, and he doesn't want to accidentally offend someone by snapping at them, so he says as little as possible, and keeps walking steadily towards the bus, trying not to smack whoever grabs onto his wrist at some point.
When they finally make it back to the bus, Alex looks awkwardly down at his feet while Nate stumbles around trying to take his shoes off, and something catches his eye. "Nate," he says. "Where's your cuff?"
Surprised, Nate looks down at his now bare wrist. "Oh fuck." He goes to pull his sleeve down, but Alex stops him with fingers hooked around his. "Wait, Alex, don't-!"
Alex sucks in a harsh breath when he sees the scars over Nate's wrist, where his Soul Mark is. There are several red slashes, clearly old but not whitened yet, clustered together over the pristine black name under Nate's pale skin. "Oh." Nate's wrist falls from his hand, and Nate dashes off, leaving Alex standing in the doorway, the sight of his own name branded on Nate's wrist burned into his brain.
He gets it now.
-
Nate's in the shower when Alex finally has everything he wants to say sorted in his head, but Alex is so incensed that he barges into the bathroom anyway, and Nate shrieks, nearly slipping over.
"I swear I didn't know!" is the first thing Alex manages to get out, pulling the shower screen open and looking at Nate imploringly.
Nate throws the soap at him. "Oh my god, Alex, get out! I'm fucking naked!"
"It's not like I haven't seen you naked before," Alex reasons, and Nate gives him an icy stare.
"So not the point. At least let me wash the shampoo off before you start babbling."
Alex decides that this is probably a reasonable request, so he goes and sits in the back lounge, listening to Nate bustle around in the bathroom until he appears in the doorway, dressed in boxers and a hoodie, hair curling wetly around his neck. "What?" he asks apprehensively, closing the door and sitting on the cushion two over from Alex's.
Crossing his legs and turning to face him, Alex takes a deep breath. "Let me tell you about how my hand got burned."
And he does. He explains about the Easter baking, the donuts, and the deep fryer. How he made a stupid mistake and spilled boiling oil all down his hand. How his Soul Mark didn't fully develop until after his skin was damaged beyond repair. "Nate, I didn't even get to read it," he says, watching Nate's face intently. "I swear I had no idea it was you."
"You really didn't know?" Nate whispers, knees pulled up to his chest. His eyes are wide and glassy, like he could start crying at any second. Alex really hopes he doesn't.
"I really, really didn't. I promise on everything I love." He darts out and takes Nate's hand. "I promise on you." He turns Nate's hand over and kisses the scars there, all of them so close together that they're like one big jagged mark. "I love you, Nate."
Nate huffs out a shaky breath. "I... When we first met, and you told me your name, I realised you didn't know mine the way I knew yours. And then I saw your scar, and I thought you'd done it on purpose. I thought you didn't want me." He slides his fingers between Alex's, tightening his grip. "So that night, I got so mad that I just wanted to get your name off my skin, and I just couldn't stop myself. I felt like I'd lost you before I'd even had you, and all I'd ever done was waited to find you."
"I felt it," Alex interrupts him softly. "When you did it. I felt it, like I was being burned again. But I didn't know what it was."
"I'm sorry," Nate gasps, rocking forwards onto his knees, surging into Alex's arms with a choked off sob. "I'm sorry."
Alex giggles, high-pitched and non-humorous as he uncrosses his legs so Nate fits against him better as they hold on tightly to each other. "God, why are you apologising?" he asks, pressing a hand to the back of Nate's neck and cradling Nate's head against his shoulder. "I'm the one who stupidly let you think I didn't want you for the last two years. Fuck."
"Shut up," Nate whispers, hands cupping Alex's jaw, and then they're kissing. It's messy and desperate, their teeth clack together, and Alex is pretty sure Nate's lip might be bleeding, but when Nate pulls back just far enough to murmur, "I love you too, since I first read your name," in the most reverent tone Alex has ever heard, he thinks it's worth it.
-
End.
The last thing Nate does before he falls asleep is press a kiss to the ruined skin on Alex's wrist. "Hey," he sighs. "Look." He angles Alex's wrist awkwardly, and traces his finger over the very edge of the scar. "There's the 'N' of Nathan."
Propping himself up on his elbow so he can lean over without crushing Nate, Alex squints at his scars. It's true. There is an 'N' there. "Well I'll be," he breathes, settling back down. That calm wave is back, surrounding them both in the bunk where they're spooned together. "I love you," he says, knowing he'll never get sick of saying it.
"I love you, too," Nate breathes out, rolling over and snuggling into Alex's chest, their skin sliding together. "Ew. We need showers."
Alex shushes him, smiling brightly. "In the morning."