Chapter Text
Alex always thought he’d go viral eventually.
Ideally, it would be for his rugged good looks and boyish charm. Or maybe one day, when he’d met someone, they’d be featured on one of those TikTok accounts that stops couples in the street and asks how they met, and they’d share their impossibly cute story.
Whatever it would be.
He didn’t expect to go viral for a whiteboard, of all things.
The whiteboard wasn’t even meant to be in the frame. What he meant to take a photo of was the smorgasbord on his desk, a literal buffet of home-cooked meals from all over the globe.
Because it was a Thursday.
Thursday was fast becoming Alex’s favourite day of the week. He liked all the days, but Thursday was open drop-in day at the non-profit he ran, when he got to just sit and hang out with people from the community. He provides legal consultations, employment advice and whatever else is needed whenever it’s needed, but Thursdays are for connections. For creating a community within his community.
Giving these people, his people, a place to come, and belong, and be heard.
Sometimes they run language classes, or information sessions on the college application process, or explain changes in local or federal government policies that may impact the people they serve.
Whatever they need, Alex tries to provide it.
He can’t remember who started it, but one Thursday someone brought in a home cooked meal for everyone to share, and then the next Thursday there were two, and then three.
And now, Alex doesn’t need to cook dinner on Thursday nights. The abuelas, babushkas and lolos would consider it a personal failure if he didn’t take containers of their food home with him, usually enough to last him through to Sunday night.
He can’t remember who started them all doing Wordle together either, but one Thursday someone asked about it, and then the next Thursday two people asked about it, and then three.
It didn't seem fair to make people register for their own accounts or pay a monthly fee to access the games, so Alex used his own subscription to get the daily puzzle and share them with the group. That’s what they needed, and Alex provided it.
One of the volunteers drew the squares on the board for that day's puzzle, and Alex worked with them to solve it. There was a collective sigh of relief when a square turned green or yellow, and a veritable party when they solved it within six turns. Sometimes they'd get it easily. When they didn't, Alex would remind them that they'd learned a new word.
It’s not a failure, it’s an opportunity.
Then the Thursday crew caught onto Spelling Bee. Their success with it was hit or miss depending on the letters, but the puzzle always inspired vigorous debate when everyone crowded around Alex's desk and pointed at the letters on the board.
They added the Mini Crossword for those who like a challenge, plus the Monday and Tuesday crosswords.
Emil once solved a Wednesday crossword all on his own, and sent Alex a screenshot and a million smiley face emojis.
There's also Connections.
But, well. Fuck Connections.
For the long-time members — the ones who invite Alex to their children's high school graduation parties or have him listed as their emergency contact on important documentation — he pays personally for their monthly puzzle app subscription.
So the whiteboard isn’t just the puzzle board anymore; now it’s the leader board. It’s where they enter their daily scores and times, and, thanks to an overly complicated algorithm from Nora, a score sheet with progress rankings and improvements over time.
That's what went viral.
Alex had been posting the Thursday food feast on his personal Instagram account for months. A few weeks ago, under siege from a leaky roof and two one-in-100-year storms in one year, he rearranged the furniture in his office so the whiteboard faced his desk instead of standing off to the side.
He did notice the influx in followers and comments, more and more by the day. But he’s often too busy to look too closely at them.
One of the volunteers pointed out that strangers were tracking the movements of the leaderboard in Alex’s Instagram comments. They had their favourites, and cheered when Jose solved Wordle in three, or when Estella found two pangrams in Spelling Bee.
The NYT Puzzles account caught on and reposted his photos, and then the New York Times invited him in for a feature where he hyped up all the great work his dedicated team does, how important immigrants are in every community, and how finding creative ways to connect and engage and bring people together is a fundamental part of his personal ethos.
And then he accidentally talked shit about Connections.
For ten minutes straight.
And now here he is.
Viral.
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He never wanted to be the spokesperson for shitty puzzles, but best laid plans and all that.
It’s not a surprise, though.
Shock horror: Alex has made his personal opinion everyone else’s problem.
It’s not all bad. Going viral has put a spotlight not just on Alex, but on the clinic itself. Ever since his rant blew up, donations have increased significantly, and they’ve had a constant stream of people reaching out and offering their help.
He’s not even that into puzzles. If it weren’t for his friends at the clinic, he probably wouldn’t do them all that regularly.
Nora and June got him into Wordle, and he does the occasional Monday crossword, but he’s not fanatical about it. Not like Nora is.
Okay, and he plays Spelling Bee until he finds all the pangrams. He refuses to even open Pips.
But Connections gets under his skin in a way that nothing else does. Maybe not as much as, say, gerrymandering and ICE raids and the overall political climate of the country, but that’s a constant thrum in the back of his head he can’t turn off. That anger is what courses through his veins, keeps him fired up enough to get through his day and then come back tomorrow and do it all over again.
That, and about 35 cups of coffee.
Connections is always the puzzle he looks at last, when he’s sitting at his kitchen counter finishing the final dregs of his third morning coffee. He shouldn’t leave it until last, but it’s almost become a barometer for his day.
That’s when he gets fucking mad. When the purple category is an entirely made-up grouping like words that rhyme with random kitchen utensils, or vegetables with an extra letter for no reason, or items John Lennon probably carried in his wallet.
And that’s what he said, verbatim, to The New York Times: That it’s arrogant, and elitist, and that people don’t enjoy attempting puzzles when the answers only exist inside the creator’s head.
He tries to actively discourage his Thursday group from doing Connections. He said that, too. That they’ve been doing so well with the other puzzles, and are so engaged and connected, and then they can’t solve some obtuse fucking puzzle and he sees the way their shoulders sag a little, or they seem a little less confident when talking afterwards.
The group doesn’t listen to him, though.
That’s how he found out.
Henry should know better than to antagonise.
He should.
He doesn't.
Connections is always contentious, that’s his firm belief.
And it should be. Puzzles are there to challenge, and to entertain, and to prove to your friends that you’re smarter than they are when you share your scores in your group chat.
That’s the biggest downside of joining the NYT Puzzles team. Henry can’t gloat about his crossword times anymore. Everyone assumes he has insider info.
Even though his sole focus at work is on Connections.
He loves to tell people that his job title is Connections Manager, like he runs a people-centric human resources team in some over-ambitious startup, instead of being just a man with a thesaurus who loves to make people mad.
They complain when it’s too simple, like that time he grouped the categories together in four horizontal rows. It’s not his fault they don’t trust the puzzle — okay, it is —but he literally couldn’t make it any more straightforward.
They complain when it’s too hard — he still gets hate mail about starting with possessive determiners (herring, histamine, mystery, ouroboros) — but he knows, secretly, that they love when it’s too hard. They get to start their day with a fire in their veins, a burst of anger to power them through their morning commute. It’s not like their success in a puzzle has any bearing on how the rest of their day will go, but people love to tell Henry otherwise.
They’re going to complain either way, so all Henry can do is make the puzzles he wants to make.
He’s not usually reactive. Doesn’t change his puzzle technique based on comments or emails or threats on his life.
But this. This is fun.
It’s been impossible to avoid the Alex Claremont-Diaz of it all. Henry gets tagged in Alex’s Instagram comments every day, but he doesn’t respond. He reads them all, but doesn’t admit it.
Doesn’t admit he’s read the article that featured Alex and his striking good looks and unsolicited thoughts on Connections. Doesn’t admit that he’s made it his personal mission to provoke the man.
Doesn’t admit that he follows Alex on a burner account.
Or that he’s donated to Alex’s clinic.
Henry may be a divisive figure in the NYT Puzzles online community, but he’s also just a man. A man with a weakness for mouthy Americans with chin dimples.
Especially when they’re mean to him.
He’s not sure what he wants out of this little game he’s started. A reaction, probably.
A connection, as cheesy as that is.
People have noticed, of course they have. But Henry hasn’t drawn attention to it, and Alex is ignoring it entirely.
So Henry keeps going.
It’s been weeks of this.
Weeks of Connections feeling a little too directed at Alex, personally.
Estella thinks it’s hilarious, and Jose has started doing Connections first every day, despite Alex’s objections.
And he can’t complain. Why would he? The internet is still going wild for it. There are an endless stream of comments on Alex’s Instagram every day, even when the puzzle is not about him.
Does he love the extra attention? Hell fucking yes, he does.
It turns out the puzzle community is a very thirsty bunch, sliding into Alex’s DMs at every opportunity. Making puns about connecting and whether the puzzle is hard today.
Alex doesn’t respond. He doesn’t respond. But he does read them all.
What he does do, when it feels like the puzzle is written just for him, is go live on Instagram and showcase what they’re doing at the clinic that day. They make videos about how they help people, and how other people can help them.
And it’s working. They smash their donation goal every month, and they’re seeing more and more people turn up at the clinic in need of help.
So, no, Alex is not going to stoop to the level of H Fox, Connections Manager, and make this personal.
But maybe he googled the NYT Puzzles team, and maybe he could only find this one LinkedIn profile that mentioned Connections.
And maybe the guy is insanely hot and it’s kind of driving Alex crazy, but that’s okay.
He’s booked and he’s busy.
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Alex had to take his personal email address off the clinic’s website, a downside to all the attention. Even after weeks of this bizarrely public one-sided display, people still keep emailing the clinic with their Connections hot takes, or suggestions for Jose to improve his standings on the leaderboard, or just to be racist fucking assholes. Alex set up filters to divert those to the trash folder.
So he doesn’t immediately know which email H Fox, Connections Manager is referring to, and it takes him a while to sort through them all to find it.
Request for Instagram, it said.
Dear Mr. Claremont-Diaz,
I would like to propose that you join me on an Instagram Live on the NYT Puzzles account. Please name a day and time that works for you.
Warm regards,
H Fox, Connections Manager
Short, and to the point. His first instinct is to say no; there’s no need to feed into the hysteria or create even more reasons for people to contact him.
But his second instinct, the one that’s growing stronger by the second, is telling him to say yes.
If only to find out who the fuck H Fox, Connections Manager is. To understand what compels someone to wake up every day and create the most infuriating puzzle known to man.
Dear H,
Thursday, 12pm.
Alex
He wants to send more, wants to ask H Fox a million more questions, but he thinks he might have the upper hand this way.
But he does reply again, because he is who he is, with a list of demands including the link to the clinic's online donation page and an overview of what work the clinic does. If he’s going to put himself on display like this, he’s going to do it for the right reasons.
He has no other motivation.
Henry’s not nervous; he’s run a few of these Insta Lives before. But they’ve been hyping it up a little bit on their socials, and the main NYT account got involved, and now it’s become a thing.
Like people are expecting them to fight, or argue, or debate the merits of car companies minus one letter as a valid way of grouping words together.
Even though he and Alex have spent the whole week just… talking.
Neither of them mentioned the puzzles. Or how Henry’s been needling Alex, practically begging for his attention. How Alex has been ignoring that, and funneling all the extra attention into his clinic.
Henry’s not going to bring it up, how often he looks at Alex’s profile and rewatches his stories. How Alex’s passion for his community and his commitment to serving others are the hottest things Henry’s ever seen.
The hottest things he’s ever seen if he doesn’t include Alex’s eyelashes, or his boisterous charm, or the frankly obscene way he commands attention on his Instagram stories. Alex is tireless, and passionate, and intelligent.
Henry would’ve hired a sky writer if that’s what it took to get Alex’s attention. He's very glad it only took a few puzzles.
A few puzzles, like his little pet project hasn’t dominated all of his time.
Over email, Alex had insisted they use the Live as a fundraiser for the clinic; that was his only condition. Henry could ask whatever he liked, and Alex could tell Henry how frustrating his puzzles are, and through it all they would talk about the clinic and Alex’s work and what their community needs.
Then Henry asked Alex how he got involved in the clinic, and Alex’s immediate response was “what’s your phone number?”
They spoke for so long that Henry had to find his portable charger while they were still on the call.
On Thursday, the first row of the morning puzzle — apparently Henry’s greatest flirtation tool — was WATCH OUR LIVE TODAY. Alex sent Henry a screenshot of his puzzle result at 5:51am.
So Henry’s maybe a little nervous, as he waits for Alex to join and viewers start streaming in to watch.
anyone else notice that alex keeps getting distracted?
I swear henry is flirting with him
GET IT HENRY FOX
Watch when Henry smiles - Alex forgets how to speak
did alex just call him sweetheart?
Now that’s what i call a connection
HENRY IS BLUSHING
I feel like we’re interrupting - do you want us to leave or ?
oh my god get a room
Came for the fight but i’m staying for the heart eyes
This is so intimate i can’t watch
Now kiss
In the days since the Instagram live, Alex has found it difficult to think of anything but Henry.
There was definitely a spark there, a connection. He knows he’s not imagining it. And he’s not the only one who sees it, judging by the comments during the Live, and on Instagram afterwards, and in his emails and DMs every day since.
And from the barista across the road from the clinic, and from June and Nora, and from his own mother. Who apparently has an Instagram account and watched it over lunch.
She texted him immediately afterwards to say “I can't wait to meet him.”
It felt like a first date. Just live-streamed to more than 10,000 people.
He can’t stop thinking about the way Henry blushed when Alex accidentally called him sweetheart. How that word slipped out without a second thought. And the way they kept getting off-topic, talking about their sisters and Henry’s dog and how Henry ended up living in New York and how Alex actually only lives a few blocks away, and how Henry could almost recite Alex’s complaints about Connections verbatim, as if he’s memorised the article. Henry seemed to know a lot about the clinic, and Alex’s work, and the whiteboard that started it all, and always brought the conversation back to the fundraiser.
Now Estella asks him every day how Henry is, as if he’s a regular part of Alex’s life. Like she just assumed they kept on talking after the Live. Went out for dinner and then back to Alex’s place, did the crossword and Connections together over breakfast.
Everyone did, apparently. If Alex thought the Instagram comments before were a lot, now they’re insane.
What he's not going to tell them, is that they're right.
Henry keeps a pretty low profile now, as far as engagement with the puzzles fandom goes. He’s stopped reading comments and complaints and viral articles about how much people hate his work. Stopped his very public flirting with Alex.
Still enjoys making people a little bit crazy every morning.
Especially now that he gets to see it firsthand. Alex sits at his kitchen counter, phone in hand while he finishes the last dregs of his third morning coffee.
“Musicals plus a starting letter is not a category! You can't just change a word to another word and act like it's anything meaningful!”
Henry hears that a lot; usually kisses Alex to shut him up. It's about the only thing that works.
Alex still complains about Connections on his Instagram. Henry still gets tagged in the comments.
It takes him two years, but Henry finally makes a puzzle that Alex doesn't complain about.
