Chapter Text
Riley Matthews is five years-old when she first hears about soulmates.
They’re the magic that binds the world, that makes living worth it, and she has living proof of it existing—her parents have each other’s names printed clearly across their respective wrists.
The way her father explains it is with a stern look and, “Something that happens when you’re much, much older.”
The way her mother explains it to her is not as dismissive. In fact, the way she tells her how it works makes her want to dwell on it in her dreams, because it feels like a fairytale.
“Two souls are destined to meet, somewhere in the world, somehow. Like magnets they come together, and then their universes collide like it did at the very beginning. Everyone has this kindred soul that is theirs, and when they find it, they can exist in pure bliss, two halves together as a whole once again.”
From that day on, she dreams of who might be her bonded soul, the person she’s supposed to meet in the future that she can trust to be hers for the rest of her life. She pictures a night in shining armor riding in on a white horse, ready to sweep her away just like in the books her mother reads to her at night.
She trusts she’ll find it. After all, her mother told her she would, and although she has many years until it happens, she can wait for that special someone.
Farkle Minkus is seven years-old when he meets Riley Matthews, and he doesn’t know what to think of her.
She seems to accept him for who he is, doesn’t think that his quirks are weird and off-putting. He admires that greatly, and despite the fact that Riley is quite the unique individual herself, he’d rather remain alongside her than spend his recesses reading science books under a tree like he has since he started school.
She smiles at him and it’s warm like the sun, pure and unadulterated happiness. She dances circles around him, makes pinky promises that only exist between the two of them and has him watch clouds with her when they’re particularly fluffy out. And then she tells him of her story she’s made up for the day of how she’s going to meet her soulmate, and Farkle listens attentively but only holds the idea with a grain of salt.
He thinks the whole “soulmate” thing isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.
Of course, he is only seven, so his knowledge is only limited to seven trivial years of personal experience plus the books his dad offers him each day, the ones filled with science and math that absolutely fascinate him.
Farkle knows science, and science can’t account for soulmates. Riley says it’s magic, but Farkle highly doubts that. Science doesn’t account for magic, either, but then he remembers that he knows Riley, and that’s enough proof for him.
For now.
Riley is thirteen years old when she meets Lucas, and he becomes her everything.
When she pictured her soulmate when she was younger, he’s exactly what she imagined—a daring, brave young man with blue eyes that could pierce a hole into her heart with just one look. She falls on his lap on the subway by ‘accident’ (read: Maya), but when she extends her hand out to introduce herself and he shakes it, she feels as if the cosmos fated them to meet, and her skin sparks with an electricity unlike any other.
This is it, she tells herself. This is him.
Riley can’t explain how she knows; she just knows. When she tells Maya this, Maya glances at her, amused, but she doesn’t tell her that she’s wrong. Maya doesn’t trust the system but she trusts Riley, and that’s all that matters. They’re thunder and lightning and they’re always on the same side, no matter what.
Farkle, however, is a little harder to convince.
When he’s not busy spouting science facts, he’s showering her and Maya with affection, but really it’s the only way he knows how to interact with them now. They’re growing up; Riley gets it. He’s always been a little shy, a little unknowing of the world he’s been placed in.
But Riley tells him Lucas is the one, and he laughs.
She’s mad at first. Righteously infuriated, because he’s supposed to be her best friend!
They’ve always clashed when it comes to beliefs, though, and after a few days of radio silence between them, Farkle apologizes, but Riley does, too. She’s known him for what feels like forever, and he’s never been one to change his own beliefs just because of his emotional connection to somebody; he knows what he believes and he sticks to his principles firmly, and Riley can’t fault him for that. That’s an aspect of himself that he’s never hidden, and she wouldn’t want him to.
In fact, she praises him for his ability to stay true to himself.
But he supports her and Lucas, and that’s all she really cares about. Not what he thinks of soulmates, not what he believes, but his unfailing, unwavering loyalty to her no matter what.
That’s all that really matters.
Farkle is fourteen when he starts dating Isadora Smackle. He doesn’t quite understand feelings but he knows that when he looks at her goofy face, his heart soars in a way that he’s never experienced before—but he’s willing to test this experiment out and see where it goes.
Isadora is just like him—she doesn’t buy into the whole ‘soulmate’ thing like most people do. She believes in numbers and science, and that those are the guiding forces of their universe. When she says that, Farkle thinks that, if he were ever to be certain about emotions and how they work, then he’d want to marry her on the spot.
Isadora lights him aflame. There’s this thing in his chest that he feels every single time he looks at her, and words seem to fail him each time he casts his eyes upon her deep, earthy brown irises that seem to hold the answers to the universe in them. He’s never been one to speak in metaphor, but it’s lighting, being with her.
He runs his relationship like an experiment; there’s theory behind everything he does. He knows she doesn’t much appreciate physical affection, so he always asks for permission before he takes the next step in his research. He’ll notice her fingers twitch at her side sometimes, and he creates a hypothesis—what if he took her hand in his? That would certainly stop the twitching.
So he does. He confirms his hypothesis. Isadora is warm, and that confirms another hypothesis of his.
It comforts him that a relationship is also a science because he can deal with science. He couldn’t handle it if he believed that soulmates worked; the probability of Isadora being his would, firstly, be very . . . low. There’s approximately seven billion people in the world. The chance of her being his is a discomforting figure, and he doesn’t believe in it anyway.
There’s a solace in science, so he lets it rule his feelings, and it works out well for him.
That, he can believe in.
Riley is eighteen years old when she graduates high school.
It’s almost unbelievable, how quickly it all passed her by. It was like her childhood has been the blink of an eye, the ripping of a band-aid. It happens so fast you can’t even process it, you don’t even have the chance to experience any emotions about it until after.
She’s learned a lot during her four years of high school. She and Lucas broke up halfway into Sophomore year, and that was the biggest hurdle Riley had to overcome. She spent so long hoping that he was her forever person, that someone meant to belong to her and only her, but the more she thought about it, the less it made sense to her.
Riley found herself not feeling that electricity, the spark having long since fizzled out of existence. It no longer felt like they were fated to be, and allure faded and gave way to reality. She pushed it away for so long, wanted so badly for the truth she had conjured up herself to not be a lie. But her and Lucas weren’t compatible in the way they were when they were thirteen; that was the unwanted yet undeniable infallibility.
The breakup was messy, but long-needed. They remained friends, but her heart would still ache for him sometimes when she’d catch him in a certain light, remembering what it once felt like to have him feel like he was hers forever.
Maya was there for her, though, still is. She made sure to be there in whatever capacity Riley needed, and Riley couldn’t believe she had been so blessed. Even Farkle stuck through it with her, despite their small fallout after his and Smackle’s breakup, and they became closer than ever.
She’s just as blessed to have him, too.
Age had changed him; she still misses his quirky mannerisms and vivid turtlenecks. But this Farkle, her Farkle now, is the version she prefers. She’d prefer him in any which way he presented himself, because he’s him. He’s her Farkle; always will be.
He knows what she needs without her expressing it, and every time she looks at him, her heart would thrum in a manner corresponding only to the sight of Farkle, her dearest friend. Farkle’s always a phone call or a text away, ready to swing through the window of her room and be there in any way she needs him to. He somehow always knows when she’s not herself, even if she doesn’t notice it herself right away.
And that’s why he appears at her side on the balcony at their graduation party, a flute of sparkling white grape juice in hand and a quirk of the mouth present at the sight of her.
“Hiding out?”
A smile rises to her face as she recognizes him, bubbly excitement welling in the pit of her stomach, along with another bit of something, a something she can’t quite comprehend, not yet.
“Thinking,” she answers him, patting the railing of the balcony, beckoning him over beside her. Farkle does so without hesitation, sighing when he’s in place.
“Yeah,” he nods, knowing fully what she means without her having to express it. “I’ve been doing that a lot lately, too.”
His fingers reach up to muss his hair about, and Riley almost reaches out to stop him because she’s been admiring the way it’s been gelled all day. She withdraws at the last second, curling her fingers back into her palm and resting the hand at her side.
“You ready?” he presses after a moment of silence from her. Riley shrugs.
“I’m not sure. I know what I want, don’t get me wrong, but something about it feels . . . off. Maybe it’s because you and Maya are going to completely separate colleges from me,” she adds at the last moment. Farkle raises a brow at her.
“You do know it’s a thirty-minute drive between our colleges?”
Riley wants to tell him that that’s not enough, that she needs him by her side every waking moment of every day. She wants to tell him that she needs him in such a way that it scares her to even consider it, in such a way that she’s tried so hard to push out of her realm of thinking. But she’s got all summer to enjoy being around him, and she knows better than to think that they’ll ever drift apart, because they won’t.
He’s her Farkle; she’s his Riley. That’s how they are, what they are to each other.
“We’ll make it work,” she agrees, tucking a lock of hair behind her own ear. “Because we’re Farkle and Riley. Nothing in the universe could stop us.”
“Not even if it tried,” he says, stealing a swig of the sparkling grape juice.
“It wouldn’t even dare,” Riley finishes, the words a truth escaping her lips, probably the most truthful thing she might ever say.
Because she would never let anything break them apart. He’s her rock, and nothing can shatter that. Not even time.