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Snow is falling fast, covering first the top of the cars then the sidewalk. In-between, some fall on top of Jean’s hat, wetting the wool.
Jean’s breath is white in the night, milling with the snowflakes briefly before disappearing. His gloves are tight against his hands. Cold is creeping up from his shoes. He starts walking, as he does every night.
Nights are difficult. They’re long, because it’s winter, and they’re personal, because though Jean’s body doesn’t belong to anyone anymore, his days are still paced by the daily grind of work and of other people.
It could be much worse. Jean knows this; he’s lived it. His life is incomparably better now that his agency is his own. His work his boring, but the pay is sufficient. He doesn’t have any friends, but he has colleagues who pester him into going out at least once a week. He doesn’t have a soulmate but the mark is still there on his body, white and stark against the dark skin of his flank. It hasn’t turned black like he’s seen it do sometimes, on the body of people whose match is dead.
He’s seen many of those; too many perhaps for the life he’s trying to build, boring and ordinary behind the counter of the coffeeshop. During the day, the balance is thin, a bubble on the edge of a knife, in constant danger of falling or bursting. At night, it seems, when Jean comes back to the silence of his apartment, the knife slices up, piercing and bursting until it all spills into his brain.
It’s been years since Jean has been made to hold a weapon and turn it on other people. Longer still since his hand has been forced the other way, back toward his own skin and mind. He has people to thank for that, he supposes. The list is short, but consequential: Renee, Neil. Kevin.
Jean takes a deep breath and stops short of being run over. He steps back into the gutter, feeling a thin layer of ice creak under his heel. The car who honked at him speeds past, the blaring noise distorted by movement.
The closed call jars him, more than it should. Jean hasn’t been near death in a while. He’s almost forgotten the taste and the weight of it, metallic in his mouth and heavy at the back of his head. He unlearned more quickly than he’d have believed. He doesn’t miss it; a year ago, he wouldn’t have even considered it. He twirls his tongue in his mouth, counting the ridges of his teeth. His next swallow washes down the taste, as easily as water.
He waits, on the edge of the sidewalk, hands buried in his pockets to resist the cold, with a dozen of other pedestrians. The signal turns green on the other side of the street. He starts walking among the crowd to the other side of the road, speed past a woman with a stroller to get ahead and—
He feels it down to his core. The warmth spreads in his gut first, in his stomach and up his trachea, coating his mouth with a honey-like substance. For one breathless second he can’t talk, can barely think. He keeps going only by instinct, pushed forward by the crowd surrounding him.
His hip burns briefly, the skin hot through the layers of fabric when Jean presses a hand on it. His soulmark is acting up. It can only mean one thing, and Jean had almost started thinking he would never have to care about it.
When he turns around, blind and clumsy like a drunk man, the warmth is already fading under his fingers. He presses more firmly on it, like a bruise he can make ache by touch. He reaches the opposite sidewalk with cold skin and the icy claws of fear digging into his heart.
The throng of people around him all look absolutely normal; mundane by their lives and looks, by their lack of reaction to the knife cut tearing Jean apart three feet away from them.
A bus pulls to the curb on the other side of the street, attracting Jean’s attention immediately. Twin flows of people form when its doors open. A well-known tactic to get lost in a crowd. Jean recognizes it. The realization brings him nothing but the knowledge that his soulmate might be on the other side of the street, frozen like Jean is. Maybe they’re trying to cross the road again, to reach Jean and that unbearable warmth. Maybe they’re afraid like he is. Maybe they already have someone they consider like a soulmate—Jean’s seen it happen—and they don’t want it. Maybe it’s a fluke, and no one’s waiting for him on the other side.
Jean is always alone. Usually he doesn’t mind.
Somebody bumps into him from behind and he turns with the shove, his back to the street for a moment.
“Sorry,” he says at the same time as the woman who knocked into him with her handbag. She smiles at him, awkward and embarrassed. He stares back until she drops her gaze, then whips back around toward the street.
It’s useless. The moment’s passed. Jean turns away and starts the long trek back home.
The apartment is completely dark when he gets home. Jean flicks the switch by the door twice, but even before he does he knows it’s useless. The oven clock has gone dark. The fridge’s hum is silent. Light filters through the blinds from the street, but it doesn’t prevent Jean from stubbing his toe on the foot of his couch.
He forgot to pay the bill, once again. They sent the last warning letter five days ago, and he’s been too tired from double shifts at the coffeeshop, and the shortened days which only leave more hours for the night to settle in.
He could set up an automatic transfer, but he likes the routine of settling down with his bills every month. He likes how concrete and solid the sheets of paper are between his fingers, and the soothing knowledge of learning how to live life like a normal person.
His heating is electrical, though.
He touches the cold radiator and sighs deeply. Money was tight last month, and he could pay neither power, gas nor water bills in time, which means that they’re probably all out. He doesn’t want to brave going through the living room to the kitchen to check, so he steps out of his shoes and collapses on the bed all dressed, burrowing under two extra blankets.
He wakes up in time the next morning. He’s a light sleeper, particularly attuned to his biological clock, so at least there’s no risk of him being late, especially as, as predicted, his water has been cut off.
He takes his laptop on his way out, determined to set up automatic payments for now on. With such short notices, it’s the smartest thing to do.
“Hey,” Alvarez greets him when he steps into the employees lounge barely after seven thirty. “You’re here early.”
Jean opens his locker gently. The lock always catches if he tugs it open too strongly.
“I need to shower,” he says carefully.
Alvarez has been his coworker for almost a year now, but he can count on two hands the number of full conversations they’ve had unrelated to work. It’s awkward because Jean is still stuck in a limbo, unable to continue entirely alone but unwilling to let people in.
“What?” Alvarez is still sitting on the couch, tying up her long hair in a bun. “Why?” When Jean doesn’t answer, she keeps going: “Are you one of these people who jog to work by negative degrees weather?”
Jean blinks. “No,” he says.
He finishes tidying up his locker and fishes out his uniform, closing the door as gently as he’s opened it. He doesn’t realize Alvarez was expecting a further answer until she drawls out:
“Okay. I’ll open up, meet me in front when you’re done.”
Jean nods and goes to shower. The water is blessedly hot, because he’s the first one here. It feels nice to wash and dress warmly, because as much as Jean has known colder winters, his windows still let in the city’s seasonal drafts.
He frowns as he looks into the mirror, running a hand in his hair. Three years ago, he’d been living in a windowless basement, following orders mindlessly, his finger flexing just as coldly on the trigger of countless guns.
A handful of months and a comfortable life and here he is: bemoaning boredom and power cuts.
His gaze wanders down, to his hip covered by his towel, hand hesitating over the wet material. He hasn’t felt a thing since yesterday evening, but his frame of reference is so reduced in this area that there is no telling what happened to him, exactly. Did he actually meet his soulmark? Was this just the burst of warmth alerting him that they were nearby that people love to rave about? Jean’s heard people on TV refer to the soulmark as a “compass of love” once. He’d turned it off.
The mark, beneath the towel, is still unmistakably white. Not dreaded gold or the more ominous black. Jean lets out a breath, closing his eyes briefly.
His therapist would tell him not to repress the surge of relief he feels, so he doesn’t. He’s relieved. He hasn’t met his soulmate and he’s relieved. A little bitter, too, but he’s learned to live with it.
He dresses quickly and goes back in front when he hears Alvarez set up the kitchen. The mixer whirs to life as she starts up the first muffins. The coffeeshop is well known for their muffins. Today’s special is a seasonal number, something with nuts and too much sugar that Jean has never felt like trying.
They work silently until the clock strikes eight, then Jean flips the “open” sign, and Laila comes in rushing with the first customers.
“Sorry I’m late,” she pants. “Be right back.”
“Take your time,” Alvarez says, blowing her a kiss. “Slow day here.”
It’s rush hour. The line is rapidly growing, going through the room and straight out of the door. Laila winces and disappears through the backdoor, Alvarez’s eyes trained on her.
“Hi,” Jean says to the next customer, elbowing Alvarez out of her reverie. “What can I get you?”
Jean pays his bills at lunch, and makes the necessary calls to get his apartment back in order during one of his breaks. It’s more tedious than he expected; he hangs up after the last call feeling uncharacteristically on edge. He locks his phone and closes his eyes, breathing in deeply. There’s no point getting angry and frustrated when he still has several hours of customer service to go through.
The jingle above the door of the coffeeshop makes him look up. Laila’s opened it, leaning halfway outside. She shivers.
“You good?” she asks.
Jean nods once. “I’m coming,” he says, getting up.
“Oh, you still have five minutes—”
Jean waits until she’s gone back inside to follow her, but Laila stays in the doorway. “You sure you’re okay? You seem quieter than usual.”
“Yes.”
“Alright.” She looks at him a long time, looking for something in his face. Jean doesn’t ask her if she finds it. “You wanna go out tonight? We’re going to that bar on Ellen Street after work.”
Jean raises an eyebrow.
“You’ll come one day,” Laila threatens, only half-joking. “We won’t give up so easily.”
“You should,” Jean says, and she finally steps back inside.
“Have you asked?” is the first thing Alvarez asks them when they take their place behind the counter again.
“He said no.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Jean corrects.
“Did it mean yes?”
“No.”
“There you go.”
“You really should come,” Alvarez says. “I know you don’t care about milling with your co-workers—which, fair, Jenkins fucking sucks—but I promise there won’t be only people from the coffeeshop here. Actually, I think you should meet—”
“Sara,” Laila calls from the backroom. “Let him breathe. No means no.”
“You’re the one insisting—”
Laila comes out holding a tray of warm muffins. She puts down it on the counter, leaning in.
“Pick your battles.”
“I’m still here,” Jean says.
“So you are.”
She gives Jean a purposefully unimpressed look, but the bell rings the next instant, bringing in a customer and a spell of cold from outside.
Jeans spends the next two evenings inside. Rain comes over the city in big rumbling clouds that burst open and wash down the streets. He can barely get to work in time; the cars and buses are inching their way along the streets. Laila comes into work with trendy rubber boots. Jean watches her from the other side of the employee lounge, cold and uncomfortable in his wet socks. That evening, he slips into the first gardening store he can find.
The boots are slippery and squeak when he walks too fast, but at least they keep his feet mercifully dry during the day. In the evening, Jean curls up on his couch with a hot mug of tea and tries to adapt to boredom and confinement. He doesn’t have a TV and nothing on the internet catches his attention. He goes to bed early, determined to escape his thoughts.
On the third evening, the rain finally dims. It doesn’t stop totally, instead thinning to a drizzle. Jean takes a step outside his building and immediately climbs back up for his gloves and hat. The temperatures are dropping. It’ll probably freeze tomorrow. Snow is already announced for next week.
The streets are emptier than usual, until he reaches downtown where everyone in the city seems to have gathered. It’s late, but it’s Friday: people mill around the entrances of the bar, protected from the rain and the cold by thick awnings and outside heaters. Jean stops in the middle of a square bordered by a movie theater, breathing deeply the wet smell of the night, focusing on the noise of hundreds of strangers to flee the racket of his own mind.
It’s only because he’s so still and lost in thoughts that he feels it.
It comes and grows gradually. The same deep warmth in his side, half-painful and almost as sweet. He takes a deep breath, mouth open on a traitorous gasp.
The theater’s doors open across the square and overheated people spill around Jean, bundling themselves up against the dreary weather. He places a hand on his flank, warmth seeping through his tingling fingers.
Jean waits, scanning the crowd. He catches himself expecting, and forces his eyes away from man height. He counts his breaths. Someone knocks into his side, a hurried apology over the shoulder. A woman shakes her scarf free of creases and winds it around her neck again, a flash of red in the periphery of his sight.
The mark keeps radiating, steadfastly warm. When most people from the square have left, Jean feels it gradually fade away, until the only warmth he can feel is his skin’s natural temperature. He drops his hand.
By ten, Jean has walked to the other side of town. The low building is dark in front of him, the old brick exterior almost deceptive from what it contains. He walks along the large windows, ignoring the dark shapes of gym equipment looming in the dark behind the glass.
The back door is unlocked, as usual, but closed against the cold. A sign is taped to the inside of the window panel, cheerfully announcing, “I’m open, just give a strong pull!” in purple marker.
Jean opens the door soundlessly. He glances at the clock hanging between the two changing room doors and follow the noise to the training room at the end of the corridor. The unmistakable dull sound of a body hitting the floormat welcomes his entrance. Jean lets the door close gently behind him, just in time to see Renee heavily drop Andrew Minyard on the mat.
She sees him from the corner of her eyes but doesn’t acknowledge him with more than a nod. Andrew takes his chance and sweeps her off her feet.
“A bit late if you want to follow the lesson,” Allison says when Jean reaches her. She’s sitting on a stack of extra thick mats, scrolling through her phone. To her right, Neil stands looking much more involved in the fight than she is. He glances at Jean but says nothing. There is a fragile truce here that Jean knows not to disturb.
“I don’t,” Jean says. “I wanted to talk to Renee.”
“Oh, I’m not fooling myself that you’re here for me.”
Allison drops her phone next to her. She glances at Jean through the curtain of her golden hair. Her skin is perfectly tanned, far from the sickly pale faces Jean has seen all around town with the arrival of winter.
“Australia was wonderful,” she says, following his gaze.
She extends her arms in front of herself, either to show off the golden glow of her forearms or the glint of the new silver band on her finger. Her soulmark swivels around her fingers like another sort of ring, an elegant mess of swirls edging from her knuckles. It glows bright gold, matching the striking color of her hair.
“Did you swim?” Jean asks instead of taking the bait.
“Every day. The hotel had a pool, but chlorine fades tans, so we stuck to the sea.”
“Poor you.”
Allison smiles.
They go back to watching the fight. Renee finally gets the upper hand on Andrew, taking advantage of it to show to her class the dos and don’ts of whatever fighting style they’re doing this time. It all looks the same to Jean’s eyes, who is used to backstreet fighting he grew up practicing with the mob;
When the class ends, Neil makes a beeline for Andrew, not glancing once in Jean’s direction. That’s fine—Jean doesn’t look at him either once he sees Renee end her conversation with one of her students and walk toward him.
“Jean,” she greets, still catching her breath. She tries to hide it, but Jean was brought up a fighter and a killer, like she did. He can tell. “I’m glad to see you. It’s been a long time. How are you doing?”
Jean shrugs. “Nothing much,” he says.
He looks at Renee intently, but next to him Allison says, “Good job tonight, babe. Can you show me that move where you slammed him on the floor at home?”
Renee’s eyes flit from Jean’s face to her wife with more speed than she displayed in twisting Andrew into submission. Jean stares at her, weary understanding dawning on him like a heavy coat. This is what it means, he catches on. He doesn’t realize he’s brought his hand up to his flank until he feels the fabric of his sweater under his fingertips.
He came looking for reassurance. Jean doesn’t like this truth, but he acknowledges it all the same. He stares at the mark taking most of Renee’s hand, a perfect match to the complicated mess on Allison’s fingertips. The golden color of a mark having found its match is daringly obnoxious in the state he’s in.
Renee turns back toward him almost immediately, though her unmarked hand rests on Allison’s knee, easy like none of this situation is to Jean.
“Do you want to talk?” she asks. “There is a diner across the road open late. They have delicious milkshakes.”
Jean considers it. He might be callous and solitary at times, but he knows the cost of those rare social interactions he can stand. He considers the golden traces on Renee and Allison’s hands, and the frightening white on his own skin. He thinks of his apartment, dark but familiar. This isn’t a choice: this is falling from Charybdis into Scylla.
“Another time,” he says.
“I can come by the coffeeshop one day,” Renee suggests. She seems to hear I missed you where Jean cannot express it.
“I’ll save you a muffin,” is his parting promise.
By the end of the week, Jean has developed a small map of the downtown grid in his head. He browses them all evening, lingering at the bus stop and on the square where he felt his soulmark warm up.
He’s cold the whole time, from the tip of his fingers to the spot on his hip. It starts snowing around nine, and the few people still outside hurry inside. The fourth bus Jean has watched speeds past him, full to the brim with people in thick winter wear.
He makes his way back down the street, widening the approximative circle of his mental map. He walks past the closed shop and the blinking Christmas lights at the windows and thinks. Leaving the flat as soon as he reached it tonight was a kneejerk reaction to seeing Renee and Allison in happy matrimony. But the analytical part of Jean—the part that broke down his life and thoughts into clinical actions to survive, but also the part that discovered the hope of recovery two days in his new freedom, clung to it and never let go—is not satisfied by mere action.
Even through several layers of fabric and his hands safely kept in his coat’s pockets, Jean is aware of his soulmark on his hip. There is no degree of blindness that can pretend the opposite.
He stops in the middle of a darkened street, rocking on the balls of his feet like a high-rope walker working without a net. Cold descends on him as quickly as the realization does. Dread is not the only emotion he feels anymore. Now his hand is attracted to his hip, as inevitable and natural as metal to a magnet. Bitterness is born from the whiteness of the mark, and ugly contrast to his skin.
Gold, he thinks, picturing the twirls on Renee and Allison’s skins, is a much softer color on brown.
Anticipation is what drives him. Working for the Moriyamas made him a creature of habit, so Jean knows how to predict himself, but there is nothing to plan for in this situation. Wandering down the streets brings him nothing, but hope and expectation have shut his logic in a box and thrown away the key.
It’s illogical and pointless, but Jean keeps on walking. He doesn’t feel anything all night, and when he comes back home, he falls into the first really dreamless sleep he’s had since he’s lived on his own.
“You’re just a very quiet person, aren’t you?”
Jean blinks, looking up from his book. Alvarez is standing over him, hands on her hips like she’s gearing up for a fight. If she is, then her posture is all wrong, Jean’s mind supplies. The thought is almost as absurd as his existence, a former mob hitman reading fiction in the back of a coffeeshop.
“You’re not,” he answers, looking back down.
“No,” Alvarez says, like he just commented that her hair’s not purple. “Are you coming out tonight?”
“It wasn’t my intention.”
A hand covers his page. Jean stares at his coworker’s manicure for a second, then raises his head.
“You know what I think your problem is?”
“I know what my problems really are,” Jean replies drily. He slips his book from under Alvarez’s hand and closes it.
“You’re too closed off on yourself,” Alvarez continues as if Jean hadn’t talked. “It’s not healthy to see no one outside of your work.”
“As opposed to seeing my coworkers even more than I already do?”
Alvarez doesn’t rise to the bait. She doesn’t seem offended, though it would make Jean’s life easier if she did.
“Just one night,” she says. “We don’t even invite that many people.”
Alvarez stares back steadily when Jean holds her gaze. She tires of the silent fight before he does, and steps back toward the shop with a roll of her eyes.
“I’ll think about it,” Jean says just as she’s leaving. The door closes on her sound of surprise.
He does think about it throughout the rest of the afternoon. He opens to the idea, poking the beast in his mind until it unfurls with many possibilities. He could have a terrible time. He could have a good time. It could be boring. He could regret going; but then he thinks about regretting not going, and that’s enough to tip him to the other side.
“When and where?” he asks Laila as they close the shop.
Jean knows he should have asked Alvarez, but she has a shorter shift today and has already left. It makes for an awkward beginning for to conversation. Laila doesn’t seem to understand Jean’s question at first, busy cleaning the tables.
“What?” she asks.
“Alvarez didn’t tell me where we’re going tonight,” Jean says. “I assume you know.”
“You’re coming?”
Jean shrugs. “Sure.”
Laila grins wider than Jean has ever seen her do in his direction.
“Awesome,” she says. “We’ll have a great time. We’ve invited a few friends—I think you’ll like them.”
“Define a few.”
“Six or seven people total? Don’t worry, you’ll fit right in.”
She spends the rest of their shift telling him about their friends in advance. Jean feels like he’s been scrolling down a dating app by the time they meet with Rhemann so he can close the shop. He suspects that it’s the intent behind the gesture of inviting him, but he figures he doesn’t have to be cooperative if he doesn’t want to.
Laila gives him a time and place as they walk together to the subway station.
“I’m glad you’ve changed your mind,” she says. “If you feel uncomfortable, don’t hesitate to leave.”
There’s nothing to say to this—no promise he can make, although he knows how disappointed they’ll be if he doesn’t have a good time. Jean nods his assent and they separate at the top of the stairs. Jean is a walker, and Laila has given him enough time to walk home, change his clothes and head back out almost at the usual time of his evening walk.
The bar is lively but not crowded, in a side street Jean has never seen before. A bell tinkles as he pushes the door open, the sound lost to the background noise of conversations. He barely has time to scan the room before he hears his name being called out.
Alvarez is waving at him from a booth at the other side of the room. By the time Jean makes his way through the people lining up at the bar, she’s settled back down and a chair stands empty for him.
“Thanks for coming,” Alvarez says. “I’m so excited you came just for my birthday!”
Jean blinks. “It’s your birthday?” he asks. Laila laughs in her hand next to him.
“Nah.” Alvarez smirks. “I just wanted to see you sweat. Anyway—guys, here’s Jean.”
“Infamous Jean!” someone laughs.
She extends her hand when Laila introduces her as Melissa. She’s the closest to him, so Jean shakes her hand, but the others only cheer and wave when the introductions are made.
“We’re just waiting for Jeremy,” Laila adds, “but he told us he might be running late and to start without him.”
Melissa stands up, taking everyone’s drink orders, and declares she needs someone to help her carry everything back to the table. Laila kicks Jean’s shin under the table. He kicks back and stands up. He has the most outer seat—it’s only logical.
Melissa is talkative, which is fine only because it means that Jean doesn’t have to say much. She holds a steady conversation more or less on her own for most of the line, interrupting herself only long enough to order. By then Jeans knows that she’s an intern for a local newspaper, but she thrives for more, and that she lives just outside town, in a neighborhood that has just bad enough transit that she has to take the car, which is annoying and not eco-friendly.
“So, what do you do?” she finally asks.
Jean spies the bartender steadily filling their tray. “I work with Laila and Alvarez,” he says.
As far as answers go, it’s pretty laconic, but it doesn’t seem to deter her. She starts on her story of meeting Laila through the gym club. Jean zones out, until her movements catch his eye. She’s gathering her hair over on shoulder, lifting it to air her neck in the stuffy hot room.
“It’s so hot,” she complains. “I hate it when they overheat in winter.”
“Not eco-friendly,” Jean agrees, to mask the fact that he’s barely listening to the conversation.
Melissa laughs—self-aware, at least, Jean thinks—but she doesn’t say anything else, because the next moment she catches Jean’s gaze on her.
“Ah,” she says. She places a hand on the faded mark spooled in the crook of her neck. On her dark skin, it doesn’t stand out as easily as white or gold would have, but it’s still striking.
Jean looks away. He’s seen marks gone black before—it’s a little hard not to, when working for the Moriyamas. He wonders if he should say sorry, or ask about it, or not say anything at all.
Melissa seems to read his thoughts on his face.
“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s been years. I didn’t even meet them.”
Is that better or worse? Jean wonders. Something curls in his stomach. He feels even more protective of the white trace on his hip.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally.
She shrugs. She doesn’t brush her hair back on the mark, but holds out her hands to accept the tray from the bartender. “There’s nothing to do about it,” she says. “Why dwell on it? It must have been so much harder for the family.”
Jean feels subdued when they go back to the table, almost chastised for his previous disregard of soulmates and his new, sudden need for that part of his life to be shaken into motion.
“Jeremy’s not coming,” Alvarez announces. Melissa lets out a disappointed noise. “Work emergency or something? He’s not free tonight.”
“Another time,” Laila tells Jean as though he was supposed to be expecting anything.
He nods at her and sits back down. Another person sitting at the table—Jean cannot remember their name—immediately launches into the tale of one of their most disastrous adventure at work. Jean spends the rest of the evening in quiet contemplation, nursing his drink and the rest of Laila’s when she has enough of her cocktail.
Melissa’s story is tragic, but in the end it’s none of Jean’s business. What’s more important to him is the way he feels antsy, waiting at the starting line for a call that never comes.
“It was so fun,” Alvarez slurs. “We had so much fun.”
She stumbles out of the nightclub she dragged them all on a Friday evening, letting out a weak warning cry as she falls down. Jean catches her around the waist and hoists her up ungracefully, while Laila comes jogging behind him.
“I’ll take care of her,” she says.
Jean eyes her smaller frame dubiously. “I’ll walk back with both of you.”
“It’s fine.”
“You’re drunk too.”
“Less than she is!”
“It’s not a competition,” Jean says, and Laila gives up.
Alvarez stands back up, wobbling only slightly in her heels. “I can walk, I can walk!” she claims.
“Sure, babe.”
“Watch me.”
She takes three steps down the alley and almost trips over an abandoned bag of food from McDonalds. She starts laughing and doesn’t stop, soon joined by Laila. In the end Jean and Laila both grab one of her elbows and walk her to the nearest subway station.
It’s so late that it’s almost early, but the night trains are still running, full to the brim of gently intoxicated people and night workers who stare ahead blankly. The train is stuffy, and Alvarez fights their hold mid-way through their commute to take off her long winter coat. Underneath she’s wearing mesh sleeves. At the next stop, a gust of wind billows in the train and she complains until Laila wrestles her coat back on her shoulders.
Jean feels relieved when the train brakes at their stop, then filled with dread when he considers the people gathering on the platform. The lines stretch almost to the back wall.
“I don’t feel very well,” Alvarez says at that moment.
“Hold it,” Jean says.
“Hold my hand,” she asks in return. Jean complies, if only so as not to lose her in the throng of people.
It takes them a while to be able to get up and out. The signal call is already ringing, announcing the imminent closing of the doors, when they make their way at the front of the crowd trying to get out.
Immediately, the rush intensifies. Alvarez mutters, “Wait,” behind him as people press them from every side, then Jean feels her hand slipping out of his grasp.
“For fuck’s sake,” he mutters, stepping onto the platform.
He turns back, jostled from every side, trying to catch a glimpse of her or Laila’s characteristic dark skin. For a moment he doesn’t see them, and after that he can’t focus on them anymore.
It happens like this: his mark burns up, brighter and deeper than it has before. Jean folds in instinctively, one hand on his hip. He searches the crowd frantically, half-sure that his mark is going to burn out a hole in his side.
He’s never felt it that much before. Even without having to check, Jean knows that the heat isn’t a simple indication that his soulmate is near. It’s the irrefutable proof that he’s met his soulmate, that they’ve touched.
Who?
The question is the single most important one in Jean’s life. He can’t answer it. When he straightens up, he’s surrounded by people rushing in and out of the train, along the platform. They sidestep to avoid him, but not enough. He gets knocked around by stray elbows and bags, and he feels them more acutely than ever.
Someone brushes against him. Nonsensically, he thinks, That’s it. When he looks up, he sees Laila’s worried face and Alvarez’s wide eyes.
The train doors slide shut behind them. Jean’s hand is still pressed to the burning sensation branding his flank.
“Jean!” Laila’s hands are on him. She has to shout over the rankling sound of the train departing. “Are you alright?”
Jean shivers from head to toe. He feels feverish and frantic. He needs to go home, he needs to go back and stop that train and find his soulmate, he needs to—
He drops his hand, trying to smooth his expression and erase the sensation from his face. “I’m good,” he says.
Laila hesitates but finally caves. “Fine. Let’s get out of here.”
The walk back to their apartment is quiet. Alvarez shrugs on her coat when they step outside and walks in silence, stomping unsteadily but in a more or less straight line. Jean can feel Laila’s worry and her unasked questions, but he has no answer for her. He stays silent.
When he gets back home, he steps in the bathroom first, turning on every light in his way. He lifts his shirt and turns.
The mark isn’t white anymore. It glows like liquid gold, almost pulsing with every beat of his heart.
Jean has met his soulmate, except it seems like he hasn’t.
Jean spends the weekend in a daze, unsure if he wants to walk out until his legs give out or lie on his bed chasing the shadows of the day on the ceiling.
In the end he does neither. Laundry has to be done, and hunger forces him out of bed at noon.
On Saturday, he feels incensed. On Sunday, anger and frustration take over. By the time Monday rolls around, and with it his first early shift of the week, he’s almost resigned.
Laila is already there when he gets in. Jean doesn’t mention the past weekend, only glancing at picture of hangover Alvarez nested in bed that Laila shows him, and she doesn’t either. Rush hour starts and customers pour in. Jean’s mind is occupied with coffeeshop-related problems until mid-afternoon.
“Finals,” Laila winces next to him as a new wave of college students come in. “It’s going to be full of studious and panicked students for the next week.”
Behind her, Alvarez groans. Students stay until the very last minute before closing time and they tend to occupy the same table for hours on end. At least they drive away families with unruly children, who can’t get a free table that’s big enough. Between the two kinds of customers, Jean has quickly learned which one he prefers.
After six, things settle down. Jean is busy counting the leftover muffins and making notes for the next day’s recipes when the bell rings.
“Hello,” he says, not looking up, “I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“That’s fine,” a young voice answers. “Take your time.”
Jean still finishes quickly. When he turns back, he’s met with a wide grin from someone he’s never seen before.
The man is also the first person that Jean would choose to look at twice since he left the Moriyamas—and if he wasn’t at work. It’s a weird sensation, a low stirring in his brain almost forgotten.
“What can I do for you?” he asks, clearing his throat.
Jean makes the man’s order mechanically. He places a muffin on a plate, mentally adjusting the count he’s just completed. He’s printing the receipt when the man looks around and asks: “Is Laila here?”
“She’s in the back,” Jean says, thrown by the question. Laila’s shift is over, but he’s not telling a stranger this. They’ve had problems like this once or twice in the past, but Rhemann has been very firm about handling them. “I can pass a message, if you want.”
“Sure.” Another smile. “Could you tell her I’m here?”
Jean stares at him. The man is busy sliding his credit card back in his wallet and starts when he looks up into Jean’s gaze.
“Who should I tell her is here?” Jean asks after they’ve silently stared at each other for a beat too long.
“Oh! Jeremy, please. We were supposed to meet when her shift’s over, but I might be a bit early.”
The name is familiar. Jean spends a few steps to the backdoor wondering why, then stops in the middle of the hallway leading past the kitchen and into the employees’ lounge. This is the man Alvarez and Laila wanted him to meet.
This is the man they wanted to set him up with, too, he knows.
Laila is shrugging on her coat when Jean comes in. He leans against the frame of the door.
“A Jeremy here to see you?”
Laila turns around. “Coming,” she says.
Jean waits for her to pick up her bag and goes back with her. “Is he your friend Jeremy who didn’t come the other night?” he asks.
“Oh, yeah. He’s super nice, isn’t he?”
“I talked to him for ten seconds,” Jean says drily, “but he took the last pecan nut muffin, so that’s one point for him.”
Laila elbows him in the side. Jean sidesteps; she brushes lower than she probably expected, almost against the mark etched golden on his skin. Jean’s heart jolts. It’s an unfortunate reminder that there’s nothing else to expect from it. Once activated golden, a soulmark is as dead as a birthmark. Were Jean to shake hands with his soulmate, he wouldn’t even know.
Jeremy is sitting at one of the only free tables left, close to the door. He’s taken off his coat, revealing a thick sweater underneath that’s so seasonal that Jean almost tells him to go stand under a pine tree.
He greets Laila as cheerfully as he ordered his coffee and finishes his muffin in two bites.
“Thank you,” he says when Jean detours by his table to get his plate.
He smiles again before leaving. The coffeeshop seems disappointingly silent when the door closes behind him.
“Jeremy told me to tell you he’s super sad he couldn’t come the other night and make your acquaintance,” Laila recites the next day. Jean looks up from measuring flour.
“Okay,” he says.
Laila seems disappointed by his lack of reaction. “So now he’s going to stop by as much as he can, if I know him.”
“Okay.”
“Is that all you want to say?”
Jean shrugs. “I’ve met him for two minutes,” he says. “He’s just another one of your friends.”
“I thought you liked our friends.”
“It doesn’t mean that the idea of having them come and buy their coffee from us everyday fills me with particular joy.”
“You don’t want him to come during your shift?”
“I don’t really mind either way.”
Laila rolls her eyes. “Fine. But please make an effort to be nice?”
Jean turns on the mixer before he can tell her that being nice is his job. He knows he’s not the best at it.
Jeremy does come by more often after that, which no other from the bar night really do. It means that Jean is forced to interact with him more, and notice him more. The wide smiles are a constant fixture of his character, Jean learns, as are the sweet coffee concoctions he always orders. At first, he comes in at all times of the day, but after a few days Jean always sees him during one of his shifts, until he gets into a routine of visiting in the late afternoon.
Jeremy brings the outside cold and unaffected cheer with him. Jean finds himself looking up at the clock frequently after four; slowly, the few minutes he spends making Jeremy’s coffee and exchanging banalities with him at the register become the less stressful moments of Jean’s day.
They progress from small talk to full conversations as winter settles in; the interactions register in Jean’s mind in a series of firsts.
The first time he guesses and starts working on Jeremy’s order before he even walks in, Jeremy laughs and tells him, “You’re good.” He holds Jean’s gaze over the rim of his paper cup. Jean finds it hard to look away, but he has an excuse for his focus when milk leaves a creamy moustache on Jeremy’s upper lip.
One Saturday, the marshmallow delivery doesn’t come like it’s supposed to.
“Snow storms up north,” Rhemann says, grim-faced. “We’re out of blueberries too.”
They bake the muffins accordingly, but marshmallows are an integral part of their latest drink’s recipe, and Jean and Alvarez face customers’ disappointment all day. Laila is finally sent to the closest grocery store to get something, in the hope they rely on another brand for delivery.
When the bell jingles, Jean instinctively says, “I’m very sorry, we’re out of marshmallows,” at the end of his welcoming speech.
“That’s fine,” Jeremy answers. “I think I’ll survive.”
Jean looks up too quickly. “You’d be the first,” he says, finishing his rows of muffins.
“Really?”
Jeremy looks surprised. Jean shrugs.
“It’s Christmas,” he says. “How else are people going to get their seasonal cheer?”
The radio chooses this moment to start on a new rendition of “Jingle Bells”. Jean closes his eyes and prays for patience.
Jeremy’s laugh jostles him out of his bad mood.
“I spent the day Christmas shopping,” he says, gesturing to the two bags he’s holding. “Seasonal spirit isn’t cheerful.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Jean mutters. He prepares Jeremy’s chocolate—sans marshmallows—and pours himself a cup of coffee after making sure no one’s coming in. They drink standing up at the register, leaning toward each other over the half-full tip jar.
The next week, Jeremy is at the coffeeshop earlier than usual. The line is long and most of the tables full, so he smiles at Jean over the till but doesn’t stop to talk.
The weather is horrible; people rush in all day in groups of two or three, laughing as they escape the hail and shaking their coats and umbrellas dry until Jean has to put up a warning sign for wet floor. When he goes back behind the counter, Jean catches Jeremy’s gaze on him. He raises an eyebrow and receives a smile in return—a bit crooked, because Jean has noticed that Jeremy’s jaw is slightly uneven.
The next time Jean looks up, Jeremy is focused on whatever he’s working on. He’s the same age as Jean, but he almost looks like one of the students engrossed with their notes or essays. He’s brought his laptop, which Jean has never seen, and has a bunch of papers spread across the table next to him.
Jean focuses on trying to decipher the writing on the many golden and red stickers stuck to the back of Jeremy’s laptop. A full minute of staring leads to the discovery that he can’t; Jeremy is sitting too far away.
Jean shrugs away the disappointment that arises. He focuses on cleaning the muffin displays, the coffee machines and the counter more times than is necessary whenever the flow of customers thins.
He’s in the middle of rubbing at a spot that he’s starting to think is a flaw in the fake marble and not a stain when he feels someone approaching the counter.
“Hey,” Jeremy says. He hands over his plate for Jean to put aside. “Sorry for not talking. You looked busy.”
“So did you.”
“Yeah, I’m working on game plays.” At Jean’s expression, he explains: “I’m a coach for an exy little league. We won the fall season, so we’re qualified for the spring championship.”
Jean nods. “Good luck with that.”
Jeremy laughs. “Thanks, we’ll need it.”
Somehow, Jean gets invited to their first game of the championships, in late January.
“Sure,” he agrees, not telling Jeremy he’s stopped making plans for so long in the future years ago.
This is something that people do, after all. They make plans with friends and go out for no reason. Jean feels like he’s standing just shy of grasping the kind of satisfaction it can bring. He just needs to step forward a little more.
So he does. The next time Laila invites him out with friends, Jean says yes on the first try. It’s a trivia night at a bar, he learns. He follows her directions to a different address than the last time, and meets a group smaller than last time.
Melissa welcomes him with a wave. Jeremy grins at him and changes his seat so Jean can sit on the outer chair.
Jean grabs a beer.
“I have no idea what we’re doing here,” he says when someone asks him if he’s ready.
“It’s trivia,” Melissa says. “Have you never played trivia before?”
“Apparently not.”
She takes it upon herself to explain the rules and goals. Jean pretends he follows her, then Jeremy starts to chime in and he forces himself to listen.
Alvarez taps a rapid beat on the tabletop when the game starts. Jean leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. Something brushes against him; Jeremy, who’s making himself comfortable on the chair next to him. He shoots Jean a quick smile. Jean, inexorably, feels the corners of his mouth quirk up.
At night, Jean goes back to his silent apartment and curls up in one of his blankets. Every time he strips, he brushes a hand over his golden mark. Every time, he’s surprised by the disappointment; he thought he’d stopped hoping a long time ago. Habits like this one are hard to break: that was always his weakness under the Moriyamas as well. He stops walking around the streets so much. It means his sleep deteriorates, but facing the empty streets is too daunting most evenings. He drags himself to work most mornings and wishes it were enough.
By late afternoon, however, Jean always finds himself awake enough.
Winter worsens drastically as they go further into December. A few days before Christmas, the whole county is on alert for an incoming snow storm. It’s everywhere in the news and in people’s mouths. Jean hears more small talk about the weather in two days manning the register at the Trojan Horse than in his entire life.
It comes, but later than the weather channel predicted. Jean’s mood is already low before he even steps out of his apartment building. The sky is a dreary gray and the morning air is cold, blown in his face by a strong, unrelenting gusts of cold wind. He’s late on his laundry so he’s wearing his only sweater left. It’s too short in the sleeves and at the bottom; Jean keeps having to tug it down so that his skin isn’t exposed to the biting wind.
At noon, gray clouds have gathered menacingly in the sky. The atmosphere is heavy with anticipation. At three, the coffeeshop is bursting to the seams with people finding shelter from the storm. They serve hot cocoa after hot cocoa all afternoon, to the point where the scent of warm chocolate is starting to affect Jean’s senses.
At five, Rhemann advises all of his customers to head home before they’re stuck inside the coffeeshop. They all seem to realize the importance of getting home over momentarily comfort and the room empties little by little.
“We’re closing,” Rhemann says ten minutes after the last group has left. “I don’t want you stuck here either.”
“A little holiday celebration first,” Alvarez says. “To closing for a week!”
All the baristas cheer. They flip the closed sign on the door and gather around the biggest table with leftover muffins and more hot cocoa. Jean brews himself a tea and hangs back. He has a headache and is already dreading the walk back home. His shoes will be soaked wet within five minutes. He tugs his sweater down reflexively, as he’s been doing all day.
“Uh oh,” someone says as they start shaking themselves to finish cleaning. “Buses aren’t running anymore.”
“And the metro?” Laila asks, stilling with a wipe rag in hand.
“Neither. Too much snow.”
“Fuck.”
They all look at each other uncertainly. Most of them depend on public transport to get to and from work because downtown is a nightmarish maze for cars with no parking place. Rhemann comes out of his office when he hears them arguing over the best way to get home.
“What’s happening?”
“We’re all stuck here after all,” Caroline says. She’s the one who spread the information. She’s still holding her phone, refreshing the news page like it’ll change anything.
“No, you’re not.” Rhemann frowns. “I don’t want you in my coffeeshop past opening hours.”
“Gee, thanks, boss.”
Rhemann looks at his watch, then walks to the window and peers outside. “How many of you are stranded?”
Alvarez, Laila, Caroline and Jenkins all raise their hands. Rhemann looks at Jean, the only one who’s still putting aside muffins.
“Alright, I’ll drop you off. I had snow-tires installed last week.”
They all cheer again and start working faster on cleaning tables, machines and displays. Outside, the snow is still falling, big snowflakes collecting on every surface available. The light dims until the lamps inside the coffeeshop pierce a gray darkness.
“I think it’s getting worse,” Alvarez says.
Rhemann looks up from the register. “All right, that’s enough,” he says. “I’ll come back and take care of the rest. Everyone out.”
“You’ll get stuck too in this snow,” Jean remarks. “I’ll finish while you drive them. I can be done by the time you come back to close.”
Rhemann and the other baristas look concerned and unconvinced. They finally relent when Jean tells them he lives in walking distance of the coffeeshop. In reality, he’s really craving peace and quiet. He’ll wait up the rest of the storm alone inside the coffeeshop, go back home and spend a quiet evening and day before the celebrations tomorrow.
They all file out, bundled up in thick scarves and calling out goodbyes as they go.
“Don’t forget the party tomorrow,” Laila says as she kisses his cheek. “Also, shave.”
Jean brushes a hand along his jaw, taking in the slight scratching sensation of his stubble. He didn’t have time to shave this morning.
“I heard beards are in fashion.”
Laila wrinkles her nose. “Not this one.”
She takes her to-go box of leftover pastries and rushes outside after Rhemann, shrieking when a clump of snow falls down from the canopy to her feet. Jean watches her step over it gingerly, sinking into the fresh snow up to the ankle.
He’s almost done with cleaning and is starting on boxing the food when a tap on the window alerts him. For a second, he imagines that it’s Rhemann, back much sooner than he expected. When he looks up, however, it is to Jeremy’s smiling face through the window.
Jeremy gestures at the closed sign, shrugging exaggeratedly to show his incomprehension, and Jean hurries to open to him.
“We’re closed,” Jean tells him as he steps aside.
“I saw that.” Jeremy unfolds his scarf. “It’s so warm in here. Can I stay forever?”
“What are you doing here?” Jean asks instead of answering.
Jeremy hesitates, pausing halfway through removing his jacket. “Am I in the way? What am I saying, of course I am. Sorry for that. Uh, I’ll go, don’t worry.”
“No!” The strength of his word startles Jean himself. He tries to collect himself. “You’re not bothering. I’m just finishing—I can’t leave until Rhemann comes back to close the shop anyway.”
“Oh.” Jeremy’s smile is slow but radiant when it widens. “I’ll just sit there and look pretty, then.”
He hangs his jacket and scarf on the coat-hanger placed next to the door and drags a chair close to the register, while Jean bottles up anything left and tidies up everything. Since they’re closing for the holidays, he empties out everything: straws and paper cups are put away in boxes he’ll stack in the backroom. Jeremy proposes his help three times. Jean waves him aside every time, then distract him by giving him the last of their cinnamon buns.
“I need it gone,” Jean says. “It’s your mission.”
“Should I decide to accept it?” Jeremy finishes. Jean looks at him, unsure, but Jeremy just says: “Aye aye, captain.”
In between mouthfuls, he tells Jean about the panic of the parents coming to get their children early from practice and the restlessness of the players who preferred to plaster themselves along the windows and comment on the snow rather than play.
“In the end I just gave up,” Jeremy says. “After the first two parents came, I had them take off their uniform and play games while they were waiting.”
Jean wrinkles his nose. He already has enough to do corralling the customers of the Trojan Horse; he can’t imagine keeping excited children entertained all day long.
Jeremy laughs when Jean tells him that. “Yes, I can’t imagine you’d have the patience for it. But I don’t mind. They’re fun. They drew me pictures for Christmas.”
Jean stops in his boxing to look at the papers Jeremy takes out of his bag. Some of them are already damp, despite being shoved in a plastic sleeve. Jeremy frowns and handles them carefully.
The sight of it does something funny to Jean’s insides. He manages to focus on the drawings while Jeremy explains what’s on them—most of the time himself, in exy gear or surrounded by his players who are all almost tall as he is, despite the fact that most of them have barely started first grade. He quickly looks away as soon as he politely can without letting his agitation show.
Looking for a distraction, he grabs the first three boxes—plastic silverware—a bit too quickly and manages to drop one. He can hear Jeremy get up over his own swearing, but he still startles when Jeremy places a gentle hand on his biceps to alert him of his presence.
“Do you want some help?” he asks.
“Take that box over here?” Jean asks. He kicks one of the boxes across the floor to Jeremy, who bends to pick it up. Jean doesn’t allow his gaze to stray.
Jeremy steps through first. Holding only one box leaves one of his arms free and he uses it to hold the door open to Jean and switch on the lights.
They place the boxes on the floor until they unearth the step stool left in a corner of the room and drag it to the high shelf Jean has to reach. Jean is tall enough, but the boxes are heavy and big enough that stuffing them up there with the tip of his fingers is annoying, so he climbs on the first step and has Jeremy pass him the boxes one by one.
Midway through it, his sleeves creep up his forearms. Jean rolls his eyes and pushes them past his elbows so it at least looks intentional.
“Are you too hot?” Jeremy asks. He laughs after saying it, a little belatedly.
“Laundry day,” Jean says as he pushes the second-to-last box up. “It shrank in the wash but it’s the only one I have left.”
“Still have an ugly sweater for tomorrow’s party, though?”
Jeans stops his movement, halfway leaning toward Jeremy. “What?”
“Tomorrow. Laila and Sara’s ugly sweater party.”
Jean looks at him, waiting for Jeremy to start laughing. He can’t keep his face straight for very long after making jokes.
“You’re serious,” he says after Jeremy only looks back. “An ugly sweater party?”
“Ugly Christmas sweater party. You find the ugliest, tackiest Christmas sweater—or holiday, really, I’ve seen some atrocious Hanukkah ones—and you wear it to the party.” Jean keeps starting at him. “It’s fun!” he explains.
“Sure.”
“So I take it you don’t have one?”
“No. I don’t make it a habit of buying horrible clothes to wear them once a year for six hours.”
“Ugly Christmas sweaters are more than just clothes,” Jeremy protests. “It’s the spirit of something bigger—”
“America’s consumerist society?”
“Exactly.”
Jeremy holds out the last box. Jean takes it, turns and lifts it to the shelf, only to find its path blocked by another crooked box. It’s a hassle to push the second one away while still holding several pounds worth of plastic spoons above his head, but he manages.
“I’ll bring you one,” Jeremy says as Jean strains. “Stores will be closed today and tomorrow, it’ll be a hassle—”
His voice falters off. Jean pushes the box onto the shelf, finally, and turns back to Jeremy, curious.
Jeremy’s face is pale. He looks shocked or horrified by something, his eyes wide and unmoving.
“Are you alright? Do you need to sit?”
“I—” Jeremy turns his head, looking behind him. “No, I just remembered something.”
The words settle in Jean’s stomach like stones at the bottom of a lake.
“Remembered something,” he repeats. He knows what kind of memories can bring such a look on a man’s face. He doesn’t wish them on anyone, much less Jeremy.
“It’s alright.” Jeremy crosses his arms, squeezing his eyes shut. When he opens them again, he’s looking slightly more at peace. He’s also focusing his gaze over Jean’s shoulder, not his face. His smile is a little shaky, but at least it’s here. “Just something mortifyingly embarrassing. Nothing important. Shall we go?”
Jean steps down from the stepladder, folding it back again. He takes his time leaning it against the wall, tugging his sleeves and the hem of sweater down.
“I need to wait for Rhemann,” he says, following Jeremy out of the backroom. “But you should go if the snow has let up.”
Jeremy nods slowly, but he sinks back into his chair and doesn’t move while Jean puts on his coat and scarf. He’s fiddling with his phone, not sending messages or even, Jean suspects, opening any app. He seems to be tapping on the screen at random. He doesn’t say anything.
Rhemann finally arrives back after five minutes of this, cursing against the storm and apologizing for the wait.
“It’s alright,” Jean says. “Happy holidays.”
Rhemann grunts, going straight for the register like he hasn’t left for an hour. “Happy holidays. Get back home safe.”
Jeremy stands up when Jean does. He greeted Rhemann with a normal voice, at least. He follows Jean out of the door, both of them bracing against the cold.
“How are you going home?” he asks as Jean starts down the street. Jeremy is following him, probably because he’s parked his car nearby.
“I walk,” Jean says. At Jeremy’s astonished look, he says: “It’s not far.”
“Come on, I’ll drop you off. My car’s just there.”
Jeremy’s car is a red beacon in the middle of the snow-covered vehicles parked around it. They scrape the thin layer of snow on the windshield easily, then dash inside. Jeremy cranks up the heating, but Jean is just happy to be out of the wet. Snow is insidious. It slipped down his collar and coated his gloves with cold water that the wool retains.
“Alright,” Jeremy says after letting the engine warm up. “Where to?”
Jean directs him. Jeremy drives in silence, but halfway through the drive he turns on the radio, almost as an afterthought. It lands on a station playing Christmas carols, but one look at Jean’s face has him changing it.
“Sorry about that,” he says. “When listened to with moderation they’re fun.”
Jean has had to stand them every day at the coffeeshop for the better part of a month. He nods but doesn’t mean it. Christmas carols grate on his nerves in a way few things have done in his life.
The rest of the drive is silent. Jeremy turns slowly into Jean’s street, snow creaking under his tires, and stops just in front of his building.
“There you go,” he says. He’s still not looking at Jean. “See you tomorrow.”
Jean stops with one hand on the handle. It almost sounds like a dismissal, said so quickly before Jean has even opened the door. But Jeremy clearly doesn’t want to dwell on it, so Jean opens the door, calls a goodbye, and makes his way to his door.
Jeremy waits until Jean has stepped into the lobby of his building to start down the street. His car is strangely quiet on the carpet of snow.
Laila and Alvarez’s apartment is a small cocoon of cheer and comfort. Everything is as squeezed as possible in the tight space without looking clustered. But twelve people milling in a living room the size of the locker room at the Trojan Horse doesn’t give people a lot of room to breathe in. Jean arrives last, so he feels it instantly.
“Hey,” Laila greets him as soon as he opens the door. She’s stepping out of the kitchen with a plate in one hand. “Mini-quiche?”
Jean takes one, sticking it between his teeth as he takes off his coat and his scarf. “It’s good,” he says, taking a bite. “We should serve them at the shop.”
“Nah.” Laila takes a quiche herself. “This is my comfort food. I can’t take comfort in it if I have to make it all day for people who won’t think twice about it.”
“Maybe you’re underestimating your recipe,” Jean tells her.
He reaches for a second quiche but she bats away his hand. “Leave some for the others.”
“Alright.”
She continues to the living room, walking across the threshold at the same time Alvarez squeezes through the door.
“Hey babe,” she says, stealing a quiche.
Laila makes a noise of protest but she doesn’t turn back. The tray is welcomed in the living room by cheers from people Jean can’t see. He feels lonely for a brief but gutting moment, before Alvarez rounds up on him.
“Where’s your sweater?” she asks. “This is an ugly sweater party.”
She’s wearing one herself, an atrocious red number with a cheap golden bow unfortunately tied vertically across her chest. It wrinkles against Jean’s shirt when she hugs him hello.
“I wasn’t informed,” he tells her.
She rolls her eyes. “The invite said to come festive and ugly.”
“I thought it was just a bad joke.”
“Would I make such a bad joke on my Christmas party invite?”
“Yes,” Jean says honestly.
She punches him in the arm.
“Don’t worry!” a voice says from the kitchen. “I brought an extra.” Jeremy sneaks his head through the door. “Hey Jean.”
He seems a little shy, but less weird than yesterday.
“Hello, Jeremy.”
“How stilted,” Alvarez says. Jean frowns at her, but she walks to Jeremy and tugs him into the hallway. “Get out of my kitchen and get Moreau-boy here in his festive garb.”
“So bossy,” Jeremy complains. “Alright. Come here.”
Everyone’s left their bags in a pile next to the door. Jeremy moves several until he finds his old beaten-up satchel Jean’s learned to recognize.
“Ta-da!”
Jeremy is holding another criminally tacky sweater up. This one has more reindeers on it than Jean’s ever seen on a piece of clothing. Some of them have big, transparent noses. When Jean reaches inside the hem and clicks on a small switch sewn in there, they light up red.
Jean actually takes a step back. “It’s fine,” he says. “No one will mind that I’m not wearing a sweater.”
“Excuse you,” Alvarez yells from the kitchen. “I mind. No quiche for you if you don’t wear one.”
“I don’t like quiche,” Jean lies.
“Come on, Moreau.”
“It’ll be too small,” he invents.
Jeremy frowns at that. He spreads his arms, trying to align the sweater with his body, and says: “You’re right. I think it’s smaller than mine, actually. Maybe we should switch.” He looks up at Jean. “You’re bigger than I am.”
There’s a clatter from the kitchen. “It’s fine!” Alvarez shouts. “Do your thing.”
“We’re not doing anything,” Jean tells her.
“We’re taking the bedroom to change,” Jeremy tells her at the same time. “There’s no room in your bathroom.”
Alvarez pops her head out of the door. “Alright,” she says. She squints at them for a moment, makes a noise in her throat that is neither approbation or disapprobation, and disappears back inside the kitchen.
“Come on.” Jeremy leads the way down the short hallway. “Alright,” he says when he closes the door on them.
Jean looks around quickly. Apparently neither of their hosts thought anyone would enter the bedroom, because the mess is much more present than in the rest of the apartment. Jean turns toward Jeremy, who is already trying to get out of his own sweater. “Just keep your tee-shirt underneath it. It’s a hundred percent plastic, so you’ll sweat.”
“Charming.”
Jean turns around to strip of his non-Christmas sweater, black and simple and without pattern. He misses it as soon as he pulls it over his head.
When he turns to take the red monstrosity from Jeremy, he stops in his tracks.
“Jeremy,” he tries to say, the word catching in his throat.
Jeremy has his back to Jean. He’s shirtless, his clothes bunched up together in his hands. The muscles down his back are defined and maybe bulging a little from his tense posture, but that’s not what catches and keeps Jean’s interest.
Another day, maybe.
Today, his heart skips a beat because of a familiar shape he sees etched in the small of Jeremy’s back, just off-center enough to make Jean’s head spin.
Get a grip, he tells himself. A tattoo on someone else’s skin should not undo him like it does. He’s seen and survived so much worse.
And yet.
“Jeremy,” he says again.
“Yes?” Jeremy’s voice is deceptively light.
Jean steps forward, as though reeled by the mark on Jeremy’s skin, the mess of lines Jean recognizes from his own skin. The soulmark is golden, like Jean’s. Of course. Of course.
It makes sense for a blindingly clear second, then Jean thinks about it and it gets covered by an avalanche of less comprehensible reactions. He wants to get closer to Jeremy, reach for him and touch him; he wants to leave; he wants to throw up and never speak again. He wants to kiss Jeremy.
Only then does he register the fact that Jeremy has weathered his approach without moving, his back turned to Jean. He’s not been caught unaware, Jean realizes. He’s posing.
He knows. The tumult in Jean’s brain is replaced by this simple truth. Jeremy already knows that Jean is—that they are soulmates.
It is the only possible reason for his behavior, the steady rise of his chest and the tense look of his muscled shoulders.
Jean steps forward. He stops before placing Jeremy in arms’ reach. He doesn’t trust himself.
“How long?” he asks.
This time his voice doesn’t break. He doesn’t like the weak note of it, but he buries it deep.
“How long what?” Jeremy asks. He’s playing the idiot. Jean takes a breath. Anger flows through him like a wave, rising and leaving him empty.
“Turn around.” Jeremy doesn’t move, but he looks even more on edge. Jean softens his voice. It isn’t difficult. “Jeremy, please, look at me.”
When Jeremy turns around, Jean is already holding his shirt up, baring his hip and the golden soulmark on it.
“You knew, didn’t you?”
Jeremy nods. “I saw it yesterday,” he says.
Jean’s too-small sweater, riding up annoyingly all day. Jeremy’s reaction, his refusal to look Jean in the eye—
“Alright,” Jean says.
“Alright?”
“What else do you want me to say?”
“Aren’t you mad?”
Jean looks at Jeremy. “I’m not,” he promises. “I would have been if you’d known for longer and hadn’t told me. But this is new, and you just did.”
Jeremy’s smile is a slow and precious thing. He ducks his head, pulling his shirt and the reindeer sweater on. When his face emerges, still smiling, his body and the mark are covered again. Jean tries to quell the disappointment sparking in his heart.
“All these times,” Jeremy says. He watches Jean with earnest eyes, and Jean wishes he could give him as genuine an answer, bare himself to the extent that Jeremy deserves. He wants to try. He’s not sure to succeed, but then again, trying might just be the first step of an inexorable process. “All these times I felt you in town, and I could never see you—”
“I thought there was something wrong with me,” Jean admits.
“I thought I was dreaming.”
You were not, Jean thinks. You are not. Maybe I am. Out loud, he says: “I can see why.”
“Really?” Jeremy steps closer. He reacts to Jean’s teasing by smiling wider. His shoulders lose some of their tension. It’s good.
“Yes,” he says. “After all, it’s not every day that you meet your soulmate after having already—” fallen in love with him, Jean’s mind supplies, but he amends— “met him.”
The punchline is flat, but Jeremy laughs weakly all the same. “Why do I get the impression you were trying to say something else?”
He’s unusually bold. Or rather: he’s bolder than he’s been while they were getting to know each other. This is something else, because they’re irremediably linked together, whatever happens between them from now on.
Once upon a time, Jean might have found this dangerous. Instead, he’s thrilled.
He steps closer, until they’re almost toe to toe. Jeremy quiets, the ghost of his laugh lingering on his face, in the crooked line of his smile.
Jean tastes the words that are on his mind, finding a new flavor to them. he swallows. Jeremy might be holding his breath; Jean’s own heart is beating, possibly, absurdly, to the beat of the jolly Christmas song in the background. He lets go of the words, savoring them as they go:
“Hello, soulmate.”