Chapter Text
It was a strange sting that woke him up that night. Some kind of tingling, maybe a little sharp — like a burn, like his skin was sparkling the way the candies he devoured as a kid would sparkle on his tongue. His slumber wasn’t nearly deep enough for him to be completely disoriented, and he had no trouble to locate where this weird feeling, not all that painful in the end, was coming from: the underside of his right arm, just below the crook of his elbow.
Lucas immediately bolted upright in his bed, heart thrumming against his ribcage.
It was there.
His soulmate’s name.
He knew it. He just did.
For months now he had read everything he could find on the subject — ever since he and his friends had reached the critical eighteenth birthday, or were just about to. Before that it was the kind of subject that would have them laughing and snorting, because really, how fucking lame it was. The idea of soulmates made 13-year-old boys snort and shrug it off, that’s just how it was. But now it was a fucking reality, and ever since Yann had gotten his soulmark, soon followed by Basile, he had been obsessing over it. Objectively he knew everything there was to know about it. He knew that soulmates didn’t automatically equal romantic partners, all websites were adamant about this. He knew that the mark appeared eighteen years after one’s birth, at the exact second, and that their spot on one’s body was the only random thing about it all. He knew that people only had one. He knew some had already died. He knew that some never found theirs.
But if anything it brought up more questions than answers.
First, because he had no idea what the time of his birth was. Smallest problem at hand, probably, but another source of worry nonetheless. His mom was in no place to answer that particular question, and Lucas highly doubted his father would even recall the day at all if it weren’t for his annual alarm on his phone.
Second, because he was gay. Which in itself wasn’t a problem — the prospect of having some girl’s name carved in his skin was. A few close friends of his were girls, it wasn’t like being attached at the hip with either another one or one of them sounded that bad, but he was terrified by the idea of him not being romantically involved with his soulmate. Some people found it better, simpler, easier to manage — but Lucas wasn’t one of them. He had never had a proper first love and he longed for someone who would be there for him when he craved it the most. Sue him, but he wanted to be loved, unconditionally and unapologetically. He knew this type of love could be platonic, but he just couldn’t bring himself to stop fantasizing about it. It scared him senseless. The exact reason why his heartbeat was currently through the roof.
His eyes snapped to the clock on his nightstand. 4:05AM. Maybe he should call Yann. He, Arthur and Basile had been talking with him long after the clock hit midnight and they had (figuratively) yelled him birthday wishes through big-cap texts, but they were all probably asleep by now. Maybe he could just get up and go to Mika’s room — wait no, he was working a night shift. Lucas racked his brain but it was to no avail. Manon was in vacation and going to Lisa was surely the best way for him to get headbutted.
You got this, he encouraged himself. It’s fine. Let’s just get this over with.
His stomach in knots, he blindly reached for his phone and turned up the flashlight. His arm kept tingling, almost insistently, and Lucas swallowed thickly as he looked up at the ceiling lost in the depths of the night, finding himself praying to some God he didn’t even believe in in the first place. It was pathetic. Everyone who knew him would probably be dumbfounded to find him in this state — but here and now, it was just him. Him and a soulmark carving itself under his skin, a soulmark he was too afraid to even peer at. Whatever the name on your body is, no matter that you ultimately find your soulmate or not, it doesn’t decrease your value as a person, someone had written on a thread he had read once, an advice he had never clung to with so much despair than he was now.
“I’m still me,” Lucas whispered to himself, and with a final inspiration that resembled a dying breath, he set his arm under the light of the flashlight, turning it so that the underside was exposed.
There indeed was a name written there, the skin red around the black letters as if he had just walked out of a tattoo parlor.
A name.
A boy name.
“Eliott,” Lucas whispered, immediately biting onto his bottom lip.
It rolled on his tongue, sweet and smooth, and after repeating it a couple more times, it felt like that name in particular had been there throughout his life. Lucas found himself repeating it a few more times during the night, long after he had shut down the flashlight. Some type of giddiness was bubbling in the pit of his stomach, and his thumb kept mechanically rubbing the name on his skin until he finally started dozing off a little while later. Somewhere on this fucking planet, someone was made just for him, designated just for him, and this thought, however simple, made everything look a little brighter. And lot more bearable. It wasn’t so often that he got to be so stupidly excited over something, but he knew himself well enough by now to know that another reason to worry would come around soon enough — finally finding his soulmate, for instance, now that he had one.
In that moment, he decided as he fell asleep, he could just roll with being happy.