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Kieren is in love with Rick Macy and that's not gonna change just because someone else's name showed up on his skin at sixteen. Whoever Simon Monroe is, they'll have to live without him, because he's planning to spend forever with Rick, destined soul mates or not.
--
Rick has had Kieren's name on his thigh for a year now, and he is constantly terrified of what his father will do to him, to both of them, if he found out. So he takes a permanent marker and carefully writes Emily Stanton on his calf, going over it every day, just so his dad won't ask questions. There is no Emily Stanton in Roarton.
--
(Simon does live his life without Kieren Walker, and he's miserable throughout nearly all of it. The drugs help, and sometimes when he's high he believes that maybe the world isn't one giant clusterfuck of meaninglessness. Sometimes when he's really high he even believes in this fucking stupid soul mates thing, thinks that maybe one day he will find someone named Kieren Walker who will make the universe seem less fucking terrifying.)
--
At seventeen Kieren takes a trip into the city and comes back with a tattoo. Rick Macy flows in elegant script, stark black against the pale skin over his heart. Rick goes silent when he sees it, during an afternoon they've so far spent drinking and touching each other in a cave in the woods.
This is the final nail, Rick thinks to himself. This is Kieren trying to convince the both of them that he belongs with Rick when he so obviously doesn't.
"See ya tomorrow," he says, and joins the army.
--
Kieren got the tattoo as a fuck you to the notion that they have no choice in who they spend their lives with, and Rick left him for it. And now Rick is dead.
There are two names on his body. One belongs to the boy he loves. One belongs to someone he thinks he will never meet.
--
(Simon cracks one day, looks up the name Kieren Walker, and finds an obituary for a young man who killed himself six weeks before. Well then.
He calls his dealer.)