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“So are you excited?” Roman jumped onto the bed beside Patton, sitting back on his heels as he waited for the other teen’s reply.
“Of course.” Patton rubbed a hand over his wrist, where his soulmark would appear in two hours. “Are you?”
“Am I? Am I?” Roman launched himself at Patton, and they rolled over each other, both laughing. “AM I?!” Roman repeated, coming up on top and shaking Patton’s shoulders.
“You could just say yes,” Virgil grumbled from the mattress on the floor. Logan was beside him, phone held in front of his face, ignoring the other three.
It was late at night, and they were supposed to have gone to sleep, but Roman’s parents hadn’t really expected them to. Not when all four of them were due for their soulmarks, barely minutes apart. The marks that would give them the clue that would lead them to their soulmate, the one person really meant for them.
Patton grinned up at Roman, trying to hide the tightening in his chest at the thought.
They had all fallen together at high school, a jumble of conflicting personalities that somehow worked together. They’d met in detention, Roman and Patton constantly banished for their inability to keep quiet in class, and Logan being reprimanded for correcting the teacher one too many times. They were friends for almost a month when they found out that they shared the same birthday, and that was when the first spark of hope started in Patton’s heart.
Virgil had joined them in grade ten, adopted into their group after he accidentally sat in their corner at lunch, and then tried to hurry away once they arrived.
On that first day they asked his birthday and found out it was the same as theirs. it seemed like fate. And the spark of hope had grown, despite all of Patton’s efforts to push it down.
Soulmates always shared a birthday, reborn minutes away from each other, so that they would receive their marks at the same time.
Their group was practically inseparable, and Patton never knew he could be so comfortable with other people. His friends were a warm contrast to the cold isolation of his childhood, where he had never quite managed to be anyone’s first choice, despite all his efforts.
Patton had always been a romantic, had been looking forward to his soulmark since he was six years old, but now… part of him, as strongly as he tried to deny it, didn’t want anything to come between their group.
Of course he knew that a soulmate shouldn’t take over one’s entire life. No more than his best friends were the only people in his life. Patton loved his parents, and his little sister, and he had favourite teachers, and the acquaintances at school that made his classes tolerable.
But there was something different. There was a space between friends and soulmates, and once you had one, Patton wasn’t so sure that the other could seem so special anymore. After all, you could have hundreds of years of history with your soulmate. How could high school seem so large after that?
He loved the others, loved each of them so impossibly much. And they loved him, he knew that. They were best friends, something even more than that, curling up with each other, pressing kisses to each other’s cheeks, holding hands during the scariest parts of the movie and then forgetting to let go, shifting into pairs and trios to make elaborate plans for pranks or surprises for each other.
So Patton would smile, and stay in touch, and he would love his own soulmate, no matter who they were. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, and it wouldn’t be the end of their friendship, but still. The twisting of fear and hope in his chest were just a little close to each other for his comfort.
“Patton? You okay?” Roman touched his nose to Patton’s, then drew back. “You’ve been staring at the ceiling for almost an hour.”
“I have?” Patton pushed himself upright, accidentally unbalancing Roman, and their foreheads collided, hard.
“He’s exaggerating,” Logan said, without looking up from his phone as they both rubbed their heads. “It has been a few minutes, though. Are you alright?”
“Yes! Of course” Patton finally disentangled himself from Roman. “I’m just a little nervous about, well, you know.”
“Tell me about it,” Virgil muttered.
“I’m sure we all are,” Logan said, sticking his phone under his pillow before he say up. “It is a large moment in our lives, after all. It would be strange not to be.”
“I’m not!” Roman said.
“You aren’t?” Logan raised a skeptical eyebrow at him.
“No way! I know who my soulmate is, I don’t need a mark to tell me.” All three of the others blinked. Patton looked around, but the others were just as confused as he was. Roman had never mentioned someone who he thought was his soulmate before.
“Who?” Virgil was the first to ask, the word sounding bitter even as it was spoken. Virgil’s crush on Roman was the worst-kept secret in the entire school. Roman looked taken aback.
“Well, it’s- I mean, isn’t…” he said, looking from one to another of them. Uncertainty bled into his expression. “Maybe I don’t want to tell you,” he finally said. Silence fell, heavy with sudden tension and wariness.
“Okay!” Patton said. “That’s fine, we’ll know for sure in two hours anyways.” This time, everyone looked a little bit ill at the thought. Think of something, Patton told himself, and quickly went through a mental list of things they did as a group when they were all under stress and likely to snap at each other if they tried to have a normal evening. “Why don’t we watch Tangled in the meantime?” he suggested. “I don’t think we want to sit around biting our nails while we wait.”
“Can I be on Tumblr, or do we have to watch it?” Virgil asked.
“Usual rules,” Patton shrugged. ‘Usual rules’ was a system developed in response to Logan and Roman’s hatred of people talking through movies, Roman’s dislike of people missing parts of movies he was showing them by looking at their phones, and Virgil’s inability to pay attention to any single thing for two hours straight. Subtitles always on, both for Logan and Virgil, and as long as everyone had seen the movie, phones and laptops were allowed to be out, and Patton could chat away unless Roman wanted to sing along to a specific part.
So they all piled onto Roman’s queen-sized bed, using Patton’s laptop to bring the movie up on Netflix. Logan brought his phone, and Virgil kept his laptop, and Roman rested his head on Patton’s lap so that Patton could play with his hair while they watched the movie.
The movie started, and the rest was familiar. It was Patton’s go-to comfort movie, so all of them had watched it many times in the past few years. Roman sang along to all of the songs, Patton joining in for most of them, and Virgil occasionally quoting a line from memory. Before they knew it, the credits were rolling.
Roman sighed happily and sat up, bumping his head into Patton’s amicably. “That was great.”
It was. Patton slipped an arm around Roman, pulling him closer, and glimpsed something on his-
“Oh my god.” He snatched his arm back. The sudden movement was enough to draw everyone’s attention, and then they all remembered at the same moment.
Each of them recoiled from the others, retreating to each corner of the bed to find some small amount of privacy.
Patton stared at his arm.
1:34, it said, in blocky digital numbers. Patton looked up at the clock and saw that it was 1:33. He tried to think about something to say, and then, at a loss for words, he stuck his arm into the center of the bed.
Roman was the first to look, and a smile spread across his face. He made eye contact with Patton, then stretched out his own arm. 1:34, printed on his arm in what looked like dark ink. Perfectly matching Patton’s.
Oh my god, Patton thought. He’s my soulmate.
He prepared himself for the rush of memories, and then Logan put his own arm out, showing that he had the same mark.
Patton looked from Logan to Roman, completely derailed. He didn’t know what this meant. Did they have to choose? Could all three of them somehow be meant to be together? He had never known three soulmarks to coincide.
He looked from their arms back to the clock. It was 1:34 am.
When he looked back, Virgil had outstretched his own arm, his head turned away, unwilling to meet their eyes. Darker against the scars on his inner wrist were the same numbers. All four of their wrists, the same mark.
We’re… all soulmates? Patton thought, and then Virgil turned to them, and Patton remembered.
–
Most people found their soulmate, and that was the end of the story.
Each lifetime, you were granted a mark that would guide you back to them, and once you met, the memories of the lives you had lived together would come flooding back. It was an elegant system, children waited eagerly for adulthood, for their clue, for the finding of the person they would never have to leave, not even after death.
But rarely, things weren’t that simple.
The first life Patton can remember, he found Roman, the prince in a small kingdom, both with a Celtic knot on their arm, which only made sense when their arms were pressed against each other, completing the design.
In his next life, Patton found a half-star on his wrist, which he had always expected his soulmate to complete. Years later, he found Logan, not with the other half of his star, but rather a red flag marked on his arm. He’d been at a tilting contest, a half-star his sigil on his tunic and shield. Patton had run over to give him a scrap of red fabric torn hastily from his sleeve, the only favour he had on him to offer, and Logan had stumbled off his horse to reveal his soulmark. At that moment, Patton had remembered his life with Roman, but Logan had remembered a different time: a time spent under olive trees, with a brother-in-arms named Virgil.
Nevertheless, they had fallen together, both alike in confusion and affection, and Patton had taken Logan as his knight, his soulmate, his partner in all parts of his life.
When Patton had next turned 18 and found a compass inked on his arm, which shifted to point South, he followed it without pause until he had reached Spanish territory, riding from place to place until he found the man named Virgil. And he had remembered Roman, and Logan, and he remembered that Logan had been with Virgil first.
Virgil had welcomed him into his home and they had shared their stories. Patton was sorry to hear that Roman and Virgil had not led a perfect life together, finding each other in a time overshadowed by the Black Death and tainted with fear.
Patton had moved down to New Spain to live with Virgil, and then the revolutions had come, and the ranch had turned into strategic territory, headquarters for the regional resistance. Mexico emerged, wreathed in combat and desperately trying to fit back together, and Virgil and Patton heard about the American inventor named Logan and his soulmate Roman, who had worked together to create a new method of communication that used some kind of wires. Virgil and Roman had looked at each other, spent three days discussing, and had moved to New York the next week.
The travel was hard, and the lodgings were scarce, but eventually they were all four in a room together, and they fell together with no introductions necessary.
And so the lives passed, a continuation of love, always as precious as before. Sometimes they would all find each other, and sometimes they lived in pairs, listening for the mention of familiar names. It was not a tragedy, those lives they didn’t spend together. After all, they could always catch up later.
Then the internet came, an explosion of new innovation. Patton and Roman, who had been living together in Massachusetts since the 1950s, watched it develop. Once the blocky computers with impossible search engines made their way into their local library, they were some of the first in line to try it, and it paid off: Logan and Virgil were up in Ontario.
They met at a Tim Horton’s, Logan grumpy and complaining about his wheelchair, Roman struggling on his way up the stairs, all of them white-haired, feeling the years pressing against their backs. Nevertheless, they drew glances with their enthusiastic greetings, all of them embracing before settling down to catch up, Patton refusing to sit anywhere but Logan’s lap.
They were too settled in their own homes to move in together in that life, but they swapped addresses and kept in touch, writing letters that were pages long and full of daily life.
When Patton finally lost Roman, the grief pushed down on him every which way, dragging up memories of all the ways he had lost him through the years: the wounds, the battles, the creeping illnesses and sudden collapses. And always the grief, despite the knowledge that they would be together again.
Logan died not so long afterwards, and Patton moved up to Ontario to spend the last years with Virgil, both of them quiet, sharing the space in peace, few words left between them as they curled up against the bitter Canadian winters.
–
“Oh.” Patton blinked tears from his eyes, looked over to see Roman doing the same.
They smiled at each other, and the smile said everything.
I missed you.
I love you.
I’m here.
Patton looked up to make eye contact with Virgil, and reached out his hand. They interlaced their fingers, both of them remembering the days they had spent together, how holding hands had become painful as their joints twisted and locked.
Roman laughed out loud, and all of them looked over to him.
“I’m sorry, I just… did you know it would be this much? Remembering?”
“We’ve shared so much,” Logan said, his voice hushed, and Roman stretched an arm towards him, holding him against his side.
“I love you all a whole lot,” Patton told them.
“Virgil!” Roman turned his head, grabbing onto one of Virgil’s hoodie strings and grinning. “Oh my god, our poetry unit!”
“What?” Virgil tried to get Roman’s hand off, but gave up after several failed attempts at prying his fist open. “What are you talking about?”
“You… grade eleven. The poem. Lord Byron?” Virgil looked at him blankly for a few more seconds, and then his eyes widened and he started laughing.
“No wonder I liked it! Roman, my god! I can’t believe I didn’t remember earlier!”
“Did you two hook up with Lord Byron?” Logan asked, sounding scandalized.
“It was a long time ago.” Roman shrugged, and then fell back into laughter. “Lots of things make so much more sense now.”
“Is no one going to talk about the fact that we’re all soulmates?” Virgil said, pulling his sleeve down over the mark. “What are we going to tell our parents?”
“It’s our first time all being soulmates! And we didn’t even have to find each other!” Patton gushed.
“This is… unheard of. I wonder if it’s a singular occurrence or simply unusual.” Logan was tracing the lines of his mark. Silence fell as all of them considered it.
“I should Google it,” said Virgil, and pulled out his phone.
“Wait!”
All three of them turned to Roman.
“I just… I wanted to say.” He hesitated. “I knew. Before this. I remembered a little bit, and I thought maybe you all knew. I’m sorry, I would have told you. I should have told you. I was scared that I would be wrong.”
“Oh, my prince.” Patton scooted across the bed to curl up in his lap, closing his eyes as Roman wrapped a familiar arm around him. “I would have believed you.”
“I would have believed you,” Logan echoed, placing a hand on his shoulder.
“I probably would have thought you were screwing with me,” Virgil said, and then shrugged and moved over to join them, tucking himself between Patton and Logan, both of whom wrapped an arm around his back, keeping him close. “But I would have wanted to believe you.”
“I’m glad,” Patton whispered into Virgil’s hair, knowing that the others could hear him. “That we’re together again.”
“Together again!” Roman said, wrapping his free arm around them and crushing them together into a jumbled embrace of elbows and cheeks and hips.
Patton closed his eyes, surrounded by his prince, his knight, his vaquero, his lovers, his honeybears, his partners, his hertis rotes. He was home, he was safe, he was with his soulmates, and he was loved.