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When Nick turns fourteen, vines of words etch themselves into her skin--words like lying thief scammer stubborn orphan jailer's child ruthless too smart for her own good choiceless. They wind themselves into the flesh of her forearm, and Nick covers them in bandages and resolves not to look at them--she has more things to worry about than words that describe her perfectly at the time, things like Molly and the rest of the Thompsons and getting them to apologize--
Nick doesn't think about it until after Sam and Dorothy are incarcerated, and she gets to send them a strong fuck-you along with her wave goodbye as they get into the police cars. She traces the words with her fingers and lets her family puzzle over them for a while before she decides to head to bed and ponder over it herself.
Will's face flashes in her mind, but she brushes it away after seconds of vague thought and denial; it can't be him. Not someone who she knows she's never going to see again and who she knows thinks of her just as a cute, maybe a bit smart, nice girl.
She can't think of anyone else, though, and so she just drops it. Whoever it is--she won't find them right now, she knows that much, and high school sucks, so she places her focus firmly on her own education and doesn't think of it again.
Still, the words on her wrist haunt her, and she only has so many wristbands and so much space on her arm. She can't hide them, and they do nothing to protect her.
Jeremy's shoulder is etched with the messy scrawl of Eric's handwriting, saying things like really hecking cute and 10/10 would kiss right now, and it takes two seconds and Jeremy hiding his face in his hands for Nick to know that somewhere else on his body, the same handwriting says more or less the same thing (only way less appropriate). Molly doesn't have anything on her arms, but she scrawls self-encouragements and things her loved ones have said to her onto her skin--the backs of her hands, her knees, her collarbones. Nick's never seen Liz or Ed's, but they've implied that they have them and have also implied that they are never uncovering them for their young, impressionable children to see because they are more embarrassing than the time Jeremy was caught feeding a rat in his locker at school which he'd saved from being trampled in Crescendo years prior.
But Nick's aren't embarrassing. They're hateful and hurtful and Nick can't help but believe they're true, because if the person who's going to be the most important in the world to her someday thought of her like this--like she's a traitor and a fraud and she's done more unforgivable things that she can count--how does she not believe it?
Jeremy blacks out the words in Sharpie when she stumbles into his room at three in the morning unable to stop apologizing and crying and saying she's not good enough for the Thompsons.
"Please don't ever," Jeremy hisses to her in the dark, and she knows he doesn't mean to be angry, because Jeremy really never does, "ever think that you're a bad person. The world's dealt you the worst deck, Nick, but that doesn't mean you have to lose--it doesn't mean you're going to turn out like your parents. It doesn't mean you're going to follow in their footsteps."
"My soulmate thought of me that way," she starts, but he shakes his head.
"That doesn't mean that you are that way, Nick, and you probably haven't let them anywhere close to you yet. Hey--you remember what you said to Sam and Dorothy after we got them arrested?" When she doesn't answer he tells her, "You said you could be whatever you wanted to be. And I know for a fact that you don't want to be what other people think of you."
She still doesn't say a word, and Jeremy releases a heavy sigh. "Please trust me when I say that you are absolutely perfect, Nick. No matter what anyone says about you."
Perfect, he says, and the word is one that--he's told her--Jeremy has tried to live up to his entire life. Perfect is something that he has explained means whole, and full, and--without faults, which he says she is, despite everything that's happened to them. Nick never questions him, though; Jeremy is her older brother and her partner in altruism, and there's not even once that she questions him or his love for her.
—
("I really like you, Nick," Will says softly, his gaze a part of this strange, quiet truth he's telling her, and Nick feels the burn of words scrawl themselves into the skin on her hips.
And then he's gone, and Nick is left wondering and obsessing over whether they'll ever meet again.)
Nick makes several New Year's Resolutions to keep from thinking about soulmates because she would like to, for just once, not have to think about it, and gets Ed to do a flowering tattoo over the words on her forearm. She'd rather these words don't come back to bite her when she's not working at Crescendo, and after the flesh affected by the ink heals, she spends hours tracing over the lines of the tattoo design and forgetting what words used to be there.
And hey, when she doesn't think about maybe-Will... life is good. Jeremy is out of the closet in college in LA, not flaunting his sexuality but always proud whenever he speaks about his incredible boyfriend; Molly is working towards a career in psychology on the East Coast; Liz opened Fortissimo--their family restaurant--when Nick had turned fifteen and it's thriving as the namesake of the second-in-running for Top Chef even three years later; Ed has his job at the bank back, and Nick is living alone in a nice apartment near the coast she wouldn't have been able to afford, a long time ago, going to a standard college before she gets into the mess that is transferring to art school.
Everything is--well, she can't say normal, because that's an imaginary word wherever Nick is, but it's good. It's good, and Nick is happy, and she should be content--
But she's not.
"I feel so ungrateful--and I shouldn't be, after all that you guys have done for me," she tells Jeremy over FaceTime, "But it just--I feel like I'm not whole, like--I'm missing something? I can't--I don't know how to explain it." Jeremy whistles; Nick squints at him. "What?"
"That sounds a heck-ton like a soulmate problem," he says after a moment of thought. "You still don't know who it is?"
"I'm not a mind reader, Jeremy. My only suspect was--well, I know he's not coming back." She pauses. "If Eric--"
"No, no more using my boyfriend to figure out your mysteries--after last year you're lucky he doesn't ask you about it every Friday at the very least." Jeremy sighs, though, his exhaustion palpable. "Maybe you'll run into each other on campus?"
"Yeah, or we'll just find each other when we're all old and wrinkly and, like, already grandparents or something."
"Now you're just being petty with a capital P, kid."
She scrunches up her face at him, prepared to argue, but deflates with another sigh. "How am I supposed to live with a freaking hole in my chest until I find my soulmate?"
"Well, wherever they are, they're going through the same thing, and maybe they even know you're their soulmate," Jeremy says, "So what are the chances that they aren't looking for you right now?"
"I think you're way too hopeful for your own good, Mr. President."
—
Nick pauses in the middle of the Starbucks line when she feels a strange burning feeling on the flesh of her hips. She goes to touch them gently, but snatches her hands back, her brows pinching. At home, she resolves to herself, and orders her usual chai latté with a soft smile to the register and the barista once she gets to the pick-up counter.
She puts her earbuds on partway as she emerges from Starbucks, and picks up a faster pace so she can get home quicker.
Familiar kind confusing strange different lovely, are the words that she sees when she peels up her shirt and pushes the waistband of her pants down, and she looks at them in the mirror before peering at them, the ink on her hips, saying words that make no sense.
She doesn't understand.
She frequents the same Starbucks in a desperate hope that she will ever see him, but it is not until she is leaving again after lunch, her hands empty and her soulmarks burning, that she freezes in her steps.
Nick feels the person who's just passed her whirl around, the breeze he creates enough to rustle her hair, and waits a moment before doing the same, and there--there he stands, in all his own ruffled glory, his expression a painting of shock.
"I knew--" he starts, then stops, his voice winded. "I knew I had to have been coming in at the wrong time."
Nick looks him over, and it truly is him--she inhales, and her one movement is enough to alter his entire stance; his posture straightens, and he lifts a hand to push back his unruly hair. Nick scrambles for words to say.
"It's you?" she chokes out eventually, "I thought--I thought we'd never--I thought that, but I--how--?" Nick shakes her head. "My words--my thoughts are--not coming out right, I'm sorry--"
"It's fine, I--" Will pauses, "Mine aren't really making any sense either." He makes this face, a startled one, and his hand lowers from his head to touch his side gently. "Wha--?"
"Your second or--third one?" Nick asks, knowing the feeling, and flicks the collar of her jacket subconsciously.
"I--don't know. I haven't... looked."
They stare at each other for a few moments, not believing or trying to believe that this is really it, until Will takes a step back, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. "I have to--grab coffee for some friends before study group, so--"
"Yeah, that's fine, I--I have to get home, too. Same time next week?"
They separate with awkward laughter on their tongues and this feeling like the world has settled into place, and Nick pulls out her phone to call Jeremy as she breaks into a run for home.
Will gives her his number and all the times he's free to talk the next time they see each other, and when she calls him on a Thursday evening his voice is a quiet hum. He's careful--she can hear that well enough, even over the crackly static of her apartment's bad reception--but he listens, and answers, and that's enough for Nick.
She talks about miscellaneous things--Jeremy's pet rat, the grand opening of Fortissimo, the day Molly had written I don't have a soulmate--so what? over the length of her arms when she'd gone to a party with a friend with the knowledge that everyone had soulmarks and were, quite frankly, pretentious dicks--but she doesn't touch the topic of their soulmarks. It seems... too fragile, too breakable for her to talk about, right now.
They get to know each other, though, slowly. Their soulmarks are something neither of them have mentioned, but they go on walks around the beach areas and schedule dinner dates and explore the city. Nick doodles Rocky and Bullwinkle scenes onto Will's blank arm with Sharpie markers; Will steals her beanies and writes her little poems that she tapes to her laptop. She gets to know his stance and the way he walks, the smiles he forces and the ones that can momentarily blind her--she counts the stray scars and freckles on his cheeks and he braids her hair with a skill that only comes from living with a family of girls for several years. Jeremy is the one who gets to hear about these, because Molly would tease her endlessly and Jeremy is the one who'd subjected her to the torture of hearing about the color of Eric's eyes and the way that Eric smiles--so he pretty much had it coming.
Will comes over to her apartment and they do nothing but sleep or study, often; as is the life of two college students who're trying to make their way in education. Sometimes he sleeps while she studies, or the other way around; sometimes, like tonight, they just lay in bed or on the floor, and do nothing but trace each other's skin and smile at each other.
This kind of time, Nick appreciates most, because it is the kind that lets her just... be. Without any fanfare or facades or fake smiles; without any dress-up or lies; she just exists, and he never judges her for it.
For once in her life, since the last time she'd felt normal, the last time everything had begun to settle with the Thompsons, Nick feels a piece of herself fall into place.
And for once, the feeling of it doesn't scare her at all.
—
Nick had felt the familiar burn of a new soulmark on an ordinary Tuesday when she had been laughing at something Will had said, one of those laughs that took over her whole body. She hasn't looked yet, afraid of what they might say and afraid of what the words would do to whatever strange limbo they have going on, but she can feel it itching even now--she flinches as it stings again, pulling her fingers away from where they are running over his palms and knuckles.
Will blinks at her; it's one of their laying-around nights. "You okay?"
She cranes her head to look up at him, her mouth opening to concoct some sort of a lie before she stops herself. No lies, she scolds herself, and pauses to try and think of something to say. "My--it's never happened before, but it doesn't hurt--my soulmark is--itching, I guess? It wants me to look at it, or something."
Will props himself up on his elbow and looks down at her with cautious eyes before his shoulders ease. "I--" he starts, "I have the same itches. Sometimes."
He hasn't looked at his soulmarks either. Nick lays down so she's flat on her back and looks up at the ceiling. "You do?"
"Yeah," and she hears him shift slightly, "It's kind of just--always there. Like, I can always feel it, no matter what I'm doing."
"You think that's what it's gonna be like until we look?" Nick asks, her hand skimming the flowered ink of her wrist.
Will pauses. "Maybe," he says, but his voice is distracted now. He hesitates on a breath; Nick listens to the dim noises of her apartment. "Were my first thoughts really that bad?"
Nick inhales sharply. Her hand stills. "I--" she tries, exhales a huff of air. She forgets to pull a shutter over her expression as she thinks, her brows furrowing and her mouth quivering. "It was--the things that Dorothy and Sam told you. Probably, I don't know where else you would have learned--I mean. A lot of them were true. It's just... It was just... a lot."
He doesn't speak for a moment, his breathing measured and quiet. His voice, when he speaks, is soft and sad. "Nick, I'm--"
"It's not your fault. Sam and Dorothy--"
"I still believed them. They scam people for a living, I should have known." he stops, sits up, and leans over so she knows he's reaching to squeeze her hand, "It's been said and done, but I'm still going to regret that I thought something like that that's going to stay with you for life."
She can do barely anything to resist the smile that curves her lips, and shifts so she can tangle her right hand with his left.
"This is gonna get really uncomfortable," Will says, but his voice is soft--Nick laughs, and sits up after a moment so that they're both on the same level. She lifts up their joined hands, holds them there for a moment, and then drops a gentle kiss to where they join together.
Will stiffens, then his face colors and a beaming grin--one that seems to take even him by surprise, one that has Nick breathless--finds his mouth. It softens to a gentle smile as he watches their hands, a softer one as he squeezes her hand gently.
They breathe, quiet and in sync with each other's without either of them realizing, and ink makes its way onto the flesh of their skin.
It's as Nick is tugging her shirt off while changing into pajamas that she catches the lines of words that have written themselves into existence on her hipbones, and she quits on resisting the pull of her itching soulmarks. She inhales a wet gasp, feeling the sting of tears behind her eyes, before she can even finish reading the first word.
Perfect, they say, and they look a little faded--a little old, like they have been there for a while and have never truly seen the light of day. Brave loyal artistic strong will determined clever lucky, and Nick traces over them with a choked sound and something of a burning in her chest.
"Perfect," she whispers aloud, and wonders quietly how he really, truly believes that is something that makes her.
He meets her on the pier on Saturday morning, and his expression is something quiet and anxious but also joyful and bright. "Hey," he says, and Nick smiles at him in answer.
They're walking along the shore without a word when Nick finally inhales and says, "I'm not perfect."
Will turns to her, looking like he wants to protest, but dips his head anyway as if to say, go on.
"I--I hurt people, sometimes, because I can read them so well. I can find what hurts people most and use it against them. I've never liked brushing my hair. I fidget a lot. I--make a lot of questionable choices, and I'm impulsive, so--there's a lot of things that you might not know. Or that you don't want to know." Nick stops there, and looks down--refuses to meet his gaze. "Sorry, I really have no idea what the--the ground rules are in a--a soulmate thing? Like, I've Googled, and Google actually doesn't fucking know anything accurate about soulmates whatsoever, but--Will, I really, really like you."
She glances up and gets caught on the way that his chest stops rising and falling for a moment and his expression freezes. Nick watches him swallow, watches him struggle with words before he says, his voice soft-- "I really l--I really like you too."
They both whirl around to smother their sappy-feeling grins, and take each other's hands to go find a breakfast place moments later.
Something shifts on that Saturday morning; maybe it is the way that Will seems to open up and brighten up considerably more, or maybe the moments that Nick's gentle kisses catch him by surprise--on the inside of his wrists, his knuckles, his temple. But something changes, and suddenly it is as if a door has opened between them; it is as if a veil has been lifted, and Nick can see her soulmate right in front of her, clear as day.
It's on one of their hour-long phone calls that Jeremy hums, interrupting Nick gently mid-and then he smiled--and pauses for a moment. "Nick," he says, and his voice is cautious and a little sharp. "Do you love him?"
Nick doesn't hesitate when she tells him, "Yeah. Yeah, I do."
Jeremy's answering grin, wide and proud and beaming, means everything.
—
On Sunday, Will spends the night; they tangle themselves in her sheets and fall off the bed and share memes with each other as Will focuses on typing an essay on his laptop; several times she tries to peek over and he reminds her repeatedly that it's an annoyingly complicated essay about evolution. Nick protests against closing her eyes profusely, but eventually she falls asleep--and when she wakes up, it is Monday morning and Will has disappeared.
There are sheets of paper and words on the counter, handwritten in Will's own hand--not poetry. Nick catches words as she skims it, her breath hitching at could never find the words, stubborn, soulmarks, something more--and gives in to reading it fully.
Nick,
I meant to give you a speech on Sunday. A full-blown one, one that would knock your socks off, but I wiggled out of it at the last second. I was terrified--am terrified. I could never find any words to say to you, not face-to-face, that could ever reply to your eloquence with the spoken word, but I think I'm more graceful on paper, so.
We met years ago. You--back then--you were so stubborn and always so brave and I really did like you. It was the kind of like that I could never resist--just like you were a kind of person I couldn't resist--and so I just let myself like you. Because there was something that drew me to you, I let myself like you.
We're older now, though, aren't we? Old enough that whenever I look at you I know you've changed from those four or five years ago. Old enough that the butterflies in our stomachs have changed into aches in our hearts and that weird burn of our soulmarks--old enough to understand what our soulmarks mean. It's strange though: sometimes I look over at you and you're laughing and you're everything I remember from all those years ago, and sometimes I look at you when you're looking at me and you have become something more, something whole, to me.
This is my response to you, to that speech you made on Saturday. I'm flawed too--fatally. I retreat into my mind every time I'm scolded, and I'm always quiet where you're always living loud, I guess? I can never find ways to fill silence. I'm impulsive and I'm bad at explaining things. I'm terribly compassionate and I always take things the wrong way. My mom--the one in jail--was an alcoholic, and--she got into a lot of trouble for it. I suck at communicating, but I get to pestering people when I figure out how to--I'm not perfect either, Nick.
But to tell you the truth (even if we kinda both know it)?
No one is.
Despite what you believe, though, Nick--the people around you, including me, see how incredible, loyal and brave you are. It has been an honor and a privilege getting to know you. I have run into an insane amount of luck knowing you. Thank you--for everything.
We still on for Thursday night beach date?
--Will
Nick sends we're still on for thursday to Will, and lets herself beam.
—
"Can we--cancel tonight?" Will asks, breathless, and Nick drops her phone. It falls harmlessly on her bed, and she slowly picks it up, reminding herself to breathe as Will talks. "It's--I'm so sorry, but my mom--the one who's--she's getting released today and I didn't get to hear about it until, like, five minutes ago--I have to go, um, help her sort things out for where she's going to live--Nick, I swear I didn't know before--"
"It's fine, Will, don't worry about it. It's your mom."
He exhales sharply, something of a scoff. "I really don't want to cancel tonight, but…"
"It's a big night," Nick reassures him. "Lots of papers, right?"
"Yeah, and then I have to drive her back to Pasadena, and I can't--"
"Bring anyone with you on short notice." She huffs out a laugh, "I know how it goes. My dad was released… a little while ago. Good luck, Will."
He pauses, "Thank you."
"I got your back," she replies, and doesn't hear from him again for roughly three weeks.
"You think he's okay?" Jeremy asks, and Nick lifts her shoulders in a vague shrug as she leans on her elbows on her bed. "It's been twenty days, Nick."
"That's not thay long--" Nick, swathed in blankets and reaching for another chip, starts to reply, but her phone buzzes on the laptop Jeremy's face is displayed on, Will's face shining over the small screen. "And I… think we may find out," she says after a second, picking it up to reply and sending Jeremy a quick goodbye wave as he closes Skype to give her some privacy.
"Will?"
"Nick, hi, I, um--so I've been--kind of--standing here for a few minutes and I think I've developed a sudden allergy to doors?"
"...What--?"
"I'm right outside, um," she hears the echo of his voice when she listens closely, "I can't--knock on the door, for some--no, nope, no excuses, I am too terrified so could you just come to--please?"
Nick blinks at her phone, to her beautiful cocoon of blankets, the apartment door, then to the bag of Lays on her bed.
She makes a break for the door.
"Hey," Nick greets cheerily, looking him over--he seems tired, a little faded, but wholly uninjured; his eyes sharpen when he meets hers. "Is--are you okay? What--is it okay to ask what happened with your mom? Is your family--" she stops at his expression--it's turned into something hard, something cold; Nick can't say it doesn't frighten her. "Did I say something wrong?"
Will blinks, and is back to fully representing the word exhaustion. "I--I just. It's been a rough few weeks."
Nick lets her shoulders slump before she straightens. "Oh! Come on in, are you--are you hungry or do you need a drink? I just restocked the fridge--"
They trail into the kitchen, Will never loosening up but always offering to help, whether to make hot cocoa or the pot of boiling spaghetti Nick has on the stove. Nick continues to chatter as they go along, shooting glances at him every so often. He's tired, but he'd come over here to do something--Nick still can't puzzle out what, exactly, he's here for.
It's as they're laying in bed, Nick tracing the cracks on the ceiling with her eyes, that he speaks.
"I'm sorry," he blurts out, then pauses, as if he doesn't know what he was planning to say next. "For not showing up. I know Thursday, it was, it was supposed to be big for--for us and we were supposed to--maybe--start something, but my mom--" Will groans, dropping his head back onto the pillow on his side of the bed and letting his hands cover his face. "I'm just so--and then with everything with you and school and--I had this whole plan, and I completely forgot about her release until the day of, and even then I meant to--I didn't want to stand you up but I was just so tired--"
"Will," Nick interrupts after determining that this he's about to start going in circles, "You have nothing to apologize for."
"--What?" He stops, hesitant, and lifts his head away from his hands--his long hair falls over his face and obscures his vision as he leans up on his elbow; he shakes it away with an irritated huff before looking to her.
"You have nothing to apologize for--seriously, Will. The day that my dad was released--it was a whole mess. It ended well, but--" Nick scrunched up her face "It was really, really bad. So--um, it's not a big deal, at all. Especially when it comes to your family--you put yours first. Just because we're soulmates doesn't mean that our entire lives have to change." She offers him a soft smile and turns over onto her side so she can pull his hands down from his face completely.
"Just some things?" Will asks, and it's as if the sun has risen over the planes of his face--he uncurls, a burden falling from his back and the crease between his eyebrows disappearing. Nick laughs, and laces his hands with hers gently.
"Yeah. Just some things. We don't need to have everything figured out, Will."
Will smiles, a sudden, small burst of a thing. He looks down at their hands, fond gaze resting upon them for a moment, before looking up. "Nick?"
She hums, meeting his eyes. When he doesn't speak for a moment she quirks an eyebrow. "Will?"
Will blinks at her twice, one of his hands gently touching down on her hip as he sits up. "You're my person, you know that?"
Nick smiles as she follows his movements; his hands rest gently on her hips. "And you're always going to be mine."
Will leans over, and Nick lets him come so close that she can't see his face any longer--now, it's just the feeling of his breath on her lips and the brush of their noses and this same frightening feeling from so long ago as she lets her eyes flutter shut.
He hesitates, and Nick takes a leap of faith.
She leans up and presses her mouth to his, and this--this is what she'd felt the first time they'd seen each other again, this crash of a wave into something bigger than just a little crush, this flood of want, need, more.
This is... everything.
He lets her tug him closer with a muffled exclamation of shock that turns into something of a pleased noise, his hands rising to touch her; Nick lets herself get lost in the ocean of sensations--his mouth releasing a hot exhale into hers, his one hand pulling her flush against him and the other tangling itself in her hair, her fingers dancing across his shoulders and up his neck before resting on his cheeks.
They laugh as Nick's excited movements bring them down onto the bed, with Will at the bottom and Nick sprawled across him, and break apart before coming together again and rolling onto their sides.
Will makes a noise that sounds like he's trying to speak after what feels like forever, breaking off from her with a slow inhale that has Nick feeling a little breathless herself. "Nick--" he starts, and then this sound escapes him like he's doing something terribly wrong and he's kissing her again, but slowly now--more languid, something that makes her feel like they have all the time in the world. When they pull apart again, Nick slides closer, gentle and careful.
"I love you for as long as the sun shines," he says, voice hushed and uncalled for, and for a moment Nick feels cradled in moonlight and stars before she returns to Will's steady breaths and the weight of his hands in hers.
Nick smiles.
"I love you for infinity," she says, and when he dips his head to kiss her, the words etch themselves into their skin and the sky opens for them to soar.