Chapter Text
William Gold has wanted from six years old to have a soulmate as lovely as his mama. She had often given comedic retellings of her soulmate meeting over the dinner table, leaving him and his sister 'ooh’ing and smirking, drowning the cheesiness of the story in mouthfuls of exploded peas.
“And you know, we thought that it was going to be something simple like ‘lie’ or ‘curse’ or ‘argue’, as it usually was. That morning, I woke up, and the first thing we saw on our wrists were-”
“‘Meet your soulmate’!” William chanted diligently, for the umpteenth time, just to feel the immense surge of satisfaction as she seamlessly continues after them,
“-and we literally screamed in excitement! Well I’m not sure if your dad did, but-”
“I did,” dad snorts- William huffs a laugh as he tries to imagine his dad screeching. Maybe with a higher pitched voice than now, and lighter on his feet as he hurls over the covers and jumps out of bed.
After dinner, William would look at his wrist with equal parts longing and curiosity, and think about what pretty lady he could encounter one day. But, pfft. Marrying was what old people did (he cringes thinking of his mom and dad), and he was far from old. He wasn’t going to settle down, make kids, eww. What a boring life.
“What d’you want to do when you grow up?” His sister asks him.
There was but a pinprick of uneasiness, thinking about the day when he grows old and starts thinking that finding your soulmate is going to be a priority. William can’t imagine it. How did old people have so much time to do that? Meanwhile, he had heard horror stories from his sister about high school and bullies and diplomas and those dreaded group projects. He hasn’t got time for soulmates.
Someday, though- he’d have a good time with his soulmate, they’d take long strolls in the park, and she would never ever annoy him like some other people do.
William couldn’t imagine spending half his life with someone who got on his nerves.
I’m mature for my age- he can’t help but smile a little. Thinking about soulmates already!
Or maybe, he’d meet his soulmate young. He had heard of people doing that. There was a girl he had seen, on Youtube, who had met her soulmate, and she was just two years older than him. There were those who had their cousins or brother as soulmates, friends who spent years with each other before discovering that they were soulmates. Plenty people whose soulmates die.
“What’s your mark today?” William’s sister comes around to take a peek, tugging a little at his wrist. He knows it was futile to hide it - she would see eventually, his sleeve would slip down during dinner and they would see without making any comments.
But he still cups his wrist defensively. His sister had tried using force once, and it had hurt a lot. But she was so very apologetic afterwards - and William gained a new source of leverage that day.
His sister narrows her eyes, but releases his wrist and slinks away with surprisingly little resistance. She would see it later anyway. In a family, there was no way to hide it.
“You know I’ll see it eventually, right? Soulmarks aren’t even that big of a deal. I’m okay with mine,” she insists.
He was being petty, he knew. Whatever. It was something that he didn’t feel good about. So William pouts at his sister.
“No one cares, William,” she says matter-of-factly, and walks away to find something else to do.
He crosses his legs and turns over his wrist in his lap- curled up in a bundle of darkness. There, written in blocky, rough-edged, capitalised letters: STEAL.
It looked almost like a whisper-shout, “Hey everybody, William’s soulmate stole something today!”
He inwardly cursed the passive-aggressive, blocky letters. Why couldn’t he get cursive like his mom?
Hers was elegant-like, something like a polished 007 criminal film.
His marks looked like something from the ten commandments, the type of ‘seven sins’ stuff he’d see in movies, written in blood.
Although- a spark of curiosity ignited in his chest, to wonder what his soulmate stole that day.
Maybe it was a pen. Maybe two dollars they slipped into their pocket.