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Spring 1993
It's bullshit. People talk about soulmates and this "bond" thing like they're something you can see or hear, like they're everywhere, and everyone's got one, and that just pisses Logan off. He knows what it's like to be able to smell someone and tell it's them just from their scent; he knows what it sounds like when a butterfly flaps its wings on a hot summer day. If a soulbond were anything a person could feel, he'd have felt one by now.
He's not so crazy about the idea that somebody's just born a submissive or a dominant, and sooner or later they wind up with their other half, complete. He's fucked older guys who said they were the toppiest fucking dominant on the block; he's bent over for, or taken orders from, girls who swore up and down they were meant to be on their knees. Being stapled into a role for the rest of his life is another part of this bond business that seems like complete and utter bullshit.
"The idea that people are permanently settled with a particular role their whole lives has a little bit of basis in fact, and obviously tradition, but it's nowhere near as clearcut as that," his guidance counselor keeps telling him. That's one of the easy parts; maybe in the fifties and sixties people insisted that a dom was a dom and a sub was a sub, but nowadays people are starting to identify as switches, and relationships where both people are doms or both people are subs are getting more common-- or maybe not more common, maybe now they're just more likely to be out. Either way, Mrs. Willis-- call me Sonya, she said, when he walked into her office for the first time this year, like they were going to be friends or something-- doesn't have a problem with Logan's refusal to quantify himself as a dominant or a submissive. The other kids think it's kind of weird, but fuck it; they also think it's weird that he can make bone claws come out of his hands, and that he heals as fast as they can kick the shit out of him.
So yeah. He's used to being stuck with a reputation for being weird. But even Mrs. Willis has some trouble with it when he finally tells her what he really thinks.
"You think people are making the soulbonding process up?" she repeats. She stares at him-- not the way parents do when their kids figure out there's no Santa Claus, but like she seriously thinks he's going to snap and start howling and snarling and drooling in her office.
"I just think people make a big fucking deal out of it when it's nothing," Logan says, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest, the lift of his eyebrows challenging her to call him on the language.
"James, sometimes there's a significant age difference between bondmates," Willis offers. "It's possible ey isn't old enough to have eir end of the bond fully-developed. I know that's hard, especially when all your friends are starting to really sense theirs, but..."
"Or maybe everyone buys into this shit and just pretends the bond's there when it's not. And nobody has the balls to admit it." Logan shrugs. "Whatever. It's been half an hour, that's enough for the school to pat itself on the back and be sure its resident troublemaker isn't going to go nuts and start clawing people to death, right?"
Willis leans back in her chair, and Logan has to give her credit: she doesn't look at his hands. "Have you considered what you'll do when you graduate? Your grades are fine, you could easily get into a university, a community college if that suits you and your family better--"
"Not interested in college," Logan says. "I don't know. They have a mutant division in the military, don't they?"
Willis nods. "I can get you some pamphlets about it, if you'd like."
It seems like as good a way to waste his life as any, and maybe people in the army won't spend all their time talking about their fucking soulmates. Logan shifts his shoulders, shrugging again. "Whatever."
*
Fall 2004
Doug slides half of his tuna fish sandwich to Kitty; she trades him half of her pastrami-on-rye. "I wonder what it feels like."
Kitty reaches into herself, finds the solid presence of her other half. He's angry right now. He's angry a lot. Someday she'll meet him and find out why, but she's used to that raw core of anger, the tightly-coiled rage that tries to burst through the bond and used to leave her reeling. Or snarling. When she was six years old and it started becoming obvious that she wasn't just a normal kid with normal outbursts, she tried explaining to her parents that it wasn't her, it was someone else. Imaginary friends are perfectly normal, especially for young mutants, said the psychiatrists. They need to feel like they aren't alone. We'll try teaching her some anger management techniques, and if that doesn't work, there are a lot of medications that are very effective for emotional disorders. Meanwhile, here's a mutant-friendly private school you might want to look into; it's only twenty minutes from Northbrook...
Thank God the meditation and journaling worked. Thank God her parents never look at her journals, all those letters to her soulmate, because by the time she was eight, she'd realized what was going on in her mind. Even then she'd heard stories about what people do to kids who sense the bond too early. Nobody knows anyone it's actually happened to, but everyone knows it happens...
Doug leans forward, lowering his voice conspiratorially; it shocks Kitty out from her connection to her other half, and she blinks three times to get her emotions separated from his. "I heard Piotr Rasputin already found his soulmate."
"Who?"
"The guy who helps out with Mrs. Brisby's after-school art program," Doug says, rolling his eyes. "He's huge, you couldn't have missed him..."
Kitty shrugs. "I don't notice people like that," she says. But she perks up a little, realizing what Doug said. "Wait, he found his soulmate? How long was he looking, when did he sense the bond?" She frowns. Doug said it like it was a big deal, but... "How old is he?"
"He's only fifteen! Can you even acknowledge at fifteen?"
"No," Kitty says, morose. It's not fair, really. She's only ten. She shouldn't be identifying with people who already know their soulmates. She should be with Doug on it, wondering what the bond feels like, reading endless books like Are You There Soulmate? It's Me, Margaret, doing rune and tarot and Ouija board readings to try to find out who it's going to be, when they'll finally meet in person.
She could be poring over Cosmo quizzes the way Doug does: What Kind Of Domme Are You? or What Kind Of Sub Are You?, Who's Your Ideal Celebrity Submissive? or Who's Your Ideal Celebrity Dominant? Doug takes both versions of all the quizzes; he says he can't tell yet, and then rolls his eyes, because all the grown-ups he's asked have just told him "Oh, sweetie, you're too young to be thinking about your orientation yet."
Kitty is already sick of being told she's too young for things, so she's never had that conversation with a grown-up. She might be a domme... she's pretty good at leading group projects at school. Or she could be a sub; she's pretty quiet. Or all of that could just be something people make up because some people are bossy and want to have an excuse to be like that all the time. Who knows?
"People are trying to figure out whether Piotr's a dom or a sub," Doug says, going on despite Kitty's silence. "I bet he's a sub."
"Wait... Is he the really big guy? From wherever, Russia or something? The one who turns into metal?"
"Yeah! I thought you'd noticed him." Doug flashes her a grin. "Isn't it cool? I hope my mutation does that, when it finally kicks in."
"What's so great about turning into metal?" Kitty's mutation has already kicked in, but no way is she telling anybody she can walk through walls until she can figure out how to keep her clothes on while she does it. "And why do you think he's a sub? Like you said, he's huge."
"I don't know. You don't have to be big to be a dom, do you?" He looks worried for a second. He's not really much taller than she is, so she can see his point.
But this is the problem with talking to kids her own age: they don't know anything. Maybe she should try talking to Piotr; she can't help but be curious what this has all been like for him. Fifteen is really young to have actually found one's soulmate. But... on the other hand, it's well within the normal range for sensing the bond. He probably wasn't feeling it at ten, or eight, or six. He probably started feeling it when he was twelve, and just got really lucky.
She could ask, though. The after-school art program... she could at least see if he's willing to talk about it. Maybe he did feel it at a young age. Maybe she's not the only person in the world who's never known what it was like not to feel it.
"What do you think you do if you find your soulmate that early?" Doug says, propping his chin on his hand. "When can you actually acknowledge?"
"You can't acknowledge until you're at least eighteen," she says, although she's not completely sure about that, and eighteen seems awfully far away. She hopes it's not eighteen. Maybe it depends on the bondmates. She grabs one of Doug's carrot sticks to distract herself. "So I don't know, I guess they just... wait."
"Like the rest of us," Doug sighs.
Kitty nods. Her lunch doesn't seem so interesting now, but she picks up her half of the tuna fish sandwich anyway. She tries to smile, or to come up with a wistful look. Anybody else would look wistful. "Like the rest of us."
*
March 2006
Logan's claws snap out. He bares his teeth-- something a whole lot darker than fuck you is happening in the back of his brain. He's so goddamn sick of people. The whole fucking month of March pisses Logan off. You'd think the worst would be February, motherfucking Valentine's Day, but no, March is fucking awful, because there are all those people who got lucky and found their soulmates on February 14th, or who turned a corner during their walk of shame on the morning of the 15th, and suddenly everyone's in the goddamn honeymoon phase of their shiny new soulbonds, acting like they're the only people in the world.
And then there are bars where people go if they didn't find their soulmate on the 14th, or the 15th, or any other time in the whole goddamn month of February. It's where people go if they don't want to hear a fucking thing about Valentine's Day or true love or destiny.
Tempers run pretty high there. Fights are the order of the day. No harm, no foul; anybody in that kind of a bar expects to throw a punch or piss somebody off. Truth is, most people want that; they want to blow off steam. It's just that most of the time, people blowing off steam don't have adamantium claws.
"Hey! Logan, cool it, c'mon, calm down." Scott grabs Logan by the shoulder and squeezes, and he almost gets his hand cut off for his trouble. It's only the fact that Jean would be pissed that keeps Logan from snapping at Scott, too.
"I'm calm," Logan barks. It comes out with a growl.
"It was an accident," Scott says calmly. Easy for him to be calm and all that shit, he's got his damn soulmate. He's just out here to keep Logan company, and maybe try to keep him from slicing anybody up.
Just humoring Logan, because lucky him, his soulmate's at home, waiting for him. Waiting for Scott the way she used to wait up for Logan. Three years Jean would wait up for Logan, calm about the fact that she hadn't found her soulmate yet, determined not to push it. If it happens, it happens, and if not, it wasn't meant to be, she said, right up until the day she walked into a fucking Starbucks and saw Scott in line, three ahead of her. But hey, she was nice enough to text.
"Okay, Logan-- it's okay. Just put the claws away--"
Logan snarls again, right at Scott this time. "Pushy motherfucker, like you know, like you care, fuck you, asshole--"
--and the strangest sensation comes over him, a solid core of something cool and soft and clean. He shakes his head, what the fuck, and tries to steady himself, holding onto that pissed-off feeling. "You--"
His pissed-off feeling is no match for whatever's going on in his brain. He sheathes his claws and puts both hands to his head, trying to work it out. His healing factor should be taking care of it if he's sick, if this is some kind of stroke. But when it doesn't get better, he stumbles forward, nearly knocking into the asshole who bumped Logan before and made him drop his cigar. It's not like he could smoke it in here, he hadn't even lit the thing, and bam, down it went into a puddle of spilled beer. He might even have been willing to put up with that if the beer hadn't been PB-fucking-R. Five-dollar cigar, gone to waste.
Scott looks at Cigar Asshole and grabs Logan by the arm. "How about you settle up our bar tab and I get him out of here?" Scott asks.
"Deal," Cigar Asshole says fervently, and Scott drags Logan outside the bar.
"What's going on?"
"Don't know," Logan grunts. He bends forward at the waist, bracing himself on his knees. "Fuck. My head."
"I'll call Jean--"
Jean. Logan's an idiot; he should have thought of that before. It could have been Jean, she's got some telepathy... baby steps, but he knows she can almost read his mind.
Except that's when they're naked and in the same room, not when he's in the armpit of Queens and Jean's at home in Manhattan. Scott pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and dials Jean's number. Even without Jean on speakerphone, Logan can hear both sides of the conversation.
"Jean? Ma'am, it's me."
"How's it going, baby?"
"Not so well. Logan's... I can't tell, he's holding onto his head like he's got a migraine--"
"--except he doesn't get migraines. Can he hear me?"
Logan nods, and Scott relays that to Jean. "He can hear you."
"Logan, are you in pain?"
He shakes his head. It's not pain, it's... he feels calm, somewhere, and something's tugging at him. "I got... it's like being..." He grasps for words and gets nowhere. "I don't know. Like..." He gestures at the base of his skull, where it feels like the tug is coming from. "It's..."
There's a sense of warmth that washes through him, a little bit of calm-- and then a burst of radiant joy that he knows isn't coming from inside his own head. He tries to pull back against that tug, the strand at the base of his skull that's getting clearer all the time, and he gasps. No pulling back, no-- whatever this is, it'd be like trying to pull away from his own arm.
"Logan, can you hear me?" Jean again. "Logan! Where do you feel it?"
He gestures at the base of his skull again, and Scott says, "The base of his skull, it's-- oh my God, Jean."
"Are you sure?" Jean sounds intent but no longer urgent. "It could be something else..."
"Logan, hey." Scott grabs Logan's shoulder. "Hey. Listen. Follow that back, okay? Follow that feeling, it's like sliding down a rope, like..." He makes a frustrated sound in his throat. "Like falling backwards into somebody's arms."
Logan leans back, hand at the base of his skull, and for a second he has this nauseating sense of vertigo--
--and then somebody catches him.
His eyes are wide open, but he's not seeing anything. He's feeling, all in his head, all in her head, it's the scariest fucking thing he's ever felt, it's-- it's--
He looks back up at Scott, who's grinning at him like a proud fucking papa.
"You got it. Finally," Scott says. "About fucking time."
"It's," Logan says weakly, "bullshit," and he passes out right there, keeling over on Scott's lap. He hopes like fuck he breaks something.
*
February 2010
Kitty rushes home from classes, grabs her purse, and runs down to the bathroom. She looks herself over-- makeup, right, lip gloss, eyeliner-- fuck, no, now she looks like she's playing dress-up. This is stupid. She's never going to look like anything other than what she is, and what she is... that's complicated.
She's been at Columbia for a year, super-early admission. It's not that she's genius-level smart (although she's damn good at the hard sciences and even better with computers), it's not that she's a prodigy...
But she's motivated. The rest of her life is out there, so close, she can feel it getting closer and closer every single day, and she wants it so much she almost can't stand it.
Sixteen is old enough. She's been waiting her entire life for this, and the bond is so strong now, her soulmate's presence so bright... sometimes she can feel him so clearly it's as if he's only minutes away from her, as if she could turn a corner and see him standing there.
She scrubs the makeup off impatiently and heads out of the residence hall. Downstairs, her Vespa's waiting for her, and she tosses her purse into the space beneath the seat and gets on her way.
*
These are the things Kitty knows about her soulmate:
She knows her mate's a he. She used the usual gender-neutral pronouns for the first year or so after she turned twelve, when people her age finally started saying they could feel the bond. The first few it happened to, all her friends' parents just seemed to think it was cute, but when it was more and more of them, the parents stopped giving them patronizing, indulgent smiles. It's funny; they all must have been through it before, surely they remember being twelve or thirteen and just knowing, down deep, that their other half was out there. But when it happened to their kids, the parents started cracking down on them, a gut-instinct fear that their children would be growing up too fast. That they'd be making some other person, some stranger, the center of their universe.
Kitty's mate has been the center of her universe since, she thinks, the day she was born. But she doesn't tell anyone about him until three of her friends are tapped into theirs for sure, and she only mentions that she's sure her mate's male when Doug says he thinks his is male, too.
Other than gender, she knows her mate still has issues with anger, and he still struggles with pain, resentment. She's there for him now, sending all her hard-won calm and meditation through the bond when he needs it, but it doesn't always help. Sometimes it does, and she can feel him reaching for her. Sometimes not, and his end of the bond goes dim for a while, like he's drawn a curtain between them or something.
But he always comes back.
She knows he isn't waiting for her. At twelve and thirteen, the odd shock of her soulmate's arousal was scary and confusing, too many sensations for her to handle. She wonders how it was for him, feeling it when she figured out the trick to masturbation, the art of touching herself. She definitely has it down now, and while it sort of kills her to know he's out there having actual sex with someone else while she's just alone in her bed, bedroom door locked, fingers working roughly between her legs... she'd rather feel it than not. Any day. Every day, if she could.
She knows he's older. A lot older; she knows he must be at least old enough that his end of the bond was fully-formed by the time she was born, so he's at least twelve years older than she is. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. It won't matter. It wouldn't matter if he were forty or fifty or sixty. He's hers, and the instant she meets him in person, she'll make sure he knows it, too.
Because this is the other thing she knows:
She's the dominant half of their bond.
At ten she had no idea, and at twelve it wasn't really obvious-- she could feel something shifting in the bond, something settling inside herself, but that was pretty damn early to be certain. At fourteen, though, in the middle of her SATs, she felt him getting angry-- and there was no time for that distraction, this ridiculous test was going to decide whether she got to move on with her life or whether she was going to be stuck waiting again.
She sent a swift, fierce bubble of calm through the bond, and got a snapping bite of emotion in response.
No. You're mine. And you're calming down because I want that. Do it now.
Words don't travel through the bond, not as such, but she felt something like... a yelp, a sense of someone whose hand had just been slapped. And then she got a wave of contrite obedience.
She aced the SATs, but it would have been worth bombing the test just to know.
*
Kitty's parents were excited about her being accepted to Columbia. She was accepted to a lot of other universities, too: Carnegie-Mellon, MIT, UC-Berkeley, University of Washington, Georgia Tech, Purdue. Purdue would have made them really happy; it had a top-20 computer science program, and it was two and a half hours away from their home in Chicago.
Columbia won not for its computer science program, but because when she stepped off the plane, she could feel him. All the places she'd been, all the trips she'd taken to see different universities, sometimes she felt him getting further away, sometimes he felt closer. But in New York, getting off that plane felt like coming home.
She's taken hours and hours of long walks, jogged in Central Park and hit up all the tourist spots, spent days riding the subways with no particular destination in mind.
She knows where the tug gets deeper, where his presence feels richer in her mind.
Her Vespa putters through traffic, and she follows the strand of their connection, ready for this. Really ready for it.
*
Logan's standing outside his favorite bar, cigar in hand, just waiting for somebody to come by and try to bust his ass for smoking. It's been a rotten lousy motherfucker of a week, and about the only thing that's making it better is the cigar he's smoking and the beer he's about to have. Maybe if he can wind down a little tonight... maybe if he's not too keyed up for it, there'll be a little something with Jean and Scott later on this week. Not tonight, because it's motherfucking Valentine's Day, and they're doing something sweet with, who knows, whips and chains, and if Jean's smart, gagging Scott. But later. If he's lucky. Lucky enough to get squeezed in, when other people have the time.
Active bond or not, he's still pretty convinced this soulmate crap is bullshit.
Except that as he smokes his cigar-- what's left of it-- he realizes he's not feeling any less keyed up. He's feeling more keyed up by the second, and he pulls away from the wall, pacing back and forth. His palms are sweating, and he's got an urge to hurt someone, or let his claws loose, or take off running and not look back.
The little putt-putt-putt of a scooter catches his attention. It's a few blocks away, by the sound of it, but geez, anybody who's enough of a wuss to bring a Vespa down here probably deserves to get mugged. It's not his problem. It's really-- it's really not--
He puts his cigar out as the midnight-blue Vespa rounds a corner and comes into view. It slows as it approaches him, and the rider takes her helmet off, tossing her hair back and looking at him expectantly.
She's all of sixteen, if that. He could probably fit her in the palm of his hand; she's tiny. She's not even trying to dress up or look like she's all grown up; she's wearing capri-length cargo pants, little plaid Chucks, an olive green hoodie, and a fucking Queen t-shirt.
He feels like falling over. He feels like throwing up. He's pretty sure he's going to have to sit down here in a minute, because this is-- this is--
She cuts her engine, swings her leg over the back of her scooter, and sets her helmet down on the seat before walking over to him. Getting closer doesn't make her seem any bigger; when he looks down at her, it's like looking down at a miniature person, some kind of Lilliputian.
Except she's the biggest thing he's ever been close to, and he's just gaping at her with his mouth open like a fucking fish.
She looks him over, head to foot, and he holds his breath while her head's tipped down, because if this isn't-- if she doesn't-- he doesn't know what he'll do if she meets his eyes and he sees disappointment, because he's been saying this is bullshit all his life, and it should be, okay, okay, but if she's disappointed it will fucking kill him.
When she looks at him again, he can see all kinds of things in her expression. But there's no startlement, no fear. Nothing even remotely resembling disappointment. He can almost breathe again.
"I'm Kitty," she says. "And you're mine."
There's nothing complicated about those words; people say them to each other every day. There is every possible fucking complication about this situation, motherfucking hell.
He tells her, "Yeah," and he watches her smile, and there are a lot of things this is. But as it turns out, bullshit isn't one of them.
-end-