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Charlie’s parents had always regaled stories to him about soulmates. They told him that from a young age you’ll be able to hear fragments of thoughts coming from your soulmate. As children, this meant that you just get brief glimpses into whatever wild adventure they were getting up to, even though it was probably overly exaggerated. You didn’t have any control over what your soulmate could hear, at least not at the start. Over time and once you meet, you would be able to communicate better with them, working as one unit together almost subconsciously. The tenuous link between two people would grow stronger and unbreakable. Charlie loved these stories, he wanted to know as much as he possibly could about soulmates and he would often fall asleep thinking about the day he would find them.
Even at just 12 years old, Charlie was a hopeless romantic, he had always favoured cheesy romantic movies centred around soulmates over whatever gore filled slasher flick his friends had somehow gotten access to. Charlie just loved the idea of it all, the thought of finally meeting the person on the other side of the thoughts bouncing around his mind. His parents had told him that it wasn’t a life-changing moment, meeting your soulmate, it was a very gradual thing. The thoughts connected people like a mental red string of fate, you wouldn’t know who it was but there was a certainty that you would always end up in the right person's arms. A slow dance through life and into love followed with the realisation that sometimes you could have a conversation without even really realising that you’re not actively speaking.
His friends weren’t too interested in soulmates. They didn’t want to chase after it like Charlie did. On the rare occasion they talked about it they didn’t share too much, just saying that they heard a couple words from their soulmate every now and then. Which struck Charlie as odd because for as long as he can remember his soulmates thoughts were in his head almost constantly. At first it had been annoying, like a distant buzzing that never went away but over time, Charlie had started to look forward to whatever his soulmate was thinking about. The small insights he had gathered revealed a lot. His soulmate was sarcastic, swore an awful lot, had a deep hatred for math which Charlie completely understood and they liked music. A lot. He remembers being 13 years old and hearing his soulmate recite random letters, ‘D, D, B minor, A’ repeating through cycles of chords for hours in the evenings and Charlie was excited because his soulmate’s a musician and that’s so fucking cool.
So now, at 16 years old, Charlie was still just as excited to meet his soulmate. He lay in his bed, his eyes closed as he listened to his soulmate. They seemed to be cleaning their room, thoughts broken up into talking about their drawers and their closet, Charlie figured they probably liked to keep things neat which might be a problem since while Charlie wasn’t a messy person he just wasn’t exactly the most organised. He was too caught up in his thoughts he hadn’t noticed when his soulmates thoughts had turned to something much darker.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Charlie frowned, a wave of panic hitting him as the words echoed in his mind. The words themselves wouldn't have seemed too out of the ordinary but Charlie knew his soulmate, he knew how his thoughts worked and this was not within the norm. His soulmate was repeating the apologies, almost like a mantra over and over again invading his mind. He felt sick that he was even listening, his soulmate clearly distressed and Charlie was just listening in, a distant presence that clearly brought no sense of comfort to his other half. The apologies hadn’t been addressed to anyone at the start, but that changed as they continued. Each desperate ‘I’m sorry. followed by a different person. ‘Mom, dad, Peter, Jess, Hannah.’ The last two were names he had heard around the highschool, but they were too common and Charlie was too worried to really think too much about it all.
Charlie tried to keep the panic out of his thoughts, if his soulmate could hear he’s sure it wouldn’t help to have someone else’s anxiety invading your mind alongside your own distress. He tried to reach out, desperately trying to convey at least one reassuring thought that things will be okay but he knew it didn’t always work like that, especially considering he probably hadn’t met his soulmate yet.
“Fuck, hurts, I don’t-.”
The words came a lot weaker, fragments of his soulmates thoughts and it’s safe to say Charlie was panicking. His soulmate was hurt, they were hurt and he couldn’t do anything about it. He felt something slip, an almost unnoticeable shift in his mind but he could feel it, as though he had just lost something but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
Charlie remembers a conversation he had with his dad, only months after his mom had passed away. He asked his dad what happens now, what happens with the link between soulmates when one of them dies. His father just gave him a small smile, told him that he's too young to be thinking things like that and he shouldn’t worry because this won’t happen to Charlie for a long time. He remembers thinking that wasn’t a good enough answer, later slipping onto the computer and googling it. People had poured over essays explaining what it feels like to lose their soulmate, all of them having formed full bonds and having that bond broken by the simple mortality of human life. He remembers reading them describe it as a feeling of emptiness, reminiscent of normal grief except it didn’t go away as easily. Your whole life you’re tied to someone, two separate paths so heavily entwined until they become one, so to lose them would feel almost like losing half of yourself. Like losing your purpose, your future.
Minutes went by and he didn’t hear anything, his mind had become unbearably silent without his soulmates near constant thoughts running through it and he tried to calm himself down, find a logical explanation for this because he’s only 15 so his soulmate can’t be too out of his age range and that’s way too young to just die.
Charlie had stayed awake all night, the anxiety had drained him completely but the worry for his soulmate kept his eyes from falling shut. He sat on the edge of his bed but when his knee started violently bouncing up and down he stood up and paced his room a few times, completely incapable of sitting still for too long as he focused on trying to hear something, anything, coming from his soulmate.
He didn’t hear a single thing that night, or the night after. For weeks he heard nothing, complete radio silence from his soulmate and the feeling of emptiness didn’t ease at all and his mind went back to all those articles he had read when he was younger, how none of them had been written by someone who hadn’t yet met their soulmate and of course it just had to be him that went through it. With a bitter laugh he thought to himself, ‘there’s a first time for everything.’
———————————————————————
“Too bright, loud, too much.”
Charlie shot upright, his eyes wide and his breathing immediately picked up. It had been months since he had heard his soulmate and he could feel his eyes sting with tears as that light background buzz picked up again slightly. He hoped this wasn’t his mind playing tricks on him, like it had a few times in dreams, faraway fantasies of his soulmate’s voice coming back that were always so painful to wake up from, and so he forced himself to calm down at least a little bit, shutting his eyes, hands tightly fisted in his bed sheets as he mentally chanted ‘you’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay’ in the hopes that his soulmate could hear.
“I’m okay.”
Those two words were enough for him, his mind not quite yet returning to the constant buzz that it had been a few months ago but it was something and that was more than enough. He let out a heavy breath, though it turned into a disbelieving laugh. His soulmate was okay, they were alive, he didn’t want to think too far into the implications of them suddenly disappearing for months just to wake up one day because they were okay and that was all that mattered.
As weeks went by with his soulmate back he realised it wouldn’t go back to the way things were. At first Charlie had thought maybe he somehow got a new soulmate, a different one, but that thought had quickly been disproven. His soulmate’s thoughts were just as angry, vulgar and sarcastic as before but they were slightly less coherent and less frequent but it was a million times better than the silence Charlie had experienced for months.
It wasn’t until two years later that he had finally met his soulmate. Alex Standall. The boy who pushed Charlie away at all possible moments because it was easier for him to act that way than to allow himself to be loved. The boy that Charlie had eventually gotten to come out of his shell, showing him that it was okay to be scared because they’ll always have each other to fall back into. The sarcastic boy that swears an awful lot and hates math with a passion and loves music. He can’t play guitar as easily as he used to, but Charlie still hears him reciting chords in the late hours of the evening and Charlie still thinks its fucking cool that his soulmate is a musician.