Chapter Text
Another wind-knocking blow to the gut – another sign that maybe it should’ve ended for him last year, and that he shouldn’t have even been around anymore. There was nothing to look forward to, nothing waiting for him. At least that’s what the events of the early morning seemed to mean for him.
Alex walked into school by second period that day, a little more distraught by the earlier discovery than he thought he’d be. He took his usual seat beside Zach’s chair with a tired huff as he plopped down after a half-hearted scolding directed at him once he entered the room and a mumbled apology.
Zach’s obnoxious grin came into his line of vision after a couple of minutes, the boy expecting Alex to humor him and spill. “Happy birthday,” he whispered through his teeth, doing that annoying Z-Man elbow nudge with only the teasing, slinky lilt of his voice. Alex raised his eyebrows in thanks, the straight line of his mouth still firmly intact, and Zach scrunched his face, accepting the challenge.
He dragged his chair right up next to Alex, the feet screeching loudly across the classroom floor, earning more disapproval from Mr. Orman, and Zach explained it off as ‘needing to help Alex.’
“Happy eighteenth birthday…” Zach said, letting the silence do the nudging for him. Alex rolled his eyes in return, less in annoyance than in frustration and absolute hurt. He looked over at Zach’s smiling, expectant face, and he brought his hand to his right jacket sleeve, lifting it up to reveal the very-much-skin-toned design on his wrist. Zach’s eyes grew as he stared at it, and Alex quickly shoved his sleeve back down.
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Alex said, heat climbing up his neck to his cheeks, and he started fiddling the edge of his table. The shame had almost consumed him right at that moment, but he’d only let it show through the flush that spread across the skin on his face and the betrayal in his eyes. Zach didn’t dare move or talk, staying only to monitor. It was only when Mr. Orman gave another pointed clearing of his throat that Zach conceded and scooted his chair back to its regular place, but never once breaking from observing his best friend.
Alex didn’t quite understand. He’d heard that it might happen, but everyone had always said that it was so rare – practically unheard of - that he’d never had any reason to second-guess it. The only question anyone ever considered was what color their marks would be once they turned eighteen.
Through the first half of the period, all Alex could do was to ruefully stare at his mark, lightly tracing his finger over the raised skin again and again. If he squinted, he could see the embossed skin twirling around his wrist and creeping up the back of his hand and up his palm like a glove of vines and small, lush leaves. Over the years, he’d imagined it in all different colors, and the kind of lives they would bring with them – the dark purple of wealth and nobility, or the blood red of fire, passion, courage, or the balance and, finally, peace of a hue of green or blue that could finally ease the constant anxiety that had found a home in Alex’ chest. He couldn’t help it.
It was actually never something that he looked forward to until recently. It had never been something he even particularly wanted. He almost loathed it – the idea of being predestined, of belonging to someone or someone belonging to him, no choice, rhyme, or reason. But after everything that happened within the past couple of years, after almost not being here for this day, it’d been something to hold on to, maybe even look forward to.
Alas, no dice.
Alex hadn’t noticed at first when his hands started to tense, but his fingernails began to dig harder into his mark, and he’d shaken himself out of his trance long enough to stop before breaking skin. He stared at the portions of his wrist where flat met raised and the dashes of dipped skin that were made from his insistent nails which caused violent itches and made Alex want to reach and scratch. The tenseness transferred to tight, tight grips on the sides of his table, knuckles turning a dangerous pale, beads of steaming sweat trekking from his scalp down to his temples, red hot cheeks, grinding gritted teeth, blown out beady pupils and eyes getting drier by the second but he couldn’t seem to blink them shut. He whipped his head with raised eyebrows to Zach, whose attention was caught immediately by the sudden movement, and Zach, momentarily paralyzed by the look of complete terror on his friend’s face, shot his hand straight into the air and shouted at their teacher.
“Mr. Orman,” he rushed, “Alex is a fucking tomato, and I’m taking him to the nurse’s office.” Tears began to spring in Alex’ eyes as Zach moved swiftly, commoting and practically knocking his chair over getting both his and Alex’ bags and dragging his friend off of his chair. “Alex you need to come with me, okay?” he said, and Alex could only nod in return, his jaw wired tight, and they made their way through the worried faces of their classmates and out of the room.
-
The two, of course, did not go to the nurse’s office and instead ran to Zach’s car, They both understood by now that whenever Alex got worked up just like this, he needed someone to be right there for him, but at the same time he needed to be left alone. It hadn’t happened in a while, but their procedure was complete muscle memory at that point – Alex in the passenger’s seat and the speakers playing Alex’ current flavor of the month, Zach simply keeping his cool in the driver’s seat while waiting for the attack to subside and for Alex to calm down.
Alex reached to turn the music off a few minutes later, feeling too low and proceeding to recline his seat, his head suddenly feather light and his body fighting the urge to take a quick nap.
“To be honest,” Zach said, reclining his chair along with him, “I didn’t think you’d be so affected by something like this.”
“I didn’t think I would be either,” Alex replied. He sighed and gave the car door beside him a weak punch and started thumping out a soft rhythm against the leather padding.
“But I guess I’m more shocked that this even happened,” Zack continued, “like… what the fuck is that about? Like what does it even mean?”
“It means they’re probably dead already. Or they aren’t even born yet. But most likely dead.” Alex flashed back to earlier that day, to his parents with him at the dining table in the dark of the morning, readied with an ice pack and a stress ball, the excitement and anticipation in their faces slowly turning to confusion and disbelief when the burning sensation his mom always warned him about never came and the wait for his mark to reveal its color turned fruitless. They’d been optimistic – convincing themselves that the time on Alex’ birth certificate had been off, and that maybe they were off for as much as half an hour.
No one knew quite what to do other than wait, and Alex finally decided to call it a night and left for bed with a broken voice, the most dejected his parents had seen him in almost two years. And as much as he tried, Alex had not gone to sleep, the dark feeling in the pit of his chest pushing him down a Reddit thread spiral of memoirs, personal accounts, and support groups by people whose marks had never turned and whose soul mates they’d never met. The more he scrolled through the stories, the sweatier his fingertips got while swiping at his phone screen which grew increasingly hot with relentless use, and the colder his blood turned.
“Fuck, I have no idea what to say,” Zach said with a sigh and a slide of his fingers through his hair. “It can’t be some kind of fluke? Like maybe all this time we got your birthday wrong and it’s actually next year or something? Or maybe this really is the color of your mark! Has it ever just been bone white before? I mean it could happen, right? Or what if it’s some kind of weird Mayan thing like how they got 2012 wrong or whatev-“
“Stop, please,” Alex said, defeated. Zach huffed and brought his seat back up, wanting to say more, but ultimately giving Alex his time. “You know those points in your life when you tell yourself, ‘well this might as well happen?’” His lips curled up with a menace. It was an expression Zach had been all too familiar with, and it never failed to scare him, knowing what Alex was capable of doing, to others, sure, but mostly to himself. “I’m just trying to keep myself the fuck together and make my peace with this.”
Zach looked on at him in pity, Alex’ eyes still fixated on the black leather lining of the car’s ceiling, so pristine he could almost make out his reflection on it – that of sad, tired eyes and resignation. But he decided it was better that he couldn’t, tired of looking at himself and determining what else could be different, what about himself should and shouldn’t change.
Alex felt his eyes start to drift closed but he was jolted awake by the sound of a starting car and the gravity beneath him suddenly shifting. He pulled the lever from off to the side and his seat immediately shot up to the sight of Zach driving out of the Liberty High parking lot, and quickly gaining speed.
“Um, what the hell are you doing?” Alex asked, pulling his seatbelt across himself.
“Well, it’s still your eighteenth birthday, Standall, and I sure as hell am not gonna let you drown in all this bullshit that’s happening to you because you’re better than some fucking mark on your wrist and some piece of shit dead person who’s missing out on a great guy. So I’m treating you to the best goddamn burger you’ve ever had in your fucking life, and we’re gonna make today a fucking fantastic day for you, okay?” By the way he impassioned his speech with the steely focus in his eyes, Alex would have thought he was driving 80 miles per hour. But it brought a smile to his face, however small it may have been. “Text Tyler and Charlie, too, tell them to meet us.”
“We can’t just skip class, Zach,” Alex said, grabbing his phone anyway and quickly texting the two.
“We’ll be back by the time lunch ends, I’m not dumb.”
“You’re kind of dumb, let’s be real,” Alex said, chuckling. Zach seemed pleased with this development and eased his pressure on the gas pedal.
He got a reply from Charlie almost instantly with a series of emojis that vaguely resembled affirmation and what Alex presumed to be a joke about Tyler being dragged along on a leash. It sent calm so quickly through Alex’ chest that he could feel his eyelids swiftly start to betray him. Looking forward to it, he finally settled on replying, his lazy fingers having to retype more than once.
“I think soul mates are overrated anyway,” Zach said. “They could’ve just been a waste of time for you, don’t worry Lex.”
I didn’t deserve one anyway, Alex thought. He looked over to where Zach’s hands gripped on the steering wheel and admired the design on Zach’s right wrist, a simple red bracelet of thick, dashed lines. He thought about the amazing person who’d eventually get to share his soul and who that might be. He recalled the one point in his life when he could’ve sworn he knew exactly who it was, and decided he was much too tired at that moment to fight the urge to just admit that –
“You know, for a second there I thought it might be you.”
Zach didn’t respond at first, and Alex leaned back, lowering his backrest once again.
He kept his eyes closed, feeling the slight nausea coming back, not used to being in this position with the motion of the car and the lack of music. He kept his silence again, taking the opportunity to berate himself, not for confessing, but for burdening Zach with the responsibility of having to tread lightly and say the right thing in fear of anything happening. “It’s okay, you don’t have to say anything,” Alex said. “Please don’t think about it anymore. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to apologize for,” Zach said without missing a beat.
If Alex had been honest with himself, he’d known all along that it could’ve never been Zach who was meant for him. Zach was much too loyal of a friend, and Alex had only been too lonely. Again, he repeated to himself, he was a burden, a responsibility. And Alex’ truth was that Zach was much too full of life for the decaying shell that Alex had become. He was much too unhinged for Alex to just... bring him down and hold him back.
What kind of soul mate was Alex expecting then? Was it someone who would bring him back up from six feet under, someone he’d never accept, for their sake? Or was it someone who was as much of a disaster as him, someone to share the casket? Maybe that’s what the world thought he deserved in this life.