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“It’s not fair, that’s all I’m saying.”
Cora sighed, looking up from her laptop and the 20 page paper from hell that was due in, oh great, 12 hours. She opened her mouth to tell Malia to stop distracting her, but someone beat her to it.
“We know, Malia,” Lydia said, without looking away from her textbook. She used the same dismissive tone that brought undergrads to their knees when she was TAing, but there was a fond smile on her face when she glanced up at Cora. “You’ve mentioned the unfairness of this whole situation several times tonight already. And yesterday. And for the whole last week.”
Lydia wrapped Cora’s blanket tighter around her and settled deeper into Cora’s tiny loveseat. The loveseat was stained and the stuffing was falling out in certain places, and it was really too big for a dorm room but Cora had found a way to shove it between her fake wood desk and her pathetic third-hand mini-fridge that come to college with every Hale child.
Lydia looked out of place in Cora’s bare dorm room, with its dirty, peeling tile and block walls. The tiny window was painted shut and covered in a layer of dust that barely let light in on a good day. The walls were beige and uncovered, except for a few family pictures Derek had brought up last time he’d visited and the Star Wars poster Laura had bought her last Christmas.
“I’m just being honest,” Malia said from her place on Cora’s tiny twin bed. Her head in the middle of the mattress and her feet up on the wall. Next to her, Stiles was sleeping head to foot in the bed like a normal person, using Malia's giant American history textbook to cover his face while his own mythology book was slowly sliding off his lap with every exhale.
Malia leaned over and rested her head on Stiles' hip, twisting so she could look at Cora.
“It’s your 21st, your marking day. That’s a big deal. We should be out celebrating, or at least hanging out at the boys’ apartment and doing the whole stupid traditional vigil thing.
"Or at least not sitting here and falling asleep while you write a paper,” Malia said, digging her chin into Stiles' stomach. He grumbled and tried to turn over, but settled when Malia patted his hip.
Cora blinked, letting the sting from her dry, tired eyes wash through her. Pulling an all nighter to finish this stupid paper had seemed like a good idea at the time, but Cora was beginning to wonder if maybe it would have been a good idea to start it like a week ago. Or maybe three weeks ago, when the professor recommended they all start. Possibly even a month and a half ago when Lydia offered to help her start researching.
“I told you guys that you didn’t have to wait with me,” Cora said, turning back to her laptop. She was pretty sure the last two sentences she’d written were just names of Pokemon over and over.
“Not the point,” Malia said, taking a deep breath and gearing up for another rant about the injustice of a professor refusing to grant an extension for a marking day.
“Leave it alone, Malia,” Lydia said from the couch, snapping her textbook closed. They’d all promised to bring something to study out of solidarity with Cora, but so far Lydia was the only one to even pretend to do any work.
“Fine,” Malia said, reaching up to Stiles' arm to rub at the tattooed L-I-A just peeking out from his shirt sleeve. “But don’t think I won’t remember this Professor Blake woman. She’s on my list.”
“Noted,” said Lydia from the couch, shooting Cora a smile. Malia’s list was legendary and long, including every person who had ever wronged her in order of worst to least offense.
Cora let herself smile back at Lydia, just a small one. She let herself soak in the way Lydia glowed even under the buzzing florescent lights of the dorm. She let herself feel her stupid crush on her stupid unattainable friend one more time before some jackass’ name showed up on Cora’s body and she was bound to them forever.
It wasn’t like she would ever have had a chance with Lydia anyway. Lydia had had her 21st birthday almost a year ago, and all Cora knew about her mark was that Lydia hadn’t met them yet. Otherwise, they’d be here, now, in Cora’s room, and Lydia would be smiling at them.
A knock on the door made Cora jump, and she pulled her eyes away from Lydia and her smiles and her eyes and her face. If anything about all this was unfair, it was Lydia’s face. And brain. And personality. Really, Lydia was just unfair to Cora.
Cora opened the door and was immediately tackled in a hug.
“Scott,” Cora said, forcing air through her most likely crushed lungs.
“Happy birthday!” Scott said, squeezing harder. “Happy marking day!”
Cora batted at Scott’s arm.
“I think she needs some air,” said Allison from the doorway. Scott let Cora go and beamed at her instead, taking a step back to let Allison wrap her arm around his waist.
“Sorry,” Scott said, shrugging. “Your brother told me to give you a hug from him, so I got kind of carried away.”
Cora felt herself scowling and couldn’t stop it. Granted, yes, Derek had known Scott first from their fraternity, but Cora had claimed Scott as her friend and that was that.
“Stop talking to my brother.” She turned to the room at large. “And I know one of you has been talking to Laura about me, so cut it out. Just because I’m younger than all of you idiots doesn’t mean you get to collude with my siblings to baby me.”
Cora took a look around the room. Malia was grinning from the bed, very familiar with her cousin’s hatred of being treated like a kid. Stiles was still asleep with a book over his face, although Cora gave it less than a minute before he realized Scott was here and woke up. Allison was stifling a laugh while Scott tried to look innocent, so at least Cora knew whose phone she needed to delete her siblings’ numbers from.
When Cora turned and walked back into the tiny room, Lydia was just raising an eyebrow at Cora, as if the very idea of her colluding with anyone was offensive. And god damnit, Cora would really appreciate it if her brain would stop finding everything Lydia did attractive. That shit had been fine when Cora was a stupid freshman with a crush on her brother’s unmarked friend who was never going to take a second look at her.
Now, Lydia was marked and Cora was about to be marked and Lydia wasn’t just Derek’s friends’ friend. Lydia was one of Cora’s best friends, one of the people she relied on to keep her sane when her family starting meddling and school got rough. Lydia was important to Cora, really massively important, and she wasn’t going to make things weird by making a pass at her marked friend.
“So,” said Allison, breaking the silence and making Cora realize once again that she was staring at Lydia. Cora pinched herself on the inner arm, just above the elbow, and sat back down at her desk. When she turned her chair to face the room, Lydia was rubbing at the crook of her own arm like it ached.
“Has it happened yet?” Allison asked, waggling her eyebrows at Cora. Cora shrugged in response.
“Nothing yet.”
“That’s all right,” said Scott, navigating the cramped room to sit on the floor leaning against Cora’s dresser. “It’s like 12:30, so it’s only actually been your birthday for half an hour. Mine didn’t show up until like 11:30 at night.”
Allison plopped down on the couch next to Lydia, squeezing into the small space remaining and letting one of her feet rest against Scott’s side. Scott turned and kissed the outside of her knee.
I was freaking out,” Scott said, smiling up at Allison, “thinking that Allison’s Scott was some other guy and I wouldn’t be marked at all.”
Without taking the book off his face, Stiles threw a pillow at Scott. Scott caught it with a quiet, “thanks bro” and put it between his back the dresser.
“I remember waking up on the morning of my birthday with mine,” Allison said, petting Scott’s hair. “Do you remember, Lyds? You were sleeping over and we woke up and my shoulder was all tingly and I just knew I’d been marked.”
“I remember” said Lydia, laughing. “You made me tell you what it said because you couldn’t see it, and then you made me get you a mirror so you could, and then you had me take a bunch of pictures of it before you ditched me to spend the rest of the day with Scott.”
Allison shrugged, and down by her feet Scott shrugged too.
“That was a good day,” Scott said, leaning against Allison’s leg.
Stiles made puking sounds, still lying on the bed with Malia’s book on his face.
“Are they making the puppy dog faces?” Stiles asked. “If they’re making the puppy dog faces, someone hit them. We’ve talked about this. Being the annoying, newly marked couple is Malia’s and my thing now, they had their turn.”
Malia rolled her eyes, slapping Stiles’ stomach with a resounding crack.
“It sounds cool to know the person you’re marked for when it happens," said Malia. "Definitely beats getting a stranger's name, because then you get to obsessively listen to every conversation around you for months until you hear some idiot called Stiles getting kicked out of the supermarket."
"Or," Stiles mumbled from underneath the textbook covering his face, "you get two names, and you spend a month wondering whether you should be trying to make out with your best friend until this girl tackles you while you're being very politely asked to leave the supermarket."
“Oh please,” said Scott, “like you didn’t think a little bit about making out with me before we were marked.”
“I just think it’s unfair that Malia and I are stuck with both of for the rest of our lives now,” Allison said, smiling at Malia while Malia nodded and laughed.
“True,” Malia said. “One of you two is bad enough, but we’re stuck with both.”
“Well,” said Lydia, voice dripping with faux sympathy “at least you have each other to share your pain.”
Cora tried and failed to stifle a choked out laugh, while Malia and Allison agreed that they probably qualified for sainthood and Scott and Stiles protested loudly. Through all the noise and commotion, Cora found herself looking at Lydia while Lydia looked back. Cora felt an itch just above the elbow of her left arm.
“What about you, Lydia?” Malia asked. “Allison knew Scott, Stiles knew Scott but not me, I didn’t know Stiles, obviously, and Scott knew he was going to end up marked platonically and romantically, but you never talk about you mark.”
“Malia,” Stiles said, finally sitting up and letting the book fall off his face. Her nudged Malia’s side and shot Lydia a look.
“What?” Malia asked, looking back and forth between Stiles and Lydia. “I mean, it’s been a year and I don’t even know where your mark is. We were all at your party, but you didn’t announce the name or anything.”
“Yeah Lydia,” said Allison, smirking, “why is that?”
Lydia shot Allison a venomous look that Cora liked to think Lydia learned from her.
“Actually,” Lydia said, “announcing has been decreasing in popularity since the 1960s, as has the traditional marking vigil. A lot of people choose to keep the name of their marked to themselves until they know for sure they’ve found them.”
Lydia rubbed at her arm again, right above the elbow. Cora remembered Lydia’s party, remembered not being able to go because she had gone back home that weekend for a family thing. She remembered briefly harboring the secret (and ridiculous) delusion that Lydia might call her and tell her it was her name tattooed forever on Lydia’s body.
“It’s her own business, Lia,” said Cora, and Lydia’s eye snapped to Cora’s. “Not everyone is as open about marking as our family.”
“Yeah, of course,” Malia said, shrugging and leaning back against the head of the bed. Stiles crawled up next to her and rested his head on her shoulder. Cora scratched at her arm as she turned back around to face her laptop.
“Okay, I really need to write this. If you guys really wanna hold vigil, fine, but do it quietly.”
A couple grumbled yeses and an unhappy sigh from Malia came from the room at large, but Cora ignored them. She really did need to work.
The only problem was that her arm wouldn’t stop itching. She erased the last two sentences of her paper, which were, in fact, just Pokemon names, but she couldn’t write anything. She typed a few things, only to immediately delete them. She could finish this paper with plenty of time left, she really could, only her arm was driving her crazy.
Cora scratched herself, wondering if another mosquito had gotten in to her room. Maybe she had bed bugs. One of the other dorms had gotten a bed bug infestation last year, and it had been brutal. Cora really needed to get out of the dorms next year.
“I’m gonna got to the bathroom,” Cora announced to the room when she couldn’t handle the itching anymore. Something told her she knew what it was, but it wasn’t even an hour into her birthday yet. She had time still. Plenty of time before some stranger’s name showed up on her skin and her life as she knew it was over.
Malia and Stiles were tangled up in Cora’s bed, fast asleep. Scott was reading an anatomy textbook with his head resting on Allison’s knee, while Allison typed something on her laptop. Only Lydia looked up from the book she was reading to look Cora up and down, something heavy in her eyes.
Cora tried to smile and stop itching, but she couldn’t force herself to move her hand away from her left arm. Lydia nodded at her. Cora felt too hot. Was that a symptom of marking, did you overheat? Or was that just another Lydia thing?
Once she was in the hallway, Cora sped toward the disgusting communal bathrooms on her floor. She tugged her long sleeves even farther down until they covered half her hands. The crook of her arm was on fire, she was sure of it, though she refused to look down at it.
Cora locked herself in a bathroom stall, thankful that for once the bathroom seemed to be empty. She traced the skin just above her elbow through her sleeve, wondering what she would find when she lifted it. If it would be someone she knew or a total stranger. If it would be someone way too good for her, or a complete asshole.
Cora picked at her nails. She counted the tiles on the floor. Her arm was burning. She brushed some lint off her jeans. She imagined how hard Laura would laugh if she saw her right now, the fearless, reckless youngest Hale kid afraid to look at her own arm.
Deciding not to deprive Laura of this opportunity to make fun of her, Cora pulled her phone from her pocket and called Laura.
“Hey, baby sis,” Laura said. Cora could hear the TV in the background, and Derek’s voice shouting his own hello.
“Hi,” Cora said, trying to sound normal. Calm. Collected.
“Oh my god,” said Laura. “It happened. Didn’t it? Derek, get over here, it happened!”
“Shut up,” Cora said, before she remembered that it had, in fact, happened. Cora Hale was marked. Forever.
“So?” said Laura. “Wait, hang on, don’t say anything, I’m putting you on speaker so Der can’t whine that I heard first.”
“I haven’t looked at it,” Cora admitted, staring down at her arm as if she was going to spontaneously develop X-ray vision.
“Seriously?” said Laura, and there it was, it was coming in 3, 2, 1…
Laura broke into peals of laughter, coming out too loud and shrill through the tinny phone speaker. Cora heard a noise that was probably Derek smacking Laura on the arm, and then another noise that was definitely Laura hitting him back. The laughter subsided, although Laura was still giggling a bit.
“Sorry,” said Laura, but she didn’t sound sorry at all. “What are you waiting for? Don’t you have all your friends there waiting to see it?”
“I’m hiding in the bathroom,” Cora admitted. “And don’t laugh.”
Laura laughed anyway.
“Why haven’t you looked at it?” Derek asked. Cora shrugged, then remembered they couldn’t see her.
“Don't know.”
“Ooh, where is it?” Laura asked.
“Arm.”
Well?” Laura said.
“What if it’s a stranger, and I don’t meet them until I’m 60? Or it’s someone I met years ago and don’t remember them? What if they’re an asshole? What if they’re not even a little bit an asshole, and they’re way too good for me?”
“Cor,” said Derek, in his I-have-a-master’s-degree-in-Psychology voice.
“Derek, shut up,” said Laura, and across the line Cora heard the muffled sound of Derek trying to talk through Laura’s hand. It was a sound she was very familiar with from their childhood.
“None of that’s gonna happen,” said Laura. “And if it does, we’ll deal with it. Just look.”
“I don’t know,” Cora said.
“We’re here, baby sis. Would Der or I ever let anything bad happen to you? If your marked is an asshole, we’ll whip them into shape. If they’re too good, we’ll corrupt them. If they don’t show up until you’re 60, then you’ll just have to hang out with us a lot until then. The one thing you can’t do is not look at your own body for the rest of your life, so just look.”
“Okay,” said Cora. “Okay.”
And she looked. And she rubbed her thumb over the letters and looked again. And she blinked.
“Oh,” Cora said.
“What?” said Laura. “Who is it? I wanna be the first to know, tell me. Derek, cover your ears so I can be the first to know.”
“I have to go,” Cora said, pressing the end call button and bursting out of the bathroom stall. A girl who was brushing her teeth at the sinks jumped at the sight of Cora, but she couldn’t even summon the requisite annoyance that usually fueled her rants about floormates and dorms and how next year not even a single would be enough to convince her to live here.
Instead Cora ran to her room, slamming the door open and letting it fall shut again behind her.
Malia and Stiles stirred on Cora’s bed, and Scott jerked awake from where he’d been drooling on Allison’s pants. Cora didn’t care about any of that though, because Lydia was sitting on Cora’s ugly, weird smelling loveseat and rubbing the crook of her elbow through her sweater.
“You,” said Cora, gesturing to Lydia and to Lydia’s arm and to the whole, existentially angsty last year of Cora’s life.
“I think that’s our cue to leave,” said Allison, helping Scott up and stopping on the way out to nudge Stiles and Malia awake.
“Did it happen?” Malia asked. Cora didn’t turn to look at Malia or answer her. She just stared at Lydia, who in turn just stared back at her.
“I’ll fill you in outside, come on,” Allison said, which answered one of Cora’s questions. And if Allison knew, Scott probably knew. And if Scott knew, Stiles definitely knew, which meant Cora had several asses to kick in the near future. For now, though, the door was closing behind Scott and she had more important things to do.
“What the hell?” Cora asked. She did her all encompassing gesture again. Lydia straightened her back, reaching up to rub at her arm again before forcibly putting her hands at her sides.
“I had my reasons,” Lydia said.
“Like what?” Cora asked, incredulous.
“How do you even know it’s me?” Lydia asked, getting up from the couch and pacing the small room. It only took her three steps to go from one end of the room to the other, but she kept walking anyways.
Cora rolled her eyes.
“Of course it’s you.” She looked down at her arm, at the L-Y-D-I-A spelled out on the skin just below her elbow in stark black ink.
“But what if it isn’t? What if there’s someone else out there named Lydia who’s right for you. I mean, I wasn’t sure last year when mine came in. Cora’s not that unusual a name, and I didn’t want to make you think you should be in love with me when someone else’s name was going to show up for you, and-”
“Lydia,” Cora said, stepping in front of Lydia to cut off her pacing. “Of course it’s you. At the risk of sounding like a character in one of stupid marking comedies you like, it’s always been you.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re marked,” Lydia said. “There have been studies that show mark bias, people thinking they’re attracted to people when they think they might be their marked when they otherwise wouldn’t find them as attractive.”
“Uh huh,” said Cora, sneaking closer to Lydia.
“Not to mention platonic marks or double marks like Scott and Stiles have call the whole soulmate idea into question.”
“Uh huh,” Cora said again, trying to edge even closer and grab Lydia’s hand without her noticing. Cora had wanted to hold Lydia’s hand since the day she first saw her. It seemed like a good place to start.
“Can I see?” Lydia asked. Cora almost jumped, because she’d been about to ask the same thing. She nodded, pushing the sleeve of her shirt back up and displaying Lydia’s name to her.
“Oh,” said Lydia, reaching out a hand to ghost over the letters of her own name on Cora’s skin.
Cora shivered at the touch.
“Can I see yours?” Cora asked. Lydia nodded, unable to tear her eyes away from Cora’s mark.
Lydia pulled her sweater off and revealed the C-O-R-A in the crook of her right elbow, a mirror match to Cora’s. Cora reached out and touched Lydia’s arm, weaving the fingers of their right hands together while she brushed her other thumb over the letters.
And really, at that point no one could blame Cora for leaning in and kissing Lydia. She’d been thinking about it for three years, and had long ago given up the idea that she might be able to do it one day.
Hours later, snuggled up in bed with Lydia’s cold feet between Cora’s thighs and Cora’s hand tracing over the letters on Lydia’s skin, Cora was struck by something. She leaned down to kiss Lydia and bring her back from the edge of sleep, because she had something important to say.
“It’s not science, or bias, or whatever,” Cora said, patting herself on the back for a job well done putting that sentence together.
“What?” Lydia asked, blinking furiously.
“I don’t want you because of bias. I want you because you took me to the hospital last year when I broke my foot, and because you make this weird pouty face when you’re thinking hard-”
“I do not,” said Lydia.
“You do” Cora said, “I promise. You’re making it right now.”
Lydia smacked Cora’s shoulders, which meant that obviously Cora had to tickle Lydia in the spot on her side where she was most ticklish, and by the time they had declared a truce from that Cora had almost forgotten what they were talking about.
“I meant it, you know,” Cora said.
“Hmm?” said Lydia, almost asleep on Cora’s shoulder.
“I’ve been in love with you since I was 18, mark or no mark. In fact, I’ve spent the last year thinking that I was going to be some doomed idiot in love with someone else’s marked for the rest of my life.”
“You’re not an idiot,” said Lydia, voice slurred with sleep. Outside the grimy window, the sun was just starting to peak over the horizon. “You are going to need to email your professor in the morning to get an extension on that paper, though.”
“Shit,” Cora said, trying to jump out of bed to get her computer and ending up on the floor, tangled in the sheet. Lydia leaned down over the edge of the bed and just laughed at her, but Cora couldn’t find it in herself to care. She was happy to have Lydia laughing at her for the rest of their lives, although she was obligated by her honor as a Hale to drag Lydia down to the floor with her and make out with her a little bit before she emailed her professor to ask about that extension.