Chapter Text
“You’re a prick, Francis Bonnefoy, and I curse you for all fucking eternity.” Arthur Kirkland grumbled, shivering into his coat, before taking a swig of his industrial strength caffeinated monstrosity. Loathe as he was to admit it, his trusty English Breakfast just wasn’t cutting it anymore. And likely, it was Francis’ fault, as most things were.
Francis, who never seemed to realize everything was his fault, rolled his eyes exasperatedly. “Whatever, Kirkland. Just buy me my suit jacket and we can go home, oui? Very professional, by the way.” He sped up his pace, crossing the street without waiting for the light. Arthur hurried after him, eager to escape the deep New York winter.
“That was a complete accident, it isn’t my fault you’re jumpy.”
Francis rolled his eyes again, and Arthur desperately wanted them to get stuck that way. “I’m not jumpy. I practically personify sophistication. You, on the other hand, are an absolute savage. Spilling wine on me was low, Arthur, even for you.”
“I said I was sorry, alright? And I’m even going to your blasted mall. I can’t do any more than that.” Francis looked ready to roll his eyes for a third time, but did not protest further.
Arthur harrumphed. Perhaps Francis’ annoyance with him was justified, for once. Three days ago, give or take (Arthur’s memory of this entire week was becoming quite hazy--perhaps it was time to lay off the gin-and-brandy nightcap), Francis’s watch was set to finally go off, at the tender age of thirty three, and the Frenchman had been a wreck about it all week. As a result, he’d started working out like crazy, putting on copious amounts of cologne, and taken to wearing particularly expensive suits. Not that he didn’t wear expensive suits before--working at an international law firm in New York, one was not left with much choice--but now, they were particularly expensive.
And, well, Arthur found it annoying. Francis had been one of the last people at the company, along with Arthur himself, who had yet to find his “soul mate”. It was going to be kind of depressing being the only single person at the firm’s social gatherings. Not to mention, if this nervous, stuttering, jumpy Francis was what Arthur had to look forward to, his future at Vargas & Vargas International Law Firm did not look bright (even if he was the youngest lawyer there to be made partner--suck on that, Ludwig Beilschmidt, not everyone could sleep their way to the top).
So when Francis had been acting like a particular nuisance at an office party last night, Arthur had found he couldn’t quite take it anymore. The older man had been harassing Arthur all night, clinging to his arm, looking out wildly for any strangers who may have caught his fancy. When he’d pawed at Arthur’s hand for the third time that night, Arthur lost his patience and whirled around to yell, but ended up tossing his drink all over Francis’s particularly expensive suit.
“Merde!!” Francis had roared, rather uncharacteristically, “Are you fucking kidding me, Kirkland!?
It also happened that Francis’s soulmate-to-be was at the party--a friend of a friend, as it had turned out. Matthew Williams, new acquaintance of one Gilbert Beilschmidt, who’s only impression of Francis was this night, wherein Francis had screamed bloody murder over a wine stain. Needless to say, once their watches had gone off, it had been an awkward beginning for the two of them. And loathe as he was to admit it, Arthur did feel a smidgen of responsibility for the whole thing.
It was Francis’ own fault, really. He’d been raised to be quite the romantic, despite his profession. He’d been a slave to the watch on his wrist--waiting patiently for the clock to count down the minutes before he met his one and only. Though he’d slept around quite a bit, he’d never been in a serious relationship, preferring to leave such things to fate. And when the time came, he had stressed himself out and wound himself up too tight.
And yet, Arthur couldn’t blame him. Most people tended to be extremely nervous once their clock started counting down days instead of years. At least Francis had been in a social setting when his watch went off--Vargas had been in the middle of an extremely high profile court case when Ludwig Beilschmidt had waltzed in, causing their watches to simultaneously go off, as well as causing one of the biggest commotions in corporate law history (at least, Arthur had thought it to be pretty big. Corporate law wasn’t exactly riddled with excitement). Arthur himself had no idea when his own watch would go off--his mother had decided, unorthodox as it was, to cover her children’s countdowns before they could walk, because she thought it ‘romantic’. Of course, all four of Arthur’s older brothers had pried off the watch cover as soon as they knew what it was, much to their mother’s exasperation. Arthur, though, chose to keep his on. More than anything, he liked mysteries. As a child, he thought taking the cover off his watch would ruin the magical moment he would surely experience with his soulmate (okay, so he was a romantic in his own right. Sue him.) His mother had been delighted at his decision, while his father and brothers had teased him relentlessly. He brushed them off fairly easily.
At least, he had then. Now, single and pushing thirty, he wondered if maybe a peek wouldn’t do more good than harm.
Well, this wasn’t the time to think too deeply on the matter. It seemed they finally found the shopping center Francis was so hellbent on going to. Not Arthur’s favorite way to spend an afternoon, but in this case, buying Francis a new suit seemed to be the least he could do.
Although, by the looks of it, Francis was making a beeline for Dior…
“Are you fucking kidding me, Francis?!” Arthur cried, reaching out to halt the Frenchman’s long strides. “I am not getting you a three-thousand dollar suit! It’s Nordstrom or bust, take your pick.”
“Arthur,” Francis ground out, with barely contained rage, “You awful human being. Not only did you almost ruin my relationship with someone I have been waiting to meet for thirty-three years, but you made me lose face in front of Vargas, and, to add insult to injury, you ruined the only gray suit in all of New York that fit me correctly. So, pardon moi, you are buying whatever the hell I want you to buy, alright?” Francis’ significantly thick French accent made his whole spiel sound a little more Bond-villain than anything, but Arthur got his point.
“...Fine.” Arthur finally acquiesced. “But you can find it on your own. If I have to watch you try on ten pairs of trousers again, I’ll go bloody mad.”
“Fine by me!” Francis said exasperatedly, “I’ll text you when I’m finished. You better stay close by, Arthur, I mean it!” Arthur waved his hand dismissively in Francis’ general direction and the older man, after a long glare, turned to walk into his shop of choice. Arthur, meanwhile, waited a few seconds, then made his way to the coffee shop he knew to be on the other side of the shopping center. Bugger what Francis wanted, Arthur needed more caffeine.
As he made his way through the mall, Arthur indulged in one of his favorite hobbies: people watching. He watched as a red haired woman struggled to pull her three red haired children out of a toy store. Then, a dark skinned man with a long blue coat, who picked up his small dog, which seemed to have trouble walking. A teenage girl ran out of a Victoria’s Secret, seemingly in tears, and holding what looked to be a dozen bags.
He wondered how his brothers were doing. Though he made an effort to Skype with them every weekend, it was getting harder to do so, considering his loaded schedule this year. He found himself working weekends more and more, which couldn’t be healthy. Even Alastair was getting worried, and that was alarming in its own right.
A particularly beautiful Hispanic woman laughed to herself as she lounged about on a bench. Her watch looked to be off however, replaced by a ring on her hand. Pity. Not ten feet away from her, a pair of twins argued over a package. A man lit a cigarette, and it illuminated his gaunt face for a nanosecond.
How long would it take Francis to choose a suit, anyway? Arthur realized he had brought no entertainment with him. He could always buy a book, but as far as he could remember, the nearest bookstore was back in the direction he had come from. Well, he could always Skype Alastair from the cafe...Francis would surely take more than fifteen minutes?
An African American girl breezed by him, wearing a particularly colorful coat. Arthur wondered if he could find it somewhere, perhaps his mother would appreciate it as a gift, in lieu of his presence this Christmas. A father and a son come out of a Burlington Coat Factory, both looking worse for wear.
Francis would take at least an hour, he always did when he was shopping. Arthur had plenty of time, both to put Alastair’s mind at ease, and to talk to his dozens of nephews. Not literally dozens, of course, but they were such a rowdy bunch, even if there were only three of them. They seemed to have inherited all of the Kirkland spunk, for which Arthur could not be prouder. Not that he’d ever tell Alastair that, of course.
Another young mother was having trouble pulling her kid out of a store. An older grandmother looked at the two, with relative fondness lining her face. A rather handsome blonde man with glasses looked right into Arthur’s eyes (or his eyebrows, it was always hard to tell) before bumping into his side rather hard. Fucking rude little wanker. And a little boy was laughing, because Arthur had nearly fallen over, stupid little brats had no--
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
Arthur immediately froze.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
Gulped. Looked down at his wrist. It can’t be…
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
There, his normally blacked out, silent watch, was beeping out of control.
“Ssshhh!!” Arthur hissed, irrationally, slapping his palm over the damn contraption just as it’s band broke. He caught it before it slipped off his wrist, then held it out in front of him, incredulously. Yes...there it was. The watch that was meant to show him who his soulmate was. The one that was supposed to go off simultaneously with someone else’s. He looked up, wildly, glancing around, hoping to see someone else in his same position. Seemingly, however, everyone was going about their daily business, and not having an internal panic attack about a malfunctioning watch.
“Is it malfunctioning..?!” Arthur muttered to himself, clawing the cover off his now useless contraption. It seemed that everything with it was in order, however, with the display reading 00:00:00.
“Shit.” Arthur said, louder this time, whirling around wildly, “Shit. Shit. Bloody bollocking SHIT.”
The mother he had been observing gave him a dirty look, but he chose to ignore it in the face of the possibly worst thing that had ever happened to him. Okay Arthur, think...these things only come off when you actually spot your soul mate, yeah? It couldn’t have been just any random person… He looked at the young mother again, but decided against questioning her. If anything out of the ordinary had happened, she would probably be freaking out like he was. What about the kid that had been laughing at him earlier? Jesus Christ, the universe wouldn’t be cruel enough to make him a pedophile, would it?!
No, no, c’mon, you’re not making sense… He turned back to the direction he came from. The woman I was...observing...earlier...no, her watch was already off, the girl with the coat? Could be, could be, though she didn’t even look at me, I don’t think...the guy, he looked at my eyebro--is that him? Is that him?! IS HE ON THE ESCALATOR?!
“Oi!!! OI MATE, STOP!!!” Arthur roared at what was probably an innapropriate volume (judging by all the dirty looks flung his way by everyone in the vicinity), but Arthur was far beyond caring at this point. When it became clear the blonde man could not hear his shouting, Arthur tore off after him at break neck speed. “STOP, STOP FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, IS YOUR WATCH STILL ON--”
Unfortunately, Arthur had never been blessed with the gift of coordination, and he hadn’t even gotten close to his target before tripping on some poor child’s teddybear and falling flat on his face. The child immediately began crying, and before Arthur could even apologize, the dark skinned father picked Arthur off the floor by his scarf and began shouting in his face. Arthur, who could not let go of his pride at the best of times, began shouting right back, and all of this, along with the exponentially louder shrieks of the child, served to make the nearest security officer come and break the men apart. By the time Arthur remembered himself, and whirled to look back at the direction of the escalator, the blonde man was long gone.
Fuck.
“And by the way, it wasn’t my kid’s fault you fell on your dumb ass!” The father was shouting from behind the security officer restraining arms. Arthur turned to look at him again, mind made up. He was going to break this man’s face in. “You tripped over that watch. Clearly, you need to watch where you’re going--”
“What watch?! Arthur interrupted, all thoughts of the man’s face forgotten. His own watch was still in his pocket, he could feel it…
The kid, still partially sobbing into his teddy bear, pointed a shaky finger somewhere in the direction of Arthur’s feet. The Briton looked down, and low and behold, a watch reading 00:00:00 was sprawled out not two feet from him. He immediately dived for it, startling the security guard and the child in the process. The father furrowed his eyebrows, and leaned past the guard’s arm, anger at Arthur momentarily forgotten. “...Is...is that…?”
“Yes.” Arthur answered, now holding his soul mate’s watch in his hands carefully. “It is.” It looked like most watches, a lot like Arthur’s actually, sans cover. Except for the fact that it was also covered in blue-and-red American flag stickers. “And it looks like it belongs to a fucking idiot.”
-------------
“Oh honey, I’m home.” Alfred shouted sarcastically into the empty room before throwing the dozen packages he was carrying onto the nearest surface. He began the long, arduous process of removing all the winter clothed he’d piled on, starting with the scratchy wool scarf his roommate's sister made him. It itched like a bitch, but he’d never tell them that.
“Did you buy my glass swan?” Ivan replied from the other room. Alfred shook his head in annoyance.
“Yes. Come get it. I can’t believe you made me go out today. You know it’s the day I’m meeting my soulmate, and you know I wanted to eat four hamburgers in a row one last time before I met them--”
“If someone was truly your soulmate, they’d understand being a fatass is part of your genetic makeup.” Ivan said, walking into the living room. “I can’t wait until you meet them, you’ll move in together immediately, da?”
“Keep dreaming, commie.” Alfred said, wrestling his coat off, “And if they do wanna move in with me immediately, they can move in here, and we’ll have a lot of loud obnoxious sex, which’ll totally drown you and Yao out."
“They’ll have to teach you how to have sex first, heh,” Ivan said, rummaging around the packages Alfred had brought home. When Alfred didn’t reply, Ivan frowned and looked back at his roommate, who was had just dropped his jacket to the floor, and was looking exceptionally pale. “Alo? Did you not hear me insulting your sexual prowess? Because you have none. Because you’re still a virgin.”
“It’s gone.” Alfred said, voice trembling, all color draining completely from his face. “It isn’t here.”
“...What’s gone?”
“M-my…” Alfred’s hands were starting to shake, and Ivan made his way toward him quickly, “My watch, it isn’t on my wrist…”
Ivan’s eyes widened. “What do you mean, it isn’t on your wrist?”
Alfred looked at him, eyes wild. “Did you forget how to speak English again?! Do I need to say it in your mother-tongue?? Privyet, Ivan! I mean it’s not on my fucking wrist! It is physically not on my fucking wrist!! Instead there is an unattractive tan line where my watch should be! It is fucking GONE, Ivan, I lost my soulmate watch thing--”
“Calm the fuck down, Alfred, Jesus,” Ivan said, putting his hands on Alfred’s shoulders in an attempt to calm him down, “Did you hit your hand somewhere? Maybe you just broke the band--”
“These things are fucking indestructible, Ivan!” Alfred shouted, “Do you remember that time Yao accidently hit it with a hammer?! It shattered my wrist but my stupid-ass watch was totally fine!!”
“Okay…” Ivan replied, quickly realizing what most likely happened, “Okay. Just, breathe for a second, durak, calm down. Em, I don’t want you to get angry, alright, but...do you think it’s possible that you already saw your soulmate?”
It seemed this statement did the opposite of calming Alfred down. “What.”
Ivan felt that a fight was coming on. This was not going to be pleasant. “Perhaps...you already saw them. On the street, or, or at the mall...everyone’s running around shopping this week, it’s a week before Christmas, it was bound to be loud...perhaps...you did not hear it go off? And neither did your partner, and they just sort of...fell off?”
“N-no, c’mon Ivan, you’re supposed to look at each other and all that shit--”
“Are you telling me you didn’t look at anyone at that mall? Not one single fucking person?”
Alfred stayed silent. Unfortunately, it made total sense. Ivan was probably correct. He just couldn’t believe he hadn’t paid enough attention, on the day he KNEW he’d be meeting the person he’d waited for all his life! Instead he’d been running around like a mad man trying to find a stupid glass swan for his stupid roommate’s boyfriend instead, and he’d completely missed it, and he was going to die alone and live with Yao and Ivan forever and have to listen to their stupid bickering in Russo-Chinese for the rest of fucking eternity--
“Snap out of it!” Ivan yelled, smacking Alfred’s bicep.
“OW! You fucking asshole! This is completely your fault--”
“Let’s not point fingers here,” Ivan interrupted, perfectly aware of the fact that he should have perhaps not sent his roommate to the most crowded area of New York City when he was meant to be meeting someone he’d waited for for twenty years. Thank Christ Ivan had met Yao when they’d both been fifteen. It made things so damn simple. “Alfred, you pretty much have one single positive attribute, and it is your memory. Try and remember, who did you actually look at today? Anyone stand out?”
Alfred tried to ignore the fact that Ivan seemed to think he was only good at memorizing things, and tried to concentrate. If he’d seen his soulmate, it stood to reason that they had to have made some sort of impression on him, no matter how brief.
Who had he seen? There had been that Korean kid who tripped over Alfred’s feet and nearly fell into the street. Alfred had laughed pretty loudly at that, though not so loudly when his six brothers started chasing after him...he’d had his hands in his pockets at that time, however, even if the watch had fallen off, it should have been safely in his jacket.
He’d looked pretty extensively at the cashiers at all the stores he’d been to. But none of them had made any distinct impression on him. Besides, if they’d been facing each other, and Alfred had been standing still, there would have been no way he wouldn’t have noticed his watch falling off.
What about the strangers he’d seen just walking on the street, or at the mall? Truth was, Alfred rarely made eye contact with random people, he thought it was uncomfortable, especially since most people stared at him because he was so extremely sexy (and he was sexy, goddamn it, no matter what Ivan and Yao claimed). Except…
Oh my god. Except for the man with the giant eyebrows!! He’d been around Alfred’s height, and he’d been staring at Alfred completely absentmindedly. Alfred would have ignored him, except for the fact that his incredibly thick eyebrows kind of arched in that way Alfred appreciated, and his face was sort of sharp and angular, which was nice, and he looked like he was wearing an extremely expensive tan trenchcoat, and he’d been messy haired, which was more endearing than it should have been, and his eyes looked acidic green, which...actually wasn’t normal, he should probably get that checked out by a doctor, but the point was--
“Okay.” Alfred said out loud, startling Ivan out of his own reverie, “Okay. I have no idea if...it’s this or not, but I remember this one guy most clearly.”
“Good start…” Ivan said, “How old did he look? Was he older?”
Alfred frowned. Not that Ivan mentioned it, it did seem the man looked older than Alfred, maybe even by a decade. “Actually, yeah...how’d you know?”
“You have a type, Alfred,” Ivan replied, and sensing that Alfred was going to start yelling again, quickly added, “Not that it is a bad thing! You’re twenty-two this summer, it’s all perfectly legal, and so on. Look, I will call Yao, he can get off work a bit early, you can tell him what you remember, da? He’ll draw him, we can work from there.”
Alfred thought about that plan. “Hang on, I know how he draws...won’t Yao make him look like a girl?”
“Oh, he will most definitely make him look like a girl.”
-------------
“Let me get this straight, Arthur.” Francis was saying, pacing around on Arthur’s nice hardwood floors. Arthur wanted to punch his face in, because surely he’d get scuff marks on the floor, but punching Francis, while cathartic, always seemed to get Arthur in trouble in the long run, so instead he burrowed further into his couch and tried not to cry. “You missed your initial confrontation with your soulmate because you were too busy getting angry at some kid for laughing at you. THEN, when you almost catch up to him again, you crash into some other poor child and get into a screaming match with it’s father instead of apologizing and moving on, like any other member of society would. And you had NO IDEA any of this was coming, because you never, not even once, looked at your watch to gauge around what year you expected to meet your soulmate.”
“You are exceptionally stupid.” Antonio Carriedo chimed in.
“Why are you here?!” Arthur spat for the third time that night. Antonio merely shrugged.
“He’s here because it’s going to take a lot of brain power to counteract your stupidity, Sourcils.” Francis explained.
“And these are the geniuses you clobbered together to come up with “brain power”, Francis?!” Arthur yelled, taking a hazardous look around the room again. Aside from Francis and Gilbert, who Arthur worked with at Vargas & Vargas, there was Antonio (Francis’s roommate from college, and the stupidest Spaniard that ever lived, in Arthur’s opinion, though he could never say so out loud, because he was currently dating the other Vargas, the one who was likely to fire Arthur for no reason), and Matthew Williams (Francis’s new beau, who thus far contributed nothing to the conversation, and whose very presence pissed Arthur off for no apparent reason).
“Yeah, I just wanna point out, Kirkland, all of us managed to find our own soul mates without scandal.” Gilbert said from the kitchen, “So how about letting us assist you with minimal bitching, hm?”
“What did he look like, again?” Matthew Williams asked, softly, one of the few things he’d said all night.
Arthur closed his eyes and counted to five. “I told you lot already, I didn’t get a good look at him. He was blonde. He had glasses. He was fit. He was carrying a lot of packages around.”
“Mon Dieu, Arthur, how are you this unobservant.” Francis said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“I have an idea!” Antonio said, making himself comfortable and putting his feet all over Arthur’s thousand-dollar coffee table. If he wasn’t dating Vargas, Arthur would have throttled him by now. “Arthur, amigo, why don’t you just take a picture of the watch and put in on Twitter? I’m sure someone will recognize it if it gets retweeted a couple hundred times. It’ll be like a modern Cinderella!”
“And it sounds so romantic…” Matthew chimed in, which Arthur chose to stoically ignore.
“I’ll tell you why, Antonio,” Francis explained, “One, Arthur is a sixty-year old man hiding in a thirty-year old’s body. He has no social media accounts. None.” Arthur also stoically ignored Antonio’s shocked face, “Two. Even if we put it up on one of our accounts, as soon as people figure out he is wealthy and minimally handsome--”
“Minimally?!”
“--widows and divorcees and all those poor lost souls who did not find love by the watches will come flocking.”
“But,” Matthew said, obviously quite taken with the idea of having Arthur resemble some sort of Prince Charming, “he knows what the guy looks like, right? He should be able to distinguish--”
“All I know is that he’s blonde with glasses.” Arthur interrupted, feeling particularly vindictive and angry. “That description can apply to a million people. Hell, that description applies to YOU.”
“Jesus, don’t take it out on Birdie, Kirkland.” Gilbert said, striding into the living room, glasses in one hand, and a bottle of gin in the other. “Do you have nothing else to drink? I wasn’t really planning on getting blitzed tonight.”
“It’s gin or tea. Take your pick.” Arthur answered, feeling a little guilty for snapping at Matthew. Gilbert was right, of course, this wasn’t Matthew’s fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, except for that blonde idiot’s. And maybe Arthur’s. A little. A tiny bit.
“Well, we aren’t getting anything done like this.” Gilbert said, reasonably. “It’s Saturday night. Let’s drink a little bit, get our creative juices flowing, see where it takes us, hm?” Everyone paused, looked around at each other, then eventually nodded, Arthur most enthusiastically of all.
“There we go. We have one glass, we come up with a solution. Simple!”