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Steve’s written on his skin for as long as he can remember. Ever since he found out Bucky was his soulmate, he’s grabbed a pen whenever he’s bored and scrawled a quick message. More often than not, Bucky would write back and soon Steve’s arms are covered in conversation.
How are you?
I’m fine. Aren’t you supposed to be in school?
Ma kept me home again. I told her I was fine but she said no school.
She was probably right.
Steve squinted at his arm. He was running out of space, so he pulled up his pant leg and started writing on his knee.
Do you want to go see a movie this weekend?
Not if you’re sick.
I’ll be fine by then.
Promise?
Promise.
They don’t stop and whenever Steve has a pen, he’ll write a quick sentence on his arm. Stay safe, or, don’t die, or, after the horrible moment where he watches Bucky plunge into a ravine, lost forever, I swear I’ll find you. The messages don’t come back after that, but a deep scar carves its way through the skin of his left shoulder.
After that Steve barely has time to think beyond revenge and pursuing Hydra and stopping the Red Skull and when he plunges the plane into the ice, his last thought is an apology to Bucky, that he never kept his promise.
Tony hates his soulmates. That’s not actually true – you can’t hate them, according to science – but Tony’s never been interested in what is and isn’t strictly possible, and he hates the scars that keep showing up on his body, so it’s easier to just say he hates his soulmates.
Ever since he was young, Howard had told him in no uncertain terms that he needed to keep them covered up, or, in his words, “the press will think I did it and hell will really break loose,” and that’s the last thing Tony wants, since hell was a pretty accurate description of his life anyway.
He goes to M.I.T and meets Rhodey and things start to fall into place, but it isn’t until he’s lying in a cave in Afghanistan with shrapnel worming its way towards his heart that he wonders what his soulmates will think. He dismisses the thought soon afterwards, too occupied with thoughts of escape and revenge.
When he gets back to America, he throws himself into his Iron Man suit, and generally ignores any new scars that show up on his body. They tend to come and go – there are a few exceptions, like the stab wound over his right lung – but there’s a series of them on his wrists and thighs.
Tony’s not stupid enough not to recognize them for what they are, and once when he’s particularly drunk he grabs a Sharpie and scrawls don’t do it beside a slowly-appearing mark. He doesn’t get a response, but the scar stops so he counts it a victory somewhere in the back of his mind.
Sometimes, when Natasha’s feeling particularly cynical, she wonders what her soulmate would think of her scars. The Red Room erases most of them after she’s finished her missions, but there are a few that they don’t take away.
When she’s ten, a mark shows up on her inner arm that she recognizes as an archery scar. Whoever it is must get an arm guard soon after, because it doesn’t appear again. She manages to hide it from her handlers until it heals, but the next one that shows up, a rope burn around her right wrist, is removed.
Years later, she wakes up with a mass of scar tissue in the centre of her chest, as if her soulmate had had their heart ripped out. The next day, a set of scars appear on her inner thigh. She watches them appear one by one, wishing she could stop whoever it was, rip the knife from their hand and throw it away. But she can’t so she doesn’t.
Clint doesn’t know why his soulmate’s scars keep disappearing on his skin, just for new ones to appear a week or a month later. If it’s a large enough one, he can sit and watch it as it goes. Sometimes he wonders what marks his circus tricks leave on his soulmate, but he’s never been permanently scarred, so he doesn’t worry too much about it.
When he gets recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D, he meets Phil Coulson. It’s incredibly cliché to say, but he’ll swear that, as soon as they shook hands, a current of electricity runs through his body. He’s sure they become soulmates in that moment, but he doesn’t know for sure until his first botched mission. S.H.I.E.L.D rescues him, and Clint sees the end of a scar that exactly matches the new one he has disappearing up into Phil’s hairline.
Bruce wishes he didn’t have soulmates most days. He likes the idea of a connection that’s deeper than words linking people who haven’t met yet, but at the same time he wishes he could remove it. If he could do that, could cut away whatever part of himself was tied to someone else, then maybe it wouldn’t hurt them on the nights he sat in the shower with a razor blade. He gets marks and phantom injuries too, but they’re regular things like cuts and scrapes from falling over in the street, and marks from archery. Not these neat, methodical lines he inflicts on himself.
It doesn’t get better, and it doesn’t get worse, and it keeps happening for years. Until, one night when scrawled writing appears beside the latest cut. Don’t do it, it says in barely legible writing, and Bruce starts sobbing. He drops the blade, pulls his knees to his chest and cries himself to sleep. For the first time he can remember, he feels like someone cares about him and it’s three words from a stranger.
Thor doesn’t have many scars for the first few centuries of his life. There are a few – from Loki of all people – but for the most part he has far fewer than anyone else at the court. It isn’t until just before he meets Jane Foster on Earth that he begins to see them. They’re small, just a few burns and other injuries like that at first, but gradually he starts to get more. As the years pass, more and more start to show up. There are scars that fade almost as quickly as they arrive, and others that are opened up over and over again, but the deepest one arrives just before he’s thrown down to Earth and stripped of Mjolnir. It appears near-fatal, and he figures that whoever gave it to him must have died, because there’s no way a mortal could survive any wound that runs that close to the heart. He mourns slightly, but then comes the trip to Jotunheim and all else is driven from his mind for a time.
It isn’t until his second trip to Earth when he meets the group of humans that call themselves the Avengers that he understands. There is a haunted look in the eyes of Steven and Natasha and Clint that speaks to one lost. Bruce’s sleeve pulls up and Thor recognizes the white line there – he knows that the lines continue across the doctor’s limbs because they’re on his body too.
There’s no time to say anything so he doesn’t until one night just after the Battle of New York as the humans are calling it. They are drinking and sharing stories in an age-old tradition that Thor is pleased to recognize transcends worlds. In some ways it is a pale imitation of his father’s halls, but in others it is far more meaningful than any Asgardian ceremony he has ever been a part of.
The hours slip by and conversation turns and turns again from topic to topic until finally settling on soulmates.
“Tell me,” Bruce says, eyes bright with mead and curiosity, “do your people have soulmates?”
“Of course!” Thor laughs loudly. “You are one of mine, Banner!”
“I – I am?” Bruce mutters. He looks as if the reveal has shocked the breath from him. “I didn’t know anyone was – “
“You’re mine, too,” Stark interrupts in a too-easy manner. “’s not like I know who mine are, but I imagine it’s pretty hard to miss for them.”
“Yeah, I’ll say,” Clint scoffs at the same time Natasha makes a noise of agreement.
“Oh, you two are mine?” Tony says with a grin. “This will make date nights with Pepper a lot more interesting!”
There’s a quick exchange of words, but across the table Thor watches Steven put down his drink. He takes off his shirt in one fluid motion and asks, “I don’t suppose any of you would know where these came from?”
In the end, it emerges that they are all soulmates in a tangled web that extends beyond their immediate gathering. Clint and Natasha were both bonded to the son of Coul, who they lost in the Battle; Natasha shares a bond with Steve in the form of his childhood friend Bucky; and Stark voices his suspicion that Pepper was also bonded to Phil but never knew.
“So, uh, what are we going to do about all of this?” Bruce asks, looking slightly dazed.
Thor smiles, feeling warmed not just from the alcohol but from the chance to finally meet all of his soulmates. “We can share,” he says.
No one disagrees.