Chapter Text
Aesop tugs his sleeve down further as he feels the ink appear on his skin. He tries desperately to focus on the lecture before him, the sudden burst of anxiety that came with the words eating away at the peace he’d managed to find that morning. Whatever has appeared under his sleeve is not for him, it hasn’t been for years, but that anxious feeling demands his attention so violently he feels like screaming.
People around him start to pick up their things and leave, causing his own anxiety to skyrocket as he frantically packs his own notes away. He curses his soulmate for distracting him as long as they did, halfheartedly praying he didn’t miss anything major in those lost moments.
Aesop doesn’t hate his soulmate, but he does hate how reliant everyone seems to be on theirs and that’s something he’d rather die than do. He can feel that his own soulmate is kind, knows that they have long since discerned that he has no interest in contact and has ceased any attempts at conversation. They still write on their skin, but it’s never anything major these days. A grocery list here and there, random times or dates, page numbers of books Aesop assumes is for homework…. it seems mostly that his soulmate just uses their own skin as notepad when in a hurry.
So, why had a deeper anxiety come through in class?
He pauses in his steps, some of his annoyance slipping away and replaced with concern. It was rare for negative emotions to slip through from his soulmate’s side. They seemed like one of the most put-together people the world had to offer, so an anxiety strong enough to trigger Aesop’s own was unusual to say the least. He decides to check it once he’s seated at a table in one of the university cafés.
“So, are you actually going to look or are you just gonna stare at your sleeve all day?” Luca’s voice startles him from his thoughts.
“How long have you—”
“5 minutes 27 seconds,” the brunet takes a seat across from him as Aesop takes in the time given.
“Why didn’t you say anything sooner??”
“Oh, y’know.” No. No, he absolutely didn’t know, but in the short time he’s known Luca, he has learned to not ask too many questions. Instead, he chooses to look around for the pale man that would normally be right behind him.
“Andrew had something to do, but he should be here soon,” Luca grins, stirring his drink with the straw provided. “Now, why do you look so concerned? You don’t normally act so… anxious when it comes to what they write.”
Aesop forgets how to breath for a moment, grip on his wrist tightening too much. He’s brought back to the moment when he feels the brunet gently tug on his sleeve to get him to let go. “It’s just… They were anxious this time. Incredibly anxious… Scared of something. They’ve never written something with that emotion before.”
“You’re worried about them,” it’s not a question. Luca does this often. He comes to a conclusion with facts and evidence so quickly that even if you want to deny his claims, you’ll have to be ready for a difficult debate. He’s sure someone can match wits with this man, but Aesop sure couldn’t. It’s a miracle they’ve even become friends with how different they are. With a sigh muffled by his mask, he looks to the side and holds his arm out to Luca, a silent ‘please do it for me’ left in the air.
Moving his drink to the side, Luca reaches out and carefully rolls the other man’s sleeve up enough to what is written. He squints and stares at the ink, giving a confused hum as he tries to see if there’s something he missed.
The silver haired man waits and waits and waits until he can no longer stand the curiosity. He finally looks down at the ink on his wrist and he frowns, looking to his companion for some sort of answer but seeing that he is just as confused. Aesop checks again, but the dark blotch of ink has not formed any words.
“They blocked out what they wrote…,” His soulmate has never done this before. They’ve scribbled over words in the past, but Aesop could always read those. Simple misspellings, random bits of math, something on a list that they no longer needed… But this…. This was done with the intention of not letting Aesop read it.
There’s a feeling caught in his throat, keeping him quiet as he tries to process what this means. To block of the text in such a way means that they very much are still aware of his existence, that they have actively considered that he reads what they write, and that whatever was just written was something they very much did not want him to know despite how unlikely it was for Aesop to have said anything about it.
“Hey, take a deep breath. Maybe they wrote their name or some other identifier and then panicked. People do that all the time. Andrew did it once!” Luca is trying to keep him grounded and it works, but he still jumps when the aforementioned man suddenly places two drinks on the table.
“And what pray tell did I do?” The pale man is halfheartedly glaring at the brunet as he takes a seat, pushing one of the drinks to Aesop.
“You wrote your new address on your hand so you wouldn’t forget—” Andrew quickly shoves a hand over Luca’s mouth, cheeks flushing a faint red as he recalls the incident.
“Why on earth are you bringing that up now?!” There’s a muffled response before Luca just points to the currently anxious man. Andrew looks to him and is about to ask what was happening when he catches sight of Aesop’s wrist. He’s quiet for a moment before taking his hand away from Luca and turning to face his less troublesome friend.
“Your soulmate writes on themselves pretty often, right? Whatever they wrote… was probably a little too personal for anyone else’s eyes… even yours. Don’t take it too personally,” The pale blonde does his best to comfort his friend and clearly speaks from his own experience which seems to help Aesop calm down more. Andrew speaks up again after a moment, “not to be rude… but, does it even matter that they blocked out the words? You don’t really care about your soulmate, right?”
It was a fair question. In fact, the only person at the table who seemed perplexed by the question was Luca.
“What they said…” Aesop starts, avoiding Luca’s gaze, “isn’t important… It’s how they might perceive me that matters.” Explaining that, seeing the understanding on Andrew’s face, he felt the anxiety slipping away. “Does that make sense?”
“Mm. No one wants to be seen as something they’re not…. Especially by someone supposedly perfect for you.” The pale man finally takes a sip of his drink, tapping his finger next to the one he’d placed in front of his friend.
Aesop gets the hint and slowly picks up the cup. “Yeah… things would be much easier without soulmates, I think.”
“True, but at least yours seems to be relatively put together… Maybe a bit scatterbrained.” Andrew huffs a bit, recalling the words on his on wrist this morning. “Mine just seems to be deeply troubled….”
“Mine is still angry at me,” Luca chimes in with a smile, his friends sharing a concerned look before awkwardly sipping from their drinks.
The silver haired man feels much more at ease now, the blotch of ink on his wrist slipping to the back of his mind as Luca begins to go off about some topic neither he nor Andrew understood. Before, Aesop would have been overwhelmed by the things the brunet would say, but after a few meetings he realized that he wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand a single word. Soon after that, he also learned that Luca never actually expected them to know or even respond and that made being around him so much easier.
The three men jump from topic to topic, falling back into normalcy as time goes on. Aesop doesn’t spare his soulmate any more thought that day, peacefully focusing on his friends and studies until it’s time for him to sleep.