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When someone turns eighteen, they’re given a soulmate mark.
It can be anywhere on their body. It can be anything. The only rule is that they have to match—that every soulmate mark has a counterpart, the exact same image or text worn by another person.
Dream’s parents had matching thorned roses on their shoulder blades. His childhood best friend got a lightning bolt on his collarbone. His aunt and uncle had infinity knots on their wrists. His older sister had a sun on the back of her neck.
And Dream had nothing.
For years, he waited until his eighteenth birthday, and when it finally arrived, nothing changed. He checked every last inch of his skin for a mark, pulled at all of himself like he might just be missing something, but it always came up blank. Empty skin, empty heart: no soulmate.
Dream cried, and he cried, and he cried. Nothing ever made his mark appear.
So he started lying to people. Pretended he had a flower on the inside of his upper thigh—a place he would never be asked to show—and let people think he was just still looking for his match. And he’d try not to choke over himself too much at every ask, would act giddier than he was every time a friend talked about their mark or soulmate, lips bitten to hell in silence.
And he’d cry into his pillow when he knew this would never change. He would forever be without a mark, without a soulmate—alone. Perhaps it was just because everyone else lied, too, but he had never met another person who existed without a mark. He was undoubtedly, unfathomably, alone.
It would always be so hard to know he was impossible to love.
When George turned eighteen, he found the flame first.
It was poised on the inside of his wrist, an outline right over the blue of his veins. And he felt excited, for that was his soulmate mark, and one day he’d meet the twin to his flame and remain in bliss forever.
Then his mother pointed out the clock on his shoulder.
He hadn’t noticed it at first, but it was there. High enough to be hidden by the sleeve of a t-shirt, apparent enough to bleed through white cotton. When George looked in the mirror at the mark staring back at him, he let himself be confused.
Because why did he have two?
He ran back to his mother as quick as he could make himself, a hundred thousand questions hot and riddled on his tongue. She didn’t have the answers, either.
As it turned out, no one did.
And George carried on with his life thinking it had been some mistake, that maybe one day, one of them would disappear and he’d be just like everyone else–it never happened.
He just had two soulmate marks. Time and fire, forever etched into his skin. He spent night after night staring up at the ceiling with a morbid curiosity, blinking at the cracks along the corners of the walls like there was more to them than just a fissure.
Patience was not a virtue he knew how to practice. George was antsy, living on the edge of his seat, fingers always pressed down against etchings like one of them was fleeting. Neither one of them disappeared.
George met Sapnap first.
Hot-headed, loud, and just a little bit annoying. George’s first thought when he met the boy from his computer science class was fire.
And it didn’t take either of them very long to put it together.
He was emblazoned, branded by a matching flame on the inside of his wrist. George would never forget the look in his soulmate’s eyes right then, when they were still sitting in the far back corner of the lecture hall waiting for something to change.
And it didn’t take George very long to realize that Sapnap didn’t have a clock on his shoulder.
They didn’t really acknowledge it. Sapnap never asked, and George figured he might’ve just thought it was a tattoo.
Then he met Karl. The matching pair to his timepiece, another person with the standard single mark.
So George just had two soulmates. At the same time, in the same place, all at once.
It took a little getting used to, but eventually, the three of them figured it all out. It might’ve involved a little bit of not-soulmates dating each other, too, but they decided it was easier that way.
And they all loved each other, anyway. No harm done.
Dream moved into someone else’s apartment when he was twenty-one. Even if the agreement was mutual, and they had talked about it before, it was still a little awkward.
George was something of his friend by that point. They’d been talking for months, and when Dream had mentioned offhand that his lease was running out, George had all but jumped on the idea of living in his spare bedroom.
“We don’t really use it,” he admitted, “so it’s all yours if you want it.”
And maybe it’s Dream’s fault for making assumptions. Maybe he shouldn’t have set himself any expectations at all, but he did. And they were already coming back for him.
His expectations seemed simple at the time. He made a concise little list in his head, and he made peace with it through all the time he spent packing up his things to move in.
1. George has mentioned that he doesn’t live alone.
2. George probably has 1 roommate.
3. George and his roommate must live in a three-bedroom apartment, hence the spare room.
4. George and his roommate were not soulmates.
Dream was only right about one thing: George didn’t live alone.
But George had two roommates. And they live in a two-bedroom apartment, and they’re soulmates. Or, at the very least, they’re all dating–because who the hell has two soulmates?
Maybe George. Maybe not. Dream never really bothered to ask.
He just let the three of them show him his new bedroom. As they were walking down the hall, he spared a glance at the occupied one, finding a bed that looked far bigger than his own unmade and far too many clothes on the floor.
So they don’t need this bedroom, Dream figured, because they all sleep in that one.
He tried not to think too hard about it, opting instead to shut his new bedroom door with the promise of settling in. He never found himself feeling very settled, not even after he’d folded up all his clothes and organized them in the rickety dresser. Not even after he changed his clothes, and tried to lay in his new bed, and stared up at the ceiling for what felt like years.
When Sapnap came to tell him dinner was ready, Dream noticed the flame symbol on the inside of his wrist.
When Karl slid him a plate across the counter, Dream noticed the clock on his shoulder.
When George emerged from their bedroom looking far more comfortable than Dream had never seen him, he finally saw his soulmate marks.
Both of them.
And he decided that it wasn’t fair. Why did George get two soulmates when he didn’t get any at all? Why did all three of them get to be happy together when he had no one to love him like that at all?
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.
He took his dinner and stormed off to his room.
Perhaps that wasn’t fair, either. Because these people had so kindly offered up their spare room to him, and he wouldn’t even talk to them. Because he was angry about something out of their control, and they didn’t even know what he was so upset about.
He wasn’t sure if they ever would.
When Dream left in a flurry, Sapnap turned to George.
“Is he okay?”
George shrugged. “He seemed fine before,” he admitted. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him like this.”
“Maybe he’s just settling in,” Karl reasoned, hooking his chin over George’s shoulder. “We shouldn’t bother him unless it keeps happening.”
George twisted his lips awkwardly. Resigned, he sighed, and muttered, “Okay.”
It kept happening.
Dream would hide in his room, and he’d come out and share a few words, and he’d disappear again. He would see the others looking happy together, and he’d feel himself growing upset, and he’d run away.
It wasn’t fair to them. It wasn’t fair to anyone. But he kept doing it anyway.
It wasn’t until George grabbed him by the arm in the hallway that something changed. When Dream was coming back from his shower, hair wet and haste in his steps. George reached out and stopped him, lithe fingers curled effortlessly around a broad arm, and everything stopped.
“We need to talk,” George said, gentle, but it wasn’t a request.
Dream let his shoulders slouch. Defeated, he asked, “Can I at least go put my clothes in my room?”
George’s grip slackened. “If you shut the door I’m opening it.”
So Dream didn’t shut the door. He walked into his room, tossed his dirty clothes in the laundry basket, and spared himself a fleeting look in the mirror. When he walked back out, he found the others all sitting in the living room, caught in a position that made Dream’s stomach twist so out-of-place and jealous.
George sat with his head in Sapnap’s neck, Karl on the other side of him with an arm braced across his shoulders. They were together, and comfortable, and Dream sat alone on the other couch.
He balled his fists up against his thighs. Slow and steady, George picked his head up.
“Why are you so distant?”
The brunet’s voice rang bitter and unwanted. Dream tensed, and he wasn’t sure how to answer, and he wasn’t sure how to phrase the truth.
In lieu of a proper response, he muttered, “It’s complicated.”
Clearly, that wasn’t good enough. But Dream didn’t know what else to say, not without revealing too much of the truth. So he bit his lip, and he waited, and he looked down at the floor.
Karl’s voice came accusatory and spiked. “Are you uncomfortable living with us because we’re together?”
Dream tensed. No.
Not really.
Kind of.
Quiet, George settled, “You are.”
Dream looked up sharply. “No!” he said immediately, newfound words crawling up his throat. “It’s not– you don’t– it’s not that.”
George stared at him. Open, patient, waiting.
Dream swallowed, and he looked back toward the floor. The silence was deafening, and he knew they were all awaiting his answer, but he didn’t know how to say it.
The words came with difficulty.
“I’m jealous. Because you guys all have each other, and I don’t have anyone.”
Sapnap said exactly what Dream was expecting to hear. “Don’t you have a soulmate?”
And for the first time in far too long, Dream was completely honest. It was quiet, and whispered, and barely loud enough to be heard–but it was honest.
“No.”
Somehow, the silence grew louder. Dream closed his eyes.
Cautious, George said, “You told me you just hadn’t met them yet.”
And that was true, and he had, but Dream had lied.
“What’s your soulmate’s name?” George had asked one day, when there was snow along the sidewalks and the air was cold enough to see their breath.
“I haven’t met them yet,” Dream answered, the bitter taste of a practiced lie hot and venomous on his tongue. “But I know they’re out there somewhere.”
They aren’t.
Nervous, Dream admitted, “I lied.” The silence remained for another deafening moment. “I lie to everyone,” he continued. “It’s easier to just say I haven’t met them yet than it is to say I don’t have a mark.”
He knew they wouldn’t argue with that. They didn’t.
“It’s okay,” Karl tried, but Dream wasn’t having it.
“Is it?” he retorted, cruel laughter falling past his lips. “I’m alone. Forever. Everyone else already has a soulmate, so what’s the point of wasting their time on me?” Looking up, he saw where all three of them still sat so close to each other, and everything inside of him twisted. “Fuck, and George has two. This isn’t… this isn’t fair.”
He felt like a petulant child, but that didn’t make him any less upset. Slow-moving tears pricked at the backs of his eyes, hot and unrelenting. Dream looked down at the floor again, and he wasn’t sure if it was more to hide them from his view or to keep his tears unseen.
“Dream,” George said, slow, his words far too earnest. “It’s okay.”
No, it’s not, he didn’t say, you don’t understand.
And perhaps the last part was true, but either way, Dream kept it to himself. He sat in pitiful silence, wishing he had it in him to get up and walk back to his bedroom, but he didn’t. He stayed where he was, water dripping slow down the back of his neck, and he was silent.
Everything moved in a painful, awful slow-motion. It was as if he could hear a ticking clock on the wall, even if there were no clocks in sight.
There was nothing but the distant mutterings of the three people he lived with from across the room. When Dream listened close, he couldn’t catch a word.
Then, “Dream,” George said again, and Dream hummed noncommittally. “Can you look at me?”
Dream looked up. He tried to blink the tears out of his eyes. It didn’t really work.
“Dream,” George said, again, a smile splitting tense across his face. “Do you want to hear something I didn’t think was very fair?”
The blond tried not to frown. Meek, he pried, “What?”
A laugh slipped past George’s curving lips. It sounded more nervous than anything.
“That I have the two best boyfriends in the world, and still, I was falling in love with you.”
When they tell people how they all got together, they pretend to be a strange mish-mash of soulmates.
Dream makes an agreement with Sapnap to both pretend they have flower markings on their upper thighs. The other two let them have it.
And it makes Dream feel a whole lot less alone, even if none of their love has anything to do with the stars; it doesn’t have to, Dream learns, and he thinks it’s better like this, anyway.
The second bedroom fades off into obscurity again. They start using it as storage, saying they’ll clear it out if they make any new friends who want to stay over, which they never do. They all share the bed in the other room, finding it a little small for four people, but if they sleep on top of each other it usually works out alright.
And life is perfect, soulmates or not. Life is perfect, and something of simple, and it’s full of laughter and love and splattered icing across cut faces. Dream makes cookies, and Karl bakes bread, and Sapnap and George bicker with each other on the wrong side of the counter.
Dream has never been happier with his decision to move into George’s spare bedroom, even if it took a little bit of avoidance and a whole lot of alone time to get to where he is now–not alone, not miserable, and not secluded.
And he doesn’t have a soulmate mark. But he doesn’t need any marks to have the three best boyfriends in the whole entire world.