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Rule #1: When you meet your soulmate, a tattoo known as a soulmark appears on the inside of your right wrist. The colors of the mark reflect your soulmate's feelings towards you.
Rule #2: You cannot truly identify your soulmate until you kiss them, at which point your soulmark will become a solid gold color.
Rule #3: It is possible to have a soulfriend in addition to (or, in some cases, instead of) a soulmate. If/when you meet your soulfriend, a friendmark will appear above your heart in the form of a tiny symbol of some sort. Unlike soulmarks, friendmarks do not change color, and unlike soulmates, soulfriends are able to identify each other instantly, without the need for a kiss to prove the connection.
Rule #4: It is also possible to have more than one soulmate. Those who meet a second soulmate will have a soulmark on their left wrist in addition to the one on their right.
Rule #5: If your soulmate/soulfriend dies, you will feel the pain of their death, and your soulmark/friendmark will become a scar. If your soulmate dies before you can identify them, the scar will forever remain in the colors that represent how your soulmate thought about you at the moment of their death.
Charlie Spring knows the soulmate rules by heart. He has since he was first introduced to the concept at five years old and spent three whole years parading around, dreaming about the man who would eventually be his soulmate, silky hair and strapping good looks and white horses by the dozen. (One of the many reasons his parents didn’t feign shock when he came out.)
It’s year ten, and he’s tried to distance himself away from those dreams, especially with the soulfriend mark he acquired at age 11, belonging to none other than Tao Xu. Getting a soulfriend mark that early is extraordinarily rare, but a soulmate mark before the age of 16 to go along with it? Delusional, really. He knows that, knows that drifting into daydreams is a lost cause, but he can’t stop himself. Not when the halls are overflowing with potential soulmates, right for the finding. Though he supposes walking up and kissing every boy in the school to see if somehow, miraculously, a golden mark solidified on his wrist, would give Charlie a reputation he wouldn’t be too keen on.
It’s stupid, really. Tao has gone on many rants about the bullshit concept of soulmates- despite having a very clear, very not-golden one on his wrist- and besides all that, Charlie has a boyfriend. He shouldn’t get hung up in the clouds when Ben Hope is right in front of him.
Still, the absence that lingers on his right carpus is aching. Ben isn’t Charlie’s soulmate, and Charlie isn’t his. But is it really practical to assume you’ll meet the one you’re destined to be with in such a short life? It’s better to settle for something else, in the long run. Ben is cute and honest. Well, he’s cute.
Deep down, Charlie doesn’t want to settle. He wants the whirlwind romance, the liquid aureate marks and perfect kisses, he wants happily ever after with the person he’s meant to be with. But he has to wake up one day.
“Happy New Year, Truham Boys!”
The loud, crackly voice over the school intercom jolts him out of morning delusions. “Don’t forget there’ll now be students from all school years in your new form groups. I hope you enjoy getting to know some fresh faces in registration each day.”
The voice cuts, and so does Charlie’s tired, drowsy yet blissful moments before the school day commences. He sighs, checking his forearm for the form room he’s assigned to. In tiny, scribbled writing, B25! is laid out on his skin in black ink.
The walk there is routine. Being his fourth year at Truham, he knows the hallways like the back of his hand, and when he finally rounds the corner into Mr. Lange’s first period classroom, blue and yellow with wide, open windows, the sensation of monotony is unshakable. Still, a reputation to uphold, and he forces his best early morning smile as he approaches the desk of his teacher.
“Oh! If it isn’t Charlie Spring. Happy New Year.” The man offers with the enthusiasm of most normal people before dawn. For the sake of both of them, Charlie drops his facade and just hopes he doesn’t look miserable.
“Hi, sir.”
“Come to join the ranks of Hamlet house?”
“Apparently so.”
Mr. Lange fumbles with his clipboard, raising his eyes and clicking a ballpoint pen, “lets see, where did I put you on the seating plan… ah, yes! You’re over there,” he gestures to the corner of the room, backlit by windows that let in rare, precious sunlight. “Next to Nicholas Nelson. He’s in year eleven, so only one year older than you. One of the rugby boys too, I think. I’m sure you’ll get along swimmingly.”
Rugby boys. Unwittingly, Charlie lets out another sigh. He’s sure he’s seen Nick Nelson around, being a rugby boy, and he’s definitely heard the name, but can’t put words to a face. Still, that crowd isn’t good news, and he fiddles with his fingers, grasping the hem of his coat. Out of everyone, a rugby lad. Just his luck, he supposes.
“Or you can just sit in silence for the rest of the year,” Mr. Lange adds with a joyless smile. “Really doesn’t affect me in any way whatsoever.”
He lets out another sigh, deeper this time, and rolls his shoulders in a way that might resemble an annoyed eye roll. Determined to get this over with, he steps towards his seat, trying to focus instead on how the light refracts off the glass, and- oh.
Shit. He’s cute.
This is stupid. This is so, so fucking stupid- besides the fact that appearances are beyond superficial, he doesn’t even know this boy, he hasn’t even heard his voice, and yet Charlie Spring is weak at the knees because he’s really, really cute. He has strawberry blonde hair that looks golden when it’s backlit like this, swept to the side. Maybe it’s fustian but his skin is soft and freckled and maybe sprinkled with cinnamon, which is a dumb metaphor but it’s so sweet and pretty that Charlie’s half-awake brain can’t come up with much else. His eyes are dark brown and soft, and his shirt is just slightly too tight, flexed against hidden muscles that make Charlie squirm. He’s just standing there like a puppet with its strings cut, swallowing and smiling giddily, before he forces his feet into motion and he thinks he might just combust because Nick is even cuter up close.
“Hi,” he breathes, soft and giddy like a schoolgirl, but he can’t contain himself because this boy, a boy he’s just met approximately one second ago, has broken him.
“Hi,” Nick says back, and his voice is cute too, and he’s looking at Charlie and he wishes he’ll never stop looking at him. But he does, looking down to write on his notebook, and Charlie has to stare down at the table because he must be the color of poppies. Or roses. Or any other assorted flush-toned flora.
“I did it again. I bought Elle’s drink again.”
“Didn’t you do that yesterday as well?”
“Yes, Isaac, yes I did.”
The days are flowing by, drifting into the wind like dandelion seeds, and Charlie’s left in the wake of it, two days later, at his lunch table with Tao and Isaac. He tries to stay engaged in the soft back-and-forth of the midday conversations, but his eyes drift somewhere else- specifically, the tennis court a few hundred metres away, lined with a thin, tall green fence. Despite it all, he can make out the shape of one Nick Nelson, blue blazer and all, running against the gusts of air and across the court. He’s barely a clump of flaxen hair and blue wardrobe, but it’s still enough to make his heart flutter.
Charlie wouldn’t admit to thinking about Nick as much as he has over just two days. But every “hi!” , whether in the form group or in the hallway or before the bell, is a little light in his life, one eventually snuffed out by Ben Hope’s cold indifference in anyone’s eyes but his own.
Still, just seeing him keeps the brightness up a little longer.
“Isn’t that Nick Nelson?” Tao’s voice cuts through his thoughts. The taller boy’s eyes land on Nick as well, narrowing them as he continues, “the guy you sit next to in form?”
Charlie feigns innocence. It’s a futile attempt- anyone in a five mile radius knows (and probably loves) Nick Nelson. Of course, Tao’s always been the exception to the rule. “Who?”
“The one who looks like a golden retriever?”
“He doesn’t look like a golden retriever!” He snaps on instinct, but looking at Nick’s golden hair, his wide smile and stupidly cute brown eyes, it all sort of fits. Another giggle comes in, and Nick Nelson must have some key to malfunctioning Charlie Spring. “Okay, he does.”
“I cannot believe you’ve been sat next to- oh my god.” Tao’s voice drops. Isaac finally looks up from his book, following Tao’s gaze that lands on Charlie’s outstretched right hand.
“What?”
“Charlie. Your wrist.”
The boy looks down, supposing he got a cut or something small. But crimson isn’t the color that awaits him.
It’s lavender. Sweet, aromatic lavender, periwinkle and soft, on his wrist. A soulmark. It’s not grey, meaning he’s actually interacted with his soulmate and not just met him- them. He can’t even remember what lavender means again because I have a soulmark. He met his actual soulmate. When did it show up? Today? Yesterday? A week ago? It’s not like he checks his wrist regularly, but it couldn’t have been more than a few days, right? Right?
His voice is barely a whisper, trembling so hard it sounds on the brink of a fever. “Oh my god.”
“You got a soulmark?“ Isaac raises his eyebrows.
“W-well,” Charlie squeaks, and he must not be able to make actual human language at this point because his brain is still trying to wrap his head around the fact that he has a soulmate and he met them. “We shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Tao’s soulmark has been light pink for like, three years.”
“Oh, shut up Charlie!” Tao’s eyes are so wide it looks like they might pop out. Charlie swallows as the other boy continues, “wait, this is recent, right? I swear you didn’t have that before the term started.”
“N-no, I didn’t. So it has to have shown up recently,” Charlie concludes. Someone recent. Someone recent. Blue eyes land on a familiar patch of strawberry blonde hair.
His giddy, sugar-hyped mind is foolish enough to entertain the idea for a fleeting moment. (He met Nick recently. Just a thought.)
Tao follows his gaze. “Oh my god, no. Charlie, you may be accustomed to these silly crushes but there’s no way in hell your soulmate is Nick Nelson.”
He pouts like a sad toddler. “But why?”
“Why? He’s the star player on the rugby team! We are a group- no, a trio- of borderline outcasts!” He gestures to the three of them. Charlie would normally be offended, or at least feign offense for comedy’s sake, but his childlike elation clouds that. “He’s friends with a bunch of gross year elevens who are exactly like the people who bullied you last year. Plus, he’s straight. Like, aggressively straight.”
Isaac nods nonchalantly. “He makes a convincing argument.”
“But-“
“It’s a new term, meaning you’ve probably met a ton of new boys. Try to focus on them and not the ultra-straight frat douche.”
Charlie sighs. Deep down, he knows Tao’s right, but no one can blame Charlie, can they? Nick is just the type of person people fall for. He’s something to keep his mind away from whoever his actual soulmate is (at least, that’s what Charlie tells himself). He can let himself indulge in this whimsical fantasy once, before he’s tied to someone forever. It’s foolish and imprudent and rash, this futile wish, but his soulmate only seems to have one face. As the school bell rings for fifth period, that same freckled face lingers in the back of his mind.
It isn’t until an hour later, stuck in maths, that he remembers lavender is the color of fondness.
It’s two days later when his soulmark finally changes.
He definitely hasn’t been checking it nightly. Hourly. More than that. Glancing at his wrist more than necessary, way more than necessary, hoping for anything other than the same periwinkle lavender that has been staring up at him for at least forty-eight hours. No luck. No attempts to draw on it work either, and he’s left waiting for his soulmate to change their mind on him.
It’s stupid, isn’t it? He’s been told a million times that things like this happen naturally, and Charlie’s fine with saying to hell with it and kissing Nick Nelson right now to see if the inside of his wrist would glow gold. Unfortunately, he doesn’t, because common decency and such, and the wiser part of his brain knowing the inevitability that it won’t work.
He’s just trying to put his books away into his locker, cramming the pages into a space much too small, but a horrible, terrible, perfect voice interrupts him.
“Hey!”
The supplies collapse on his feet, sorely collecting dust from the spotless floors. He turns to see none other than Nick Nelson looking down at where his books have fallen at his feet, and offers a hand to pick up the remnants. Charlie can’t help but look at his hands, calloused and smooth and things he’d really like to hold. But Nick’s handing him the folders and his drumsticks and he supposes maybe he shouldn’t be thinking like that when the other boy’s trying to have an actual human conversation.
“You play the drums?”
Charlie swallows. “Yeah.”
“That’s so cool!”
That’s so cool. That’s so cool. That’s so cool. That’s so cool. Nick Nelson thinks he’s cool. That’ssocoolthatssocoolyhatsocosolsl.
He squeaks out a word that’s hopefully in English. “Thanks.”
“So, um, I had something I wanted to ask you.”
Roses appear around his vision, and the hue shifts pink, because Nick’s brown eyes are crinkled and soft and perfect. He can almost hear it, Nick’s voice, smiling and-
“Charlie, I wanted to let you know that I’m gay too, and I’m your soulmate. Do you want to go out with me? I want to be with you forever.”
“Do you wanna join the rugby team?”
He can feel the excitement drain out of him, lord of whimsy leaving him cold in the wake of reality. “What?”
“We have enough players for the team, but we’re not allowed to actually play against other teams without a reserve,” Nick explains, but Charlie’s a little too focused on the way his side swept hair shifts when he tilts his head. “And I saw you run in P.E, and you’re like, really fast, so I thought you might be interested.”
He’s expecting a response, so Charlie has to actually process what he’s said. The younger boy’s barely ever seen rugby, let alone play it, and if he was held at gunpoint to name a single rule, you might as well pull the trigger.
“I don’t really know how to play…”
“That’s fine! I can teach you!” Nick’s smiling again, and it’s infectious. It’s kind of unfair, how stupidly cute his smile is, and also unfair that he’s offering to teach Charlie something, which means more time with Nick, which means more Nick Nelson smiles. Unfair to him. How is he supposed to focus on his soulmate when Nick Nelson is right in front of him?
“Aren’t I a bit… small and weak to be a rugby player?”
“We’re just a school team, you know. It’s not that serious,” it’s lighthearted, but the smile still fades slightly, and call Charlie shallow but he could use some luminescence.
“So you’re saying I am small and weak?”
Panic flashes across Nick’s face, mumbling objections, but he sees Charlie’s grin and the smile is back again, bright and warm and glowing. “So, do you want to join?”
His breath catches, as if there’s anything to debate here. “Um… yeah! Sure, I’ll give it a shot.”
Nick’s grin widens and Charlie hopes it never leaves. He really, really wants to kiss that smile, but he doesn’t. “Awesome! See you after school, then?”
“Yeah!” Charlie replies shakily. “See you.”
As Nick flashes one last beam and walks away, the other boy finds himself trying to glance at Nick’s right wrist. No luck, as it’s tucked under the navy school blazer, and he mentally reminds himself to check it when Nick’s in a polo at rugby practice. He knows it’s impossible, but hey, the world’s been off its axis lately.
(Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but he doesn’t want to let that pondering sink in.)
So the year ten closes his locker, checking his wrist for where his next class is, scribbled in messy black ink, and-
Oh.
It changed. It finally, finally changed. The soft, periwinkle lavender is accompanied by a cream color, just in the brink of buttercream yellow. It’s soft and pastel and gentle, and Charlie’s trying to wrack his brain for the fourth grade knowledge on what the color means. It takes him an embarrassingly long moment to recover the knowledge.
Admiration. Soft, gentle, pastel admiration. His soulmate admires him. The reasoning is to be desired, but the feeling is there, and he’s giddily beaming right there in the corridor. His soulmate is here, close, right for the falling.
Every day, Charlie Spring either gets a little more sure Nick Nelson is his soulmate or a little more sure he’s going insane.
Because this can’t have all been a coincidence.
After practice that day, he’d headed out of the building and found Ben, who- who- it was a blur. A blur of unwanted touches and forced mouth smashes and it felt like hell and then Nick was there, pulling him out of the darkness and keeping a hand on his shoulder, steady and grounding. He barely cried that night, because his soulmark changed again. Red-orange, a vibrant tangerine color latched into his wrist that signifies protectiveness. But he’d only interacted with Nick since the change.
He tried not to jump to conclusions, because he’s young and gay and foolish and in love, so of course his half-witted brain would search for signs. But the tiniest swirls of yellow-orange companionship started to appear after they talked for many hours, not even in person, and surely that had to mean something.
The next weekend, when he went over to Nick’s house for the first time, it was enough to make him combust. He should’ve checked the other boy’s wrist, but he didn’t, because the amber from before swirled bigger and overtook almost the entire mark and it was enough to drive him up the wall because why can’t it be him?
Tao became tired of listening to Charlie’s rambles on this, but it was nowhere near the end because when Nick came over to his house, it all got worse. Or better. He doesn’t know. He was too focused on how unfair it was that Nick’s smile was that cute. He tried to control his daydreams and reel his heart in, ignore the sparks that jutted from their palms when he held Nick’s hands over the drums, but Nick hugged him like he’d never let go and Charlie wanted to stay there for ever, safe and grounded and held in Nick Nelson’s arms. It ended too quickly and left him cold, and when he glanced at his wrist and saw soft, blooming fuchsia, the color of a deep crush burrowing in someone’s heart, it really was too much to take in.
It couldn’t have been a coincidence, could it?
Could it?
He’s tried for days to come up with another explanation, but he’s spent no more time with anyone else than Nick, let alone someone he just met as recently as his new crush. Really, all the signs in the universe are pointing towards the fact that Nick Nelson is his soulmate.
But even if it is true, how do you even bring something up like that? Hey, do you mind if I just check your wrist and we maybe kiss to see if we turn gold because you might be my soulmate? Thanks!
God. Nick would probably run screaming. Charlie can’t blame him.
“Charlie, you’re going to be late!”
His mother’s voice interrupts the existential crisis that Charlie Spring has been locked in for two months. He sighs, fixing his hair a final time before turning to his bedroom door.
He can’t believe he’s doing this. Going to Harry Greene’s party. Voluntarily. In any other world, he’d jump off a cliff before he’d voluntarily go anywhere with Harry Greene. But this world has Nick Nelson’s smile, one of his Top Ten Favorite Things (right above drums and below Moonlight), so he is.
(Nick himself, of course, is above them all.)
“Coming, mum!” He yells in return, sneaking a final glance at his reflection, wearing a wine-colored button up. Knowing parties, and knowing the fact that Nick exudes heat like a radiator, he knows Nick will likely be wearing a t-shirt. Which means his wrists will be visible. So tonight, Charlie has to check them. To see if this whole thing actually is a massive coincidence. God. He really wished this soulmate thing was simpler, like their name on your wrist, but whatever.
He shuts his bedroom door and runs downstairs.
Charlie’s been here for over an hour, and so far, this party is a bust.
It’s too loud and too humid and too hot, and he’s really starting to envy everyone who showed up in a tank top. The whole atmosphere is stuffy and asphyxiating, heavy with condensation of teenage hormones and spiked fruit punch. Of course, this would all be okay if Nick were here. But he isn’t.
In the beginning, they found each other, and despite the fact that Nick’s arms were firmly locked on his chest thus obfuscating the view of his wrist, everything in the world was good and bright and perfect for about ten minutes. And then Harry Greene came, and Nick went to the girl he likes, and everything went crumbling down. Because how stupid was Charlie to think Nick would ever be his soulmate? Almost fifteen and still caught in the clouds, except those clouds were suffocating and too heavy and he couldn’t hold it all up. So he did what he did best. He ran and kept running.
Of course, of course, right at that moment he ran into Ben Hope. His words felt like viruses and his hands felt like eels on Charlie’s skin, so he shoved and he walked and the world was a little less dark.
A little.
Sitting on a couch in the middle of a hotel with a lot of screaming adolescents is not exactly what Charlie thought he’d be doing on this Friday night. It’s somewhat quieter here, but the technology-infused artificial pop keeps booming a drumline in his ears, unfamiliar and unsettling, and maybe a part of him wishes for some luminescence because Nick Nelson is at his side once more.
His face in the hue-tinted lighting is pink and soft and perfect, and the asphyxiation eases out of Charlie’s lungs bit by bit, “hi.”
“You left,” Nick says quietly. It’s not accusatory or sad, just a statement, and Charlie fumbles to come up with an explanation that won’t make him sound insane.
“Sorry, I-I felt like I was in the way,” he breathes nervously, and Nick looks like a kicked puppy, and the sensation feels much like whiplash. “And your year eleven friends are kind of… intimidating.”
The other boy looks down and pauses, pursing his lips for a moment, “yeah,” he looks back up, “I don’t know if I want to hang out with those guys anymore.” This feels light, it feels airy, and Charlie’s tiny smile only grows when he hears: “I’d rather hang out with you, anyway.”
This is unfair. This is so, so unfair to have the cutest, kindest boy alive in front of him saying this and have them not be soulmates. Charlie can feel his heart speed up, and words get caught in his throat. So much he wants to say to such a simple statement, but he can feel himself falling downwards and instead switches the line of converse. “So, I just ran into Ben.”
Nick’s eyes widen again, “Ben?”
The dark-haired boy swallows and nods as best as possible, trying to untangle the jumbled sentences that refuse to untie. “Yeah. I mean… I dealt with it,” he thinks back and tries to pick up a tiny smile, “He tried to like… apologize for what happened, but I pushed him into a wall and told him to go away.”
Nick’s face lifts, high, high up, and Charlie wants to fly with him more than he’s wanted anything in his life. “I think he got the message this time.”
The strawberry blond is beaming now and Charlie wishes he could see it forever. “I’m so proud!”
“Shut up!” He jokes, and those calloused, warm hands are around his again, and his heart stops. He allows himself a glance, only a quick one, down to their joined limbs, and just peeking out of Nick’s carpus is a soft pink light, deep fuchsia, so vibrant it might border on red. He has a soulmark, and the colors can’t be matched in Charlie’s frazzled brain but they feel so close to home. It’s stupid, it’s so foolish, but he lets himself hope, dare, fly into the possibilities.
Nick’s face stays illuminated, but Charlie supposes it would be whether the spotlight was trained on him or not. “It’s kind of noisy in here, isn’t it.”
His breath catches, and he wants to say take me away from here, to somewhere, anywhere, just with you. It has to be you. But he doesn’t. “Yeah.”
“Should we go somewhere quieter?”
Charlie doesn’t know what stops his airflow, but he has to manually force himself to breathe, voice achingly soft, so soft he’s not sure Nick will make it out. “Okay.”
But he does, Nick does, just like always, and he’s standing up and pulling Charlie by the hand. He can clearly see the mark now, deep and vibrant and gut-wrenching, and it’s the brightest thing in this room full of lights. Well, second brightest thing, because Nick is smiling again, and they’re racing, and the world is bright and colorful and perfect.
A few stories later, they find themselves in a spare room, if you can even call it that. Charlie bets his entire ground floor can fit inside this room, with towering ceilings and satin curtains and perfectly polished floors. It’s what could only be described as a ballroom, if he really had to guess.
“How did Harry hire this entire place?”
“Oh, he’s like, extremely rich,” Nick chuckles as Charlie glances in awe.
“He should have gone on My Super Sweet 16!”
“Mm,” Nick nods in agreement, “so he could cry when his parents got him the wrong color Lamborghini!”
They’re both giggling stupidly, “exactly!”
Nick walks over to a windowsill, leaning against the wall with a long, tired exhale. He may be a rugby player, but he’s not the runner Charlie is, and they’re left with the absence of downstairs, only faint sounds and their breathing to quell the silence.
Charlie follows in the other boy’s footsteps, sighing as he sits down next to him. The silence is deafening, absence of noise clouding his ears when he’s sitting next to the boy who may or may not be his soulmate. “So,” he breathes, “was… Harry being serious?” He feels Nick’s gaze. “Do you like Tara?”
He’s not sure what he was expecting, but objections come out almost instantly. “What? No! No, definitely not.”
The air feels lighter and yet so much thicker. The tension is heavy enough to cauterize and for a moment, Charlie lets himself imagine Nick feels it too. “So, you… don’t have a crush on anyone at the moment?”
The year eleven looks down. This is too much, it’s prying beyond what Charlie would ever normally ask, but he’s high off serotonin and teenage want and so he indulges, just once, trying to decipher the look in Nick’s eye as he lets out another exhale. “Well,” his throat feels like cement. “I didn’t say that.”
He likes someone. Nick likes someone. This shouldn’t be a surprise, he’s Nick Nelson for god’s sake and he can like whoever he wants, but the possibility of it being Charlie is so small, so impossibly microscopic that he might as well let the futile wish go. There’s no reason to get his heart broken over nothing. This is foolish. This is so, so foolish, but he can’t stop himself. “What’s she like then?“
The silence might only be for a moment but it feels like decades. It feels strangulating and stiff and quiet and dark, and he’s begging for a little light, a smile, anything to draw him out of the knowledge he’s fallen for someone who can’t-won’t love him back.
“You’re just going to assume they’re a she?”
The dark haired boy’s head snaps in Nick’s direction. He can’t comprehend the words that leave his mouth, and he can’t process what his own tongue is saying because it feels fuzzy, too fuzzy, dreamlike and ethereal. “Are they,” breathing feels arduous. “Are they not a girl?”
He can hear Nick swallow. Every sound feels like a bass. And Charlie’s begging for more, begging for a consistent drumline, and he’s so parched and out of body that he might as well be on autopilot.
“Would you go out with someone who wasn’t a girl?”
Nick licks his lips, and they’re so close that Charlie can feel his shaky breath. The words come out in chokes. “I… don’t know,” he looks somewhere far off before turning again, “maybe.”
Every inch closer feels addicting. He’s tantalizing, Nick is, and Charlie can only want more. He should think clearly, he shouldn’t be this foolish, but Nick’s brown eyes are looking at him like that and he’s a goner.
“Would you… kiss someone who wasn’t a girl?”
It feels like the drop before the fall. It feels horrible and wonderful and exciting and terrifying and Charlie’s definitely going to regret this, but the pink of their soulmarks and Nick’s face tilted just that way put him into checkmate.
“I don’t know.”
The world goes blank. Charlie’s ears ring. His skin feels numb and tingly and it feels like a dream, a dream he doesn’t want to wake up from. He latches on a little longer. The world goes mute.
“Would you kiss me?”
Nick’s looking at him like he just destroyed his world and built it back up again. His eyes are wider than the moon and twice as bright, and as they link their fingers slowly, achingly, agonizingly, the second pulse brings feeling back into Charlie’s senses. The world is shifted on its axis.
“Yeah.”
He can’t breathe. The boy in front of him has stolen all the air from his lungs in one fell swoop, and he’s left in the aftermath, clinging to the syllable that promises night and day and gods above. A single syllable that breaks the world and builds it back up again.
Charlie can feel himself inching closer, painfully closer, so close he can count every single freckle on Nick’s pale skin. He’d paint constellations with them, if he could. He’d let the stars burn and dissipate before his own eyes to keep Nick Nelson here. It’s quiet. Too quiet. It feels silent and deafening and horrible and like the most wonderful thing in the world.
When Nick’s lips finally meet with his, it all goes white.
It all stops and starts at the same time.
He’d heard it a million times, crawled up on his mother’s lap in the late evening. Hushed and perfect and promising.
“It’s like magic,” she whispers.
She wasn’t wrong. In fact maybe she was, because magic isn’t good enough of a word for this. Nothing is. Charlie can’t think of a single thing to describe it as.
To the best he can muster, it starts like a spark of electricity, coursing through his veins and down his spine across his skin and it's like the kind of shiver that you get when you're excited and nervous all at the same time and it's intoxicatingly addictive.
It feels like light. The tingles fade and only leave warmth, in, out, above, beneath, every adjective imaginable because Charlie never knew he could feel golden before this. But he does. God, he does, it feels like melting and falling and flying in aureate glow and it’s everything he’s ever hoped for and more. Every bit of luminescence he’s felt with Nick comes back, brighter, stronger, softer, perfect and bright and he might as well be kissing the sun. It’s possible he never lived before this.
Then, like he’s supposed to, he can breathe again.
For the first time in what feels like forever, he exhales, the cool air running over his empty lips.
Slowly, he opens his eyes. Nick can only stare, eyes bright and soft and perfect, eyes Charlie wants to drown in. Drown to the bottom of the ocean. If love is madness, then maybe he’ll never feel sanity again. It’s a thought that brings too much joy to articulate.
He’s half out of his mind, so foolish that it takes Nick’s gaze darting downwards to check his wrist. And he doesn’t even need to check, but he does anyway, and both of their soulmarks share a perfect, luminescent aurelian hue. They’re warm and beating and pulsing through skin, and when Nick curls his hand around Charlie’s and their wrists touch fully, they lock like magnets finally finding their other half. The soft glow of elation convinces him he’ll never let go.
He doesn’t. Charlie winds a hand around Nick’s neck, clasping onto dear life, and brings himself back into the light.
He’d obsessed for years over what it would be like to finally kiss his soulmate, yet none of the fantasies could bring him this. Nick’s lips against his own, soft and whole and steady, taking him up into the clouds and down to the sea and everywhere, all the time, all at once. He can feel himself yearning for him, yearning to hold every inch of Nick and explore every bit of his heart and mind and soul, fit with Charlie’s so perfectly, so, so perfectly that it might border on saccharine and he wants to cry. He wants to know and love everything. Nick’s smile and laugh and frown and cry and yell and shout and everything in between, the constellations on his face and the universe in his lips and the worlds he’d like to explore for eons and eons just waiting inside of this boy. It steals his breath, but Nick is more like breathing than breathing ever was, and Charlie supposes he’ll never need oxygen again.
They part. He’s almost okay with the absence on his lips because Nick’s unfairly, foolishly perfect and he’s looking at Charlie like he built the sun and the stars and the planets all for his wishes. And he might as well have.
There’s no words to describe everything coursing through Charlie’s veins. He doesn’t attempt that, instead whispering through cleansed lungs, “you okay?”
But there’s a voice, and it’s not Nick’s. It’s too quiet and too loud and too everything and it’s not Nick’s, not the one Charlie wants to cling to until the end of time, except that one is mumbling about leaving. He’s leaving. Shoes pound against the polished wood, the door slams, and Nick is gone.
And the world crumbles in.
The next day, when Charlie’s eyes fall open, dawn feels dim.
It all feels dim, in the absence of the blinding light that built the world and let it crumble. And in that absence, his soulmark keeps pulsating, reaching for its other half, and then falling back into numbness when it realizes there’s nothing to latch onto.
After feeling everything, Charlie supposes, the ordinary feels dull. Beyond dull. It’s muted, diminished, colorless, a million other adjectives with nothing to hold onto. It’s deafeningly silent and horribly bleak and there’s nothing left to cling to before sinking down, down, down into somewhere he can’t locate.
“Charlie, can you get the door, please? It’s probably the postman!”
The brunet’s mellowed, slumbered brain isn’t able to clear the fog enough to remember that it’s Sundays and therefore it couldn’t be the postman, so unable that when Nick Nelson, soaked and bright and iridescent, is on his front porch, all that his lips offer is absence.
“Hi,” the boy offers, heaving and drenched and perfect.
“Hi,” is all Charlie can say back.
They stare for a good long minute, matched heavy swallows and sore eyes, before Nick finally speaks. His voice is soft and sweet and sounds like honeycomb. “I-I’m sorry for not texting you. I just wanted to talk in person.”
“Okay,” Charlie breathes, because he’s too focused on the way golden, shimmering light peeks out of Nick’s jumper, barely visible, as if it was meant for his eyes only, and he’d let the world crumble to fall into that light and never get up. But that tantalizing warmth brings the realization of Nick’s state, cold and drenched and standing in the open. He’s foolish, and Charlie’s foolish for not taking note of it, but he can’t bring himself to chastise. “Just- just come in, you’re getting soaked.”
Charlie drags him in by the arm, and it’s impossible and unfair and ridiculous how Nick’s hand still feels warm even after drenched in frigid rain. “Yeah, good idea.”
Charlie swallows, “did you forget a coat?”
Nick glances down at himself, as if to double check the slip of mind, “oh, um. Yeah. I… didn’t check the weather before I left.”
“Idiot,” Charlie giggles, and Nick laughs ever so slightly along with him, and the world is a little brighter.
“Um. So, about last night.”
Nevermind.
It’s darker. It’s so, so much darker, because he can see the way Nick’s eyes falter and he can hear the muted tone in his voice and he knows this is the end. Soulmate or not, he can’t make him stay.
“I just wanted to say-“
“Nick.”
They both turn to see Jane Spring standing in the hallway, arms crossed against her chest with an unreadable expression. Charlie can’t remember to decide whether he’s happy for the interruption or if it worsens the pit in his stomach. “I didn’t know you were coming around.”
“Um…” Nick gulps, “yeah. Sorry, yeah.”
“He’s just picking up a jumper he left here last week,” Charlie cuts in. It’s a flimsy excuse, and the tremble in his voice should give away the lie instantly, but to his relief, his mother doesn’t question it.
“Right,” she glances between them with a look her son pointedly ignores. “Well, don’t forget we’re going to Grandma’s this morning, Charlie.” Yes, okay, now please leave and let me fizzle out in peace. “You could at least change out of your pajamas.”
He glances at the worn-out yellow t-shirt and shorts he’s wearing. It’s embarrassing, beyond embarrassing, and to his chagrin his mother leaves it at that. He really, really would prefer to dissipate now, but he steals a glance at Nick, who has the softest, most wonderful, dorkiest smile he’s ever seen, and maybe it all isn’t so bad.
But it’s better to get the scarring over with, right?
“Let’s just go to my room,” he mumbles. Nick nods, and the brunet turns away to close the door, fix his hair, straighten his top, anything to avoid looking at Nick while fractures his heart bit by bit. It’s inevitable, really, and yet he still finds himself staring at the crooked floors when they finally make it to his bedroom.
“Uh,” Nick’s tone is aching and leaden, absent from the luminescence that Charlie clings to, and that absence leaves him cold. Cold with the knowledge he’s lost that light, the soft glow that’s kept him afloat for months. “So.”
“I’m so sorry,” it’s like a dam breaking, and it all collapses. Bit by bit by bit, and Charlie can’t even stop the reckless apologies that flow out. “I’m so sorry. It was- I-I didn’t think properly about what I was doing, and it was a stupid thing to do, and I don’t want you to feel awkward about it because it was all my fault.”
“Charlie, hang on-“
It’s loud. His head is too loud to hold onto Nick, and the dam has long since been broken- there’s no stopping the river that rushes out now. “I shouldn’t have kissed you! A-and I know you just felt pressured, because I asked, and because we’re- we’re-“ soulmates. It’s on the brink of his tongue, it’s so close and he wants to say it so bad but he can’t admit he has one when he’s losing it. “You probably don’t want to talk to me ever again, but… I at least had to say sorry.” His voice breaks. “And see if maybe… there’s a chance we could still be friends?” He sounds like a child, pleading, clinging onto the life vest that’s rapidly sinking under the waves. Nick says another word he can’t hear. “I don’t want to lose you because I did something stupid-“
“Charlie.”
The waters recede as Nick cups his cheek. It’s quieter, softer, gentler, and the light creeps back in through Nick’s calloused fingers, warm and whole and steady. Freckles like constellations and hair like liquid gold, and eyes he’s so close to drowning in, so close to jumping off the deep end and never looking back. But he doesn’t. He waits. He waits, achingly, agonizingly, staring into the eyes that will decide his fate. He’d wait forever, if Nick wants.
But he doesn’t need to, because soft lips are on Charlie’s again and the world comes crawling back. It’s bright and blinding and luminous and he wants to melt into this, melt into Nick’s arms and never reconstitute. He pushes onto his toes, reaching for more, reaching for heavens above through the soulmate he wants to cling to for eons and eons and maybe more than that. Just enough to make him stay.
But he doesn’t. As soon as it starts, they part, and his skin feels cold and his hands feel empty. Cool air feels frigid against his pale skin, and he wants so badly to run back into those arms, but he can’t.
“God,” Nick’s voice is more of a tremble than a tone, and Charlie swears it leaves him shaking in tandem. “I’m so sorry, I-“
Charlie doesn’t have the time to process more mindless apologies, nor the ability to care when Nick, drenched and damp, sits on his bed. All he can do is listen and grasp and feel everything and nothing. “I’m just so sorry I ran away last night. I was just freaking out because I was confused, and surprised, and like honestly-“ he shifts, and Charlie can see his adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. “I’m having a proper, full-on gay crisis. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to… you know…” the blond’s voice gets impossibly softer. “Kiss you. And it’s not that I don’t like you being my soulmate, or anything like that, I-I do, it’s just-“
Charlie’s heard that soulmates can share pain, and maybe that’s true because he feels throbbing, aching and agonizing, deep in his chest, or maybe deeper. Somewhere he can’t place. A kind of ache he aches to soothe, slowly walking over and sitting next to Nick.
He wants to heal him, hold him, build the world up to ease a pain he can’t cure, but he can’t. Instead, Charlie places a soft hand on his shoulder, feeling the ache lessen ever so slightly.
“I just think I need some time to… figure this out.”
Nick’s words are less of an observation and more of a plea. Charlie feels his heart fracture even more, fracture far more than it would’ve if Nick truly did never stay. But he did. He does. And Charlie pulls him close, arms clasping him like a vice and holding on, begging him to stay.
And he does.
The tears begin to subside as Nick buries his head in flaxen wool, and the light starts to break through the clouds. When Nick brings his head up again, looking at Charlie with eyes he’s drowning in, the light breaks through completely. The brunet brings out the best smile he can muster, just to see Nick replicate the same back, the same luminescence that he’ll never stop loving. One hundred lifetimes, and he’ll never stop loving it.
Maybe he could live a hundred lifetimes. They could grow old a hundred times, a hundred weddings and a hundred ever-after with his golden soulmate, and yet it all comes back to this. Nick, here, whole, staying in his arms. He holds on a little longer.
He murmurs comforts into strawberry blonde hair, golden in the sunlit beams.
“We have all the time in the world.”