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Scripps, being the oldest, has his tattoo come in first.
He makes sure he’s on his own when it happens, curled up under his duvet in the dark of his room as the clock strokes to midnight and he turns sixteen.
There’s nothing for a moment, then there’s a brief sear of heat across the skin of his inner right wrist and he knows. He shifts his left hand to curl his fingers around his wrist and traces over the slightly raised shapes that have appeared there.
When he looks at it for the first time in the morning, the letters are still a little red and raw around the edges but the name is there, clear as day. David.
If he squints at it a little, it looks a bit like Posner’s writing, he thinks. He fastens his watch over it, and doesn’t think any more on it.
*
Dakin gets his a few weeks later, and Scripps finds himself on the receiving end of a particularly irate phone call.
“Thomas? Who the fuck is Thomas? I’ve never even met a Thomas!”
*
Posner is the last of their group to get his, a few days after they get their O-Level results. He refuses to tell them what it says, and instead just keeps rubbing a few fingers over the centre of his chest and smiling down at his shoes.
Scripps doesn’t press, when they’re alone after everyone else has gone back to Lockwood’s to sneak booze out of his dad’s cabinet, and they’re left together on the swings in the play park. It’s starting to go grey, like it’s trying to rain, but they don’t move, swinging slightly and slowly in the breeze.
“Do you believe in it?” Posner asks suddenly. He’s still looking at his feet. “You know, in soulmates and destiny and fate, and all that.”
“Suppose so. I’ve got no reason not to,” Scripps replies after a moment, turning to look at the other boy. “The poets say it’s real.”
“What about God?” Posner frowns, kicking at the ground and muddying his shoes.
“He doesn’t say it’s the be all and end all,” Scripps says after a moment, features pinched somewhat. “There’s ways to be happy without them, He says. And besides, there’s nothing to suggest that soulmarks are anything to do with God, despite what people think.”
His hands tighten on the chains of the swing, and he looks away from Posner at the dirty grass and tarmac beneath their feet.
Posner makes a quiet noise at the back of his throat but doesn’t say anything, looking instead at the clouding sky above them. Scripps stays silent too, picking at a thread trailing from the cuff of his shirt.
“Let me have thee whole, –all–all–be mine! That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest,” Posner recites quietly, looking back down at his feet. Scripps snaps his head around to look at him.
“Of love, your kiss,–those hands, those eyes divine,” Scripps carries on, features shifting into a frown. “He wrote that about his soulmate, didn’t he? It’s one of the most well-documented cases from the nineteenth century.”
“He did,” Posner replies, finally looking up and fixing Scripps with a curious expression. “I often wonder if I’ll ever feel love like that.”
“You will, Pos,” Scripps states assuredly, thinking briefly of the name printed under the band of his watch.
“If I find them, that is,” he smiles demurely, expression slipping into a frown nonetheless. “I do hope I’m not a horrible disappointment.”
“You won’t be, I’m sure,” Scripps replies as the first few drops of rain start to break through the clouds. “Now come on, we’d best move or we’re gonna get drenched.”
Posner stands and follows as Scripps heads over to where he’s propped his bike up against the railings.
“If you think I’m walking all the way home, you can jog on,” Scripps laughs at Posner’s expression as he climbs on his bike. “We’ll go mine, it’s closer. Get on.”
He pats the space between the handlebars.
“We’ve not ridden like that since we were little, isn’t it a bit dangerous?” Posner’s frown deepens a little.
“Only if you slip,” Scripps smiles lopsidedly. “Now get on. You’re my eyes, so if we go our lengths it’s on you.”
Posner sighs good-naturedly, a hint of a smile pulling at his lips, and lifts himself up onto the handlebars, his hands resting next to Scripps’s.
“Hold on,” Scripps says as he kicks off from the ground and sets them on their way.
It’s pouring by the time they make it to Scripps’s house, and his dad chastises them both and throws towels at them as soon as they get the door open, and they settle themselves on the floor of Scripps’s room with their backs against the radiator and books in their hands.
*
Posner falls in love with Dakin some time during their first year of A-Levels. Scripps doesn’t quite know what to think of this development, and spends a lot of time writing awful staccato poetry in the margins of his school notebooks to try and make sense of it.
Dakin knows, of course, and acts like some sort of benevolent god whenever he deigns to smile at Posner, or straighten his tie for him, just to lead him on. It annoys Scripps more than he first realises, but he doesn’t understand why until he finds himself peer marking one of Posner’s essays for English.
He’s muddling through a run-on sentence about Mr. Darcy when he glances at the top of the page, where Posner’s written his name in his delicate sloping script that’s starting to look a little like Dakin’s. It’s oddly familiar.
He frowns intently at it for a moment, then fumbles blindly for his wrist, struggles against the buckle of his watch until it slides open and away, revealing the word he’d been hiding.
It matches perfectly, from the lopsided loop of the ‘a’ to the flick at the end of the lowercase ‘d’ and Scripps’s heart plunges to his stomach.
Of course it’s Posner.
Of course he’s one of the unrequited ones.
He drops Posner’s essay on his desk, scattering the pages across the wood as he stands and grabs his coat and makes to leave.
“Don?” His mother frowns after him, popping her head out of the kitchen as he opens the front door. “Donald, where are you going? Tea’s nearly ready.”
“Sorry, Mum, I’ve just– I need to–“ he leaves before he finishes, leaving his mother shouting after him as he climbs on his bike and heads towards the city library.
He finds any writing on unrequited cases he can, and spreads them out across a desk and starts reading. The outlook is overwhelming negative, spattered with suicides and moving across the world to be a safe distance away from them and heartrending poetry and literature and Scripps feels sick to the stomach.
He’s poring over a volume about Harriet Westbrook and how her doomed relationship with Shelley ultimately destroyed her when he hears a cough above him.
He looks up and Rudge is standing in front of him, eyebrows raised and a collection of books on the Irish famine tucked under his arms.
“You alright, mate? You look like you’ve been hit by the back end of a bus.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Scripps frowns, looking back at the book open in front of him. “Just, long night.”
“Unrequited soulmarks?” Rudge whistles through his teeth when he looks at the pile of books in front of Scripps. “Hector’d be pleased. He likes this poetic shite.”
“Yeah,” Scripps says distractedly, and Rudge drops his books on the table and loudly sits down opposite him.
“Mate, you sure you’re fine? You kind of look like you’re gonna start bawling.”
“Look, pack it in, will you?” Scripps snaps, harsher than he means. “I’m sorry, it’s just been a long day.”
“Calm your passions, Christ,” Rudge replies with a quiet laugh. “Sorry, sorry, I know, Lord’s name in vain and that. Wait, shit, hold on –you don’t mean you’ve found them, do you?”
Scripps nods tersely.
“Hell fire. Do they know?”
“No. We’re friends and they’ve never said anything, so I’ve reason to believe I’m not theirs. So I’ve gone for the books.” Scripps gestures at the stacks around him.
“That’s crap, mate. Sorry.” Rudge winces, then falls silent for a long time, and starts reading his own books. Scripps appreciates the quiet, even if he’s not sure Rudge understands.
He gets home late that night, and his parents are waiting for him in the living room with stern expressions on their faces. After he explains, their moods shift into something more fond and concerned, and they make him a cup of tea and squash him between them in a hug like they used to when he was small. He still gets grounded for a week for running off, but he feels less alone.
*
Now he knows, it’s worse.
He finds he can’t look at Posner without smiling to himself, stupidly, and every time he tries to write for himself he ends up with page upon page about how his hair looks in the sun and the freckles that come out across his nose over summer and how he shines so bright when he sings Scripps can barely look at the music.
And Posner is still in love with Dakin.
Scripps wishes he could say he’s at peace with it, but he’s not, especially when he catches Dakin remorselessly snogging Fiona behind the bike sheds one time he’s on playground duty during lunch break.
They’re in the last term of their A-Levels by now, and Scripps had rather hoped it might stop stinging when he catches Posner looking at Dakin like he hung the moon, but of course it hasn’t.
“He doesn’t even look twice at me,” Posner laments from his position sprawled on Scripps’s floor, where he sits ensconced in every anthology they could find in the library. “Why do I still want him?”
“The heart wants what it wants – or else it does not care,” Scripps replies, without looking up from his notes.
“Yes, Dickinson, very nice,” Posner rolls his eyes. “I don’t know why I keep pursuing this like I think it’s going to matter –we’re not bonded in any sense of the word, and I still act like he’s going to bother with me. I suppose I’m in love with the idea of him more than anything.”
Scripps looks up and raises an eyebrow at him.
“You do know he’s a complete prat, right?”
“I’m aware,” Posner fixes him with a look. “I know he’s never going to want me, but he’s attractive and smart and so sue me if I’ve a type, Scripps.”
Scripps raises his hands in mock surrender, but files that away for later use.
“It might suit you better if you went for men that’d actually look at you, though.” Scripps replies, and Posner’s impression hardens imperceptibly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Scripps replies quickly. “I just meant, you might be happier in the long run if you fall in love with people who can and will love you back.”
“Well, when you find someone who fits that bill, be sure to let me know.”
*
The day Irwin turns up is the day Scripps realises how he must look when he looks at Posner.
Dakin is gaping at this new bloke like he’s God’s gift and Christ, Scripps hopes he doesn’t look quite so gormless whenever Posner starts talking.
“You’ve absolutely fallen arse over tit for him, haven’t you?” Scripps says one day when him and Dakin are sprawled on the grass of the front field during one of their free periods. “Next thing you’ll be writing ‘Stuart Irwin’ all over your books.”
“Oh, piss off, would you?” Dakin punches him in the arm as well as he can manage from his prone position. “I’m not queer.”
“Right, of course you’re not,” Scripps laughs, rolling on to his back and letting his blazer fall open. “And I’m actually Jesus himself.”
“Shut your trap, you bellend,” Dakin snaps. “Besides, you’re one to talk. Posner?”
“What about me?” Posner appears above them, eyebrow raised and folder hugged to his chest. “You’d best shift yourselves if you don’t want to be late to History. Irwin’ll have your arses.”
“Oh, I think Dakin’d quite like that,” Scripps smirks, and when Dakin smacks him around the head with a book he knows he deserves it.
*
It gets a little easier, after that, when Dakin gets so pre-occupied with Irwin that he barely has time to dedicate to leading Posner on.
Posner still wants him, though, for reasons Scripps fears he will never understand.
There’s days when he wonders whether it’d be worth saying something, when Posner’s laughing at something Akthar said and beaming like the sun, or when he recites a particularly difficult line of Barrett Browning perfectly and looks so pleased he might burst, or his face when he finds out he’s got into Oxford.
Things get a little hectic after that.
*
Dakin about breaks his front door down with his bare hands on the afternoon of the accident.
“Simmer down! I’m coming,” Scripps shouts as he runs down the stairs and opens the door to his frantic expression. “What’s up with you?”
“I need a lift to the hospital.”
“Right, because I know how to drive. Why?”
“I think Irwin’s my soulmate.” Dakin elaborates, still jerking about skittishly. Scripps frowns at him.
“Okay, grand. Still doesn’t explain the hospital.” Scripps raises an eyebrow but dutifully leaves his house and leads Dakin towards where his bike’s leaning against the hedge.
“Hector crashed the bike.”
“Shit.”
“Quite.”
*
Scripps rings Posner from the hospital waiting room phone while Dakin shouts at a terrified receptionist about his rights as Irwin’s soulmate. He arrives not too long after, out of breath from the journey and with his eyes red.
“I think I’ve seen this on film before,” he says quietly, so only Scripps can hear him. “It didn’t end well.”
Scripps doesn’t say anything, but blindly reaches for Posner’s hand and squeezes like it will hold them both together.
It’s hours before they let Dakin through and by the time he reappears with wet eyes and a grim set to his mouth, Posner’s fallen asleep on Scripps’s shoulder.
“He is,” is all he says, slumping down in the empty seat on Scripps’s other side. “Christ.”
“At least he’s alive.” Scripps replies as quiet as he can manage, careful not to speak too loudly so as to avoid waking Posner.
“But I don’t understand why he didn’t say anything? He must’ve known.” Dakin runs his hand through his hair, mussing it beyond repair. “He had a chance, I was right there, and nothing.”
“You were his student.”
“Not anymore.” Dakin scoffs, looking at the dirty lino floor and scuffing the toes of his shoes against it. “But at least I said something.”
Scripps lets out a soft laugh, and Dakin turns his head to look at him.
“You know celibacy only applies to sex, don’t you? Not love.” His expression is tight, but Scripps stays silent. “And I know, I’m hardly the appropriate authority on how to function in a relationship, but fucking hell, Scripps. The only reason he’s not noticed the way you gawp at him is because he’s so busy staring at me.”
“I know that much,” Scripps snaps, expression hardening. “That’s exactly why I’ve never said anything. Besides, that’s not the point. I know I’m not his.”
“Have you ever thought to ask him?” Dakin laughs quietly, shaking his head.
“He’d've said something, if I was."
“What, just like you’ve been oh so vocal yourself?” Scripps presses his mouth into a thin line and doesn’t say a word. “Thought so. Given the current circumstances, I’d suggest you tell him rather than sitting on it like a coward.”
Dakin falls silent after that and stares emptily down the corridor to the wards, where Scripps knows Irwin is. He doesn’t say anything, but looks at where Posner’s asleep, shoulders shifting with gentle breaths and wonders if this is what Neruda meant every time he waxed poetic about love.
*
Dakin almost sacks off Oxford, in the end.
“Don’t be stupid,” Irwin tells him from where he sits, propped up in bed with tea and a book. “You worked hard for this, and you’ve earned it. Go and be a proper student for a while. I’ll still be here when you get back.”
There’s an unspoken ‘if you still want me’ in the air and Dakin leans over to kiss him quiet, hand squeezing his arm where he knows his own name is written in stark black.
*
“It’s really quite sickening, how loved up they are,” Scripps muses one morning, still in their first week of their first term as Oxford students. He’s walking back from the church, pushing his bike along as Posner walks beside him. “The other day he was late meeting me for a drink because they’d been on the phone for hours.”
“I suppose it’s cliché of me to find it quite romantic, isn’t it?” Posner smiles softly, a gentle laugh in his throat. “I do always like when love conquers all odds.”
“So you’re not bothered by it, then? Even though you’re in love with him?”
“You know, I’m not so sure about that anymore,” Posner hums, squinting against the sun as he looks sideways at Scripps. “I feel like I’ve a chance to redefine myself here. No one knows me as ‘the one who’s in love with Dakin’ here. I don’t have to be.”
“So you’re not?” Scripps jerks to a stop and Posner wheels round to look at him. “In love with him, I mean.”
“You know, I don’t think I am.” Posner grins like a weight’s been lifted off his shoulders, and a blush rises high in his cheeks. “Isn’t it lovely?”
‘Lovely’ isn’t quite the word Scripps would use, but he smiles and lets Posner drag him off to that coffee shop Akthar won’t stop talking about.
*
Dakin and Irwin continue to be utterly repulsive for the entirety of their first year, as Scripps learns the hard way.
They’re on the train on the way back to Sheffield for the summer, and in a stroke of rotten luck, Scripps has landed the seat next to Dakin. The other boy is restless, bouncing his leg and flipping his book irritatingly.
“Will you stop faffing about for thirty seconds? Irwin’s not gonna have gone anywhere since Christmas, you know.” Scripps groans, fixing him with a bleary glare. He’s more hungover from the leaver’s do than he cares to own up to.
“Shut it,” Dakin glowers. “I’ve not seen him in months. I’m allowed.”
“Are you, now?” Scripps closes his eyes again. “Can you at least do it quietly?”
“Fuck off,” Dakin replies, with no real venom in his voice. He looks sideways at where Posner and Akthar are asleep on each other in the seats across the aisle. “No joy on the Posner front, I take it?”
“Haven’t even tried,” Scripps says, keeping his eyes closed so he doesn’t betray anything. “Just because he’s not in love with you anymore doesn’t mean he’s going to be in love with me.”
“In the nicest way possible,” Dakin replies with a raised eyebrow in a way that tells Scripps it’s anything but. “You’re a fucking idiot.”
“I know,” Scripps sighs heavily, because he does.
*
Things are gloriously quiet for a week or so, until one morning Scripps wakes up to Dakin all but sitting on him. He groans and grumbles and tries desperately to roll over and ignore him, but Dakin is nothing if not persistent.
“Please go away,” he mumbles half-heartedly into his pillow. “I have dealt with your shit every day for sixteen of my twenty years and I deserve this lie in. Get out.”
“Oh, I can leave, if that’s what you want.”
“Please.”
“Or I could tell you that I happen to know whose name it is that Posner has. But if you really want me to go, then I will,” Dakin stands up with his hands raised, smirk on his face cat-like and smug because he knows he’s won.
“Why would he tell you?” Scripps finally admits defeat and rolls over, and he squints against the sun as Dakin rips the curtains open unceremoniously. He frowns and shifts his arm to cover his eyes, and Dakin stands in front of the window and folds his arm.
“He didn’t. Rudge did.”
“How the bloody hell did Rudge know?” Scripps gives in and drags himself into a sitting position and fixes Dakin with a withering look.
“He’s considerably more observant than any of us give him credit for, you know,” Dakin clicks his tongue, fiddling with the hem of his jacket. “And he didn’t tell me outright, so much as confirm my earlier suspicions.”
“If you have a point, please get to it.” Scripps grumbles, throwing himself back on to his back and staring at the ceiling like it’ll make Dakin talk quicker.
“He reckons it looked like your name, actually.”
“Fuck off, Stu.”
“And it got me thinking,” Dakin carries on at the same time Scripps yanks his duvet over his head and sets about ignoring him completely. “If that’s the case, then all this could be solved by you just saying something.”
“And that’s the umpteenth time you’ve said that, and I’m still not going to,” Scripps replies, voice muffled by the quilt he’s hiding under. “Because that’d be such a fun conversation, wouldn’t it? “Hi Posner, I’ve known you’re my soulmate for the last three years but haven’t said anything because I’m a massive prick, fancy a shag?” Somehow I doubt that’ll win him over.”
“Because sitting here silently and stewing is doing that, is it?” Dakin whistles through his teeth and Scripps shuffles, moving so just his eyes and the top of his head are visible outside the duvet. He glares.
“Please piss off, Stuart.” He says with a heavy sigh, closing his eyes against the light and Dakin’s smug expression. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Fine, fine, I’ll go,” Dakin laughs softly, moving towards Scripps’s door. “Though I really do think you should say something. Take it from me, you wouldn’t want to leave it too long.”
The door closes quietly behind him, and Scripps groans heavily and rolls over.
*
The same thing happens not even a week later, and Scripps continues to whine like a child.
“I swear, Stuart, if you’ve come to nag me about Posner again, don’t,” he says, face half squashed into his pillow and voice barely intelligible. “Just leave off for like, a week or something. My sanity needs this.”
Dakin stays blissfully, if suspiciously, silent, and Scripps graces him with rolling over and throwing an arm over his eyes so he isn’t blinded by the sunlight creeping around his curtains.
“Come on, then. Out with it. Irwin not humouring your latest inane ramblings about Churchill?”
“Not quite.” He finally replies, except that’s not Dakin, it’s Posner, and Scripps remembers with a sickening dread in his stomach quite what Posner can see written across the inside of his wrist.
He jerks upright, eyes wide, and Posner is staring at him, white-faced.
“Dakin rang and said you wanted a word,” Posner forces out, fingers twisting in the cuffs of his cardigan. “I thought I’d drop by on the way to work; I’m back at the bookshop this summer. But if now’s not a good time–”
He looks like he’s about ready to bolt, and Scripps’s thoughts have barely caught up enough by the time he’s run out of the door.
He swears to himself and squeezes his pillow probably a little too hard, and his mum comes running upstairs a few minutes after he hears Posner shut the front door, just to check if he’s alright.
*
Dakin trots to Irwin’s that day with a spring in his step and a pile of his summer reading tucked under his arm.
“You seem awfully pleased for someone with that many textbooks to read,” Irwin answers the door suspiciously, one eyebrow raised and leaning heavily on his crutches. “What’ve you been up to?”
“Nothing,” Dakin replies with a smug smile, ducking down to kiss him on the cheek. “All I’ve done is give someone a push in the right direction.”
“That someone wouldn’t be Posner or Scripps, would it?” Irwin fixes him with a stern expression and Dakin just beams at him as he follows him into the sitting room and helps him settle himself comfortably. “I did wonder when that was going to work itself out.”
“It might never have, if I’d’ve kept my gob shut.” Dakin laughs, all but throwing himself down on to the sofa and pressing himself up against Irwin’s side.
“You should really leave well enough alone, sometimes,” Irwin smiles, picking up his newspaper and resuming the crossword. “You’re incorrigible.”
“I know,” Dakin grins, opening the book at the top of his pile. “But it’s why you love me.”
“Well, someone has to.”
Dakin fixes him with a playful, fond expression, and leans in to kiss him hard.
*
Scripps gives Posner a few hours to collect himself, and he spends them plotting the quickest way to kill Dakin and willing his hands to stop shaking quite so much.
He gets changed a few times, before he finally settles on an old jumper with worn out elbows, because he knows Posner has seen him in a greater state of disrepair in their years of friendship. He contemplates putting his watch on, goes so far as to wrap the leather around his wrist before he stops and drops it onto his bed. The damage is done, now.
He rides his bike down to the little bookshop just off Fitzalan Square and jumps off, propping it up next to Posner’s outside. It’s the only reason he knows he’s still at work, that and the quiet sound of him singing along to the wireless that’s drifting through the open windows. Scripps resists the urge to grin stupidly at his shoes.
He opens the door, the bell above it tinkling and making Posner look up from his position halfway up a ladder where he’s repositioning children’s storybooks. The shop is empty, apart from them.
“Hello,” Posner says, smoothing down the spine of the last book he’s straightening before he slowly turns and descends the ladder.
“Dakin’s an arse,” Scripps opens with, then winces immediately because that’s not how he wanted to start this.
“Water is wet,” Posner replies with an affectionate roll of his eyes, moving over to the cash register to pick up his cup of tea. The mug is patterned with a particularly ugly kitten print, but Scripps is oddly transfixed by the curl of Posner’s fingers around the ceramic and the bob of his throat as he swallows.
“That’s,” Scripps hesitates again, fumbling distractedly with his hands in his pockets. “That’s not exactly how I wanted you to find out.”
“How long’ve you known?” Posner asks quietly, setting his mug down on the counter.
“We were about seventeen, I think. Hector’d set that essay on Pride and Prejudice and I had to mark yours.”
“That’s– Scripps, that’s three years. At least.”
“Nearer four, I think, actually.”
“Of course, that’s what you focus on,” Posner laughs softly, cocking his head ever so slightly. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Dakin, mostly,” Scripps admits with a weak shrug of his shoulders. “By the time I’d realised, you already fancied him so I figured yours wasn’t me. You’re braver than me with stuff like this; if I was, I always thought you’d’ve said something.”
Posner huffs the softest laugh he can manage, and rummages for a piece of paper and a pen behind the counter.
“With all due respect,” he says, expression unimaginably fond as he hands Scripps the paper and he still can’t bring himself to hope, even now. “You’re a bit of an idiot.”
“You know, you’re not the first person to tell me that.” Scripps smiles weakly, and writes his name down on the piece of paper like he knows Posner wants him to.
“Why am I not surprised? I'm not quite as brave as you like to believe I am, I don't think,” Posner’s face shifts a little as he unbuttons a section of his shirt and pulls it off to the side, and –oh god, there it is, Scripps’s horrible excuse for handwriting tucked in between two of Posner’s ribs, hard black against his pale freckles.
“Oh, Christ,” Scripps exhales heavily, comparing his own writing to the mark across Posner’s chest even though he knows it’s his own, would know it anywhere.
“Now, now. Wouldn’t want the dear old reverend to hear you talking like that, would we?” Posner laughs a little breathless, and Scripps is all but grinning now as he watches him button his shirt back up. Posner reaches blindly for his hand, because he knows that’s where his own practiced cursive sits between the angular bones of Scripps’s wrist, and hums quietly.
“You know, I always sort of hoped it’d be you.”
And Scripps can’t help himself and pulls him in, twists the fingers of their joined hands together and cups his jaw and kisses him.
That’s how Posner’s boss finds them when she comes back from her lunch break half an hour later, entwined in each other and with Posner’s fingertips tracing the shapes his own writing form across Scripps’s wrist.
She lets him leave early, because really he does deserve this, and smiles as she watches them kiss on the stoop then cycle off together.
(Later, Scripps will realise just quite how much he enjoys kissing the mark of his own name on Posner’s chest and listening to his soft breaths as he goes, and how much he likes the bright, affectionate smile that lights up Posner’s face when he tells him he loves him.)