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Adam’s mother always told him he was incredibly lucky. Most people had only two threads of fate: a red one for their soulmate and a green one for their soul friend. Some people had only one thread of fate, and a lucky few had three or four, but Adam was blessed with five threads — one on each finger of his left hand.
The problem was, he didn’t know which, if any, of them were red and which were green.
Adam was color blind. It ran in his family; his uncle on his mother’s side was color blind, and his mom told him that some of her cousins were too.
He was able to get by in a lot of ways. He knew that the top traffic light meant “stop” and the bottom one “go” even if he couldn’t clearly distinguish their shades. He had color-coded his dresser and closet and if he wasn’t sure whether an outfit matched he would ask one of his sisters or, later, his billet family. He could identify the ripeness of fruits and veggies by their firmness and smell.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t apply these hacks to his threads. They were invisible to everyone other than him and the people they connected him to — none of whom he’d met yet. Although he could sometimes distinguish some shades of red and green from each other, the shades of his threads were too similar. Sometimes he’d think one of them looked slightly different from the other four, but moments later he’d be sure it had simply been a trick of the light.
On nights when he couldn’t sleep, he would look at his left hand and wonder what his threads meant and who they connected him to. Did he have one soulmate and four soul friends? Five soul friends and no soulmate? Or multiple soulmates?
Where were these people? The five threads seemed to be pulling him in nearly all directions. Based on the tension on his middle finger, he felt sure that connection lived relatively close to his childhood home in Buffalo. Whoever was connected to his thumb seemed to travel a lot, but most of the time that thread pointed northeast of him. The threads on his pointer and ring fingers ran so parallel to each other most of the time that he wondered if they’d already met each other. The one tied to his pinky was the most slack, but generally pointed south.
When would he meet them? Most of the kids he’d known growing up had met their soul friends by early high school, but he still hadn’t even met the one that felt closest to home. As the years went by he tried to remind himself that many people didn’t meet their soulmates until well into their twenties, but that was cold comfort when most of his teammates in juniors were already with their soulmates.
The one thing he felt certain of was the one thing everyone told him he couldn’t possibly know. He was sure all five either had some connection to hockey or that the ice would bring them together. Threads of fate were only supposed to tell you the direction and relative distance to your soul connections; they couldn’t tell you anything about the people themselves. Yet the first time Adam set foot on ice, all five of his threads vibrated so brightly they practically sang.
He knew he was meant to play hockey, and juniors was his obvious next step. Still, he could feel that moving to Waterloo brought him further away from his soul connections rather than closer. Although all five of his threads became slacker after he moved, he missed the pull most acutely on his middle finger. He figured it was because he’d gotten used to feeling tension on that string for most of his life.
When juniors didn’t lead him to the NHL, he happily followed his threads back east to college. Samwell University was the clear choice for many reasons: they had a highly-ranked men’s hockey team (captained by THE Jack Zimmermann, no less), a work-hard-party-hard reputation, and it was LGBTQ-friendly. But most importantly, his threads of fate all felt like they were pulling him to Samwell.
_X_
Adam wiped his hands on his shorts for the third time before opening the door to Faber. Not only was he heading to his first NCAA hockey practice, but the ever-increasing tension in his strings told him that he was close to meeting three of his soul connections. This could be one of the most important days of his life.
He reminded himself to stay cool, damnit when he saw Jack Zimmermann, hockey prodigy, scandal prince of the QMJHL, and his new captain, standing in the doorway to the locker room.
“Euh… hi. Welcome to the SMH. Name?” Zimmermann barely glanced at Adam before fixing his attention on the clipboard in his hands. Adam tried not to take it personally.
Adam barely had a chance to get his name out before his left hand shot forward involuntarily. The clipboard clattered to the ground as Zimmermann’s left hand reached forward as well, the thread connecting them shortening as it pulled their hands together. Adam felt a momentary shock as his thumb touched Zimmermann’s the tip of index finger. Then, the thread slackened again; still there, but no longer pulling them toward each other.
Zimmermann ran his right hand across the back of his neck. “Soul friends, eh? Nice to meet you, um…” He snuck an awkward glance at the clipboard, which unfortunately for both of them laid face down on the floor.
“Adam,” he supplied.
“Right. Adam. Sorry. Euh. I’m Jack,” he added as if he wasn’t one of the most famous hockey players of their generation. “Welcome to…”
“MY NEXT SOUL FRIEND IS HERE!” Zimmermann was interrupted by a shouting man. The new man barrelled out of the locker room and tackled Adam to the ground, touching his left index finger to Adam’s. A similar shock surged through Adam’s hand.
“Holy shit, am I excited to meet you,” his unnamed soul friend chattered excitedly while perched with his knees on either side of Adam’s chest. He had a sweet flow and ‘stache, and was wearing only his hockey pants and a questionable-looking pair of socks. “I’m Shitty Knight and you’re my soul friend!”
The guy (Shitty?) twisted to look over his shoulder. “Jacko! This guy is my second soul friend!”
“Euh, yeah, he’s mine too,” Zimmermann replied. “His name’s Adam.”
Shitty looked disbelievingly back and forth between Adam and Zimmermann. “What? No fuckin’ way. Seriously? Are all three of us soul friends?”
“I think so?” Adam answered.
“That is the coolest fucking thing I have ever heard of!” Shitty shouted. “Want to know the craziest part? I think my third soul friend is heading toward us right now.”
“Me too,” Adam and Zimmermann replied in unison. Judging from the tension in his third string, his next soul connection was close and getting closer.
At that moment, the most gorgeous man Adam had ever laid eyes on walked around the corner, with his left arm extended in front of him. He had cheekbones he could hang his entire body off of. And what a body!
“Um…” Gorgeous Guy stared at Adam, still sprawled on the ground with Shitty straddling him. “This is awkward but I think…”
“We’re soul friends, brah!” Shitty leapt to his feet and enveloped Gorgeous Man in a full-body hug. “My name is Shitty, these are Jack and Adam, and the four of us are all soul friends! Is this the greatest thing ever, or is this the greatest thing ever?”
“It’s… a lot,” Gorgeous Guy replied.
“Knight!” A voice called out from behind Zimmermann. “Stop harassing the frogs and get into the locker room!”
Adam, Shitty, and Gorgeous Guy all hustled into the locker room, where Coach Hall directed Adam and Gorgeous Guy to adjacent cubicles. Adam glanced at his new soul connection out of the corners of his eyes. So this was the connection that had always tugged so firmly on Adam’s middle finger. Some part of Adam had always hoped that thread connected him to his soulmate, but Gorgeous Guy hadn’t denied it when Shitty called them soul friends…
Adam chuckled awkwardly. “So, uh, I guess we’re neighbors and…”
“…D-men together. Yeah.” Gorgeous Guy shuffled from foot to foot.
“Sorry about that out there, bee tee dubs.” Adam crooked a thumb toward the hallway. “I’ve known Shitty for like two minutes and I can already tell he’s…” He struggled for the right words.
“A bit much?” Gorgeous Guy offered.
“Yeah, totally.” Adam grinned. “I don’t think we’ve actually met yet? Not technically? I’m Adam. Birkholtz. Boys back in juniors called me Birker.”
“Justin Oluransi,” Gorgeous Guy Justin replied. “Back in Toronto, the boys all called me Ranser.”
Surely if they were soulmates, Justin would have brought it up by then. In every rom-com Adam had ever seen, soulmates practically leapt into each others’ arms immediately upon meeting. This was more of a meet-awkward than a meet-cute. Based on Adam’s extensive pop cultural knowledge, he and Justin could only be soul friends.
Adam was just about to touch left hands with Justin to solidify their introduction when Shitty appeared from seemingly out of nowhere. “Oh shit!” he cried. “We should call you Ransom and Holster! Sick name for a d-men pair.”
Adam thought over the nicknames for a moment. The look in Justin’s eyes told Adam that he was considering them too. “Ransom…”
“And…” he and Justin said in unison.
“…Holster,” Justin finished.
They both turned to look at each other in shared surprise and joy at the Best Hockey Nicknames Ever, then executed a perfect left-handed fist bump. Adam felt a thrill run through his entire body as the knot on his middle finger made contact with the one on Justin’s index finger. It felt much more intense than he remembered feeling when he touched hands with Jack or Shitty. However, he didn’t have time to wonder about it before Shitty pushed his way in between him and Justin, throwing his arms around each of their shoulders.
“Yo! Everybody!” Shitty called out to the hockey players and coaches gathered in the locker room. “Meet our two new frog d-men and my soul friends, Ransom and Holster!”
_X_
The rest of their first practice was too busy to get to know his new soul friends beyond surface impressions. Jack was scary-intense about hockey, to the point that Adam wondered what they could possibly have in common off-ice. Still, the threads of fate were never wrong, and he trusted the process.
Shitty was loud-mouthed and gregarious. He had a surprisingly diverse vocabulary, ranging from some of the filthiest swear words Adam had ever heard to some kind of academic jargon that Adam couldn’t begin to parse.
On top of being insanely hot, Justin was an incredibly talented defenseman. Adam had been paired with a lot of d-men over the years, but he’d never played alongside such a perfect match to him before. By the end of the first practice, they were both already anticipating each others’ moves.
It was exhilarating, but also overwhelming. Adam walked out of Faber eager for a nap.
“Hey.” Justin — no, Ransom — jogged up to Adam, then fell in sync with his steps, walking side-by-side. “That was pretty ‘swawesome back there.”
“Oh, yeah, totally.” Adam bit back a yawn. He was still breaking in his dorm bed, but he suspected he would be out like a light as soon as he laid down.
“So, uh.” Ransom shoved his hands in his pockets. “We didn’t really get much chance to talk, not really. Do you want to grab some coffee and get to know each other better?”
“Yeah, we should definitely do that sometime.” Adam nodded. “Anyway, this is my dorm. See you at team brekkie tomorrow.”
Ransom stopped walking and looked at Adam curiously. “Oh. Okay.”
“‘Kay, bye!” Adam had the feeling like Ransom was expecting something else from him, so he added “Good practice today” over his shoulder as he opened the door to his dorm.
_X_
Ransom was a perfect soul friend. Maybe too perfect. He and Adam connected on a level that Shitty and Jack couldn’t match. They finished each others’ sentences and balanced each others’ strengths and weaknesses. And he was damn hot.
Adam dreamed of leisurely kissing Ransom. Of running his fingers down his toned back. Of… other things. But it would be wrong. And unfair.
It was unfair to Ransom, who had been nothing but an amazing friend to Adam, to wish for more than he could give. It was unfair to Ransom’s soulmate, wherever they were, and to Adam’s as well.
Adam told himself he was probably just sexually frustrated. He had confused the feelings he was meant to have for his soulmate with his feelings toward his objectively hot soul friend. He was sure that once he found his soulmate, all of his sexual and romantic feelings would transfer to them and he and Ransom would settle into the best friends they were always meant to be.
He decided to ramp up his efforts to find his fourth and fifth soul connections. Surely one of them was his soulmate. The fifth one still felt far away, but the fourth felt almost as nearby as Jack, Shitty and Ransom had felt when he first stepped on campus.
Some days he felt a tug this way or that as he crossed the quad or in the library, but it didn’t lead him to his fourth soul connection. He told himself it just wasn’t their time yet, but that he’d find them when the time was right.
_X_
“Everyone gather ’round!” Shitty walked into Faber yelling into a megaphone that was entirely unnecessary given his usual volume. “I have a few important announcements.”
Adam, Ransom and the rest of the SMH skated up to the boards to listen.
“We finally have a team manager! Everybody give it up for Larissa (nickname TBD) Duan!”
Adam joined in with the scattered applause from his teammates as a petite woman stepped out from behind Shitty. Almost immediately, his left hand rose unbidden. If he wasn’t already leaning against the boards, he could swear the thread on his left ring finger might have dragged him across the ice. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ransom raise his own left hand.
Adam’s heart started beating rapidly. Was this it? Was Larissa his soulmate? Or Ransom’s soulmate?
Before he had a chance to wonder about it too much, Shitty continued shouting into the megaphone. “And she’s my soulmate!” He wrapped his left arm around her shoulders and grinned from ear-to-ear. Several of their teammates let out loud whoops of approval. “And she’s Jack’s soul friend too, how awesome is that?”
Larissa looked down at her left hand as it rose toward the ice. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I have two more soul friends here.” She leaned over the gate and left-hand fist bumped first Adam and then Ransom. “Yo.”
Adam’s left ring finger tingled as the knots on their thread of fate briefly connected. He glanced at the thread, wondering whether it was any different from the others. “Soul friends, huh?” he asked her.
Larissa shrugged. “Yup. ‘Swawesome.”
“Totally.” Adam nodded, struggling to put a name to what he was feeling. He didn’t feel disappointed that Larissa wasn’t his soulmate, not really. Even after that slightest of introductions, he already knew intuitively not only that she would be a great friend, but that he had no desire to be anything more than friends with her — not like how he felt about Ransom.
At the same time, he was disappointed that after being pulled to Samwell, after a whirlwind of soul connections, he still hadn’t found his soulmate. His soulmate was still out there somewhere, evidently far away based on the slack in the thread tied to his pinky, and Adam was no closer to finding them.
And no closer to resolving his complicated feelings toward Ransom.
_X_
Adam would just have to go out and find his soulmate; that was the only solution. He’d spent twenty years waiting for his soulmate to come to him and trusting that they’d meet at the right time, and what had that brought him? Years of loneliness while everyone else around him paired off, and now weeks of confused pining after the best soul friend a guy could ask for.
He should have been enjoying his friendship with Ransom and happy that the threads had brought them together. Instead he was wishing for something he couldn’t have. He needed to find his soulmate and get this mess back on track.
“Hey. Are you paying attention?” Ransom nudged Adam’s side, drawing his awareness back to his surroundings. They were sitting side-by-side on the floor of Adam’s room, leaning against his bed, and they were supposed to be studying for their upcoming Statistics exam.
“Sorry.” Adam rolled his shoulders. “I guess I was daydreaming.”
“Not about Stats, I’m guessing,” Ransom remarked.
“I’m thinking of taking a road trip to find my last soul connection over Thanksgiving weekend,” Adam confessed. “Just rent a car and follow the thread until it leads me to them. But my mom would be pissed if I skipped out on Thanksgiving dinner. I know I should probably hold off until winter break, but I’m so tired of waiting for them. What do you think I should do?”
Ransom stared intently at Adam’s face for several long seconds before speaking. “Are you disappointed with our soul connection?”
“What? No! No, no, of course not!” Adam denied it. “You’re like the most amazing person I’ve ever met!” Adam didn’t need to lie. He might have complicated feelings toward Ransom, but he was beyond grateful to have him in his life and couldn’t imagine ever feeling disappointed in him.
Ransom took a deep breath then let it out. “Then why do you keep me at arms’ length?”
Adam, confused, glanced down at their shoulders that were leaning against each other even as they spoke.
Ransom must have noticed and understood Adam’s glance, because he continued, “I don’t mean literally. Well, I don’t know. Maybe I do mean literally too.”
Ransom sighed and pulled a hand down his face. “I want to give you all the space that you need, but I’ve been reading and all of the experts say that communication is the most important thing in any relationship, and I just don’t feel like we’re on the same page. Or really, we haven’t talked about what we both want in order to get on the same page. I mean.” He sighed again. “I will honor whatever you want, but it’s been weeks and I’ve been so confused and I really need to know whether you only want to be platonic soulmates or do you want to give the whole romantic-sexual soulmates thing a shot?”
Soulmates?
Adam’s whole world spun around him, reorienting itself and coming back together in a new configuration. He wasn’t sure whether Ransom was waiting for him to respond or if he’d continued speaking. All Adam could focus on was that Ransom had just called him his soulmate.
Adam stared down at his left hand, focusing on the thread connecting his middle finger to Ransom’s left index finger. He’d always thought that thread was pulling him more urgently than the others, but he’d told himself that was because Ransom had grown up geographically closer to him than any of his other soul connections. He’d thought he’d felt something different when he first fist bumped Ransom, but he’d convinced himself that he’d imagined it.
Adam traced the thread with his eyes, following it from his hand to Ransom’s, then looked up into Ransom’s eyes. “Rans? What color is our thread?” His heart pounded in his chest. Could he really have been so wrong all this time?
Ransom (Adam’s soulmate? ) started. “What do you mean?” He furrowed his brow and gnawed on his lower lip. “What color does it look like to you?”
“I don’t know,” Adam admitted out loud for the first time. “I’m color blind. All of my threads look similar to me.” He squinted down at the knots on his left hand, even though he knew it wouldn’t make any difference to his color vision. “Sometimes I think your thread looks slightly different from the others, but when I look again they all look the same.” He looked back up at Ransom. “Besides, you told me we were soul friends.”
Ransom shook his head incredulously. “When did I say that?”
“The day we met, at our first practice,” Adam explained. “I’m sure I remember you saying we were soul friends!”
Ransom leaned toward Adam intently. “I did not! I remember Shitty talking over absolutely everyone and interrupting me every time I tried to talk to you. But I definitely never claimed to be your soul friend.”
Adam thought back over that day. Jack had told him that they were soul friends. Shitty had told everybody that they were soul friends. But now that he thought of it, he couldn’t remember Ransom ever calling Adam his soul friend.
“But you never told me,” Adam protested. “You never said we were soulmates!”
“I thought you knew,” Ransom explained. “I didn’t know you were color blind until, like, literally a minute ago. I thought you just wanted to take it slow, especially after you turned me down when I asked you out.”
“What? Nooooooo.” Adam adamantly shook his head. “You never asked me out! I would remember if you’d asked me out.”
“It was right after that first practice. I asked you out and you just said we should do that ‘sometime’ and that you’d see me at team breakfast.” Ransom raised an eyebrow at Adam.
Adam searched his memory of that event. “But that wasn’t a date-date. You just wanted to grab some coffee and get to knoooooooooh shit…” His eyes widened in horror at his own idiocy. “But… I didn’t… look, in my defense I was exhausted and overwhelmed. And stupid. Totally stupid.”
“So this whole time, you haven’t been taking it slow… you just literally didn’t know we were soulmates?” Ransom asked. He curled his knees up underneath him and turned his whole body to face Adam.
“I’m so sorry. I was so dumb. I should’ve asked! I just assumed you were… I’m so stupid,” Adam castigated himself.
“Hey.” Ransom placed the tips of his fingers across Adam’s mouth to stop his babbling. “I should’ve said something too. I made an assumption of my own.”
Adam smiled into Ransom’s stunning face despite his own mortification. “I guess we’ve both gone and made asses out of you and me.”
Ransom smiled back. “I guess so. But we can fix this.” He straightened his shoulders and held out his left hand with his palm facing Adam. “Hi, I’m Justin. I’m your soulmate.”
Adam felt so full of joy that he could swear he was glowing. “I’m Adam. And I’m thrilled to meet you, but I’m color blind so could you just confirm the color of our thread of fate?” He held his own left hand up parallel to Justin’s.
“Red. It’s red.” Justin linked his fingers with Adam’s so that his left index finger laid right next to Adam’s middle finger, their thread shrinking down to nearly nothing. They had touched hands before, but this? This felt perfect.
“May I?” Justin asked, his right hand hovering next to the temple of Adam’s glasses.
“Yeah,” Adam replied breathlessly as Justin carefully removed his glasses and set them on his bedside table. And then finally, finally, he was kissing the most perfect man in the world and it was better than any of his fantasies.
_x_
Epilogue
Adam met his fifth soul connection — a short, blonde, Southern man — nearly a year later. He was fairly confident Bitty wasn’t a second soulmate (particularly given the way that Bitty had glommed onto Jack practically at first sight), but he wouldn’t take any chances this time.
When Bitty and Jack finally came up for air, Bitty went about meeting the rest of his soul connections. Adam and Justin waited their turns side-by-side behind Shitty and Lardo. When it was his turn, Adam held up his left pinkie. “Hi, I’m Adam Birkholtz. We’re connected, but I’m color blind so I’m going to need you to tell me what color our thread is.”
“Oh!” Bitty’s eyebrows shot up but he otherwise took it in stride. He held up his left ring and pinky fingers. “We’re soul friends.” He nodded to Justin as well. “And so are we.”
“‘Swawesome.” Adam fist bumped Bitty with his left hand, then wrapped his arm around Justin’s waist as Justin made his own introductions. “Justin and me are soulmates.” He rested his head against Justin’s shoulder.
“Justin and I,” Justin corrected him fondly.
“Okay, Mr. Pre-Med Super-Genius.” Adam rolled his eyes and grinned at Bitty. “You’re lucky to have this guy for a soul friend. He is the literally greatest human being ever.”
“Take it down a notch.” Justin nudged Adam with the shoulder he was leaning on, gently enough that Adam knew he wasn’t really annoyed. “Anyway, Adam’s the best. He makes the world’s best soul…”
“…mates…” Adam chimed in.
“Sundaes!” They finished in unison.
“Oh my word, the two of you are adorable,” Bitty giggled, holding a hand over his mouth. “Have you always been this attuned to each other?”
Adam and Justin shared a glance. “Not always,” Adam answered truthfully.
“We had a few bumps in the road we had to get past,” Justin explained.
“It turns out that life isn’t actually like a rom-com,” Adam advised Bitty.
“And good communication is the key to a strong soul connection,” Justin added.
“So you should never assume, or…” Adam set up the joke and passed the punch line to his partner.
“…You’ll fuck up your relationship until you talk it through,” Justin concluded.