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“Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by again?”
James hadn’t really understood his words at first. Or, he understood the letter of them, but not what they actually meant. His mother had explained them as “something a person would say if they want to get to know you”, which was true in its own way and made enough sense to satisfy his eight-year-old self.
They were written down the outside of his right leg, where most clothing covered them, and they’d shown up a week before Christmas. By the time school started again in January, he had much more exciting things to tell his friends about, and it was nearly summer by the time anyone outside his own family even knew he’d gotten his words. It was a few months after that they began to understand what his words were.
It was at that point that he learned to tune his friends out when they got that gleefully teasing tone in their voices and let it roll off him. It became so much background noise by the time he was fourteen.
By the time he was eighteen his friends had developed - and been broken of - the habit of chasing people off for using the wrong pick-up line on him.
He was nineteen, making his way across a mostly-empty campus, when it happened.
A body collided with his, nearly knocking him off his feet. The body in question belonged to a white kid a few years younger and several inches shorter than James, wearing a too-big jacket over a Van Halen tee and jeans so old and stained it was hard to tell what color they’d been originally. The kid grabbed James’ arm to keep from falling over himself, looking James over with a wide grin.
“Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by again?” he asked breathlessly.
James, who’d always expected to hear his words in a club or at a party, after one too many drinks of the alcoholic kind, responded before he even registered what he’d been asked, “That would kind of require having walked by once.”
The kid’s grin melted into a decidedly pole-axed expression mixed with hope and a bit of wariness, and his grip on James’ coat sleeve tightened. “Fair enough,” he said. “Tony Stark, pretty sure I’m your soulmate.”
“James Rhodes, pretty sure you’re right.”
Tony Stark’s grin came back full force, shining like a second sun. “Okay. Okay, wow, this was not what I was expecting to happen today. Okay. Dramatic gestures are called for here. We should run away. I suggest Paris. It’s very cliche and romantic and we should totally do that.”
“I have class,”
“Forget class, I know MIT has a thing about soulmates, you get time off if you find your soulmate.”
“Yeah, but only if you tell them before you take that time off,” James pointed out, smiling.
“Ugh, fine, bring logic into this why don’t you. Fine, whatever, we’ll be good little drones and ask permission.” Tony’s hand loosened and dropped far enough to grab James’s, twining their fingers together. “C’mon, let’s go, office is this way, right?”
James smiled wider and let Tony drag him down the sidewalk. If nothing else, he could already tell that being Tony Stark’s soulmate was not going to be boring.