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Dominick Carisi Jr. was the one man you had managed to not meet in your entire life in New York. Which, you know, was fairly annoying because that was also the name etched into the side of your neck in sloppy handwriting.
His handwriting.
But that didn’t matter. He had your name, somewhere, and you knew that if he wanted you that he would find you. You had already tried to find him, but there were so many Dominick’s in Manhattan, many more in the other burrows. So, three years ago, you had given up.
You took a job as a sketch artist for the NYPD, working long hours one day and none the next but it paid the bills and you had met many Dominicks, but no Dominick Carisi Jr. Not even a Dominick Carisi Sr.
So when you woke up one morning and your neck was burning, on fire, where the tattoo lay, you considered going to the doctor. The forums you frequented, late-bloomer and one sided death forums, all said that your tattoo burning was a bad sign. You panicked but went along with your day, covering your neck with concealer and heading to work.
The panic was thinly veiled on your face and the detective you were meeting, the lieutenant of a special unit you couldn’t remember the name of, say it right away. “Are you okay?” She asked, shaking your hand. You nodded, trying to be convincing.
“Just another day of drawing faces getting to me, I guess,” And she didn’t believe the lie, but why would she? Olivia, as she had asked you to call her, had probably already met her soulmate. You could see the name on the curve of her collarbone but didn’t read it. That information was private.
“Well, our victim is right in here. She’s pretty shaken up. You’ve taken your empathy classes?” A man approached her and said something under his breath, eyes searching your face as he spoke. You had the feeling he was judging you, but you couldn’t be sure. The look he was giving you was the same that you looked at men you didn’t know with; yearning, hope, the possibility of finding his soulmate.
“I have,” You said slowly, appraising the man after he finished speaking, “And I passed with flying colors.” Olivia nodded and then she lead you to the room, letting you look in on the shaking girl for a moment.
“Sonny will be in the room with you, purely to assist you in getting an accurate description.” She gestured to the man who had come up behind her and spoke, and you nodded, shaking his hand but not offering your name. Did it matter? His name was Sonny and, though the tall blond was attractive in every way, it didn’t matter because he wasn’t Dominick. He lead you to the room where you smiled warmly to the girl, offering her your hand before you sat next to her. You tried to pretend like you didn’t see the words scrawled over her bruised cheek, an unfortunate tattoo placement.
Suddenly you felt better about your own burning mark on your neck. Though public, it was better than having aface name.
You took out your supplies, your sketchbooks, pencils, pens, erasers and smudgers and sat them in front of you, leaning back to get into a more comfortable position for the sketch of the face shape. Sonny was watching you uncomfortably, and he was shifting in his seat as he did so.
As the girl, shaking like a leaf, described the curve of her attackers cheek you met his eyes and nearly cried out when the burning became so intense in your neck you felt like you were suffocation, falling at one thousand miles per hour with the sea at your feet. Your eyes rolled back in your head and the pencil fell from your grasp as you tried to gasp for breath, head lolling back and clacking against the chair you were sitting in.
Sonny stood, or maybe he jumped up and collapsed in on himself, but then someone was in the room with you, taking you out of the chair and laying you on your side while you struggled to breath through the fire.
You clawed at your neck, eyes wide, and the makeup covering your tattoo came off under your nails. Olivia called for someone to get a rag and the cold water soothed it, only for a moment. Your skin was on fire and you still couldn’t breath and everything was spinning but then it stopped and you stilled, body collapsing against the ground as your eyes lazily focused on the ceiling. Olivia cradled your head as she tried to speak to you, but you couldn’t tell what she was saying. Everything was still too warm and your face was flushed even though you were laying on the cool floor.
“Your name,” Olivia’s voice finally cut through your pain induced haze, “Tell us your name.” And you did, voice croaking as the movement exacerbated the pain on the side of your throat and then you heard gasping from the other side of the room, a sort of slow laughter that bubbled up and stopped at random intervals as whoever was making the noise was trying to catch their breath. Olivia smiled crookedly at you, as if she was aware of something that you weren’t, and then she patted your shoulder, “I think we just found the guy who has your name.”
Your heart stopped and you shook your head, just wanting to get off of the damn floor and do your job, but you knew that a hospital visit was probably in your future. Marks weren’t supposed to burn so intensely, be so painful, but yours was.
“Something’s wrong with Dominick,” You breathed, closing your eyes, “Something’s really wrong; my tattoo wouldn’t have burned so bad unless something was wrong.” The thought of a man you had never met being hurt, or being dead, brought tears to your eyes even though you weren’t sure why. Someone across the room laughed and your stomach felt like you were going to be sick. What a sick bastard, you thought, laughing at the early death of my soulmate.
But then the owner of the laugh spoke, “There ain’t nothing wrong with me, doll, except for the fact my back feels like it’s on fire.” And the voice sent a thrill through your spine, the burning on your neck cooling until you sighed in relief.
“Your name is Sonny,” You finally whispered, nobody in the room moving. It was like a shitty movie, and you were the star, “I’m looking for-”
“Dominick Carisi Jr.” He finished your sentence and you heard the scuffing of dress shoes on the floor, Sonny- Dominick rather- pulling himself up. You didn’t move, still out of breath from the way your tattoo had punished you. The face swam in your vision and if you hadn’t have known better you would have thought he was a fever dream, something made up to help you cope with the pain of the early death of Dominick.
But he was real, oh so real, and his hand was reaching down to help you up and you were taking it and stumbling when you got too dizzy but he was there catching you and then you were the only two people in the room and, fuck, you had been waiting so long for him to be there and he was there and your thoughts were runaway trains at midnight, no control, no stopping.
And then he smiled and everything stopped. Every run on sentence in your head found punctuation, every heartbeat found it’s partner and his hand didn’t leave yours. He held it between your bodies, as if it was the only thing keeping him from floating away.
“I’m Dominick.” He all but whispered, grinning at you like a fool. You knew that he was feeling the same thing that you were, elation in finally finding the one he was supposed to spend his life with. You tried out your own name on your tongue, unfamiliar with the way it lilted on your tongue, six months of not saying it aloud preventing you from feeling like it belonged to you. He grinned and nodded, shaking your hand in an informal way, like he was trying to read your pulse without pressing a finger to your wrist.
“I have your name on my body,” He said, “And you have my name. Here.” His other hand rose to your neck, a finger delicately tracing over your tattoo. His touch soothed the burn, and you closed your eyes and tried to pretend like your head wasn’t following his hand until it cupped over the side of your neck, chasing the burn away. “Does it feel better?” You nodded and sighed, holding your own hand up.
“Does yours still burn?” He shook his head, small smile playing on his face. Dominick looked like he didn’t know what to say, but did you want him to speak? You were content to just look at him, take in his coiffed hair and the way he looked unabashedly happy, like he had helium in his veins and he didn’t care if he floated away. “I can’t believe you were a precinct away. I’ve been in here before, but I’ve never…” He shook his head, scoffing out a laugh. He seemed to portray too many emotions with his eyes and you could easily lose yourself in them.
“I’ve seen you,” He admitted, “But I never saw your tattoo. Why do you cover it?” You shrugged.
“I’ve been in New York for a long time, nearly my entire life, and I never found you. I looked, and I’ve spent my fair share of time staring at people to try and see if my name was on their body but I never, ever saw it.” He nodded. “I didn’t want people to see it and ask me about Dominick- I mean, you. I didn’t want them to ask me about you if I hadn’t found you yet.”
“My sisters, I’ve got a lot of them, they convinced me I was an early death. My Ma held firm in the fact that I was just a late bloomer.” You nodded and agreed, knowing what it was like to be unaware of the fate of your other half. You felt warm, but cold at the same time, and Dominick’s face was literally all you could think about.
He grinned at you and nodded at nothing before you finally felt at home with Dominick, like he was meant for you and, in a way, he was.