Chapter Text
# Chapter 1: Unfortunately, Australian
Oscar was eight years old when his soulmate ruined his life.
This was, in retrospect, a dramatic way of putting it.
His life was not actually ruined.
He still had school the next day. His mum still made pasta for dinner. His dad still reminded him to put his shoes away instead of abandoning them in the hall. The world, to Oscar's growing annoyance, rudely kept functioning as though nothing catastrophic had happened.
Which, according to the rest of the world, was because nothing catastrophic had happened.
Unfortunately, Oscar was eight.
And eight-year-olds are not famous for their emotional restraint.
It happened on a regular Sunday.
He was eating cereal at the kitchen table and reading the back of the box because he had already read all the car magazines he'd brought downstairs and refused to admit that he was bored. There was a cartoon crocodile on the packet explaining the importance of calcium.
Oscar had several doubts about the crocodile's qualifications.
He was halfway through deciding whether crocodiles even had bones in the same way humans did when something tickled on the inside of his right forearm.
He scratched at it without looking.
The tickle stayed.
Then it turned warm. A little buzzing under his skin, crawling from his wrist to his shoulder.
Oscar froze.
There were a few things every child knew about long before they were old enough to experience them. Things they were taught to recognise. Things adults always insisted were perfectly normal, which was generally a strong indication that they were not normal at all.
Soulmate links were one of them.
Adults loved explaining them in gentle, complicated ways that made everything sound less exciting than it was. The link usually opened in your teenage years, somewhere between ten and seventeen. The first messages were often accidental. Thoughts appeared as ink on the receiver's skin and stayed there until another thought replaced them.
Simple enough.
At least in theory.
In practice, people had a tendency to make soulmates everybody's business.
Sometimes soulmates fell in love.
Sometimes they didn't.
Sometimes they never even met.
Sometimes they met and immediately discovered they found each other unbearable.
Adults always included that last one as if it made children feel better.
It generally did not.
Oscar knew all of this, of course.
He was not stupid.
His teacher wasn't with her soulmate and nobody thought that was strange. His mum had a friend who had closed her link permanently and married someone else and seemed perfectly happy.
Oscar knew all of that.
Still.
Oscar liked the idea.
Actually, that wasn't entirely true.
"Liked" implied a healthy level of interest.
Oscar had spent the better part of the last four years thinking about his soulmate.
Not constantly. He still had school and remote-controlled cars to obsess about and far more important projects, like convincing his parents that a go-kart counted as a sensible financial investment. But the thought was always there somewhere, tucked into the back of his mind.
Sometimes he wondered what they looked like, or whether they liked the same things he did.
Sometimes he imagined the first conversation they would have when the link finally opened.
By eight years old, Oscar had already decided he would be prepared.
Nobody had asked him to prepare.
Nobody else his age appeared to be preparing.
Oscar considered this a lack of professionalism on their part.
He didn't know when the connection would open, but when it did, he intended to make a good impression.
Which was why he occasionally rehearsed possible first conversations while brushing his teeth.
Nothing weird. Just practical things.
Questions. Funny icebreakers. Interesting facts.
The fact that he had once spent nearly twenty minutes deciding whether "Do you like dinosaurs?" or "What's your favourite car?" was a better opening topic was information nobody needed to know about.
He liked thinking there was someone out there who might one day know him better than anyone. Someone who would listen to him talk about remote-controlled cars, understand why he got annoyed at people not liking Crocs, or why he preferred the blue mug even though the green one held exactly the same amount of Milo.
Someone who would choose to listen.
Someone who might even become his best friend.
His favourite person.
And if he was lucky, maybe one day, the person he would spend the rest of his life with.
He had imagined the first sentence he'd get so often that it had become difficult to remember which versions he had actually invented and which ones he'd merely daydreamed about.
Hello ! would have been fine.
Are you there? would have been acceptable.
Are you watching Avatar on TV right now? would have been brilliant.
Oscar looked down at his arm.
The warmth intensified.
His stomach flipped.
Oh.
Oh.
It was happening.
Two years early, maybe.
Definitely happening.
For one glorious second, excitement burst through him so quickly it almost hurt.
His soulmate.
His soulmate.
His soulmate.
Black letters began appearing beneath his skin, slowly enough that he watched the sentence build itself word by word.
Australians...
Oscar sucked in a breath.
Australians suck.
Oscar blinked.
A second sentence followed.
I hope my soulmate isn't Australian.
For a moment, Oscar just stared blankly.
The cereal went soggy in front of him.
The kitchen was very quiet except for the hum of the fridge and the distant sound of his mum moving around in the laundry room. Sunlight came through the window, catching on the edge of the table, making everything look very normal and very stupid.
Oscar read the message again.
Australians suck. I hope my soulmate isn't Australian.
Oscar was Australian.
He checked the words one more time in case they had changed into something less awful while he wasn't looking.
They had not.
His soulmate had opened their link early, sent one sentence, insulted his entire country, specifically hoped Oscar did not exist, and then apparently gone silent.
In fairness, that was not technically what the sentence said.
Unfortunately, Oscar was currently eight and therefore not operating under what experts would describe as a fair interpretation of events.
The excitement drained out of him so quickly it left him feeling hollow.
A minute ago, he'd been imagining great introductions and all the silly conversations they could have had with his soulmate.
Now he wasn't entirely sure he wanted one anymore.
Which was a lie.
He still wanted one.
Oscar put his spoon down very carefully.
He did not want to cry.
The tears pooled in his eyes nonetheless.
A sniff made it out before he could stop it, and he rubbed furiously at his face, making his eyes red and irritated around the edges.
No.
He would not cry.
He was above this.
This was a remarkably ambitious claim for a child currently losing a fight with his own itchy eyes and runny nose.
He couldn't let himself cry over this.
His soulmate hated his whole being, apparently.
The fact that the thought immediately made his chest hurt was beside the point.
So what?
Oscar decided continuing to cry would be stupid.
Instead, he pulled his sleeve down until it covered the ink.
Then he did the only sensible thing his little kid brain could think of.
He shut the link.
Hard.
It was surprisingly easy, once he found it.
Like closing a door inside his own head.
The connection had been warm and thin and strange, a little thread leading somewhere he couldn't see.
Oscar shoved it away with all the dignity he could manage while sitting in pyjamas with cereal milk on his chin.
"Oscar?" his mum called. "You alright?"
"Yes," Oscar said, head bowed over his bowl, his fringe covering his eyes.
It was not one of his better lies.
It wasn't even one of his top ten.
But it was his first attempt at pretending his soulmate didn't matter.
Over time, he got much better at it.
On the other side of the world, ten-year-old Lando Norris was having a very good summer.
This was mostly because school was over.
A secondary reason was that Oliver had somehow acquired an older friend.
The older friend had appeared at the beginning of the holidays and immediately inserted himself into everyone's life with alarming ease.
Lando wasn't entirely sure how it had happened.
One day the house three doors down had been empty.
The next there was a family living there, a motorbike parked outside, and a teenager who seemed to know everybody after less than a week.
It was weird.
People shouldn't be that social.
Lando had decided this after careful observation.
His observations mostly consisted of watching the teenager somehow become friends with his older brother Oliver, his parents, several neighbours, and at least one dog in record time.
The dog was particularly concerning because that one was a chihuahua and chihuahuas normally hated people on principle.
The teenager's name was Daniel.
Daniel was fifteen.
Daniel laughed too loudly.
Daniel appeared in the Norris house so often that Lando's mum had stopped asking if he was staying for dinner and just assumed so.
At this point, Lando wasn't entirely convinced Daniel didn't actually live there.
Daniel also had an unfortunate habit of treating Lando like a little kid.
Lando considered this a character flaw.
A severe one.
"Morning, Landito."
Lando looked up from where he was trying to build something vaguely resembling a fort out of cushions.
"Stop it."
"What do you mean, stop it?"
"You can't call me that."
"Why not?"
"Because."
Daniel considered this.
"Solid argument."
Lando followed him into the kitchen.
"It's not my name."
"No, mate. That's why it's a nickname."
Oliver, who was already eating breakfast, immediately betrayed him.
"I think it's funny. It's like Lando but in Spanish or something."
Traitor.
Daniel grinned.
Lando disliked that grin.
Not because there was anything wrong with it.
The problem was that it usually meant Daniel was about to be annoying.
And Daniel was annoying quite frequently.
Some people possessed natural talents.
Daniel's appeared to be bothering other people while remaining weirdly likeable.
Still.
He was also funny.
Which made things complicated.
If Daniel had simply been awful, Lando could have disliked him properly and gotten on with his life.
Instead, Daniel taught him card games, let him sit on the motorbike when nobody was looking, knew weird facts about almost everything, and listened when Lando talked about dirt bike races instead of doing the thing adults did where they smiled and clearly stopped paying attention.
By July, Daniel had become a permanent fixture of the summer.
By August, he was sitting in their living room on a Saturday evening, stealing their crisps and destroying Lando at FIFA.
Again.
"Nooooo!"
The goal replayed on screen.
"You cheater!"
Across the sofa, Daniel looked delighted.
"What?"
"That shouldn't count. That was a dirty move!"
"It literally counted."
"It shouldn't have."
Daniel laughed.
"That's not really how the game works, mate."
Oliver didn't even bother pretending to be on Lando's side anymore.
"Lando, you've said that after every goal."
"Because every goal has been weird. He plays like a hacker!"
Daniel nearly dropped the controller.
"You raging?"
"No!"
"Yet you say I'm cheating."
"I know you're cheating!"
"How?"
Lando opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
Then opened it again.
He didn't actually know how.
But that wasn't the point.
The point was that Daniel was winning.
By a lot.
"You've done something. I just can't prove it yet."
Daniel rolled his eyes, grinning.
"What, football witchcraft?"
"Maybe."
"Well, if I had witchcraft, I'd use it on my maths homework."
Lando was buzzing with frustration.
And Oliver, his very own flesh and blood was laughing so hard he almost spilled his drink.
Lando hoped he choked on that drink.
The game continued.
Lando lost.
Then he lost again.
The third loss was worse than the first because he'd actually thought he was doing well this time.
By then, Daniel had become entirely too pleased with himself.
"You know," Daniel said, reaching for the crisps, "I think the issue might be that I'm better than you."
Lando slapped his hand away.
Daniel got the crisp anyway.
"This is why nobody likes you."
Daniel put a hand over his heart.
"Landitoooo! You wound me."
"I hope it hurts."
Oliver nearly inhaled a crisp.
Daniel turned to Oliver.
"Your lil bro's a bully, mate."
"I meant it," Lando said pointing his finger at him.
Daniel started laughing again.
Lando had never met anybody who laughed this much.
It was exhausting.
The conversation drifted after that. It always did around Daniel.
One minute they were talking about FIFA.
The next Daniel was telling a story about getting stuck on the roof of a shed.
Halfway through the story, Oliver interrupted to ask why he'd been on the roof in the first place.
Daniel admitted he didn't remember.
"How do you not remember?"
"I remember getting off the roof."
"That's not the important bit."
Daniel shrugged.
Lando found it deeply irresponsible.
Then Daniel mentioned something about home.
Back in Australia—
Lando looked up.
"Wait."
Daniel paused.
"What?"
"Australia?"
"Yeah."
"You never said you were from Australia."
For a moment, Daniel just stared at him with a shocked expression on his face.
Then he started laughing.
Oliver joined in immediately.
Lando frowned.
"What?"
"Mate."
Daniel was still laughing.
"My accent."
Lando blinked.
"Oh."
Now that he thought about it, maybe there was an accent.
A little one.
Probably.
"Well, I just thought you just talked weird."
Daniel doubled over.
Oliver slid halfway off the sofa.
Neither of them seemed capable of acting normally.
Lando didn't see what was so funny.
Australia explained the accent, yes.
And other things.
Like the loudness.
Or the inability to stop talking.
Or the complete lack of humility whenever he scored a goal.
Lando didn't know.
Daniel was the only Australian he knew.
The evening carried on after that.
And Lando's FIFA losses accumulated.
Daniel's confidence became increasingly unbearable.
At one point, he started singing and breaking into victory dances after every win.
One involved finger guns. Another involved a moonwalk.
The moonwalk was particularly offensive because Daniel wasn't even good at it.
"Lando No Wins" became the latest addition to his ever-growing list of nicknames.
Lando briefly considered unplugging the console and launching it at Daniel's head, but he wasn't keen on being grounded for the rest of the summer.
After a few hours, somehow, the conversation landed on soulmates.
Lando wasn't sure how.
One moment Daniel was celebrating another goal.
The next Oliver was saying, "Mum thinks my link is going to open soon."
Daniel snorted.
"Your mum thinks everything's going to happen soon."
"It's possible."
"You've been saying that for a while."
Oliver looked annoyed and chucked a pillow at his head.
Lando ignored them.
Soulmates were interesting.
Yes.
But his wouldn't open for ages yet.
Still, he thought about it sometimes.
Mostly when somebody mentioned it.
Or when he heard stories.
Lando knew his soulmate was great.
That was the important thing.
Lando didn't really have evidence for this.
But he simply knew.
He had to be.
The universe wouldn't give him a rubbish soulmate.
That was impossible.
"What about you?" Daniel asked suddenly.
Lando looked up.
"What about me?"
"Your soulmate. How do you think they'll be?"
Lando shrugged.
"They'll be the best."
Daniel chuckled.
"That's very confident."
"They will."
"How do you know?"
"Because they're mine."
Daniel stared at him.
Oliver stared at him.
Lando stared back.
As far as he was concerned, that was a complete explanation.
Apparently, nobody else agreed.
"That doesn't mean anything."
"It means loads."
"It means nothing."
"It means they're the coolest. Unlike you."
Daniel looked delighted.
"The confidence on this kid."
Lando felt completely justified.
A few minutes later, after scoring yet another ridiculous goal, Daniel pointed at the screen and then, just to annoy him further:
"You don't know, maybe your soulmate will be Australian."
Lando looked horrified.
"No way. Impossible."
Daniel immediately started laughing.
"Why not?"
"Because."
"Excellent argument."
"Australians are annoying."
Daniel put a hand on his chest again.
"Wow."
"They are."
"There are twenty-six million of us, Landito."
"Yeah."
"What does that mean?"
"It means there's twenty-six million annoying people like you."
Oliver laughed so hard while smacking Daniel’s back.
Daniel looked deeply offended.
Fake offended, because he still had that stupid grin on his face, but nonetheless.
Daniel shook his head.
"That's brutal, mate."
Lando thought it was fair.
Then Daniel scored again.
Another stupid goal.
Another stupid celebration.
Another reason for Lando to suspect cheating.
The score on screen was becoming genuinely upsetting.
Daniel was still grinning.
Still talking. Still being Australian.
Lando glared at him.
Honestly.
Were all Australians this annoying?
The thought flashed through his head.
Quick and harmless.
The sort of thing people thought every day and immediately forgot.
Australians suck.
I hope my soulmate isn't Australian.
At the time, Lando considered this a perfectly reasonable reaction to losing at FIFA.
History would eventually disagree.
The thought vanished as quickly as it arrived.
Lando never felt it leave.
Never noticed the connection opening for the first time.
Never noticed the words appearing on somebody else's skin.
Never noticed the link slam shut from the other side of the world with the emotional force of a diplomatic incident.
He only noticed Daniel celebrating yet another goal.
"Oh, come on. I’m not playing with you anymore !”
Daniel laughed.
"You are absolutely sulking, kiddo."
"I am not."
"You are."
Lando crossed his arms, fuming.
Meanwhile, somewhere on the other side of the world, an eight-year-old boy sat alone at a kitchen table and decided, with all the certainty available to a child, that he was never forgiving them.
Oscar spent the next years being normal about his soulmate.
That was what he told people.
It was also what he told himself, which was more important and significantly less true.
At first, being normal meant hiding the sentences under long sleeves, even in hot weather which made this objectively stupid.
Melbourne summers did not care about silly grudges.
By the time he was ten, Oscar had developed a whole system of folding his arms, adjusting cuffs, and standing at angles that kept people from noticing the ink.
Unfortunately, children were nosy.
"What does it say?" a boy at school asked once, grabbing Oscar's arm before Oscar could pull away.
Oscar yanked his it back.
"Nothing."
"It's not nothing."
"It's private."
"Is your soulmate dead?"
"No."
"Then why don't you talk to them?"
Oscar glared at him until he left.
That worked more often than people expected.
Oscar possessed many useful skills.
One of them was making prolonged eye contact feel like a threat.
His parents tried to be supportive, which was somehow worse.
His mum asked if he wanted to talk about it.
His dad said they could look into proper link counselling if Oscar wanted.
Oscar did not want that.
He wanted everyone to pretend the whole thing had never happened.
Including himself.
This became harder when everyone else's links started opening.
At twelve, one of his classmates got I forgot my maths homework appearing across her ankle and spent the entire day showing people.
At thirteen, a boy from his cricket team received what seemed to be an entire shopping list, including bananas??? written three times.
By fourteen, soulmate messages were everywhere.
People rolled up sleeves at lunch to compare fresh ink.
Someone's soulmate sent song lyrics every morning for a month.
Another person had a soulmate who only seemed to think about frogs.
Oscar found the whole thing deeply undignified.
But he also watched every time.
Not obviously. He wasn't an amateur.
But he noticed the way people smiled when new words appeared, how they complained while secretly looking pleased or how even the ones who said soulmates didn't matter still glanced down whenever the ink warmed.
Oscar never got new ink.
Because Oscar never reopened the link.
The original sentences stayed where they were.
Faded a little by time, but still perfectly readable.
Australians suck. I hope my soulmate isn't Australian.
At fifteen, Oscar briefly considered reopening the bond.
This lasted approximately four minutes.
Then he remembered how his stupid hope had been crushed by mere words and decided he wanted no more of that.
The bond remained closed.
At sixteen, Oscar decided the situation was actually convenient.
It saved time.
Some people had messy soulmate situations. Others had dramatic ones.
Some spent years trying to work out whether they wanted to meet the person on the other side.
Oscar already knew his answer.
His soulmate was either an idiot, an arsehole, or both.
There was no need to complicate things further.
When people asked, he said, "I'm not interested in all that."
He became very good at sounding like he meant it.
This was not the same thing as meaning it.
Oscar spent years failing to notice the distinction.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Lando spent those same years waiting for a soulmate who never answered.
At first, he didn't think much of it.
Links opened at different times, people said.
Sometimes one side noticed the link before the other.
The connection could be weak.
It could take years before things settled properly.
Lando liked these explanations.
They made him feel better.
At twelve, when people in his class started receiving messages, he told himself his soulmate was probably just late.
At fourteen, he decided they were shy.
At sixteen, he joked that they were probably the busiest human on the planet.
People laughed.
That was the useful thing about jokes.
If you made them quickly enough, nobody had time to ask whether they were true.
At seventeen, Lando briefly became convinced his soulmate was simply waiting for the perfect first message.
At eighteen, he wondered whether they were trapped on a remote island somewhere.
At nineteen, he spent nearly an hour considering whether they might be a spy or a secret agent unable to form bonds or reveal too much about themselves.
In fairness, he was very tired when that one happened.
By twenty, he knew most of his theories had been ridiculous.
The spy one in particular.
Still.
He had liked them.
They gave shape to the silence.
Because the alternative explanation was that somebody on the other side of this link had chosen not to answer.
Lando preferred the spies.
By nineteen, he had developed an opinion.
"Maybe they're unavailable," he'd say.
"For seven years?" Max asked once.
"People get caught up in things."
"Seven years, and they couldn't spare five minutes for a text?"
"Maybe it's a very complicated thing."
Max stared at him.
Lando managed an uneasy smile.
Max looked more bothered by the situation than Lando did.
"Oh look, Charles sending you messages." Lando asked, spotting fresh ink on Max's wrist.
Max looked down.
Then frowned.
"He is not annoyed. I probably just beamed my thoughts on his arm, and he read them. He wrote : Tell Lando to stop being stubborn and lying to himself."
"Not what I’d call constructive feedback."
Charles and Max were soulmates in the worst possible way.
Meaning everybody knew and nobody was allowed to forget.
They had met young.
Stayed in contact.
Argued constantly.
Somehow made it everybody else's problem.
Their bond was so active that Charles once received Max's instant furious thoughts about a bad sandwich from across a lecture hall and laughed hard enough to get them both thrown out of class.
In comparison, George and Alex were less dramatic.
Which somehow made them more irritating.
They were healthy about it.
Calm.
Reasonable.
Alex occasionally sent George nonsense answers during exams.
George pretended to disapprove.
Then saved every single message in a folder on his phone.
Lando found this embarrassing.
Mostly because he suspected he'd do the same thing.
Carlos hadn't met his soulmate yet.
But he communicated with them.
Apparently, they sent thoughts in three languages and once spent an entire week thinking about bread.
Everyone had something.
A message.
A conversation.
A story.
Lando had silence.
He never said that part out loud.
He also never severed the bond.
Not because he was a hopeless romantic.
He wasn't.
At least, that was what he told people.
He wasn't sitting around waiting for destiny to kick down the door.
He knew plenty of people didn't end up with their soulmates.
That was normal.
Fine, even.
But severing felt final.
And despite years of evidence, several increasingly ridiculous theories, and a truly impressive amount of pretending not to care—
Lando wasn't quite ready for final.
Oscar was twenty when he finally sent something back.
This was not planned.
Had it been planned, he would have made a spreadsheet.
Possibly several spreadsheets.
There would have been categories.
Colour coding.
A pros and cons list.
He would have considered the emotional consequences, ranked them by severity, and eventually concluded that reopening the soulmate bond was a terrible idea.
Then he would have not done it.
Unfortunately, he was drunk.
Not blackout drunk.
Just drunk enough that his brain had started offering suggestions with the confidence of a very bad friend.
He was at a party in Melbourne (unfortunately happening in his very own apartment), sitting on the kitchen counter because all the chairs were occupied and because his friend had said, "I dare you."
Which remained one of the easiest ways to get Oscar to do anything.
The music was too loud.
Someone had opened the window because the room smelled like beer, perfume, and one poor pizza that had been abandoned beneath a lamp.
Logan was leaning against the fridge, staring at his forearm with the exhausted expression of a man receiving unwanted information.
"What now?" Oscar asked.
Logan sighed.
"Platypuses glow under UV light."
Oscar looked at him.
Logan turned his arm around.
The sentence sat there in tidy black letters.
Oscar read it twice.
"Your soulmate just sends you animal facts?"
"Apparently."
"Useful."
"It came through while I was flirting with someone."
Oscar considered this.
"More useful than I originally thought."
Logan gave him a flat look.
"She asked why I was laughing."
"What did you say?"
"Platypus."
Oscar laughed.
"Devastating."
"It was. Thank you."
Across the room, somebody cheered because they had successfully opened a bottle with a lighter.
Oscar watched them fail to look humble about it.
"Do you ever get anything?" Logan asked.
Oscar went still for half a second.
Not much.
Logan noticed immediately.
Annoyingly.
"No."
"Ever?"
"No."
"Because you closed it?"
Oscar took another drink.
"You ask a lot of questions."
"I'm American."
"That's not an explanation."
"It is. Look up 'nosy' in the dictionary. ‘American' is listed as a synonym.”
Oscar snorted despite himself.
Logan was one of the few people who knew there was something strange about Oscar's soulmate situation.
He knew there had been a first message and that Oscar didn't talk about it.
He knew enough not to ask most of the time.
Which was why Oscar tolerated him.
Most of the time.
"You could sever it," Logan suggested.
"I know."
"People do."
"I know."
"You always say you don't care."
Oscar looked down at his bottle.
"That's because I don't."
Logan hummed.
It was an annoying hum.
A deeply judgmental hum.
A hum that suggested Logan had known Oscar long enough to recognise a lie when he heard one.
Oscar slid off the counter.
"I'm leaving."
"You live here."
"I'm leaving this conversation."
"That's what a coward would say."
Oscar gave him a finger over his shoulder and went to his room.
The room was blessedly quieter.
Someone's laughter still came through the wall, but it was muffled now.
Oscar shut the door and leaned back against it.
He should go to bed.
That was the obvious choice.
He was tired.
He was drunk.
He had a headache forming behind one eye.
Nothing good had ever happened because someone sat alone in their room at two in the morning and decided to revisit old emotional baggage.
Human history provided extensive evidence for this.
Oscar pushed up his sleeve.
The sentences were still there.
Of course.
They had been there for twelve years.
It had survived primary school, secondary school, birthdays, exams, holidays, and every single attempt Oscar had made to convince himself he didn't care.
Australians suck. I hope my soulmate isn't Australian.
Oscar stared at it.
"It's not even clever," he muttered.
Somehow that annoyed him most.
Not the insult.
Not the silence.
The lack of effort.
If somebody was going to permanently alter the emotional trajectory of his childhood, the least they could do was be witty.
He sat on the edge of his bed.
Then he found himself reaching deep into his mental space for that familiar string.
The bond was still there when he looked for it.
Oscar hadn't touched it in years but he knew exactly where it was.
He could open it.
He absolutely should not open it.
Oscar opened it.
The connection stirred.
Warm.
Strange.
Familiar.
For one second he felt something on the other side.
Not a person exactly.
More the outline of one.
A possibility.
Oscar hated that possibility still worked on him.
He thought about Logan's soulmate and the platypus fact.
He thought about everyone else's messages.
Everyone else's stories.
Then he thought about eight-year-old Oscar sitting at a kitchen table waiting for a hello.
And finally, with all the emotional maturity of someone drunk at two in the morning:
I fucking hate my soulmate.
The bitter sentence vanished into the bond.
Oscar blinked.
"Oh."
A pause.
Then with the delayed wisdom of somebody who had just done exactly the wrong thing, Oscar closed the link again.
Immediately.
Like a man setting off fireworks indoors and then attempting to leave before consequences arrived.
He sat there for another full minute.
Then sighed.
"That was immature..."
Nobody disagreed.
Lando received the message in the middle of a pub quiz.
This was not how he had imagined it.
To be fair, he had imagined many possibilities over the years.
He had not imagined sitting between Alex and George in a sticky pub booth while Carlos argued with a quizmaster about whether his answers should count in Spanish.
Then his arm heated.
Lando froze.
Alex noticed immediately.
Alex possessed the observational skills of a suspicious cat.
"You okay?"
Lando didn't answer.
The ink appeared.
One clean line.
I fucking hate my soulmate.
For a second, all he could do was stare.
The pub kept happening around him.
Someone dropped a glass.
George said, "Carlos, please sit down before we're banned."
Carlos replied, "I am defending my civil rights."
Max shouted, "It's a pub quiz, man. Chill."
Lando looked down again.
The words had not improved.
After twelve years.
After twelve years.
Proof.
His soulmate existed.
His soulmate had opened the link.
His soulmate had finally, finally sent something.
And they hated him.
Which felt a little excessive.
He hadn't even introduced himself yet.
"Lando?" Alex said.
Lando curled his arm into his lap.
"Yeah. Fine."
It was a good lie.
Not his best.
But respectable.
Alex looked unconvinced.
Then looked away anyway.
Lando appreciated that more than he could say.
"Question seven," George announced. "Capital of Australia."
"Canberra," Charles said.
"Sydney," Carlos said simultaneously.
Charles stared at him.
"No."
Carlos frowned.
“Why is it not Sydney?”
“Why would it be Sydney?”
“Because people only know Sydney.”
“That’s not how capitals work.”
Carlos frowned.
"Why is it not Sydney?"
"Because people only know Sydney."
"That's not how capitals work."
Lando let the argument wash over him. Usually he would have joined in. He would have backed Carlos purely because Carlos was wrong and therefore funnier.
Instead, he kept his arm hidden beneath the table, shrinking on his seat.
I fucking hate my soulmate.
The words sat there.
Sharp.
Mean.
Deliberate.
He wondered how long they had hated him.
That was the thought that stuck.
Not who.
Not even why.
Just... how long.
Had he made a mistake?
Had they opened the bond tonight specifically to tell him this?
The thought stung more than it should have.
Because it sounded ridiculous when he said it like that.
Nobody waited twelve years in silence just to insult somebody.
Probably.
Hopefully.
"Lando."
Alex leaned closer while Charles and Carlos continued to debate geography.
"You want to go?"
Lando shook his head too quickly.
"No."
"You sure?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
Alex looked at him.
Lando looked back.
Alex sighed.
"Right."
It was the sort of sigh that said I don't believe you for a second but I'm choosing peace.
Lando appreciated it.
Mostly.
"You look like somebody just killed your dog and you’re about to cry."
"I work at an animal shelter. Don’t say that."
"Exactly. You'd know the look."
Despite himself, Lando laughed.
It came out wrong.
But it came out.
Alex bumped his shoulder.
"Your arm?"
Lando looked at him.
Alex raised both hands.
"Not asking."
"You literally are."
"I'm implying."
"My soulmate," Lando said eventually.
Something shifted across Alex's face.
Lando hated that too. The careful sympathy. The way people’s faces changed when they realised he lacked something important.
"They finally wrote?"
Lando huffed.
"Yeah."
"Good?"
Lando pushed his sleeve back just enough.
Alex read it.
Then visibly abandoned whatever response he had been planning.
"Ah."
"Yeah."
Alex rubbed a hand over his face.
"That's… horrible."
Lando laughed softly.
It sounded tired.
"Bit rude."
"Only a bit?"
"I think there are etiquette rules."
"I think so too."
"Pretty sure soulmate introductions aren't supposed to start with violence."
Alex snorted.
"Maybe they got nervous."
Lando looked at him.
Alex immediately grimaced.
"Sorry. No. That's awful. I’m sorry for you Lando."
"Thanks."
Then he bumped their shoulders playfully.
“Their loss. You’re a free bird now, mate.”
Lando rolled his eyes, but the easygoing smile was back on his face.
The quiz continued.
They lost.
Mostly because Carlos refused to let go of the capital-city argument and George eventually became so annoyed that he wrote Carlos is banned as the answer to question twelve.
Charles laughed for five minutes straight.
Lando laughed too.
He was good at that.
Later, when he got back to his flat, the quiet arrived all at once.
His room was a mess in the specific way that happened when somebody was too busy to be disgusting but too tired to be tidy.
Clean clothes sat in a pile on a chair.
Lecture notes covered the desk.
A half-finished volunteer schedule glowed on his laptop.
There was a mug on the windowsill that had definitely contained tea at some point in the last forty-eight hours.
Possibly longer.
Lando sat on the edge of the bed.
Then pushed up his sleeve.
I fucking hate my soulmate.
Still there.
Still rude.
Still arguably the worst opening line in soulmate history.
He read it again.
Then again.
The words stubbornly refused to improve.
He should sever the bond.
That would be sensible.
People did it all the time.
Soulmate bonds weren't sacred.
They weren't destiny.
Half the world treated them like complicated long-distance pen pals with potential romantic side effects.
Plenty of people chose not to bother.
Lando knew all that.
He'd said all that.
Loudly.
Repeatedly.
Often while pretending not to care.
Still.
He couldn't bring himself to sever it completely.
The other side had already closed off.
Whoever they were had delivered their message and vanished again.
Which felt deeply unfair.
But the connection itself was still there.
Stronger now.
Like the message had woken something up.
Lando touched the ink with his thumb.
He tried to feel angry.
Anger would have been useful.
Anger was simple.
He could have decided his soulmate was an arsehole and moved on.
Instead he mostly felt stupid.
Stupid for waiting.
Stupid for hoping.
Stupid for still wondering if there was a reason.
His phone buzzed.
Alex.
got home?
Lando typed back.
yeah
The reply appeared almost instantly.
want company?
Lando stared at it.
Longer than he meant to.
Then typed:
nah all good x
Three seconds later:
liar
Despite everything, Lando smiled.
He didn't answer.
Instead he lay back on the bed.
Shoes still on.
Arm held above his face.
The streetlight outside painted pale lines across the ceiling.
Somewhere in the world, his soulmate hated him.
Somewhere in the world, somebody had waited twelve years to tell him so.
Lando wondered if they really meant it.
He wondered if they regretted it.
Then, because he was apparently incapable of helping himself, he wondered again if there was a reason.
Probably not.
Oscar woke the next morning with a dry mouth, a headache, and a sense of dread so immediate it was almost impressive.
For three glorious seconds, he had no idea why.
Then he remembered.
The party.
Logan.
The bond.
The message.
"Oh no."
Oscar stared at the ceiling.
The ceiling offered no sympathy.
Which was fair.
Oscar sat up.
Immediately regretted it.
His head throbbed.
His phone was on the floor.
One shoe was on his desk.
The other was beside his bed.
Slowly, he replayed the previous night.
The bond.
Opening it.
Sending the message.
Closing it again.
Immediately.
Like a coward.
"Damn it."
The second one sounded worse.
His phone buzzed.
Seventeen unread messages from Logan.
Most concerned somebody named Ben throwing up in a laundry basket.
None concerned Oscar's soulmate.
Which should have reassured him.
Instead, it somehow didn't.
Oscar rubbed a hand over his face.
It had been childish.
Worse.
It had been messy.
Oscar disliked messy things.
He liked planning.
He liked thinking before speaking.
He liked being able to defend his choices using logic.
This was indefensible.
He had gotten drunk and yelled into the soulmate void.
Fucking embarrassing.
His phone buzzed again.
Logan: you awake?
Oscar: unfortunately
Logan: drama queen. coffee?
Oscar looked at his arm, where the old sentence sat beneath the newer shame of what he had done.
Twelve years of nonsense.
Then he pulled his sleeve down.
Oscar: ok giv me a minute
Oscar did not sever the bond.
He told himself it was because severing required emotional introspection and actually acknowledging he had a soulmate in the first place, all of which sounded worse than simply pretending none of this had happened.
This was partly true.
The rest of the truth sat quietly beneath it, annoying and persistent.
He had opened the bond.
For one second, somebody had been there.
Somebody real.
Oscar hated that he cared.
So he decided not to.
Again.
The strategy had worked terribly for twelve years.
Oscar saw no reason not to continue.
Three months later, Oscar received his acceptance letter for a postgraduate program in England.
He read it twice at the kitchen table.
Then a third time standing up.
Because apparently that made it more official.
His mum cried.
His dad hugged him hard enough to make his ribs complain.
Logan, when called, said:
"England? Isn't that where they invented rain and depression? You'll fit right in mate."
"Thank you."
"That wasn't a compliment."
"I chose to receive it as one."
The university had a good reputation.
The course was exactly what Oscar wanted.
The move made sense on every practical level.
The impractical levels were considerably more annoying.
England.
The annoying voice in his head that never stopped spouting soulmate facts pointed out that a lot of people met their soulmates while travelling.
The probability was real.
Oscar packed his life into suitcases and firmly ignored this information.
He was going for the degree.
Certainly not a soulmate.
The fact that England contained millions of people and his soulmate could theoretically be one of them was completely irrelevant.
Oscar had performed the calculation only once.
Maybe twice.
Fine.
Several times.
But purely for statistical purposes.
Obviously.