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Nick’s year hadn’t started as well as he’d hoped it would.
First, David had puked all over the landing carpet on New Year’s Day, and walking out of his bedroom with bleary eyes, Nick had stepped right into it. Happy new year, indeed.
His mum had said he should see it as an omen of good luck, like when a bird craps on you, but Nick had only forced out a grin before putting his socks in the bin. Some things just can’t be washed out.
Like now, where Nick is hunched over the bathroom sink, relentlessly scrubbing at his upper arm, the skin raw and red and angry, but the mark in the colour of his freckles still as prominent as when he first glimpsed it while getting changed after rugby practice.
It was a lot for a first day back at school.
The new form, where he met Charlie. A nice, quiet boy he remembered seeing around, but always only at a distance. He was smiling at him, the morning sunlight shining through his dark curls, greeting him with a soft “Hi”. Of course Nick also knew what had happened to Charlie the year before and he wondered how much of that had left marks on the boy. Not a soulmark, of course not, but other, deeper wounds, just as indelible.
As he keeps scrubbing at the newly appeared mark, tears are running down his cheeks. Tears of frustration, of pain, of fright.
He isn’t sure at which point the mark appeared exactly. He can’t remember seeing it when he got dressed that morning, but he was only half awake then. He isn’t sure about before rugby practice, when Harry distracted him with his frankly brain-numbing “banter”.
But the mark definitely was there after practice, when he caught a glimpse of it while coming out of the shower. Nick felt the blood drain from his face when he saw it and was very quick to surreptitiously cover it up. He can’t remember ever getting dressed that quickly before.
He locked himself in his bedroom once he got home, ignoring his mother’s offer of a cup of tea. His laptop only gave him depressing results.
Getting your soulmark read by a professional was a pricey endeavour. They rather accurately deciphered what to expect from your soulmate, in looks and temperament, which made narrowing down the search for who it was easier.
Nick had no such funds at his disposal. He had to make do with hobby readers, offering their questionable expertise on Reddit.
He isn’t sure what he expected his soulmark to look like. Maybe he anticipated the soft, swooping swirls that indicate his soulmate would be as sensitive as he knew himself to be. And also feminine. Mainly that. Why would he expect anything else?
There are no curved lines on his soul mark.
Only the sharp, geometrical edges soulmark readers always call masculine. Whatever that actually is supposed to mean.
And as much as Nick keeps scrubbing at it with his washcloth, beads of blood now pricking at the surface of his skin, the mark does neither disappear, nor change.
He has to face the reality that his soulmate is most probably male. Nick stops his hand for a moment, letting his tears flow and drip down into the sink, where they mix with the blood and the suds of the scouring soap.
Voices are echoing through his head – his father, enquiring after girlfriends, his teammates, using words like gay and fag as insults of the highest order, his brother, already seeing him as the weak one in the family.
Nick eyes the Brillo pad lying on the bathroom cupboard. Maybe if he gets enough skin off, the mark might fade. Maybe, if enough scar tissue covers it, his fate can change.
He picks it up, feeling the steel wool pricking at his finger tips. Nick isn’t looking forward to hurting himself more, the pain in his arm already barely tolerable. But he can’t think of another solution.
Nick read about a girl altering her soulmark with razorblades, after she’d had a falling out with her soulmate. Of course that could be nonsense, his mum had taught him to be wary to not believe everything that is on the internet.
His mum.
Nick lets the metal sponge fall into the sink. Maybe she can help, maybe she knows a solution, a specialist at the hospital they can ask. She at least won’t judge him if he turns out to be gay – at least he doesn’t think so.
It’s so confusing to him, he knows he really fancied Tara Jones and he notices when a girl is pretty. He blushes when Imogen sits too close to him on the picnic bench, pressing her thigh against his and then pretending it’s nothing. But Nick knows it’s not nothing, while he also knows he doesn’t feel like that about her at all.
Has Nick ever felt like that about a boy? He can only remember wanting to impress boys, wanting them to like him and see him as their equal. But that’s not the same, is it?
Nick wipes a hand over his face to get rid of the tears, but he knows he can’t hide his red-rimmed eyes.
He presses a wad of toilet paper against his bleeding arm before he opens the bathroom door.
“Muuuum?” he calls down the landing, a tremor in his voice.
She must have heard his uncharacteristically plaintive tone, as his mother is usually not one to come scrambling just because he called her.
“Nicky? Are you alright, dear?” she asks, already bounding up the stairs, Nellie quick on her heels.
Nick slinks back into the bathroom, sinking down on the toilet seat, the tears flowing freely again.
“I… I don’t know?” he hiccups.
Her eyes briefly flick to the mess in the sink, before honing in on his upper arm.
“Nick, what’s going on?”
She gently lifts his arm towards her and he is powerless to resist. Nick drops the toilet paper, showing her the bloody soulmark.
“Oh my baby,” she coos, her voice full of worry and empathy. “Is it new?”
Nellie presses her head against his thigh with a low whine and he cards his fingers through her thick fur, immediately slightly comforted.
Nick nods. “It appeared today… But Mum, what am I going to do? It’s… you know…”
His mum smiles softly at him, while grabbing a tube of antiseptic cream from the medicine cabinet.
“Yes, it could be a male-leaning soulmark, if that’s what you mean. But that doesn’t say anything definite,” she explains as she carefully spreads the cream over the wound. “And even if, that’s not a problem is it? I hope I never made you feel like you not liking girls would be a problem.”
“I think I still like girls,” Nick muses while his mum fixes a bandage around his arm, her calm voice and demeanour have mostly made his tears stop. Her soft touch momentarily soothes him.
“And that’s okay, too!” she adds cheerfully. “Love comes in as many forms and variations as soulmarks, and there is no wrong way to love.”
“But what will Dad say? And David? And the rugby team?”
“You can tell them if you want to. But remember, covering up your soulmark is perfectly acceptable, you don’t owe anyone that information!”
In his blind panic, Nick had completely forgotten that this is an option, even though long-lasting skin patches are being heavily advertised everywhere.
His mum washes out the sink, before turning back to him. “You don’t have to answer, but have you met a new boy recently? At school maybe?”
Nick thinks about dark curls dappled by sunlight, piercing blue eyes and prominent eyebrows. He thinks about a radiant smile with a cute tooth gap. He thinks about a soft laugh and an untidy scrawl of handwriting. He thinks about long legs walking away from him after form. He thinks about Charlie and notices the swoop in his stomach.
Nick’s smile is small and shy, but it’s there for his mum to see.
“Ah,” Sarah smiles back. “How wonderful!”
She grabs his hands and pulls him up from the toilet seat.
“Okay, how about that cup of tea now? And if you want to, you can tell me about him?”
Nick nods, even though he’s still unsure about so much. But he now knows he’s got his mum on his side while he figures himself out and that, to him, makes all the difference.