soulmates: everything drawn across your skin gets reflected on another’s
You've decided that you don't like your soulmate very much.
At the newly turned age of 10, you went to sleep that night feeling like the world was at your fingertips. Double digits, you heard thrown around. It felt special, you felt special.
The next morning, as you woke up and went into the bathroom, you found your face streaked in a cacophony of reds, oranges, yellows, and browns. Horrible squiggly, fat drawings of stars and mustaches and playing cards and dogs.
That day was when you discovered what it meant to have a soulmate. As well as the fact that no matter how hard you scrubbed, you would not be getting the marks off until your soulmate decided to.
Holding back angry tears, you grabbed the nearest marker and drew the meanest face you could imagine into your forearm until your skin chafed. Refusing to remove it until your face was yours again.
You watched in the bathroom mirror as the last of the drawings faded. Transfixed by the process of it all—the way you could trace the path of your soulmate's hands as they cleaned—you stood in slight wonder.
Until you noticed your drawing being painted over to resemble a clown.
The sight filled you with an annoyance you've never felt before.
🃏°🂱⋆ 🎲 .🂱࿔*🃏
Besides the fact that your soulmate is a fan of dramatic introductions, they're also incredibly persistent.
It's been explained to you that drawing across the skin to connect with another's means it was purposeful. Your soulmate had to be thinking of you for the marks to transfer.
For months following the initial incident, everything from cartoon animals to ridiculous expressions to random shapes and colors pops up over just about every inch of your arms and hands. Sometimes even across your knees. And they just wouldn't stop. Every day, without fail, you'd find something on your skin, like clockwork.
From a more grown-up perspective, it could've been seen as sweet. For someone to keep reaching out with such uninhibited desire towards this connection. To want to show you everything and anything they could think of.
But your younger self wasn't impressed. So, for a time, every playing card provoked some sort of Pavlovian response that made you aggravated.
While all the stories you've heard were of sunsets and flowers and rainbows, you were stuck with weird mutant creatures and basketballs. And clowns, against your wishes. Clowns made a frequent appearance.
Though you were annoyed and angry at your worst, you ignored it. Ignored the drawings until they went away, never deigning to respond. Surely your soulmate would stop after noticing your continued silence.
Instead, one day, while sitting at your desk to work, you were startled by the sudden shock of red, bleeding marker scrawling atop your hand.
A sad face.
It left you a bit shocked, then ashamed. Before remembering what they did to your face. So now they're upset, after months of being ignored. Just because they weren't getting any attention.
You went back to work, steadfast in your protest.
But then it appeared again, but on the other hand, even bigger with tears running down its face.
They were persistent, you reminded yourself, but you just needed to hold out.
Then they spread, like an infection. The sad faces started blooming across every possible inch of skin you had.
It was crazy, so incredibly overwhelming and childish that you grabbed the nearest marker and ran to the bathroom for a mirror. You took that marker and went to town. Cat whiskers, swirls, a goatee, glasses. Anything you could think of went on your face with intent. Thinking of the faceless individual currently pettily vandalizing your arms, possibly parts of your legs.
By the time you were done, feeling strangely settled, you looked down at yourself.
There was a heart in the middle of your palm. Where the sad faces couldn't touch, colored in. It was tiny, but it looked so carefully made. Like they had taken the time to make sure the lines were clean.
You stare at it, then look up again.
You're a mess, so much red across your arms it might as well be your new skin color. And your face. It might just rival your other half's previous work.
Your lips twitch into a smile you're hesitant to allow. But then you're laughing until your cheeks hurt. Tears prickling the corners of your eyes, chest heaving between each gasp for air.
Once you can stop, you reach for a washcloth, intent on washing your face. But then you make a split-second decision. You take your marker and make three other hearts near the first, turning the drawing into a four-leaf clover.
🃏°🂱⋆ 🎲 .🂱࿔*🃏
Your relationship to your soulmate changes as much as it doesn’t. You no longer hate them, but god are they annoying sometimes.
Waking up to smiley faces and roosters, going to bed with sheep lining your wrists. It’s still as endless as before.
Except now, during your most idle moments, you’ll grab a pen and start drawing. Thinking about your soulmate doing whatever it is they do. Maybe on a court playing basketball. Maybe lying down to go to bed. Maybe doing homework like you.
You’d always get a response.
Until one day, there aren’t as many.
You think you’re being paranoid at first. Brushing aside your initial anxiety over only one of your arms containing doodles.
You’re both growing up, you imagine. Things can change, you try to remind yourself.
Even though they might not appear as often as they used to, somewhere deep within your very being, you have started to be able to know when they do.
A tingle across your wrist, a sudden splash of warmth over your knee cap. Little indicators that shouldn’t have meant anything, but to your experienced soul, you knew better.
It’s not like it used to be, but it’s steady regardless.
Then they stop altogether. No warning, no lead-up, just nothing.
The first day, you’re concerned but choose to brush off the worry. The next day you feel conflicted, but push on anyway. It’s on the third day that you pick up a pen with shaky fingers. After a moment’s hesitation, you settle on drawing a cat waiting at a closed door on your forearm.
It takes until the next day, when the ink has naturally dimmed from your skin, that you see his response.
On the other side of that door, a couch. Filled with two people, a guy and a girl, side by side, arms intertwined.
🃏°🂱⋆ 🎲 .🂱࿔*🃏
Some people become painters for the sole purpose of talking with their other half. The most renowned of the Renaissance painters have contributed their success to their endless desire to display nothing but the most beautiful depictions of art to their soulmates.
Van Gogh suffered from the years of silence at the other end of his void connection, filling every inch of his skin with colored melancholy that led up to the conception of the Starry Night.
You think about him as you stare at your barren flesh. Wondering if you should paint your arms in blues and yellows, hoping he’ll see and feel sorry for what he’s done to you. Can tattoos be shared if you learn how to do a stick and poke?
You shake your head, appalled and disgusted by your own impulsive thoughts. You know you'd never go that far. Yet you still feel gross, overflowing with a jealousy you're not sure you should have. It's not abnormal for soulmates to never find each other, or for one to date someone else in between. It shouldn't matter what they do, you try to tell yourself. They may be yours, but only in theory.
You don’t want to be the villain, but you’re starting to feel like one. Hoping, as you are, that the person on the other end of their arm knows how the two of them are not destined to last.
🃏°🂱⋆ 🎲 .🂱࿔*🃏
You wake up to an open door on your arm.
It's been months of unmarked skin, barren canvases, blues and yellows.
You stare at it until your vision blurs.
Eventually, you pick up a marker and draw a dead rat. Dozens stacked and placed in front of the door.
No cat in sight.
🃏°🂱⋆ 🎲 .🂱࿔*🃏
Your one regret, you think as you wake within a velvet inlaid coffin and into a world beyond your wildest imagination, is that you should've forgiven them sooner.
And so, before Dire Crowley leaves you alone to the dank, decrepit remains of a long-abandoned house, you ask him for a marker.
That night, you draw a cat, then another, then a dozen. As many as it takes for your hand to start cramping.
You stay awake until you can no longer. By the next morning, there's still no response.
You lock yourself in a bathroom to cry until a ghost has to comfort you. And your new talking cat begs for food.
🃏°🂱⋆ 🎲 .🂱࿔*🃏
The first thing you notice about Ace Trappola is that he's got the smile of someone who lives for trouble.
Your hunch is confirmed when he laughs in your face, nearly blows you off your feet in the most literal way possible, then tries to ignore the consequences of his own actions.
You don't like him.
And it's not just because he reminds you of playing cards and closed doors.
🃏°🂱⋆ 🎲 .🂱࿔*🃏
"I'm not going to let myself get expelled when the stone is right there!"
Deuce, as shaken as he is after running for his life from a ten-foot mutant sludge monster, stands firm in his resolve.
"And I'm asking you if you've lost your damn mind. Cause there's no way in hell you're getting past that thing!"
"It doesn't matter, because I have to. I'm going to graduate as an honors student for my mom and stay alive for my soulmate."
Ace says something, probably another dig at Deuce's chances of survival, but all you hear is static.
Soulmate, he said. That means they exist here too.
"ALRIGHT, ENOUGH."
Both boys and your feline menace jump.
"Here's the plan: you're going to listen to me, or none of us go home in one piece."
🃏°🂱⋆ 🎲 .🂱࿔*🃏
Things happened so fast, faster than you thought possible. But now you're standing outside Crowley's office, no longer expelled and with a new leadership position under your belt.
"So, Prefect," Ace interrupts your dazed musings with an arm thrown over your shoulder. "What's going to be first on your agenda of things to do as the new Dormhead of Ramshackle?"
"Pester my soulmate."
"What?" He balks.
"So your world has soulmates too," Deuce says, the softest smile you've ever seen on him taking shape across his face. "That's so cool. Have you been able to keep talking with them since you got here?"
"No."
"Oh," that sweet expression crumbles, and you scramble to try and get it back.
"But we were also sort of fighting before I came here, so. They might just be ignoring me."
"Oh, that's..." Deuce bites his lip, conflicted.
Ace is strangely quiet, looking at you with an expression made to give nothing away.
"What's a soulmate?" Grim chooses that moment to butt in. Done admiring his new gem.
You spend the walk back to Ramshackle explaining the concept as best you can to your companion. Departing from Ace and Deuce with promises to see them at school first thing tomorrow.
🃏°🂱⋆ 🎲 .🂱࿔*🃏
It's way too late to be up on a school night, and you're halfway through drawing a large maine coon on your calf when someone knocks on your door.
You open it to find Ace, collared and fuming. Coat haphazardly slung over his shoulders.
"I'm moving into Ramshackle!" He bellows.
But all you can see are the hints of cat ears peeking over the edge of his displaced sleeves.
Then his eyes catch on your calf, pant leg still rolled up to let the ink dry.
It doesn't look like anyone will speak anytime soon. So you decide to bite the bullet.
"Girlfriend not work out? How shocking."
He blinks, blinks some more, then remembers himself. "Oh, like it's a crime to date someone who isn't your soulmate. Unless it was where you're from?"
You say nothing, and that's enough of an answer for him.
"Yeah, so no. Not a big deal then."
"You were ignoring me though."
"Oh, excuse me for not finding your dead rats the most pleasant."
You're tired, you imagine he is too. Coming off a fight with a monster beyond both of your comprehension.
"Sleep on the couch." You leave before he can say anything back.
🃏°🂱⋆ 🎲 .🂱࿔*🃏
It's probably not even an hour later when you cave and push yourself out of bed, striding toward the door.
Ace is already on the other side of it. Brows pinched and eyes downcast.
"Get in." He's not expecting your voice, considering how he flinches. "Stay on your side, and maybe I won't send you back to the couch."
Again, you don't wait for his response, just tuck yourself back into bed and close your eyes.
You feel his weight shifting the old mattress, hear springs groan under the additional body.
"... I'm—"
"Don't."
"But I—"
"Ace, really, it's fine. It doesn't matter."
"Clearly it does, you're upset."
He's facing you on the other side of the bed, mindful of Grim's placement as an unintended barrier between you two. His hair sticks up in gravity-defying tuffs, clad in just his white button-up.
"... That collar looks uncomfortable."
"You have no idea."
You smile, despite it all, tired yet grateful all the same. He gives you one back, hesitant and with only one side of his mouth at first.
"I thought I lost you." You don't mean to say it, but it slips.
The smile falls.
"I thought your last memory of me was going to be of dead rats."
"It wasn't."
Even in the dark of your room, you swear his eyes shine with a determination you saw mirrored in the flames he helped to fan.
"It never would've been. Trust me."
That seems to be all the words either of you want to say at this hour. And steadily, your lids grow heavy with sleep. But right before you slip under, you feel something touch your hand. A featherlight, curious brush. You open your hand to that touch without hesitation. You go to sleep to the sensation of Ace drawing repeated four-leaf clovers into your palm.
Such a handsome boy he is — even if i don't want to admit it.
This was so interesting to do ! It took me between two or maybe three days to render, i didn't like how the hand ended up, but it was worth the shot. I really loved trying this.
OMG OMG OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG THAT'S MY BOYFRINED YOU GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THATS MY BOYFRIEND!!!! MY BEAUTIFUL BOYFRIEND ACE TRAPPOLA AHSHDHUWIAJIDSJA HE'S SO BEAUTIFUL GHHHH ILOVE HIM SO MUCH OMGOMGOMGOMG HEHEHEHAHAHAHAHIHIHIH KICKS MY FEET
baratheonpilled
prguitarman
ellievsbear
kianamaiart
annaxmalina
snowghoul
tangentwithtanner
gummygunk
kaledo-art
