pavol i can't decide if i love or hate you. i would also leave your ass if i were married to you. but your smile is so painful looking i can't help but love you. also you're a little bitch.
→ summary: whenever your soulmate passes you, you get a tally mark on your hand.
→ warnings: swearing, a bit of angst, fluff
→ words: 1.4k+
→ a/n: this was my submission for this blog!! i’m excited to share it with you guys!
The familiar sensation burned its way across your hand, as yet another tally mark was etched into your skin. Sure, it was painful, then again, all reminders were. You winced, and looked down at the blood that seeped from the scratch. Seeing it flood into the crevices of you palm was taunting—knowing that now, you’ve passed your soulmate seven times.
Walking along the road to your shabby, rundown apartment you thought only of him. In all honesty, you didn’t care what he looked like. He could be short, tall, or anywhere in between. He could be muscular or scrawny, it didn’t really matter to you. All you wanted was for the pain to cease. Anyone who could make the marks go away, was a blessing … anyone …
Opening the door, and walking in, you rushed to your kitchen, and almost slipped on a sock trying to get bandages for your hand.
Everyone’s idea of these “soulmate marks” was good in the beginning, until people began getting them on their own bodies. No one can thoroughly explain why this started happening to people. When the issue first arose, everyone thought the marks would be clean and beautiful, but that was not the case. The wounds were jagged and disgusting. They made hands look like they had been mauled by bears. In the now, people chose to cover them. It didn’t matter how they did it, they just wanted them gone. Sometimes, you would see people embrace them, and post their scars on social media. Sometimes it would be Instagram, sometimes Snapchat, and that’s why you owned absolutely no social platforms. You, of all people, did not want to see tallies on others when you had plenty of your own.
Snapped out of your reverie by a scalding feeling on your hand, you shifted your gaze to the hot water running from the faucet. Swiftly pulling your hand back, you shook your head and scoffed.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” You asked, rhetorically. Because, deep down, you knew the answer. It was the cuts, they made you like this. It was festering insanity that was pinned in the bottom of your stomach. It was the fact that you had no clue who your other half was. This not-so-sudden revelation was eating you from the inside out.
The next day came quickly after you slept for about two hours. You couldn’t help but think about the ironic situation people who chose to cover their scars were. It was quite laughable, to say the least. The marks that were engraved into their skin served as bitter messages. ‘Look who you just passed,’ the marks mock. So, in a sense, covering them was futile. In the cases where people actually did find their soulmate, the bloody lines disappeared, like they were never there in the first place. But, this situation was extremely rare. It was unbelievably sad, when people died, all that was carved into their cold, stone graves was the number of tallies they had when they passed.
‘That’ll be me, I guess,’ you laughed, voice souring with each word that was internally uttered. Although, you were sad and just a bit angry, the sun was shining, so you decided to take your homework outside, to cheer yourself up.
While finding yourself a place to sit, you just about tripped and fell. The searing pain coming from your hand was almost unbearable, and all you could do was grip your wrist and wait for it all to be over. It’d been at least a minute, and at this point, you had crumpled in on yourself. People were staring, but they did nothing to help, because they knew how you felt. They knew what it was like for those gashes to ache, and they knew what it was like for them to form. Everyone knew the cost of these soulmate marks—but no one did anything about it.
Even as you did your project for your class, your injuries still throbbed, and it wasn’t until you heard a smooth man’s voice that you were broken out of your daydream.
“Are you okay? You’ve been holding your hand for a while now.” The sound seemed to come from the air above you, and your focus moved to the tree limbs that hung over your head. As you looked up, your eyes widened, and you were face to face with a handsome young man.
“What, uh, I—how long have you been here?!” You stammered, clutching your appendage close to your chest. Though your voice was venomous, he continued to stare into your face. His eyes were soft and doe-like albeit fierce and never-ending. They seemed to pass right through you, and you couldn’t say that you were okay with that …
“Oh, y’know, long enough,” he replied vaguely. You scoffed and muttered some colorful language under your breath, and prayed he couldn’t hear all the way down here.
“That’s not the answer I was looking for, but, okay,” you muttered, rolling your eyes. “I meant like, what’d you see … asshole?” His gaze never shifted from your form, curled into a ball at the foot of the tree. The leaves rustled, and within the span of a few seconds, he was crouched right in front of you, his right hand shoved into your face … there were eight scars, the exact same number your’s had.
“I saw your cuts,” he smiled, quirking his head at an odd angle, “they aren’t like everyone else’s. They’re different, and so are you.” His smile never faded, even as he went on and on about things that were uncomfortable for people to talk about. You found yourself wasting the day away with this mystery man, but you didn’t mind, and besides, he made the pain go away.
When the sky grew dark, he stood up abruptly, patting the front of his jacket before helping you off the ground. You weren’t ready to leave just yet, you internally begged for him to stay.
“We can meet here again tomorrow, (Name),” he beamed, looking at your forlorn expression.
“Alright, but can you at least tell me your name so I don’t have to keep mentally calling you asshole for the rest of my life,” you joked, playfully hitting his shoulder. He grinned like the Cheshire cat, and he placed both of his hands on your shoulders.
“One, my name’s Hansol, but most people call me Vernon. And, two, I’m flattered that you want to keep talking to me for the rest of your life. It’s cute …” His voice came to a halt right there, and he looked like he was resisting the urge to do something that you could probably guess the exact action. Instead, he reluctantly pulled his hands off of your body, waved, and walked in the other direction.
“Hansol, Hansol! Vernon! Hello!” You’d been waiting under the tree for almost two hours, and you just decided to start looking for him. It was a pretty dumb move on your part, but what could you say—you’d started to fall. All you hoped was that you didn’t open old wounds back up as you went down.
“Up here, again, (Name),” he called, this time from atop a different tree.
“There you are!” You sighed, “I’ve been waiting under that thing for over an hour!” The tree grumbled, as you saw Hansol’s form climb out of it, he rushed over to you and his eyes looked extremely worried. He shook his head, his eyes cleared, and the same vast, brown desert that was hidden in them yesterday was found once again.
“Why’d you stay? Am I really that important?” His words pierced your heart, like a knife does flesh. You now realized why he numbed the pain … it was because he rid all of it from your body. Slowly, you glanced down at your hand, and you had to hold back the bile rising in your throat. The tallies, the cursed marks that had plagued your soft, smooth skin, were gone. Like they had never existed in the first place. He was so, inexplicably important …
Your body moved on autopilot, and you pulled him into strong a hug. This young man, he was broken, just like you, just like everybody else … but no two mirrors crack in the same way. Your life had its ups and, unfortunately, its downs, but his did too.
He begrudgingly drew himself from your grasp, to look you in the face. He took your hand in his, and slowly flipped it over. Up to his lips your hand was lifted, and in every place where a lesion had been, he kissed. The actions were light, but to you, they meant more than the world itself.
Through tears you choked, “I finally found you … the one who made the pain go away.”
