Extra: could always write a song about this
Happy Holidays to @ironicsnowflake, and so many thanks for letting me borrow Rory because Thorne would not be the same without him. The brothers really do not do well when separated! <3
could always write a song about this
Gen (Rory, Thorne)
~2500 words
Rory picks his phone up from the table when it buzzes, glances at it long enough to see the message, then sets it back down. It’s not a surprise to hear from Alaric, and it’s not at all a surprise what he’s said. Alaric’s relationship with his parents is strained, so he and Rory have been texting back and forth a lot since they left campus on the Tuesday before Christmas. It slowed during the holidays, but now that Christmas is over, the number of texts has been picking up again.
“Just answer it,” Rowan says, his fork clinking against his plate.
Daniel huffs, and Lucy raises an eyebrow at both her husbands. “Rules,” she reminds them. “Rory, phone in your pocket until after dinner. We all know it’s your roommate, and he’ll still be there when we’re done.”
Thorne has his hand over his mouth and Rory can see how his shoulders are shaking. He knocks his knee under the table in a quiet order to stop laughing. It doesn’t help.
He’s got one parent encouraging, one denying, and the other one is silent. Rory decides to hedge his bets and picks up the phone again, tapping back a quick response. Dinner, and Mom’s a tyrant about the family dinner thing when we’re actually all here. I’ll call later.
Rory thinks about saying, go poke Corbin and Drea, but he’s pretty sure that won’t actually help, so he doesn’t. Instead he just slides his phone into his pocket and rearranges himself in his chair so that his legs aren’t so far under the table. He knocks into someone; Daniel gives him a look and Rory sends a wry smile back. They both have ridiculously long legs. It isn’t the first time it’s been a problem.
“Maybe we need a bigger table,” Daniel comments, and Lucy’s brow furrows while Rowan snorts.
The phone buzzes in his pocket, but Rory ignores it, picking up a good-sized forkful of greens instead.
“Best part of being home,” Thorne says, pushing his plate away. “I don’t have to cook for myself, and I don’t have to spend money on half-assed vegetarian food on campus.”
“The Indian place in the student center isn’t bad,” Rory comments. “Good pakora. And pretty much everything else.” He’s not going to comment on the dining halls, where his dinner choices tend to be cheese pizza, salad, or some form of pasta. He’s sick of macaroni and cheese. It’s nice on those rare nights when there’s quinoa or something green that isn’t lettuce. “You’d think the campus would be better prepared for vegetarians.”
“When you move into the apartment, we’ll cook together.” Thorne knocks Rory’s knee under the table, grins at him.
“What if I don’t want to move into that apartment until you get some decent sound-proofing?” Rory asks, raising an eyebrow. Rowan snorts again, and Lucy winces.
“Maybe that’s not a discussion for the dinner table,” Lucy says.
There’s only one bite of spaghetti squash casserole left on his plate, and two bites of greens. Rory eats quickly, pushes his own plate toward Thorne. “I’m done. You carry the plates in, I’ll start washing up.”
Lucy looks like she’s going to say something, but Daniel has his hand on her wrist and her mouth closes without a word. Rory escapes into the kitchen and gets the water running so it’ll get hot, then opens the dishwasher.
By the time Thorne brings in the plates, Rory already has the leftovers put away and is scrubbing out pots and pans to get them in the dishwasher. Thorne budges up against him at the sink and starts on the hand wash items, while Rory keeps working on the dishwasher.
“So.” Thorne rinses a knife, drops it into the drainer. “Are we going to talk about whatever’s on your mind? I haven’t seen you this itchy since two Christmases ago, when you couldn’t decide whether to give me the cold shoulder or sleep on top of me after I got back from my first semester away.”
Rory’s jaw is tight. He rinses three plates, gets them into the dishwasher, then has to jockey things around so he can fit in the remaining two. It’s almost overfull by the time he gets the soap in and starts it up. Thorne hands him a towel and Rory dries off, twisting the towel in his hands when he’s done.
Rory rubs at the inside of his left wrist, and Thorne’s gaze drops to watch. There’s a moment where Thorne frowns before his eyebrows lift and he grabs onto Rory’s forearm, gently twisting to turn him so he can see the inside of his wrist. Rory’s breath catches, and he closes his eyes.
He knows what Thorne sees there, the soft clouded space. Not red from a rash, not raw from scratching. Just what looks like a spray of ink that seems to shift and change every time you look at it. Cloudy. Impossible to discern.
Rory pulls his hand back. “Let’s go upstairs.”
His phone is buzzing again, and he glances at it as they head for their room.
There’s a thing here for the new year and I don’t want to go.
We can come up with something different, if you want to hang out with me and Thorne. We don’t have a gig, Rory offers. Are the guys going to be at the house? You could do something with your frat brothers, too. It only seems logical to Rory, because the frat housing is both on-campus and yet exempt from the dorm policies for closing dates. They could go back early, just like Thorne could go to his apartment. I’ll talk to Thorne, he suggests.
He pauses outside his room, leaning against the wall as he watches the little dots telling him that Alaric is typing a response. The dots stop and start several times before it finally comes: I’ll talk to Chris.
Rory walks into his room and drops the phone onto the nightstand by his own bed. Thorne’s already stretched out there and Rory drops onto the bed next to him, sits there with his head bowed. He can’t make himself small, but he feels small right now. Young. And kind of probably stupid.
“It didn’t happen to you, right?” Rory says, because Thorne was there, too.
Thorne knocks into him lightly, and Rory lies down at the touch. He stretches out next to Thorne, tilted up on one elbow, and looks at the wrists Thorne shows him.
“You have a whole shitload more songwriting material now,” Thorne says. Rory shoves at him, less gently than he normally would.
“It’s not funny, Thorne. I caught backlash on something that was a targeted ritual.” He flops onto his back, holds up the wrist and looks at the cloudy ink. “This shouldn’t be here. Everything was focused on Ángel and Hayley. No one else should’ve been affected at all. We were just there to bolster the ritual and provide energy.”
“Which was a test for you, since providing energy is the opposite of your natural talent,” Thorne points out. “Not to mention that Pawel was a part of the ritual as well, and his level of natural energy is off the charts.” He holds Rory’s wrist, lightly strokes his thumb over the mark. “Have you talked to him about it?”
Rory closes his eyes, shakes his head. “I haven’t talked to anyone, really. Chris and Alaric know, because they saw me scratching at it after the show.”
“It’s not Alaric, is it?” Thorne asks, and Rory laughs, rueful.
“Nope. Tested it that night. I was pretty sure it wasn’t—it’s not like I avoid touching Alaric and it didn’t resolve into something immediately.” He shrugs one shoulder, tugs his hand back from Thorne. “I figured it has to be platonic. I mean. If they’re my soulmate, they’re not going to expect….”
“You to fuck like bunnies?” Thorne supplies, when Rory’s voice trails off.
Rory elbows him. “Something like that, yeah. I’d half figured it might be you, because we’re us. And wouldn’t our fans think it was cute if we suddenly had matching tattoos? And that’s just platonic, too, and I know you’re in my life forever. But it’s not that, either. Which means the ritual went out and found someone else. Somewhere. And I have no idea who it is.”
“At least you didn’t end up like Ángel and Hayley,” Thorne says quietly, and Rory has to agree.
He wonders if the ritual was just a bad idea all along. A soulmate ritual. He didn’t think it was a real thing they could do, but Ángel said it was something his great-grandmother told him about. A tradition, when you knew in your heart and gut that it was right. And he’d been with Hayley for a year and a half and they were perfect together. Two peas in a pod, so similar it was frightening. They knew, so they brought the ritual to Coven and asked for permission to cast it and help raising the energy.
Pawel researched before they did anything, making sure he understood as their advisor how it worked, and that it was safe. Then they cast the ritual, and at the end, Ángel and Hayley clasped hands and… nothing happened. The marks on their wrists remained clouded, and Rory had an up close and personal view of what it looked like to see all hope destroyed.
He had no idea how their Christmas break was going, but he suspected that Hayley’s visit to Ángel’s home wasn’t going to be everything they’d originally planned.
And at the end of it all, Rory had somehow ended up with the same damn mark on his own wrist, sitting there, swirling and staring at him, making him itch because he knows it means something. And he hates not knowing what, hates knowing that some kind of magic thinks there’s someone out there, waiting to meet him.
He tilts his head back, swallows hard and crosses his arms. “Has to suck for them right now,” Rory agrees. Thorne rolls over closer to him, nudges Rory until he lies on his side, lets Thorne spoon behind him and hold on tight. Rory inhales long and slow, and lets it out even more slowly. Thorne’s rasp of a breath is comforting, and Rory slowly shudders and relaxes.
“I don’t like touching people,” Rory mutters. “I like the idea even less now. I could just make someone’s Talent stop. Or I could make this thing appear on their wrist and they’d know it was me. That I did something to them. That it’s my fault, and they’d think I expect something from them. Or they might expect something from me.” He’s not sure which side of that equation is worse.
“If they’re really your soulmate, they won’t expect anything you don’t want to give,” Thorne says quietly, his breath warm against Rory’s neck.
“Why didn’t it happen to you?” Rory whispers into the pillow. “Did it happen to anyone else?”
Rory shakes his head. “Didn’t really want to point out that something else went wrong.”
Thorne huffs. “Maybe you should let Pawel know. Rogue magic isn’t something to screw around with, and he’ll probably want to check in on everyone who was there. Since he hasn’t said anything, I’m guessing it didn’t happen to him.”
“Why?” That’s the most important question in Rory’s mind. Why did it work—except not—for both Ángel and Hayley, and why did it affect Rory, but Thorne’s wrist is clear?
“Maybe not everyone has a soulmate.” Thorne rubs Rory’s shoulder. “It’s not like I’m looking for the one perfect person, right? It’s not like I’m even looking for one person who hangs around while I bang everything in sight.” A small hesitation before he admits, “And no, banging everything in sight isn’t a goal, either. I just like to celebrate sex.”
“Pretty sure you got all the sexual attraction and I got none,” Rory says dryly.
“Maybe it’s something more about timing,” Thorne muses. “The ritual was a tradition done during engagements, right? When a couple had been together. When they already knew they were soulmates.”
“Except Ángel and Hayley aren’t.”
Thorne waves a hand. “My point is, this ritual was created to be cast when you were with your soulmate. When meeting your soulmate was imminent, just a question of reaching out to touch them across the circle. So it’s an immediacy thing. Even though they weren’t soulmates, maybe Ángel and Hayley are going to meet their soulmates soon. And maybe that’s why you’re marked, and I’m not. Because maybe everyone does have someone—it’s just that we don’t really know, since this isn’t something that’s typical for most Mages to do. There’s no point in the magic getting involved unless it’s the right time.”
Rory considers the spot on his wrist, watches it seem to move. “So you think that this happened because I’m going to meet someone soon.” It’s not a question, just a rephrasing while he sorts through everything Thorne said.
“I think it’s a possibility.”
Rory lowers his hand, closes his eyes again. “And what if I don’t want to?”
“Then don’t touch people you don’t want to touch,” Thorne says, as if it’s that easy.
In a way, it is. Rory’s not a touchy person, not with strangers. But with his family, with the band, with the people he’s close to—he likes contact. If he trusts them, he has no problems with cuddling. And he can’t think of a single person he trusts—except one, and that person happens to be straight as an arrow—that he’d want to find out is his soulmate.
“Besides, if whoever it is isn’t a Mage, they might not even realize when it happens,” Thorne murmurs. “You can control this, Rory. Just because you might find a soulmate doesn’t mean you’re bound to be with them. It’s an option. An opportunity. It’s not something that controls you.”
Thorne’s words let him breathe more easily, a long inhale and an even slower exhalation while Rory relaxes again. “If you want to play at OPT for New Year’s Eve, I’m okay with that,” Rory murmurs after a while. “I could crash at your apartment. You know Alaric could stay at OPT. I bet Drea has friends who are coming back to SigPsiEp early, too. Secret show. Could be fun.”
There’s a smile at the nape of his neck. “I’ll text Chris tomorrow,” Thorne says. “And I’ll see if Stormy and Andy are in, too. You sure you’re up for a party?”
A party? Not really. But Rory doesn’t think it’ll get out of hand. It’ll be their band, and the guys from OPT and the girls from SigPsiEp. And maybe some local friends from school, like Jackson, or who could come up from the city, like TJ. “It’s just playing music with our friends around,” he says on a sigh. “They say to do what we want the year to bring, and that sounds pretty much perfect to me.”
