17 with MadVav would be hilarious if it was just the same name on both wrists.
When Ryan’s soulmarks appear, he’s more than a little confused.
His mother had two separate names on her wrist- she’d explained the one of her left was the name of his father, someone she’d been destined to love for the rest of each of their lives. The one on her right was the name of someone she’d been destined to fight with- her sworn enemy, she’d laughed.
So, yeah. Seeing the same name on both of his wrists was... a little fucking odd.
Ryan chalked it up to the thought that there were simply two separate people in the world named that, that he would both somehow know both of them. Even though the odds of that were... a little off the charts.
And then he meets X-Ray and Vav, many years later.
There’s nothing remarkable about either of them, of course, but he suspects that behind their monikers they have real names, and that maybe one of those matches the one on his wrist.
One day he meets a citizen in a heavy jacket and high tops, humming some old song he doesn’t recognize. There’s a pull to him that Ryan doesn’t understand, something in his eyes, and, enamored, Ryan asks him this:
“I know this is a little- outta nowhere but would you. Maybe like to go for coffee sometime?”
The stranger laughs and something in Ryan’s chest sets his heart racing in a very distinct way because, well. This isn’t just a stranger.
“Sure,” Vav says, with a smile that is like sunlight that Ryan can’t decide whether or not to keep it there forever, or to punch him- “I’m Gavin.”
His heart stops, and dread settles low in his gut while his heart goes faster, because, oh boy.
“I’m Ryan,” he says, and the look on Gavin’s face twists in a way similar to how Ryan feels.
This is going to be complicated.
