Soulmate AU where one of your eyes is the same color as your soulmate. Jack’s a little bummed when he learns that he’s born first. It’s tough
Jack’s classmates think he’s broken when they first meet him.
He’s a child being pointed and laughed at two steps inside the preschool doors. Maman scoops him up in her arms and sets him down on a bench outside the daycare center.
He’s trying very hard not to cry. As a toddler, a child, a teenager, a twenty-something, it always looks the same. His jaw quakes just a little and he closes his eyes, turning away from her as he does.
“Oh no you don’t,” Alicia reaches out and scoops him up in her arms.
It’s the first time he asks about his eyes.
She explains in soothing tones, patient and gentle in a way only a mother of a four year old can.
One of his eyes was given to him by his mother. A brilliant blue that shines when he’s happy and plays with the light. When his eyes first opened, she and Bob melted when they say her eye looking back up at him.
His other eye is black. There’s no whites of his eye, and he can see just fine, but the contrast is startling.
His other, she explains, will be given to him when his soulmate is born.
It’s not the first moment that Jack resents his soulmate for being born second, that they didn’t have to hear the taunts.
There are other kids in the daycare without their second eye, but the loudest and the proudest are the kids that have both. A pair of brown eyes, subtly different colors as they play on the playground, one blue and the other green...
But Jack’s is the most obvious, his icy blue eye beside that of darkest night.
Dean takes his toys from him, Vanessa pinches him, and even Gerard whispers mean things to him when he thinks the teacher’s not looking.
Jack is ready for this to be over.
Jack wakes up every morning and bolts to the mirror in the bathroom, pulling up his little step stool he uses to step up and brush his teeth with. He looks into the mirror and sighs with disappointment.
He doesn’t care that his soulmate hasn’t been born yet. He doesn’t even want to meet them. He just wants the mean looks to stop.
It’s May and he shuffles into the kitchen, not bothering to look at the mirror that morning. He opens his eyes and Maman drops her plate, “BOB? WHAT DAY IS IT?” The shattered glass is forgotten as he darts to a calendar, trying to find the correct date.
Papa bolts into the kitchen, half dressed with his big camera slung around his neck, the kind he lets Jack hold and look at every once and a while.
The bulb inside flashes as his father points the camera his way. Jack blinks and rubs his eyes - his eyes!
Jack’s little feet pad through the house, trying to get to the first floor bathroom.
“It’s the fifth!” His mother squeals, racing after her son and her husband.
She finds Jack trying to jump up and down in front of the mirror, so short he can’t see himself in the mirror. Bob chuckles and lifts Jack up.
“Brown and blue!”
Jack doesn’t care, he can see the whites of his eyes, he looks normal.
He’ll never get bullied again.
Later that night, Papa brings home a little cake from the patisserie around the corner. It has a lit single candle in it even though his birthday is in August.
It occurs to Jack now, quietly and tenderly that his soulmate, a real person with his eye, is out there somewhere. He’s got one friend through all of this. Someone who won’t pinch him, someone who is always going to love him.
And they were born on May 5.
Jack’s going to find them. And tell them he likes their eyes. And then go skating.
Because they’re gonna love skating if they’re soulmates with him.
