LUKE

When I was younger, all anyone ever talked about was their soulmate. Their match, the one specially made for them. I understood the specifics, how when you see them a feeling of indescribable satisfaction and purity courses through your system. I understood how as you grow up without them, you are connected by a series of mental mechanics, like two ropes in a knot. Two different beings, but forever connected. You feel the pain they feel, you'll receive the same bruises or scrapes that appear on the other's skin, you'll receive the same marks. I understood all of it.

What I didn't understand was why. At what point of time did our brains begin sending out signals like a radio station, finding its perfect soulmate to be. I've read the history books-- it wasn't always like this. There was a time when each person was so painfully, bitterly alone. Forced to find your loved one all by yourself. And even back then, you had a 98% chance of finding the wrong person. The divorce rates, the crime rates, all were off the scale. All that was resolved when our cells began fixing the world on its own.

I wondered about this my entire life, from when I was five and listening to my parent's stories of how they found each other, to when I was a teenager and watching spontaneous bruises sink into my skin, and fast forward up to now. Twenty one years old and taking my first step into the realm of medical school. Steel tabletops and oxygen that reeks of disinfectant spray.

What caused this world to begin the glorified system of soulmates?

To try and make sense of the world's most unanswered question, I'm beginning an internship with a doctor by the name of Dr. Yatabe, who finally got irritated with the number of times people mispronounced his name and rechristened himself as Doc instead.

Doc is a short, stubby man who only the most compassionate of souls would call a good doctor. He's all over the place, scattered and disorganized to the point that I wonder if I might be a better doctor than him. He's constantly murmuring to himself, mumbling symptoms of rare diseases and rambling useless information of how to spot the signs of internal bleeding before the victim even knows it's occurring. Facts that pre-medical classes have already taught me.

But due to my lack of experience in the medical field so far, I take the internship as a gift.

As I am walking up to his office, preparing to meet him officially for the first time, I smooth down the wrinkled fabric of the sickly green scrubs, a color no one would ever wear by choice. I brush back my blonde hair, my heart throbbing in the center of my chest as I step in front of his office door. It's covered by stacks of papers filled with medical terminology, lists of things to do and clients to contact. I take a deep breath, praying that the doctor doesn't live up to his reputation. This internship could make or break my future career as a doctor.

I slowly open the door, peeking inside to find a man wearing a long white coat with his back turned to me, his hands rummaging through a drawer in search of some unknown object. At the sound of the door opening, however, he turns around, his brown eyes locking with mine.

I quickly step all the way inside, shutting the door behind me before sticking my hand out in front of Doc's. "My name is Luke Hemmings, and I believe that I will be your intern for the next two semesters."

Doc breaks into a smile. "Luke! Right, I think I remember receiving some notification about you." He claps me on the back and turns back to what he was doing before I came in, either not noticing or completely ignoring my outstretched hand. I slowly stuff it back into my pocket. Looks like he lives up to his reputation.

"What are you doing?" I ask, my voice soft. Doc pauses his shuffling to answer me.

"I'm looking for the pack of gauze that I keep somewhere in these drawers. I run out all the time, and I have a client coming in soon who's gonna need it."

I stand in the same spot I arrived in by the door, watching as Doc continues on his search for the gauze. He finds it a mere two minutes later, smiling as though he just won the lottery. He turns around and places the gauze on a steel operating table in the center of the room, glancing up at me and looking at me for the first time since I arrived.

Doc widens his eyes as he takes in sight of me. "Good god!" he exclaims. "What's all over your arms?"

For a moment, I am utterly confused. And then as I look down at my skin, I realize what he's talking about. What everyone talks about when they catch sight of me in short sleeves.

The line of bruises lining my arms catches against the dim fluorescent lighting of Doc's office, illuminating the swirl of dangerous black and blue. They paint my arms like a canvas, the image of a dark sunset on my skin. I'm used to them by now. They've been there for years, fading and reappearing constantly.

"Just bruises," I say as Doc rushes forward, taking my arm and looking at it from behind the intense stare of his magnifying glasses. "It's nothing."

"This doesn't look like nothing," Doc says. I sigh, pulling my arm away from him as he begins to focus his attention on the cuts and scrapes covering my cheekbones.

"They aren't mine," I tell him, my voice tired from having to repeat the same words constantly to curious strangers. "They're my soulmate's, I guess."

"Ah." Doc says, slowly nodding. "I see."

It's a real struggle, to be honest, having to deal with all these bruises as a consequence of whatever it is that my soulmate is doing out there. They don't hurt, but they're always there, and they always appear every day. I don't know what it is that my soulmate does, but I'm really hoping that he'll quit it at some point. Because here I am receiving all of the backlash.

Over the years, I've come up with many theories. Maybe he's a vigilante, fighting crimes all over the city. Maybe he's a cop, and he gets in fights when he's trying to enforce the law. Maybe he's takes a beating for people who can't handle it, and helps them in the process. So many forms of depravity have crossed my mind, all in hope that it isn't something more serious, like domestic abuse, or gang-fighting. I don't think I could handle it if something like that were to happen to my soulmate. I couldn't take it. A prescription of pills can't fix everything, unfortunately.

"Well, on the bright side," Doc says, bringing me back into focus, "all that stuff will go away once you meet the person. The whole physical connection thing."

"Right," I mumble. That's what I have to keep saying to myself to keep on getting by. It's harder than you would think to go on and achieve daily activities when bruises appear on your skin, as though you're the host to some evil parasite in your intestines.

When I decided that I wanted to be a doctor, a hematologist in fact, it didn't take me long to sort through the aggrandizing group of doctors and realize that most of them are studying blood simply for the money. Which is a bit disappointing, considering that there are patients out there who need phlebotomies and cord blood transplants and all kinds of expensive sounding treatments that health care usually doesn't even cover. And all the while, the people watching over you are also the same people who barely struggled through medical school in the first place.

The hospital is full of brainless idiots who care more about opulence than humility. But if I'm going to be the one solace in a room of fire, then so be it.

I sometimes imagine how I'll meet my soulmate. Maybe I'll run into him at a quaint coffee shop, or maybe he'll stumble into the hospital in need of platelets, or maybe he'll push me out of the way of an incoming car.

Or maybe, I won't meet him at all. A fruitless effort that results in synthetic hope.

However, there is still this faint image in my head-- a boy, with a blurred out face. Strong, compassionate, caring. Someone who will listen to my rambles of medical terminology without blinking an eye. The kind of boy you read books about.

It's probably egotistical to think about my soulmate when I have literally no clue who he is, but our human minds are made up of defections anyway. In a life of events that never seem to go my way, I'm grasping at straws.

At any rate, there comes a point in your life that you have to look back and wonder if that's all you've achieved. Struggled to the point that learning new medical facts is the barometer of your happiness.

My mother used to say that I'm crazy. But theoretically, aren't we all?

"Luke, get the Neosporin out of the left cabinet, will you?" Doc's voice swims through the water in my head and down my brain stem until it reaches my ears. I snap back to reality, shaking my head slightly as I move towards the cabinets. Opening them up, I sort through the assortment of medical paraphernalia until I find the familiar white tube.

"What's all this for?" I ask, more for formality's sake than anything. Doc has the door locked, clearly moving stuff out of the way to make way for whatever client is coming into his office. He glances at me, brown eyes slightly frenzied, and takes the Neosporin.

"I have a client coming in. He's a boxer, and got pretty beaten up at a recent fight." Doc tells me, finishing up his preparations. He looks at me for a second, scrutinizing, and then lowers his voice. "They box in a fight club underground. Under the railroads downtown."

"Illegally?" I clarify, eyebrows furrowed. Doc doesn't bother answering. He knows I'm smart enough to know the answer to that question myself.

"Keep this on the down-low, okay, Luke?" Doc says, but it isn't a question. "Their fighting is supposed to stay a secret. I just treat them after a match. Secretly." He puts emphasis on the last word, giving me a warning look that makes it blatantly clear that it's supposed to stay that way.

I sit back, leaning against the wall. I don't have anything to say. It's a good deed that he's helping them, granted, but it's also illegal. And if anyone finds out, I could be right smack beside him in jail.

Before I can think too hard about what I'm doing, a knock sounds on the door. Doc scurries over and unlocks the door, pulling it open to reveal a man that smells like sweat and victory.

My first ever shared client is 6'0, with golden hair that drops below his ears in ocean waves and enough wounds covering his body to make me wonder how he managed to get here alone in the first place.

Doc takes the man to the steel table in the center of the room, already wiped down with disinfectants and stacked with medical supplies that will soon act as a solace to the man's injuries. Doc hands me a sheet of paper, filled with the boxer's information.

Ashton Irwin is his name, and when I lock eyes with him, I can see how bright and alive his hazel irises are. They're different from mine, apart from the obvious color difference. They're happy, purposeful. Content.

The answer is revealed when I see the slot for the name of his soulmate neatly filled in with block letters. Calum Hood.

All my previous theories prove to be correct: for a man who seems so patently alive, it's all thanks to the soulmate bond in his cells.

I can't help but wonder what Ashton thinks when he sees me. A figure, much more a boy than a man, with dull blue eyes and downturned lips, a brain full of knowledge and heart full of air. Bruises that so obviously are not mine scattered like depressed splatter pain across my skin. A train wreck, if you ask me.

Doc calls me over to help out with his wounds, so I place the sheet of paper down and join him beside the table. Ashton watches Doc as he inspects a slash over his right eye. The cut leaks blood, clearly deep enough to need at least ten stitches. He has his right eye closed to avoid blood getting in his eye, and because of the swollen blue bruise covering his eyelid. His arms and legs are littered with cuts and bruises, swollen and raised on his tan skin. His chest still heaves and I can practically hear his heart beating at a maximum rate, red blood cells racing to collect the oxygen from his lungs. I quickly wet a washcloth and begin cleaning the blood around his eye. All the while, a smug smile remains on Ashton's lips.

"Why are you so happy?" I ask, voice gruff. The washcloth stains red. "You're bleeding."

"I won the fight," he answers proudly, puffing out his chest. "And I won a lot of money because everyone bet on me."

I mentally compare the size of my muscles (or lack thereof) to the size of Ashton's, and make the satisfied conclusion that I would already be six feet underground if I were shoved into a boxing match. I can list you all the components of the skin anatomy and each individual function, but I couldn't do shit if you asked me to throw a punch.

I carefully begin preparing the sutures, analyzing the cleaned wound. It's jagged, gaping slightly and I'm amazing Ashton isn't nearly in tears. I can't imagine how rough it is wherever he fights if he gets a wound this deep. I cautiously numb the area with a local anesthetic, despite Ashton's protests of numbing it, and get to work removing any dead tissue surrounding the cut.

"You like fighting?" I ask, mainly just to distract him from what I'm doing above his eye. Although, due to his never-fading smile, it doesn't particularly look like he needs it.

"Of course," Ashton says, like it's obvious. "So does my soulmate. But he doesn't fight. He just watches." I can't help but notice the way his voice grows softer when mentioning his name. I ignore the stab of jealousy at their relationship.

"So he doesn't fight?" I ask, Ashton's proud smile refusing to fade.

As much as we humans can't bear to admit it, we're dependent on people. Even those who have been hurt time and time again and can barely look someone in the eye, we are trusting beings, craving human contact. It's one of the many pieces of our brain, the need for human connection.

It's a shame, really, for people who want to say away from other people. They put all their effort into staying solitary, and then one look at the right person and all of our efforts come right back to bite us in the ass.

Ashton's delayed reply brings me back to reality. "God, no. I keep Calum away as much as I can. I wouldn't forgive myself if he got hurt."

I sense the care in his voice, and I smile slightly as I finish looping the thread through each edge of his cut. I put a bandage over it for an extra measure and step back, cleaning the supplies out of the way.

With both me and Doc's help, Ashton finished receiving his stop-gap treatment as a consequence for his unorthodox hobbies in less than an hour. The man gives us a lopsided smile before pushing off of the table, giving Doc a pat on the back and brushing past me with a faint "thank you", before leaving Doc's office without another word.

Doc smiles at me. "Just think. Your soulmate could be a boxer like him." And then he laughs and begins cleaning up the supplies while I'm frozen stiff, the possibility of his words ringing like a bell inside my brain.

The thought stays there, and it grows like a wild fire.

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A/N totally forgot to put an author's not here

this is the new story

yes, another taylor swift title I know

little luke is my weakness so i'm super excited for this one.

thank you for reading and please tell me your thoughts about it. i love you so much

byE