kotlc tumblr fandom gift exchange thingy led to my very first soulmate au sooo 

tw: needles, swearing, arguing?? I'm not sure what else

Fitz said that he was dizzy when he got his, but Keefe's head is perfectly clear. Crystal, almost terrifyingly clear, even though he can feel the tattoo artist's concentration through the gloves she wears. He can feel every prick of the needle, every time his fingers tense and flex from the pain. He can hear every step from Marella's boots as she paces behind him, heels clacking against the wooden floor.

His focus is absolute, so, no, he's not dizzy at all.

Part of him wonders if this is normal, if something is wrong with him to be so in his body when everyone else described it as the opposite, as if they were floating or flying or falling. He was dreading this day for more than one reason, but partly for that feeling. He hates falling in dreams. He wishes he could wake up.

But he is sitting perfectly still, and his arm is gaining a name. It's been gaining a name for a few hours now, despite how small the tattoo forming is. 

"Done," the tattoo artist (her name is Bryce, but it doesn't matter. He'll never see her again) says, stepping back quickly. "No bandage, no nothing. For things like this, it doesn't matter."

Keefe doesn't dare look at it. He uses his other hand to pay, to open the door, hiding the other behind his back for fear of catching a glimpse of the name etched into his skin.

Marella falls into step beside him, eyes glimmering. "So? Who'd you get?"

He shakes his head. "I haven't looked."

The sun beats down, hot against his uncovered neck. He wishes his dad hadn't made him cut his hair. He wishes his freckles didn't appear when it was sunny. He wishes he hadn't gotten his tattoo.

"Why not?" Marella's boots are uncomfortably loud in the silence of his head, in the pool of wishes he has made for himself to drown in. Why can't she let him drown in peace?

"I don't know who I'll see," he says truthfully, letting his arms swing back and forth in the air. The tattoo is a splotch of blue on his forearm. Their favorite color is blue, then, since the tattoos change with their mood once you meet, but are stuck at their favorite color until then.

Keefe has never had a favorite color. He doesn't like committing to just one.

He wonders what his name will look like on their arm.

"Keefe, this is your soulmate. You have to look eventually." That's easy for her to say. She got what she wanted, didn't she? A partner that is perfect for her, that loves her, and she loves them, and they'll have their perfect life together.

But he's seen what happens on the other end. He's seen it in his parents. The tattoos don't make you love someone. They make the possibility of love, and he has too little certainty in his life to be sure about this.

"Maybe," he says instead of his thoughts. Marella can try, but she wouldn't understand the roiling terror in his stomach, there since the first prick of the needle. The terror that he's going to end up just like Cassius and Gisela, forced into a house and a marriage that everyone but them knew was wrong.

"Can I see, at least?" She grabs at his wrist, but he holds it away.

"No. You'll tell everyone." He attempts a grin, because Marella's eyebrows are creasing together with a familiar worry. "I'll look at it later. By myself."

She shakes her head, but she steps away, tracing the letters on her own arm. Linh, Linh, Linh, like she can never get sick of the word.

He hates her a little for it. For her happiness.

...

It's there, but he wishes it wasn't.

It's like all of his nightmares have combined into a terror that he can never run away from.

Sophie, the tattoo reads, and he finds himself tracing a finger over the letters just like Marella did with Linh's name. Over and over again, in time with the way the word repeats in his head. Sophie, Sophie, Sophie, Sophie Sophie Sophie SophieSophieSophie—

Keefe grits his teeth. It's a shade of teal, shinier than he wanted it to be. It stands out on his tanned skin, a bright jewel sinking into honey.

He hates it.

There isn't anything wrong with Sophie, of course. In fact, there's more right about her (sandy blonde hair, golden-flecked eyes, that hand she places on her hip when she's waiting for him to tell her the truth) than there is about most, and really, he should count himself lucky.

Except he can't. 

Of course he can't.

"Ah," he murmurs to himself as the world shudders around him, and he flops back onto his bed, messy sheets tangling with his outstretched arms. "Here's the dizziness."

Keefe's not entirely sure what caused this new unsteadiness, since he was fine while getting the tattoo and walking home and even while working up the courage to peel back his fingers from covering his arm and looking at the marked name. Thinking of her can't be enough to make him feel this faint.

(SophieSophieSophieSophieSophieSophieSophieSophieSophieSophieSophieSophie)

Fuck.

...

The world fractures around him the first time he sees her after getting his tattoo.

It's like his sight breaks, shatters, and he sees all the different versions of the way it could be.

If it could work. If he doesn't ruin it. If she can. If he can. If they can. 

"Who'd you get?" Sophie asks, half-teasingly, as if she doesn't actually expect him to answer, but still wants him to. The world solidifies at the sound of her voice.

Keefe laughs instead of answering, waving his arm above her head teasingly. Her name is covered by a thick bracelet, but part of his heart still speeds as she cranes her neck to catch a glimpse.

"No fair!" she grins, the light catching her eyes. Her hair is shimmering gold, colors he can't put words to running down the length of it. "Is it embarrassing? Is that why you covered it up?

Most people parade their tattoos, highlighting them with brighter colors. He knows that Sophie's dad, Grady, even got a second tattoo on his forearm of Edaline's name in larger letters. He knows that Marella hasn't worn long sleeves since. 

Soulmates are a matter of pride, of love, of dedication. It's not common to cover the name up after you get it.

Cassius hates t-shirts. Gisela always needs sleeves.

"Very embarrassing," he lies, if only to get her to stop asking about it.

She narrows her eyes. "Is it Tam?"

(it's you it's you it's you it's you it's you it's you it's youyouyouyou)

He wrinkles his nose in mock disgust. "Please, don't insult me." Sophie lifts an eyebrow, and he says, "It's someone you don't know."

(youyouyouyou)

"Then it won't matter if I see," she says, laughter ringing through every word. She's joking, she's teasing, she doesn't really mean it. Because this is not a bad grade that he's going to show her anyway, it's not a photo of little kid Fitz, it's something that will alter his life—both of their lives— forever.

This is a mountain, not an anthill. Endless and monumental and too big for him to force the words out. They're stuck in his throat, so he swallows them down.

"Yes, it does," he says instead, and he might as well have said it anyway, but she doesn't seem to get it. She's still smiling.

The world tilts, and rights itself. Her hair falls across her shoulder.

She's wearing earrings shaped like hearts.

It's you—

...

It's terrifying, how often she's in his head now.

It's like getting the tattoo flipped a switch in him, and now he's noticing everything about her: the exact pink shade of her lips, the way her head tilts back when she laughs, her fingers tapping against the side of her leg when she's impatient.

Terrifying.

In the end, it's not how he falls. There isn't a word to describe how he falls, because then you'd have to explain how many times a heart can skip a beat before he stops breathing. Then you'd have to explain the feeling of wanting to capture a moment in your bare hands when everyone knows moments are liquid, and it will slip between his fingers before he can grasp it.

In the end, it's more about when. He can't pinpoint the exact moment he falls (how do you measure it? Is there a chart, a line on a graph that shows your tipping point?), but he knows it the second he lands.

It's that feeling of getting the wind knocked out of you. When the world around you breaks for a split second, and you break with it, and then you're back together.

It happens every time she smiles.

That's when he realizes it.

(that he's fucked. that's when he realizes he's fucked)

...

The door slams open, and he scrambles off his bed, hands already held out in front of him.

"Sophie—"

"You absolute idiot, Keefe Sencen!" Her cheeks are flushed red with anger, and she's breathing hard like she ran all the way to his house. Her fists are balled at her sides.

He can't quite stop his eyes from being being drawn to it. It's brighter than his was, the way it usually is when the other one has already gotten theirs. Maybe it seems brighter not just because of that, but because her tattoo of his name is a shimmering gold.

Ah, he thinks nonsensically as Sophie moves towards him. So that's my favorite color.

There's this twitchy feeling in him, battling between the urge to run run run away from her and the whole situation, or to seize her face in his hands and press his forehead to hers and tell her that he loves her and hope that everything will work out. Two extremes, and he does neither of them. If Sophie hadn't stopped him, he might have, though; might have run, might have threaded his fingers through her hair.

"When were you going to tell me?" she asks hopelessly, hand gripping her arm where the tattoo is, covering up his name in curling calligraphy. Keefe's first thought is that it's hurting her; the second is that she doesn't want it to be him.

So this is it.

Where she hates him.

"Never," he whispers. Then, louder, so she can hear, "Tell you about what?"

The look of exasperation that flashes over her face almost makes him laugh out loud. He'll miss this. He'll miss her anger.

"About you being my fucking soulmate, Keefe."

"Oh. That." He shifts back and forth on his feet, an old habit from when he would waver between two choices, each burning into him. He'd learned to hide that indecisiveness, to cover it up with a mask of confidence, but this conversation makes him unsteady. She makes him unsteady.

"Is that all you have to say?" Her voice breaks.

They teeter at the top of a cliff's ledge, her and him. Being pulled both ways, being pushed over the edge. Everything he says pushes him a little farther. "What do you want me to say?"

Sophie presses her lips together. Keefe doesn't know if the tears glimmering in her eyes are sad or angry. "Can I see it?"

He doesn't realize for a few moments what she means, and the world stills. He thinks about refusing, but what's the point? "Yeah." His voice is rougher than he meant it to be.

He pushes up the perpetual band around his forearm and holds it out for her. Her name glows a deep red, swirling with purple near the edges. It looks like blood scattered on his skin.

He's so busy looking that he doesn't realize Sophie's hand is outstretched until it brushes against his skin, a firework bursting in his blood at her touch. It takes everything in him not to react. He grits his teeth.

"So it's not fake," she murmurs, like she's been waiting for her own tattoo to be proven wrong. She rubs her fingertips together like she can feel the fireworks too. "You just didn't tell me."

"It's not that simple," he argues, withdrawing his arm before he does something he'll regret. Like run. Or move closer.

"How complicated is it?" Sophie demands, and he can't stop himself from following the line of her throat as she swallows, hard. Like she's trying not to cry. "Soulmates are soulmates, Keefe. That's the whole point. That it's perfect and uncomplicated and— and not this."

"Not every time," he says, louder than he means to, raking a hand through his messy hair. "It's not always perfect."

"It could have been," she says quietly, taking his hand in both of hers. She separates his fingers carefully, aimlessly, fingertips dancing around knuckles. He stares at where their skin meets. They're a matched set: blonde to blonde, broken to breaking. "We could have been."

"Did you want us to be?" He doesn't pull his hand away. He's on fire. He's a phoenix, and he'll burn no matter what her answer is. 

"Do I?" She focuses on his hand, tracing the lines of delicate veins and bone, counting each freckle. Her touch is a fiery feather, dusting his skin with sparks. Both of their tattoos are swirling with colors, dulling and brightening, undecided.

Keefe can't take it anymore. "Do you?" he echoes, taking a step closer to her. She looks up at him, and part of his heart skips at the look in her eyes.

He has a feeling that this is a kind of love that could devour him. But her smile is always there lingering in the back of his head, and dammit, he is greedy for it. He's greedy for that smile, for the way her eyes crinkle at the corners, for the scrunch in her nose when she laughs.

So he takes another step, and waits for her to back away.

But she doesn't. Instead, she moves closer, until they are nose to nose, and he can see the moment her eyes widen. The moment her gaze flicks down to his lips.

Burning, burning, burning.

"Am I too late," he says, voice shaking, "to tell you that it's you? That it's always been you? That it will always be you?"

She laughs unsteadily. Ah, he thinks, trapped in the idea of her. There's the dizziness.

"You're an idiot, Keefe Sencen," Sophie tells him, and then she kisses him.

...

SophieSophieSophieSophieSophieSophieSophieSophie

...

KeefeKeefeKeefeKeefeKeefeKeefeKeefeKeefeKeefeKeefe

...

HOW was I supposed to end that.....