Chapter Text
Everybody has a soulmate. And everybody knows it. Everybody knows that when you turn five you get the writings. Or doodles, or notes. Whatever the person prefers. Or nothing, if they’re younger than you. Everybody knows that at five you get the mark on your shoulder, in the person's colour, to show what they would be to you. Everybody knows that it’s when you meet your soulmate, properly meet them, in person, that you start getting the thoughts too. Little scribbles that no one wrote, the colours the same, bar from the slight glow.
“Love” was a common one. “Sister” or “brother” were common too, not all soulmates were romantic. Everybody knows a soulmate can be anyone. A sibling, a friend, a lover, a parent. Everybody knows that, somewhere in the world, someone was made for them. That there was someone out there to love them first, and that everyone was loved. That everyone deserves love.
Hence why Tommy should’ve been absolutely ecstatic when he saw the 3 different colours scrawled across his skin.
He wasn’t.
Everybody has a soulmate. Emphasis on a . Singular, one, lone, however you wanted to say it. Now, it wasn’t exactly unheard of for someone to have two soulmates. It was rare, sure. Remarkable, even. If someone could say with certainty that they had two different people to care about them unconditionally, for what was a soulmate if not someone who would do exactly that, then they were special. Three soulmates? Unheard of. There wasn’t an exact number, since if someone did have three soulmates it’s unlikely they would be parading it around, but there were few recorded cases in history. They were sparse and hard to find, scattered through the centuries, and more often than not the stories ended with tragedy. Tommy didn’t want anything to do with the soulmate system in the first place, just his luck he’d get lumped with the group of oddities.
Soulmates, if anyone asked him, were stupid. Dumb. Irritating. Pointless. What was the point, he would say, of someone who’s supposed to love you unconditionally if it only leads to harm? In Tommy’s experience, that’s all it led to. Everyone he’d ever known, every pair and bond in those close to him, gone.
His parents, fighting. Constantly. They’d never wanted to marry, but growing up in a time where soulmates were the be-all and end-all of relationships they didn’t have a choice.
One of his best friends, sobbing for weeks after waking up just weeks after his twelfth birthday to see his soulmates writing grey, a half-assed suicide note scrawled across his forearm.
His aunt, plunged into an abusive relationship for years because of the pressure to stick by your soulmate unconditionally.
He could go on. Ever since he was a toddler, he’d heard horror stories of failed soulmates and bad matches, of disaster couples and toxic love.
So, it was no surprise when he woke up on the morning of his fifth birthday and squeezed his eyes tight. He squinted slightly, almost intrigued. Almost. His fathers words rang through his head, a reminder of the long list of problems drilled into his mind. Still. It couldn’t hurt to just see, right? Just once, just a second. Nobody would know, and it’s not like he ever planned on finding his soulmate in the future. Just one glimpse, just one, just long enough for him to memorise the loops of their writing, absorb the exact hue it left on him.
He risked a glance down, and blanched in shock. Three colours greeted him, burning into his irises. There shouldn’t be three colours. He didn’t even want one, let alone three! The first writing he saw was hot pink, and a looping scrawl. He quickly scanned the message, averting his eyes before he could gather much more than the words “math” and “stupid”. At least one of his soulmates was a kid, and he felt a moment of relief before scolding himself. No, he didn’t want any soulmates.
Still Tommy couldn’t quite help himself staring at the other colours. Three soulmates never happened! It was a myth! But regardless, here they were. His eyes latched onto a second colour. It was a deep green, chicken scratch handwriting, and seemed to be helping the pink one with their homework. An adult, then, Tommy presumed. Or an older teenager maybe.
The third colour was a bluish purple, almost like a bruise, except for the music-note-shaped marks it left. ♪𝄞♫ Tommy wasn’t sure of this person's handwriting, they seemed to be doodling randomly rather than saying anything. Tommy glanced away. He shouldn’t be looking, he wasn’t allowed. It was stupid. He was being stupid.
That didn’t stop him from craning his neck, peering at his shoulder. Sure enough he saw the mark. Or- marks. One, a pink sword. It was pretty. Tommy hoped his soulmate would be nice, a sword was kinda ominous for someone meant to love you. But what did Tommy know, maybe the soulmate was actually supposed to protect hi- No. No, the soulmate wouldn’t do anything, protecting or harming him, because he’d never meet the soulmate. Ever.
The second mark was a green bird. It was soothing. It was pretty, and Tommy ran his eyes across the intricate lines and curves that formed the wings, a sense of calm washing over him. Hopefully this soulmate would be nice too. He wanted his soulmates to be nice. Not that it- not that it mattered. It didn’t matter. Tommy wasn’t going to talk to any of them. He just hoped they were nice to each other. Yeah. Yeah, that was it.
The third one was a blue guitar. It was nice. This soulmate already seemed to like music, if the bluish scribbles on his wrist were anything to go by, and Tommy could almost imagine them playing him music, humming gently as he fell asleep. It was pure fantasy, of course, never in a million years would Tommy even think of finding any of his soulmates. That didn’t stop the marks looking nice. That didn’t stop him wondering.
And finally, his own mark. It looked like a red gun, if he were to take a guess. He scrunched up his nose in disdain. He wasn’t an American! Tommy had never even seen a gun before! Still, he supposed pink had probably never seen a sword before. Unless they were samurai or something. That would be cool. All three of the other marks had a grey chain in the background, meaning all three were platonic. That, at least, was a relief.
Tommy finally tore his eyes away for the last time, looking up as his mother called his name. He changed into a long sleeved shirt, not wanting to annoy his mum with his soulmate writing, and went downstairs. His mum asked, of course. He showed her. She frowned. She reprimanded him. Tommy mirrored her facial expression. It wasn’t like he could control it! He didn’t want three soulmates either, and he made sure to tell his mother as such. It was for this reason that Tommy kept his arms covered at school. His legs too, although that was harder given how warm the weather was. His friends asked, of course, innocent childish questions about words and colours and guesses. Tommy ignored them.
Just in case it wasn’t clear already, Tommy didn’t like soulmates. Even at the ripe old age of five, Tommy knew of the problems that came with. On occasion, his father would bring up a case of two soulmates meeting and the encounter ending in at least one dead. Or a pair who pulled a Romeo and Juliet, each killing themselves for the other. Or just any tragedy with the word ‘soulmate’ in the headlines. He didn’t need some stupid marks to prove someone loved him. He could be loved perfectly fine without some dumb ink binding him.
And as he aged, his strong opinions aged with him. For as long as he could remember, Tommy kept a makeup bag in his rucksack, taking out concealer any time something showed up in a hard to cover spot. Even into his teens he wore exclusively long sleeves, and wore gloves when he was able. He wore trousers when he could, shorts and a shit ton of concealer when not. Some of his friends would poke fun at him, but Tommy brushed them off. Soulmates were bad, he insisted. His parents encouraged it, both bitter about their own experience with the soulmate system.
Still, he couldn't help getting occasional glimpses. The blue one spoke more as Tommy approached double digits, sometimes entire paragraphs at a time. Tommy never read them the whole way through. (He was lying). The green one talked about work a lot, so Tommy must’ve been right in his original assumption of them being an adult. He scrunched up his nose at that, but ignored it. Not like he’d ever meet any of them, so it didn’t matter.
Occasionally, the topic of him would come up. The pink one asked first, casually bringing it up one evening by checking if either of the other two had a red gun-looking thing on their shoulder. Blue and green both said they had it, and blue made a joke about how the gun person must be American. Pink seemed to find that funny, saying they’d match. Tommy ignored it.
When he was 10, blue stopped talking completely. The other two seemed worried, completely coating Tommy’s arms with words almost every day. They never garnered a response, but the soulmark never turned grey so Tommy knew that Blue must be alive. Pink and Green didn’t give up, and it wasn’t long until his 11th birthday when Blue reappeared.
Tommy smiled when he saw the writing. This was a mistake. He quickly shook his head, mentally berating himself. He didn’t care about these people! He didn’t! He was just. Glad the other two would only lose one soulmate and not two. Tommy did feel a bit guilty for depriving these three of their fourth, but he knew it was for the best. He’d seen the words “resent” and “hatred” plastered across his parents' skin more than enough to know that soulmates were bad.
The guilt only increased as the other three seemed to grow more and more concerned, Tommy coming up in conversation more times than he was comfortable with. Blue seemed confused, whining about how they wanted to finally hear from their fourth member. Pink also seemed agitated, although they seemed to have a somewhat level head and proposed the idea that maybe their fourth member was still too young. Apparently, Blue hadn’t thought of that and started cooing over the idea of having a little brother. It was through these conversations that Tommy finally got a solid answer on their ages. Pink was the youngest, as he’d first suspected, the guy (he assumed they were a guy, the other two referred to them as such and Pink put up no argument. The same could be said for the other two) just five years older than Tommy himself. Blue was next, apparently having recently turned twenty, putting him at roughly eight years Tommy’s senior. Green was the oldest, the fucker practically one foot in the grave, ancient and crumbling at twenty-eight, meaning they were a full sixteen years older than Tommy.
Green seemed the most patient of the three, and acted as a sort of father-figure towards the younger pair. They didn’t seem worried about Tommy not saying anything, bringing up the idea that he might just not want to. Which was true. Tommy wanted nothing to do with them, nothing at all. He didn’t wish he could join in their games, didn’t crave the praise Green handed out whenever Pink or Blue were struggling, didn’t find himself staring wistfully at the ceiling on dreary days and wishing he could slot into that easy-going dynamic. He didn’t.
He didn’t want that, he knew better. And so he remained as cold and disinterested as ever, face souring whenever the topic of soulmates was brought up. Even as his online career slowly advanced, he stood his ground. He knew most of his friends were chill with the idea, some even having found said soulmate. One of the perks of being a known streamer, if Tommy were to take a guess.
Tubbo, his best friend of about a year, had only recently found out that Ranboo was his soulmate. The pair had been on call with Tommy, and Tubbo had leant over to the side for something. His shoulder was revealed, and Ranboo’s eyes widened in the camera at the sight of the familiar yellow bee and purple crown. Tommy had left call soon after, allowing the two to discuss the concept all they wanted. Tubbo had apologised the next day for the abrupt end, but Tommy waved him away. He was glad his friends were happy, truly he was, but he couldn’t help worrying it would all go wrong.
It was when Tommy was fifteen that he fucked up for the first time. He was on call with Tubbo, the older boy talking about his plan to fly Ranboo over to England so they could meet up properly. Tommy was only half listening, worn out from school, and just barely keeping himself awake. He was doodling on the back of his hand, mind far too sleep deprived to notice his mistake. He thought it looked nice. It wasn’t until a bright blue “HOLY SHIT” was scrawled messily beside the drawing that Tommy realised what he’d done. His eyes widened, and he dropped the pen suddenly. He ended call not long later, coming up with some bullshit excuse about going to bed. He wasn’t tired anymore. Immediately, Tommy rushed to the sink and scrubbed viciously at his hand. Just his luck, the pen was a permanent marker. The sketch remained on his palm for the next day and a half before it finally rubbed away completely. It was far too late, however, all three of his soulmates having noticed.
Pink asked a few questions, tracing back over the doodle as it began to fade, but all in all left Tommy alone when he realised he wasn’t responding. Green was much the same, asking a few questions, and it took him longer to go back to normal. Blue was by far the most irritating, practically spamming his hand with messages until Pink eventually told him to give up, reminding them that Tommy would talk if and when he wanted to. Blue, reluctantly, caved in with reassurance that Tommy was likely just nervous and would talk to them eventually. Well, that was too bad for those three, because Tommy didn't want to speak with them. Not now, not ever. He didn’t need a soulmate. He didn’t need to be loved.