Chapter Text
He was in first grade when pen marks and marker swipes started showing up on his hands and arms.
At first, Patton didn’t think anything of it. He didn’t really pay much attention to it and didn’t notice it at first. That, and he had probably made some of the marks himself in his rush to color his drawings and stuff.
But he really started to notice the morning that he woke up to see a picture of three purple stick figures drawn on his arm. The lines were squiggly and not very steady, but Patton loved it. It was cute. Two of the stick people were a lot taller than the other one, the short one in the middle and seemingly holding hands with the others. They all had smiles on their faces.
So Patton nearly flew out of bed to show his mom and dad before he got ready for school.
The second his mother saw the drawing, she gasped and dragged him to the bathroom and started scrubbing at his arm. The entire time, she was scolding him and just about yelling about how he should never draw on himself and how he would end up with ink poisoning or something.
The scrubbing hurt. She was using one of their old washcloths that was kind of scratchy, one of the ones Patton hated using for anything because it wasn’t soft. But she’d wet it down and scrubbed some soap into it and rubbed it over and over and over Patton’s skin, rubbing it red and raw.
And Patton was crying. Because he hadn’t drawn it, and he tried telling his mom that, but she wouldn’t listen. Even when it wouldn’t come off and the drawing was stuck there, she continued scrubbing, her face pinched in an angry frown, putting more pressure into the movements until Patton was nearly screaming, yanking his arm out of her grasp and holding it to his chest.
“Don’t you ever do that again!”
And Patton ran back to his room, crying so hard he was nearly hyperventilating. There was snot running from his nose, salty tears streaming wildly down his cheeks and dripping off his chin.
It was a little while before Patton calmed down, pulling his arm away from his chest and inspecting the raw skin. Just moving his arm pulled at the skin that was stinging and burning. Patton whimpered to himself just as his mother came in.
“Patton, come here,” she said, motioning for him to come stand in front of her.
He was hesitant to do so, but he knew she would get angry if he defied her. So he stood and moved closer, coming to a stop and not looking his mother in the eye.
“Give me your arm, darling.” She held out her hand. He gave it to her and winced a little as she rubbed some cream over the stinging skin before wrapping gauze around his arm.
“Now, you’re going to wear a long sleeve shirt today, okay? And if someone seems the bandage, you tell them you fell down and hurt yourself. Got it?”
Patton looked up at her briefly before looking back down and nodding.
“Okay. Get ready for school, sweetheart,” she said before leaving down the hallway.
Patton sniffled a little, looking for his only clean long sleeve shirt. The school he went to had uniforms, and since their winters only ever got mildly cold, Patton only had two long sleeve, white polos. And one of them was stained, and his mom didn’t know that yet, so he had to find the other one. Thankfully, it didn’t take long. He still wore his shorts, not wanting to be too hot during the day.
So then he went and ate a bowl of cereal and brushed his teeth and let his dad comb his hair for the day. His dad handed him his packed lunch and told him to go grab his backpack. Patton did so and met the man by the back door to get in the car and head to school.
Patton felt a little bit better after his dad talked to him in the car, letting him sit in the front seat even though he knew he shouldn’t. His dad explained how writing on himself could hurt him if he did it too much, and that his mom had hurt herself a long time ago when she did it.
But Patton vowed to never so much as accidentally get a pen mark on his finger when writing.
*
Virgil was Patton’s best friend. They were in the same class and sat next to each other at the same table. Virgil was sort of quiet where Patton was excitable, but they were basically inseparable. They played together at recess and had sleepovers almost every weekend at one of their houses. Virgil’s parents called Patton their “second son”, and Patton’s parents loved having Virgil around because he was famously able to keep Patton fairly contained.
So when Patton showed up in class that morning, Virgil was immediately at his side.
“Hi, Pat,” Virgil said, a smile on his face.
“Hi, Virgil,” Patton greeted back. He didn’t hold his usual bounce and excitement, and Virgil was bound to notice it.
“Are you okay?”
And there it was. The concern. Virgil was very serious, and rather mature for his age. So it noticed things that other kids their age wouldn’t, and Patton kinda liked it.
Patton smiled a little brighter, nodding his head. “I’m okay.”
Virgil looked at him skeptically for a second.
“Come on, come color with me!” Patton nearly yelled, taking Virgil’s wrist and pulling the other boy over to their table with him, sitting them down in their chairs.
*
Patton didn’t notice right away. But when he did, he was sort of confused.
Because Virgil had the same drawing on his arm. It was the same squiggly purple lines and the same stick figures holding hands with the same smiles.
Patton wasn’t sure what had happened. How could he have the same drawing on his arm as Virgil? Was Virgil the one who drew it? Should Patton ask about it?
So Patton waited until the teacher let them go with their group work. Then he whispered to Virgil, sort of ignoring the other two kids at their table who were diligently working together to do their addition.
“Did you draw that?” Patton asked quietly, pointing at Virgil’s arm that was uncovered since he was wearing a short sleeve polo.
Virgil looked down at the picture for a second before looking up at his friend with a smile. “Uh huh! It’s me and my mom and dad. Mom really liked it.”
“Shouldn’t you not draw on yourself?” Patton asked.
Virgil’s eyebrows furrowed a bit, looking at his friend. “My mom and dad write to each other all the time…”
“They… write to each other?”
“Yeah,” Virgil said, tapping his pencil quickly against the table. “They’re soulmates.”
Patton didn’t know what that meant. He thought maybe he’d heard the term “soulmates” before, but he didn’t know what it meant.
So all he said was, “oh.”
*
“Mom,” Patton said on the ride home. “What are soulmates?”
“Soulmates aren’t real, Patton,” his mother said simply. Her tone had a finality to it that Patton did not want to challenge.
Besides, Mom knew a lot of things. He figured she was right about this too. Soulmates weren’t real, whatever they were.
*
Soon after the first drawing appeared, a lot of other ones did too. Virgil often used purple, which Patton knew was his favorite color. But there seemed to be two other people that were leaving them drawings as well. One of them favored the color red, but often used other colors as well, and another liked the colors blue and black.
And Patton never said anything about how he found these drawings on himself. He never showed them to his parents again, but Virgil would show him the red and blue drawings every morning when they met in class.
Patton pretended he hadn’t seen them before, because somehow, it seemed wrong that he be included in this.
So weeks turned into years, and later, it wasn’t just drawing. There were words. They started writing to each other and leaving messages. Virgil, Ro, and Lo got to know each other slowly. And Patton watched, until sixth grade.
In sixth grade, both of the homerooms were gathered in the gym to have a talk about Soulmates.
Patton, who had long been under the impression that soulmates weren’t real, was confused. Why would the school talk to them about something that didn’t exist? Unless it was to tell them all that soulmates weren’t actually real and that there was some other explanation for why everyone found writing on their skin.
Yeah, that was it. They were going to debunk (a word Patton learned from Lo the other day) everything to do with the whole “soulmate” thing.
Except… they didn’t. They were sat down and introduced to this group of people (note: couples), mostly in their late teens and early twenties. And they had the sixth graders doing all sorts of activities for about an hour and a half, talking about soulmates and what being a soulmate means.
Soulmates were two or more people who were destined to be with each other. Scientists were still searching for how the connections work and why certain people are connected together and others aren’t, but every set of soulmates were “meant to be”. They love each other implicitly and anything that they wrote or drew on their skin would should up on their soulmate’s skin.
So… so this meant that his mother was wrong. She had lied to him.
*
“Patton?” his father asked in the car on the way home. Patton spared a brief glance over at the man he looked so much like before turning his eyes back to the window.
“What?”
“Everything alright, kiddo?”
“Fine.”
*
“You. Lied. To me.” Patton demanded angrily at home.
His father came into the room quickly from hanging the car keys back on the hook by the door.
Patton’s mother looked at him, surprised from her seat on the couch. “Patton… what?”
“You lied to me! You told me soulmates weren’t real, but you lied!” Patton yelled, throwing his backpack to the floor. “They talked to us today! They told us all about soulmates and soulmarks!”
“Patton-”
“Why would you lie to me?! You wouldn’t believe me when I said I didn’t draw on myself, and you told me soulmates didn’t exist! And you knew! You must have known! Everyone knows about soulmates! Why didn’t I?”
A sort of dangerous look came over his mother’s face. Her eyes hardened in a way that Patton didn’t like but wouldn’t back down from. Because Patton’s emotions governed many of the things he did. And in this case, right now, Patton was angry.
“Patton, do not speak to your mother that way,” she warned.
“No.” Patton lifted his chin higher, his anger working to add much more bravado to his stature than usual.
A slight pause. “Excuse you?”
“No. Answer me,” Patton demanded harshly. “Why did you lie?”
The room was silent for a moment too long. Patton didn’t like it, and he could tell his dad was standing behind him, watching the situation unfold before him with no idea what to do.
But then, finally, she spoke. “Soulmates are useless, Patton. Anyone who believes in those childish fairy tales are setting themselves up for heartbreak and a life of torment and agony. You need to learn to grow up before you start demanding answers about things you don’t even understand.”
Patton’s face flashed with shock. For a second, his voice refused to cooperate with him.
“I didn’t lie to you. Soulmates don’t exist.”
Without another word, Patton stormed from the room, snagging his backpack from the ground as he stomped up the stairs and down the hallway, slamming his bedroom door behind him.
He didn’t know why his mother was so adamant that soulmates weren’t real, but one thing was for sure: Patton didn’t believe her. Patton had three soulmates out there, and one of them was his best friend who he would see in homeroom tomorrow morning.
And Patton was angry.
*
Virgil talked to Patton about their soulmates often. He showed the other boy his markings and drawings and let his friend read all the messages that Ro and Lo left. Of course, Patton was already very familiar with each and every mark. He saw them when he woke up in the morning since Ro seemed to do most of his line memorization at night, the same as when Virgil practiced his poetry. Lo seemed to have an earlier sleep schedule and woke up much earlier than the others did, and practiced “simple” (read: advanced) algebraic equations to get his brain moving.
And Patton watched them appear throughout the day. Why he was extremely careful at every second to ensure he never ended up with pen marks on his hands, they showed up anyway, mostly from Virgil, whose hands could be rather shaky, depending on how bad his anxiety was.
One time, Patton had even gone so far as to put a bandaid over a whole rainbow that had been left on the back of his hand. It’s not as if he could wash it off, and… after all this time, whatever order the other three had seemed to find worked. And it worked well. Patton was certain none of them had a clue that they had a fourth soulmate.
And Patton had always been rather empathetic. He worried to himself a lot whether his presence would mess up the flow and rhythm Virgil, Ro, and Lo had together. Because Patton hadn’t made himself known at the beginning of all this. He hadn’t drawn back to the others when Virgil’s very first drawing had shown up on them. Lo had left a checkmark and Ro had left a star, both indicating that they liked the stick figures.
But… he could feel them, sometimes. Or, he thought he could. When Virgil got really jittery, Patton couldn’t really sit still. And when Ro had performed in his first play, Patton wanted to sing for hours (and he had, playing video after video on YouTube). When Lo wins a debate with his junior high debate team, Patton couldn’t help but smile and wish that he could learn everything there was to know in the whole universe.
Could they feel him? It felt exciting that they might, because… it’s not like Patton didn’t want to be a part of what they have. He could honestly say he cared about them, because he did. But it had been his own fault that they didn’t really know him.
Or… no. It wasn’t his fault. It was his mother’s. It was her fault for telling him that soulmates didn’t exist. Her fault that he had been so scared to so much as accidentally make a tally mark on his fingers as he went to cap a pen.
But Patton ignored all that.
He listened to Virgil with rapt attention when he spoke about their soulmates. And Patton heard about when they all reached high school and had supposedly all gotten cellphones around the same time. Ro turned into Roman and Lo became Logan, and Patton didn’t really see a lot of drawings or writings on himself anymore. Because the three of them texted, and they called and followed each other on their social media.
And any sense of connection Patton had once hoped he could have was left in the dust. Because they had moved on to a point in their relationship that Patton couldn’t hope to achieve. He couldn’t catch up. Because he talked and texted with Virgil and often spent at least 75% of their time together, but it was different. Virgil may be his best friend, but Patton was certain that was all he saw them as.
So Patton ignored it all. The math equations, the play lines, and poems, he didn’t read them anymore. He let Virgil show him when they spent time together and Virgil got so pent up that he just had to gush for awhile about all the awesome things that Roman and Logan were and did and were going to be.
*
Years passed, and Patton could honestly say he couldn’t remember the last time he wore a short sleeve shirt. He wore last sleeve polos and sweaters or jackets all the time. He had gotten glasses back in freshman year when a teacher finally asked him why he wasn’t writing down any of the notes and the answer was that he couldn’t see the board.
His father had taken him to the eye doctor and the doctor had confirmed that Patton had probably needed glasses for years and no one had noticed. So now he had a pair of thick rimmed black glasses.
That night, Patton had snapchatted Virgil about the glasses and the first thing Virgil said was, “wow you look just like Logan!”.
Patton had cried.
Somewhere around the same time, some kids at school had started whispering about Patton behind his back. It took awhile for him to notice, but when he did, he heard things like “I bet he hasn’t got a soulmate”, “he covers his arms to hide it”, “he probably gets beat at home”.
There were worse ones, too. “Freak.” “Loser.” “Idiot.” “Airhead.” “A walking bad pun.” “Incomplete.”
“Unwanted.”
For exactly one week, Patton didn’t talk to anyone. Not Virgil, not his biology group for class, not his teachers, not his parents. No one. Virgil followed him around at school, constantly attempting to get Patton to talk to him. And when that failed, he went to their counselor. She had called Patton into her office and tried to talk to him, and during that time, Patton said two words.
“I’m fine.”
On Friday night, Patton’s father loaded him into the car with a pack overnight bag and dropped him at Virgil’s house with no warning.
The two spent three hours sitting in silence.
Until Virgil spoke up, his voice hard and guarded. “Let me see your arms.”
A flash a panic ripped through Patton, and for the briefest of moments, it intensified because it seemed as if his friend had noticed. But then he schooled the feelings away and crossed his arms.
“Why?”
“Because,” Virgil said simply.
“That’s not a reason.”
“I don’t care. Show me your arms.”
“No.”
Patton didn’t know if there was writing there or not. Virgil was wearing something long sleeved too, and Patton hadn’t seen his own arms since this morning. This was not the way he wanted Virgil to find out they were soulmates, if that day were to come at all.
But Virgil was persistent, and Patton’s nerves were frayed. So eventually, Patton layed down, stole a blanket off of his friend’s bed, and did his very best to go to sleep. It worked after a while.
Of course, not before he overheard a conversation that he shouldn’t have been privy to.
“Honestly, I just don’t get it! What could have happened?”
“Well, has he informed you of any bullying at school? Or perhaps a family situation?”
“No, Logan! Patton would have said something… Right? I mean… I’m his best friend…”
“True, but there are some things people don’t wish to share with others, no matter how close they may be.”
“No, not something this big. He knows that I’m here for him, no matter what.”
“What, exactly, are you worried he has done?”
“I… I think he’s… hurting himself…”
“...oh.”
“Oh? That’s all you have to say?”
“I… do not know how I should respond in this instance. Perhaps if you are that worried, you should talk to an adult about it.”
“I tried. He won’t listen to them either.”
“Then you may just have to wait and see what happens. If you are unwilling to invade his privacy, and he won’t talk to the adults, there is not much else for you to do.”
“...”
“I know that face… There’s something else. What is it?”
“I dunno, Logan… He’s been by my side since… since forever. I can’t bear the thought of losing him…”
“How so? As a friend?”
“I… I dunno. There’s… something. God, I wish you could talk to him, Logan. You’d understand what I mean. There’s something special about Patton…”
“Like, say… if you lost me or Roman?”
“...”
“Virgil?”
“Yeah, a lot like that…”
*
Patton’s heart had jumped into his throat. After a second of silence, he pretended to yawn and shift, as if still asleep. He hoped that the movement would cause Virgil to cut the conversation short and say goodnight to Logan. Because Patton didn’t want to listen to anymore of it.
Thankfully, Virgil did end up say goodnight to the other soon after, stating that he was afraid that Patton might wake from the noise.
Patton really did fall asleep quickly after that.
*
The next day, Patton forced himself to move past what he’d heard all those kids say, and be the happy pappy Patton everyone expected him to be. He might be dying on the inside, but no one else needed to know that.
Except there was something strained about it, and the closer they got to the end of high school, the worse it was. There was something so obviously fake about the way he presented himself to the world. But at this point, it had been so long that no one questioned it anymore.
*
Their high school graduation was great. Patton shed more than just a few tears, sitting with his hand firmly clasped in Virgil’s the whole time. It ended and they all stood up for the final blessing of the graduates and to leave the sanctuary just as they had rehearsed earlier that morning.
Something had possessed Patton to put a sharpie in the pocket of his slacks earlier when he was getting dressed for the ceremony. Something about the last six and a half years and the way he mother was looking at him, and the way Virgil’s eyes lit up when Patton smiled urged him to keep the marker on hand today.
As if he would need a sharpie at his graduation ceremony.
But just as the band began to play the closing song that they would recess out to, Patton felt his hand brush against the hard line of marker in his pocket. And suddenly he was desperately pulling the end of his red gown up just far enough to reach into his pocket, grasp the sharpie and pull it out.
Virgil wasn’t paying attention to him for the moment, anxiously watching as the other rows left until it was their turn, so Patton had just a moment.
He let his gown sleeve fall to his elbow before unbuttoning the cuff of his dress shirt and yanking it up to expose his skin. At his wrist, there were three hearts, purple, red, and blue. They had been put there this morning with the knowledge that Virgil had his graduation ceremony this evening.
Patton grasped the sharpie lid between his teeth, uncapping it quickly, before writing in big, bold lettering across the inside of his forearm: I’M HERE.
As quickly as he could, he replaced the marker in his pocket, let his gown fall back into place, and followed Virgil in the line, leaving the building.
They got separated as the former seniors all gathered outside, hearing a “3… 2… 1…” before they all threw their caps into the air.
And Patton felt lighter than ever. He laughed with tears streaming down his face, watching as caps fell all around them, everyone cheering and congratulating each other, meeting up with family and friends and hugging and screaming.
Patton watched it happen for a second, smiling like the fool he played he was, until someone’s hands were on his shoulders, spinning him around. And there was Virgil, with tears in his eyes and a smile on his lips, pulling his friend into a hug.
But he pulled away too fast, reaching for his sleeve and tugging it back, working the button on his sleeve so harshly that it nearly popped off. And there it was. I’M HERE in big, black letters.
And Virgil stared at it for a second before lifting his face again and glancing around in a confused daze.
“They aren’t… neither of them wrote this…” he seemed to say to himself. The chaos around them was only a bit too loud for Patton to hear him correctly.
But Patton smiled a little more broadly, if only for Virgil’s sake, pulling up his sleeves that he hadn’t bothered to fix correctly, showing Virgil the same words in slightly smeared black sharpie.
“I’m here…”