Work Text:
Everyone is born with the name of their soulmate written on the inside of their wrist, ln varying colors and temperatures to signal the state of their destined.
Black is typical, as it means your soulmate is alive, well, and out in the universe for you to find. When the name is black, it is simply the temperature of your skin. It is a part of you. Most people are born with, and have for most of their natural lives, a deep ebony name.
As you draw closer to the time of meeting, the deep shade will turn a heated maroon, signaling that they have gotten nearer, and that fate will soon fall in line. This deep red feels hot to the touch, and in instances of extremely strong soul bonds has been known to burn the skin or small hairs around the area the name is written.
You can feel it nearly engulfing your body, setting every nerve on fire. The ‘flames of love,’ as a dramatic is known to write them.
The singular, blinding red heat is a comfort to most, as even the sting announces a change for the better, a change into becoming part of a whole, rather than a piece of an isolated soul floating aimlessly in the universe for all eternity.
Many scholars have hypothesised that the function of having the names on the wrist, an accessible part of the body, rather than any else is to constantly be aware of the varying shades of deep, hot red it starts to turn at different parts of town, different countries, or wherever and whenever your soulmate may be dwelling away from you. It’s a variable game of hot-and-cold, the black and red. When the name feels fiery hot, you are supposed to meet your one true partner for life.
Anywhere else on the body, the burns could be detrimental.
But, still, what is a small burn to a lifetime of bliss with the one destined to love you back? It is nothing. While self-preserving fear may take hold and keep you from jumping into any other flame, no such fear exists from finding a mate.
Children play by running around town, seeing if the name will make the slightest change. Often, students from college will take a gap year to travel around in the same spirit. There is no fear here, only hope. But some don’t even have that.
While black and red are typical, there is one other option for the name. White.
When the name turns a freezing white, and scars over, it means your soulmate is dead. Dead, deceased, passed on- however you choose to call it, they are no longer living. They are not out for you to find.
Some people are, as unfortunate as it may be, born with a white name. Martin Whitly was one of those people.
Born to an unimportant family, he worked hard to complete his studies. The poverty he was in from a young age, estranged parents, and perhaps just genetics themselves made for a power complex to grow. Martin wanted so badly to be in control, and so he was. He took great joy in memorizing his times tables as a boy, his literature as an adolescent, and the parts of the body, various surgical procedures, bones, and forms of death as an adult. It was simple for him. It was a plan to fit in, to be adored and respected. Go to medical school, make money, play around in the lungs of some poor smoker, come home and enjoy scotch. Maybe commit a murder or two along the way. It was foolproof.
Or so he thought.
Wherever he went he could do nothing to stop the pitying looks from colleagues when they saw the name on his wrist, faded, a ghost of someone he would never meet. He hated those looks.
He couldn’t stand the water in their eyes, the feeling like they may begin to tear up over poor, poor Martin. He doesn’t feel the way they do, not about soulmates, not about their work, not about anything. He isn’t the one on the table, organs exposed, flayed open for the whole room to see. He isn’t the one dying, but to them he might as well be.
“Without your soulmate, you just never feel complete. I haven’t felt heat like that again.” old women croon.
Oh, it sparks an anger he can't begin to show.
“I never felt so alive before I met my mate, never.” young people say.
He will never be normal, never fit the universal schema of a perfect man. There’s no room for error, no room for anything until he has a soulmate. He can’t feel anything but the cold touch of a dove white name. No room for error.
Although, he does feel a pinch of heat when he takes a life. It’s not much but it is something. A man needs his vices, right?
Martin is 30 when he becomes a fully practitioner doctor, and he still can’t feel the way they do. His wrist stares viciously up at him, testing him, telling him he has no control over anything, not even the universe. Not even God. Not even life.
When his colleague breaks down after a particularly hard surgery, while they wash their hands and remove their masks, he knows what to say. He has read books, had experiences, and he knows what she wants to hear. He can say the kind, soft words in a steady tone.
“You did perfectly,” he says smoothly, washing the blood from his wrist where the name still stands, tired, as if to tell him again, ‘you aren’t enough.’
“He couldn’t be saved, we did our best. There was nothing more that could have been done, you know that.” - but he doesn’t feel her grief. Not over a stranger, not over anyone.
“I just-” the woman splashes her face with cold water, eyes bloodshot from tears, “-i imagine if it was him, you know? My mate. Can you imagine having…”
She glances down at Martin’s hands, and remembers. She stops herself from saying more about it.
Martin looks at her, the ghost of anger present on his brow.
“Forget it.” she dries her hands and face, “I have a friend I want you to meet.”
“Well, she’d better be quite the catch for a crack like that.” Martin jokes, drying his hands near the sink. “I’d be delighted to, really.” he amends, shrugging his coat back on. “What’s her name?”
-
Martin Whitely is 32 when he marries Jessica Milton.
She’s beautiful, kind, overwhelmingly bourgeoisie, and her wrist is white.
“She died when we were very young,” she explains to him one night Martin came home late from surgery. She was already drunk, in bed, and caught his eyes resting there a second too long. Her eyes narrowed as she tells him, curling up in the sheets, “Ainsley, that was her name. Ooooold friend-” she draws out dramatically, attempting to mask the emotion behind it.
Martin listens, knowing she may not remember in the morning.
“One of my parents enemies had a hit out on her, I was too young to remember really…” she turns over, not facing him. “But i remember the heat.”
Martin puts this aside.
It’s all he needs to look mundane: a perfect wife, a few kids, a mansion by the city. In due time, he’ll have all the room he can to be the perfect husband, doctor, father, and have his hobby on the side.
He keeps his wrist covered with a cold watch, a jumper sweater, lab coats, medical gloves, anything he can. The Miltons where all too happy to make an arrangement where their daughter looked to be with the perfect soulmate, despite their reservations. But two white wrists covering up may as well to the press scream soulmates. People make assumptions, they may as well do good for the family name.
Martin wines and dines his wife, makes his way through wedding plans and house paperwork, and spoils her thoroughly so she doesn’t lose whatever measure of personal interest she may have with him.
She stays at home most of the time, planning charities and dinner events with her parents.
They live a happy, fulfilled life of indulgences- Martin possibly more than his wife, even for all her drinking and dressing up. He has his time, somehow, between the hospital and family to find a new plaything every few months, satiate his thirst for blood, and make his way back home. It makes him feel alive, heated, and perfectly still.
Perfectly in control.
When Jessica decides she wants a child, Martin is more than happy to provide. It’s the obvious next step on the road to normality.
But, his controlling nature does come into play, as it will. In the spirit of sentiment he agrees with his makeshift ‘other-half’: If it is a girl, they will name her Ainsely, for the name on her wrist. it is a boy, they will name him Malcolm, after the name on Martins.
Jessica hopes one day they’ll have both, a sort of trick to play on fate for thinking they could possibly be seperated. Martin pretends he adores her spirit.
When they get to the easy work, conceiving the child, Martins wrist is still cold. But he swears there, at the end, he feels a foreign throb of heat.
It goes away.
-
At the hospital, 36 weeks later, he’s sweating buckets.
He’s never been nervous before, but he’s sure becoming a parent could possibly warrant a response from anyone, couldn’t it? It has to be. The contractions are premature, of course he’s nervous.
Still, he’s never felt this particular way. And honestly, what’s the worst that could happen, Jessica dies? All he needs is one survivor from this, other than himself. All he needs is his child, and he can maintain normality. There is no reason to be afraid.
His body runs hot to cold to normal to hot all over again. He’s on a rollercoaster of temperature, and he wrists positively ache with some kind of feeling. The doctors he’s worked with before, that have seen him stone-faced in surgery and through death ask if he is okay. He feels on fire, and his hands have started to shake. He feels out of control.
He holds his wives hand and says yes, of course, just a little worried about how this will go. No, he’s not leaving, he’s staying right here.
They give him the look, again. It’s heavy with pity. Anger dances on his brow.
Jessica knows the look well, and her face falls.
Well, maybe for a moment he’ll take a break.
Martin makes his way to the bathroom to wash up. First impressions are important, after all. He checks his watch and notices something red from the corner of his eye. It can’t be, can it? That name has always been white, always. It’s always tormented him, the freezing thing.
It’s always been cold, his wrist is still cold.
His watch is still on.
He takes the cool metal off and realize three things:
One: His wrist is fucking hot. His entire body is fucking smouldering with heat.
He douses his head in water, hoping to cool it down. Deep breathes, in and out. That’s it, he has to go back out there. Normality, normality. Push it away and hide it until you are alone.
Two: His name had turned red. Bright, beautiful red. The thing resembles his first kill, all those years ago. He’s had three or so since then, but none could feel the same way as the first. All that blood, trickling down, all those screams muffled from rope…
His heartbeat, and temperature pick up just a little.
He will be a father soon, he cannot let this interfere. He can’t let this soulmate ruin his perfectly-
Oh.
He looks in the mirror, steadily seeing the truth.
Three: His soulmate was not dead. His soulmate simply hadn’t been alive.
He stares at his reflection, and finds one more realization left in him, possibly the worst of them all. He was in control. He was terribly in control. So much so that another person, a soulmate, could ruin it entirely.
If he was to feel entirely ecstatic at the mere thought of another person, if having them around meant the entire world could fall and he could be happy, he would be ruined. He was the universe, and he had known this from the start. And he made his mate more than just another part of his whole, he made him an extension of himself. Someone he could control. Someone he could mold from the very beginning to be like him, to think like him, to adore him in the way all others had known.
He had a soulmate, and he was about to be born.
Martin comes back into the hospital room where his wife is waiting on her bed, breathing as deeply as she can manage, crying, muscles aching, and Martin would swear he feels his doing the same. When Malcom comes out, and the doctors take him away, performing their tests and cleaning, the heat is red hot. It burns Martin from the inside out with a white hot jealousy, and possessiveness sneaking its way around every atom in his body and squeezing tight.
He feels like boiling water was forced down his throat, like a hot iron was pressed firmly against his DNA.
‘My boy,’ he thinks, ‘my dear boy.’
‘Get your filthy hands off of my. boy.”
Malcom is born with a fever, and taken to a separate unit to be treated. The doctors let him out two weeks later with his mother, all recovered, but they have a sad look in their eyes. Malcom doesn’t have a name.