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On his 13th birthday, Shane Madej woke up, going through his routine like it was any other day. He knew why today was so important, but instead of feeling excited he felt on edge. He had covered the bathroom mirror the night before with a sheet, and showered with his eyes closed, because he couldn't look. It was almost as if he knew that something wasn't right the moment he woke up, because he wasn't that disappointed when he realized why he had such a bad feeling in his gut.
"Can we see?" his friend Sara asked him immediately when he sat down at the lunch table.
"I haven't actually looked for it yet," he admitted, taking a bite out of an apple.
"You haven't?!" she practically screamed, and he had motioned for her to tone it down a notch.
Getting home that night, taking the sheet off the bathroom mirror, he knew that something was off. Stripping down to his boxers and looking at his reflection, he was met with the same bare skin that he's had his entire life. Even taking off his boxers, just to make sure, he was right, he didn't have a soulmark.
So when he was later sat at the dinner table, and his mom asked how his day had gone, he burst into tears. There was nothing that could be done to console him, he was going to die without ever finding love. Everyone with a soulmark always met their soulmate, always got married and lived happily ever after, and Shane was going to be alone forever. He voiced this to his parents, and his dad chuckled.
"Shane, it probably just means that you're a little older than your soulmate. You both have to be over the age of thirteen for the mark to appear."
Well, that would've been nice to tell him beforehand.
And so, for the next few months, Shane would check in the mirror everyday, yearning for something to happen. But as a year passed, and then two, and then three, he had given up. He had resorted to researching online, finding out that sometimes if someone's soulmate died before the other was born, then the remaining half was left with bare skin, a constant reminder that there was no one on the earth destined for them.
When Shane was 17, on a chilly November day, he was lounging at home. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving, and he had decided to skip school, because it wasn't like the teachers were going to be covering anything remotely important. It was like that every school day before break, teachers resorting to "fun activities" or free periods because they knew that the students weren't going to be paying attention whatsoever. But at that point, why bother having school in the first place?
His brother Finn was sat next to him on the couch, leafing through a comic book, when he said something unexpected.
"Dude, what's on your arm?"
Shane, who was wearing a long-sleeved shirt with said sleeves rolled up, immediately turned to examine both his arms quickly, and noticed some black lines peeking out from underneath the sleeve on his left arm.
"Shit," he said, shooting up from where he was sat and bolting towards the bathroom. Yanking his shirt off as he ran, he accidentally rammed his lanky body into the door frame, but the adrenaline in his veins blocked out the pain. Finn had ran after him, standing behind Shane in silence as Shane stared in the mirror, and his brother at his arm.
"It's a ghost," Shane finally said, bringing up his fingers to lightly trace the cheesy outline. It looked like the ghosts depicted on Halloween decorations.
"Maybe she's really into Halloween," Finn offered, and Shane nodded.
-
As Shane completed high school and then went into college, he kept his soulmark expertly concealed underneath tons of long-sleeved shirts. Tons of people had cheesy soulmarks, they were quirky and fun topics for conversation, but Shane just didn't see the point of putting it on display for everyone to see.
When he eventually graduated, getting a job at Buzzfeed, he had mostly forgotten about his mark. It served as an empty reminder to him that someone was out there, probably looking for him, but Shane wasn't in any hurry to find them. It wasn't that he didn't care, but he had already waited four years for the mark to appear in the first place, and he'd be willing to wait an indefinite amount of time to actually meet the person that was his other half.
"Yo, Shane, you know Ryan Bergara?" Andrew, his supervisor, asked one day while Shane was responding to some emails on casting-calls.
"Yeah, the short one, right?" He turned in his chair, taking a sip of his coffee.
"Well, he's starting up this series about unsolved cases and that kind of stuff, and he was doing it with Brent but we're moving him to a different project. Would you be up for co-hosting?"
"Yeah, sure, sign me up."
Little did Shane know, but the series would eventually take off, and he would develop a great friendship with Ryan.
-
"I can't believe you hit your head on the door frame," Ryan wheezed as they walked into their hotel room. They were currently on a case in Louisiana, and had begun to set up for filming.
"Shut up, if you short people knew how hard it was to be above average height, literally everything is designed against you-"
"I'm not short, I am average! It's not my fault you're part Bigfoot!" the younger man argued, but it was all light-hearted.
The banter continued as the two went about the grounds of the Dauphine Orleans Hotel, Ryan recounting the history with Shane adding his own commentary here and there. They eventually got back to the hotel room, and where laying on the bed in the dark, trying to get one of the ghosts to reach out and talk to them.
Shane really didn't know how he ended up in this scenario. He loved filming the show, there was no question about that, but he found it so ironic that he was basically a ghost hunter, with a ghost soulmark, that didn't believe in ghosts. His brother teased him constantly about it, about how maybe his soulmate was a ghost, and Shane hated him for it. It had been fine when the assumption was that his soulmate probably just really liked Halloween, but now that it had become evident that they were probably a firm believer in ghosts with Shane doing Unsolved... Shane didn't even want to think about it.
When the two began to mock each other, it was obvious that filming was going nowhere.
"Are we going to keep doing this? Or are we going to use the Jacuzzi hot tub that we've been blessed with?" Shane finally said.
"Are you serious?" Ryan sounded astonished, but complied with him nonetheless.
Turning the cameras off, the two changed into their swim trunks, facing opposite sides of the hotel room to give the other privacy. Walking into the bathroom and turning the lights on, Shane began to fill the tub with water, when he heard a sharp intake of breath from behind him.
"What, did you see a ghost?" Shane asked, not turning his head to look back at the shorter man.
"Yes," Ryan replied, tone dead-serious.
Shane's head snapped around, expecting Ryan to be pale-faced and shaking, but instead he was smiling wide. Taking in a shirtless Ryan, he saw a mark on the other man's chest, a mark he had become extremely familiar with, considering it was also etched onto his own skin.
"I can't believe my soulmate is a fucking Boogara," he finally said with a smile, breaking the long silence between the two, and Ryan wheezed in response.
"Is it so bad that your better half believes in ghosts?" he sassed back.
"Oh, I wouldn't say better," Shane raised an eyebrow, laughing with him. Once the laughter ceased, they both fell into a comfortable silence, resuming their filming for the night before getting ready for bed. They obviously were going to have to talk about this eventually, but they did come here on a job. Climbing into the large bed, both hunkered down for the night.
When they were both (rudely, in Shane's opinion) woken up by loud stomping from the room above them, Ryan immediately called out for Shane.
"Do you want me to complain to the front desk?" He offered sleepily, but Ryan simply grabbed on to his arm, head tilted up at the ceiling. His grip was tight but it didn't hurt, and whether consciously or unconsciously, Ryan had grabbed on to Shane's soulmark. It pulsed with warmth underneath his hand, and it was a comforting feeling that quickly lulled Shane back to sleep.
The next morning, as Shane left to talk to the crew, and Ryan stayed behind to "investigate" the stomping, Shane had a lot of time to think. Did he want to pursue a relationship with Ryan? If he did, what if Ryan didn't want to pursue one with him? How does one even go about having this sort of conversation? They had known each other for a few months, and were bordering on close friends, so at least the two knew that they got along in a platonic sense. And, as it was obvious from the ghost outlined on his bicep, they were destined to do this show together, so it's likely that Ryan would want to continue doing it.
With the crew now with them, it was hard to get alone time with Ryan to talk. It wasn't until they were all back in Los Angeles that they were able to have any sort of conversation, and it was while both of them were sat in Shane's living room.
"So, um, soulmates..." Shane started awkwardly, not sure how to start.
"I've had a crush on you for a few weeks now, to be honest," Ryan laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his neck and looking down at his shoes.
"Well, like most employees at our office, I've had a crush on you since you started at the company," Shane quipped, and Ryan blushed.
"Not everyone has a crush on me," the black-haired man began to argue.
"How would you know? With those good looks, people are falling for you left and right." Ryan leaned into Shane's side as he talked, and the brunet moved his arm to wrap it around his shoulders.
"I'd like to try, you know, a relationship, and all that," Ryan admitted quietly, and Shane hummed in agreement.
"I have a feeling that we're going to work out in the end."
-1 year later-
"This question comes from 'gram town, from Jake Anderson, 'What's with the ghost tattoo on Ryan's arm?" Ryan read the question, as the two were filming a Post-Mortem.
"Can I answer this? You see, Jake, the universe has a horrible sense of humor, because that is indeed, Ryan Bergara's soulmark," Shane quipped, lifting Ryan's sleeve and gesturing to it dramatically.
"You're just salty because it's your soulmark too," Ryan poked back, and Shane rolled his eyes, throwing his arms back.
"Because ghosts are not real! I can't even have the excuse that it's because one of us loves Halloween!"
"You're a ghosthunter with a ghost soulmark," Ryan taunted, and Shane threw him a dark look.
"I hate you."
"Love you too, babe."