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Soulmates.
It’s a strange concept to begin with, and only turns more so as time progresses. In this age of connection, it has become borderline ridiculous. Who needs a fated person in a world where all kinds of relationships can be found so easily? Why do people who put their freedom above all else still yearn for something they have no control over? There are academic essays on these questions, philosophical debates on what it all might mean, but an answer has yet to be found.
Pete doesn’t need any of it. No essays, no answers, and certainly no soulmate. Sometimes he thinks it’s an elaborate scheme everyone but him is in on because he can’t, for the life of him, understand the obsession. Social media is overflowing with “soulmate reveals” (causing Pete to delete all his accounts), there are hundreds of TV series revolving around the matter (causing Pete's TV to gather dust), and wherever he goes, the concept of soulmates is being monetized. It’s a much ado about something that seems more fickle and volatile the closer you look at it. It goes like this:
People are born with words on their wrist. Some have them on their right, some on their left. The ones on the right are the first ones your soulmate will say to you, the ones on the left the last. One person with the first words is then matched with one who has the final ones.
Quite easy. In theory.
In practice, it’s a mess.
What feels like half the world’s population has just “Hello” or a variation thereof printed on their skin, leading to a whole lot of confusion, frustration, and anxiety. And those who have the last words? Live in constant panic of hearing them. Some have gone insane over it. It lead to a divide in society, as things that allow extreme opinions are bound to, and there are fierce supporters just as there are fierce adversaries. Some reject the words on purpose and find a happy and fulfilling relationship on their own terms. Whether they proved fate wrong or just made it work out of spite, remains to be seen. And although there are rumours of the words changing or even disappearing, those cases haven’t been recorded and no one can say how true they are. And Pete never bothered to dig deeper. Because Pete belongs to the third faction.
The indifferent.
Trained indifferent, so to say, because when he was younger he, much like all children who crave understanding and support, was thrilled by the concept of soulmates. He yearned for the day he would hear the words on his right wrist. Each pet has its owner, I suppose. They are strange ones, but as a child, he found them funny, glad that he wasn’t one of the many “Hello”-people. So Pete waited. And waited. And turned older. And endured. What he had once craved now became an afterthought. He knew that everything his father did to him had twisted him in a way that made him impossible to understand. He himself wasn’t even sure of who exactly he was anymore. Suddenly the thought of a person seeing him was dreadful. He didn’t want anyone to look behind his mask and see the creature underneath. He tried to carve out the words but they reappeared on the scar tissue, he tried burning them away but they still returned. He hid his wrist, ugly, mangled, and still painted.
It was a blessing when Khun Korn approached him after Pete had killed his father. In exchange for Pete’s service, he promised safety and anonymity and the prospect of taking Pete’s life and commanding it. Pete agreed in a heartbeat. He belonged to the family now, and that meant he could never belong to anyone else. Not his soulmate, not himself.
It is liberating.
Pete spends his days turning himself into a person useful to the family. He trains and follows orders. His wrist is covered with a broad metallic cuff, but that’s nothing unusual. Many hide the words. People assume he’s against soulmates and Pete lets them. What others say doesn’t matter.
“Each pet has its owner, I suppose.”
The words are said with a condescending smirk as Khun Vegas shoulders past Pete. Pete stares straight ahead. Khun Tankhun yells something after the heir of the minor family, but Pete hears nothing except the words he used to stare at for hours at a time.
Well, that settles it. Fate can make mistakes, after all. It’s impossible for Khun Vegas to be Pete’s soulmate.
Like a puppet pulled by strings, Pete turns around. Khun Vegas is further down the hallway, but Pete’s eyes still drop down his left arm. The long sleeve reaches to his hand and Pete is glad.
The ever-aching skin on his right wrist flares up with pain. Pete digs his fingers into it. He belongs to the main family. He’s not his own person and doesn’t need a soulmate.
-
“Why are you hiding it?”
Pete flinches at the voice from behind him. He quickly lowers his phone and adopts an unassuming, foolish air as he turns.
“Khun Vegas!”
Pete has gotten used to seeing him. Being a part of the family Vegas was around often, and even more so ever since Porsche started working for them. Pete pretends he doesn’t see the way Vegas’ eyes linger on him, or the way Porsche gravitates towards him. It isn’t his business because Vegas ‘ words are right, Pete is nothing but a pet.
“Is it cowardice, or conviction?”
Vegas is leaning against the wall, arms crossed and eyes trained on Pete’s covered wrist.
“Or…” and his smirk turns sharp and his tone disgusted. “Loyalty? Does the pet not want another owner taking claim?”
Pete keeps himself smiling. “Ah, I just don’t really care, Khun Vegas. I don’t like leaving things to fate,” he adds, because it’s one of the most common arguments for opposers.
“Of course,” Vegas says and his fingers curl around his own wrist. Pete isn’t entirely sure it’s conscious. “And what, exactly, are you doing here?”
He pushes off the wall and closes in on Pete, and Pete feels cornered in the wide corridor that stretches behind him. Some people claim to feel a connection whenever their soulmate is near, but all Pete feels is a sense of discomfort that reminds him that Vegas cannot be his soulmate. Still his eyes trail down to where Vegas’ arms are crossed over his chest, and where the askew cloth of his sleeve leaves a sliver of wrist exposed. He doesn’t hide the words, Pete notes, isn’t ashamed or doesn’t care.
His prolonged silence is taken as guilt and Vegas chuckles and leans in. “I asked you a question. Does the main family train their pets so badly that they don’t know when to answer?”
“I’ve just gotten lost, Khun Vegas,” Pete says, fast and loud to drown out the echo of pet that’s ringing in his ears. “These hallways all look the same.”
“Right. I’m sure you’re used to much…humbler hallways.” Voice dripping sarcasm, Vegas uncrosses his arms and Pete’s treacherous eyes follow his left hand down to his side.
“If you want to see, you only need to ask.”
Pete’s eyes snap up. “I would never presume, Khun Vegas.”
Vegas hums and places his hands on Pete’s shoulders. “You know what, Pete? I don’t think you’re indifferent about soulmates, I think you’re afraid.” Then he turns Pete around, lays his left arm around his shoulder, and starts walking him down the corridor. “Let me show you back to your rooms.
His wrist is right on the edge of Pete’s vision, and he can see black lines blurred in the corner of his eye. He forces himself to ignore them, just as he forces himself to ignore the warmth Vegas radiates against his side.
-
Vegas arm around him is like a vice, forcing him to keep pace. His presence is overwhelming; not because he is Pete’s soulmate, but because he is Vegas Theerapanyakul. When Kinn ordered Pete to spy on him, Pete was hesitant not because Vegas is his soulmate, but because the intensity of him threatens to drown him.
He tries to pull away but Vegas doesn’t let him. His hand slips from Pete’s upper arm down to his elbow and Pete feels the words on his wrist flare. For a moment he wonders if Vegas found out about them; then discards the thought mere seconds later. Were that the case, he would not be in this situation. He isn’t sure what Vegas is going to do once he finds out fate paired him up with a mindless bodyguard of all people, but it can’t be pleasant. It’s only the constant pressure of the broad metallic cuff around his wrist that grounds Pete and stops him from wrestling Vegas to the ground and bolting.
“Why are you so tense?” Vegas asks, voice low now that they sit in the temple. He’s too close again, his thigh brushing Pete’s and his smell of smoke, heavy cologne, and copper drowning out the incense. “Oh, is it because you’re not used to this?”
Pete swallows against the barrier in his throat and manages speak. “Not used to what?”
“A sermon,” Vegas says. His head is lowered, palms pressed together. “Since you don’t believe in fate, you are probably not religious either.”
“I-” Pete starts, but then decides against it. Vegas doesn’t expect him to answer honestly; he just wants to be humoured. “Something like that.”
“But do you actually not believe in soulmates?” Vegas continues on, unfazed. Pete glances at him out of the corner of his eyes. Vegas has lowered his hands and raised his head and is looking at Pete with a gleam of interest in his eyes.
“No,” Pete says, and should leave it at that. But in a rare show of honesty and even more so; of his own opinion, he finds himself elaborating. “I mean, I do believe in them.” He doesn’t know what is prompting him to say this to Vegas of all people, someone who has gotten under his skin a little too literally. But something makes him speak, and Pete tells himself it’s the look Vegas is giving him and not the strings of fate trying to bind them together. “I believe in them for others, but not for me. I don’t want a soulmate, and I don’t deserve one.”
Vegas raises an eyebrow and his eyes drop to Pete’s wrist. “That’s why you cover it up? Out of sight, out of mind?”
“I just don’t want to be reminded of it, and I don’t want others to see. It’s my own decision. Mine. It’s the last bit of agency I have left.”
Pete shuts his mouth. He doesn’t know why he just said that. He never even admitted it to himself and now he said it out loud to a person he felt nothing but discomfort towards.
Vegas looks at him for a long moment. “I understand,” he says then, and for some strange reason, Pete believes him.
-
Defiance has always been Pete’s most trusted companion. It was the one quality he acknowledged and prided himself on. It was with him when he was bullied in school, when his father hit him, when the other bodyguards ridiculed him. It was there when Vegas sent current after current of electricity through his body, when he touched Pete, when dragged his tongue across his skin.
“Don’t take it off.” Defiance is gone. “Please, don’t take it off. It’s all I have left.” Finally, Pete’s voice breaks. His brain, sluggish from the electricity, the dehydration, and the stuffy air, can only form one clear thought: Don’t let him see the words. “It’s all I have left.” Pete’s arms, bound around the pillar behind him, are tense as he pulls at the chains digging into his skin.
The cruelty clouding Vegas’ eyes disperses, even if it’s just for a second. He’s breathing heavily; Pete can feel hot bursts of air against his cheek an how, ever so briefly, his breath hitches. The fingers that pry at the cuff around Pete’s wrist still. Vegas’ expression turns strange as his eyes flicker between Pete’s.
My agency. Pete’s mouth forms the words without being able to give voice to them and Vegas’ gaze dips to read them from his lips.
“Whatever,” he says and turns and grabs a knife. The pain feels like mercy as it cuts into Pete’s skin.
And if pain is mercy, Vegas is a pardoner. Chained up to the ceiling of a windowless room, Pete finds himself floating. Everything hurts on the outside, but his inside is so, so calm. The black lake of his mind is undisturbed by thoughts as Pete lets the pain wash over him. Sometimes he’s conscious enough to gaze up at Vegas with a serene expression. It’s never a challenge, and Vegas always takes it as one. Pete thinks he might be merciful enough to kill him. But when he’s almost there, enveloped by soothing darkness, something brings him back. Lips on his, a tongue pushing something into his mouth. Pete barely realises when he swallows the medicine.
The coming days have his body still aching, but the pain is dulled now, leaving his mind all the sharper. In a way, Pete mourns the respite that came with the thoughtless drifting, but a part of him knows how wrong it is for him to feel like that. He focuses on that rationality which he has been nurturing for so long. If anything, it allows him to see Vegas in a different light.
Volatile, unpredictable, easy to anger and easy to calm. He calls Pete foolish for believing in loyalty and caring about people who don’t give a fuck about him, all the while he brings Pete food and dresses his wounds.
He also hasn’t taken off Pete’s cuff.
The words burn, now more than ever, and it doesn’t help that Vegas visits wearing soft t-shirts that expose his wrists. Pete looks everywhere but there. Vegas notices, makes fun of him for it, but never forces him to look.
It is another day that sees Vegas visit with a bruised face when he speaks up.
“I don’t believe in it either,” he says, unprompted and sudden. Pete opens his eyes where he is splayed on the bed, one arm angled uncomfortably to the side to accommodate the chain. “Soulmates and that shit. For me, I mean.”
Pete slowly turns his head and holds his breath. If he says anything wrong now, he’s sure Vegas’ anger is going to stop him from what he has to say. Pete wants to know what he has to say. Why, is a question he has stopped asking.
“You said that you think soulmates exist for other people, but not for yourself. I think you’re right.” And Vegas lifts his fist in the air and there is a broad metal cuff around his wrist, bearing resemblance to Pete’s own. “I don’t want anyone to have me as a soulmate.”
Pete wonders, not for the first time, what his father said to Vegas to put him in this mood.
“I think you wouldn’t make a bad soulmate,” Pete says slowly, listening for Vegas’ reactions. The room remains quiet, and he continues. “You know who you are, what you want, where you’re going.”
Vegas scoffs and Pete quickly shuts his mouth. “I know who I am? Yeah, of course. I’m a son of the second family, the one who can do nothing right and who gets acknowledgment only for his many fuck-ups.”
Pete glances at the back of Vegas’ head. “Is that what he told you? That you’ll never be enough, and that everyone who has the misfortune of being bound to you is doomed?”
Vegas’ body stills. Pete doesn’t know if it’s the dangerous kind of stillness and waits. Then Vegas turns his head and meets his eyes.
Oh, Pete thinks. The smallest smile tugs at the corners of his lips. “We’re the same then, you and I.”
His body is still aching, but the pain is dull.
Pity, Pete thinks, his mind clear enough to realise that something shifted between Vegas and him in that very moment, the pain was mercy.
Only that, It isn’t mercy, Pete realises as Vegas’ fingers dig into the half-healed scars his belt has left and draws blood anew. It’s salvation.
He closes his eyes and lets the pain wash over him. He arches his body into Vegas’ touch, craving more. Vegas replaces his fingers with his tongue and laps up the oozing blood. Pete’s mouth opens on a voiceless sound and he buries his fingers in Vegas’ hair. His body reacts without his brain commanding it to and he’s so wonderfully, mercifully hazy. Nothing matters other than Vegas and the delicious pain he inflicts on Pete’s body. When he moves up to claim Pete’s mouth, Pete can taste his own blood on Vegas’ tongue, and it makes him moan. He has never seen Vegas smile, but now he feels it against his mouth, the sweetness of it overwhelming in contrast to the sharp pain. Vegas surrounds him, has become his everything. Pete’s hands are tied over his head and he wants nothing more than to rip them from their bounds and show his wrist to Vegas and tell him to claim him entirely.
But he doesn’t. He can’t get his body to obey, and when he comes down from his high, boneless and pliant on the mattress where the pain and pleasure make way for clarity, he’s glad. If he did, then there would be no way back; no excuse left to hide behind. Then all of this would become real; Pete’s feelings and desires and the fact that Vegas is his soulmate. Then he would become both his own as much as Vegas’ person and he can’t, not after being no one for so long. He is scared of facing the person he truly is, the deformed and ugly creature he has been hiding all these years. He is also scared of what it will do to Vegas if he knows Pete is the one bound to him. If it will make him think that all of this was done out of a sense of obligation rather than want – if it will make him question the last bit of agency Pete has.
“Do you know how sexy you are?” Vegas asks. The fingers of his left hand stroke up and down Pete’s right arm, every now and then catching on the cuff. Then he lays his wrist on Pete’s with a slight clink of metal against metal. “Like this, you could almost think we were soulmates.” The words are quiet, but still echo through the room.
Out of instinct Pete yanks his arm from below Vegas’ head and turns his head to the side. He doesn’t want Vegas to see whatever shows on his face.
Vegas chuckles and strokes Pete’s cheek with enough pressure to turn his head back.
“I know,” he whispers, “It’s not for us.”
It’s the Us that makes Pete’s eyes burn: the promise of understanding. All his life, he wanted to be understood, to be seen. But now, it was too much.
It was so much that Pete couldn’t bear it anymore, the presence of his soulmate right next to him and so far away at the same time.
And when he frees himself from this torn state, the hand that knocks Vegas unconscious is the right one.
-
When Pete sits alone in his room of the main family compound, he takes a knife to his wrist for the first time in ages. The pain relates him to Vegas more than the words could ever hope to. That thought makes him dig the blade deeper; he shifts it underneath the words and pushes up, tearing out a large patch of skin. Blood flows down his arm and seeps into the sheets. Pete watches it pulse in the rhythm of his heartbeat. He sits still and focusses on the pain. But the words form anew and anew and anew on the raw skin, then flow away with the blood, then reform again.
Vegas is your soulmate, and you can’t change it, they tell him, and Pete replies that fate is wrong, that he’s one of those whose words will change eventually when he meets his true soulmate, someone as insignificant as him.
But the words that bleed remain the same.
-
Pete already knew it was too late from the moment he ran from Vegas and couldn’t stop thinking about him. He knew when everything he saw reminded him of Vegas. And he knew when he wanted to tear off his cuff and show his wrist for all the world to see. But to admit that to himself took him until it was almost too late. When the families fought against each other, Pete stumbled through battlefields. The part of himself cultivated to be nothing but the main family’s bodyguard commanded him to fight, but the part that belonged to Vegas made him continue searching for his soulmate.
He finds him by the side of the pool with shimmering lights floating over his body and a gun pressed against his chin.
“Stop! What are you doing, Vegas!?”
Vegas lets out a hoarse shout and drops his arms, his body curls in on himself. He is breathing heavily.
“There’s nothing left,” he chokes out and sounds like he means it, like his soulmate isn’t right there behind him.
“I’m here, Vegas,” Pete says. “I’m here.”
When Vegas doesn’t react Pete moves closer, rests a hand on Vegas’ shoulder to make him feel Pete’s presence.
“Why did you follow me, Pete? I’ve got nothing left.” He takes a staggering step forward, away from Pete, and Pete won’t allow it. He lunges for him, curls his arms around Vegas and clutches him close.
“Let me go!”
“No!”
They sink to their knees together and Pete refuses to pull back even a bit. Vegas’ body is shaking with sobs. “Why did you follow me…” With a surge of strength he frees himself from Pete’s grip and staggers back to his feet, taking a few stumbling steps. “I’ve got nothing left.”
“Would you stop saying that?” Pete yells, and now he’s sobbing himself. “I’m right here! And don’t turn your back on me like that. Because…because you’re my soulmate.”
Vegas stills. His left arm twitches. His wrist is bare today and Pete can see black words peak out underneath the sleeve. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not.” Pete undoes the clasp of the cuff and raises his hand, even though Vegas can’t see it. “I’m not lying. Each pet has its owner, I suppose. Those are the first words you ever said to me. And you were right. Each pet has its owner, and the owner has to take care of the pet. So why are you pushing me away now? I’m your pet. I’m your soulmate. You’re my everything, Vegas! Please don’t leave me like this!”
Vegas isn’t moving. And maybe it’s the connection between them or maybe it’s just that Pete understands Vegas on a fundamental level, but he can imagine his expression. It’s wide-eyed and shocked, but there is the smallest smile threatening his lips. Pete needs to see it.
“Vegas. Can you please turn around and look at me?”
At that, Vegas reacts. He startles, his entire body goes rigid, then he whirls around. He’s wide-eyes and shocked, but there is no smile on his lips. In the very second their eyes meet, Pete knows what happened. He knows it and he can’t do anything. The shots ring out before he can move.
Vegas’ body jerks under the impacts and he sinks to his knees and tilts to the side and crumples to the ground. Pete hears himself scream, feels his body act on its own and shoot whoever did that, then he stumbles forward and falls down next to Vegas unmoving body.
“No, no, no,” he begs and presses his hand on the wounds.
Vegas moves his left arm, raising it, resting his hand against Pete’s cheek. “We have soulmates, Pete,” he smiles. Pete covers his hand with his own and presses it against his skin. He doesn’t want to see the words. Words that he spoke and that killed Vegas.
“Luckily, it was me,” Vegas says. He blinks slowly as his consciousness is fading. But it’s still there. He can still hear Pete.
“You don’t get to leave me, Vegas,” Pete chokes out, takes the words and speaks them against Vegas’ wrist. He feels it warm against his skin. “You hear me? I won’t let you leave!”
-
Pete pulls open the curtains and lets light flood the room. He looks outside and takes in the bright and beautiful day. Summer is meant to be spent outside, his grandmother used to say, and usually he agrees. But this summer, Pete is more than happy to live in a small hospital room. When he hears shuffling behind him, he turns towards the reason.
“Awake?”
“For a while now.”
They smile at each other and Pete steps to the bed. He lowers himself next to Vegas and takes his hand.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Now? Good.” Vegas turns his hand and curls his fingers around Pete’s wrist. It is empty, just like his own. Their words are gone but they are still here. No one knows why and there is nothing Pete cares about less. The only thing that matters is that Vegas is here with him. They don’t need words to know they belong to each other.
The scars, covering both their bodies and souls, are the only proof of belonging they need.