Arthur didn't consider himself a very unlucky man, most of the time. On the contrary, he was probably considered by other people to be quite lucky, or, at least, not doing too badly for himself. He lucky enough to have done well at his exams, gone to a good university, and from there he was lucky enough to obtain a high class degree in engineering. He was then lucky enough to easily secure himself a nice entry level job with said degree. At 25 he was on the way to owning his own flat – not something most people his age could boast about- and his commute to work wasn't terrible, despite the length. His family, whilst they weren't the closest with each other, certainly weren't horrendous and despite what his friend Alfred said he wasn't bad at making friends. There were just very few people he wanted to make friends with. But the few friends he had, he was very close to.

Therefore, if anything, he was actually doing alright for himself. Sadly, Arthur Kirkland could not call himself a lucky man because every now and again something so terribly unlucky would happen to him that it would set back all of the luck he had managed to accrue by about 50%. These, of course, were what he was remembered for by other people. One major thing was that he was always losing things. As a young child his parents found this out rather quickly when he'd often misplace his toys, but it only started to become a fixture of his personality after his dad had given him a £20 note when he was seven and instructions to get a pint of milk from the local corner shop. On the way there he'd either let go of or lost the money and afterwards neither of his parents were willing to trust him with the responsibility again, despite his fervent assurances it was a one time thing.

There was also the time when he was eleven. He'd finally been allowed to go to town by himself, a big deal at the time, and was supposed to meet his friends from school by the fountain in the high street. Enjoying his newfound freedom, he'd decided to pop to the off-license beforehand to get some sweets, feeling very grown up with the luxury of not having to ask first. However, upon entering he was promptly grabbed by a security guard and pulled into the back room where the police were called to arrest him. It turned out that a boy, around his height with his colouring, and wearing the same damn jumper of all things, had been caught by CCTV stealing quite a bit from not only that shop, but quite a few others that day. He was delivered home in mortification to his mother, who was absolutely livid with him. Although she did eventually believe that it wasn't him -there was no concrete proof, after all- Arthur was banned from stepping foot in town alone again until he was fourteen. His brothers found that particularly hilarious, as did all of his classmates.

Another time, when he was seventeen, Arthur had worked all of the summer and saved up all of his money in order to buy his first motorcycle. He'd loved the thing, passed his test on his first try and happily told anyone who'd listen all about it, only to put his keys down somewhere on a night out and get it stolen after only 3 weeks of having it. He'd had to walk the 3 miles back home in the rain because no one would pick up their phone to collect him and he had no money for the bus.

Then, at university, he'd spent month after month toiling over his research for his dissertation essay only to submit it and have it pulled up for plagiarism. Somehow, he'd managed to copy over 60% of content from other essays despite having never seen them before. Threatened with suspension, it was only after a few mental breakdown and weeks' worth of submitting evidence and writing emails that he was able to prove that, despite what it really did look like, he had in fact written the thing all in his own words.

He was also unlucky in another, more intimate way.

Arthur had known all of his life that the meeting he'd eventually have with his soulmate wasn't destined to be...perfect, as it where. The words inscribed on the skin of his left arm, in deep black ink for all to see, read: 'Fuck, I don't have time for this,' leaving Arthur no doubt that he was in for a bit of a challenge.

He was more bothered about it when he was really young. When he'd first been told what his tattoo was for he'd burst into tears. The idea that someone who was supposed to love him unconditionally could already hate him was the saddest thing he could think of. His brothers didn't help matters by teasing him that the reason he'd got his particular tattoo because he was so grumpy.

'Or!' Patrick, his second eldest brother, used to like to crow at him, 'Or, maybe, it's just you! Imagine that, they take one look at your face, think you're a troll or something and then realise just what they've been stuck with.'

Owen muffled his laughter with his sleeve. His own soulmate tattoo, a nice and friendly, 'Oh thank God,' meant that he was quite looking forward to his own meeting. Normally adverse to picking on his youngest brother too much, this was the one topic where Arthur's youngest older brother always felt as though he safely had the upper hand.

Thankfully, it was the one act of teasing Arthur that Ian didn't participate in. On his oldest brother's arm was a rather ambivalent 'really, it's you,' which could be read one of two ways. It made Arthur grateful that potentially he wasn't the only one in his family or social circle with difficulties in meeting his supposed 'perfect match.'

His concern with the whole thing only grew worse after he left home for university, and after that living alone as an independent adult. Every new person he seemed to meet had such lovely things written for them, the traditionally lines one could watch in soap operas and read about in soppy love books: 'You're more beautiful that I could have ever imagined,' or 'Oh, it's finally you!' Either that or the banal ones.

The banal ones, personally, Arthur thought were far worse. At least his was recognisable, as potentially confidence destroying as it was. Some poor sods were stuck with a 'hello', or a 'nice to meet you.' Ones like that meant that one's soulmate could, quite literally, be anyone. Arthur had to count his blessings where he could.

But although his soulmate would at least be easy to recognise, Arthur would lie awake at night worrying about what on earth could happen in his future for his soulmate to utter his tattoo upon meeting him. None else he met seemed to have a tattoo which could be interpreted as disgust and as much as his friends tried to convince him otherwise, the flittering looks of pity they gave his arm said everything.

That was fine. He could cope with that. Sure, it was unusual. Sure, it made him self-conscious and uncomfortable when people stared at his arm for too long. However, he refused to let this become a defining part of his life and worked hard to minimise the time people spent talking about it or focusing on it.

Generally, therefore, the unlucky blips in his life were, mostly, cancelled out.

But today, today might be the unluckiest thing that had ever happened to him.

He'd managed to get off work early, for once. He worked for quite a small company but business had recently picked up, so usually he had to stay a few extra hours or take on a few more projects than he'd like just to maintain their growth. It wasn't a big deal, if anything it only helped him – the more experience the better. But today he'd finally cleared a big enough dent in his to-do list to allow him to leave on time with the rest of the rush hour.

As soon as it hit half 4 he clocked out, shrugged on his coat and left the office to come out onto the street below his building. It was busy, hundreds of others were leaving at the same time and he had to push against the flow of people to travel in the opposite direction.

Making his way to a pedestrian crossing, Arthur shuffled his bag strap on his shoulder and tugged his coat closer to his body. Jesus it was cold, January wasn't usually this bad. There was a lot of traffic, he hadn't considered it was going to be this busy. At 7pm there were always far less people.

The light for the cars turned red and Arthur impatiently watched the pedestrian light, waiting for the sign that he could cross. A few seconds after the cars stopped - there it was.

Moving with the crowd he pushed forward only to bump into the wide back of the guy in front of him. The man didn't seem to be moving, nor did he look like he was going to be anytime soon. Muttering to himself, Arthur made to step around him only to be blocked by someone coming from the other side. Now beyond frustrated, he tried to to the other side but when he glanced up to check the lights had changed at the cars had once again started to move.

Bollocks, he wasn't going to leave early again if this is what constituted as rush hour. The traffic coming in in the morning was enough, he didn't need this. A crowd had started to gather around him again, pressing in to an uncomfortably squash. Grinding his teeth together Arthur tried to school bubbling temper and made to move away from the immovable statue of a human in front of him, only to have someone crash into his back. Taking a deep breath in he decided against pushing them back and instead tapped his foot in irritation, willing the lights to change.

'Fuck, I don't have time for this!'

Arthur didn't need to feel the slight tingle on his arm to know what happened. His breath caught. The speaker had the gruff voice of a man and their voice came from somewhere behind him on his right. This was it, that was his soulmate. A bubble of relief grew in his chest. After all those years of worry, his soulmate's ire wasn't directed at him after all! He couldn't wait to tell his brothers, he the look on Owen's face would be priceless.

He made to turn around, to say something back, but before he realised what was going on the crowd surged forward and dragged him along with it. Cold fear quickly replaced any happiness he'd felt.

Desperately, he tried to stop himself. Twisting around he tried to catch the eye of whoever had said those damn words but he could only see women standing behind him, looking rather annoyed at the hold up he was causing. But there, pushing out of the huddle to walk in the other direction, was a man with shoulder length blond hair. His face looked stressed and he was striding away into the masses on the street and away from Arthur.

'Wait!' Arthur struggled around an old lady with a particularly large carrier back and made it back onto the pavement. Frantically, he craned his neck, hoping to catch sight of the man's head again and caught sight of him in the distance away, mixed in with the crowd.

'Hey! Excuse me!' He looked down for a split second to avoid a wayward child and then, that was it. He looked up again but it was too late, his soulmate was gone.

Arthur tried to catch his breath, feeling the panic well up inside him. He swivelled to his left, just in case the man had crossed the road but there was no one over there who looked even slightly familiar either. There wasn't even a huddle of people surrounding Arthur now but there were just so many of them and they were all moving so fast in so many different directions that it was hard to keep track of anyone, let alone someone who was obviously in a rush to be somewhere else.

Arthur stumbled his way to the nearest building and leant against it weakly, heart hammering in his chest and the sound of his own breathing in his ears. Oh God. Oh God. It had all happened so fast, but that was it. He'd met his soul mate and he hadn't even managed to meet him.

What if his soulmate hadn't heard him. Or worse, what if he was never supposed to hear him; not everyone had a tattoo. He could have been Arthur's soulmate, but maybe Arthur wasn't his- a one sided match. He ran a shaky hand through his hair and tried to calm himself down. It was okay, this could still be fixed. This wasn't the end; dammit he wouldn't let it be. There were websites for this sort of thing, Facebook even could work. He'd watched reality TV shows before about situations like this, everyone had. Poor souls who missed their opportunity to get to know their destined life partner and were now condemned to search forever and hope that they meet again. Fleeting encounters on public transport or as children where they couldn't stay and swap contact information. There were hundreds of books and plays written about it alongside depressing love songs and operas. Whilst not common, this sort of thing wasn't exactly unusual by any means. But this happened to other people, it wasn't ever supposed to happen to Arthur. It was something he heard about and pitied but never expected.

Arthur tried to swallow, tongue heavy. He couldn't tell his mother; he couldn't tell his brothers. It was hard enough trying not to break down on the floor now without thinking about other people and the look they'd give him. No, Arthur refused to become like those people on the TV, he wasn't some old sop who was just going to sit about lamenting this, he was going to fight as hard as he could.

With one last look around, just in case, he resolved to himself that no matter how long it took or what he'd have to do, he was going to find his soulmate again. Pushing away from the wall, he set off in the direction of home, stubbornly ignoring that little voice in his head that whispered that, despite all of the tough words, that might well have been it for him.

His soulmate could very well be lost forever and there was nothing he could do about it

AN:

Hello! I've never written a soulmate AU before but I've recently got into reading them (down into the deep, deep hole I go). I've noticed that in the ones I've found there may be an issue before meeting their soulmate, or after, but I haven't seen one where there's been a problem like this before. I'd think it'd be a lot more common, think of how many people you pass every day! There's bound to be someone who messes it up. It just got me thinking and for me poor England would most certainly be that person.

I'd love to know what you all think, so please do let me know!

Thanks so much for reading, I shall hopefully see you all soon