If it weren't for the mark on his right hip, Philip would think the idea of soulmates was the silliest thing he'd ever heard.
The mark is small and pale, shaped like a crescent moon.
"Your soulmate has the opposite mark," his mother tells him when he first asks about it. "The moon and the sun."
Lukas' smile reminds him of sunshine.
Bright, like the light that comes through windows in the morning.
But Philip doesn't ask to see his soulmate mark. Maybe because he's afraid it won't match. Maybe because he's afraid it will.
Falling in love is a scary thing.
When Lukas first sees Philip's soulmate mark, Philip wishes it would just disappear, fade away into his skin.
"It's not supposed to be you," Lukas says, turning away.
Philip stares at the sun on Lukas' ankle. It doesn't make sense. Isn't the point of soulmates that they're supposed to be?
No one ever told him what to do if his soulmate didn't love him back.
"Whatever," Philip says. "All the soulmate stuff is bullshit anyways."
Philip can't pinpoint the exact moment when Lukas starts to come around to the idea of them, but it doesn't really matter. All that matters is that it happened somewhere along the way, right?
Lukas stops the motorbike near a tree, and they sit facing each other in the grass.
Philip tears a few blades of grass out of the ground and scatters them across the dirt at the base of the tree.
Lukas wraps his arms around his knees. "I wish we'd never seen any of it," he says suddenly, looking down.
"I know," Philip says, brushing the hair out of Lukas' face.
"I can't stop seeing it."
"I know."
"At least…" Lukas begins. "I mean…"
"What?" Philip reaches for Lukas' hand and laces their fingers together.
"I wish you'd never had to see it. But at least we weren't alone."
"Yeah." Philip absently traces the sun shape on Lukas' ankle. "We're in this together."
The idea that you can feel your soulmate's pain is supposedly a myth.
But Philip swears that when Lukas is shot, he feels it, too.
It hurts.
He sits in the hospital and watches Lukas breathing. In, out. In, out.
"I love you," he says, because maybe Lukas can hear him, and Philip just wants him to know. He just wants Lukas to know he loves him.
He's going to wake up, Philip tells himself, even though he's not sure he believes it. He's heard stories about people whose soulmates die when they're young. They say that your life is never the same. That it's almost impossible to go on.
It sounds plausible. Life without Lukas seems unbearable.
The world shifts when Lukas wakes up.
Some people say that life after you find your soulmate is pure happiness.
Philip can safely say that this is not the case.
But they're getting there.
It's their first morning in their new apartment. Philip rolls over to look at his boyfriend curled up in bed next to him. "Good morning, sunshine," he says softly.
Lukas mumbles something sleepily and snuggles into his side, burying his face in his shirt.
If it weren't for Lukas, Philip would think the idea of soulmates was the silliest thing he'd ever heard.