Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead. Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: onedayyouustchange asked for: "Aaron and Eric, soulmates first meeting." – I decided to try my hand at a different version of the soulmate trope, this one relating to the idea of 'soul-timers', where everyone is born with a timer counting down the days until you meet your soulmate.
Warnings: Set pre-season one. While I am aware that it is canon that Aaron and Eric were in a long term relationship pre-apocalypse, this fic is going to showing how Aaron and Eric could have first met – just as the world decides to end. Expect adult language, adult themes, angst, drama, canon appropriate violence and gore, mild references to depression, homophobia, and Aaron's questionable home life and along with a surprisingly happy ending.
Countdown (I just hope you don't bite)
There was a pleasant softness to the flow of his timer that he'd always liked the most.
It was unassuming. Cockily-different and sweetly strong.
In a word, home.
Like the scent of the familiar before you see it, only it took decades for you to get there.
Everyone's timer was different, not just in the way the numbers counted down – how they jumped backwards or forwards or sometimes seemed to stall completely. But there was also something unique in the way the numbers flowed. How the inky-dark of them flirted with the veins that connected the wrist to the arm, melding with the blushing colors that tended to spread across your skin throughout the day.
Some said it was an echo, an impression of your one. Others said it was wishful thinking and superstition - the stuff Hollywood happy endings were made of. His mother, unfortunately, agreed. Her perfectly painted lips dipping into a cruel downturn as she joked about him being a 'human mood ring.' Her eyes strayed more to his timer than they ever did to his face as the jab grew less and less warm as the years trickled past. His mother's timer had run out sometime in the womb. Empty and barren-black before his grandmother even had a chance to hold her.
He learned to pity her later, even after everything she'd done.
No one deserved that.
Not even her.
True to form, his soulmate was a near constant play of pastels and dizzying swirls of oddball combinations that made him picture laughter and blanket-warm contentment regardless of the weather or time of year. He got these impressions sometimes. Lancing little niggles of awareness, like when he smoothed his shirt cuffs and the fabric chilled across the sensitive skin of his timer. Suddenly sure that somehow, somewhere, his one had felt it too.
Your soul timer was considered to be a deeply private thing.
You didn't ask about it.
It was taboo to the point that most people wore a decorative cuff around their wrists.
Keeping the running numbers and colors safe from prying eyes.
So, naturally, keeping that in mind, everyone talked about it.
Everyone tried to find a way to ask – to look – when they first met you.
Sometimes it felt like that was all anyone thought about.
It was for good reason, but still-
You couldn't walk a block without hearing it.
People wondering about their one.
Gossiping with envy as they talked about people they knew who'd already found theirs.
And honestly, he wasn't any different.
He'd thought about it a hundred times before. Thousands, even. Thumb grazing across the numbers, cock leaking enthusiastically into the chafe of his briefs when he was home alone in his stupid little apartment. Wondering what they looked like. If they'd like him. How they'd meet. Nothing went unwondered. No avenue of fantasy was left unexplored. If they were a woman or a-
He was the echo he always got back. Filtered through with gentle, bubbling amusement. He.
The first time it had happened he'd looked up at his ceiling and choked on a laugh like the whole thing was nothing and everything all at once. Like it didn't matter – like it had never mattered - as the idea slotted into place somewhere just above where he figured the soul would be. It was a place that didn't curl away in disgust like his mother had taught, but rather only yearned and wanted. A place that wanted, no- needed to do impossible, animal things like glut himself on his one's scent and crawl clean inside his skin. Things that scared him a bit with how fervently he wanted.
Sometimes though, it just made him wonder what he leeched back through. Wincing internally whenever he did as his mother's voice inevitably found root – spreading like doubt in the back of his mind. Wondering if, sometimes, on the bad days, his one tasted the stale tart of homemade applesauce curdling across his tongue.
But more often than anything he didn't think it was possible to be worth someone that lived their life surrounded in so much color.
The day he accepted a job at the agency – a non-profit dealing with clean well water in certain unsavory parts of the world that were generally ruled by overlords and drug cartels - he was barely through the revolving door when he glanced down at his timer and nearly walked straight into a wall.
Within the time it took to catch the subway and travel the twenty minutes downtown the numbers had flipped from the sedate, black-scripted two years, sixteen hours, six minutes and fifty nine seconds to just one minute and fourteen seconds.
He wrenched himself straight and wheeled around in a circle like he could somehow see them coming. Recognize them somehow. Heart pounding wildly in his chest. He kept one eye on his timer and the other on the foyer as the people around him gave him a wide berth, the two security guards fixing him with the hairy eyeball from the front desk. He didn't even notice, joy and anticipation tightening in his throat as he fastened his eyes on the opposite corner of the hall and waited. Counting down, counting down, counting down-
He looked down at his wrist and deflated, watching the numbers increase.
Minutes. Hours. Days.
Dammit.
The second time it happened and his timer reset - twelve hours, twenty minutes and nine seconds - he cursed out loud in the middle of the men's bathroom. Loudly. The third time he'd been in the middle of a meeting. Watching the old-fashioned, wood paneled door as his coffee cooled – curling steam and forgotten beside him. Only it'd never opened. Instead, the fucking fire alarm blared with half a minute to go and he'd been forced to watch the numbers climb with a terrible sort of detachment that'd come out tasting sour in the back of his throat. Wondering how much more of this he could take as his boss repeated the same speech about operational protocol for the twelfth time in under seven months as they huddled, miserable and long suffering together in the pissing rain. Crowding under the overhang in the courtyard until the Fire Marshal gave the okay to go back inside.
It was maddening, and unfortunately, completely unavoidable. It was all about circumstance and last minute choices. The timer could only account for so much. Sometimes the decisions you made – big or small – had an effect. Things like being five minutes late running out your front door or planning a summer vacation. Things like getting in an accident or having a family member pass away. Every second of every day had the ability to either bring you together or spread you even further apart all over again.
With some people it was simple - cut and dry.
The numbers counted down and there they were.
But not them.
His soulmate seemed determined to be a handful.
The fourth and fifth time went down remarkably the same way.
So did the sixth, seventh, eighth, eleventh, fifteenth.
Always at work.
Always with seconds to spare.
Always ending in another disappointment.
Years passed like that.
Like ships passing in the dark, they just kept missing each other.
Until well, the world ended, apparently.
He was trying to calm a hysterical woman who'd gotten separated from her husband in the chaos outside. Helping her with her inhaler and gently trying to disentangle her death grip on his coat sleeve - when a security guard and a handful of police ran in from the street.
They were bleeding, trigger happy and screaming for desks and chairs – anything to make a barricade - as a woman from the HR department two floors up slammed the lock on the revolving doors half a second before what looked like over two dozen shambling figures, dripping red and growling, ran head first into the glass.
"Jesus Christ!"
"What the hell!"
"Who are they!?"
"They are going to break the glass!"
"What do we do!?
"911 is busy! I can't get through!"
"Who are-"
"It ain't who, but what they are, lady!" one of the officers answered, cutting through the panicked voices with an authority that would have been impressive if anyone had been in the frame of mind to appreciate it. "They're the infected the news has been talking about. Same with the CDC. It's that god damned virus! Ain't seen nothin' like it."
"That's impossible," his boss snapped, pushing to the front of the crowd. Rocking back on his heels and fiddling with his glasses in that way he did when he was stalling for time. "The news has been talking about rioting. These are sick people! They're injured, they need medical attention, we need to-"
"Tell that to half my squad!" the officer slapped back. Pointing a bloody finger at the glass where the high-visibility stripes of more than one police uniform melded together with the tangle of people mouthing at the glass. Ripped into and dripping. Like something out of a nightmare.
He was backing away from the glass, eyes following the shallow cracks already starting to spider-web outwards from the beating fists and press of bodies when he suddenly stumbled. One hand flying to his breast as a soul jerking tug swooped like failing gravity in the very center of him. Almost like the universe was yanking on a string he didn't even know he was attached to before – all of a sudden – he found himself running.
He careened around a corner, dress shoes squeaking as he left black smudges across the tile floor. Brought up short as a red-head – all gangly-tall, with a mess of colt-limbs and cheekbones that could kill – struggled with the side exit. Trying to pull it closed as bloody hands jammed into the gap. Clawing at the sleeves of his suit jacket – snarling and growling as the man let go of a bitten off yell. Every muscle quivering and on point as he braced his legs against the frame and tried to yank the door closed – clearly struggling. But people just streamed past without stopping. Not seeming to realize that if these things got inside it would be all over, that if the man didn't get that door closed they would all be-
He was beside him like blinking. Hands brushing as he curled his fingers around the push bar and yanked. Adding his weight into the mix as the man cursed under his breath, tendons in his neck straining.
For a heart stopping second he didn't think it was going to be enough. Instead they got lucky. Because it was only when a fresh knot of infected slammed against the door from behind that they were able to use that inertia to wrench the door shut.
He staggered, off balance as the lock clicked and the infected scratched and clawed ineffectually at the metal door. The red-head, however, sprawled panting across the floor. A weird mix of pale and flushed against the coal-grey of his suit. Blue eyes just a bit too piercing as the man's lip curled up in the corner like a thank you.
And, a lot like an afterthought, he looked down at his wrist.
0 years. 0 days. 0 hours. 0 minutes. 0 Seconds.
Oh.
Oh.
"It's you," he breathed. The words coming out rough and vulnerable from his throat like he didn't have it in him to pretend this wasn't the best thing with the worst timing ever.
The red-head just blinked up at him, bemused and blood-spattered as he rubbed cautiously at his wrist. Seeming to get stuck there for a couple of beats as sirens started up in the distance. Letting the moment lengthen as he stared at his own timer before, unbelievably, the man actually laughed. Delighted and pealing as a wave of contentment and arousal washed over him like waves lapping at the shore - gentle but insistent.
"Took you long enough," the red-head mused. Eyes bright as he looked him up and down, memorizing him, just as he was. "You've kept me waiting for, well, ever."
He didn't kiss that silly little smirk off his soulmate's face - not yet - but even then it was a near thing. Instead, he held out his hand and tried not to flinch when something –a car or maybe even a building – blew up somewhere outside.
"Let's get out of here," he rasped, a little bit lost in him already as the urge to touch and taste and finally make the man his bubbled under his skin like burning.
"Smart, strong and handsome," the man returned, cheeky. Flashing white teeth and eye-crinkling amusement as he took his hand and laced their fingers together like he'd been waiting his entire life to do just that. Making him shiver with a low building heat when the affirming little spark of connection spread out like tendrils between them. "Guess I lucked out."
Somehow, he guessed they both had.
They were already running – following the surviving police officers down an alley - trying to avoid the screams and shambling figures as a woman in an FBI civilian coordinator jacket shrilled into a radio for an extraction point before he realized he didn't even know his soulmate's name.
That's the part of the story they ended up telling people first.
Much later when people asked how they found each other.
Because honestly, end of the world aside, for them, it fit.
Authors Note #2: Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed. - This story is now complete.