Written for trope fest over on tumblr
"What kind of person could they be if our shared mark is a pair of antlers on my arse?" asks Lily, craning her neck to stare at the ink, stark against her pale skin. No matter how hard she glares at it, it remains there.
Behind her, Marlene snickers. "It's not on your arse," she says, barely managing to keep the laughter out of her voice, "It's right above your arse."
She directs her glare to the blonde who still had tear tracks down her cheek from the initial bout of laughter. "Because that makes things so much better," she snaps, "Who the fuck thinks 'hey a pair of antlers as a tramp stamp is great idea for a soulmark'?"
"Maybe it's a symbol for something," she says, winding a lock of hair around her finger before prodding the mark once more. Lily squawks and jumps away from her while the other girl just grins wickedly. "Maybe you're soulmate likes it up-"
"If you don't want me to cut off your tongue you'll stop right there," she warns. Lily glances back at the mirror, bemoaning the appearance of the mark. "If I ever meet this fucker I'm punching him in the dick."
"Or the tit," Marlene chirps, "Don't let heteronormativity rule your life."
"Shut up Marlene."
Soulmarks weren't rare, but they also weren't exactly common. It was like a sunshower, a blue moon, a six petal flower on a four petal bush. Different, unexpected, but not rare.
It's a topic tied into all their subjects; historians told the stories of those who shared the bond, the power they held when stood side by side, waging war and ruling men, the poets spoke about the special brand of intimacy shared only between lovers of the kind, a bond that ran deeper than anything else, while science tried to prove it with fact, a genetic anomaly, perhaps natural selection taking place, making it easier to find a desirable mate. For centuries they've been attempts to explain them- platonic, romantic and in between- but no one can ever agree and soon it just became a thing, accepted just like that.
(It falls in between questions of why do you taste like heartbreak and ash? how does a person manage to have galaxies in their eyes? what is that pain in my chest when you leave me?)
(There're no answers and one answer. Love, the most dangerous thing of them all.)
They all learn about it, but learning and experiencing are two completely different things. They never tell you that you feel the pain of it appearing, like a million needles pressed into your skin at the same time, the place where it grows warm and irritated, and it leaves you feeling as though there's a gaping wound in your chest for days.
They never tell you that remain hurting and raw, craving something that you never had in the first place. A kind of want that drives you mad.
It happened while she was in class, carrying out a chem lab with Marlene and the wave of pain hit so hard, so intense, that she dropped a beaker of sulphuric acid and felt like her spine was being cleaved in two, from the base up. She told a lie about cramps through clenched teeth, and Marlene helped her hobble out of class, almost collapsing on the cool bathroom tile as another wave of pain passes.
She feels like an eternity passes, during which she heavily leans on Marlene, her shirt untucked and rucked up around her waist, while she presses a hand to the small of her back until the burning stops and all that's left is the mark standing out against porcelain.
"Holy shit," Marlene breathed, a shaky hand reaching out to trace the mark, and she flinches away before she can. Her entire back hurts. "Holy shit."
"What is it?" she asks, craning her neck around to no avail.
A giggle bubbles past her lip. Marlene's fingers gently graze her skin. "Antlers, right here," she tells her, and presses the skin down about. A pained mewl comes from Lily.
The two girls look at each other, and she starts to her feet, hastily shoving her shirt back into her skirt, straightening out her tie. There was only a few minutes until break, and she rather not be caught in the girls' bathroom looking like she was shagged ragged. The coarse fabric of her uniform catches on the skin when she moves and it's the worst.
She washes her face and tries to compose herself before heading back out there. Marlene catches her arm and whispers, "You've got a soulmate."
The word sits heavy between them and she says nothing. It's crazy how in less than ten minutes her life has changed.
Lily remembers scoffing when she read stories, of soulmates willing to raze the earth for their other half, death and destruction and willingness to collapse in onto themselves just for the other person. It seemed stupid at time, one person unable to live without the other, some kind of unhealthy co-dependence shit, but now she gets it.
And it scares the hell out of her.
Over time she learns to deal with it.
She makes the mistake of letting her sister see it, and Petunia is livid. The blow out is massive and ever since then there's been a frosty silence between them. But she leaves for uni soon enough and only has to deal with her a few times a year.
It sticks with her though; the envious glances soon gave way to vitriol and poison.
"I don't even know why I wanted on in the first place," she sneered, arms crossed and face screwed up. "Obviously it's only for freaks like you, people who aren't whole by themselves."
It stings more than she's willing to admit.
From then on she puts in effort to ignore it. The pain subsides to just a nagging gnaw in her stomach after a few months, easily forgotten, but sometimes it hits her out of the blue, and Lily ends up doubled over, clutching on to a chair with bone white knuckles. Still, she no longer spends her days thinking about it, doesn't let it rule her life.
It's easy to pretend that there isn't someone out there made just for her. Easy to kiss boys and girls with bitter mouths and caged hearts, easy to ignore the burning that springs up when she's alone at night with nothing but her thoughts for company. She makes it easy to forget all of it.
For the first time, she's not afraid of what the mark might mean, but hates it with a fiery passion, spending hours rubbing at it until her skin is raw and red, investing in heavy duty concealer to cover it. Thankfully, it's pretty easy to hide it given that it's right above the swell of her bum. No one sees the mark, no one else knows of its existence, and Marlene swears to keep it a secret.
The word soulmate rips from her mouth like a curse whenever she speaks of it, like a daisy being crushed in an iron fist.
On her nineteenth birthday she wakes to flowers blooming on her breastbone and panics.
There are dark lines traced on to her sternum; peonies, roses and honeysuckle all in black and white, lying heavy on her heart. It feels like it's crushing her.
It doesn't hurt though, which shocks her the most. The last time felt as though her skin was ripping at the seams but this one is soft and warm, and Lily feels her stomach turn. It's supposed to hurt; it's supposed to make her hate them even more. It's not supposed to fill her warmth. It's not supposed to be quiet and lovely.
She wants to cry and scream and yell.
Instead she dons a skin tight leather skirt and a dangerously low cut tank, her pink bra peaking through the sides. She goes to the bar with her friends, and they all do shots until she can't walk straight. She makes out with a stranger in a dark alley, and can't remember much, if they were a boy or girl, big or small. She remembers gold dripping through her fingers though, and lavender pressed into her neck.
The hickey at the base of her throat isn't the only souvenir from last night.
There is a wreath of laurels wrapped around her bicep in dark green ink. A tattoo.
They're not frowned upon, not exactly, but they still do get some side eye, particularly when a couple decides to get matching ones. You can't designate your own soulmate, some might say. The stigma is fading fast however, more and more people getting them. This is a mark she chose for herself, this is something she actually wanted.
It hurt and bled, and when it was done the skin was red and raw wrapped under bandages, but a small part of her basked in it.
This is how a soulmark was supposed to feel. It was supposed to hurt because that's what soulmates do.
It's exactly what she tells Marlene the next day when the girl spots it, dark and shocking on her skin, still smarting whenever she moves.
After, she licks her lips with a frown. So this is what a lie tastes like, bitterness that lies in her mouth like cotton.
The Ancient World course she elects to take meets every Tuesday and Thursday, and the syllabus is heavily inlaid with stories of the Greeks and Romans. It's not one her requirements, but Lily can spare three hours a week to duck in to the old hall with dust swirling galaxies and faulty air conditioning.
One of the first things they discuss is the concept of soulmates. The story of how the first humans had four legs, four arms, two heads, one heart before they were split, left them to wander the earth bleeding from their chest in search of their partner.
A girl in the second row raised her hand, asking why they were separated and the professor smiled.
"Zeus was afraid," he says, "Love is powerful on its own, and the love shared between a soulmate is the most powerful of them all."
She doesn't mean to scoff, not really, but she does, and so does the boy three seats down, the one with the leather jacket and ponytail. He looks over at her, glancing across her form almost disinterestedly before shooting her a heartbreaking grin.
After class he introduces himself. Sirius Black, a history major with an entire sleeve of tattoos down his left arm and an old Harley he fixed up himself.
He says nothing when she stares at his tattoos for a few seconds, just remains impassive, but when she easily shrugs off her cardigan, exposing her own, he smiles.
From then on the two of them are desk buddies.
They get a lunch together after class, joking around and shooting the shit while she steals his chips and he pretends not to notice. He's spending the year here in an exchange programme, leaving his friends behind up north, but he fits in pretty well in her ragtag bunch, even is he and Marlene butt heads from time to time. It's fun and easy, and by the time the end of the semester rolls around, she's ready to admit that he's probably one of her best friends.
"How do you feel about soulmates?" he asks one night, smoking his way through a packet of Marlboros. Lily stiffens almost immediately, and only just barely restrains herself from reaching out and touching her marks.
Instead, she reaches over and steals his cig. "What about them?" she replies after she's taken a long drag.
He makes some sort of gesture with his hands. "You know... We only started talking because you thought they were hogwash."
She frowns, dropping the cig and grinding it on the pavement with the toe of her boot. "I don't know... They exist, obviously, but I don't really buy into the whole dramatics. I'm not going to fall in love with someone just because a random mark appeared on my skin and told me so."
Sirius looks at her for a moment before leaning back against the wall, shoving his hands in his pockets. He lights up another and they just stare at passing traffic for the time being. Finally, after the seventh car flies by, blasting heavy bass and rap, he says, "My best friend's got one."
She's heard all about this best friend before, but never this. It's the first time she has an actual chance of meeting someone her age with a soul mark. Still though, she doesn't want to be weird about so she knocks her shoulder into his, and she offers him a teasing smile. "This the best friend I always hear about but never meet? James?"
He barks out a laugh. "Yeah, it is. Didn't realise at first, the tosser. I saw it before he did, when I walked in on him in the shower, this thing right over his arse. I thought he went and got a tattoo without me."
A trickle of cold worms its way down her back, but Lily adamantly ignores it, focusing on Sirius who's looking at the cig as though it holds the answers to all his questions. "It didn't even hurt him, not a bit, and I spent the next few days waiting for one to show up on my skin. I thought we- James is like a brother to me. He's the family I never had, and I thought the universe thought so too."
He exhales a puff of smoke that lingers in the cool night air, and Lily shuffles closer to lay her head on his shoulder.
"Fuck soulmates," she says, slightly muffled by the collar of his shirt, and she can see the corners of his lips tip up.
"Yeah," he sighs, dropping his head atop hers. "Fuck soulmates."
She first meets Sirius' James when she's half under the couch, swearing as she tries to get batteries that fell behind there.
When she finally gets her hands on them she wiggles back out, still cursing the thing into oblivion, even as she shoves it back into the remote. It's only then she realises that her door is open and there's a stranger standing in the middle of it, staring at her cobweb covered self with his mouth half open.
Objectively, she knows that this is James, that he's Sirius's friend, and she's seen him in a number of pictures, but it still doesn't stop her from blurting out, "Who the fuck are you?"
He opens and closes his mouth a few times before finally settling on, "I'm James. Sirius said he told you-"
"Do you always barge into strangers' dorms?"
"I thought-"
"Bloody hell, I leave you alone for two seconds and you've already riled her up," says Sirius as he walks past James and into the dorm. He nods at Lily. "Hey Lils."
Meanwhile, James splutters behind him. "I didn't even-"
"Shh. We brought beer. Go give her the beer. She's more tolerable when she's drunk," he interrupts again.
"Fuck you," Lily tells him good naturedly, and Sirius blows a raspberry at her before swiping the remote.
James is still standing in the doorway, something akin to shock masking his face. Lily turns back to him, eyebrows raised. "Are you going to come inside, or are you just going to stand around like a prick all day?"
"I'm coming-"
"I don't care. Hand over the six pack."
He does as she says, though not before rolling his eyes, huffing, "Am I going to actually get to finish a sentence while I'm here?"
Sirius snorts and cracks open a can. "You have to earn your place mate," he tells him before turning back to her, "James is my sugar daddy."
James' face twists in mild disgust. "Please don't say that."
"Come on, Prongs; if you're really desperate, you can buy Evans' love here."
"My affection can be bought through Cadbury chocolates and some good, old fashioned whiskey," Lily deadpans, and Sirius bumps her fist with his.
At this point James finally steps into the dorm, closing the door behind him. "I see why the two of you are friends," he says, coming to sit next to her on the couch. It's more of a loveseat really, old and worn with barely any leg room, and everyone always ends up pooling together in the middle. It was there when Lily first moved in, for some unidentifiable reason, and she never really got around to getting rid of it.
His arm brushes against hers when he sits, and her skin tingles where it touched. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye, but if he had any reaction, he hides it well. "You're both assholes," he says succinctly, and she elbows him in the ribs while Sirius just snorts.
He slings his arm around her, leather jacket sticking uncomfortably to her skin, and pulls on her braid while grinning at James. It's feral and full of all teeth. "Yeah, we are."
James is only here for break, and Lily, well, she doesn't really know what to make of him.
He's tall, taller than Sirius who already uses her head as an arm rest, and snarky, but it's a different brand of asshole from his best mate. While she and Sirius are both cynics with bloodied teeth and grenade hearts, James is all acerbic wit and sharp edges. It's a nice contrast, especially when she's privy to see them tag teaming, taking on an asshole twice their size who was putting the moves on her, before she manages to punch his lights out.
They bicker over the smallest of things, and she learns that once he warms up to her- which honestly doesn't take that long; she reckons James can make a snowman warm up to him if he tries- he's meeting her word for word and it's. It's fun.
"I can't believe you're doing it wrong," he says, appropriately aghast as he watches her pour her cereal in to the bowl of milk. They stayed in his hotel for the night, after stumbling home from the club. He's a terrible dancer she learnt. She also learns that he has matching tattoos with Sirius, a small paw on the inner wrist, and her skin still burns from where he traced her own. "Who the fuck puts the milk before cereal?"
"Sod off, Potter," she snaps, her tongue poking out while she mixes in some sugar as well. He makes a distressed sound in the back of his throat.
"You're going to get diabetes by the time you're thirty," he declares, and Lily throws a handful of cornflakes at his face.
The talk of soulmates doesn't come up. Lily does her best to ignore the brand on her, but some days it's there, like a deep ache in her bones, and she swears she sees a black bouquet, just like hers, through the threadbare fabric of his t shirt, but she manages to convince herself that it's nothing more than a trick of the light. Besides, the thought doesn't even linger, for the next minute he's arguing with her about the best character to use in Mario Kart.
("Princess Peach's bike has the most manoeuvrability." "Oh my god, see this is why you always fucking die when on Rainbow Road.")
In all honesty, she doesn't realise what's happening until Marlene points it out for her.
She whistles lowly and says, "So that's why you let down the guy I was wingmanning for you."
Lily tears her eyes away from James, whom she was making funny faces at in order to get him to crack while he's in line to get their coffee. "What?"
"The guy, Lily! He had arms," she says, "But now I realise that it's moot point since you're head over heels for tall, dark, and dorky over there."
"What," she says again, though this time it's more deadpan than a question. "I'm not head over heels for anyone. Especially not James. He's a dumbass."
She hates the smile the other girl gives her, hates it even more when she pats her shoulder and says sweetly, "Whatever you say."
She doesn't get to argue, because Sirius chooses that moment to return from the loo, throwing himself in to the empty seat in appropriate drama and fanfare.
Lily refuses to think about it, but once Marlene's put the idea into her head, it's all she can think about. It's all she can do to analyse every interaction between them, to wonder if grabbing on to his arm while laughing is something she does with all her friends, if she looks at him any differently than she does with others. She's only known him personally for two weeks, and even though Sirius used to tell her all about his friends from back home, she can't possibly have fallen for him so quickly.
Can she?
When James leaves it's rainy, and she and Sirius drive him to the train station in the shitty little station wagon they borrowed from Marlene's dorm mate. He hugs Sirius first, and then her, his palm ghosting across the antlers hidden under her shirt causing her to feel warm all over.
The flames don't stop for nearly two days.
The text a lot.
And Snapchat each other while undergoing a passive aggressive tag war on Facebook. She has like seven Pepe the Frog memes in a row on her page because of him, and Sirius threatens to report them both. Lily learns two things.
The first being that James manages to look good in any of the ridiculous Snapchat filters, including the weird ones that contort the face, which is thoroughly unfair. He sends one with him in the dog filter and she unabashedly screenshots it, saving it for future use. Marlene teases her for weeks when she finds it in her camera role.
The second is that he always has to have to last word in everything, and has a certain liking to texting her at 2am just to properly fulfil this. The middle finger emoji quickly becomes one of the most used ones on her phone.
All the signs are there to be honest, but she doesn't actually realise that she likes him until a few months later when he sends her a blurry picture of a Venus Flytrap with the caption: 'Gonna get you a bouquet of these since you hate normal flowers.'
The feeling washes over her like a wave in a kiddie pool, slow and easy, with affection dripping over her as she realises that this fool has somehow gotten a hold of her heart.
Lily decides to ask Sirius after class when they go for lunch, and he just snorts, a bit of lettuce flying out his mouth. "Fucking git's been infatuated with you since asked him who the fuck he was."
She almost drops her sandwich in shock. "What?" she splutters, "Why didn't he say anything?"
He levels her with a blank look. "Because, he has a soulmate and I know he's a prick, but he's a good guy, Lily. He doesn't want to start dating you and then have his soulmate come along. He'd hate himself."
Lily takes a bit of her sandwich to avoid speaking as guilt floods through her. She wasn't even thinking of her soulmate. More than ever she hates the mark on her skin, hates the fact that it makes her feel guilty about something as simple as dating.
She swallows and just says, "Oh, I didn't think of that," trying to mask the shakiness in her voice, and they drop the topic.
She starts to cut back on talking to James. Lily thinks she's being sneaky about it, but after just a week, she gets a text from him.
are you ok? you're being weird :/
It makes the pit in her stomach widen, guilt gnawing her from the inside out as she's reminded of the fact that she's not being fair to James, or his soulmate or even hers. Still, she types back:
yeah just working through some things
He replies with a row of smiley faces and her gut twists.
She and Sirius decide to surprise James the first day of summer. They told him that classes are finishing a week later than they were supposed to, and manage to scrounge up the money to take the early train up North for the visit.
James owns the flat, sharing it with Sirius whenever he's back. It's already sweltering out when they arrive, despite it only being ten in the morning. Lily was going to check into a hotel, but Sirius argued against that, saying that the couch pulls out and he's willing to throw her over his shoulder and haul her back if she dares to.
So here she is, bouncing on her toes as they ride up the lift to the seventh floor with their luggage beside them. Sirius is testing the others, Remus and Peter, to head over for a surprise by the time they're walking through the hallway.
Sirius jiggles the key into the lock and throws the door wide open, yelling, "Honey, I'm home," as he tugs her in to the kitchen with him.
"What the fuck," comes from behind them, and they both turn to see James standing by the bathroom in a pair of pyjama pants with a toothbrush in his mouth.
It's the lack of shirt that draws her attention though- or what the lack of shirt reveals, for right there in the middle of his chest is a bouquet; peonies, roses and honeysuckle all tied together and her heart breaks into a gallop.
She vaguely hears Sirius grumble, "Jesus, go put on a shirt, no one wants to see that," but she feels like the world is spinning and there's water clogged in her ears.
James Potter has the exact same tattoo on his sternum.
James Potter is her soulmate.
Holy fuck.
She needs to sit down.
Luckily, no one realises that she's standing there practically gaping like a fool, and she recovers quick enough to see James flip off Sirius before heading back in to the bathroom, the tips of the antlers just visible over the waistband.
She doesn't know what to do with this information, and doesn't really have much time to think since Remus and Peter show up a few minutes later, and the boys all spend the day together with her in the flat. Lily tries to act as normal as possible but she still sees Sirius shooting her a few odd looks now and again when she chooses the single armchair instead of perching next to James on the couch, but no one actively calls her out on it.
When the day's coming to a close, Sirius and James pull out the bed for her and make it up with some spare linens. Sirius heads off soon after, claiming that he's in dire need of a shower and some sleep and they let him go without complaint.
James turns to her and says, "Come on, you can use mine; he spends at least thirty minutes conditioning his hair."
"At least I care about my hair!" comes a muffled yell and she can't help but laugh.
Still, as she follows James into his room, the nervousness comes back because holy fuck she has a soulmate, holy fuck she actually found her soulmate, and holy fuck what are the chances that her soulmate was the boy with hurricane hair and wild eyes who she's fallen head over arse for already?
By the time the door to his room clicks shut, she comes up with some sort of plan, because she's tired of hiding from it, tired of running and pretending it doesn't exist because this is James and she's willing to trust him with her life.
He turns back around and Lily pulls off her shirt.
His eyes widen behind his specs and he splutters out, "Bloody hell Evans-" before she crosses the room and places her hand on his mark, right above his heart.
It's an exact replica of hers, the same lines that she's traced over her skin nearly a thousand times, and she maps it out completely over his t shirt until he sucks in a breath, finally catching on.
"You-"
She bites her lip coyly and ducks her head, flushing for some reason. "Yeah."
His fingers are cool on her jaw, tracing it, and his eyes drop to her mark, hungrily roving over it while his free hand touches the one on her back.
He barks out a laugh, incredulous, and steps back, running a hand through his tousled hair, and that's it, Lily can't help herself any longer, and she steps into him, pulling the collar of his t shirt to bring him down to her level.
The kiss is sloppy and messy, more teeth than lip and spit slicking their mouths, but he tastes like gold, and it feels like the sun is blazing behind her eyelids while holds her close, tracing the antlers on her skin while she sneaks a hand under his shirt to rest on his flowers.
When they pull back she's somehow found herself on his bed, and James is hovering over her, a grin so wide that she's sure it's going to split his face. She butts him gently in the chin.
"Hi there," she says, grinning as well, and he sneaks another kiss, quick and chaste.
"Hi," he mumbles against her neck and for some reason she laughs, quiet and happy as she cards her fingers through his hair.
His lips find hers again, kissing her soft and slow, and Lily lets herself melt, gripping on to him all while tracing the petals painted on his chest. James has always inspired warmth in her, always made her feel at ease and comfortable, but it's only now that she's realising what it means.
He feels like home.
Later, they're tangled up in each other, fingers running up their bodies as they're bathed in moonlight, and James murmurs softly, "Remember what you first said when I met you?"
She wriggles closer to him, resting her head on his chest. "I asked you who the fuck were you."
He huffs out a laugh and presses a kiss to her forehead. "Well now I have the answer."
"You mean the answer wasn't that you're James?"
She yelps when he pinches her side. "I'm trying to be romantic, goddammit," and she has to smother a giggle into his chest.
"Alright, alright. Romance me."
"Oh my god you're such a brat," he says, rolling his eyes and Lily nips at his collarbone. "I was going to say that I'm yours."
Her eyes soften and she cranes her neck up to kiss him. "I'm yours too," she says lowly, fingers threading through his hair, and his smile feels like a thousand stars lighting up the sky.