This s a trope I've never attempted before in a fandom I've never written in, and I'm a little nervous about posting as a consequence... But here goes!
(I don't usually post chapters this short, either, but... nervous and testing the waters!)
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Robert doesn't believe in soulmarks.
The physical reality of them is impossible to ignore – the mark is undeniably there, inscribed distinct and dark-edged across his skin – but he can't think of them as anything other than ridiculous.
Because they don't mean anything, not really. They're not the first words, or the last words, or even the most important words, but just something that someone, somewhere might say to you. If you're lucky enough to meet them, that is, and most people aren't, because that someone lives on the other side of the world, they don't take that one, fateful call, or they look to the left when they should have looked right.
And even then, most of the marks spell out inanities, common-place greetings and hackneyed phrases that their bearer might hear a hundred times in a day, never mind a lifetime, but those who have met their soulmate insist that it sounds and feels different when spoken by their other half, although no-one's ever been able to explain how to Robert's satisfaction.
There have been hundreds of studies performed by universities and hospitals and research institutions, measuring heart rates and brainwaves, hormone fluctuations and endorphin levels, but the results are never conclusive and nothing's ever been proven. He's meant to take it on faith that the words are meaningful, but Robert just can't. He can't believe that there's some mystical, unknowable force out there, playing cryptic matchmaker.
The idea is ridiculous. Laughable.
But still he'd checked every inch of his skin every morning when he was younger, as all children did – a mirror propped up against his pillow, twisting his body and craning his neck to try and catch the reflection of the back of his neck, the base of his spine – waiting and watching and hoping for the words to start to resolve themselves from the midst of the freckles that already peppered his body.
When they finally come, one otherwise uneventful day when he's thirteen, he decides he doesn't want to believe.
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Although they're always words, the marks can still take many forms.
Some are so minuscule they're barely even legible, a cramped scrawl clustered inside the crease of a palm or the laughter lines at the corner of an eye, and some are writ large in elegant copperplate, covering entire limbs.
Some are faint, some are bold. Most are monochrome, but a rare few are rainbow-hued, or shimmer and shine as though the bearer's flesh has been inlaid with a precious metal.
Those are works of art, and proudly displayed for the most part with clothes carefully cut to reveal or emphasise them, especially if the words themselves are particularly romantic or poetic.
The letters that make up Robert's mark are jagged and spindly, stark black against the pale skin of his forearm. Unlovely, and the sentiment they spell out is even uglier.
When they'd first appeared, Robert had tried to scrub them out, but the rush of blood to his skin had simply made them stand out even more strongly.
Nowadays, he wears long sleeves whenever he can, and when he can't, he keeps moving, keeps misdirecting, and he's become so adept at such deliberate diversions that even when the mark's bared, no-one can read it.
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He used to think it must be Katie.
She must have said the words – or, at least, a part of them – in and amongst the confusion and chaos and anger of everything that happened between them, but, if she did, Robert did not recall it with any clarity, which he supposes is an answer in and of itself.
He definitely never felt a flash of that indefinable, indescribable sensation of rightness he's been promised, however, which made him even more inclined to think it doesn't actually exist.
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When he isn't careful, or quick, or dexterous enough and someone sees, they don't tend to look at the mark for long.
They would usually wince and turn their head aside, and sometimes they'd then give
him sympathy, more often they seem to pity him, but most of the time, they try to reason that the words must have some different meaning which would become clear the moment he heard them. That the tone of his soulmate's voice, a turn of their expression, would make them sound like a joke, perhaps. Teasing. Loving in a way they were hard pressed to define, but were nonetheless quite adamant about, all the same.
Katie hadn't thought that, though. Nor had Andy. A decade back, he had taunted Robert with the words. Said they couldn't possibly mean anything else, because of course, of course, Robert would find away to ruin his soulbond, too.
And his first night with Chrissie, she'd traced the letters with the very tip of one well-manicured nail, her bottom lip caught up between her teeth; slow and thoughtful.
"I can't imagine ever saying this to you," she'd said, and there had been an edge of unease to her voice, a pensive furrow nicking her brow.
Because there was nothing comforting about the mark; nothing encouraging. In the strength of her conviction, there was only one inescapable conclusion: either she wasn't his soulmate, or else she was, and there was still that, looming large, dreadful, and inevitable in their as yet undecided future. Fated, if she did believe in such things, for destruction right from the start.
Normally, and with other people, it would be just one night. Robert wouldn't care and it wouldn't be important, but Chrissie matters, and he wants them to matter. He can't hide the mark away now, and he can't make her unread it, but he can try to make her forget, and, hopefully, keep on forgetting.
He kisses her again, deeper than before, and draws her back down against scattered pillows and passion-warmed sheets, offering his body up as a much-needed distraction.