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Lucas isn’t shy to the idea of soulmates.
The general idea is always the same. Guided by some universal sign, everyone in the world is led to a single other person, who is in some way essential to their life. Not always lovers (though usually lovers), but a lifelong partner nonetheless. A person made specifically to fit the jagged piece of another. Someone you needed in your life for your universe to be complete.
Of course, it’s never necessary to survival. A full—and happy—life could be lived without them. Some people simply never got the chance to meet their soulmate. Whether through immense distance, severe bad luck, or in the most heartbreaking cases, a soulmate dying before they cross paths. But the basis is always the same.
One life, one soulmate.
No exceptions, no second chances. Of course, people meet other people who feel just as intrinsic as soulmates, and often spend their life with them. But, they still aren’t soulmates. Not having those chosen people does not lead to feeling like a star is missing from the sky. It doesn’t cause that constant lost, wandery feeling, like walking into a room and forgetting why you’re there. It isn’t an exception.
One life. One soulmate. That’s the deal everyone is dealt.
At least, it seems to be, for everyone except Lucas.
~^~
Lucas Van Der Heijden is not unfamiliar with the concept of a soulmate. In fact, he confidently considers himself the most familiar person in the world with such an idea. Of course, it always changes, but again—the basis is always the same.
There is one exception. One with endless second chances.
That exception is Lucas.
When Lucas is born, this knowledge isn’t accessible to his baby brain. It comes with time. He grows up in this body, in this life, in this place, with these people, and is shaped into a person like everyone else. His environment and experiences give him a unique personality and development and life.
The exception is that it isn’t the only one.
As Lucas grows, the knowledge appears in increments, slotting into his memory as if it’s always been there. As if it’s his. He realises, slowly, that it is. That each and every one of these memories from different cities, from different ages, different people, are his own. He realises, only when the memory of realising returns, that he is the exception to the rule. That his life has existed and ended more times than he bothers to count, anymore.
Multiple lives.
And multiple soulmates.
Lucas remembers every one, and sees the pattern. And so he thinks, maybe he isn’t the exception. He lives the same life, with the same soulmate. He simply gets to do it over and over.
Which is a wonderful way to catalogue how the soulmate connection evolves.
As Isak Valtersen, the universe leads him to Even with ridiculous words etched onto his skin in Norwegian. The first words his soulmate will ever say to him. In Even’s case—an indicator that leaves no room for doubt. He lives his life. He meets his soulmate.
Then, he wakes up.
As Martino Rametta, a red string of fate only he can see leads him to Niccoló. He feels, instantly, a relieved understanding. He thinks not ‘I’ve found my soulmate’. He thinks, giddily, I’ve found my Even. He thinks, hopefully, his Even realises he’s found him too. Only, it doesn’t come up. So he treads lightly. He utilises his memories. He talks, in a second life, of parallel universes.
But Nico isn’t Even. Not the way he is Isak.
But the similarities in being and in life are enough, and he assumes he’s been given a second chance. He lives his life with his soulmate for a second time.
He wakes up.
As Lucas Lallement, doodles and handwriting on his skin lead him to Eliott. As Matteo Florenzi, a countdown leaves him in front of David. Countless lives he lives, and countless times he finds his Even. His soulmate. He sees the connections. He sees the pattern. He decides he is only half an exception to the rule.
It doesn’t change the fact that he is the only one, but it does bring him the most minimal sense of comfort. Of sense. It’s an understanding he can accept.
He wakes up as Lucas Van Der Heijden, and his world is in black and white—aside from one deep, mousy shade of brown.
His lives come back to him in increments, as they always do. It terrifies him at first, as it always does. Sends him into a frenzy and a necessarily isolated meltdown, before the full picture returns and he realises the same instant has happened countless times before. They come back, and he comes to terms, and the idea of his soulmate no longer causes him that anxiety, the fear that comes with the unknown. They come back and bring with them an understanding of what awaits, a preparation for the soulmate he’s yet to meet. He’s no longer fearful, but eager. He’s no longer waiting for the unknown. He’s waiting for his Even.
Or at least, this universe’s equivalent.
Which is why he’s so certain, at the age of fifteen, when he meets Sander Driesen.
~^~
It seems ironic, that in his only life without colour, he finds his own artistic appreciation.
He has an advantage, he supposes, in that even while he can no longer see the colours, he remembers what they’re supposed to look like. His memories remain in colour, all the brightest moments in his previous lives retaining their vibrancy, splashes of colour clear in the art they’d all created for him. When he’s eight, and only the faintest wisps of these memories are available, he approaches his mother with a packet of coloured pencils amidst their grocery shopping. Her brows furrow in a frown as she looks down at him, but there’s a smile on her lips as she asks, “Can you see them, darling?”
All he can do is shake his head and continue to hold them up hopefully, unable to explain his need. His mother puts them in the basket without a word. “Do you want a colouring book, too?” Lucas shakes his head once more and her smile widens. “How about a big packet of paper then, hm?”
He chose this particular packet of pencils on purpose, a packet that comes with the colours written on each. The basic ones are familiar to him, niggling at the back of his mind and triggering a faint image. Others, he Googles. Each one comes with an in depth description, crafted by the real artists of this world for the majorly colourblind population. Every one also comes with examples and images, still in black and white to Lucas but triggering some other faint memories. It’s enough, something more than the endless shades of grey, and it gets Lucas going. He starts off with little doodles. Flowers and skulls and paws, small pretty things that catch his young eyes, sketched with childish, wobbly lines and the utmost care.
He isn’t sure himself, where the need comes from, this desire to put his thoughts on paper in the form of images he can’t even really see. But something about the movement, and the tones, and the scratch of pencil on paper, all become a comfort to him. Familiar.
He isn’t going to be a world famous artist, he doesn’t think, but he enjoys what he does. Slowly, and surely, he develops his own style. Cartoonish features and bright colours (so, light shades) begin to take up the most space. These are the ones he shows off proudly to his mother, that he tacks to the walls of his room with a smile.
The others, he keeps to himself. The ones he develops with the most attention and care, the ones that are full of details and shadow. The ones that are his memories on pages. Eyes and jawlines and hands and lips and hair, bits and pieces that begin to slot together with each day. There are sketchbooks, then, full of his soulmates. He keeps these all in graphite, forever captured in hundreds of shades of grey, always with one exception.
Their eyes, he colours.
Eliott’s are the most difficult to discern, made up of varying shades of grey on their own. If he reaches far enough, though, he catches them in all their lights. When they’re cast, in the earliest hours of the morning, into a faint blue, always full of light. Nico’s are easier, specks of them almost visible to him now, a few hints of their brown startlingly familiar. David’s are similar, barely a different hue, with speckles of green thrown in when the right image surfaces. Even’s are the easiest, though they are the farthest from his sight now. The sparkling green is all too familiar regardless, always bright, always shining, and even as it appears in colourless swipes, Lucas knows he’s gotten them right.
More often than not, however, he finds himself sketching eyes he’s never seen. Eyes in that mousy brown, the only colour visible to him now. The colour Lucas catches sight of in the deep grooves of trees, in the patches of clay dug up in the back garden, in the lines of his father’s work shoes. He has a sketchbook dedicated to these eyes alone, and he fits them into various faces, heart racing with the idea of crafting his soulmate in one of them.
His art becomes his outlet, and he fills pages as he feels an unfamiliar peace. A connection to his old selves in a way he hadn’t imagined before.
It also feels a little bit like his thing. Something that makes him Lucas. That makes this life, as this person, feel a little more real and a little less pointless.
It’s a weird thing, having full centuries worth of memories with not even two decades worth of life. It’s overwhelming.
The only thing that never comes with the memories is a concept of time. Lucas isn’t sure how it works. Each life seems to occur in the same era, and it doesn’t correlate with Lucas’s understanding of time and of history and it leaves him mind-numbingly frustrated, trying to understand.
Then again, there’s nothing about it he understands.
He comes to the conclusion—or the decision—that the most likely answer is not him living life after life in a continuous stream, but in the very parallel universes he’s always been so fond of.
Most times, he just thinks he’s insane. That the memories are concocted fantasies, remnants of very vivid dreams, any list of possibilities that relies on being creations from his overactive mind. It is, often, the least frightening possibility, and the one he convinces himself of when the weight of it all threatens to pull him under. When he needs a moment to breathe, he talks himself out of it. When it seems so overwhelming, the easiest thing to believe is that none of it is real.
When he’s had a moment to breathe, he thinks he isn’t that creative. That nothing he could have dreamt up could be that vivid.
That the emotion wouldn’t be there, if it had only been his imagination.
The surety.
He doesn’t know what that means, for him. It means he often avoids thinking about it, and learns to simply accept. It means he draws.
This means that, after having to move to live with his aunt at the age of fifteen, he ends up in an art shop in Antwerp on the same day as one Sander Driesen.
And something in him sees him, and knows.
Lucas assumes there’s only one reason for that.
His breath catches when he sees him. From the opposite end of the store, he guesses they’re roughly the same age, roughly the same height. He can make out stunning features, youthful and bright and handsome. He appears dark only through his clothes, which are simply black, jacket and shirt and jeans and boots. They’re in sharp contrast to his hair, which actually appears entirely white, not even a darker shade visible at the root. The first thing Lucas thinks about him is that, in a world made to drown them out, he’s found the way to beat the system. Even in a complete lack of colour, taking the two extremes has made him vibrant. He’s eliminated the millions shades of grey to appear in what might as well be screaming colour.
All Lucas knows, in that moment, is that he needs to get his attention. He just has no idea how.
He could approach him, pretend to be looking for something, but the guy clearly doesn’t work here and it would just be the best way to make a fool of himself. He could still approach him and ask about something, explaining that he isn’t from here. He could approach him and make a joke. He could just approach him. But with the very idea comes a very familiar anxiety, the niggle in his brain telling him not to approach anyone, and especially not this very pretty boy.
Then he realises he doesn’t have to, because the boy is already approaching him.
Of course, Lucas takes this as another sign from the universe.
Lucas abruptly turns away, back towards the shelves, then curses himself for making an even bigger fool of himself. There’s no way the boy hadn’t seen him looking. He was already caught, and trying to hide was just making the situation more embarrassing.
He’s greeted by a soft, deep, “Hey,” and he closes his eyes and collects himself before looking over with a smile.
“Hey,” he returns, equal parts shy and curious, heart stuttering now that the boy is so close.
“This might be really weird, but I was wondering if I could take a picture of you?”
He holds up the camera Lucas hadn’t even noticed was around his neck, and Lucas blinks. “You want to take a picture...of me?”
The boy blinks, as if startled, and Lucas has to wonder briefly why he’s so surprised. Then he says, “You’re Dutch.” Then, “Even better.”
Lucas flushes. “What?”
“Sorry,” the boy shakes his head. “I’m doing this project on art culture and youth and I don’t usually see many people like you when I come in here. It’s mostly older women buying paints and pencils and even older women buying wool. Plus the occasional odd guy buying spray cans. It’s kind of a niche store. Doesn’t really give me a lot of opportunities for capturing the ‘youth’. But you’re perfect. The Dutch artist.” He holds his hands up in front of Lucas’s face, two fingers up and thumbs out, as if framing him in his mind.
This isn’t exactly what Lucas had expected, but it’s so overwhelmingly familiar in a way that leaves him breathless. He assumes this is the only thing that leads to his huff of laughter ending in a giddy, “Okay.”
The boy’s face brightens instantly, and he turns even more brilliant as a wide smile spreads across his face. “Okay,” he repeats. Then he’s holding his hand out to Lucas and saying, “Sander.”
The thing is, he’s so sure. Sander is bright and enigmatic and hypnotic, drawing all the light and attention of the room towards himself. It isn’t that when he does so, either, that everything else gets drowned out. He seems to brighten the whole space with his presence, making the small aisle and the shop and Antwerp seem all the more appealing.
And still, there’s that thread of something. That mystery, an oddity, something darker buried in all that light, something carved into the slopes of Sander’s shoulders and the arch of his spine, etched in the cover of his eyes. Something that Lucas has seen countless times before, even in this life, in the hidden depths of his mother’s smile.
Lucas looks at him and thinks, It’s him. It has to be him.
Then he takes Sander’s hand in his, and nothing happens.
~^~
At first, for ages, Lucas looks for excuses.
His main excuse is, in fact, his age. He relies on the possibility that soulmates can’t be discovered until the age of sixteen. Even’s first words hadn’t appeared on Isak’s wrist until he turned sixteen, after all, and only when Martino turned sixteen was he able to see the red string, and only after sixteen full years of life did Matteo’s countdown begin. Of course, again, there have been exceptions. Eliott’s unintelligible marker lines had appeared on Lucas’s skin right from the beginning. He just doesn’t yet know the rules of this universe—there’s no one around him he can ask, no one he’s in contact with who has actually found their soulmate.
It’s also possible, of course, that for whatever rules this universe follows, Lucas would be the exception.
He clings to these ideas, brushing over Sander’s age of seventeen with the excuse that one soulmate can’t be ahead of the other. Sander’s world simply hasn’t come into colour either because he also needs to wait for Lucas.
It’s perfectly sensible reasoning.
It doesn’t matter that Sander quickly falls into a relationship with a pretty girl called Britt.
She isn’t his soulmate, which Sander doesn’t seem bothered about and which leaves Lucas relieved. He doesn’t worry for a second that Sander will be off bounds because he’s straight, because Sander had flippantly acknowledged his interest in guys days after meeting Lucas. Soulmates never take that into consideration, anyway, so really, Lucas isn’t worried. It always starts like this, he reminds himself. In fact, the addition of Britt almost makes everything feel even more on course.
Lucas doesn’t worry. It’s hard to, with Sander seeming so perfect. In this universe, it feels even easier, with their art in common.
“I don’t get it either,” Sander tells him passionately, once, the very first time they hang out. A week after meeting Lucas in the shop, Sander had invited him to his house. He presents the sketches and photos hung on his wall with a proud flourish, excitedly pointing out his favorites to Lucas as Lucas takes it all in. His breath catches at the sketches of a single pair of eyes, holding a few specks of the brown Lucas is so familiar with amidst the dark grey shades making up everything else. “A much larger percentage of the population sees everything in black and white and everyone still appreciates art on some level. Everyone is still capable of seeing something and recognising beauty in it. It’s not like you’re thinking ‘ugh, that would be prettier if it wasn’t in black and white’, because you don’t know what that would look like. Colour-seeing people are really trying to hold a superiority, but I really don’t see the difference. Also, plenty of them sketch and take photos and make movies in black and white. It’s like, stylistic when it isn’t simply truth. No one’s ever content just admiring things the way they are.”
Lucas just manages to bite back his thoughts, that day, just manages to leave the fervent look in Sander’s eyes unacknowledged. He just manages to avoid telling Sander that he admires him just the way he is, knowing why he’s so passionate about it.
At this point, Sander hadn’t told him about his bipolar, but Lucas had a hunch.
He finds that out a few months later, when Sander disappears for a few days, a week, then two, without so much as a word. Lucas feels the absence like a black hole, sure of what’s happening and still worrying and spiraling into his own pit of despair. He only resurfaces when Sander does, sending Lucas one simple message: I’m sorry. Can you come over?
He’s Lucas’s only friend here for that first summer, and he quickly makes his way into Lucas’s list of favourite people, because Lucas is so, so sure.
Then Sander meets Robbe, and Lucas spirals again.
His heart drops into his stomach that day Sander meets up with him, eyes too bright and smile too wide as he looks at Lucas, and for a single, stupid moment, Lucas allows himself to hope. Then Sander says, breathless, “His name is Robbe.”
He spends the day looking around him in wonderment, pointing out various things to Lucas and attempting to describe the colour. Lucas doesn’t know how to tell him even though he can’t see them, he knows what they look like. Then Sander turns to him and tells him, “Your eyes are blue. Really smooth. The same colour as the sky right now.” He adds, nonchalantly, “Pretty.”
Lucas does his best not to let his heart shatter and comes to a startlingly obvious realisation.
He’s never been able to see Sander’s eyes.
Sander could never have been his soulmate.
~^~
This throws Lucas into a state of anxiety he can’t explain to anyone else. He’s been shot very abruptly back to square one, and he begins to think this universe is playing with him.
Sander becomes increasingly absent, but he still makes sure not to go anywhere. He keeps up with Lucas, always setting time aside for him, and makes sure not to let him feel abandoned. At least, this is what he tells Lucas he’s trying to do, in a very serious conversation a little over a month after finding his soulmate. Lucas appreciates it, more than Sander probably realises. But as lost and thrown and jealous as he is, he doesn’t begrudge Sander anything. He understands, even as he misses him, even as he calls out to the universe with increasing anguish in search of his own answer.
He tells himself it isn’t the end of the world. That there are plenty of Evens in every universe, and Sander simply isn’t his. Which is a hard pill to swallow, at the beginning, until he realises with the hope of that soulmate connection gone, any attraction he’d felt for the other boy has disintegrated. It was never love he’d felt for Sander in the first place, or at least not the romantic kind. Instead it’s an intense infatuation, an instinct, rooted in hope and a senseless surety. The first time he sees Sander with Robbe, he understands this.
Robbe is, honestly, a little like Lucas, but goofier and softer all at once. There’s a light about him that emanates from his kindness, a quietly loving nature that easily overwhelms the hardships resting on his tiny shoulders. It’s easy to see that he’s made to fit Sander, the calm at the center of the boy’s storm. It’s even easier to see how much Sander adores him.
A tiny bit of Lucas hates him, at the beginning. He’s Isak re-personified himself, Lucas is sure of it, and he soon decides he isn’t supposed to be in this universe at all. He’s had too many chances, too much time, that the universe has finally decided to pass the opportunity on and show him this as a spiteful goodbye.
He might be feeling a little bitter, and a little self-pitying, and a lot lonely.
He’s pretty sure Sander notices, because of course he does, and in the throes of his own romance, he becomes invested in finding Lucas his own soulmate. Lucas tries telling him he’s ridiculous, that that’s impossible, that it doesn’t matter because he’s given up searching anyway. Maybe he doesn’t even have a soulmate. Maybe he’s simply meant to live a colourless last life. Like watching a very long, very depressing film.
Black and white seem to lose their beauty. He stops drawing. He no longer uses the old camera Sander had gifted him.
He sketches brown eyes, over and over, without even realising he’s doing it.
He thinks, He’s still out there. I’m waiting, I’m waiting, I’m waiting.
Sander uses it as an excuse to make Lucas more social. He drags him to parties with his college friends, all different artists, Sander points out to him, and introduces him to people even he doesn’t seem to know in the hopes of producing Lucas’s soulmate out of thin air.
Lucas tells him that maybe the universe doesn’t want him to find his soulmate.
Sander tells him he just wants him to be as happy as he is, and Lucas tries not to let the cracks in his heart show, and Sander says, “Then fuck the universe. Don’t trust in it anymore, okay? Trust me. Because I believe you deserve the world in full colour.”
The beauty in black and white seems to disappear for Sander, too, just for the entirely opposite reason.
It doesn’t make him change his style, though. At least, not quite yet.
By the time Sander brings him along to meet Robbe’s friends, Lucas is almost seventeen and can no longer use the age excuse.
He knows he doesn’t have to, the instant he lays his eyes on Jens Stoffels, only looking at eyes in full colour for a second before their hands are clasped together and the world shifts into bright, dizzying focus.
~^~
Lucas almost thinks, if he’d had more time to think, he wouldn’t have done it. If he’d had a few extra seconds to take in the sight in front of him, to realise what the visibility of those eyes meant, he would’ve avoided that touch.
Jens is nothing like Sander. There isn’t that otherworldly vibe to him, that mysterious artistic air, that bright flare that draws Lucas in. It’s not that Jens isn’t stunning, because he is. He just doesn’t hold the world in his eyes the way Lucas expected him to.
Jens is almost a silent presence. There’s a gentleness to him, a vulnerability, that Lucas is familiar with. But he greets them in a manner that’s quiet and cool, calm and collected, in an overall underwhelming way. His first word to Lucas is, very simply, “Hey.”
Lucas blames all of this for throwing him off guard. For leaving him in his unfocused, forlorn state for long enough to have him introducing himself by shaking hands without a thought.
He almost tells himself he wouldn’t have done it, because as soon as that contact is made, there’s no method of denial.
Lucas can’t process, and he certainly can’t take it back.
It feels, in every way, just like a shift. The world doesn’t burst into colour, or slowly spread out before him. It’s simply as if he blinks and finds himself in a new world, nothing changed but everything entirely different. Shifting and finally fitting into place, the same thing his heart does within the safe confines of his ribs.
It’s so abrupt, so sudden and shocking in the most unexpected way, that it throws Lucas off balance. His hand rips out of Jens’s, and the other boy does nothing to stop him. But he stares, while Lucas stares back, both sets of lips parted in surprise and awe before the delayed reaction kicks in. Lucas does become unbalanced, stumbling just slightly over his own feet before Sander is catching his arm and whirling on him with a concerned gaze. Lucas is sure everything must show on his face. But Sander only sets a steadying hand on his shoulder and continues to look at him with furrowed brows, asking a genuine, “You okay?”
Lucas’s tongue feels heavy as he says, “No, sorry, I should’ve just told you I haven’t been feeling well today.”
With a profound apology to Robbe and a final greeting to Jens without ever relinquishing his grip on Lucas, Sander is taking him home. Lucas squeezes his eyes shut too many times to count as they go, too overwhelmed to take everything in at once, too scared that Sander will finally realise what has actually happened. His head is spinning too much to use his bike, so he’s guided home by Sander’s grip on his arm while his eyes are trained on his feet. The pavement remains grey and the toes and laces of his shoes white, the rest of the fabric a dull navy. Easy enough to digest.
Sander leaves him sitting on his sofa while he goes to prepare him a glass of water. Lucas sinks down in wonder, mouth hung open and eyes jumping from one colour to another with rapt attention. Sander finds him examining his own hand with too much amazement, focused particularly on the old patches of grey that are now bright spots of red and pink and blue.
“Holy shit, it’s him, isn’t it,” Sander says.
Lucas shifts his gaze to stare at his friend, who is already staring black. “Your eyes are green,” he says, astonished.
Sander repeats, “Holy shit.”
~^~
“I can’t believe I just dragged you out of there without realising, when it was so obvious,” Sander complains, roughly twenty minutes later. He sits staring at the too-bright screen on his phone, slouched at the opposite end of the sofa with Lucas’s feet in his lap.
Lucas had casually decided to lay down a while ago. For comfort purposes.
His head might be spinning a little. It might be a little...overwhelming.
And confusing.
He is so confused.
“I can’t believe,” Lucas mumbles, and then stops, because he doesn’t even know what he can’t believe. The universe, maybe. He can’t believe the universe. He can’t believe himself. He can’t believe he found his soulmate. He can’t believe Jens is his soulmate. He can’t believe Jens is the best friend of his best friend’s soulmate. His best friend who should have been his soulmate.
Maybe it’s a trick. Some kind of test. Or it’s just one big cosmic joke. He wouldn’t put it past the universe, to play with him in such a way.
Not that there’s anything wrong with Jens. On the contrary. From what Lucas had seen at first glance, Jens is perfect.
But he can’t possibly be perfect for Lucas.
Can he?
He shuts his eyes again, tossing his arm over them. Sander shifts, and his hand lands on Lucas’s shin, patting comfortingly. “It’s a lot, huh? It’ll honestly probably take a few days to adjust.”
Lucas blanks for a moment, wondering how the hell Sander knows, then realises he’s talking about the world suddenly looking completely different. He hums, coming across distracted and overwhelmed and mildly loopy, and it’s fine. That’s how he’s supposed to feel. He supposes the colour is also a big thing. Colours. Many, many colours.
His head really, really hurts.
“Do you want to stalk him a litte, or are you really just too overwhelmed? Because I’ll completely understand that.”
Lucas is a little disappointed in himself for considering it. He’s even more disappointed himself for answering with, “Depends. Is there much to stalk?”
“Well, you saw him,” Sander says, and Lucas can very clearly imagine the small flick of his brows accompanied by his ever-present smirk. “You got pretty lucky, if you ask me.”
“Does Robbe know you think his best friend is hot?”
“Robbe knows his best friend is hot. Stop changing the subject. Do you want to watch the vlogs?”
“There are vlogs?”
Sander hums.
“What the hell does he vlog about?”
“They,” Sander corrects. “Robbe’s in them, too, and their other friends.”
And well that’s—something. Lucas hadn’t really been expecting that. That, he supposes, is in the realm of surprising. He realises he doesn’t actually know what to expect from Jens. He’d only had a very abrupt, shocking first impression, after all. He doesn’t actually know Jens, he realises. Jens could very well be all those things Lucas has been looking for, and better at keeping it inside than the others had been. Or he simply portrays it a different way.
“I mean, they’re pretty ridiculous, but funny. Jens is funny. Very ‘chill’.”
Lucas removes his arm just in time to catch the air quotes and blow out an exasperated puff. No, he decides. There’s no point fooling himself. Jens isn’t, in any way, the person he’s been looking for.
Yet the universe has given him over anyway.
Sander shakes his leg and Lucas finally looks over at him, blinking for a moment at the new range of objects this brings into view. “Talk to me,” he requests.
Lucas thinks. “Everything is really colourful.”
That earns him a huff. “Bit crazy, right? But...how do you feel?”
It’s a little pathetic, but Lucas can’t manage more than a shrug.
Sander sits up, straightening himself as he looks straight ahead, jaw clenching. He doesn’t look mad, necessarily, but there’s something in his curiosity, something tense and almost fearful. It has Lucas drawing his feet off his lap and pushing himself up, too, only just managing to ignore the consequential head rush. He sits silently, letting his weight sink back against the cushions and watching Sander get his thoughts together. When he speaks, his voice is surprisingly soft.
“You’ve been weird, since I found out about Robbe. I didn’t notice at the start, but then—I thought it was my fault. Or that it was coming from my side. That I’d been accidentally drifting away from you. Then I was trying harder, and it was easier to notice. I thought maybe it was Robbe, but you didn’t even meet him right away. Then I thought maybe it just made things more real. That it made you want to find your soulmate, too.”
Lucas doesn’t argue or agree with any of these statements, just contemplates the paint on his hands until Sander turns to look at him. “It really seemed like that’s what it was. When you were always saying the universe didn’t want you to find them. So I thought if you...I don’t know, I know I couldn’t really help, but I thought maybe the more people you met the easier it would be to meet the one.”
Now he goes silent—waiting—and Lucas realises he has to respond. He picks through the questions carefully, wondering what he actually wants to respond to and how much he can leave out. “That’s probably accurate,” he eventually agrees.
Sander purses his lips. “But now you have found them, and it feels like you didn’t want to.”
That’s because it isn’t right. I haven’t found my soulmate. He isn’t ‘the one’.
This is the only thing Lucas can think about, and everything he can’t say.
He tries to figure out how Sander wants him to respond, but his brain has spent so much time in overdrive already that it can only twitch sluggishly now. All his thoughts—beyond his fears and his doubts and his panic—seem distant and slow, slipping through his mind like half-formed clouds.
Then Sander asks, “Is it because it’s a guy?”
Now, Lucas understands.
“I’m not disappointed,” he says, and it isn’t a lie. At least not in response to what Sander’s asking him. “It’s—everything is just really overwhelming. I don’t know…”
Sander nods, like he understands all of that without Lucas having to explain. Which Lucas supposes, he does. Beyond having experienced the shock of the soulmate connection, Sander knows well how heavy the mind can be. The knowledge of that has always made Lucas feel safe with him. The idea that he doesn’t have to outline the darkness in his head for Sander to recognise it.
They actually work a lot the same, that way.
“The soulmate connection doesn’t have to be a romantic thing,” Sander goes on, still cautious. “It’s...I mean, it’s not like you ever have to have sex with him, or anything. He could just as easily be like a brother, if you don’t…”
“Sander,” Lucas cuts him off, taking a breath as Sander’s eyes settle on him. “I’m gay, you idiot.”
Sander’s lips part, and he blinks.
The words weren’t as hard to force out as Lucas had expected. Maybe because it’s Sander, who has always been so open, who is already in such a deeply committed relationship with another boy. Or maybe because it feels like all the secrets are out now, anyway, exposed with one simple touch of hands, too little and too much all at once.
“So,” Sander’s brow furrows, “what’s going on? If you’re not disappointed or disgusted or freaked out by the fact that it’s a guy. Do you feel any of those things because it’s Jens?”
“I don’t even know Jens,” Lucas points out, which is too true and a little bit of a lie.
“So, what then? I know there’s something.”
Lucas pushes his head back into the sofa and closes his eyes again. “It was just...really unexpected.”
“So you let me drag you away.”
“I felt like I was going to collapse. And I didn’t really know what I was supposed to say,” Lucas admits, rolling his head to look at his friend.
Sander smiles softly. “You probably would have had a better chance of figuring that out if you’d stayed to try.”
Lucas thinks he probably isn’t going to get much of a choice.
~^~
He’s right.
It’s only two days later when he thinks he’s safely confined in Sander’s flat, only for Sander to shoot him a much too suspicious look when the doorbell rings. He’s rocketed off the sofa and into the hallway before Lucas can do much more than glare at him. He sucks in a quick breath and snaps his sketchbook closed as he hears Sander buzz them in, dragging hands through his hair roughly in hopes of making himself appear somewhat put together. He almost tells himself to calm down, that surely he’s overreacting. But Sander is nowhere near as sly as he thinks, and once Robbe steps through the doorway with a hesitant smile, Lucas’s heart plummets.
“Hey, Lucas,” Robbe greets easily, sweetly.
Lucas feels a little bad about only managing a nod in response, but then he reminds himself that Robbe definitely had a part in this plan and feels well within his rights to be a little pissed. Sander appears at his boyfriend’s shoulder, smile sheepish and nervous and asking to be smacked right off his face.
Jens appears behind them both, eyes landing on Lucas and immediately turning soft, and Lucas is well within his rights to be pissed.
How can he be all mad and in denial and against the universe when his soulmate looks like that?
“Hey,” Jens says, exactly the same way he had the first time, instants before Lucas had touched him and felt his world flip upside down. His hand twitches and tingles, as if reliving the experience, and he curls it into a fist atop his thigh.
“Hey,” he echoes.
“Sorry,” Sander says, not looking even slightly apologetic. “I lost track of time and forgot to mention they were coming.”
Lucas feels a little gratified at the incredulous look Jens also gives Sander, obviously not buying a word. Still, he doesn’t say anything, and he looks back at Lucas before Lucas has time to look away. Something tugs at his gut, sharp and wanting, and he wraps his arms around himself and sinks back.
The room is silent until Robbe eventually raises a brow. “So, Sander was telling me you’re working on an art project together?”
It’s enough for Lucas to latch onto with immense gratitude, and the pressure on his chest eases as he falls into animated conversation when Robbe drops down beside him. Sander squishes himself into the corner and lets Robbe lie against him, and still Lucas can’t stop noticing Jens. He lingers a little longer, slow in his steps as he makes his way over before eventually settling in the only available seat—the armchair next to Lucas.
Lucas doesn’t lift his gaze from Robbe, but his breath catches noticeably when Jens stretches his long legs and knocks his foot against Lucas’s. Lucas isn’t sure if it’s purposeful, doesn’t seem like it when the touch is so quickly retracted, and he has to stop himself from chasing the contact. The electricity from the simple touch zings up his spine and sets the warning bells blaring in his head. Not of danger, or a need to fear, but an intense shot of adrenaline all the same. A deep-rooted recognition that shouldn’t even be possible.
Robbe doesn’t comment on any of it, keeping engaged in conversation, egging Lucas on with his questions and keeping Sander busy with his teasing. Jens doesn’t say anything, but gives the occasional hum or huff of amusement or interest, showing that he’s listening. Lucas keeps his body turned mostly forward, not so rude as to exclude Jens completely, but careful enough not to allow any more eye contact. Not yet.
He hasn’t figured out what to do about Jens, yet. He hasn’t been sure if he was going to do anything.
He should’ve figured Sander wouldn’t have given him much of a choice.
It makes it worse, he thinks, impossible to glaze over or ignore, because of who Jens is. Because he’s Robbe’s best friend. Because Sander had already met and liked him, before witnessing Lucas’s extreme act of idiocy.
Because more than anything, Lucas feels a little bad. Because it shouldn’t matter what he thinks. Jens deserves better than this.
It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know Jens. Anyone would deserve better than this.
Which just enforces the idea that the universe has made some crucial, monumental mistake.
Robbe is kind, and Lucas is lucky, in how long he manages to put off the inevitable. Lucas could probably survive, but he’s spoken too much, and his throat is going to crack open if it dries out any more. He can’t keep up the conversation, can’t keep using the distraction, if he simply can’t speak.
He makes a swift apology. He gets up. He goes to the kitchen.
He doesn’t even have the glass out of the cupboard before Jens has followed him.
“Hey,” Jens says, again, and Lucas hates that he finds it kind of endearing.
He clears his throat, moving to fill his glass. “Hi.”
At this point, Lucas is almost worried (hopeful) that this is as far as they’ll ever get in a conversation.
Then Jens says, “I don’t really believe in meaningless conversation but I also don’t want to be the one to start the serious one.”
Lucas finally gets a sip of water. He tucks the glass to his chest, before thinking better of it and setting it on the counter. His nerves are too frayed to be trusted with something so fragile.
He can’t possibly be trusted with someone’s emotions.
“I’m not just lucky, then,” he says eventually, going for a lighthearted quip and landing somewhere amidst awkward and terrified.
Jens smiles. “Ouch. Unlucky for both of us, it turns out.”
Lucas closes his eyes. “Sorry. I really didn’t mean it like that.”
“No, I get it. It’s not every day you have to speak to your soulmate for the first time, is it?”
Lucas finally looks at him properly. He’s tall, taller than Lucas remembers, holding a few inches on him. Raven dark hair. Smooth skin, nice lips. Brown eyes. Lucas’s brown.
Beautiful.
This isn’t news. Lucas had made this deduction from the instant he saw him, already too late and overwhelmed. He’d had more opportunity to examine when he had, against his own better judgment, done a little bit of internet stalking.
But, come on.
There are vlogs.
He shakes his head, shakily takes another sip of his water as Jens takes a step closer.
“I don’t know what you were thinking about it. Or if you’ve thought about it at all? I guess there could be...reasons for wanting to pretend nothing had happened. But I’m not very good at that. And Robbe is persistent but Sander is like, really, really persistent.”
Lucas considers his options. He goes for a half-truth. “I really didn’t know what to do. Or, how to even go about doing anything. I wasn’t prepared, I guess. To just shake hands with someone I don’t know and…”
Jens tucks his chin to his chest, understanding as he gives a nod. He takes another step closer. Lucas feels rooted to the spot. “So, do you want to try it again, then?”
“What?”
“Just, shaking hands with someone you don’t know. I never actually got to introduce myself.”
“Robbe introduced us,” Lucas points out, confused.
Jens shakes his head, lips quirked up at the corners as if what Lucas had said is very amusing. He sticks his hand out in the space between them. “I’m Jens.”
It sounds like a challenge and an invitation.
It sounds right.
Lucas takes his hand and feels another zing. “Lucas.”
“Do you maybe want to get to know each other a little bit, Lucas?” Jens seems anxious for him to answer, but the words mean nothing. Lucas is more focused on the way he’s still gripping his hand, gentle but sure. He’s more interested in the way his name had fallen from Jens’s lips, easy and familiar while being spoken for the first time. It comes again, stronger, pointed, and Lucas blinks and drags himself back to the present.
“I...yeah.”
Jens smiles, and he’s beautiful, and Lucas is really going to have a problem here. “Yeah?”
Lucas finds himself nodding.
“Okay. How do you feel about coffee?”
“...To be honest, I prefer cake.”
Jens gives a tiny huff of laughter, surprised and pleased and not at all seeming to harbour all the same doubts as Lucas. “Lucky then that my favourite coffee shop is my favourite because of the desserts. Would you let me take you there, then? Purely for the cake.”
The universe most definitely hates him.
Lucas is so incredibly weak.
He offers his first smile to Jens. “For the cake.”
~^~
Lucas has made a deal with the universe.
He’s decided to play along.
He’s still pretty sure of his earlier deduction. That the universe simply has him here as a joke, a farewell. Only, it still has to follow its own rules. It still needs to give Lucas a soulmate. Jens is a pretty neatly wrapped consolation prize.
Lucas realises he’s a terrible person for thinking about his soulmate this way, but he’s already established that Jens deserves better.
It’s just a little frustrating that Jens doesn’t seem to realise the same thing.
Lucas catches sight of him through the window of the coffee shop, sitting at a table in the corner. He doesn’t see Lucas, too focused on his hands, which are nervously shredding a napkin. Nervous. To see Lucas.
Lucas supposes he can’t really blame him. He probably hasn’t given the best first impression. Jens probably hates him already. Lucas bets he’s figuring out how to tell him he doesn’t want him as a soulmate right now.
Not that they get a choice.
Before he can talk himself out of it, he’s walking inside.
The bell over the door alerts the entire place to his presence, but Jens’s head jerks up most noticeably. His eyes land on Lucas and a smile tugs at his lips, leaving Lucas with a growing sense of frustration as warmth floods his chest. It shouldn’t be like this, Lucas thinks. Jens shouldn’t have this effect on him. At least, not already. It’s frightening—how vividly he recognises his soulmate, while knowing they can’t possibly be made for him. He can’t help but feel that familiar tug, even knowing that it’s a mistake.
But, he supposes, there’s no harm in coffee and cake.
He’s sitting across from Jens before he knows it, shrugging out of his jacket and draping it across the back of his chair as Jens sits up straighter, still smiling at him. Too soft, too sure. Lucas’s heart twinges at the realisation Jens doesn’t know. He isn’t experiencing any of the same doubt. He has trust in the universe.
“Hi,” Lucas greets first. Despite everything, he’s unable to hold back a smile of his own.
Jens’s smile widens. “Hey. I hope it’s okay that I ordered for you?”
Lucas narrows his eyes. “Someone’s confident.”
Jens draws his shoulders up to his ears in a drawn out shrug. “Something told me you’re the kind of guy who likes surprises. And is a little impatient. Even though you didn’t seem in any hurry with me.”
He raises a brow, and really, Lucas should’ve known he wouldn’t get away with things that easily.
But he can’t possibly tell Jens the truth. He’s never had to tell anyone the truth. Where would he even begin?
“Honestly…I thought it was a mistake,” Lucas admits.
Jens blinks and his smile falls and Lucas hates himself. “A mistake.”
Lucas forces himself to nod.
“Why?”
Lucas manages a shrug.
Jens picks up a few shreds of his napkin and begins to shred them further. He seems contemplative, and less hurt than he had been a moment ago. Already trying to figure Lucas out and struggling. “Because I’m a guy?”
Now it’s Lucas’s turn to blink. Really, why does everyone keep asking him that? “No, no. I mean, no. I would’ve actually been more sure that it was a mistake if you weren’t a guy.”
“So you’re,” Jens makes a vague hand gesture, looking somewhat relieved, and Lucas feels that twinge again. “I mean, not that it matters. This doesn’t have to be like…”
Lucas’s heart falls even further. Of course, he thinks. Of course he doesn’t want this to be anything. He probably thought from the beginning that this was platonic, and that’s why he’s not freaking out. It doesn’t matter to him. Of course the cool skater guy simply thinks Lucas has been presented to him so they can be ‘best bros’. He probably already has a girlfriend.
Jens says, “But I feel like I need to say that I wouldn’t be opposed, and I always kinda thought...no, sorry, this is gonna sound really stupid. I should probably wait more than five minutes before freaking you out.”
Lucas should really stop jumping to conclusions. It’s not good to let Jens keep surprising him like this.
“No, thought what?” Lucas urges, smile even more real, even more irrepressible than before.
Jens licks his lips, shaking his head. Lucas only leans forward, shaking his head back, waiting. Jens leans back in his chair and watches him before releasing a small sigh. “I don’t know. I always kinda believed in the ‘one true love’ soulmate thing.”
And, well. Lucas doesn’t really know what to do with that.
His mouth drops open as he falls back into his chair, and Jens drags a hand over his face, now shaking his head in what seems to be an apology. Lucas knows he’s taking his reaction as a bad thing, feeling like he said the wrong thing for all the wrong reasons. Lucas can’t explain that he isn’t speechless in a runaway sort of moment. He can’t explain that the comment has floored him so much because it seems so much more familiar.
He can’t tell Jens that that was a very Even thing to say, and that now he’s very, very confused.
“But like I said, it doesn’t have to be anything you don’t want it to be. It doesn’t have to be anything if that’s what you want.”
Lucas forces himself to take a breath and smile again. “Maybe just buy me some coffee first, yeah?”
Jens laughs, short and embarrassed and relieved all at once, giving an exaggerated roll of his eyes as he nods. “Yeah, okay.”
~^~
Jens has ordered him a slice of strawberry cheesecake and a latte.
Lucas has the very fleeting thought that maybe he’s not so far off with this one true love thing.
“Good choice?” Jens asks, complete with a cheeky smile, after he’s already watched Lucas devour half the cake slice in seconds.
Lucas shoots him a look, but acquiesces with a wave of his fork. “Lucky guess.”
Jens sighs, smile never falling. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
Lucas softens. It’s not his intention to make this difficult for Jens. Though it’s not like Jens is innocent. Lucas is finding it very hard to be mad at the universe when it has presented him with someone so beautiful—when Jens makes it so easy. “Sorry. I’m not trying to make it difficult.”
“I get it,” Jens shakes his head. “I’m still a little overwhelmed with, everything. I honestly didn’t expect so many colours. Even Robbe’s still learning.”
Oh. Lucas hadn’t been able to explain to Sander either why his suddenly colourful sight didn’t overwhelm him as much as everyone seems to expect. His world had just felt like it shifted back into place. It was still a lot to process—he doesn’t remember absolutely everything, for one. But his interest in art has also been an immense help, as has Sander himself. He knows how dramatic the switch is. He just can’t fully understand it as much as the others. With how easily it had thrown him off with the unexpectedness of it all, he can’t imagine what it must have felt like for Jens. It makes him feel even worse than before, that it hadn’t even occurred to him before now to ask how Jens has been doing.
“There are a lot of colours,” Lucas agrees. “Has it been really weird for you? Like, the grass is green, the sky is blue?”
“The sky is literally a different colour every hour,” Jens says, pouting out the window to prove his point. Lucas thinks that’s probably true, and he also thinks Jens probably looks good under any sky. He’s lit up beautifully by it now, the left side of his face brightened by the sunlight falling through the wall-length expanse of windows. He turns back to Lucas and his eyes glitter. “I always knew what the blue looked like, though.”
For whatever reason, Lucas feels himself flush. He clears his throat and takes another bite of his cake. “Your education was off to an okay start, then,” he says lightly.
“Mmhm.”
He looks up and finds that Jens’s gaze has grown suddenly intense. He lifts his hand self-consciously, slowly setting his fork back down. “Do I have something on my face?”
Jens shakes his head, corner of his mouth twitching. “No.”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?”
“Just,” Jens shakes his head again. His smile is wry, but sparkling. “I never really trusted the universe much.”
Lucas doesn’t know whether to be crestfallen or curious. He hesitates, swallowing, before asking, “Is there a but?”
Jens bites his lip. “Fuck, it did a good job with you.”
~^~
Whatever game the universe is playing might be more complicated than Lucas originally thought.
Jens isn’t what Lucas had expected, but he’s not as far off as he imagined, either. His chill, skater boy vibe is most unfamiliar. He’s missing the usual eccentricity that all of Lucas’s memories have led him to expect. Taken at face value, he’s incredibly far from what Lucas was looking for. Which is why he’s entirely sure he never would have found him if it wasn’t for the universe’s meddling, and Sander.
He’s never planning on telling the blonde that, though.
The coffee date surprises him. Jens’s patchy shyness had seemed uncharacteristic, considering his looks and his overall aura. Lucas had guessed more in the realm between flippant and cocky, and it seems ‘in between’ has really come as the best description. Jens is somehow quiet in a number of ways. Despite what Lucas imagines, Jens manages to blend in; but he’s far from shy. He’s not hesitant with voicing his opinions the way Lucas is, doesn’t have any problem telling you what he’s thinking. His directness has left Lucas speechless on more than one occasion, with those first few instances remaining the most memorable. It’s hard enough to avoid being attracted to him. Lucas had kind of hoped some of that would dissipate when he opened his mouth.
But really...well, Lucas could listen to him all day.
There are occasions when he does. Jens seems to make it his mission to drag Lucas to as many places in Antwerp as possible, and Lucas grows less and less reluctant. Jens seems to simply want to get to know him, tossing out random questions here and there amidst their outings and offering answers about himself. Lucas doesn’t find it as hard to be open with him as he expected, considering he isn’t usually the most open person. With Jens, it’s different. Every time he’s with Jens, it’s fun. With Jens, it’s easy.
He kind of finds it hard to believe. He still can’t bring himself to trust it. But he looks out, and he notices things.
He’s unable to avoid it, with the situations Sander continues to place him in.
“Robbe and Jens are coming over and we’re having a movie night,” he announces, minutes before the bell rings through the apartment.
Lucas gives him a spiteful look. “Sometimes I think you really take the fact that I basically live here for granted. I could still leave.”
Sander shrugs. “But you won’t.”
Sander is extra annoying when he’s right.
Lucas doesn’t have much time to hate him, because before he knows it the door is opening and permitting their two soulmates and his stomach is doing that tingly, tuggy thing in acknowledgment. Robbe gets caught up in Sander and it leaves Jens entering ahead of him, stopping to gaze upon Lucas with a too-fond smile. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Robbe joins a second later, popping up behind Jens with an overly pleased grin. Lucas has, oddly enough, been having less opportunities to hang out with him since meeting his best friend. He smiles at seeing him now, only to roll his eyes when Sander wraps himself around him from behind.
When he looks back to Jens, the other is already watching him, and has an eye-roll prepared in solidarity. Lucas grins.
Sander and Robbe once again claim their spot on the rest of the sofa, but this time Jens raises his brows questioningly. Lucas looks towards Sander and mimics the gesture. “If you’re roping me into this, you’re at least making me a pillow pile.”
He looks back to Jens as Sander rises with a huff, and his soulmate nods in appreciation. While his boyfriend’s gone, Robbe moves to help Lucas shift the coffee table as Jens pushes the armchair back out of the way, and a much larger space of the floor is clear for them to spread out on.
Sander returns with a bundle of blankets and pillows that tumble from his hands the instant he makes it through the threshold. Robbe giggles at his unimpressed expression, moving to give him a comforting kiss as Lucas bites down his own laughter. He just manages to catch Jens smiling at him before he hastily looks away, moving to drag his friend off of Sander before collecting the pile at their feet.
The ‘pillow pile’ becomes more of a massive nest. Lucas isn’t disappointed with this outcome.
As Sander sets up the TV, the others make themselves comfortable. Robbe settles down first, leaving enough room for Sander next to him. Lucas settles at the far end and once again finds his gaze traveling to Jens.
Once again, Jens is already watching him back.
He moves into the space between Lucas and Robbe without a word.
Lucas can definitely manage this. Even when Sander dims the lights before joining them and Lucas realises how beautiful all of Jens’s angles are cast in shadow, he’s sure this is manageable. He and Jens are no longer in the awkward, unknowing phase. They’ve long since moved past that. It doesn’t matter that all their interactions so far have been in public, out in the daylight, with considerably more space available between them. This isn’t really that different. It still isn’t private, with Robbe and Sander huddled together less than a foot away, even with them lost in their own world. There’s still space between them, even though Lucas can feel Jens’s heat radiating through his own skin. This isn’t anything unusual. It’s not special.
Even though Lucas feels comfortable and drowsy and pleased, cocooned as they are, and he can’t help but imagine how easy it would be to eliminate that space. To sink into Jens and find out if he’s maybe more comfortable, and if being wrapped up in him would change that knowing thrum into something sturdier and happier and even more certain.
But he has much more self control than that, as well as some remaining sense of self-preservation.
It’s just...he still isn’t sure.
He can feel Jens’s gaze flicker to him, every now and again, lighting on his face and lingering. Lucas makes a very conscious effort not to look back, but it doesn’t matter much. He’s still too distracted to even know what movie is playing. He isn’t even sure if it’s a movie.
Barely ten minutes in, he feels Jens shiver.
He looks over at him finally, sees his arms bare under the ends of his white t-shirt, hugging himself tightly around his chest. He’s the only one so underdressed, with both Sander and Lucas wearing sweaters and Robbe safely snuggled up in a hoodie. Lucas barely bites back a sigh at the realisation that his soulmate is such an idiot—January is definitely not a time for t-shirts—but the words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. “Sander, don’t you have any blankets we can actually use? Like, not as a makeshift mattress?”
Where it seems to take Sander a moment to realise he’s being spoken to, Jens turns his attention to Lucas instantly. Lucas carefully avoids his gaze until he gets an answer, which comes in the form of raised brows and a knowing smile. “You can go get my duvet, if you want.”
“Why me?” Lucas raises a brow back.
“Because you’re the one who wants it,” Sander retorts easily. “You can take Jens with you and bring the one from the spare room too.”
Lucas narrows his eyes to very explicitly express how unimpressed he is. Sander merely gives him an innocent smile, and Jens makes no protest about being volunteered. With a sigh, Lucas pushes himself to his feet. He only hesitates for a few seconds before turning and holding his hand out to Jens. Jens doesn’t hesitate at all before taking it with a bright smile.
Lucas pulls him up and quickly lets go, turning and carefully stepping around the other boys to make it out into the hallway. He squints as he moves out the door, the change in brightness momentarily throwing him off. He feels Jens close behind him and quickens his pace towards the spare room at the end of the hall. He has to jiggle the old fashioned handle for a moment before the door falls open and he reaches along the wall inside for the light switch. He’s familiar with the space, has stayed in this room himself on numerous occasions, and he doesn’t have to think before moving towards the bed and pulling the duvet off.
He turns around to produce the weighty bundle to Jens, only to realise he isn’t paying any attention to him. Instead he’s moved towards the old brown piano pushed against the wall, fingers running through the dust on the lid. “I didn’t know Sander had a piano.”
Lucas eyes him over the pile in his arms. “I don’t really think it’s his. Might be his sister’s, or something. I think this was her room before she moved out for college.”
“Is Sander here alone a lot, then?”
“No, the opposite. His parents have started trying to go out one weekend per month to give him a little independence. But those are just the weekends I stay over, so.”
Jens smiles over his shoulder at him. “So he never gets peace.”
Lucas makes an affronted noise. “I am very peaceful.”
Jens hums like he doesn’t believe that in the slightest. He smooths his hand over the wood once more before lifting it carefully, running his gaze along the keys. He presses down on one, and then another, testing. “Still works. And it’s in tune,” Jens says, mostly to himself, and Lucas carefully sits down on the bed behind him.
Jens shoots him a glance and Lucas looks steadily back, patient and waiting. Curious. Jens takes a hesitant seat and Lucas hugs the duvet to his chest. Jens presses a few more keys. Then he begins to play.
Lucas should really learn to stop being surprised by him, but when he does something like this—well, then it isn’t so easy.
He doesn’t recognise the song, but by the way Jens plays it so effortlessly, he guesses it’s flawless. His fingers flirt with the keys, touches drawn out and lingering as long, haunting notes fill the small space. Lucas can only see the shadow of his profile and the movement of his shoulders, and he focuses there as the tempo picks up into something longing, quicker and rhythmic and beautiful. The sound is somehow so achingly Jens that it leaves Lucas’s chest thrumming, always aware, always recognising.
The whole occurrence is short, not even two minutes, and Lucas feels like he’s been listening for a lifetime.
Jens drops his hands silently into his lap as he turns to look at Lucas, smile smaller and more nervous than Lucas has ever seen it, even when they’d properly introduced themselves.
It’s only then that Lucas realises how awestruck his gaze has been, eyes wide and lips parted, trained solely on Jens. He clears his throat, but manages not to look away. Instead, he allows a small smile to surface. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Jens smiles back.
Lucas can’t help but think of Niccoló.
Jens takes the duvet when Lucas passes it to him, then hovers in the hallway as Lucas collects the other from Sander’s room. They make it back to the sitting room, where Sander and Robbe instantly look to them with matching smiles, though Sander’s is curious and Robbe’s knowing.
“That definitely wasn’t you,” Sander says to Lucas, and he can’t even bring himself to be offended. He just nods, dazedly, and dumps the duvet on top of the two before shuffling back to his own spot.
He sinks down heavily, mind whirling, as Jens drops the duvet next to him before retaking his own place. When he spreads the warm cover out over the two of them, Lucas can’t be blamed for settling just a tiny bit closer than before. He’s surprised by the intensity of his sudden desire to rest his head on Jens’s shoulder, to see if his breath is as rhythmic as his song, if he has those pianist's hands and Lucas has just never noticed. Instead, he quietly asks, “What song was that?”
Jens’s shoulder bumps against his as he shrugs. “I made it up.”
Lucas blinks over at him. “You just sat down and made that up?”
Jens looks over at him, confused at first, before huffing a little laugh as realisation hits. “Not just now. I mean, I made it up, but I’ve been playing it for a while.”
“It’s your song?”
“Kinda.” Jens has turned bashful again. It seems more and more unreal to Lucas each time. “I wouldn’t really call it a song. It’s incomplete.”
“It’s beautiful.”
The words fall out before Lucas can stop them. It doesn’t matter when he clamps his lips closed, because he can’t stop looking at Jens, either. Especially when Jens looks back, surprised and pleased and calculating and a little sad.
Lucas is really beginning to think that he doesn’t understand a thing.
~^~
The credits are rolling for a few minutes before they realise no one is getting up to change it, and Lucas looks over to see that Sander and Robbe have both fallen asleep. Sander is propped up a little too high to be comfortable with Robbe cuddled into his chest, but both are sound, lashes lain peacefully against their cheeks. Lucas takes a moment to smile at them before a quiet huff sounds beside him. He twists around to see that Jens has followed his line of sight, and is looking on the others with a fond smile even as he gives an exasperated shake of his head.
“Can’t believe they left us out of their cuddle pile,” Jens mumbles, turning to smile at Lucas instead.
Lucas rolls his eyes. “I can’t believe Sander organised a movie night and then fell asleep before the first one was even over.”
“I mean, it wasn’t that good.”
“I’m still not entirely sure what was playing.”
Jens laughs, eyes crinkling even in the quietness of the gesture. Lucas’s eyes fall to his lips and then flicker instantly away. He tucks his hands under his arms as a tremble runs through him, digging his fingers into his ribs. He’s had enough interactions with Jens now that he should be prepared for this. Only, this isn’t how he usually reacts. He usually isn’t so thrown, even in moments of confusion. When Jens seems half like the person he’s looking for and entirely not.
Jens sits still next to him for a little while, breath soft, eyes still trained on Lucas. He takes another glance over at their friends before sliding himself down. Lucas chances looking at him as he lies down on the floor, curling onto his side as he bunches the pillow up under his head before settling. He tugs the duvet—that he’s spent the night sharing with Lucas—back into place around himself. Then he looks up and meets Lucas’s gaze. Lucas stares back at him until Jens pats the space between them.
Slowly, Lucas lays down next to him.
He settles on his side, facing Jens, and tries to ignore the quickening of his heart. This doesn’t mean anything more. This isn’t anything new. He isn’t even any closer to Jens than he had been a moment ago. If anything, now he has more opportunity to move farther away.
But Jens is smiling at him as if there’s nowhere else he’d rather be, and with a gentleness Lucas didn’t know to expect, he tucks the duvet up over Lucas’s shoulder and smooths it into place.
No closer, no different, and yet something very new. Something achingly intimate.
Lucas tucks a hand under his cheek and curls the other very close to his chest, doing his best to ignore the fond curiosity shining from the boy lying next to him. He should turn away, he tells himself. Close his eyes, at the least. There’s no reason for him to lie here like this, no reason for him to put himself in this situation.
Jens says, “I thought I’d found my soulmate, before.”
His voice is a whisper. Lucas blinks at him. He keeps his tone at the same level. “Before me?”
“Yeah,” Jens’s lips quirk. “It’s not really a good story for me, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had a girlfriend. We were like, barely fifteen, and she was pretty, and I knew she wasn’t my soulmate or anything but we got together. But then there was this other girl. Her best friend.”
Jens pauses, almost as if he expects Lucas to recoil or condemn him on the spot. It’s pretty clear what he means, but Lucas knows he’s in no place to judge. There are enough mistakes in his memories to fill lifetimes, after all.
“She was just...beautiful. And we clicked right away. And I was so sure. I couldn’t just be feeling everything I was feeling out of nowhere. When she touched me, and nothing happened, I made up so many excuses. Anything I could think of to tell myself that the universe must be making some kind of mistake. There was no way I was doing what I was doing if it wasn’t meant to be. Then I told myself, she doesn’t have to be my soulmate for it to be on purpose. Maybe my soulmate was someone platonic, and this girl was the person I was meant to love anyway.”
Lucas feels clogged with emotion and an irrational fear. More than anything, he understands. Jens has almost exactly described how Lucas himself was feeling, has followed the same path of idiocy with his apparent ex as Lucas had with Sander. Separately, he worries, for that brief moment, that he’s been worrying for nothing. That Jens already has someone he loves, and Lucas was never even considered. Even though it contradicts everything that Jens has told him, the thought slips in. Overpowering it is the fear that Jens is telling him this for the exact opposite reason. He’s sure Jens is about to tell him something he isn’t ready to hear.
“What happened?” Lucas whispers.
Jens gives a tiny shrug. “We weren’t meant to be. People got hurt. The two of us the most. And the only thing I could think was how stupid I was. I’d known. We both had. That’s when I decided that wasn’t what the universe had planned for me.”
Lucas shouldn’t ask. “So what is?”
Instead of giving a straight answer, Jens says, “I still found it hard to believe then. I thought maybe I just wasn’t made for the relationship thing. That even a soulmate would never be that person for me.” He takes a shaky breath. “But then you touched me. And I really wanted to believe in it.”
The words hit their mark, and suddenly, Lucas can’t look at him. He closes his eyes, curling his fingers into his sweater and trying to center himself. “Jens,” he tries, but he doesn’t know what to say. There’s nothing he can say. He can’t do this. He can’t make it better. He can’t be what Jens wants. They can’t be.
He thinks of Sander and Robbe, still curled up a few feet away, oblivious. He thinks of Sander that day he’d come to Lucas saying he’d found him, the awe with which he’d said his name, the surety that had completely encased him. He thinks of the crushed hope that had filled his own chest, the way he’d felt like his world had finally collapsed around him, finally proving he’d been wrong, wrong, wrong. He remembers the surety he’d felt himself, a much different kind that had dimmed the light in him and left him feeling more lost than ever. Cast permanently into the shadows, forever captured in black and white.
He thinks of when Jens had touched him, and all the light came rushing back.
“It’s okay,” Jens whispers, “if I’m wrong. But I still don’t want to be. I still don’t think you want me to be.”
Does he?
The truth is, he doesn’t. The truth is, nothing about this has ever really felt wrong. Lucas doesn’t know what keeps him fighting. Especially when Jens is who he is. When he says all these things he says. When he makes Lucas feel like the world is finally on the right axis, and the stars have aligned now that their lives have eclipsed. The truth is, every time he sees him, there’s a part of Lucas that wants Jens so strongly the rest of the world seems to fade again.
Lucas looks at him now, and swallows down everything that wants to erupt, and wonders why he’s doing it. “The universe has made it really hard for me to trust it, Jens.”
Jens instantly shakes his head, eyes dark. Lucas feels like he’s being seen right through. “I don’t buy that. I don’t think that’s what it is at all.”
Lucas doesn’t close his eyes again, but he can’t look at him, either. Instead he just lets his gaze drop, jumping down past Jens’s lips to settle at the base of his throat, shadowed by the duvet. “You really are amazing, Jens,” he says, because it’s better than it’s not you, it’s me, even if that’s what’s true.
They fall into silence, but Lucas knows that’s not it. There’s too much lingering tension, too much shifting in Jens’s jaw, his throat, for Lucas to believe he has nothing left to say. Jens’s hand seems to raise in slow motion, and yet Lucas is still surprised when it falls on his cheek. Fingers cup his jaw and a thumb brushes over his cheekbone and he tries to think if anyone has ever touched him like this. Maybe his mother, years before, but even in her most tender moments, Lucas can’t imagine it would have felt like this. The featherlight touch is enough to leave his whole body sinking. His breath rushes out of him and returns in unsure hitches, and the whole time, Jens waits.
Lucas looks back at his eyes.
“I wish I knew what was holding you back,” Jens says.
Lucas isn’t really sure anymore, either.
He raises his hand and places it over Jens’s. Jens keeps stroking his cheek.
Lucas turns into the touch, just barely, leaving the corner of his mouth a hair's breadth away. Then he presses back into the pillow and closes his eyes.
When Jens moves his hand off his cheek, Lucas follows, leaving their hands atop each other on the space between them. He’s glad he can’t see Jens anymore, because he doesn’t want to dissect his expression when Lucas tangles their fingers together.
He doesn’t really want Jens to see him, either.
Lucas has always known. Since waking up in his second life, he’s realised that he is the exception to the rule. He’s always been some blip in the universe’s plans, something separate, something other. Even while blending, while following, while believing, he’s never fit. The rules weren’t made for him.
So why has he been making this one for himself?
~^~
After knowing his soulmate for two months, Lucas kind of imagined they’d be further along.
In all his memories, a lot more had happened within that time. There had been love even amidst the lingering uncertainties that had been enough to overpower everything else. Sander had fallen madly in love with Robbe in that time and even gotten him to fully reciprocate.
Lucas and Jens are skating down the street silently with a couple of feet between them.
Lucas has spent the past couple of weeks since their movie night trying to wrangle his thoughts together, wanting desperately to make sense of things. He’s had so many repeated lives. So many versions of what felt like the same soulmate gifted to him over and over. He’d been the exception to the rule. But within that space, others had formed. He followed the same path, over and over, and it always felt like it was exactly where he was meant to be.
Now, following Jens down the street, that feeling is still there.
Lucas doesn’t know what it means. He doesn’t know what any of it has ever meant. He’s beginning to think that maybe he doesn’t have to.
I wish I knew what was holding you back.
“What’s your spirit animal?” Jens asks him, once they’re settled at the top of the half pipe, a bag of crisps laid open between them.
Lucas raises a brow. “My what?”
“Your spirit animal. Like, what animal do you feel all connected to and represented by and shit.”
“I know what a spirit animal is,” Lucas says, thinking of Eliott, ‘hedgehog’ on the tip of his tongue. “I just don’t know why you’re asking me about it.”
Jens shrugs. “I guess it just seems like something you’d be interested in. You find all that universal, spiritual stuff interesting right?”
“It seems like you do too.”
“I do, I guess. Are you going to keep acting surprised by it, or are you going to give me an answer?” Jens smiles, brows raised, and Lucas kind of hates how pretty he is. He’s becoming increasingly sure that Jens is the most annoying person he’s ever known in all his lifetimes. He seems to know exactly what buttons to push, and when pushing them will throw Lucas completely off guard.
Lucas furrows his brows. It’s never something he’s had to think about before. “I don’t actually know.” Then he asks, “Why? What do you think I would be?”
“The butterfly.”
Lucas stares at him. “The butterfly,” he repeats. Jens hums, smile widening, softening, and Lucas should stop looking at his lips. “Why the fuck?”
Jens huffs a laugh, shoulders shaking visibly from where he’s leaned back on his hands; much more relaxed than Lucas, as usual. “Metamorphosis. Growth. Change. Like there’s something still stuck inside you trying to break free. Something even more beautiful. Something free.”
Still, Lucas stares at him. He’s mostly shocked that he can still be shocked by Jens. That every time they interact, Jens surprises him. It’s like he has a checklist of things to do and say that continuously prove Lucas wrong, and he’s quickly working his way through them. “You came prepared with this, didn’t you?”
Jens shrugs again, but this time the movement is much smaller. Bashful and unsure. “I might have thought about it a little. Also, Sander’s a wolf and Robbe’s a fox.”
“And I’m a butterfly,” Lucas says dryly.
“And you’re a butterfly,” Jens agrees. “Meaning you’re the only one who can fly. Speaking of flying, if you could have any superpower, what would it be?”
“You’re not going to tell me your spirit animal?”
“I don’t have one.”
“You don’t have one.”
“I haven’t figured mine out yet. I’ll get back to you.”
“Very kind of you.”
Jens lifts a hand to shove his shoulder. “Superpowers.”
“Mind-reading.”
Jens tilts his head, and Lucas preens. It’s nice to think that he can surprise the other boy, too. “Really?”
Lucas hums. “I feel like it would help a lot with all the anxiety over everything. If you just knew what everyone was thinking all the time, you wouldn’t be constantly second-guessing.”
Jens hums back, shifting his gaze out to the rest of the skatepark, abnormally quiet for the time of the afternoon. He looks suddenly tired. “Now that you’ve said it, I think I’d like that, too.”
Lucas feels his throat clog up again. That familiar tightness settles in his chest. “No answer for your last question and copying me for this one. That’s boring.”
“They’re true, though,” Jens shrugs. Lucas feels like he’s doing a lot of that. It feels like some kind of indicator. Like this is just a lead up to something else, something that can’t be shrugged off. Lucas feels ridiculous for worrying over shrugs. Jens is just chill. Jens can just shrug everything off. Lucas should just stop projecting.
Then Jens asks, “If you were a monster, what would you look like?”
Lucas isn’t quite sure why he laughs, but the noise is startled out of him. “Excuse me? I was a butterfly, and now I’m a monster?”
“Do you have an answer?” Jens presses.
“Do you?”
Lucas doesn’t even really have to ask, already sure that he does. He’s proven right when Jens reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded up piece of paper, still crisp around the edges. He holds it out to Lucas silently, and Lucas merely raises a brow before taking it. When Jens doesn’t give any other instructions, Lucas unfolds it to find a comic-like drawing.
It’s made up of two creatures. One is thin and made up of too many limbs, though it’s shaded lightly, appearing soft and somewhat gentle for all of its monstrosity. The butterfly wings sprouting from its back make up the only colour in the sketch, done in what appears to be every possible shade of blue. Without understanding why, Lucas understands that it’s him. On further inspection, the other creature isn’t really one at all. It doesn’t seem fully formed, made up of hurried, jagged lines, spiky and shapeless. The only visible appendage is the wisp of what must be an arm, held out to the butterfly creature across the page. This second being is harshly shaded, dark and entirely devoid of any colour or form of humanity. A thin, pencil-woven string tethers the two creatures together, even though the contrast makes them seem miles apart.
Lucas’s grip on the paper is too tight, but he fears nothing more than letting it go. He doesn’t know where to begin. He thinks of drawings pinned on walls and snuck into backpacks, flipbooks and cartoons and texts, carefully left notes and wordless apologies. He thinks that the boy sitting next to him is anything but dark and jagged.
“This is wrong,” is the first thing he manages to say. “I’m not—we should be the other way around.”
“I don’t know how to draw myself, either,” Jens responds quietly. “But this is how it feels to me.”
“I didn’t know you could draw.”
“Well, I can’t, really. Not like you and Sander. I’m not really into the whole realism thing. Just...something I’ve always done for fun.”
“Always?”
Jens raises a hand and wiggles it in mid air, a ‘more-or-less’. “I know it’s weird, and a lot of what I did is the same colour, but...well, you understand, I guess.”
Lucas nods, absentminded, still focused on the drawing. He doesn’t really know how to process what he’s looking at or what he’s been told or what this means. It’s like another piece of the impossible puzzle has been slotted into place, and Lucas is running out of arguments for himself.
Everything about this life is different. This is the only universe in which he was ripped away from his friends, his life. This is the only universe in which he’s gone on his own pursuit of art. This is the only universe in which he’s met an Even that isn’t his own. This is the only universe in which he feels like everything has been taken from him, over and over again, only to finally give him a soulmate he was never looking for.
This is the only universe in which he genuinely fears he’s being tricked.
He doesn’t want to fall for Jens just to have him ripped away, too.
He’s beginning to realise that it’s probably too late for that.
He also knows that, in a way, Jens is the soulmate he’s always wanted.
Jens is the Jonas he never thought he’d be allowed to have.
Jens is about to make him do something very, very risky.
“I have to tell you something,” he whispers, unsure if Jens will even hear him, unsure if he actually wants him to.
Jens turns to look at him, and waits.
Lucas lets out a breath.
“You’re not my first soulmate.”
~^~
It’s not something he’s ever done, in any of his memories. Not something any of his past selves have even considered doing. He doesn’t really know what it’ll mean. He assumes that being the only exception to probably the biggest rule in the universe means he should keep it to himself. It’s their little secret. The universe and its mistake.
He doesn’t know what kind of repercussions there may be, if he lets someone else in on it. It’s always felt like his secret, his burden. It’s always been something he struggles to explain to himself, never mind to anyone else.
But he can’t breathe anymore.
He can’t keep looking at Jens and pretending that it feels wrong.
Not without at least explaining why.
Jens doesn’t seem as shocked by the statement as Lucas expects, but it does leave him momentarily speechless. Only, driven by confusion, rather than mind-blown surprise. After a drawn-out moment of silence, in which Lucas feels like he’s finally broken the surface and is still drowning, Jens simply raises his brows and says, “Okay? What does that mean?”
Lucas explains that he has no idea how to explain. Jens stands up and offers him a hand with a simple, “Let’s go somewhere warmer first then, huh?”
Lucas takes him back to his aunt’s apartment, even though Jens lives closer. Lucas knows for a fact that his aunt is working, and an empty house is probably the best idea for this discussion. His hands shake the whole way, and before he can stuff them in his pockets, Jens grabs the one closest to him and entwines it with his own, giving a gentle squeeze. He drops it just as quickly, adjusting his grip on his skateboard. After a moment of hesitation, Lucas reaches out for him again. Jens lets Lucas cling to him without a fuss, and Lucas walks closer alongside him.
Only when he’s lying on his bed with Jens next to him does he realise he still has no idea what to say. He looks for answers in the ceiling and struggles to find any.
“Lucas,” Jens says, soft and soothing. “You don’t have to tell me. But if you do, whatever it is—it’s fine. Nothing’s going to happen. You’re good.”
Lucas really wishes he harbored the same surety. “I’ve had soulmates before.”
This time, Jens seems surprised. “Plural?”
Lucas gives him a weak smile. “It’s complicated.”
Jens keeps his expression smooth as he nods, and Lucas is grateful that he at least isn’t running yet.
“I guess I haven’t really had them. When I was around...eight, I think, I started remembering things. At the start I thought maybe it was dreams. It was just….I could see everything in colour. I knew what the colours were. And I still thought maybe...that’s just my brain, making it up. But there’s no way it could do that. There’s no way it could do that and be right. And they stayed with me, even though I never remembered my dreams. These stayed with me. And every day there would be more. Some other flash. Another person, another place, another moment. Always so real, like I was right there. They always just felt like normal memories. From a dozen different lives, with a dozen different soulmates. Like I’d lived them all. Like I’ve been all of these people. I remember everything about them. Their names, their interests, their fears, their desires, all the people around them. Basically their whole life. They’re all almost the same story. It verges a little, the older they get, and the people….they’re all different, but still the same. Mostly the same events happen, everyone has the same position. I’ve lived the same life a dozen times and I remember all of them.”
Lucas takes a long breath when he’s done, trying to release some of the anxiety that had built up in his chest without his notice. He knows he still hasn’t made any sense of things, and that he’s simply risen a whole plethora of questions. He’s kept his gaze on the ceiling the whole way through his rant, and he takes extra time to compose himself before turning to look at Jens.
Jens stares back at him with his mouth agape, unblinking.
So, Lucas has definitely surprised him.
“I think,” Jens says slowly, “I need to lay down.”
Lucas simply watches him as he adjusts himself, carefully shifting across the bed before lowering himself down until his head hits the pillow. He takes another deep, slow breath with his eyes trained on the ceiling. Then he says, “What the fuck?”
“Yeah,” Lucas says.
“I don’t understand.”
“Me either.”
“No, really, like I didn’t understand anything. You’re gonna have to run me through that again, because none of what you just said makes sense.”
“I can’t make sense of it.”
“Okay, past lives, cool, I understand, but remembering all of them, as if they’re your life now? And why are they in colour? I mean, is that what you meant, that they were all in colour? Oh well wait, of course they would be, if it’s with their soulmate.”
Lucas shakes his head before Jens is even finished. “No, that’s the thing. The soulmate connection never works the same way. One time it’s their name on my wrist, the next it’s their first words, the next it’s a countdown, the next it’s their scars on my skin. And they aren’t past lives like I remember living in the twelfth century. That’s why I don’t get it. It isn’t even like I’m reborn. It’s like I just...restart.”
Jens raises his hands to his forehead and closes his eyes. “This is more of a head rush than when I touched you for the first time. What the fuck.”
“I told you it’s complicated.”
“Well I always knew you were complicated but I didn’t know there were like twelve of you.”
Lucas can’t help but laugh. The sound seems to be ripped out of him, and his smile turns automatically fond as he gazes at Jens, still amidst his breakdown. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
Jens finally drops his hands and opens his eyes, letting out a sigh. “How do you think it happens, then?”
“I don’t know.” Lucas swallows. In the momentary pause, he finds the confidence somewhere to roll onto his side, towards Jens.
“Then maybe that is how it works.” Jens turns his head to look back at him. “Have you ever thought about parallel universes?”
Wait, what?
Lucas is pretty sure the rules have completely disappeared in this lifetime, but he’s still pretty sure that’s his line.
“Have you thought about parallel universes?” Lucas asks carefully.
“Yeah. Robbe and I used to talk about them, now and again. He always liked the idea better than I did, but now—for you, it would make sense, wouldn’t it? If there’s no concept of time...maybe they aren’t even memories. Maybe they’re all happening now, to different versions of you in different parallel universes. Maybe you have some kind of magic connection through the veil.”
Lucas blinks. “You’re joking.”
Jens nods, then widens his eyes and quickly shakes his head. “I’m not, I swear. Do you think I don’t believe you?”
Lucas shrugs.
“That’s stupid. Why the fuck would you lie about that? Of course I believe you, Luc. It’s just…”
He trails off, and Lucas finishes, “A lot?”
“Yeah,” Jens sighs. He pauses. “Lying down isn’t helping.”
Lucas huffs. He pushes himself up. “I’m gonna get us some water.”
~^~
They lie propped up against Lucas’s headboard, taking occasional sips from glasses of water cradled in shaky hands. Lucas waits until Jens no longer seems on the verge of pulling his hair out in confusion before explaining the problems with his theory.
“I thought about the parallel universe thing too. It’s always something I think about, actually. But it doesn’t work with the time concept, either. I have memories of all of them growing old. I could remember things from their old age before their childhood. They are definitely memories, not insights. That’s why it feels like a restart. Like I’m the universe’s main character, and it can hit rewind and make me start over whenever it feels like it. It can adjust the film until I live the way it wants me to. But that’s why I’ve never understood. The rule is that you have this one person who is made for you, and you don’t get any other options or any second chances. I don’t get why I keep waking up as someone new, and I keep remembering, and I keep getting a do over.”
Jens listens attentively. He seems to be trying his best to absorb everything Lucas says, even though there’s no possible way for him to understand. Even though there’s no possible way for him to make sense of things and explain them to Lucas.
Still, Lucas wants to tell him.
“But you said it’s always the same, right? More or less. So if it was happening because you were doing it wrong, wouldn’t things change completely?”
Lucas considers. “I guess.”
“Can you explain it to me? The rundown of your usual life.”
Can he? Lucas blows out a sigh, flopping onto his back again as he sifts through his mind. “It’s hard, because everything kind of jumbles together and it’s not really in order. But it’s basically the same as my life now. Mother freaks out, dad ditches, except I usually don’t get sent away. I’m able to live with friends. Then I...I meet him.”
Jens’s lips quirk. “Well at least I have the he part.”
Lucas rolls his eyes, smiling slightly. “That’s never been surprising.”
“So...what then?”
“I don’t even know anymore,” Lucas whispers. “It’s just...usually I see them, and I just know. There’s something about them. The way they exist and take up space. Like they’re brighter than everything else. The way they have this cool persona, and act like they don’t need anyone’s approval, but there’s doubt in everything they do. In everything they choose. Except for me.”
Jens rolls onto his side to face him now, smile a little wry, almost self-deprecating. “Still sounds pretty much like me. I mean not the brighter thing, but the rest.”
Lucas shakes his head, and he knows his smile has turned soft. “The bright thing works for you, too. You know then I used the excuse that they’re always artistic in some way. Mostly filmmaking and stuff, sometimes musical, always with some type of weird drawing style. So imagine my fucking surprise now that I know you better.”
This startles a small laugh out of Jens, leaving his eyes crinkling, and he really is a little too beautiful. He sobers up fairly quickly, expression turning slowly somber and inquisitive. “There’s still something missing, though.”
“There’s a lot that isn’t right. I know that. Me moving and not having my usual set of friends. Living with my aunt. But I was sure it wouldn’t change anything about my soulmate, that it might just make him a little harder to find. I didn’t know it was different so I could find you. And I didn’t know when I found you because...even though they weren’t like me, they didn’t have memories, they felt like the same person. Even though I’ve never been exactly the same as Isak, every soulmate in my memory has reminded me of Even.”
“Wait,” Jens interrupts. “So they’re like, where you started? How do you know that if there’s no indication of time?”
“It’s...weird. But it’s like my memories have memories. I’ve always been Isak looking for Even. That’s what they all focus on. And Isak doesn’t have any memories of remembering.”
“I’m finding this really hard to take in.”
“You’re taking it much better than I expected, honestly,” Lucas admits. “I’ve never—there’s no memories of telling anyone else before.”
“Being chill is my whole persona. It'll be really damaging to that if I freak out.”
Lucas huffs a laugh. “Okay. But if you need to take a minute, I get it.”
He’s starting to feel like he needs a moment to himself. He’s gotten lost in the maze of his own thoughts, the excess jumble of memories in his head, and he isn’t sure anything he says is even going to be coherent anymore.
But Jens deserves an explanation. And he deserves to finally let it out.
“Why are you so sure I’m different, then? What’s wrong with me?” Jens asks, and it’s not to be self-pitying, or judgmental, or insecure. It’s genuine confusion, a question delivered with curious ease, and it somehow makes Lucas feel worse.
“Nothing,” he finally says. “I thought—I mean, Even was bipolar. And then, most of the time, I expected it. It wasn’t always bipolar, sometimes BPD, sometimes something else, and I thought it was a part of the rules, a part of identifying, but there’s been exceptions to that, too. I don’t know anymore. I don’t know why I was stuck on the idea that it couldn’t be you. There’s no reason I wouldn’t want it to be you. But I wasn’t expecting it. It’s just that I was so sure of what I was looking for, and before I met you, I thought—“
He cuts himself off before he can say it, but the dawning realisation in Jens’s eyes is enough proof that he’s already given it away.
“Sander,” Jens says quietly.
Lucas can’t do anything but nod.
“You liked him?”
“I thought so. It seemed right. Everything seemed to fit into place. It’s just...it’s the whole aura about them, you know? And I deluded myself when he touched me, too. I still hoped. Then he found Robbe. And once I realised that he really wasn’t mine, all the ‘feelings’ I thought I had just disappeared. It never made sense. I knew what Sander would be like, once he was in love, and I refused to notice that he wasn’t like that with me and that was proof enough. And then I...I stopped looking.”
Jens stares down at the bed sheets, rubbing a loose thread between his finger and thumb. “And you gave up,” he finishes.
“And I gave up,” Lucas agrees.
He considers, and stalls, and his nerves rise. It takes all of his courage to roll onto his side. To lift his hand and set it gently on Jens’s cheek. To pull his gaze up to him, the way Jens had done to him before, easy and confident and sure as always. It doesn’t feel as bad, once Jens has his eyes on him. It doesn’t matter how different it is, that everything has gone wrong, and that nothing fits together in his head anymore. There is nothing more familiar to him than those eyes, and that’s enough.
“But then I found you.”
Jens’s lips part, and it doesn’t scare Lucas when he realises, again, that he wants to kiss him.
“It’s just that...I had it all figured out in my head. I always do. Like my life is already decided for me, and I can only make a few minor changes here and there, differences that don’t really affect anything. I was just so set on this single idea, and then I thought everything was settled into place, and when it wasn’t, I felt like it was a mistake. You know when you have this idea in your head, and you’re so sure, and then it falls apart and it’s just like, the world is ending. Nothing fits. I couldn’t make it fit.”
He takes a breath. “It just—I got scared. That the universe had really made a mistake, and was taking a little while to realise it. Or that it was testing me, trying to see if I understood I had to follow its rules, if I knew my place. Either way, it seemed like there would be consequences. And I hated it. It physically hurt to stay away. To push you away. To know that I was hurting you. But the thought of letting myself try, of ending up falling for you only to have the universe take you back...it really fucking scared me.”
Jens’s eyes are glistening and focused, not straying from Lucas once, even as his jaw tenses and his throat bobs through a thick swallow. “What changed your mind?”
Lucas strokes his thumb over his cheek. His skin is soft and warm and familiar under Lucas’s hand. “I could never manage to convince myself that the way I felt about you was wrong. Not when every part of me was telling me otherwise. It didn’t make sense for the universe to allow me to feel like that, if it wasn’t on purpose. I didn’t change my mind so much as that I couldn’t stop it.”
This earns him a tiny, pleased, hopeful smile.
“I kind of started thinking about it more and more. When I got to know Robbe, and I heard more about his relationship with Sander, and I felt like my story was wrong because he was put here in my place. And I’ve realised that he is a lot like me, if I’d actually been made for Sander. And I really obviously wasn’t. But I’ve always had the same best friend, in my past lives. They were always super chill, and kinda secretly dorky, and way too loving. They were always the best person I knew. And even though every time I knew...it was usually too late by then anyway. I’d always already fallen for them. In every life I’ve lived I’ve always fallen for you, Jens.”
Jens’s next breath comes sharp, and he looks on disbelievingly as Lucas traces his thumb over his bottom lip. It seems simple now, looking at him. Like the easiest thing in the world would be to lean in and kiss Jens, to see what it does to that tug in his stomach, if all the colours will brighten. It seems necessary.
“You don’t mean that,” Jens laughs slightly, and it sounds like he wants to be wrong.
Lucas smiles. “Thought you believed me.”
This earns him a huff. Jens leans into his touch even while shaking his head, stubborn furrow suddenly formed between his brows. “So now, what? None of it matters to you anymore? Fuck the rules of the universe?”
“The only rule in this universe is you. And I’ve never tried to mess with it before.”
Jens swallows, licking his lips. “Just like that?”
“I just told you my multi-life story and you didn’t up and run. But you’re gonna fight me now?”
“I’ve been fighting since I met you. I just want to be sure. I need you to be sure. I get that there’s—that I have a lot to live up to.”
Lucas shakes his head and shifts closer, following the dip of the mattress allowing him to fall into Jens, making him go cross-eyed. Lucas smiles and smooths the furrow in his brow with his thumb. “Okay, I didn’t explain it right. Yes, I have all the memories, and in some way...they’re all mine, and I lived through it. But I’m not really all those past lives. I never am. I’m me. With my own life, and my own people, and my own soulmate. And I couldn’t let myself accept that before, because I felt like I’ve never needed to. I knew what was expected of me, and the things I was supposed to do and the life I was supposed to have and I didn’t have to try to be anyone else. But I’m not being someone else. I’m just me. And I want you, Jens. And I’m honored that the universe wants me to have you.”
He should pull away to look at Jens properly, to be able to take in his reaction, to see the effect his words have. If they sink in. Instead he presses closer still, until they’re forehead to forehead, moving his hand back into Jens’s hair, watching his eyes slip closed.
“I can’t believe you were holding out on me this whole time. I never would have guessed you were so cheesy.”
Lucas laughs, keeping himself quiet, letting his nose brush against Jens’s. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”
“Are you actually going to kiss me or do I have to—“
Lucas cuts him off by pressing his lips to his. Jens lets the rest of his words fall away with nothing more than a muffled hum before kissing him back.
Lucas eliminates the sliver of space left between them as Jens slips an arm over his waist, settling a hand in the dip of his back, and the tug in his stomach finally gives way to a pleasant heat. The way Jens kisses him is familiar, soft and reverent and natural, easier to Lucas than breathing. A soulmate’s kiss, through and through. Lucas can feel it in the tingle of his lips, in the burn of his chest, in the pit of his stomach. Jens is smooth and sharp and undeniably real under his hands, his own grip on Lucas gentle but tight. It seems only right that Lucas wants to kiss him forever.
“I’ve been waiting for this since long before I found you,” Jens admits, voice lost between kisses, words falling from his lips onto Lucas’s.
Lucas says, “Me too,” in much the same way, letting Jens swallow the words and hold them in his chest, where he can hopefully begin to believe them.
~^~
Sander is, of course, even more insufferable when he finds out. He has radiated smugness since the beginning, irrationally proud of himself for truly being the one to find Lucas’s soulmate. Lucas tells him on numerous occasions that it doesn’t count and is nowhere as impressive as he thinks, and Sander’s disappointment is clear from the moment he notices the hesitation in Lucas.
So when he not only turns up to Sander’s apartment with Jens by his side, but with the boy’s arm tucked securely around his shoulders, Sander is understandably pleased.
He drags Lucas away from Jens instantly to wrap him up in a hug, not bothering to tone down his declaration of, “Finally.”
Lucas laughs but gives his friend a tight squeeze, only to shove him away when the older boy ruffles his hair. Jens gets a hug of his own and then Robbe is stepping into the space and all of Sander’s attention shifts in an instant. Lucas looks to Jens first, this time, before giving his usual eye-roll, and warmth swamps his chest when Jens grins at him. He makes his own way through the apartment and flops down on the couch, tugging Jens down next to him once he’s close enough. Jens is snuggled into his side with Lucas’s feet thrown over his lap before Sander and Robbe finally join them, both looking on with ridiculous smiles.
“Stop it,” Lucas mumbles, covering his soulmate’s own sappy expression by pulling his head into his chest. Jens simply laughs as he tugs Lucas’s arms down, but otherwise makes no effort to move away. Robbe and Sander’s smiles simply widen. “I mean it. Stop all the smiling or we’re leaving.”
Robbe tilts his head at them, then looks at Sander. “Is that what we seem like?”
Sander snorts and wraps his arms around his boyfriend, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “No, they’re not like us.”
“Nah, we’re way cuter,” Jens says.
Robbe snorts this time as Sander laughs, before they say a simultaneous, “You wish.”
It drives more laughter out of them both, and Jens joins in with an exaggerated roll of his eyes as Lucas feels a heavy sense of deja-vu. He shakes it off and presses his nose to Jens’s hair, conveniently hiding his smile as Jens presses a kiss to his chest in return. He distantly hears Sander’s cooing, and raises a hand to flip him off without lifting his head.
“Sit down and play your movie,” Jens grumbles, tone easily contradicted by the smile on his face.
Robbe and Sander obey, settling on the empty half of the sofa. Neither of them, however, make any attempt to set up the TV. Instead they both watch Jens and Lucas with curious gazes, seemingly waiting. Lucas is happy to let them continue watching in silence. He’ll gladly wait until they squirm.
Jens, it seems, doesn’t have quite as much patience. “What?”
“You can’t expect us to just sit here and not ask what happened,” Robbe says, bordering between incredulity and genuine sadness. Lucas can’t help but think that he and Sander are truly a perfect pairing.
“What do you think happened? I finally wooed Lucas with my charms. He simply couldn’t resist any longer. What more is there to know? Do you want the dirty details?” Jens retorts.
Robbe instantly cringes. “No no, thank you.”
Lucas smacks his soulmate’s—no, boyfriend’s—chest. “There was no dirt to detail.”
“Pity,” Sander comments idly. Robbe smacks the back of his head.
“Jens is basically right,” Lucas shrugs. “Except it was less charm and more overwhelming annoyance. Had to find some way of finally shutting him up.”
Jens pinches his side in response, but Lucas knows he recognises the teasing. He also understands how hard it still is for Lucas, with the jumbled mess in his head. He knows that they can’t possibly explain to anyone else—that it still weighs somewhat uncomfortably between themselves. In all of Lucas’s thinking about it, in the confusion and distress his memories have caused him, he hadn’t thought about the insecurities it could incite in his soulmate. His distance from Jens at the beginning is likely to have only made it worse.
But Lucas is trying.
“Well, either way, I’m happy about it,” Robbe says, giving them a soft smile. “The tension was ridiculous.”
Lucas sticks his tongue out at him as Jens laughs, lifting himself away from Lucas to pull a suggestive face at his friend. “What makes you think that’ll stop?”
Lucas hits his shoulder again as Robbe tosses a throw cushion at him. Sander holds his hand out for a fist bump. As Jens lifts his arm Lucas quickly moves to intervene, pushing his hand down with a harsh, “Do not fist bump him.”
Jens turns to him in surprise as Sander raises a brow, small smirk tugging at his lips. “Bossy,” he teases, and Jens nods in agreement. But he drops his hand, and his eyes are slightly glazed as he tilts his head to press a kiss to Lucas’s jaw, and Lucas knows that he’s won. He allows himself to shoot Sander a smug smile as the blonde retracts his own hand in disappointment, watching Robbe give his knee a comforting pat. “I’m happy for you too, though,” Sander says, directing most of his attention to Lucas. Lucas nods gratefully at him in response.
With a movie finally playing, Jens settles more comfortably against Lucas’s chest, one arm wrapped around Lucas’s back and the other tossed over his legs. Lucas, once again, spends most of the time distracted. He plays with Jens’s hair and traces patterns on his bared forearm and lets their breathing sync. He hadn’t really been prepared for the amount of affection Jens seems to constantly give away, but he’s pleased. It leaves his heart warm and his head spinning, when Jens pulls him unexpectedly into a kiss or flips him onto his back or appears out of nowhere to wrap his arms around him. It helps that Jens positively glows when Lucas returns it with equal care and attention. It helps that the colours do seem to brighten, every time they touch.
Jens twists his hand around now to catch Lucas’s, squeezing gently as he nuzzles into his neck. Lucas smiles and kisses the crown of his head. When he looks back up, he catches Sander watching him.
“I’m going to get some better snacks,” Sander says a moment later, detangling himself from Robbe to stand up. “Luc, can you come help me?”
Sander has gotten absolutely no better at subtlety.
Still, Lucas indulges him with no more protest than a quiet sigh. He slips out of the comfort of his soulmate’s hold and follows Sander to the kitchen, where he is already at the counter, emptying a packet of crisps into a bowl. At least he knows to actually take back snacks, Lucas will concede.
Sander also doesn’t beat around the bush. “I don’t really know what was making you unsure in the first place, but I’m glad you worked it out. It’s nice, seeing you like that.” He abandons his task to turn to Lucas, smiling softly. “You seem happy.”
Lucas can’t help but roll his eyes. He also can’t help a smile of his own. “I am happy,” he admits. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain it to you, either, but...I think Jens understands.” He knows he won’t be able to explain it to Sander, ever. He’s still a little nervous about having told Jens, still waiting to be hit with the consequences. But it’s been a week, and so far neither of them have been struck down, so Lucas is considering it a blessing.
“Then, it doesn’t matter about me. Jens looks better when he’s happy, too.”
Lucas grins. “He does, doesn’t he?”
Sander rolls his eyes and shoves two filled bowls into Lucas’s arms, waving him away. Jens and Robbe both turn to look at him when he comes back, giving him the feeling he interrupted their own, likely sappy conversation. Robbe just grins at him, however, and makes grabby hands for the food Lucas carries, so Lucas figures they got through what needed to be said.
It’s a large contrast to their last movie night, Lucas thinks, as Jens grows heavy against him and falls asleep first, much to the amusement of their friends. Lucas ignores them and tries to take in the end of the film, continuing to card his hand through Jens’s hair.
Lucas thinks all this change might not be too bad.
~^~
“Is this really all you want to do?”
Lucas looks over his shoulder at Jens, at the extremely unimpressed look on his face, and rolls his eyes. He tugs Jens further down the hall, even though he isn’t entirely sure where he's going, and says, “Why? Am I boring you?”
Jens rolls his eyes. “You’re never boring.”
Lucas lets himself smile and gives a quiet hum. “But?” he prompts.
“But,” Jens sighs, “I was kind of hoping to take you on a date, now.”
At that, Lucas stops. He turns around to look at him with a baffled expression. “Jens, we’ve been on like a hundred dates.”
Jens furrows his brows. “No, we haven’t.”
“What about all those times you took me for cake and coffee? Or our little random tours of Antwerp?”
“You didn’t even like me then. That doesn’t count.”
Lucas shakes his head, smiling. “I’ve always liked you, Jens. Do you think you have to take me on dates to make me interested in you? Seriously? Do I even look like the kind of person who would like dates?”
“Doesn’t everyone like dates?”
“Do you want me to take you on a date?”
Jens huffs as he finally pulls Lucas to the side and through a door. Warmth fills him at the knowledge that it’s Jens’s bedroom. It feels special, somehow, like he’s been let into something extremely private. Like he’s stepped right into Jens’s head and heart at once—made it to the very center of his home. He catches sight of a skateboard and lamp in the corner, books piled on the desk, various unidentifiable items scattered everywhere, and drawings tacked to the wall. Lucas wants to examine every inch.
First, though, he has to diminish whatever dumb insecurities his boyfriend is currently struggling with.
He sets his arms around Jens’s neck as Jens pulls him in by the waist. “Well?”
Jens rolls his eyes. “No, I don’t want you to take me on a date. I want to take you on a date and I want you to be so wooed you drag me home and rip my clothes off.”
A laugh bursts out of Lucas. “Is that so?” Jens hums and pulls him in closer. “I’m sorry to tell you it might take a few dates before that.”
“Understandable,” Jens sighs, smiling slightly.
Lucas shakes his head and reaches up to poke his cheek. “Stop thinking so much. We’re literally soulmates. Specifically meant for each other. Do you think I’m going to run away?” Jens only shrugs. “Okay, I know I maybe made it seem like I didn’t think that at the start. I guess I actually didn’t. But I always felt it. I mean, you feel it, don’t you?”
Jens blows out a breath, dropping his forehead against Lucas’s. “Always. Like if I’m not right next to you my body goes into protest mode.”
“Exactly,” Lucas laughs quietly. “Like that. It would hurt, in so many ways, to live without you. It hurt just not kissing you. I’m not stupid enough to put myself through that anymore.”
Jens grins and kisses his nose. “Lucky me,” he murmurs.
“Lucky you.”
“You know, it kinda hurts right now. Think it’s ‘cause you’re not kissing me.”
Lucas laughs again. “You think? Because I’m not sure that’s how it actually works.”
“Well I just don’t think you should chance it. You know, just in case.”
It’s pointless arguing, when Lucas has just made a point of how much he wants the same thing. There’s no struggle in kissing Jens. Not with the way Jens handles him with such gentle urgency, melting into Lucas and consuming him at the same time, pouring something heavy into his kiss that feels frighteningly like love. Lucas could get drunk on it. At the very least, it leaves him feeling heady and breathless; as if he would float away if Jens wasn’t holding him.
Two and a half weeks of too many kisses to count and Lucas still isn’t used to it.
Jens walks backwards, pulling Lucas with him, stumbling when his legs finally hit the bed in the center of the room. He drops down and draws Lucas after him, onto his lap, into the safe home of his arms, kiss turning deep and needy as Lucas runs his hands over his shoulders and up into his hair. He still isn’t used to it, but he has Jens pretty well figured out.
Either that, or Jens is extremely responsive to anything Lucas does. He’s willing to compromise somewhere in the middle.
It’s obvious, in these moments, that Jens would gladly kiss him forever, longer and harder, if given the chance. There are telltale signs, in the pant of his breath and the force of his lips and the clench of his hands, bunched in the back of Lucas’s sweater, in his hair, gripping his jaw or his neck or his waist or his thighs. But he lets Lucas draw it out, lets Lucas slow them down, tilts his head back for the soft kisses trailed down his throat and doesn’t make a single complaint when it slips to a stop. It only leaves the fire in Lucas’s stomach burning hotter, his pulse jumping at a stutter in his heartbeat. He really doesn’t know what he was thinking.
Jens is no less earth-shattering than any of the beautiful memories clogging his brain. Jens doesn’t hold the world like Lucas expected him to, in the depths of his eyes, like a light and a weight in constant war with each other. He holds the world in his fingertips, his smile, his chest. He holds the world somewhere deep in his soul, where only Lucas can reach.
He’s been thinking a lot, that maybe the universe is still following the same rule, and it just has never been the one he’d thought. He feels like, maybe, they’re still Isak and Even. With all of their parts put together, they fit the same way. It just isn’t as clear and as tangible as he’s been used to.
But it’s clear in the ease he feels in Jens’s presence. In the warmth caused by his touch. In the familiarity still swimming in his chest, growing in a whole number of new waves, creating an ocean of knowledge that will only continue to spread. It’s clear in the way Jens looks at him, as if Lucas holds the universe in his heart and he wants to discover every chamber.
Lucas kisses him again, softly, once and then twice. Then he pulls back, waits for those eyes to flutter open, and sees not the world but himself. Reflected in all his brightest colours.
He smiles, and Jens smiles back, and every piece of the universe is in place.
“So, now try to tell me why you’d rather take me on a date, when instead we get to spend the whole night with your house all to ourselves.”
It takes a moment for Jens to blink back into focus, but then he gives a defeated sigh. “So you’re right, again, congratulations. Although if I remember correctly, there are no clothes coming off, so maybe this privacy is overrated.”
Lucas flicks the side of his head, but Jens is grinning. He gives another exaggerated sigh and adds, “Super jealous of all those ex-soulmates right now.”
“What?” Lucas laughs. “It’s not like they’ve seen me with my clothes off.”
“I mean, technically, sure, but spiritually…”
“Jens, how the fuck do you think these memories work?”
“Well I mean, it must be nice, having all that experience.”
“Jens,” Lucas laughs louder. “That’s not how it works. It’s just like...watching it on the TV.”
“Go-to porn, all downloaded right there in your brain.”
“Jens,” Lucas complains, covering his face with his hands, and this time Jens laughs with him. He hugs Lucas back into his chest and squeezes, mumbling a very insincere apology into his hair.
Then he quietens, and instead says, “I like hearing you say my name.”
Lucas tucks his head into his neck and smiles. “Why?”
“I don’t know. It just sounds right. Like I respond more fully to it, when it comes from you.”
“Good to know it’s going to be easy to get your attention.”
“You never even have to try,” Jens admits.
With his smile widening, Lucas places another light kiss on Jens’s neck and then climbs off him, turning mischievous as he winks at Jens before wandering over to his drawings. He hears Jens sigh, but receives no real protest, so he allows himself to get closer.
There are tons placed together, overlapping, some almost hidden entirely by the others cluttered around them. Lucas sees more odd, fantasy-like creatures sprinkled in amongst drawings of scenery. Most are pencil sketches, but there are a few images of water, skies, flowers, birds, and eyes in a familiar shade of blue. Amidst them, there’s also a familiar creature adorned with butterfly wings.
Lucas traces his fingers over one of the drawings in the center, a sketch of blue eyes too much like his own to be done before they met. “How long have you been drawing me?”
The bed creaks as Jens stands, coming up behind Lucas before answering. “Long before you.”
Lucas finds himself smiling again. “Me too.”
“What’s your favourite colour?” Jens asks. “Now that you can see all of them.”
He doesn’t have to think much before answering, “Red,” and then simply hopes Jens doesn’t ask him why. Lucas doesn’t want to have to explain that it’s red in every form, the bright colour of Jens’s beloved sweaters and the deep flush that floods his skin and the silky shine of his lips. So he asks back, “What’s yours?”
When Lucas turns to look at him, he’s already looking back. “Still blue.”
~^~
It takes more time, as these things always do, but Lucas no longer fears it. He has the time to waste. His time, and no one else’s. The memories and the feelings and the lives that come with them remain, and Lucas keeps them close and cherished without being consumed. There are still things he sees, in Jens and Sander and others he meets and the whole universe around him, that toss him back into another time before he finds himself again.
Despite the fear and confusion and weight that always seems to follow him, Lucas has always put his trust in the universe.
So, when Jens says ‘I love you’, Lucas finds it easy when he says it back and means it.
And when the universe says Jens, Lucas doesn’t have to try too hard to believe it.