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Bobbi Morse learned her eyes were blue when she was sixteen years old.
Her parents could both see color, but when she was old enough to understand the world was black-and-white, and why, they sat her down and explained they weren’t going to tell her anything about colors unless she asked.
Bobbi never asked.
Fitz didn’t wait for her to ask, though. He just said — “Your eyes are blue.” Beat. “Mine are too.”
Bobbi didn’t have a response prepared. Even if she’d had forever to think about it, she still wouldn’t have had anything to say, because what could she say? Blue was just another color, just like orange and green and purple and any other color Bobbi had heard. She could tell the difference between a few of them even in grayscale, but as far as Bobbi was concerned, the only real colors were black, white, and gray.
She knew blue existed, the same way she knew soulmates existed; she had no desire to discover what either really meant.
(They were sixteen. How could the universe pick someone for Fitz to love the rest of his life when he was sixteen? Bobbi didn’t even know what she wanted to major in when she went to college, let alone who she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.)
“Cool.” Because, as noted, Bobbi didn’t know what to say. She could tell Fitz wanted her to ask questions, but her stomach jumped around unpleasantly and Bobbi didn’t want to ask questions. She wanted to finish her lunch in peace.
---
The strangest thing about soulmates was that no one could decide whether or not you were destined to meet your person. It was another part of the system that perplexed Bobbi immensely — the universe could decide which person was unequivocally hers, but couldn’t guarantee she’d meet that person before one or both of them died? That just seemed like poor planning at best, and absolute sadism at worse.
As she got older, Bobbi began to lean more towards the universe being sadistic. She watched her friends and classmates grow up, an entire decade passing in the blink of an eye, and still Fitz was the only person she knew who had successfully found their soulmate.
(On her twenty-first birthday, Bobbi learned her parents could see color, but not from each other. They were bound to other people. Then why are you together?, Bobbi had bit back.
She just wanted to know why anything in this world, where so little seemed to be under her control.)
Bobbi wasn’t going to sit around and wait for something that was never coming, but not everyone shared her opinion. Eventually Bobbi stopped talking to those people; she was unsure of enough in her life without adding someone else’s doubt on top of her own.
She went on dates. She kissed some men and some women and some people in between. Bobbi wouldn’t say she fell in love, but she had the sneaking suspicion that would’ve been the same without the whole soulmate thing. Her guarding her heart had nothing to do with her or her parents’ predicament with soulmates, and everything to do with the world being ugly for people who gave others their trust too easily.
Another issue Bobbi had about the soulmate system: it only seemed to keep people from loving, and never seemed to keep them from hating.
As many issues as she had with the world and the system, though, Bobbi couldn’t change it. Enough people had tried (and failed).
Most would rather believe in there being one perfect person, their other half, than try to make it work with anyone else.
---
Bobbi met Hunter exactly thirteen years after Fitz told her her eyes were blue. She knew because he was texting her about the anniversary date he was on when she bumped into Hunter in the street hard enough to send them both sprawling.
Color did not flood her vision.
“Sorry about that, love,” Hunter said sheepishly when he took her hand.
“It’s fine,” Bobbi answered, shocked enough to allow him to help her up. “I should be saying sorry to you.”
“My mum always told me that beautiful women never need to apologize.”
“Does that line normally work?” Bobbi asked with an arched eyebrow. The scrapes on her palms stung when she brushed her hands across her jeans, but she didn’t care because it made the moment feel real.
“Dunno, never saw someone pretty enough to try it on before.”
“Now you’re just peacocking,” Bobbi said, amused.
“Sweetheart, nobody uses the word peacocking.” Hunter winked, then offered her his phone number.
Bobbi accepted.
---
Neither of them addressed the elephant in the room on their first date, or their second, or their third, or —
By the time Bobbi mustered up the courage to talk to Hunter about it, she was a little afraid the conversation would break her heart.
“You’re not my soulmate,” Bobbi said as she threaded her fingers through his. They’d gone on a date to a little Italian place just a few blocks away from her apartment, and in a stroke of gentlemanliness he’d offered to walk her home.
Dinner had lasted longer than it was supposed to — their waiter had had to gently remind them closing was in fifteen minutes so they could finish their drink and close their tab. It was hard to stop talking to Hunter, though; every time they talked Bobbi felt like she was dancing, or sparring, or both. There was an ease to talking with Hunter Bobbi had never found with anyone else before. He wasn’t afraid to challenge her ideas, but he was equally unafraid to slide in a lascivious comment or to startle her into laughter. Somehow he managed to be simultaneously serious and goofy and Bobbi hated it, because it was perfect.
“I figured that bit out, love,” Hunter laughed back. “Does that bother you?”
“If it bothered me I wouldn’t still be with you,” Bobbi answered matter-of-factly. “Does it it bother you?”
“I’m not the one who brought it up,” Hunter answered. Bobbi took that to mean no. “Would you want to stop seeing me if you met your soulmate?”
Bobbi blinked. “No, I don’t think so.” She paused. “Would you want to stop seeing me?”
“If you met your soulmate?” he asked, eyes bright under the glow of the streetlights.
“Hunter.”
“No, Bob.” He squeezed her hand. “I like this.”
“I like this too,” she said, ducking her head.
“Enough to be my girlfriend? Officially?”
“I could be persuaded.”
Hunter shook his head fondly. “You’re hellacious, you know that?” He never took her teasing seriously, but his put-upon exasperation always left a warm, tingly feeling in the center of her chest.
“Just call me hellbeast,” she said as they walked up the front steps to her apartment.
“I will.” Hunter leaned in, smiling against her lips when he kissed her.
Bobbi could get used to that smile.
---
“Last box,” Bobbi huffed as she put it down in the entrance to the apartment she and Hunter had just signed a lease on. Taking the next step forward in their relationship probably should have been more terrifying, especially given how many people in her life she knew were secretly hoping it wouldn’t work out, but Bobbi was old enough to be beyond giving a damn about what other people thought. If they wanted to judge her for moving in with someone who wasn’t her soulmate, so be it.
“I say we ignore unpacking and order takeout instead.”
“I knew there was a reason I liked you.” Bobbi grinned as she pulled Hunter in for a quick kiss to the cheek, giggling when he caught her in his arms to keep her from moving away.
“Are you sure that’s the only reason?” he asked, peppering kisses on her face and neck.
“I never said it was the only reason.” She tilted her head to catch his next kiss on the lips. “Just that it’s a reason.”
“Hellbeast,” Hunter murmured, tucking another kiss under her jawline. “My hellbeast girlfriend, making fun of me again.”
“And now you’re stuck with me for the next twelve months.” Bobbi opened her mouth to make a joke about how it was all a part of her evil plan, but then Hunter interrupted her.
“I wouldn’t mind being stuck with you forever.”
Another thing Bobbi both loved and hated about Hunter: he was one of the only people who could regularly shock her into silence.
“Too soon?” he asked quietly when a minute later she still hadn’t responded.
“No, I…” Bobbi took a deep breath, leaning into him. “I guess I just never thought about it.” Marriage hadn’t been on Bobbi’s radar since she learned the truth behind her own parents’ relationship. It wasn’t that they weren’t happy together, but they constantly had to pretend to be something that they weren’t.
Bobbi didn’t want to have to spend the rest of her life living a lie so people wouldn’t question her relationship. Enough people knew the truth already that even if she did lie, the truth would get out eventually.
“You know, there are more non-soulmate marriages than they let us think,” Hunter said cautiously. “I don’t know why everyone wants to believe that’s not true, because we know the statistics, and —”
“You’re preaching to the choir here, baby,” Bobbi murmured, taking a deep breath in. “Sometimes I think having soulmates makes it impossible for anyone to love for real.”
“You think?” Hunter asked quietly.
“Only sometimes,” Bobbi said, wrapping her arms more securely around him. “But then I think about you.”
“Careful, Bob, you’re dangerously close to saying something heartfelt.”
“Hush.” She pillowed her head against his shoulder and didn’t protest when he began swaying them from side to side. “I just think… it’s so much easier to say that you can’t love someone because they’re not your soulmate than to admit that you’re afraid of what might happen.” So much could go wrong in love. Someone could take your heart and break it — or even worse, they could take your heart and hold it and never give it back. “I always thought — I mean, love is supposed to be a little messy, right?”
Hunter made a noise of affirmation.
“People assume that if things aren’t perfect from the start, it means it’s not real love,” Bobbi sighed. “And when you pair that with the idea that there is real love out there, a soulmate, someone who’s your other half…”
“You get a world full of people who don’t want to try,” Hunter finished.
Bobbi would be the first to admit her relationship with Hunter was not perfect. She was not a perfect woman, and he was not a perfect man. Their love was not a perfect love, but Bobbi didn’t understand why everyone wanted a perfect love. A good love, a great love — that was better than no love at all, wasn’t it? And Bobbi would rather try for her imperfect love than wait for her perfect love. She didn’t understand why others wouldn’t do the same.
“Let’s get takeout,” Hunter whispered, kissing the shell of Bobbi’s ear before letting go of her.
“I’ll start unpacking while we wait,” she said. “We need to find the forks.”
---
“Do you ever wonder what it’s like?” Hunter asked one night as he and Bobbi stared at the ceiling together. “To be able to see color?”
“Sometimes.” Maybe she was imagining it, but Bobbi swore she could hear Hunter’s heart beating faster under her ear.
“I think about it a lot,” Hunter admitted. “More than I should.”
“How much do you think you should think about it?”
Hunter shrugged. “Never, maybe.”
“I don’t think that’s realistic,” Bobbi answered. Even if they were both happy with the life they had — and as far as Bobbi knew, they were — they were both allowed to wonder about what they’d given up to have it.
“Probably not,” Hunter agreed. “But I love you, and… thinking about seeing color makes me feel like I love you less.”
“You don’t,” Bobbi assured him, pressing her palm gently into his chest. “You love me more than anyone else.”
“I wish I knew what blue was,” Hunter said into the still, dark air.
Bobbi swallowed hard. She’d told him once that her eyes were blue; if she knew he’d become so fixated on it she wouldn’t have mentioned it at all.
“Blue is when we wake up before our alarms, and everything is quiet.” Bobbi scooted herself further up the bed so she could press her lips into Hunter’s cheek. “When it’s just the two of us, alone, with nowhere to be except each other’s arms.”
“Who made you a poet?” Hunter whispered, nuzzling her cheek with the tip of his nose.
“You.”
---
It became a game after that, finding moments that described the way she imagined colors looked.
Orange was when they were standing in the kitchen together after a long day, humming to the music on the crap radio Hunter had never bothered to throw away. Green was when they were at her parents’ house on a summer weekend and she chased him around the backyard with a garden hose, laughing so loud and so hard her stomach hurt. Red was when they were alone and Hunter touched her until she saw stars. Purple was when they were in the middle of a crowded room and Bobbi looked over to see Hunter already staring back.
She couldn’t see colors, but she could feel them. Each passing day it became easier, and the colors grew more specific. She didn’t try to find yellow; she tried to find dandelion and sunshine and bumblebee and butterscotch and gold, and when she was with Hunter, she found them all.
Bobbi never bothered to ask anyone if her feelings were right. She didn’t care if what she felt was nothing like the colors themselves — she only cared that she was in love with a man who could make a black-and-white world come alive with rainbows.
---
White was not the absence of color.
White was the presence of every color at once.
She hadn’t thought to find a feeling to match one of the colors she could see, but when Hunter asked her to marry him, Bobbi felt white — everything at once.
White was every touch they shared, every kiss they’d stolen, every conversation by sunlight and moonlight and everything in between. White was the sum of everything they’d done so far — and it was the blank page on which they’d write the rest of their story, too.
Black was the absence of color.
But it also wasn’t.
Black was the space between them that allowed them to breathe, the pauses in conversation while they both sat and thought, the days they couldn’t quite connect but tried their best anyways.
Maybe Hunter could make the world seem technicolor, but he would never make her actually experience it that way.
He would never be her soulmate, but at the end of it all, Bobbi had learned to love the world in black and white.