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When Jack is eleven, he wishes his skin wasn’t pale and plain.
All the other kids at school have at least some colored pigmentation on their skin, the result of the intense emotions that come with the onset of puberty. Infatuation, jealousy, hatred, sorrow - it all plays out on their skin for the world to see. Pigments pool at their fingertips, coalescing into small stones when emotions run high. Girls cry over unrequited crushes and leave mercury-gray hematite all over the school floors. At his hockey games, anger over penalties and mishandled pucks leaves so many pieces of agate on the ice that they need to be swept up after every period.
None of them belong to Jack.
Jack starts wearing long sleeves all the time so people will stop asking him where his pigments are.
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Jack remembers the first time Maman showed him her and Papa’s touchstone. It lives in a small box on their nightstand - a fire opal - smooth and vibrant with all the colors of the rainbow radiating outwards. He remembers staring, wide-eyed, as she calmly explained to his 4-year-old self about pigments and creating stones when he had intense emotions. That, if he wanted, he could give those stones to people he cared about. She told him when, someday, he found that person his pigments would know, and how they would form their own touchstone together. Maman had said that every touchstone was unique to the soulmates that formed it, and that it served as a grounding point for those two people and their emotions.
Jack had immediately asked if his soulmate would like hockey. Maman had laughed and held Jack close, reassuring him that yes, she was sure of that.
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When Jack is seventeen he still hasn’t made any stones of his own and his skin remains pale and unmarked. Parse, however, is covered with swirling colors from neck to wrist.
One night, mashed together from chest to thigh, Kenny presses a rough piece of lapis into Jack’s palm saying, “It’s yours now.” Jack’s mouth goes dry when he realizes he can’t give Kenny anything in return.
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Jack wakes up in the hospital feeling groggy, with a throat full of sandpaper. Papa gives him some ice chips, then both he and Maman fold Jack’s hand around a piece of watermelon tourmaline. “We were so worried,” Papa manages to say. “I let you down, Jack.” Tears roll down his cheeks. Jack says nothing, but pulls them both into a hug, the triangular edges of the crystal digging into his palm.
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“Why don’t I have any pigments?” he asks his therapist during their third appointment. She starts talking about emotions and how Jack may have been pushing his down and out of the way in his effort to succeed on the ice. That maybe his anxiety could be keeping them at bay. Jack frowns and tunes her out.
Jack forgets about pigments. Forgets about soulmates and touchstones. He just wants to get better.
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The Samwell Men’s Hockey Team is full of color. Shitty’s body is so covered with pigment that sometimes it’s hard to tell if he’s naked or not (he usually is). Ransom and Holster have mirrored swirling patterns that have them convinced that they were separated at birth. Even Lardo’s arms are a canvas of color that she uses in her art. Jack worries that they’ll ask about his lack of pigment, to which Shitty remarks, “Nah, brah, that’s wicked rude!”
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Sometime during the winter of Jack’s junior year at Samwell, he notices that his chest and shoulders are tinted a light scarlet. Jack attributes it to excess dye from all his crimson Samwell shirts bleeding onto his skin. He steps into the shower and doesn’t think about it again.
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The Yale player checks Bittle. Hard. Jack gets the goal, but he feels fury boil inside him like a tempest. It doesn’t give him peace until he sees Bittle, who looks even smaller now, come back into the locker room and smile wanly at him. Jack pulls off his right glove, which has suddenly become uncomfortably tight around his index finger. Thinking there must be something stuck inside, he turns it upside down and smacks it against his thigh.
Out falls a perfectly faceted ruby.
Jack turns his back on the room and quickly covers the stone. He can feel it thrumming even through his other glove, but something about the vibrations makes it feel off, incomplete. It must be his, but he’s never made stones before, much less the perfect gem now buried under an inch of athletic padding. It’s all Jack can do to shower, change, and make it back to the Haus before looking at the stone again. He can just see a tiny bit of red under his nailbeds. Is that the remnant of the pigment that made the stone? The rest of his skin is as blank as ever. Jack scrubs a hand over his face, puts the ruby into his bedside drawer, and tries to forget about it.
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Jack can’t forget his stone, and within a few months he realizes that keeping it with him makes him feel better. He gets a soft pouch for it, the comforting weight grounding him to something he can’t define.
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Samwell loses the championship game. Jack’s heart breaks a thousand times over and he skates off the ice without talking to anyone. He finds an empty corner of the rink, pulls off his jersey, and reaches under his pads to extract his stone from the pouch around his neck.
When Bittle finds Jack later, he doesn’t say anything, just hugs Jack as best he can over the hockey pads. Bittle’s still wearing his UnderArmour, so Jack misses the swirling pigments moving into Bittle’s hand. A soft “oh” is all he hears before Bittle’s fingertips release a smooth stone as black as night.
“What is it?”
“Onyx? No, obsidian I think,” Bittle says, peering at the stone closely. “I haven’t made any stones in so long…” He blushes a little. “I don’t know what this one means.”
Jack shrugs, fist tightening around his ruby. It’s vibrating more than usual, and without the incompleteness it usually has.
“We should probably go back now. I just needed some time…”
“I know, Jack.” Bittle touches Jack’s elbow, his other hand tight around his new stone. They don’t talk as they head back into the locker room.
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Jack goes online and looks up the meaning of stones. When he reads the description for ruby (contentment, love, passion), he quickly closes his laptop. Crawling into bed, he turns out the light and thinks about touchstones for the first time in almost six years.
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Bittle says goodbye to Jack at graduation and something about it feels wrong. The ruby is vibrating frenetically in Jack’s pocket and Jack pulls out the pouch just as Papa claps him on the shoulder.
“Congratula- Jack? Is that…? When did you…?”
It all comes tumbling out. Jack tells him everything, even the part about what rubies mean. Papa just embraces him and says something cryptic about “missing 100% of the shots you don’t take, pigment or no.”
Jack starts running.
For an instant Jack thinks he’s missed Bittle, but then he catches the sound of stilted singing upstairs. He barrels into his old room, surprising Bittle out of a tearful reverie and saying all at once “ThisisyoursIthinkyouresupposedtohaveit.”
“What?”
Jack inhales and blows the air out slowly. “This is yours. I think you’re supposed to have it.” He holds out the soft pouch to Bittle. “Please. I want you to have this.”
When the ruby falls into Bittle’s palm, Jack’s not sure who gasps - him, Bittle, or maybe both. Bittle looks at him and says “And I think this is yours,” pulling the obsidian sphere from his pocket. He places the sphere into Jack’s outstretched hand and Jack’s racing heart immediately calms. It’s the same thrum his ruby made when Bittle hugged him at the Frozen Four.
“Oh.” Jack doesn’t have words for this feeling, so he steps forward into the vibration and kisses Bittle softly.
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Snow dusts the windowsill above his head. Jack breathes heavily, sweaty and content, his limbs languid and warm despite the chill outside. Bitty is draped over him like a blanket, their fingers twined together tightly. He mumbles endearments into Jack’s chest. “Oh honey, that was…can’t feel my…love you so much.”
“I love you too, Bits.” Jack smiles, leaning to press kisses into Bitty’s hair, then begins to drift toward sleep.
“Jack? Sweetheart, look.”
The fervor in Bitty’s voice wakes Jack immediately. He can’t tell what Bitty’s looking at, but it seems to be on his body. He sits up, not knowing what to expect.
Pigments.
Bitty always has swirls and whorls that Jack loves to chase with his fingers and tongue, but now Bitty’s pigments have all migrated into the hand that holds Jack’s. And what’s more baffling to Jack is the stream of pigment emanating from just above his heart that trickles over his shoulder into the crook of his elbow and pools in his fingers, mixing with Bitty’s pigments. They both stare, transfixed.
Jack feels a weight drop between their twined fingers and just as quickly as they came, his pigments disappear and Bitty’s return to normal. Was that…could it have been?
“Touchstone.” Bitty says it with a reverence that Jack’s never heard before. Jack can feel it humming between their palms, feels it anchoring and calming him.
“Touchstone,” Jack repeats, slowly unwinding their fingers. He inhales sharply when he sees the stone within.
It’s a faceted emerald.
“Hope. Love. Eases the troubled mind,” Bitty says softly and looks at Jack with tear-filled eyes. “Ours.”
Jack pulls Bitty to him as their hands close around the stone. “Yeah, Bits. Ours.”