Chapter Text
Patton had fallen in love with soulwords the moment he’d learned about them. He’d seen the marks on his mother’s arm and had to know what they were. She’d explained it was such a look in her eye that Patton couldn’t help but fall in love.
She sat him down at the kitchen table as she wrote her weekly letter to Patton’s father.
“Well you see,” She’d said, such a bittersweet tone to her voice, “Soulwords are the first words your Soulmate will say to you!” Patton’s eyes had sparkled as he looked at the short words on the inside of his mother’s forearm.
“They can show up anywhere on your body. And although most of the time the words are said to you, sometimes they’re just the first words you hear your Soulmate say. Mine is short, your father said it to me. “Hey there, got the time?”” His mother said it sadly, and Patton wouldn’t understand the bittersweetness of his father’s absence until he was much older. He wouldn’t learn that the person who’d said those words to his mother was not his father, and he wouldn’t learn that his father was in prison for having a child with someone who wasn’t his Soulmate. He wouldn’t learn that his mother’s Soulmate had left the moment he realized she was pregnant.
Patton would learn at another date, not long after he first learned what Soulwords were, that he would get his Soulwords on his sixteenth birthday.
“So I have to wait until I’m sixteen to meet my Soulmate!” Patton wailed, he was hardly six at the time, and ten years was far longer than he could comprehend. His mother chuckled.
“Not necessarily. If someone meets their Soulmate before they get their words, the first words that person says to them after they receive the mark will be their words.” Patton sniffled. He wasn’t quite satisfied.
“Don’t be down, kiddo! One day you’ll meet your Soulmate, maybe in a year, maybe in twenty, but when you do it’ll be the universe’s perfect timing. You’ll fall in love, maybe instantly, maybe over time, and it’ll be perfect.” Patton would take his mother’s words like gospel just then, no matter how much of a hypocrite she felt like for saying them, and use those words as comfort in trying times.
Patton would wait, though not as patiently as his mother wished, until his sixteenth birthday.
The night before the big day, Patton stayed up all night to see it happen. That night Patton would feel the tingle his mother had described on his belly, just below his ribs. The mark would take its sweet time, taking all of an hour to appear. It would start as soft grey splotches that would darken and squirm into words.
By one a.m. Patton would have the words “What makes you think a cookie will help me?” in a stiff, even scrawl horizontally across his stomach. Patton would giggle at the thought. It was just like him to offer a stranger a cookie.
Patton will debate on going to show his mother, when he’ll feel the tingle again. Patton isn’t one to panic, but he’d asked his mother for every detail she could spare about this moment for the last several weeks, and she never mentioned a second tingle.
He will rush to his full length mirror and rid himself of his shirt. There, on the side of his shoulder, will be more black splotches. Patton will stare in aw for several minutes as they form words. It will take far less time for these words to form. Within twenty minutes he will have the words “Aren't they on your head?” wrapped around his shoulder in a dramatic, cursive font. Patton won’t understand what would prompt someone to say ‘they’ were on his head, but his mind will stray to spiders out of habit and he will shiver despite the heat of the room.
Patton will have to tell his mother now.
He will rush across the hall and flick the light switch on. He won’t get the chance to do much more before she wakes up.
“Pat?! What’s wrong?” Patton’s mother will fling the covers off and rush to him. He’ll realize this must look bad, him waking her at almost one thirty in the morning, shirtless.
“Ma! Look!” He directs her attention to his first Soulwords, the ones across his stomach. She’ll sigh heavily.
“Patpat I told you not to wait up-” She will pause upon seeing the second marks on his shoulder.
“That’s what I came to tell you about! There’s two!” She will rub her weary eyes, then rub her hands over both. She’ll stumble back and sob as she slumps into her bed.
Patton would go to school the next day and tell everyone about how his Soulwords appeared, he would show everyone his shoulder proudly, and would try to forget the burning of the words on his stomach. He would choose to show off the one on his shoulder because that one would be the most likely to be casually seen.
Patton would never be ashamed of having more than one Soulmate, more people to love, but after his mother’s story of the ridicule she’d faced after falling in love with a man with no Soulmate, who happened to be his father, and having to run away with him so they could stay together, he would hide these extra words to make sure he’d be around to meet each person associated with them.
It’d be two days later when he would get a third tingle, this one almost painful, across his calf, in the middle of class. Patton wouldn’t look at it until he was safely at home. He would cry a little, because he’d never be able to wear shorts again, but he’d smile, on the inside. Because he had three Soulmates, three people to love and to love him for all his life.
This time the words were in sloppy print, trailing a little lower at the end as it wrapped around his leg. “What do you pipsqueaks think you’re doing on this side of town?” Patton’s third Soulmate seemed intimidating, and maybe a little rude. But Patton couldn’t judge context by toneless writing. So he’d love his Soulmates before he even met them.