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"I dreamed of my soulmate from the moment I knew what the word meant, from the second I knew that there was someone in the world with a name that matched the one printed on my wrist." Maxwell whispered in the quiet of Wilson's camp, his hands curled tightly into the fabric of his suit jacket.
The night air was frigid, bringing goosebumps to the small sliver of exposed flesh on the back of Wilson's neck, the rest of his slight frame covered by the thick wool of Maxwell's coat, the fur at the collar swaddled close around his face in an attempt to keep the warmth from the fire close to his body. His eyes were still closed, and he was limp and bruised, but he was breathing.
"I never wanted my soulmate to suffer." he bit his lip, frowning as he stared into the fire he had built in a hurry, trying to build as much of a barrier between the smaller man and the Shadow Watchers as he could. "It's just been so long since I looked at my own wrist, I'd forgotten what name it was that lay there." he looked down at his wrist, sighing as he traced the alteration he'd made to his projection. Wilson's name sat there now, stark black letters against the pale skin. "If I had known- Remembered..." he shook his head. "What use are apologies when the man you speak them to is unconscious because you moved too slowly? You are the greatest idiot of all time, Carter." he ground his knuckles into his forehead, eyes squinting shut.
He didn't see Wilson's eyes open, slow and slightly confused.
"I suppose that is the reason I chose to make the deal with you. They supplied a name and I spoke with you through the radio, and I- It must have been something long since buried, something I thought was irrelevant and ignorable." Maxwell pressed his face into his hands, nails digging into the skin of his face.
The fire popped, startling Wilson slightly as he rolled to stare at the other man.
"I searched for years as well. I joined a travelling circus, became a stage magician, held onto my own name as long as I could, for the sake of my soulmate because what if they were looking for me? When the shadows started giving me more powers, revealing the secrets of the Codex to me, I forgot to keep that in mind." he sighed again. "And when I forgot, I changed my name. Charlie was always angry at me for that, said that I gave up too easily on the matter.
"My soulmate would not have thought to look for a Maxwell when they were looking for a William Carter, afterall." Maxwell curled his long body around his knees, sliding his face from his hands and down onto what he could reach of his thigh. "Stupid man that I was, it seemed grander than my own name, forgetting at once the reason for it."
Wilson sat up slowly, bracing himself with a hand on the ground, frowning at his shredded glove for a moment.
"I would prefer loneliness to having to watch you die..." Maxwell's shoulders were tensed, as if he were ready to be struck down, prepared to face his own death instead. "Please, Higgsbury, just wake up."
A small smile twisted the edge of Wilson's lips as he settled his unmarked wrist between the bony shoulders, rubbing his thumb in soothing circles. "Already awake." he hummed a few notes of surprise when Maxwell practically tumbled into his lap, relaxing so quickly that he seemed like a puppet with the strings cut. "I was looking in the wrong time all those years, it makes sense now."
He pulled Maxwell's face up, a hand on his chin, settling his thumb just below the taller man's full bottom lip. "You hid from history. The company that I was registered with to find my soulmate was only a few decades old. I suspect that you were from before then, weren't you? Or maybe our lives would have crossed if we had just-"
Maxwell's eyes were wide, a sort of terror in them as he studied Wilson's face. "I was in a train wreck in the early nineteen hundreds." he admitted quietly, one hand coming up to wrap around Wilson's wrist. "That was how they brought me here."
"And then you made the deal with me in nineteen-twenty." Wilson huffed out a small laugh, rearranging his hold on the face in front of him so that his palms were pressed to the sharp cheekbones. "Tell me, how many years lay between the two events?"
"About fifteen."
"Oh, what a scandal we would have caused if we had found each other right away." Wilson laughed again, a pleased flush coloring his face. "You look about the same age as myself, possibly older by a few years, and I myself was not young when this all started. I searched for twenty years to find you, leaving me a man in my forties when I was brought here."
The warmth from the smaller man seemed to suffuse from his hands, causing Maxwell's face to flush a brilliant shade of pink. "Troublemaker."
"I wound up here, didn't I?" Wilson grinned at him, then met his eyes. His smile faded as he did, leaving him flushed and meeting Maxwell's gaze. "William Carter. A stage magician and practitioner of actual magic. Hm." he leaned forward slowly. "You will have to explain that to me, I want to know."
"Of course you do," Maxwell whispered, his own eyes wide and filled to bursting with wonderment at the man in front of him. "Knowledge was your gain." he reached blindly for his discarded coat, pulling it up and around Wilson, using it to tug him in closer. With their foreheads pressed together, he tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. "Are you quite alright?"
"I don't think I've ever been better," Wilson whispered back, angling his head to one side and pressing his thin lips against Maxwell's, a faint whimper escaping him as the larger man tangled a gloved hand in his already-mussed hair.