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Belle knows, scientifically speaking, that soulmates exist. There has been much research on the subject, many books written, essays drafted, articles published. There have been numerous lectures, and lessons, and experiments ever since the first ink to paper to theorise the meaning and provenance of those puzzling tattoos people are born with, those scribbled first sentences, those fated words.
She knows, because she has read every book, every essay, every paper, every article. She has written to any and every professor – Oxford and Cambridge both – about the subject, has filled too many journals with notes from her readings, with her own ideas and theories and questions.
And yet, one question remains unanswered.
Why is it that she, Belle Fox, does not have a tattoo of her own?
It was proven, after all, that even people who do not know their letters have soulmates tattoos, for the concept transcends literacy – in ways that are yet to be understood, but that exist nonetheless. Even the lowest born of factory workers bears the mark, somewhere on his body.
As far as she is aware, Belle is the only person in England – maybe even in the whole world – not to have a single word etched into her skin.
The thought troubled her more than she cared to admit when she was younger. But, through her research on soulmates, Belle had developed her love of medicine, science, and all things human body, and had vowed to dedicate her life to the field. Now, several years later, with books and papers and ink and pens scattered across every inch of desk space in her room, she no longer has time to think of anything else.
No longer allows herself to ponder as to why, oh why, she was born without a tattoo, doomed to live her days without a lover of her own, without someone to hold the other half of her heart.
Heart. Left atria. Right atria. Left ventricle. Right ventricle. Aorta. Pulmonary valve.
She shakes her head as she stops listing from memory, and dismisses the paper she was reading with her breakfast. Another breakthrough from another professor in another university on the skin quality under the soulmates tattoos. The newspaper falls to her feet as she sighs into her cup of tea, the liquid burning down her throat.
Belle Fox does not have a tattoo of her own.
End of the story.
…
Cold. Freezing cold. Burning his face, and his eyes, and down his throat.
Jack emerges from the water, loudly gasps as air fills his lungs again, droplets of water falling all around him as he shakes his head. He pushes tendrils of blond, drenched hair away from his forehead, wipes the water from his eyes, as he steps away from the bucket of freezing water.
As far as remedy to drunkenness, a quick shot to the nerves is yet to be equalled.
He strips off his shirt, now wet on top of smelling of beer and smoke and someone else’s vomit – or maybe his own? No, Jack doesn’t remember getting sick, doesn’t have the faint aftertaste at the back of his mouth. Which would have been better than someone else barfing on him, all things considered.
The shirt falls on the floor with a wet, sloshing sound, so loud it makes him wince as he walks, barefoot, toward his small wardrobe. Options are, as always, more than limited, but he grabs a seemingly clear shirt and a vest that still had all the buttons sewed on, last time he checked.
He takes a clean towel too, rubbing it in his hair as he moves closer to the small mirror in a corner, the one crooked on the wall above a bowl of water and his shaving razor. He grabs his chin, looking left and right to decide if he can push his luck through another day of fuzz on his cheeks. Probably. Most likely. Definitely.
He rubs his face dry, followed by the pits of his arms, stretching one arm above his head and turning slightly to the side as he looks at his own reflection. There, right below his eighth rib, in the neatest and thinnest handwriting ever known to man, is his tattoo.
God fucking knows what it means.
It’s not that Jack hasn’t tried to read it, far from it. But he only ever learnt his letters from books, and even then the words were a jumbled-up nonsense on the page. It didn’t matter if the printer had the best ink and stamps in all of England, they couldn’t have made less sense to Jack. His friends in the Navy had tried their hardest to help him, but everyone’s patience had worn thin pretty quickly. Well, Jack’s patience, really.
So calligraphy? Thinner than a needle? Only visible to him backward in the mirror?
Not a chance, no.
He could have asked Hetty, but it would have meant showing weakness, and owning a favour, and so many other things, that he’d not entertained the thought for more than a few seconds, at best. Sneed was a definitive no, and Jack would rather die than ask anything of the good old Professor.
So, there. A nice, pretty tattoo that might as well mean shit all.
…
When they were children, Fanny would always go on and on and on about her soulmate, how they’d meet, how romantic the whole lot would be. It would involve flowers, and a bridge atop a river, the most beautiful gown, doves flying and squirrels singing songs and any other details Belle’s sister fancied at the time.
Belle would only half listen, because thinking of Fanny’s soulmate was only a bitter reminder of her lack thereof of one, and because Fanny’s wildest fantasies were, quite frankly, vomit-inducing at best.
Belle didn’t want to think about first meetings. First kisses. First anything.
Nope, no, absolutely not.
So her first kiss to be with Jack Dawkins, in the surgery room, above the fainted body of Sneed, of all things? She would have laughed herself breathless.
But here she is. Staring into his eyes as he hands the scalpel to her, offers her the first incision. Here she is, with warmth pooling low in her stomach, her breath hitching in a way that has nothing to do with her heart issues. Here she is, leaning above the patient’s legs, leaning forward and closer, closer, closer to him.
Her lips brush his, a bit dry but oh so inviting, and Belle wonders how she will ever manage to live the rest of her (somewhat short) life, knowing that in another universe, under different stars, she would have his words on her and his hands in her hair and his mouth on her neck.
And maybe it makes her selfish, to still want those things. To let her desire get the best of her and forget that Jack is meant for another one, a woman who might be less opinionated, more willing, less stubborn. Healthier. A woman who will grow old with him, a woman who will hold his hand every day of his life, a woman who will give him love, and children, and so much more.
Maybe Belle is selfish this way, maybe she couldn’t give less of a crap about the woman who exists, out there, somewhere, because – because fuck it , she will die soon and she wants to live, to just live and love, and be loved in return.
Fuck fate, and fuck her heart, and fuck that stupid, nonexistent tattoo.
…
He finds her outside the pub, standing there in her little cloak, looking like Guinevere come to life, waiting for her Lancelot and – fuck, he must be more drunk than he thought, because what the hell is that? What the fuck is happening to him?
Like a moth to fire, he’s drawn to her, closer and closer and closer, until he’s there, drunk and standing in front of her, and drowning in her smile. He warns her, because he believes himself to be, somewhat, enough of a gentleman. He warns her but she takes that as a challenge, because of course she does, this crazy, maddening, infuriating woman. This perfect woman.
She drinks from his cup and declares herself drunk too, and Jack can only ignore the tightness in his trousers for so long. Fuck he wants her, he needs her, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about her family, and his crimes, and her standing, and all the other bollocks. He wants her so much it fucking hurts, fucking kills him from the inside, fucking want to die, to live, to kiss her, to hold her, to…
She kisses him. Or he kisses her. He doesn’t know. He’s drunk on cheap ale and on her perfume and the way she rises on the tip of her toes to meet him, and the expanse of her thigh when she was hurt, and the softness of her hair and her mouth, and her teeth around his bottom lip, and.
He’s is so much fucking trouble.
He almost laughs when she voice his thoughts, and rubs his nose against hers, and has the absolutely stupid, foolish, brainless idea of bringing her back to the hospital, to his room, to his bed. Stripping her off her clothes, and petticoats, and all the other layers of bullshit, and examining every inch of her skin, every limb and body part, to find the ink, the most precious sight of all.
He’s hard and hot for her, and he wants to know.
Wants to know how fucked he is.
…
She wakes up with his fingers on her wrist, checking her pulse even in slumber, and she’s afraid of what will happen if her heart grows ten sizes bigger at the sight – maybe she’d die on the spot, maybe she’d be cured, maybe, maybe, maybe. She loves him in a way she thought impossible to love someone, in a way she thought forbidden to her. She loves him more than life itself, loves him with every part of her, soul and body and heart.
It’s foolish, she knows. Selfish and arrogant of her, to assume he would choose her over true love. But in the morning light, golden sun on his golden hair, she allows herself to be selfish and arrogant and a bit stupid. She allows herself to believe that this could work, even if it shouldn’t.
She will die soon, and then she will only be a memory to him, the one before The One. A passing fancy he had, when he was young and reckless and a bit too mad in the head, before he settled down and became a doctor, the doctor.
She shifts in bed, waking him up. He blinks at her, and she cannot hold it any longer. Aortic aneurysm, she tells him, and he agrees, and she wonders if that’s what it feels like, being right in a way that is so devastating, so terrible. She hates herself for knowing, for being too smart, too knowledgeable. She could have lived a happy life, not knowing, not dreading the moment that will come, urgent and unexpected.
“I don’t want to leave this world without being loved fully,” she whispers, her voice breaking over the words, her heart breaking at the soft sadness in his eyes.
He tells her what she wants to hear, tells her she is loved by him, fully.
Belle may die soon, but for now she wants to live. She wants to pretend, to close her mind to the logical parts of her brain, wants to love him and be loved in return, wants to play the fool and act like his words are on her skin, wants him more than she has ever wanted anything else. She wants him more than university studies, more than a career, more than freedom. She wants him, in a way she can’t.
So she shifts on the bed, until her hand finds the collar of his shirt, her fingers travelling down the fabric to work on the buttons. She kisses him as she moves on top of him, legs straddling his hips, hands on his chest, lips against his mouth.
She kisses him slow and soft, slips the sleeves of his shirt down his arms, slips the braces down his shoulders. His hands are on her thighs, holding her closer, grabbing her in a way that is both pain and pleasure, holding her down against his cock until she moans into his mouth.
He growls back, low and desperate, flipping them until she’s under him, her hair a golden halo around her face on the pillow, his face just above hers. She reaches his lips for another kiss that is too eagerly given even as he discards his shirt once and for all, the fabric rustling against her bedsheets before it falls on the floor.
Her hands caress his torso, firm and soft at the same time. Her lips part open as she admires his body, eyes following her fingers in her exploration of his torso. It is one thing to see drawings and diagrams and explanations, and another thing altogether to figure it out for herself, as she follows the dips between his ribs, from collarbone all the way to her stomach.
She frowns as her eyes catch something .
Jack’s hand swats hers away.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” he replies, his voice too harsh, his tone too hard.
She frowns up at him. “It doesn’t feel like nothing.”
“Can you just let it go and go back to… you know…”
“Jack,” she warns.
He sighs as he sits up, fingers moving up to pinch the bridge of his nose. She swears he mumbles something about stubborn women, but still he complies, raising one arm above his head and turning slightly to the side.
“See? Happy now?”
Her mouth opens in surprise at the sight of his soulmate tattoo. She knew, on an intellectual level, that he had one. But it is something different to see it for herself, to brush her knuckles against his inked skin. He flinches, but remains silent.
Belle frowns, as she props herself up on her elbows to give it a closer look. Her eyes widen, a gasp caught at the back of the throat. Jack, still refusing to look at her, misses both.
“Jack…”
“I know it doesn’t match yours and I really don’t give a fuck because…”
“Jack,” she says again, louder. “Jack, it’s my handwriting.”
He looks down at her, but she doesn’t meet his eyes. Not when she’s too busy looking at her own letters, etched into his ribcage. Not when her index finger follows the looping curves of her handwriting, I’ve put a tourniquet on . Their first meeting, by the side of a carriage, her hands coated in blood as he snapped at her.
She…
She doesn’t understand.
“You didn’t know?” he asks her, in a whisper so low she would have missed it were it not for the tense silence between them.
When her eyes finally meet his, Jack looks so utterly miserable that Belle can only raise her hand to cup his cheek, thumb caressing his face. She is at a loss for words, yet her mind races to places never visited before.
“Neither did you,” is all she manages to whisper back.
“It’s the blood handwriting, I can’t… I don’t…” He stops, swallows hard. “What about yours?”
“I don’t have one.”
He gapes at her. Belle stares back, but her eyes glaze over as she keeps thinking, trying to make sense of it all. Could it – no – maybe? But what if – it can’t be – but? Her mind jumps from one thought to the other, so fast she barely keeps track of them all, leaving her giddy and breathless and so, so excited. This could be a breakthrough. This could mean so much for science, and research. This could be – this could be her work, her life's achievements, if only, if only…
“Belle!”
She shakes her head, eyes focusing back on him. He looks concerned, and she wants to giggle at the ridiculous of it all – his standing above her, shirtless, with his tattoo on display, with her handwriting on his skin, with her words carved between his ribs. Them, in her bedroom, about to have sex, about to have the breakthrough of the century, about to change science. She wants to laugh and so she does, the giggle escaping her before she can press a hand to her mouth. Jack looks at her like she has lost her mind.
“You absolute mad woman, will you just explain ?”
She nods, breathing slowly through her nose to calm the hysteria, to ease her nerves, before she sits up, her back to the headboard of her bed, Jack shifting with her, still between her thighs.
“You can’t write, like – it’s not that you don’t know how to, it is that you can’t ,” she explains, the words tumbling out of her mouth with excitement. “What if that messed with the tattoo? What if I don’t have one, not because we are not soulmates, but because of – I don’t know – potential – abilities – skills?”
Jack is still frowning, but Belle stares so intently at him that she notices the minute changes in his features, from confusion to deep thinking. His head tilts as he considers her idea, before he ever so slightly nods to himself.
“I have read recent papers,” she continues, as if needing to convince him some more, “about people’s inability to read, or to write, or to use numbers. Regardless of intelligence. It might – maybe – you know…”
He kisses her before she can finish her sentence, not that it was going anywhere in particular. He kisses her and laughs against her lips and kisses her more, until they are both giddy and breathless and happy. He kisses her mouth, before he trails down her jawline, her neck, her collarbone, He kisses her until her skin is on fire, until her core aches for him, for more .
“Only you could make love so fucking academic,” he laughs against the delicate skin above the collar of her nightgown. “You and your fucking papers, I swear… I swear, I love you so bloody much.”
Belle laughs too, her hands in his hair, her thighs pressed into his sides, her skin against his. She laughs, and moans, and gasps. There will come a time for her to address it all – soulmates and love and tattoos and adoration. She will come to terms with it all, with the gravity of it, with the shift of universes, with paths opening up to her that she thought closed forever. She will deal with it later.
For now, she lets him undress her, lets him have his ways with her.
Her soulmate. Her Jack.