Day Seven - Soulmates

Day Seven - Soulmates

-

Soulmates, as everyone knows, share each other's pain. Bruises, scrapes, broken bones. Fevers, infections. Anything, everything. Nothing physical is left behind, just. Pain.

Roier kinda thinks it's all bullshit. There's all sorts of philosophy attached to it, like the idea that sharing pain is supposed to bring you and your soulmate together, but that idea doesn't really matter when you don't even know who your soulmate is. It's just pain for the sake of pain, and it's absolutely ridiculous, and he kinda hates it.

...But maybe Roier is biased, just a little. His soulmate, whoever they are, is either the most accident-prone person on the planet, or they've been a soldier since Roier was still in middle school. After years and years of constant aches and pains and bruises and fucking stab wounds right through the stomach and gunshots fired through the shoulder and the throat, Roier's tired.

Roier doesn't hate his soulmate. He probably loves them, actually; he started working out in middle school just so he could grow up into a strong enough man to be able to protect his soulmate the way they deserved. He just also thinks it's kind of bullshit that he and his soulmate have to share this much without not knowing who each other is.

"It's just kind of ridiculous, you know?" he asks.

"I guess," Cellbit hesitantly agrees.

Cellbit, unlike Roier, seems pretty into the whole soulmate thing. He doesn't think he has one, but he likes the idea of people being able to find someone special just for them that they can love and who will love them back. Sharing pain, to Cellbit, is the same as sharing a warm cup of coffee on a cold winter's morning: it's just something that people who love each other do.

Roier sighs, but he doesn't say anything else, mostly because he's decided he kinda likes Cellbit and he doesn't want to lose him before he can work up the nerve to ask him over for, like. Dinner. Or sex.

Tonight, they're side-by-side in sleeping bags on the deck of their newly-claimed Base Guapita. The kids are asleep inside, and Cellbit's hands are rough and red from an afternoon spent putting up the communications tower. He's half asleep, but Roier is wide awake and staring at the stars and trying to connect them into something meaningful.

Cellbit is... nice. He's nice. Him and Roier got off on the wrong foot, and he kinda super needs to shower more often, but he's sweet, and he has a cute smile when he deigns to show it. His eyes are breathtaking. His hands are big. His arms are covered in too many scars to count, and so is what little of his chest and neck he shows beneath his button-up and vest.

(Roier remembers waking up screaming a week or so ago and immediately checking his arms to make sure he wasn't the one getting fucking shredded with- with something. Bobby ran downstairs to check on him, and he got to the bottom floor just in time to watch Roier pass out as his soulmate died and had to respawn.

The day after that, Roier idly watched as Cellbit and Felps argued in the corner of his garden. He couldn't catch much of what they were saying, but the scars on Cellbit's arms were new, maybe.

Maybe...)

In the end, it's Cellbit who continues the conversation:

"If I do have a soulmate," he murmurs, voice slurred from exhaustion and muffled slightly by his pillow, "I kind of feel bad for them."

"Mm?"

Absently, Cellbit rolls onto his back, his arms falling on top of the sleeping bag's outer layer. One hand brushes along the largest of the opposite arm's scars.

Ah.

"Nah, it's probably fine," Roier says. He adjusts himself so that he's laying on his side facing Cellbit with his hand propping his head up. "Aren't you the guy who thinks sharing pain is romantic and stuff?"

"It isn't romantic," Cellbit scoffs. "It's pain. Nobody should have to go through it."

"Or maybe nobody should have to go through it alone. Isn't that what all this soulmate shit is about?"

Cellbit glances at him out of the corner of his eye. "I thought you didn't believe in soulmates."

"What?" Roier gasps, dramatically offended. "No! Of course I do! I just don't get all that philosophical stuff. Like, what's the point of sharing pain if you don't know who you're sharing with, you know?"

"Because it's what people who love each other do."

Roier snaps with a grin. "There you go! You and your soulmate love each other, so you want to share each other's pain. Right?"

Cellbit hums, "Or maybe he just wants to stop it."

Oh. "'He'? Do you-"

Cellbit cuts him off with a shake of the head: "No, I don't. I just know he would be a he. I'm not, ah..."

Oh, shit.

Roier knows Cellbit well enough by now to know when he doesn't want to elaborate on something, so he offers a cheerful, "Cool!", before going quiet again.

Then:

"I hope you find him, man," Roier says. He sits up and pats Cellbit on the shoulder with a smaller, more genuine smile. "I know he's out there."

Cellbit watches him warily. "I'm not even sure if he exists."

"Nah, he does. And I'd better get to be your best man, okay? If not, I'm stealing your husband."

Cellbit snorts quietly, lips quirking up into a half-smile. "Of course, guapito."

"Good." Roier nods, and he settles back into his sleeping bag. His bones, as usual, are aching. His hands burn, and he doesn't know what the hell his soulmate has been up to today, but he's going to make them start wearing gloves when he finds them.

He flops onto his opposite side, and then he screeches as his arm impales itself on the pointy end of an exposed screw.

"Chinga su madre-" he swears, scrambling out of his sleeping bag to dig up the hammer he and Cellbit were using earlier when they were renovating the airship.

Cellbit sits up, eyes wide. "Guapito? What happened?"

Roier slams his hammer into the screw in response with an irritated, pained, "Fucking nail got me in the arm, what the fuck?"

He turns his attention back to the floorboards, turning his sleeping bag over to inspect the rest of the floor for any loose nails.

(He does not notice Cellbit's face pale as he raises a shaky hand to his own arm, right where the screw had hit Roier. He looks from Roier's bleeding arm to his own, and a faint, excited, surprised, terrified smile crosses his face, and a blush paints itself across his nose and cheeks, and he has to cover his mouth to keep himself from letting out the happiest little squeal possible.)