#hhh ngl i rlly struggled w this one

[liluwrites]

DenNor Week: Day Four - Fantasy

Note: I used quite a loose interpretation of the prompt, so this is a soulmate au in which people see only in black and white, but when they first touch their soulmate the world bursts into colour

Word count: 1024

When his phone vibrates in his pocket, Matthias scrambles to grab it so quickly he splashes coffee all over the tabletop. Flashing an apologetic grin at the Starbucks employee, he taps the blinking icon on the screen to reveal the message:

Lukas

just landed, where r u

Immediately, his heart leaps into his throat. He’s been waiting for this moment for weeks, ever since Lukas had FaceTimed him with a radiant smile and had wordlessly held up a plane ticket to Denmark. After four long years of messaging and gaming and late-night video calls, Matthias is finally going to meet his internet friend in person.

“You’ve gotta stay at my house,” Matthias had insisted. “We have a spare room, or we could, uh, share? If you want, I mean – “

Lukas had given him a tiny smile. “Sharing is fine.”

At some point during those four years, Matthias had begun to think of Lukas as more than a friend. He doesn’t know when it happened – it crept up slowly, so gradually he didn’t even know it was happening, until one day he had looked at Lukas’ smiling face through the screen and realised quite suddenly that he was in love.

He hadn’t told anyone, of course. Everyone knows that love outside of a soulmate bond ruins fate’s design and ends in nothing but heartbreak. There have been countless tragic romances published over the years, and the plot is always the same; the hero falls in love, but their lover finds their soulmate and abandons them for a world in technicolour.

That’s another thing. Colour.

For twenty years, Matthias has seen the world in nothing but black and white and shades of grey. His friends have told him of colours – the ‘blue’ sky and the ‘green’ hills and the ‘multicolour’ spray of flowers that bloom around the neighbourhood – but their descriptions are impossible to comprehend. Until he touches his soulmate for the first time, his world will remain in greyscale. Matthias doesn’t know what it means to see a universe in colour.

And, if he allows himself to fall for Lukas, he never will.

He sends a quick text in reply.

Matthias

on my way

Then, banishing the traitorous thoughts from his head, he grabs his coffee-to-go and runs to meet Lukas.

Matthias recognises him immediately. The pixelated FaceTime calls and shy selfies failed to do him justice – none of them could capture the slim angles of his body and silky waves of his hair and the smooth sway of his hips as he walks and the way his eyes reflect the artificial light of the airport as he looks around uncertainly in search of Matthias – but when he catches sight of him, Matthias knows he would recognise that tiny, beautiful smile anywhere.

“Lukas!” He calls, and he loves hearing the syllables roll off his tongue. “Over here.”

Lukas rolls his eyes as he walks towards him, pulling his suitcase behind him. “I can see you, there’s no need to shout.”

“Lukas,” he repeats more softly, suddenly lost for words. They stand a few metres apart, hesitant, smiling at one another uncertainly. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Lukas whispers back.

“I – I don’t know what to say.” He laughs ruefully. “I’ve imagined this so many times in my head, but now we’re finally here, I don’t know what to do.”

Lukas meets his eyes. “Do what feels right.”

His voice is soft, but it sounds like a challenge, a dare. And Matthias has never been one to refuse a dare. He takes a deep breath, holds out his arms, and steps forward to sweep Lukas into his embrace.

They touch.

They touch, and suddenly something sears through Matthias’ body, white-hot and electric, and he pulls away from Lukas in shock, and suddenly –

Suddenly, the world is filled with light.

It doesn’t come all at once, the colour. It seeps into everything like wildfire; the bright, stinging glow of the airport lights and the announcements board, the rainbow reflections on the polished tile, the millions of shades in all the shop windows and the escalators and the signposts and the people. Matthias’ friends had told him about colours, but he didn’t know there were this many shades. It feels like he could live forever and never experience them all.

And then, finally, he sees Lukas.

Lukas is light, pastel, painted in colours he doesn’t know the words for yet. He looks like a watercolour painting, all subtle shades and soft edges and blurred lines. Matthias looks at Lukas’ eyes and decides they are his favourite colour.

Lukas stumbles back a little, head tilted back to the lights. “God,” he whispers. “Do you see that?”

Something swells in his chest, and he can’t tell if it’s laughter or tears. “Yes,” he chokes out. “Yes. I see it.”

From around them, a soft round of applause starts up. They have an audience, Matthias realises. He turns to the people watching them, some with tears in their eyes, and takes them all in; the different tones of their clothes and their skin and their hair.

“There are so many colours,” he whispers, clutching tightly to Lukas’ hands.

Someone steps forward from the crowd; a man with white hair and skin lined with age. “You haven’t even gone outside yet, son,” he says. “This is only the beginning.”

Matthias’ breath catches in his throat. He turns to Lukas and wraps him tightly in his arms, buries his face in his shoulder and breathes him in. Lukas clings to him around the waist.

They are soulmates, he realises, with sudden and overwhelming joy. He and Lukas, the boy he has been so deeply in love with, are destined to spend the rest of their lives together, in a world filled with infinite colour and light. His heart could burst with happiness.

He draws back for a moment to admire Lukas’ face, every perfect freckle and blemish on his pale skin, then pulls him close again and smiles through the welling tears. This is Lukas Bondevik, the man he is going to spend the rest of his life with.

And this is only the beginning.