#ts roman - mentioned

[middlingthebest]

Day 4 - There is a trail of colour only you can see that marks out where your soulmate has been

Day 4 for @tsshipmonth2020‘s Soulmate September! I’m going for a platonic soulmate challenge this month. Approx 1100 words. Remus mentions corpses at one point but no warnings.

Patton and Remus

Patton stared at the glittering green glow halfway up the wall with a determination that even he wasn’t sure where he was pulling from. His soulmate was nearby, it was something he’d known for almost a month now and suspected for longer. The only problem was the green trail in front of him spanned half the city and Patton didn’t know if it was poor luck, the inconceivable treks that the other person took daily, or this little game they were playing but he’d never met them on the other end of it. Still! He had a really good feeling about today! Rolling up his sleeves, he excused himself between passers-by and slipped into the alley in front of him, tracking along the wall until he found the skip his soulmate must have climbed to get up there.

It was pretty high up; as Patton pulled himself up onto the rim of the skip he wasn’t entirely sure if he’d even be able to reach the ledge his soulmate had been wandering around on. They must be really tall! He added that to his mental picture and with a leap he was amazed paid off managed to grab hold of the edge… and then he wasn’t entirely sure what to do to be honest. What he could reasonably conclude from what happened next was that he probably shouldn’t have tried to pick up the piece of paper under his hand when he barely had the upper body strength to hold on with both.

His soulmate must be pretty strong, he thought as his hand tightened around the paper and his other hand slipped from the edge and he hurtled down into the skip, blessedly full of rather soft rubbish this time rather than the wooden scraps from last week. He had never suspected that actively searching for his soulmate would involve so many dumpster dives, and not even in a cool detective way, just literally diving into dumpsters. Or that he would get so used to it that the note in his hand was so much more pressing that getting right up. Cushioned amongst the black bags Patton hurried to unfold the note grinning at the simple message inside: bet you won’t find this one. Patton added it to his collection. He already knew his soulmate had jagged handwriting.

Sitting up, he pulled his notebook from his bag and slipped the note safely into the paper pocket in the back to be transferred into his scrapbook later. He scrawled a note of his own and stood, staring back up at the ledge again and trying to figure out the best way to get back up there when he was interrupted by a high voice in the mouth of the alley.

“Ooh, is there room in there for two?” The voice cooed over and Patton turned, still spluttering excuses to why he was standing in a skip as the person heaved themselves in and joined him. In the moments between them crashing into the rubbish and popping back up again Patton admired the pretty green trail hovering before his eyes, and when his vision was filled with his soulmate’s grinning face, stooped down so they were level, he met them with a grin of his own. Around him his own blue cloud was dissipating, not that he could see it, until finally they were standing together and the trails leading up and down the block (and buildings) fully faded away.

“So I know why I’m here but why are you?” Remus asked, bursting with excitement as they took in the sight of their soulmate for the first time.

“Well I hope you won’t think I’m trashy if I answer honestly.” Patton joked back before handing over his answering note which Remus quickly snatched from his hand to read. It wasn’t so much a message as it was a quick doodle of Patton falling into the bin but it made Remus laugh anyway and they pulled the chain for their wallet until the plastic was safe in their hand instead of dangling free by their leg. Best thing they’d ever bought. For all the outside looked like it was falling apart, bulging and held together by copious layers of duct tape, the inside was secure and they tucked the doodle inside with the rest.

“You found this one faster than those dogs that find corpses!” They exclaimed, their eyes darting immediately to Patton’s face.

Patton’s face… did a few things before he could think of how to react, he certainly hadn’t been expecting his soulmate to mention corpses in the first few minutes of interacting with them. Some surprise definitely made its way into his expression, some shock, some apprehension, but Patton always tried to be adaptable to new situations and there was one word in there that never failed to get him back into a conversation.

“Woof.”

He was usually better at it than this though? But his soulmate laughed. He made them laugh! And gosh they were laughing a lot and Patton couldn’t help but share in the relief on their face as he giggled alongside them.

“I’m Patton.” He introduced, realising that they’d been standing in a bin for some time now without properly greeting each other. “He/him.” He added as a force of habit, holding his hand out to shake.

Remus took it and pulled him into a hug which Patton eagerly returned, his arms wrapped tight around Remus’s waist and cosy under the oversized jacket as his soulmate squeezed him up off the ground.

“Remus.” His soulmate squealed, setting him back down on the ground and also tacking on, “they/them. I knew you’d be fun to look for when I saw you’d made your way onto that roof.” They recalled, grinning as Patton flushed at the memory, remembering how many boosts he’d needed Virgil to give him to get that high; the poor boy refused to go searching with him again.

“That wasn’t too bad though I don’t know how you got onto my friend’s fire escape with no one noticing. I had to be let into xyr building to put a note there.” Patton chimed back, and really, Roman hadn’t been too pleased about that.

“It was my dumb sibling’s.” Remus explained with a shrug and Patton lit up at the coincidence.

Swapping stories of the hiding spaces, climbs and subsequent broken bones in their quest to find and hide from each other, they eventually made their way out of the skip, dropping back into the alley with an arm flung around each other and an eager anticipation for where this strange little friendship would lead them. With their colour trails mingling happily behind them as they walked, they both kept an eye out, plotting along their route for the next place they were going to stash their notes because when you’d been playing their game for as long as they had it was really quite hard to decide when it was over.