Chapter Text
Before experiencing it, most people thought that the shift from black-and-white to a world with color was something that happened instantly. But the truth was that it was slow and subtle. Color started to bleed in from the peripheral vision, shades of blue and green at first before transferring to the warmer colors. It could take almost a full minute before all the gray was gone, replaced by a view that had previously been unimaginable. In a dark room, it could take even longer to become clear.
What that meant, practically speaking, was that if the eye contact with one’s soulmate was brief, one would sometimes no longer be holding that eye contact at the moment they noticed the color shift.
What that meant, practically speaking, was that by the time Prapai noticed, he had no idea who he had been looking at when the change had begun. And Sky, lost in the crowd, was already looking at somebody else.
~ ~ ~ ~
Four years later …
“Sky! Sky! You’ll never believe what happened last night!”
Sky glanced up from his notes as Rain all but flung himself into the chair next to him. His hair looked a little mussed, like he had gotten ready that morning in a hurry. Of course, that wasn’t surprising, as Rain’s time management skills were questionable at best. He often looked as if he had jumped out of bed and directly into his clothes before running out of the house. And given his life choices, Sky thought he was absolutely right; he would never guess what had happened to Rain the previous night. “All right, all right, settle down,” he said. “It’s nine o’clock in the morning. You don’t need to shout.”
Rain pouted for half of a second before forgetting he had been scolded and rushing onwards to his conclusion. “I met my soulmate!”
The words made Sky’s breath catch in his throat as his chest constricted painfully. He knew that Rain had no idea why the words would affect Sky the way they did, and didn’t want him to have any idea. So he forced the emotions back down to stew in his gut where they belonged and focused on being excited for Rain. This was a big deal, and he wanted to be happy for his friend. “Oh? Who is it? What’s she like? How’d you meet?”
“It’s a he,” Rain said, then saw Sky’s face. “I know, I was surprised too! I’d never really thought about boys that way. But he’s sooooooo hot, Sky. He’s so hot. My tire went flat and I had to pull over and it was pouring rain, and he came up behind me on a motorcycle. He drives a motorcycle, Sky.”
Sky realized he was smiling, momentarily forgetting about his own problems because Rain was so ridiculous and so happy. “Oh, yeah?”
“Uh huh, and I rolled my window down and our eyes met and it was really just like the movies. Orange is such an amazing color, everything was orange because of the streetlights and it’s gonna be my favorite color forever.” Rain rambled on happily about the moment when he had noticed the colors start to appear, and how this hot motorcycle-riding stranger had looked just as stunned. Then Rain had held the umbrella over him while he changed the tire and they had gone out to get some food together. “And you know what’s crazy? He was in the Faculty of Architecture here too! He just graduated last year!”
“Oh?” Sky was surprised, although he supposed it wasn’t that weird. For all his faults, Rain loved architecture, and his natural visual talent made up for some of his academic flaws. So it wasn’t that surprising that his soulmate might also be an architect. Still, Sky had met a lot of the alumni at the early faculty mixers, when he was taking on the responsibility for his fellow classmates. “What’s his name?”
“P’Phayu!”
Sky nearly choked on his own spit. Sig and Por, and even Ple, who had been hanging onto this conversation like it was a telenovela, all immediately began to clamor. “P’Phayu? The P’Phayu?” they asked in unison, and Rain blinked at them guilelessly. Sig tried to get through to him. “The P’Phayu who was the head of the class, who the professors are always telling us about and showing us his work and saying we should follow his example but we won’t because he’s a genius and we’re all talentless hacks?”
“Oh, I guess,” Rain said, with the cluelessness of someone who only heard every third sentence out of the professor’s mouth.
“You guess?” Ple was appalled. “He’s your soulmate? Oh, I’m gonna cry. You don’t even know who he is and you get to have him as your soulmate . . .”
Rain was starting to look upset, and that annoyed Sky, who said, “Leave off him. We don’t get to choose our soulmates or someone would have snapped up P’Phayu ages ago. If Rain is his soulmate, then he’s going to make P’Phayu happy and it’s none of your business.”
Ple still looked disappointed, but Rain perked back up. “I might not have known him before but I know him now, and he is amazing! He works full-time as an architect but he also works as a mechanic and his family owns a shop and he took me to see it last night - ”
“And that’s enough,” Sky said. “Whatever you two did at that shop, we don’t want to hear about it.”
He knew better than most that you didn’t get to choose your soulmate. He had never understood, and figured he never would understand, why the universe had cursed him the way it had. Things had been so good for the first few months after he had met Gun. But Sky hadn’t been enough for him. He would never forget Gun’s words before leaving. Two years had passed, and he still heard them in his mind every day.
// “You’re just boring,” Gun said, then more deliberately, “I’m bored with you.”
“You can’t be bored,” Sky said, his voice trembling. “You’re my soulmate. You don’t get bored of your soulmate.”
Gun shrugged and played with his lighter, and Sky flinched away from the sound. “I guess that’s probably true most of the time, but most people didn’t get stuck with a soulmate as boring and pathetic as you, huh? You can’t tell me I’m not bored.”
“Please - please don’t leave me,” Sky said, even as he had no idea why he would say that. His whole body ached with the fear of what Gun would do to him if he stayed, but for some reason, the idea of Gun leaving was worse. Gun was his soulmate. If Gun left him, he would truly have nobody. “Please, P’Gun. I love you.” //
“Sky?” Rain asked, and Sky jerked back to reality. “Did you want to come to the party?”
“Sure,” Sky said automatically. A party was normal when someone met their soulmate, to introduce them to each other’s friends and family. “Yeah. Sounds fun.”
It sounded terrible. Standing in crowds of people he didn’t know, all of them congratulating Rain and Phayu, talking about how happy they were for them. Sky was happy for Rain, he really was, but the idea of the party made his stomach churn. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that it didn’t matter. Whether he would have a good time, whether he was comfortable with the idea of going, didn’t matter. This was what was expected of him, so he would put on his mask and go and support Rain, and nobody would ever know how much it cost him.
~ ~ ~ ~
Across the city, Prapai was pretending to work when he got a text from Phayu that said, ‘You free for lunch?’
‘Sure,’ Prapai said, curious about what was up. He and Phayu saw each other often at the races, and sometimes made plans while they were there, but it was rare for Phayu to reach out to him like this. Phayu had a busy life - much busier than Prapai’s - and his free time was hard won. So if he was inviting Prapai out on a weekday, it was probably for a specific reason.
Phayu texted him back with a location about halfway between their offices. Prapai agreed and knuckled down to get at least a few things done so Namtan wouldn’t nag too much when he left. “It’s a business lunch,” he said, as if she would believe that.
“Hey, what’s up?” Phayu greeted him, and there was a look on his face that Prapai couldn’t quite identify. His eyes skimmed up and down Prapai in a way that they usually didn’t.
“Not much. You must have news, though. I’ve been curious all morning.”
“Yeah,” Phayu said, and they grabbed a table. “I met my soulmate last night.”
Now Prapai understood. Phayu had known this news would hit Prapai like a truck, in a way that Phayu couldn’t completely comprehend. The up and down look - he was seeing Prapai in color for the first time, which was always an experience. Prapai had gotten used to it over the past few years, but he still remembered how shocking it had been at first.
Four years. It had been four years since he had gone to a friend’s party and started seeing color. In the intervening years, he had tracked down everyone who had been there. Had talked to each one of them. All of them either had a soulmate already, or still saw black and white. It was as if his soulmate was a ghost. How was he supposed to find them when he didn’t have anything to go on?
It hurt more than it should. Prapai had always been a player. A hotshot. He had laughed at the idea of having a soulmate. How could one person ever be enough for him? Even now, caught in the strange limbo between having a soulmate and not having one, he still fooled around. His bed was never empty if he didn’t want it to be.
But it itched at him. Nagged at him. Somewhere out there in the world was someone who was perfect for him. Someone who would fit in his life like a puzzle piece he hadn’t known he was missing. And knowing that made all the ways he was missing stand out more.
Phayu had met his someone. And Prapai was deeply, painfully jealous. But he wasn’t going to say that out loud, even though he knew that Phayu knew that. “Oh, yeah? Tell me everything. On a scale of one to ten, how hot?”
“He’s cute,” Phayu said, smiling. “He’s so cute. He’s a little, hm, he’s kind of a brat? But in a way that I really like. Does that make sense?”
“Only because it’s you saying that,” Prapai said, laughing.
They ordered food, and Phayu told him about pulling up behind a car with a flat tire, about how the cute boy had rolled down the window just as Phayu put up the visor on his helmet. How their eyes had met and their gazes had, apparently, held long enough that they were still looking at each other when Phayu had noticed the orange fading in from the edges of his vision.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Prapai said. It hadn’t been orange for him. The party had been lit up with blue and green, and it had been dim, so dim that it had taken him too long to notice.
“Yeah,” Phayu said. “It really is. It’s so hard to describe. I tried to describe it to Saifha and he looked at me like I was a babbling idiot.”
“You probably were,” Prapai said, laughing.
“Anyway, my parents are coming down this weekend and throwing a party. You’re welcome to come, but I’d understand if you didn’t want to.”
“It’s a party, so I’m there,” Prapai said. “I can’t miss out on all the finer things in life, after all.”
He was already missing out on too much, and he knew that this party was going to rub that right in his face. But he could be happy for Phayu even while he was unhappy for himself. And things weren’t over yet. Sure, it had been four years, but he was only twenty-five. Once he found his soulmate, and he would find them, he still would have plenty of time with them. They would make everyone else just as jealous as he felt now, looking at how happy Prapai and his mysterious soulmate were.
“Still no leads?” Phayu asked him.
Prapai gave him a look. “Believe me, you would’ve heard if I’d found even the smallest lead.”
“Yeah, I know. I just don’t get it.” Phayu looked pensive as the waiter brought their food. Prapai didn’t get it either, but he knew that Phayu knew that better than most. Phayu hadn’t been at the party, but he traveled in those circles. He had helped Prapai with the search. At first, Prapai had been optimistic. He would just ask around until he found someone who had talked about meeting their soulmate that night, then losing them in the crowd. But nobody did, and as the weeks had turned to months, Phayu had taken over more of the search because he could see how frustrated Prapai was getting.
No, Prapai didn’t get it. As far as he could tell, there were only a few options. Either his soulmate was someone that nobody else at the party knew, who didn’t know how to find Prapai any more than Prapai knew how to find him. Or someone, somewhere, was lying to him. He couldn’t fathom explanation two, so it had to be explanation one, but that didn’t leave him in a good place. Even if whoever that was didn’t travel in those circles, didn’t they want to find their soulmate? Didn’t they realize it had been someone at the party? Why would they have not asked the host, or other guests, who else had been there? Prapai had posted on dozens of ‘missed connections’ and ‘find my soulmate’ forums that were used for this exact purpose. Had his soulmate not even checked them?
Neither of them got it. There was some piece of the puzzle they were missing, and it was driving Prapai up the wall. “Well, I’m not giving up. Once I find them, we’re going to make up for lost time.”
Phayu smiled slightly and said, “I wouldn’t expect anything else from you.”
~ ~ ~ ~
Sky knew his family was fairly well off. They had enough money to send him to study in the city, for his uncle to have a spare apartment that Sky had lived in during high school. Wealth didn’t intimidate him the way it did some of his classmates. But the first view he got of Phayu’s house had his jaw sagging slightly. It wasn’t just that it was clearly the home of a very rich person; it was also gorgeous. He supposed that made sense. Phayu was an architect; he wouldn’t live in an ugly house. Even so, he felt shy and anxious as he made his way into the party. Rain had said it would be casual, so he was dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and a button-down. He felt underdressed, even though he saw many people wearing the same sort of outfit.
Seeing Rain through the crowd was a relief. He made his way over and tried not to stare at the P’Phayu, an absolute legend in the halls of their university.
“Sky!” Rain greeted him enthusiastically. “How are you? P’Phayu, this is Sky, my best friend.”
Phayu smiled at Sky and said, “I think we’ve met before, right?”
Sky nodded and managed to unglue his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “At some of the faculty mixers towards the beginning of the year.”
“I saw your portfolio. Some really good stuff,” Phayu said, and Sky fought the urge to just melt into a puddle. Phayu might not have been his soulmate, but he was universally loved and worshipped in their faculty. Even such vague praise, which might or might not have even been honest, had Sky looking around for a fainting couch. “Rain says you help him out a lot, too.”
At least Sky knew what to say to that. “He’s really talented; he just doesn’t know how to study,” he said, then saw Rain’s grin. “Don’t tell him I said that first part,” he added, as if Rain wasn’t standing right there, and both Rain and Phayu laughed.
“There’s a lot of people for us to meet and greet, but let’s talk later, okay?” Phayu said. “I know you and Rain are close so let’s grab some lunch next week. Until then, enjoy the party, make yourself at home.”
“Thanks,” Sky said, then to Rain, “Have fun. I’ll see you later.”
For a minute, as he went through the crowd, he thought about bailing. He just didn’t enjoy this kind of thing. He wasn’t exactly shy, and he could fake it when he had to, but this sort of thing drained his social battery. He was sure he was going to be expected to mix and chat and make small talk, and it sounded exhausting. There was someone serving drinks, and he went to get one in the hopes that it would loosen his nerves.
While he was waiting for the drink, he felt eyes on him. He glanced around, trying to be subtle, and saw one of the most handsome men he had ever encountered watching him from across the room. He looked away quickly, before his cheeks could flush. A little butterfly started making circles in his stomach.
“I know you from somewhere,” a voice said, and Sky risked another glance. Handsome guy was still handsome, dressed in a black shirt that wasn’t buttoned all the way up, with a red jacket and black slacks. Sky wasn’t sure why anyone who looked like that would be looking at him, and equally unsure where he could possibly know this person from. He didn’t recognize him, and he was sure that he would, but something tugged at him nonetheless, some sense of familiarity.
“Pretty sure you don’t,” Sky said, accepting the glass from the bartender, marveling at the fact that this party had an actual bartender, and forcing himself not to gulp it down.
The man smiled at him, and his smile was so gorgeous that Sky wanted to bask in it forever. “That’s right, I forgot. I’ve only met you in my dreams.”
Sky choked on his drink. Was that supposed to be a pick-up line? Was this asshole trying to hit on him? He felt the blood rising to his cheeks and hoped it wasn’t obvious. He forced himself to speak in a calm, rational tone. “Wow. Does that sort of line actually work on people?”
“More than you’d think,” the man said, giving him an up-and-down look that Sky didn’t mind at all, even though he would have liked to. “How about it? If the line doesn’t work on you, how about my looks?”
“You really think you’re that hot?” Sky asked, rolling his eyes. He had absolutely no intention of showing this jerk that he was that hot, that there was a part of Sky that ached to just throw all his clothes off and see where it took him. Maybe if the setting had been different, maybe if he hadn’t tried such a stupid line, maybe if Sky hadn’t felt Gun looking over his shoulder -
// “You’ll still be faithful to me, right?” Gun asked, and laughed when he saw the look on Sky’s face. “Of course you will.” //
“I know exactly how hot I am,” the hot man said.
“I’m not interested,” Sky said, and set his empty glass down. “Go find someone who is.”
He pushed through the crowd and decided to leave. He couldn’t stay at this party any longer, full of happy people and hot flirty strangers. He needed to get as far away from all of this as possible. He wished he had a car so he could drive away, but walked to the nearest bus station instead and took the bus back to his dorm.
A few hours later, he got a text from Rain. ‘Did you leave? I can’t find you.’
Sky chewed on this for a minute before replying, ‘Yeah, I went home. I have a lot of work to do.’ Rain wouldn’t question that, because Sky always had a lot of work to do.
‘Okay, but I’m coming over tomorrow! I have so much to tell you!’
Sky sighed and pulled out his homework. As long as he focused on that, he would be able to keep himself from screaming.
He had bad dreams, which wasn’t unusual. Even two years after Gun had left, Sky still dreamed about him at least once or twice a week. He woke up crying and sat with his knees pulled up to his chest, wishing he could forget. In the aftermath of the nightmares, the darkest corners of the wee hours of the morning, he thought about what sort of person he was, to have ended up with a soulmate like Gun.
After class, Rain was talking nonstop about the party and fending off their classmates, who were angry that they hadn’t been invited. After a pointed comment from Ple left Rain looking downcast, Sky said waspishly, “Maybe you would’ve been invited if you could be normal around P’Phayu for three seconds.”
“Hey,” Sig said, in the tone of someone who knew they were being called out for good reason.
“I admire P’Phayu too, okay?” Sky said. “I’m the only one of you who had actually met him before. But at least I could say hello without implying that he deserves a better soulmate than Rain. Why don’t you all do a little self-reflection before being upset that you’ve been left out?” He slammed his textbook shut. “I’m going to go home and study.”
“Hey - hey, Sky, wait up!” Rain said, hastily gathering his things. Sky didn’t, but Rain caught up with him a few minutes later. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Sky said. “They’re just being assholes.”
“Okay,” Rain said, beaming at him, obviously glad that Sky was standing up for him. He rambled on about the party as they walked back to Sky’s dorm, and Sky tuned him out. “Anyway, I’m really sorry,” Rain said, as they were going up the stairs. “There were just so many people there. I only invited, like, half a dozen - you know, my mom and dad, my aunts and my two cousins, and you! I didn’t even invite any other friends because, you know, like you said - they were being kind of weird about it. But P’Phayu’s parents invited like a hundred people! And P’Phayu kept apologizing, he said he’d asked them to keep it small but apparently that is their idea of small, and - wowwwwwww.”
“What?” Sky asked, stepping into his apartment.
Rain was looking around with wide eyes. “It’s so cool to see places in color for the first time! I had no idea your place was so pretty!”
“Pretty?” Sky was amused despite himself. “Sure. I’ll take your word on it.”
Truthfully, he remembered that feeling, too. The awe of seeing the vivid green of grass, the beautiful flowers in his father’s garden, the shocking red of a sports car. For a little while, every place had felt new, even if he had been there a hundred times. So he didn’t object as Rain wandered around his apartment, examining everything.
“You hungry?” he asked, and Rain nodded. “I’m going to order.”
“Okay,” Rain said, poking his head where it didn’t belong. “Oh, wow, look at these!”
Sky glanced over to see Rain messing around on his desk, examining his pack of colored pencils. “What are you doing over there?” he asked, tucking his phone away. Rain seemed intent on pulling each pencil out so he could see the color better, scribbling on a blank piece of notebook paper. “Cut that out, those are expensive,” Sky said, which was true. He had bought them not long after meeting Gun, thrilled with the ability to sketch in color for the first time. Some of them were now much shorter than they had been at the beginning, but he still used them regularly. “Ugh, leave them alone! You’re putting them back in the wrong places.” Unthinking, he shouldered Rain aside and began to slot the pencils back into the case.
He realized his mistake a moment too late when he saw Rain staring at him. “Sky . . . you can see color?”
“What? No, I can’t,” Sky said, unconvincingly. “I’ve just had them for a long time so I know what order they go in by the shades of gray.”
“Why would you even have these if you couldn’t see color?” Rain asked. “There’s only so much gray, you wouldn’t need a set with this many - and you’re putting them back in rainbow order, there’s no way you would be able to do that - ”
“Ugh, why are you only smart at the wrong times?” Sky asked, snapping the case shut. “Yes, I can see color. Happy now?”
Rain obviously was. “You’ve met your soulmate?” he asked excitedly. “You’ve never told me that before - what are they like? How did you meet? Why haven’t you ever introduced us?”
Sky resisted the urge to throw Rain out of his apartment. He would only make things worse if he resisted talking about it. Rain was already curious about why he hadn’t mentioned it before; to refuse to discuss it would make him more determined. Rain might not have been the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was like a dog with a bone when he wanted answers. “I met him four years ago, at a party I snuck into on a dare. Some big thing on top of a skyscraper that had just opened.”
“Four years?!” Rain was astonished. “How have you never told me about him before? Where is he?” Rain added, looking around like he expected Sky’s soulmate to pop out of a closet.
“He’s working,” Sky said. “He travels a lot for work,” he added, the easiest way he could think of to explain Gun’s absence. “He’s a few years older than me.”
“Okay, but what does he do? Where does he live? Why haven’t you - ”
Sky knew that the best way to get Rain to stop asking questions was to make him feel like an idiot for asking them. Maybe that made him an asshole, but he would not, could not, talk about Gun. “Why are you making such a big deal out of this? Everyone has a soulmate. Is it really such a surprise to you?”
“Well, no, but . . .” Rain’s voice trailed off.
“Then stop being so weird about it.”
“At least tell me his name,” Rain said.
Sky sighed. “His name is Gun.”
“Then you should invite him when you go out with me and P’Phayu! You know, P’Phayu said you should join us for lunch so he can get to know you better, and I don’t want you to feel like a third wheel, so you should invite your soulmate, too.”
“He’s not in town right now,” Sky said, then added, “Maybe next time,” to get Rain off his back, and, “P’Phayu can invite one of his friends to come along, too. Didn’t you say he has a brother?”
“Oh, yeah, he can invite P’Saifha, that’s a good idea,” Rain said, fortunately now distracted from Sky’s soulmate by thinking about his own. Sky let out a silent sigh of relief as Rain began to ramble about Phayu’s incredibly large, incredibly rich family. If he was lucky, Rain would get so absorbed in his relationship with Phayu that he would completely forget about Sky’s nonexistent relationship with Gun.
Of course, Sky thought, he had never been lucky.
~ ~ ~ ~