Chapter Text
Valentine's Day Soulmate AU, where you can see the aura of your soulmate for one day a year. A brightly lit coloured shine, illuminating their body like a beacon in the night:
Robby hated the day. Not necessarily out of jealousy or bitterness for not having found his soulmate in 54 years, but because every holiday cantered around the expectation of finding the one - or simply not being alone - meant an increase of patients in the ER. Many of them didn't even want to be saved anymore, or came in too late to do more than announce their death.
Dennis hated the day, because it reminded him of the church gatherings, he had to take part in. Something that felt like clinical speed dating events, supervised by parents and pastors alike. Whenever a pair was found they would be married immediately, while the others had to wait another year to have another chance with a new church in the area joining the gathering. During one of such events a girl had started crying, when she looked at him. Told everybody they were soulmates and that his aura was a beautiful light blue. Dennis knew it was a lie. There wasn't even a speck of light around her when he looked at her. But her family insisted on the wedding and the little boy, born 6 months later, told him why. He was just too convenient, barely able to stutter out his denials in front of the pastor. Despite going through with the marriage he got shunned for denying god's will at the altar. For protesting a fake union.
When he fled, he left her behind with a divorce agreement that gave her the right to all his savings and the house he inherited from his grandfather. A small price to pay for his freedom. Still, a part of him would forever feel guilty for abandoning them.
When he came into work that day the ER was already busy. Triage filled to the brim with slighted lovers, failed weddings and the occasional influencer couple, who tried to film a "soulmate reveal" only for it to go horribly wrong.
He was barely able to put his backpack away, before another trauma patient got rolled in, pulling him away from the Hub.
Robby had been busy all morning to the point that the steady drum of his headache had reached a new level. The little spots of light dancing in his peripheral vision every now and then, were of no help to his case. Cursing the cheap neon lights the hospital had installed, he massaged the back of his nose, but the light seemed to even penetrate through his eyelids as it grew only brighter.
Meanwhile Dennis almost got run over by a gurney as he stepped into the Hub and froze into place. The most beautiful rainbow light radiated from Robby. Little specks illuminating the area around him, like the sun catchers his mother used to have hung up in her kitchen. He wanted to touch them, bathe in them. Burn the image into his eyes, so that he would never forget it. Robby looked....ethereal. Like the stained-glass windows of the church in Omaha, they once visited on a school trip.
Robby reluctantly opened his eyes as the light wouldn't subside. Turning to the source, he expected anything but Dennis standing behind him. Eyes even bigger than usual, tears forming at their edges and mouth slack in awe. But what shocked him the most was the light emitting from him. It was a soft, warm yellowy thing split into multiple, blurry lines. Like streetlights on a rainy night. It reminded him of the last sunrays on a warm summer's night, in the lake House, he and his grandma used to visit. Of the feeling of a lazy morning spent in bed, with sunlight tickling his tummy. He wanted to touch Dennis, feel if he was as soft and warm as the light made him look like and then take him home and never let go.
They found each other, their hands meeting, as they still took the other in. The lights around them mixing and mingling with each other, creating a spectacular show, that made everything else fade into distance. Robby was so lost in the reflection in Dennis's eyes, how it made him feel whole, with warm, lazy happiness spreading through his body, that he barely registered Dana yelling at them to get out of the way and have their little moment in private, "-Jesus, Maria and Joseph!"
Dennis was the first to come back to his senses. The giddiness being damped by the fact that he was currently making googly eyes at his boss in front of all his colleagues. He could feel the blush creeping down his neck as he took it upon himself to quickly push and pull a still stunned Robby into Pedes to give them more privacy.
And if he ended up pressed against the wall, with cartoon animals staring at him, while his boss kissed him within an inch of his life, then let it be known, that he was right where he wanted to be.