Work Text:
Regulus was pretty convinced his soulmate was going to get ink poisoning before he even turned twenty-one.
The marks had started appearing the exact day he turned twenty, six months ago. He’d been bracing himself for something meaningful, or at least a "hello", but instead, he’d woken up on his birthday to a frantic, bleeding scrawl across the meat of his palm: “milk, eggs, beer 4 my 21st bday party.”
Over the next few months, Regulus learned that his soulmate essentially lived two entirely different lives, and both of them played out across Regulus's own skin. By day, the guy was a total disaster and horribly forgetful. Regulus would be sitting in a lecture or trying to eat breakfast, only to watch jagged, panicked handwriting bleed into his wrist. Sometimes he wouldn't even notice it, but Barty would point it out and cackle. Regulus had run away at 18 and moved in with Barty, taking his inheritance with him.
“Dentist!! 2 PM (BRING CARD!!)” would appear at noon, aggressively underlined three times. Then, inevitably, at 2:25 PM, a cluster of messy question marks would appear right beneath it, signaling the exact moment the idiot realized he had missed it.
Regulus spent most of his afternoons playing detective, trying to piece together who this disaster of a man actually was. He knew he liked sweet coffee because of a smeared grocery list that specified “the vanilla syrup stuff, not the gross one.” He knew he was taking some kind of chemistry class based on a hastily scribbled formula he'd clearly forgotten for a test and tried to cheat-sheet onto his skin at the last second.
But every single night, at nine o'clock on the dot, the artist would come out. Regulus would roll up his sleeves, lean back against his pillows, and just watch his arms. It was fascinating. He would sit perfectly still as a fine-tipped black gel pen began to bloom across his skin, stroke by stroke, as if an invisible hand was tracing directly onto his flesh.
Sometimes it was geometric bands that wrapped around his wrists like bracelets. Sometimes it was sketched lions that covered his thighs, or vines creeping up his forearm. Regulus never wrote back. He had picked up a pen or a marker dozens of times, but he always dropped it. He didn't want to ruin the canvas. He was content to watch, tracing the dried ink with his fingertips in the dark.
Which brought him to Tuesday morning.
Regulus was sitting in the sterile, aggressively bright waiting room of the central medical plaza. He was only there for a routine check-up, holding a book he hadn't read a single page of because he was too busy staring at the back of his left hand.
Written in thick, bleeding red ink across his knuckles was the latest appointment of his soulmate: “Dr. Lyall - 3rd floor - 11:15!!”
Regulus checked the clock on the waiting room wall. It was 11:20 AM. He shook his head, a smirk becoming barely visible on his face.
Right on cue, the doors of the clinic swung open with a thud.
A boy burst into the room, looking like he had just run a marathon. His dark curls were bouncing wildly around his face, utterly untamed. He was wearing a Letterman jacket and a look of panic.
"I'm so sorry, I know I'm late, I'm James, James Potter, I have an 11:15 with Dr. Lyall?" the boy gasped out, leaning his entire weight against the reception desk. He was completely out of breath, running a hand through his messy hair, which only made it stick up even worse.
Regulus froze. The name didn't mean anything to him - there was no connection. But his eyes automatically darted from the boy's frantic face down to the hand gripping the edge of the reception desk.
There, written in aggressive, bleeding red ink across the back of his left hand, wrapping right over his knuckles, were the exact words: “Dr. Lyall - 3rd floor - 11:15!!”
Regulus’s heart did a strange, violent flip, slamming against his ribs so hard it made him dizzy. The artist. The chaotic, beautiful, completely disorganized artist was standing twenty feet away from him, arguing with a receptionist about a medical file.
James caught his breath, nodding thankfully at the receptionist as she pointed him toward the waiting chairs with a sigh. James turned around, scanning the room for an empty seat, his eyes brushing past the clock, past the plants, and finally landing on Regulus.
Regulus hadn't moved a muscle. He was still sitting frozen in his plastic chair, but he had purposefully turned his left hand over, resting it flat against his knee. The identical red scrawl was facing completely upward, totally exposed under the fluorescent lights.
James’s eyes dropped to Regulus’s hand.
He blinked once. He stopped walking. He blinked again. Slowly, James looked down at his own hand, then back up to Regulus’s. Then it hit him. James’s jaw dropped, and his hazel eyes widened to the size of saucers behind his gold-framed glasses. He looked down at the hand, then up at Regulus’s face, then back to the hand.
Regulus didn't break eye contact, just raising an eyebrow.
Suddenly, James went into hyper drive. He began frantically patting down his pockets, his face turning bright red. He checked his jacket, his jeans, and then stuck his hands into his paint-splattered tote bag. He was digging with pure desperation, dumping a notebook, a stray apple, and three loose paintbrushes onto a side table, making a horrible clattering racket in the quiet waiting room.
Finally, his fingers wrapped around a black Sharpie. He ripped it out of the bag, and without taking his eyes off Regulus, James popped the cap off with his teeth, spit the cap onto his lap, and furiously began writing something on the back of his right hand.
A sharp, tingling warmth bloomed across the skin of Regulus’s own right hand. He tore his eyes away from James to look down at his palm.
In that familiar handwriting he had spent six months deciphering, the fresh ink bled into his skin:
found you.
Regulus looked up, and a smile broke across his face. James was beaming back, utterly breathless, letting the Sharpie drop right out of his hand and clatter to the floor as he took a step forward.
"Wanna get lunch with me after this?" asked James, cracking his ink-stained knuckles.
"Only as long as you're not late to that too," Regulus said, flashing an amused grin as his name was called and he walked away.
Written by a human in Ellipsus.