Chapter Text
this AU was brought to you by: sharpie hating the idea of soulmate aus where only one person is destined to be your soulmate and its more often than not romantic. That shit’s boring. Let’s have an au where there’s more than one soulmate, where soulmates are romantic and familial and platonic and everything in between
an AU where, when you meet one of your soulmates and touch for the first time, there's a splash of color on each of you
(in this au, the initiator leaves the color, and each person leaves different shades of the same color on different people)
porsche stains the people he loves different shades of blue - his love calms him down, keeps him centered. he loves blue
chay has a deep, calm blue on his forehead, where his baby big brother pressed a kiss under their parents' direction
(chay's little pudgy baby hand grabbed onto porsche's pointer finger and permanently stained it a bright, hopeful yellow)
kinn's wrist is a electric, energetic blue from where porsche helped him up on their first meeting
pete has a soft, compassionate, midday sky blue on his arm from porsche brushing up against him in their shared room
even vegas has a deep, turbulent, almost-black blue on his hands
kinn leaves behind a bright berry-red stain on porsche's wrist as he grabs back on their very first meeting (not quite as neon-bright as porsche's excitement-love, but easily as passionate)
he pushes back chay's bangs one day and leaves behind a steady, focused maroon (right beside baby-porsche's mark) on his new little brother's forehead
(chay, in his excitement of new soulmate, grabs for the first bare part of kinn he can see. the side of kinn's neck is the same yellow as porsche's pointer finger. chay loves them not quite the same way – porsche is HiaProtectorParent all in one, but loves them both as his brothers all the same)
kinn and vegas leave soulmarks on each other that they convince themselves symbolize forever rivalry. kinn's ankle and vegas's shoulder are similar almost-black, turbulent reds from when they would play fight as children
(neither of them knew, when they tusseled as little kids under their mothers' laughing eyes, that the play fights would repeat over and over again well into adulthood, less playful each time)
surprisingly to only vegas and kinn, both of them leave shades of red on their soulmates
(everybody else pretty much figured that these two similar assholes would leave similar shades)
((somehow, knowing that they love in similar ways only made their rivalry worse))
kinn and vegas use their love to propel them forward, energize them, excite them. they love in shades of red
vegas's mother never directed her eldest to touch a specific part of his new sibling, so macau's second soulmark (after his mother's warm pink), is a ring of protective red around his wrist where his new big brother stopped him from flailing a fist right into his own face
vegas's own third soulmark (forever-dissapointed purple from his father, soon-to-be-absent-loving pink from his mother) is a bright, playful yellow on his nose, where his little brother tried to steal his nose right off of his face
(on quiet, affectionate nights, where their father is nothing but a specter of a nightmare, vegas will tug at macau's nose and call him little thief)
((macau never gets purple from their father. seeing it hurt vegas more than any physical blow ever could makes him feel grateful))
(((it's always hard to leave someone you love, even if they hurt you. it's even harder when a promise that they could love you is forever on your skin)))
porsche leaves vegas with dark-storming almost-black blue on a night he barely remembers, fighting back against an assailant he can't see. vegas leaves porsche behind with dark-raging almost-black red on his chest, an assailant who didn't want to be an assailant
(if vegas had ignored disappointed purple and focused on hopeful-yellow and loving-pink, who were both always many things but never disappointed, perhaps they might have left kinder shades on each other)
((porsche only accepts having a soulmark with vegas when he sees pete being happy. porsche only understands his soulmate bond with vegas when he sees vegas tweak macau's nose. porsche can understand doing anything for a little brother.))
macau, like chay, uses his love to give himself hope and happiness – they both paint their love in shades of yellow
pete comes into their lives, tearing it up and finally stabilizing it all at the same time
vegas first touches pete on his shoulder to guide him back to his room (pete is absolutely the worst spy), leaving behind drying-blood-red that he doesn't see until morning
(he has an absolutely normal reaction to it. don't listen to macau, he does not freak out about leaving behind red on this main family bodyguard.)
((he thinks it's kinn-red for a while, until pete smacks him up the head and reminds him that the red showed up while kinn was still at the main family manor and well out of reach))
(((pete loves vegas for many reasons. emotional intelligence is not one of those)))
pete and macau only meet as individuals and not second-family-second-heir and first-family-bodyguard while vegas is still unconscious
pete sees macau hurting - pete sees vegas's little brother, the one person vegas would burn down the world for hurting, and instinctively pulls him into a hug
(he lived with porsche. living with porsche for any amount of time means learning that hugs = affection. pete is good at learning.)
macau's shoulder stains a steady, calm brown where pete pulls him in. pete's upper arm stains a dandelion-crayon-yellow where macau scrambles for anything to hold on to
(pete is macau's third soulmate. macau's loving pink mother is dead. macau's protective red brother is barely holding on to life. macau clings and clings to steadying brown with all he has because he doesn't have much left to lose)
((much like porsche, vegas tried to protect macau from the worst. much like porsche, vegas could only protect macau from so much)
pete uses his love to ground himself, keep himself steady. he leaves behind shades of brown
pete, when he's brought onto the bodyguard staff, leaves no marks on kinn. but a tripping hazard in the wrong place, and a hand steadied on khun's shoulder leaves behind a comforting, oak brown and has him transferred to khun's detail
(pete is one of the best, even new, dangerous fists hiding under a sweet smile. kinn, seeing that one of the best is also soulmate-bound to his brother, thinks he'll keep him safe)
khun never reaches back for pete without gloves or a towel or three layers of blankets, but if he did, he would have left behind an almost-yellow orange, one that promised a bright day after years in the dark
(porsche, always one to cross boundaries, manages to dare khun into grabbing for him. just as khun's left arm has a bright, sky blue; porsche's has a sun-bright orange. two people, bringing out the excitement in each other, only ever hyping each other up)
((without pete, they definitely would crash))
(((there's a reason for more than one soulmate, after all)))
khun, who is energetic, even at his most shattered, and loves his brothers with all he has left in him, leaves behind orange
(but he rarely ever touches anyone without at least two layers of fabric between them anymore)
((one of his captors walked away with a sickly orange stain and a shard of khun's self))
korn would've been thrilled if none of his children had soulmarks ever (he never touched any of them skin-to-skin), but their mother overrode him and pressed khun's hand to a newborn kinn's chest
kinn's heart has a summer-hopeful orange (khun always wished that his baby brother would be able to do anything he wanted)
((there was a time when khun was the heir and kinn was the one with the possibility of freedom just within his grasp))
khun's hand has a red ring, where a two-day-old kinn tried to chow down on Big Brother Hand but failed spectacularly (mostly due to a lack of any teeth)
(khun traces the mark back and forth absent mindedly to calm himself, sometimes; remind himself that he loves his brother and his brother loves him)
((a baby kinn would continue trying to eat his brother’s hand for a few years. khun found it significantly more painful when there were actual teeth involved))
kim has only ever let himself love secretly, even loving his brothers only from afar; he leaves behind black smudges and tries to hope that those he love will think of them as ink stains
kim's chest has both a steady, lifeblood red and a warm, committed orange, where his big brothers places their hands on his heart and swore to their mother to love him
(a little fist swung out and caught khun right under the jaw, leaving him with a forever-shadow-black)
(a little foot caught kinn right above the belly button, racking up his shirt and leaving behind an ink-black smudge)
((kim was born fighting))
(korn sees the black and thinks weapon, not protection, not loyalty, not strength)
((korn saw the orange and thought naive and childish, and he saw the red and thought rash and arrogant))
((korn, even in this au, can go fuck himself))
kim's mark on chay is on chay's fimgers, where he corrected chay's guitar grip during their practice. he hoped, with his coward-in-the-face-of-love heart, that chay wouldn’t notice the additional soulmark
(kim's wish came true: chay thought it was an ink stain. however, it also didn't come true: even Professional Oblivious Dumbass Porchay will notice when it's been weeks and an ink stain hasn't come off)
chay leaves behind a pastel yellow on kim's arm (the calmest yellow he's ever left behind) on complete accident
(chay doesn't know until well after The Breakup that kim left behind a soulmark at all. after all, he’d had a fresh black soulmark for weeks but kkim had never fessed up)
((chay figured that his pastel yellow was unrequited. chay loved A Lot. he was used to not being loved back))
(((a lot of his classmates are stained yellow with not even a spec in return. he's used to brushing off awkward apologies from one-sided soulmarks. he has his hia, and later he has kinn and macau and kim. he doesn't need more than that)))
chay leaves behind bright yellow almost wherever he goes
he was raised by a brother who loves him, who stained love on his forehead within hours of him being born and he loves the world in turn; loves people and things and music
(porsche's love for chay meant being hurt to keep his little brother safe. chay's love for porsche meant being happy to keep his brother content)
((both of them need therapy))
chay leaves the same sunflower yellow on kinn as an adult as he did on porsche as a baby; yellow that meant your baby brother to porsche and keep him safe to kinn
chay and macau meet for the first time and leave identical bright-yellow-excitement on each other's palms after high-fiving for the first time
(before, they would mostly finger gun at each other. neither porsche nor vegas quite understand the chaos gremlins they have raised)
((after they stain each other yellow, they high-five every time they meet. hugging is chay's preferred greeting for those he loves (he is kittisawasd, and they love with all of their hearts and hugs), but high-fives are almost better if it's macau))
(((porsche and vegas very quickly learn to become friends again out of fear of their little brothers banding together and destroying the planet or something. porsche can sweep trauma under the rug and vegas can sweep years of family rivalry away - their brothers are dumbasses and clever and therefore dangerous)))