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Curt knows, objectively, that his words aren’t the worst in the world. They’re pretty bad for his ego, though. Sure, he’s not one of the unlucky bastards with “hey” or “hello” emblazoned across their bodies, but he’s spent his life walking around with an undeniable sign that the first thing he says to his soulmate is going to be notably dumb. It’s the kind of thing that gives a guy a teensy bit of a complex.
He’d resolved to build up enough charisma to at least salvage the first impression; make up for it somehow, maybe, or just make himself look like less of an idiot. And then he’d hit college and ended up surrounding himself with friends who he’d made the worst possible impressions on.
Case in point: Tatiana, who he first met whilst having a minor breakdown outside of a lecture hall. She’s sat in the best spot in the cafe right now, a nice corner table with a few squashy armchairs pulled up to it, saving a seat for him.
“Don’t look now,” Curt says, carefully depositing their tray on the table, “but there’s a really hot guy waiting at the counter who’s just made my day like, eighty percent better.”
“Did you talk to him?” Tatiana asks, looking vaguely amused. She picks up her chai latte and sips from it as Curt collapses into the armchair opposite her, grabbing for his hideous caramel macchiato with double whipped cream.
“Nah, just looking,” Curt says happily.
Tatiana looks up and gets the privilege of seeing Hot Counter Guy, as Curt’s nicknamed him. In a few words, he’s tall, dark, and handsome. Which is a stupid cliché, and Curt’s never even thought that before, but he really is. He looks slightly alien in the tacky modernist design of the student cafe, classically angular silhouette jarring by contrast with the plastic surfacing of the wall panelling and the counter that overworked baristas are jamming coffees onto. Which isn’t to say that he looks out of place, or awkward – his expression is one of self-assured calm as he waits. Curt realises he’s propped his chin on one hand to stare, and shakes himself out of it.
“Yeah, not gonna hit on him,” Curt says pre-emptively in an attempt to avoid Tatiana’s correct and often extremely direct advice.
“What are you afraid of?” Tatiana asks. Mission failed, Tatiana’s going to tear him to shreds. And she’s not even going to be wrong, so Curt can’t be mad. Sometimes he wishes his friends were less kind and perceptive. He misses floating by on a cloud of blissful self-ignorance.
“He’s way too hot,” Curt says forlornly, “The rejection is inevitable and also going to kill me. And then - you know, people. And then if I do go for it, I have to worry about making a good impression, and it’s high pressure!” He’s gesturing a little frantically.
“Or making the best impression,” Tatiana suggests.
Curt shrugs. “Yeah, well, statistics.” Most people don’t meet their soulmates in college. He’s still firmly on the shallow end of the bell curve, and it’s definitely strikingly unlikely that he’ll meet the guy before graduation.
Tatiana hums in agreement, and then says, “At least yours is fairly distinct.”
Curt winces, thinking of Barb. One of the really unlucky ones. She’s got “hey” printed neatly on her left bicep, which if you subscribe to placement analysis (Curt doesn’t, really) means that her soulmate’s meant to be direct, strong, and passionate. Curt thinks it means that it had to be really awkward to get it at an angle where it was readable. She’s not super happy about the word. Curt had actually said it to her the first time they met, which had resulted in a couple of awkward minutes before Barb got it together enough to ask if he was her soulmate. She’s refined the system since, at the cost of occasional weird looks when she chants three randomly selected nouns every time she meets someone.
On the other hand, Curt’s makes it really clear that he’s the one to start the conversation, which is scary in a different way. So yeah, he’ll happily hit on people, as Tatiana suggests, but only if they start the conversation.
“Still. It’s scary,” he says, and Tatiana pats him on the shoulder.
“Have your coffee and mourn the life you could have had with the hot guy at the counter,” she says, not unkindly, “and then we can practice for your Russian oral exam.”
Curt’s so defeated he doesn’t even make the usual oral exam joke. At least the cinnamon roll he got with his coffee can comfort him in his time of need, and Tatiana’s relentless compassion for his pathetic gay psyche is always soothing. Even when she’s compassionately telling him to get his shit together and stop being a fucking idiot.
Hot Counter Guy picks up his drink and a pastry and leaves the counter, and Curt sighs pathetically.
“Better luck next time,” Tatiana says.
“Farewell, Hot Counter Guy,” Curt mutters, “I hardly knew thee.”
Tatiana raises her eyebrows. “Hot Counter Guy?”
“It’s efficient. You know I do the efficient nickname thing, you were Scary Russian Girl for like twenty minutes to me,” Curt says, because Tatiana had in fact been scary and Russian when he first met her. She’s still both of those things, but she’s scary for new reasons now. Like how she’s always right and also his best friend, so now he’s afraid of everything she knows about him and her ability to comprehensively demolish him.
“I hope, in your heart of hearts, that I still am,” Tatiana says, and Curt grins at her.
“I can neither confirm nor deny,” he says, mock-seriously, and drinks his coffee.
“So,” Tatiana says, “Aside from your tragically doomed romance with Hot Counter Guy, how are you doing?”
“Uh, pretty gay,” Curt says, and then realises – way too late – a set of facts:
- Hot Counter Guy had, when he left the counter, been heading for the seats.
- He had slowed down, navigating the maze of tables, as he walked past them.
- He had glanced back at Curt, overhearing their conversation.
- Curt had just said that out loud sort of directly at him.
“You’re not incorrect, but I’ve heard it’s traditional to start conversations with ‘hello’,” Hot Counter Guy says, smiling. Curt’s hand, without his consent, moves to the patch of skin with those exact words inscribed across it.
Tatiana, who knows Curt’s words because she’s his best friend, starts cackling.
“Oh my God,” Curt says desperately, “Have I seriously made you walk around with that on your skin your whole life?” It is genuinely thirty or more times worse than he had ever imagined.
Hot Counter Guy blinks. His hand goes to the collar of his shirt, which he unbuttons hastily and tugs aside and – hey, Curt’s not complaining. And then Curt gets to look at the three words scrawled across Hot Counter Guy’s skin in his own messy handwriting. It’s. Well. It’s something. Curt’s brain screeches to a complete halt. He’s seen the rom-coms (everyone’s seen the rom-coms at some point, shut up Tati) and kind of conceptually got the appeal of the Mark Reveal, the shining moment where the soulmates see each other’s words for the first time, but there’s an entirely new element when it’s his words on someone’s skin. Ridiculous and embarrassing as they kind of are, it’s more than a little overwhelming to see evidence that something has picked out the two of them for each other.
Curt doesn’t even realise that he’s dropped his head into his hands until Hot Counter Guy asks politely over his head, “Is he alright?”
There’s an edge of concern there that already makes Curt melt a little. And it is totally unfair that Hot Counter Guy has an equally hot voice, and he’s nice. This sucks. He’s ticking all of Curt’s boxes already.
“He does this sometimes,” Tatiana says, pats Curt on the back, “He’s excellent at handling strong emotions.” Curt can’t even muster up the defensiveness to flip her off. “I’m Tatiana. That disaster who you’re apparently metaphysically linked to is Curt.”
Curt suddenly catches up and blurts out, “Do you want to sit down?”
Hot Counter Guy places his tray on the table, gracefully pulls up a chair (fuck, is anything this guy does not perfect? Hello, inadequacy), and sits beside him.
“I’m Owen, by the way,” Hot Counter Guy says, which makes mentally referring to him a lot more efficient.
“I’m Curt,” Curt says reflexively, “But, uh, you just got told that. So.” Every conversation topic he has ever thought of disembarks from his head, waving a graceful goodbye and leaving him with absolutely nothing besides tripping over his own tongue. The safe sanctuary of hiding behind his hands has never been more appealing.
“This is unprecedented,” Tatiana says with undisguised awe, “I have never before seen you fumble the basics of social interaction.”
Curt gives up and drops his head back down into his hands as Tatiana laughs at him. The worst part is that she’s totally lying, because he was worse than this when they met. Maybe this is the pattern, and he just has to astronomically fuck up every time he meets someone who’ll be important to him.
“It’s sort of flattering,” Owen says, and buttons his shirt up again. Curt’s mourning, just a little. Hot guy. Soulmate guy. What a day.
“Good to meet you, by the way,” Tatiana says. Curt resigns himself to being embarrassed. “I’m Curt’s best friend, which does sort of make it my job to inform you that I will dissect you if you do anything to hurt him.”
“Lovely to know,” Owen says. He doesn’t even sound alarmed. Thank God, because Curt’s entire life is just a cast of weirdos. If he passes muster for Tatiana, that might help him survive the rest of them.
Tatiana drains her chai latte and swings her tote bag over one shoulder. “Now that I’ve issued my warning, I’ll leave you two to get to know each other. Good luck stringing a sentence together, Curt.”
“I hate you,” Curt says. Hatefully.
“I think you mean you love me and I’m a wonderful friend, since I haven’t yet snitched about you calling Owen Hot Coffee Guy.”
“Hot Counter Guy,” Curt mindlessly corrects her, and then cringes. Tatiana waves at him smugly, and Curt, reserving his other hand to cover his face, flips her off. She nods at Owen and departs.
In the pause after Tatiana’s departure, Owen takes a sip from his drink and Curt scrambles together his social graces enough to ask, “What are you drinking?”
Owen tips his mug at him. “Americano. Double espresso.”
“Oh,” Curt says, and then, because he’s a hapless asshole, “do you actually like that?”
Owen pauses. “No,” he says, “but I have a rather important essay due tomorrow that I haven’t started yet, and it’s a key part of the self-flagellation.”
Curt laughs. “I guess I can understand getting an Americano for the point of suffering. That seems like the only reason to drink them.”
“I can’t disagree,” Owen says, “What did you get, a mocha?”
“Caramel macchiato, because I like experiencing things that are nice,” Curt says cheerfully.
“Point,” Owen says, and raises his mug. When he takes a sip, he winces for a moment before his expression smooths over. It’s kind of cute – his eyebrows furrow, and a little wrinkle appears between them, and his eyes crinkle at the corners. Totally unfair that he looks good even when he’s suffering bad coffee.
“Can I get your number?” Curt says suddenly. Because he’s on a real roll today, and this sort of agonising putting-feelers-out thing is not something he’s good at.
“Of course,” Owen says, and quickly opens his phone to the contacts section and hands it over.
Curt does the same to Owen, and then puts himself in Owen’s phone sensibly, as his full name, because he is occasionally capable of restraint. Then he sticks a rainbow flag emoji at the end, because he isn’t capable of that much restraint.
He hands Owen’s phone back to him, and says, “Not that I was creeping on your contacts, but do we know the same Barb?”
“Small, blonde, chants words at new people?” Owen asks.
Curt nods.
“We have a few lectures together,” Owen says. Great, he’s smart too, if he’s in lectures with actual-legal-genius Barb. Curt’s fucked. He makes a little pathetic sound. “I feel like I’m saying this a lot,” Owen adds, “but are you alright?”
“I’m usually better at this,” Curt says pathetically, “At people. I mean. Except when it’s something I care about, and then I kind of collapse like tissue paper in the rain, and then I’m soggy and weird and this metaphor really got away from me.”
Owen huffs out a quiet laugh and strokes a thumb over the back of Curt’s hand. “If I’m honest, I’m absolutely petrified right now.”
“Why? Curt asks, genuinely baffled.
“It’s not just you who’s meeting his soulmate here, you know.”
That kind of reframes it for Curt. Not that he didn’t know it wasn’t just him in the equation, but he hadn’t quite figured that Owen, for his perfectly unflappable demeanour, could be nervous about it as well. So, he thinks, back to conversational basics again, beyond the coffee and the people they know. Back to freshman orientation stuff.
“What’s the essay on?” he asks, and Owen doesn’t even blink at the non-sequitur.
“Brecht and realism in the theatre.”
“Wow,” Curt says, “I don’t even know what like half of that means.”
At his encouragement, Owen embarks on an outline of schools of thought in theatre, and then segues to how he got into acting (first became interested when dragged to the local am-dram groups as a child, then rediscovered it as a teenager when his English teacher made him read for Hamlet). Curt watches his eyes brighten with excitement whenever he talks about acting, and the clean and precise gestures he uses to outline styles of staging and their benefits, and smiles. Owen catches him looking.
“-and that’s how you get to the – oh, sorry,” he breaks off, looking a little embarrassed, “I know I can talk for England when I get started.”
Curt stumbles over words for a minute, and then resorts to the truth, “No, it’s – I mean, uh – you’re cute, that’s all. When you’re excited.”
“Oh,” Owen says, and honest to God blushes.
“If anyone hasn’t told you that before,” Curt says decisively, “That’s a crime.”
Owen laughs. “You’re quite something, you know that?” he says.
“Usually, when people say that to me, they sound horrified,” Curt says happily, and gets another quiet laugh from Owen for his troubles.
There’s a lull in conversation for a moment, but it feels less tense now. Maybe it’s just that Curt’s less nervous, and he’s reading it into the air, but Owen seems more relaxed too.
Owen leans forwards a little to get to his drink, and says, “So, Hot Counter Guy?” His voice is warm, tinged with amusement, and Curt glances quickly at him and then away again.
“I saw you waiting by the counter,” he admits, “and – you know. You’re hot.”
“Can’t fault you for efficiency,” Owen says with a smile, “I mean, I won’t lie and say I didn’t notice you too.”
Curt thinks he might be blushing. “Can I - this might seem stupid. Can I see the words again?”
Owen doesn’t question him, just unbuttons his shirt. Curt leans a little closer to read the words, and feels a gentle wave of horror wash over him.
“I can’t believe this is the symbol of our eternal connection or whatever,” Curt says, “and it’s me making a gay joke about myself.”
“Saved me the trouble of coming out to my parents,” Owen says. Curt laughs, and watches Owen shiver as his breath hits Owen’s collarbone. On stupid instinct, he reaches out to touch the words, and then realises what he’s done after his fingers make contact. Owen sighs, a quiet, shuddering noise. Curt retracts his hand as if he’s been burnt.
“Sorry, I should have asked,” he says hastily.
“It’s fine,” Owen replies, soothing, “It’s just new.”
Curt says, “I’d offer to even the playing field, but mine’s in a more awkward spot than yours.”
“I look forwards to seeing it, then,” Owen says.
Curt blinks in surprise. “That attitude's new.” Owen reddens, just a little.
“I said you weren’t the only one meeting your soulmate,” he says, “I just react differently to nerves than you do. I clam up, unfortunately, and you’ve been – well, very gracious in drawing me out of my shell.”
Curt blurts out, “Can I kiss you?”
“What?”
“I could come up with a complicated reason, or say that it’s to sort out nerves or whatever, but honestly I just really wanna kiss you.” Curt says.
“Oh,” Owen says, looking pleased in an embarrassed sort of way.
Then he kisses Curt, and fuck. He’s so mad that the rom-coms were right about the fireworks thing. Unbelievably mad. Except for the part where it’s great, and they fit together so perfectly that Curt has his whole faith in the soulmate system restored when he hadn’t even lost it in the first place, it just doubles. Owen wraps an arm around him and somehow his hand immediately finds the spot on Curt’s back where his words are, and he tries to press closer to Owen because the feeling of warmth rising up in him is too much to deal with alone.
This is definitely too much for a cafe. He doesn’t give a fuck.
When they separate, they just look at each other for a moment.
“That was–” Owen starts, and then stops.
“Yeah,” Curt agrees.
Owen’s got a hand in Curt’s hair, and he doesn’t even know when that happened but he leans into the soothing weight of it.
“We should have just done that immediately,” he says, tilting his head back into Owen’s hand and closing his eyes.
“The conversation was nice, too.” Owen says.
“Yeah, and I really wanna hear more of your opinions on like, productions of Sweeney Todd, but consider: we could have been doing that this whole time.”
Owen hums. “You make an excellent point.”
“It turns out I'm capable of doing that.” Owen laughs, and then lets go of Curt to drain his Americano. As is becoming a pattern, he winces when he’s finished. Weirdo.
“Walk me back to my flat?” he asks.
“Sure,” Curt says happily.
Conversation flows easily between them as they go, chatting about their respective majors and the slightly alarming number of mutual friends they have (Curt genuinely cannot believe they missed each other for this long), until they reach Owen’s door.
“This is me,” he says, slightly awkward.
Curt wants to linger at the door forever, honestly. Because he’s brave and trying to be sensible about the fact that he can’t U-Haul his way into Owen’s life immediately, he instead kisses Owen and says, “Good luck with the all-nighter and the essay.”
Owen pulls him in closer, kisses him again like he doesn’t want to say goodbye either, and promises, “I’ll text you the moment it’s done.” Curt presses a hand against his collarbone, envisioning the words there through the fabric of his shirt, and Owen sighs into his mouth. He still tastes like Americano, but Curt’s willing to put up with it.
“I cannot believe I’m hanging around outside a doorway,” Curt says, “I’m turning into everything I swore I’d never be when I met that couple who found each other at, like, fourteen.”
“It’s a lot, isn’t it?” Owen agrees, kisses him again, and Curt’s not going to turn him down.
“I think I’m handling it very well,” Curt says primly.
“Fantastically,” Owen says, and kisses Curt’s jaw.
“No, okay, cut that out or you’re not going to get that essay done,” Curt says firmly, kissing Owen one last time.
“I’ll never procrastinate again if this is my punishment,” Owen vows.
Curt laughs, and says “Text me.”
“I will,” Owen says, pulls Curt in by his waist for one more kiss, and then opens the door and waves a forlorn goodbye.
As Curt walks down the hallway, away from his soulmate for the first time, his phone dings with a text from one Owen Carvour, occupation listed as “soulmate”.
You didn’t say when I could text you
Curt smiles, and responds.
Anytime.