FIC: you can use my skin ... (Thunderheart, Walter Crow Horse/Ray Levoi, PG-13)

[carlyinrome]

TITLE: you can use my skin to bury secrets in
RATING: PG-13
FANDOMS: Thunderheart
PAIRINGS: Ray Levoi/Walter Crow Horse
SUMMARY: "Sometimes, when there's a very strong soul bond, what happens to your soulmate's body happens to you, like a mirror." When he was older, Ray would realize his parents were worried by it. This kind of soul bond didn't always make for an easy life. But as a child, he just listened to the story, and wondered about the person who got his scraped knees.

At first, all that registered was pain. Beginning when Ray was small, sometimes an injury would bloom out of his skin like poppies pushing out of the snow. He would feel the pain out of nowhere, and his parents would patch his wounds and hold him and tell him the same story.

"Sometimes, when there's a very strong soul bond, what happens to your soulmate's body happens to you, like a mirror."

When he was older, Ray would realize they were worried by it. This kind of soul bond was rare, and often volatile; when people loved so hard, they could get hurt by more than sharing a papercut. If things went bad—obsession, heartbreak—everything was magnified. Doubled. This kind of soul bond didn't always make for an easy life.

But as a child, he just listened to the story, and wondered about the person who got his scraped knees.

He was twelve when he realized that it wasn't just injury they shared. One day he noticed a patch of discoloration on the ring finger of his right hand, on the thumb side against the nail. He thought it was a bruise at first, but eventually he noticed the mirroring mark on his middle finger: a smudge of ink rubbed into the callus that had formed from holding his pen against the bone. It was the same mark on his ring finger; his soulmate just held their pen differently.

It was a quick jump to the next idea. Ray abandoned his homework, and rolled up his sleeve. In his precise script, he wrote across the veins in his wrist, pressing the pen into the flesh of his arm: Hello, soulmate.

He watched his arm, his breath tight in his chest. No saying it would work. It was just a theory…

Then, appearing letter by letter, right below his message: Hello yourself.

Ray grinned. This changed everything.

***

Ray's soulmate's name was Walter. He was eight years older than Ray, and lived in South Dakota. By the time Ray was in high school, they talked constantly. They could have just exchanged phone numbers, but they never did. They wrote messages into their skin, talking back and forth about everything. As Ray got older, their conversations started to shift toward a specific goal.

Forty-eight days 'til I see you, Ray wrote, ignoring his physics lecture.

I know, honey. It's been circled on my calendar since I put it up, and you've been reminding me every morning for a year and a half.

Don't act like you're not excited. I know you too well.

I've never been more excited for anything in my life, Ray. Aren't you in class? Study, boy.

Aren't you at work? I'm getting an A. Forty-eight days.

Forty-eight days. STUDY.

Ray grinned, and reluctantly turned his attention to his teacher.

***

Ray's eighteenth birthday found him on a plane to Rapid City, South Dakota. He'd never been so glad to have a summer birthday; school had let out last week, and he had three whole months to spend with Walter before he had to go back.

His mother had worried.

"He's my soulmate," Ray had told her. "And I know him. I know him better than almost anyone, and I trust him."

He watched her fight against telling him he was too young. They'd waited until now to meet for a reason. Eventually, she'd sighed and told him to be careful. He told her he would, but he knew the truth: he didn't need to be careful. He'd be safer with Walter than anywhere else in the world.

Ray stepped off the plane, and looked around the small concourse. People were walking quickly to and from planes, but there was one person standing still. Waiting. He grinned when Ray walked up to him.

"Hello, soulmate," Ray said.

"Hello yourself."

Ray grinned. Walter wrapped him in a hug, and both their knees buckled as the full weight of the contact hit them. The simple touch was magnified, doubled, more intense than anything either of them had felt before. They struggled to stay on their feet.

"Jesus," Walter gasped, and held onto him.

Ray kept an arm around him, and his free hand slid through Walter's hair, getting a grip on him. He angled his face up and kissed him.

It was a supernova.

It was only the beginning.