McCall Polypack, Soulmate AU
Allison Argent is never allowed to speak of the two inset rings, one thick, the other thin, that blacken the skin at centre of her sternum. Her wardrobe is carefully scrutinized, down to the bodysuits she wears in gymnastics and the swimwear she dons at the pool.
“What’s a Wolf Mark?” Allison asks, six years old, bright-eyed and fearlessly curious. Her father pales, a spark of something extinguishing in his eyes, while her mother snaps, vicious and rabid, for her to never speak those words again.
Like anything Allison hears adults say and is scolded for repeating – swear words and sex words and prejudicial words too thinly veiled – she holds them tight to her chest, dangles them on the tip of her tongue, and internalizes them without ever really understanding.
Not until she sees the same mark reflected back at her by a boy with sharp teeth and amber eyes that glow in the pale light of a waxing moon.
Stiles Stilinski has two bands, one thick, the other thin, curled around the bony circle of ankle like a cuff. His father regards them warily, a realist through and through, while his mother tells him old Polish fairy tales about magic and destiny and true love. He reveres the bands as a gift – until his mother dies – then reviles them like a curse.
“I have one, too, see?” says a little boy in the sandbox on Stiles’ first day of school. His eyes are warm and brown, and something in them feels familiar in a sharp kind of way just beneath Stiles’ ribs. “Maybe that means we’re supposed to be friends.”
He memorizes the shape of his mark on another boy’s arm with curious fingers that will one day do the same for another partner, then another, then another, then another. None will be be the same as the first, but all will feel like coming home.
Lydia Martin hides a bullseye birthmark – two rings; one thick, the other thin – at the base of her skull with long, strawberry curls her mother brushes like ritual every morning at her vanity.
She takes lessons of covering imperfections to heart, covers her intelligence and her agency and her worth under a carefully crafted mask of meek desirability, so the only thing anyone sees when they look at her head is hair.
Sharp, biting wire leaves bruises in purples and blues around the pale, dainty column of her neck, and she goes to school the next day with her hair in a crown of braids.
“I don’t need to hide that.”
Gentle hands trace the lines of her face. A kaleidoscope of thin-ringed irises look at her with unrestrained care and affection. For the first time in her life, Lydia can breathe.
Two stark brands, one thick, the other thin, wrap high around Malia Hale’s thigh and draw whispers and sidelong glares. They exists where three looping spirals belong be instead – a mark born by her cousins, and her father, and a towering woman with sharp cheeks and blood in her stare she knows only as Alpha.
“Keep an eye on that one; she’s marked for another Pack.”
Smoke, like fog, obscures the memory of whispers, of family, and of things destined to be. Malia Tate goes to her pediatrician’s once every six months to measure the strange discolorations that ring her warm tan skin and doesn’t think of home being anywhere other than her family farmhouse.
Not until home is a den, and two circles of dark black fur ring the ash-grey haunch of a mangy coyote, scavenging its way through barren winters in isolation. Not until a deep, guttural growl pulls the girl from the beast, and she understands for the first time what Alpha really means.
Kira Yukimura is taught from an early age to love the two concentric rings, one thick, the other thin, splayed across her back, low and to the left, just over her hip. Her parents trace its patterns to lull her to sleep on nights when the buzzing under her skin leaves her agitated and restless.
“There are people in this world, Kira, who will tell you that certain kinds of love are not allowed,” her mother tells her, those nights and every night, until Kira is seventeen and feels stuck in a loop.
“I know,” she takes to replying, long and airy like a sigh. “Love wins. Racism is bad. I promise, Mom, my self-esteem is fine.”
Her rings prickle, like high voltage travelling in closed circuits, when she enters the wolf’s den, a place foxes should never be. Her parents’ lessons, like a heartbeat, echo in her chest just when she needs them most: “You must love anyway. It is meant for you. You’ll see.”
Scott McCall is born with two bands, one thick, the other thin, fixed inky dark around his upper arm. His mother worries – she’s a nurse, it’s impossible not to – and badgers the hospital staff until an old man in a pristine white coat arrives to dismiss her concerns out of hand.
“It’s just a birthmark.”
“But Doc, it’s black.”
A dismissive shrug. “The human body is peculiar, sometimes.”
Still, he takes a biopsy and sends it off for tests. Melissa doesn’t sleep until the results come back benign. The skin doesn’t scar, much as they were warned it would, and sleep, while it finds her again, is fitful at best until Melissa finally understands why.
Until she sees the mark her son bears emblazoned on five other teenagers, curled together on her living room sofa, cross-referencing colleges programs and budgeting for rent, and she just knows.
This is Scott’s mark. This was always meant to be.