Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Possessive Ilya Rozanov, Jealousy, Misunderstandings, the jealousy is unfounded and the possessiveness is probably a bit toxic but do not try to save shane, He is exactly where he wants to be, Angst with a Happy Ending, ilya thinks he's a monster but i think he's baby, maybe im the toxic one, also the summary is a total lie

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-15 Words: 6,638 Chapters: 1/1

i want a scar that looks just like you

Summary

Shane has been covering up his soulmark for as long as Ilya has known him.
Ilya doesn't have a soulmark at all.

Notes

I spent mon-fri last week writing a 50k first draft of a zombie fic, so I figured I'd spend this week editing it to try and get it posted soon-ish. Then on the drive to work today, Vampire Smile by Kyla la Grange came up, and I plotted this fic immediately and then wrote the first draft in about an hour lmao. So that's where the title of this fic is from! Also, I have lost control of my life! mark me down as one of the legions of previously retired fic writers who have been dragged back in thanks to this show

Ilya isn't even sure why the argument starts. It was probably always about the soulmark patch, on some level, but it started out pretending to be about something else, because Ilya is way too humiliated to admit that he's been tying himself into complicated knots about the soulmark patch for weeks, ever since they decided to give this thing between them a real shot. 

He's flown up for a stretch of three days in the middle of the week, and the countdown clock always makes him feel anxious now, greedy for more in a way that makes him frantic, and probably makes him into a bit of an asshole. Shane doesn’t seem to mind. He preens under the attention, a flower blooming, perfectly pleased with Ilya at his most possessive, which is probably dangerous. If he was unhappy with it, Ilya would at least have a reason to try and be more normal. Now he just feels like he has permission. Ilya grasps and wants and takes, and Shane shouldn’t encourage him to reach for even more. 

They used to be satisfied with a few hours every couple of weeks at the most, or at least they pretended to be, but neither of them can pretend that anymore, after the cottage. So Ilya wants more, more, more, and maybe it's not surprising that he's now turned to begging for the one thing Shane won't give him.

Shane has been covering up his soulmark diligently since Ilya has known him. Shane is diligent about everything, so it's not surprising that he always keeps patches stocked, always has way more than he’ll need on roadies and in the locker rooms and in his gear bag and his backpack and the glovebox of his car. Everywhere. He reminds Ilya of Svetlana, who leaves little stashes of menstrual products everywhere she goes, like a squirrel preparing for winter. At first, it's cute. It's cute that Shane is so scared of being perceived that he always keeps that small, round patch fused to the skin over his heart. At first. 

Now, with Ilya selfishly wanting every single part of Shane to be bared to him, Shane’s insistence on secrecy is starting to grate at Ilya’s nerves; he keeps worrying at the thought of what Shane’s soulmark might look like. He knows what every other part of Shane’s body looks like. He’s intimately familiar with even the parts of Shane that no one else has ever seen. Why can’t Shane allow him to see this? 

“It’s not a big deal,” Shane has always said, every time Ilya asks, but of course, if that was true, he wouldn’t bother hiding it. 

Ilya has always known about Shane’s soulmark, ever since they saw each other in the showers. It’s on his chest, right over his heart, and it would be impossible to miss it, even if Ilya wasn’t constantly devouring Shane with his eyes. They've talked about it before, a few times, and Shane always seems dismissive about it, which of course could mean anything. He claims he doesn't believe in “that stuff” anyway, which is clearly a lie, and not a very good one. Hard not to believe in something when the physical proof is on your chest. And it’s hard to take him at his word because Ilya is always watching him, and Shane is always touching it. Pressing his fingers against it, whether he’s wearing a shirt or not. It’s like when he chews on the strings of his sweatshirts. An unthinking habit. At first, Ilya thought it was just to make sure that the patch wasn't coming loose, but he becomes less certain of that as time goes by, and it's starting to kill him. This is supposed to be his Shane. His Shane. His Shane forever. But Shane is not his Shane. Not really. 

So the fight isn't about soulmarks at first. It's an argument about something stupider, a half-hearted one that's making Shane laugh, and then suddenly Shane isn't laughing anymore. He's on the defensive, wounded, and Ilya knows he’s being an asshole, knows he’s a monster, because he can't stop fucking pushing. It’s like he can’t wait to sabotage the happiness he’s been granted. He’s picking at the edges of that happiness, trying to peel it off. Why can’t he just be happy with what he has? Why does he always have to prepare himself for the worst? Why can't he just accept that Shane has chosen him over whoever the universe claims should own  his heart? 

He just can't get it out of his head. He can’t stop thinking but they would be better for him. He would have to love them more. He would have to want them more if he gave them a chance. He will meet them and realize that what he feels for me is nothing in comparison, and he will hate me for needing him so much, and resent me for existing. He can feel himself in real time becoming clingy, obsessive, and he doesn't want to do that to Shane, but he's not sure he'll be able to help it. Shane is so sweet and trusting with him now. He looks at Ilya with so much undeserved love in his eyes, and all Ilya wants to do is rip the patch from his chest and take that fucking soulmark with it. 

“I can't,” Shane says softly when Ilya demands to see it. They've been arguing steadily for minutes now, both growing colder with it, and Ilya is feeling sick with the knowledge that he's relishing it a little bit, that he wants this, that he's hoping that Shane tells him to get back on a fucking plane to Boston, but Shane just looks cornered and scared and wounded and confused, like he can't figure out why Ilya needs to know so badly. “I can't, Ilya. It would change everything.”

Ilya knows it will change everything, and that's why he's been so calm about it for all these years, but he doesn't know how much longer he can stay calm. He loves Shane. He wants to be with Shane always. He’s going to be making some big sacrifices for Shane, and he really meant it when he said he doesn’t mind, but of course he’s worried about it. He at least wants to know who, wants to know why Shane is so sure that Ilya makes a better choice of a person with whom to build a life than the person the universe made specifically for him. 

He's been half-convinced for a while now that Shane will peel off that soulmark patch and it will be a rose underneath. Ilya thinks he could probably be very mature about that. Shane and Rose are best friends, and they have an easy chemistry that Shane has never had with Ilya, and it would make sense, maybe, for the universe to make him soulmates with Rose even if they aren’t “compatible”.

But Shane is shaking his head, and he's looking at the ground, and Ilya thinks the answer might be worse than Rose. 

“I thought it did not bother me, but I think it might,” Ilya admits finally, and Shane's eyes snap up to his, tear filled, fear filled. 

“It bothers you?” he asks. 

“I don’t know. Scares me? Maybe?”

“Ilya.” 

“What if you meet them and it's better with them than it is with me? What if I…” He doesn’t want to say it, because he thinks this is the thing that could really break them, but he has to. “What if I follow the plan and leave Boston and move to fucking Ottawa only for you to meet the person your body says you should love, and you leave me? And then I am in fucking Ottawa, alone?”

“Ilya, come on. I promise, that's not going to happen.” 

“You can’t know that!” 

“I can! I know him already. It's not…”

I know him already. That might be worse. Ilya feels an uncomfortable pang in his chest, and he nods and looks down. He can feel the three days they were supposed to spend together slipping away from him. 

“Okay,” he says. He's thinking that he's relieved he didn't even get a chance to take off his shoes before launching into whatever the original argument was. He's relieved that he can grab his bag and leave. He can’t breathe anymore. “Okay. I think I need to go? Just for a little. I’m already making things worse. I just…” 

“What? Ilya, please don’t go,” Shane says, stepping forward quickly. Ilya really must be in a rotten mood, because he would normally do anything to get that hurt look out of Shane's eyes, but today he feels vindicated to see it, and that’s how he knows that leaving is the right choice. Shane is reaching out for him, trying to keep him close, the way he's always the one reaching out. He's the one who kept texting after Sochi, who reached out after Vegas when Ilya was sure he’d shoved him away completely. He texted like a day after he broke up with Rose to apologize for panicking that day in Boston. He’s always the one trying, and Ilya is always the one trying to move away. Even now, even after they’ve both confessed their love, Ilya is shying back, looking for reasons to run. Terrified that he’s not going to be enough for Shane. 

To be fair to him: the universe apparently agrees. 

Ilya loves Shane so much that it scares the shit out of him every time he thinks about it too hard. He's loved Shane almost from the start, even though he knew how fucking dangerous it was. Dangerous because of who they were, and dangerous because of Shane’s soulmark, and dangerous because of how quickly Ilya fell, and how hard. It's almost validating when he makes Shane look like this, like he wants to cry but won't. Yes, he thinks, every time, maybe now you'll prove me right that this can never work out. 

Because Ilya doesn’t have a soulmark, has never had a soulmark, and as much as he knows better than to listen to his father and his brother about most things, he thinks they were both right when they used to tell him that his skin was bare because the universe was too kind to saddle someone with all his faults. That the universe hadn't given either of them soulmarks either had only confirmed Ilya's worst fears: he was too much like them. 

His mama had a soulmark, he remembers. She sometimes said that she'd never met her soulmate, but at other times she said that she thought the soulmark was referencing his father. That’s always been the problem with soulmarks: they’re small pictures, icons that are supposed to represent the person you’re meant to be with, but of course they can sometimes be vague. Ilya remembers that his mama’s soulmark was a small symbol of a sun, and he never could figure out what about his cold and frigid father would have come to mind when looking at it. Maybe he’d been different once, before Ilya can remember him. He sort of doubts it, though.

He used to wish that he was more like his mama than his father and brother, and then he was glad that no marks ever showed up on his skin, and then he met Shane, and he was all regret. He saw the patch on Shane’s chest in the showers, and he told himself that it didn't matter, and he told himself that it was only just for fun anyway, but ever since then, it has haunted him. 

“I'm sorry,” he says quietly. “I know it isn't fair.” Shane nods, his fingers twisting together. 

“It wouldn't be fair to show you,” he says, reasonably, and it makes Ilya want to tear him to pieces, but only for a second. He closes his eyes. He tries to imagine leaving. He tries to imagine getting back on a plane. He tries to imagine staying and kissing Shane and holding him close and playing at happy perfect boyfriends while that soulmark patch burns a hole in his heart. He thought he could do this. He thought he'd get over it. It's not fair to Shane that he keeps coming back, keeps reaching out and meeting Shane's hand, and then turns around and does shit like this. How is Shane ever going to feel right about giving up his soulmate if Ilya is giving him more and more reasons to leave? 

But maybe that's why Ilya should leave. 

“I know,” he agrees quietly. “None of it is fair, I think.”

“I'm sorry.”

Ilya looks up, meets Shane's eyes, annoyed. 

“You have nothing to be sorry for. It is my thing. My…” He can't think of the word. Brushes it off physically, waving his hand in the air. “My problem.”

“Hang-up,” Shane offers, voice strained, and Ilya sighs. Shane is yet again continuing to be so perfect for him, always offering up little pieces of himself, giving him the words that Ilya has trouble finding on his own. And all Ilya does is take and take. 

All Shane is doing is trying to keep this one thing for himself. Can't Ilya let him have that? Can't he deal with not having one single part of Shane that's not his?

“Yes,” he admits quietly. “Hang-up. I'm sorry.”

“Please don't leave,” Shane says. Not begging, really, but so steady and wanting and loving, and Ilya is going to destroy himself just like this. Like a ship unmoored, dashing again and again against a rocky shore. 

Two days later, Ilya is exhausted with pretending, but he has largely managed to fold himself into a softer shape. He doesn't look at the patch. He avoids looking at Shane's chest at all. He kisses him desperately and he fucks him skillfully and he does everything for Shane, Shane, Shane. He peppers him with I love yous and he teases him mercilessly, and he keeps himself from asking again. From wanting too much. Still, he can see the way Shane watches him. He knows that Shane is worried that it’s only a matter of time before he tries to burn it all down again, and it makes Ilya feel awful, because he knows Shane is right to worry. Ilya is not the steady sort of person on whom you can build a foundation. 

Shane has so many tells, which Ilya will never reveal to him, because he likes to know what Shane is thinking, likes to know when Shane is nervous, and he’s afraid that Shane will try to hide himself away if he realizes how easily Ilya can read him now. He gets this haunted, mile-long stare when he's working himself up to something. His muscles go tense. His fingers worry at the hem of his clothes. That last night, he’s showing all the signs. Ilya kisses him through it, and he tells him that everything is fine, but on the last night before Ilya has to leave, Shane abruptly jumps up from the couch, where they'd been watching a movie for a brief break between all the fucking, and he starts ripping off his layers. Hoodie, t-shirt. 

“I have to…but you can't…it doesn't mean…it's okay. It's okay. It's okay. I'm not mad. I'm okay. I am okay. Can you just…just…not freak out. Do not freak out.”

He's standing there shirtless, suddenly pointing at Ilya, firm. Ilya was dozing off with a sleepy Shane warm in his arms a second ago, so it takes him a second to catch up. 

“I am not the one freaking out, moy lyubimyy,” he points out sleepily. “What are you doing?”

“You’re giving up everything for me, and I need…I need you to understand that I'm not going to leave you,” Shane says. He looks wild with terror, like a spooked horse, and Ilya is suddenly afraid, too. 

“No, Shane, I shouldn’t have said…”

“I'm sorry,” Shane says, and then he rips off the soulmark patch and it's…

It’s a flower. 

It’s a small white lily. 

Ilya looks back up to meet Shane's eyes, suddenly very awake, and he remembers every single conversation they've ever had. 

He remembers the way Shane looked at him when he put himself into Shane's phone as Lily. 

He remembers the way Shane kept asking. Are you sure you don't have one? And Ilya had teased him for being a jealous little thing, because he’d thought that he was the one at a disadvantage, and he wanted to hide the fact that he was the jealous monster of the two of them.

He remembers every time Shane said it doesn’t matter. It won’t matter. You don’t have to worry. And every time Ilya pretended to believe him while thinking how could I not worry? When you are so wonderful that anyone would be glad to steal you away from me?

And all this time. 

All this time, Shane has known that the universe has declared that Ilya Rozanov is his soulmate. 

And all this time, Shane has lived with knowing that he is not Ilya's. 

“What the fuck,” Ilya breathes. 

“I know,” Shane says, defeated. 

“What the fuck.”

“I know.” Shane still looks tense with his nerves, like he thinks Ilya is mad at him for hiding it, but of course Ilya isn't mad at him. He's sorry for him. He hurts for him. He knows what it's like to be in love with someone destined for someone else, he knows the pain of it, and he would trade it back in a fucking heartbeat, because it just makes sense that someone as beautiful as Shane Hollander has a soulmark, and it makes sense that that person will love him, because he is so fucking lovable. 

It's unthinkable that the universe could have created a man like Shane Hollander and then told him you are made for someone, but he is not for you. 

“No,” Ilya decides. He stands up, and he pulls Shane into his arms, and Shane is shaking apart, just a bit. Ilya holds him tighter. “No, this is wrong.”

“I’m sorry,” Shane says miserably, and Ilya realizes that Shane never meant to tell him. Shane meant to live like this for as long as possible, hiding his soulmark for always. He meant to carry the burden of it so Ilya would not have to. What a fucking asshole. 

“Is stupid, and fucked up, and I don't give a shit. I love you. I love you forever. Stupid mark on stupid fucking skin doesn't mean anything. Okay?” 

After so long of acting like a dipshit and insisting that your soulmark has to matter, that feels a little hypocritical, but he doesn’t care. The rules are different now.  

“Okay,” Shane says, but it leaves a sour taste in Ilya's mouth because he knows that Shane has so much he's feeling, so much he wants to say, but he won't, because he doesn't think he can, because Ilya forced him into revealing this thing that has clearly broken his heart, at least a little bit. Has maybe been breaking his heart for years.

Shane is clearly a little embarrassed the next morning, but not insurmountably. Ilya gets up first to make breakfast, and Shane comes slinking into the kitchen like a wary cat, trying to judge the mood. Ilya still feels terrible, but he pretends that he doesn’t. He apologizes again for being a monster, serves Shane his breakfast, and asks him very politely if he’d like his first blowjob now or if he’d rather wait. Shane laughs and kisses him. 

“I’m not mad,” he says, but it sounds the same as I’m okay sounded last night, like he’s trying really hard to make it true. Ilya nods, and he pretends to believe it, and he feels wretched. More wretched than last night, probably. Shane has left the patch off, leaving his soulmark bare for the first time, flushing but not shying away when Ilya bends his head to kiss it. 

“I’m glad you told me,” Ilya says, which isn’t true, but he thinks he has done a good job of convincing Shane that it is. 

“It really isn’t a big deal,” Shane replies. “I’ve come to terms with it.” 

Ilya isn’t completely sure what that means, and he makes a note to google the phrase later, but he thinks he understands from how resigned Shane sounds. Like there’s nothing to be done about it, so there’s no sense in worrying.

“Okay,” Ilya says. 

“I hope you don’t feel, like.” When Ilya arches an eyebrow, waiting, Shane mumbles out, “guilty, or whatever.” 

Ilya shrugs, considers not saying anything. 

“I think…sad,” he finally says. “I wish you did not have to carry this for so long.” 

“It’s okay,” Shane replies, almost sounding relieved. “I really…it would be different if you had someone else’s mark, I guess. That would be way worse.” 

“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “It would make even less sense. I love you.” 

Shane looks so happy to hear that. And it makes Ilya sick, but he still can’t quite regret pushing last night. So he apologizes, cries a little, and then applies himself to fucking Shane into a coma so can feel exactly who he belongs to, no matter what the stupid fucking universe thinks it knows. 

At the door, they do their typical dance where Shane says goodbye to him like five times, but follows him each time until they’re at the bottom of the stairs. Out of the bedroom—his soulmark still bare, the lily haunting Ilya everywhere he looks—into the kitchen, then to the front door, then down the back stairs. Ilya kisses him, holds him, whispers to him how perfect he is and how much he can’t wait until the next time they see each other, until Shane is trembling with a want to believe everything Ilya has said. 

Ilya has always been a greedy, possessive creature, wanting everything of Shane, and he knows he has to do a better job of being careful. Not giving in to the desire to take everything. Shane is terrible for him in that way, because Shane always seems to earnestly want everything Ilya can give him, and is always eager to be possessed. It’s too tempting to test his limits, and Ilya is afraid to take too much and end up hurting him again. 

He heads back to Boston, and he thinks about Shane on the flight, and he tries to calm himself down. Last night had been intense, and he knows that he didn’t do enough. He didn’t show Shane that his lack of mark isn’t about Shane, but about himself. It has to be about him, about Ilya, about being broken just like his father and his brother. He is good at using his body to show Shane just how wanted and desired he is, but he’s much worse at words, and he knows he didn’t say the right ones. He tries to draft better ones in his head, and he thinks about texting them to Shane, but he doesn’t, yet. He doesn’t want to fuck it up again. 

He keeps thinking about how happy Shane looked before seeing him off. Lighter, like he was glad to finally put down the burden of his secret even if it must have been so mortifying for him to reveal. Ilya has to be glad to pick that burden up instead, since he’s the one who forced the truth out of him by not believing his assurances. It hurts, though. He wishes it was different. It’s so fucking unfair. Why would the universe do something like that to Shane? Shane. Out of anyone!

It fucks him up now that he knows why Shane was keeping it hidden. He said it last night, said that he didn't want Ilya to worry, or be hurt. Ilya is hurt, and he is worried, and he's fucking angry, but he hides it all away until he gets home and spends the next seventeen hours scrolling through his phone, combing through every article he can find. 

In Russia, soulmarks weren’t as big a deal as they are in the US and Canada. They were often kept hidden, were considered shameful, because there was this idea that they pointed you to impractical people. Certainly, his mother’s soulmark had led her in an impractical direction, if it really did belong to his father. So people didn’t talk about them, didn’t ask about them, covered them early. Svetlana’s is on her inner wrist, and she has always worn heavy bracelets as a result. Sasha’s is on the underside of his forearm, and so he always wore long sleeves to cover it. 

But when people can’t hide them, or when the mark is inconvenient in some way, or embarrassing, people have them removed. 

Could his father have paid to have Ilya's soulmark removed? Was it so obvious that his soulmate was going to be a man? Is that maybe why his father never liked him? Most people get them very young. Was Ilya so young that he doesn't remember being taken in for the minor surgery? There's no one to tell him the truth now, but he looks up pictures of the scars that are left behind after such a thing, and he doesn't think he has anything like that on his body. He checks, anyway, standing in front of the mirror, trying to see where a mark or a bump might be an ancient surgical scar. Shane’s lily is very small. Maybe Ilya’s visual for Shane was small, too. Maybe the scar has healed over completely. Maybe he will never know where it was.

There are many people out there who don't have soulmarks and who are convinced that they must. They post about special foods that allegedly trigger the formation of soulmarks, about therapists who can apparently talk you into growing one, about the various meditations that are meant to reveal your soulmate to your inner self. Ilya supposes he should have more empathy for those online people, but it just makes him feel discouraged; he isn’t special. There are people like him all over the world whose lovers bear their marks while they remain blank. It makes him want to give up, but he doesn’t. He can’t. It’s Shane. So he picks the suggestion that sounds least pathetic to him: a professional skin check. 

He doesn't tell Shane about any of this. He texts Shane like normal, and they call every day, and they talk to each other on Facetime as often as they can, and Shane seems almost normal, except that now Ilya can see how much fear and pain and humiliation he was hiding, all along, behind that normal. Ilya waits impatiently for his appointment with a clinic in Brookline called SoulSearch that has a strong privacy policy and offers Russian under their language options. He doesn't tell Shane, but he tells Shane almost everything else. How much he loves him and how much he needs him and how much he always misses him when he's not there. Shane always looks so content on their calls, but Ilya wants him to be more than just content. He wants Shane blissfully happy and secure in the knowledge that Ilya is made for him just as much as he is made for Ilya. Ilya knows that he would have spent the rest of his life trying desperately to be better than the soulmate he thought Shane had, but now that he knows the truth, he only wants to make sure he's the best soulmate anyone could ever want. He needs Shane to not regret him. He needs Shane to feel safe with him.

He’s a monster for feeling any happiness at all about this, but there is a part of him that saw that lily and thought he’s mine. I knew he was mine. He’s mine forever now. No one else will steal him away. And of course that’s just the possessive monster within him, and Shane feeds that monster every day by saying similar things. Saying that he likes being marked by Ilya. Saying that he likes being able to prove it now, that he will never leave Ilya. Ilya goes to sleep every night curled around the stone in his heart that grows harder and more frantic with every day that passes, because it isn’t fair. He shouldn’t be the one to get all the assurance of love. Shane deserves it so much more than he does. Ilya can’t even be a soulmate properly. 

All his life, he has known that he will not be enough for anyone, or will maybe be too much for them. It made sense, in a way, even though it was disappointing. No soulmark meant that he didn't have to worry about hurting someone, because no one would ever love him enough to be hurt by him. 

He simply cannot live in a world where he is so much like his father that the person he loves wears his mark while he has nothing. He can't watch Shane cling to him the way his mother clung to his father beyond all sense. That can't be what happens. Not to his Shane. 

The soulmark lady calls herself a Counselor. She is wearing too many gauzy scarves, and the lighting in the clinic is dim and yellow and too soothing. It’s like a low-end spa. Ilya almost walks out immediately, but he doesn't. She has gray hair and thick glasses and this knowing smirk that he hates. It makes him feel itchy. But she is Russian, and he wants to be able to say all the right words, and so he stays, and they speak Russian to each other. 

“Most people, when they come to me, they come because they are searching for their perfect match. From your message, it sounds like you have already met yours. Who is she?”

Ilya sighs, and he thinks of Shane on the ice, Shane scoring goals, Shane laughing at that photoshoot, Shane sinking to his knees that first time, Shane so nervous but so brave and always so eager and so willing to let Ilya do anything. Always so surprised when Ilya is sweet to him. Blushing, smiling softly, calling Ilya a fucking asshole with that lazy grin on his face.

“She is perfect,” he says. “For me, anyway. Probably not to anyone else. She is neurotic. Always worried about things. She's kind of mean sometimes, but I like that, and most of the time she's a lot more sweet than she realizes. She's everything to me. I have loved her for years. Longer than I realized.”

“And why does the lack of soulmark bother you now? If you love her so much without it?” 

“Since we've met, she has covered her mark. I thought, assumed, it was because it was for someone else. I thought she was sparing my feelings. And she was, but not in the way I thought. I was cruel, the other night. I started to let it get to me, the fact that she was meant for someone else. Except then she showed me, and it's clear that her soulmark is a reference to me. But I don't have one. So instead of losing her to some better person, I'm supposed to watch her deal with the fact that my body says I don't love her enough.”

“I see. And is that something that will cause problems for you two?”

“I don't want to hurt her. I don't want her to be hurt because of me. If there is nothing to be done, there’s nothing to be done, but I want to make sure, first. I think there has to be something I’m missing. I know the world isn’t fair, but it can’t be so unfair to her. She doesn’t deserve that.”

The counselor seems satisfied with that. She gives him a very annoying speech about how he may not like what they find; there may be nothing to find. She says that some people find the procedure invasive, and that if he is uncomfortable at any point, they can stop, and he will be given a full refund. She will do a visual check first, and then a check under several different lights, and then a full-body electronic scan if necessary. She explains all of these steps, and what they mean, and what they will reveal. She explains the chemistry of it all. Ilya nods, and doesn’t listen, and doesn’t give a fuck. She will not guarantee anything, but if there is nothing to be found, she offers counseling. Ilya agrees to everything she says, impatiently, and he strips down when she tells him to, to his boxers. When he asks what she will do if his soulmark is hidden under them, she gives him a wry smile and says they'll cross that bridge when they come to it. 

She wears a little eyepiece that looks like the kind he's seen jewelers wearing when appraising diamonds, and she looks over every inch of him as he lies on the uncomfortable examination table and sweats under the absurdly bright lights and tries not to think about Shane's devastated eyes. Ilya is abstractly sorry that he pushed, that he's always pushing Shane in some way, but mostly he's glad. It makes him sick to think of Shane hurting privately for all these years. It makes him look back on their every interaction with heartache.

Maybe, if this lady doesn't find anything, Ilya will go out and get a tattoo. One of those fucking loons, or a hockey puck, or the fucking Metros logo, even. Something to show Shane that Ilya is choosing him forever, no matter what lies his skin is trying to tell. 

The woman works silently, but she hums a little when she's checking his left thigh, just below his hip. 

“You have many moles,” she tells him, and then her fingers brush the side of his leg. “These are different.”

He cranes his neck to see, hope flaring in his chest. 

“What do you mean?” he asks. 

“They're lighter, very faint. I almost thought they were scars at first. Chicken pox, maybe.” 

“I thought they were scars from something too. Playing as a child, maybe. Scraping on gravel? I don’t know. Are they not?” He tries not to sound as hopeful as he is. She smiles at him, which tells him that he failed. 

 “They’re not raised or pitted, and they have a sheen under the light that you see a lot in soulmarks. And they're in a strange pattern. Two larger arcs, connected by a smaller one in the middle.” She frowns, and she presses a gloved finger against his skin, observing it clinically. “A constellation, maybe? Stars? Does that mean anything to you?” Ilya shakes his head, trying not to let his heart sink. “Ah,” she says brightly, like a thought has just come to her. “Physical features are a common theme, and these look…Does she have freckles? On her cheeks?”

Ilya almost stops breathing. He nods, unable to speak. The woman laughs, delighted. 

“The smaller arc is for the bridge of her nose, yes. I can see it now!”

“You are sure?” 

“Oh, yes. I will take a sample, just in case, but I’ve been at this a very long time, and I know a soulmark when I see one. Here, I will take a picture with your phone, so you can line it up with a picture of her face, and you will see.” 

Ilya hands his phone over, fingers shaking. When she hands it back, he looks at the picture, and he imagines Shane smiling at him, and he imagines Shane's face crinkling up, his freckles moving with it. 

“Yes,” Ilya says, drunk on his happiness. “Yes, you're right. That's her.”

He calls Shane when he's already in Montreal, standing outside his building. This might be a mistake, because he doesn’t even know if Shane’s home, and it also might be invasive and creepy of him, but he doesn't think he cares very much. 

“Hey!” Shane says when he answers. “Shouldn't you be at practice?”

“Ah, family emergency. Sick uncle.”

“You have an uncle? I'm sorry he's sick.”

“No, I don't have an uncle, idiot. Are you home? Are you alone?”

“I am! I'm reading, too, so it’s your lucky day. Glasses are on.” A little laugh. “Did you want to do a video call?” 

“Nope!” Ilya says happily, and he hangs up, and he punches in the door code, and he jogs up the stairs. By the time he gets up there, Shane is already opening the door to the apartment, because he gets him. Because they're soulmates. He looks thrilled, a little scandalized. 

“You can't use sick relatives for booty calls,” he says, but he's smiling so wide and already reaching out to hug Ilya, and then he's kissing him, and then Ilya is taking Shane's precious face in his own unworthy hands, and he's kissing his cheeks reverently. 

“I had to see you,” he says. “Show you in person.”

He unbuttons his jeans. Shane rolls his eyes, but he starts to sink to his knees anyway, smiling, apparently genuinely pleased to think Ilya came all this way just to get his dick sucked. Ilya almost laughs, but doesn't, because this is the man he loves. This is his soulmate.

“No, no, look,” he says, and he points to his leg, to the little cluster of spots that he now knows are freckles. “I always thought they were scars, or something. Fainter moles.”

“They’re not? What are they?” Shane asks, leaning in more closely to inspect them, looking especially sexy about it with his glasses on. 

“They are freckles. Your freckles.”

Shane freezes, and then his eyes flick up to Ilya's, and Ilya can see the hope gathering behind them. Ilya can’t stop smiling at him. Shane straightens up, stands at his full height. 

“Oh,” he finally breathes. 

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure. I went to this woman in Boston. A Soulmate Therapist or whatever. It was bullshit that you would have a lily and I would have fucking nothing. It made no sense. So she checked my skin, and she found this. Took a sample of skin and everything, sent it to some lab. They can tell from that, I guess. I wasn't listening. Did not really care. Just wanted to be sure, because I knew you wouldn't believe it unless there was science behind it.” 

“Shut up. It's not that I wouldn’t believe it.” 

“It was never going to be true that you could love me more than I love you.”

“Oh, so it was a competition thing.”

“No. It was ‘I would rather die than hurt you like that’ thing.”

“Maybe you should be seeing a real therapist. Have we considered that?”

“Don't be cruel to me after I let an old woman look at me naked for you.”

“You probably loved that, shut up. But…you're really sure?”

“I'm really sure.”

“You're really mine?”

“I would have been yours no matter what. But yes. I am yours.”

“Oh. Cool. I mean, same. Yeah.”

“So poetic, my soulmate,” Ilya sighs, and Shane blushes, and Ilya touches his freckles again, because he can. Because they’re his. “Now you can get back on your knees for me, if you want.”

“Oh, can I?” Shane scoffs, but he's already folding, because of course he is. Because the universe is right about him. Because the universe is right about them both.