Work Text:
Soulmarks are not that rare.
It is special, for two people to have such a profound impact on one another, that they will both change the course of the other person’s life, that they will have the greatest impact on each other’s life, above every other person the other will meet.
Soulmarks are not romantic, not necessarily. Not even typically.
There are just as many, if not more, horror stories of soulmarked pairs as there are stories of great loves.
(As if those are not also so often heartbreak.)
Family members, enemies, lovers, strangers who meet in times of crisis.
And rivals.
People still debate who among Rome’s ruling elite were marked for one another when Julius Caesar lived, ruled, died and was avenged, according to the victors, and how that knowledge may or may not have led to certain decisions.
There is no one way a body responds to the appearance of a soulmark, and the way it feels, and the way it looks when it forms, even as it forms. And while great thinkers and scientists have tried to find a connection to the placement of marks, the coloration, the size, even the sensation described when the mark forms, it is not known with certainty how two people who share a mark will impact one another.
Only that the mark is shared, perfectly, and that two people who a share a mark will define each other in some way.
They have laws in many countries now, about a person’s right to privacy, or lack of right to privacy, depending on each government and their people’s traditions and folklore around soulmarked.
Ilya is lucky that while the Russian Federation has the right to catalog his body before and after each game he plays for his country, they cannot ask him who brought about the bright bloom springing from his sternum, like something breaking free from his chest, tearing out of his very heart.
(Marks are personal in most Slavic folklore. It is dangerous to have them, it is dangerous to hide or cover them, it is dangerous to speak of them, but sacred all the same. Ilya’s mother had been unmarked. His brother was unmarked. His father had a small, thin vein-like line that ran along his jaw bone on the left side of his face. Ilya did not know who carried the match.)
For him, it started as an itch when Shane Hollander walked toward him outside the rink in Saskatchewan, and it did not become a vibrating, aching, burning sensation until the Canadian hockey player had walked away.
Ilya had fallen to the ground clutching his chest, wondering if that stupid boy was right and he’d die right fucking there from his stupid cigarette, like the boy had cursed him or some shit.
He didn’t know how Hollander dealt with it, if he also doubled over, if his parents tried to rush him to some doctor.
Ilya had not thought he was superstitious until he had a soulmark. Then he’d carefully followed the rules only shared through stories, never direct discussion.
He had not cared that it was different in North America, that they spoke directly about marks to one another, lectured children on the importance of every person deciding how best to “manage” their soulmark, whether they hid it, whether they discussed it, whether they shared the name of their soulmarked.
Ilya did not care, until he watched Shane Hollander shower off the thick skin-tinted body paint covering their soulmark after their CCM photoshoot, the shoot Ilya had suggested, wanting to get another glimpse of Hollander’s clean edges, and little beauty marks, and annoyed little pout.
And their soulmark.
Ilya wanted to see their mark on Hollander’s chest.
He was surprised by his own anger, that Hollander would dare hide this piece of them.
But then Ilya was distracted by the other boy’s very hard, very pretty cock.