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There are certain things you can’t do to your soulmate, everybody knows that. You can’t cause them physical pain, which Sasha supposes she sees the logic of, though it can cause difficulties for soulmate couples who lean kinky. For some reason which not even the best and most dedicated scientists in the world haven’t been able to discover, you can’t wear each other’s socks.
And you can’t lie to them. You can’t even lie when they’re in the same room as you. Not even in writing. Not even a harmless little white lie that would make everyone feel better if you could only force your lips to utter it.
It’s how most people realise they’re soulmates. Some random person in your workplace, perhaps, who you’ve met a couple of times before but only exchanged a few sentences with about the cases you both happen to be working on, so that even if you happen to be more honest about your progress than you’d usually bother to be, you don’t necessarily notice. But then you head to the break room one afternoon after an especially gruelling phone call, and they’re there too, just filling the kettle, so when they ask if you want a cuppa you say god yes please and they grin at you, and then they ask how it’s going.
And you answer. Honestly.
Sasha stands there, feeling suddenly cold, her heart beating sickly in her throat, while Tim looks at her, obviously surprised and not quite knowing what to say.
“Wow,” he says at last. “That’s a pretty bad day.”
And Sasha means, she really does, to say, “It’s not that bad,” but what comes out of her mouth is, “Yeah, I can’t wait to get home and shut all the curtains and put my noise cancelling headphones on and sit in the dark for an hour or two.” Fuck. At leasst she is able, after that, to say, “Sorry, I don’t know why I told you all that.”
Tim gives her a little grin. “It’s okay,” he says easily. “Sometimes you have to get stuff off your chest.”
“I don’t!” Sasha says, frustrated. “I just… I don’t.”
That’s when it dawns on her. There’s only one thing, surely, that could make her spill the truth to an almost total stranger like that. She looks at Tim.
“How are you doing?”
Sasha’s not much good at reading people, but even she can tell immediately that Tim didn’t have the slightest intention of telling her that it would have been his brother’s birthday in a couple of weeks if he hadn’t died and that he’s feeling pretty damn shitty about it. His face goes absolutely white and he stands there, gaping at her, while behind him the kettle comes to a sudden boil and rumbles away until Sasha steps past him to switch it off. He’s already got two mugs ready with teabags in them, so she pours out the water, then looks at him.
“Right,” Tim says. He shoves a hand through his hair. “Right. Okay. So. We’re… we’re soulmates?”
“Apparently,” Sasha says. She turns away so she doesn’t have to look at him, and stirs the teabags around a bit before taking them out of the mugs and binning them. She feels rather cold.
“I mean, that’s cool, right?” Tim says. Sasha reaches for the milk. “I don’t know you that well, but… I can see it,” When she turns around and hands him one of the mugs, he gives her another little grin. “I can see myself falling in love with you for sure.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Sasha says, and immediately wants to sink right through the floor. Stupid fucking shitty inability to lie to him.
Tim’s face falls.
“Why not?” he says. And then, when she doesn’t answer, he goes on, “Okay, obviously that was way too much way too soon. I’m sorry. I came on too strong. I… I know loads of soulmates aren’t romantic, I guess I’ve just always assumed…”
“Look,” Sasha interrupts, because she can’t bear this any longer. “It’s not that I don’t like you. I don’t really know you, but you seem nice.” Christ, she’s so glad she can say that with perfect truth. He’s never acted weird towards her when she stims or avoids looking him in the eye, which is more than she can say for half the people who work at the Institute.
“Okay,” Tim says slowly.
“But I don’t like the idea of love,” she says bluntly. Tim’s eyebrows go up. Shit. “Like, at all. Romantically, platonically, any of it. It’s… it’s just not for me. I won’t fall in love with you. I won’t love you at all. And I don’t want you to love me.”
“Okay,” Tim says, even more slowly. “I… sorry, are you saying you’re aromantic?”
“Yes,” she says. “Or… sort of. Only partially. Aros, or some of them, anyway, they love to go on and on about how being aro doesn’t make you cold or heartless, they still love in all the other ways, and it’s… I mean, that’s great for them, obviously. But it’s not me. I’m not like that. I don’t love people. I just don’t. And I don’t want to.”
At least the soulmate truth-telling curse thing doesn’t force you to tell the whole truth. Maybe she’ll tell him, one day, about the things people have done to her in the name of love, and how she ended up deciding that the whole concept simply wasn’t for her, but not today. She barely knows him, has no idea how far she can trust him.
“Right,” Tim says. He nods a couple of times. She thinks it’s more of a filler than an acceptance, and she can’t tell what he’s really thinking. If he decides it’s his job to fix her or something, she’s quitting this job and moving to a whole new city, and fuck the whole soulmates thing.
“I’m sorry if that’s not what you wanted to hear,” she says, which is the closest she can get to saying sorry and it being the truth.
“No, it’s…” Tim bites at his thumbnail for a moment. “It’s not what I was expecting, I’m not going to lie. Well, I can’t, so…” He gives her a wry smile, and Sasha smile back tentatively. It’s a better start than she’d been fearing. “The thing is, we don’t really know each other.”
“True,” Sasha says cautiously.
“I like what I do know of you,” Tim says. “I’d like to know you better. Why don’t we just keep talking and see where things go?”
“I’m not going to change my mind,” Sasha says. She grits her teeth and makes herself say it. “You’re not going to fix me.”
Tim shakes his head quickly. “No, sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound like that. I don’t want to fix you. I don’t think you’re broken. And… and, look, I’m not going to pretend I know exactly where you’re coming from, because I don’t, but you’re my soulmate, you know? And I’m yours. There has to be a reason for that, right?”
“I guess,” Sasha says. Honestly, once she’d hit the age of thirty, she’d begun to wonder whether maybe she didn’t have a soulmate after all, or perhaps she’d met them years ago and neither of them ever realised it, and she’d been more than fine with that. Nobody knows what causes the soulmate bond or why it exists, or even if the reason for this strange link between two people means that they’re soulmates at all. It’s just a word people use to describe an inexplicable phenomenon.
“I’m not going to try and make you feel a way you don’t want to feel,” Tim says, and Sasha remembers all of a sudden that the inability to lie affects him just as much as it does her. He’s telling the truth. He really means it, all of it. Tears prickle suddenly in her eyes and she nods.
“Okay,” she says. “Thanks.”
He smiles at her. “You don’t need to thank me for that. Basic human decency, blah blah blah. I’m… what are your thoughts on friendship?”
“I like having friends,” Sasha says. “I like my friends a lot. I care about them. I want good things for them. I just… I don’t use that word. Love. I don’t feel that.”
“Cool,” Tim says. “Thanks for telling me, seriously. And I’d still like to get to know you better, if you’re good with that.”
And now, completely truthfully, she can say, “Yeah, I’d like that a lot.”
“Brilliant,” Tim says, and beams. Sasha finds herself smiling back.
“Do you want to get drinks tonight after work?” she says. “The pub closest to here is really weird, but there’s one a few minutes’ walk away that’s nice.”
“Yeah, let’s do it!” Tim glances at the clock on the wall. “I’ve got a report I need to finish by end of day, but once that’s done I’m all yours.”
As Sasha walks back to her desk, mug in hand, she realises that she’s treading lighter than she has in years. The uncertainty is over, the quiet, background fear of what her soulmate might be like no longer exists. She’s sure it won’t always be easy, life seldom is, but despite that, she thinks it might be good.
She thinks it might feel right.