howlinginhale:

Soulmates weren’t something Derek really believed in too much, because it was a ridiculous notion even with the ticking clock on his wrist and all the others. How could something decide what two people were destined when most times they never encountered before? How did whatever this higher power was decide chemistry would work well and two could mesh years into minutes? It was stupid and Derek didn’t want any part of it but that didn’t seem to matter much to the universe. When did Derek’s thoughts matter, really? Try never.

Gazing up at the girl — no, his soulmate — Derek didn’t know what to say. He never met her before (big surprise) but at least she looked just as shocked as he did. That made him feel the least bit better but not by much. Sighing deeply, he pushed himself back to his feet, keeping an eye on her in case she ran or something. He was apparently an intimidating person or something like that — he tended to zone out when Scott talked.

“Look at that, zeros all across the board,” Derek muttered, running a hand over his face. “What’s your name?” May as well know the name of his soulmate before he confessed all of this was stupid and he didn’t believe in it.

“Summer,” she managed, still caught by his eyes. She lifted her wrist, showing him the zeros.

This? Years of knowing she was always going to be different, that she would never /have/ a soulmate, of being resigned (pretending to be resigned) — what part of her, of the light she’s fought to keep alive and share, matches this man?

But if there’s one thing that’s true about Summer Rainault, it’s that she doesn’t give up without trying. There must be something here. Some reason, something she can reach, something he can do and she can do — and the only way to find out is to try.

She blinks, finally, and looks away. “I guess we should talk.”

howlinginhale:

In a universe where everyone is born with numbers on their wrists counting down to when they’ll meet their soulmate, send me 00:00:00 for my muses reaction to their numbers hitting zero when they meet yours.

The soulmate countdown was something everyone preoccupied themselves with at one point or another throughout the day. Often without really concious thought about it. Someone would rub their fingertips against it, gaze at it, brush it up against their heart as if that somehow synched the two beatings into one.

The clock was meant to countdown towards the meeting of a soulmate. Tick, tick, tick. Every number falling lower and lower until that moment would arrive.

For Derek Hale his countdown started to mess up at the age of nine, which perplexed everyone because that wasn’t meant to happen. His counting went haywire and would alternate between rising and falling numbers. It could move down but then would suddenly move up. No one had any way of knowing this was because his soulmate was facing trouble. The number would rise in the heat of the danger and would fall back down where it should have been when the danger cleared.

They first encountered one another when Derek was twelve years old but they weren’t ready yet and the numbers fiddled until they rose a little higher. It wasn’t the moment but a faint beep happened anyway, not that either one paid any attention to it.

It was when Derek was eighteen that the countdown finally reached 24 hours left. The very next day he would finally meet his soulmate and try as he might he couldn’t sleep at all that night. He went about his day and everytime he thought it was her — it turned out not to be.

No, the moment he actually met his soulmate once and for all was when he was about to step into the street and into oncoming danger he wasn’t noticing but pulled back just in the nick of time with a thud. He was left to stare up into the eyes he was meant to be with forever.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

                                       This time the numbers actually read zero.

It was like any other scar on her body; in times of stress, Summer would run her fingertips over it. The soulmate countdown. She’d long since quit paying attention to the numbers. They had seemed to spiral out of control the first time she had an empathy-induced seizure, spiking up and down erratically.

That was when she had decided she wasn’t actually meant to have a soulmate.

After all, who could possibly be destined to be with someone like her? Someone born broken, forced to listen as others around her met their soulmates. Forced to know the hidden things, the things people didn’t want others to see.

So she didn’t notice that her clock dropped sharply with the first fire she shaped of someone else’s emotions, or again when she moved upstate.

Summer didn’t notice that days had become hours on the clock, while she unpacked her electronics and clothes, bought her coursebooks. She didn’t pay attention to the fact that hours had become minutes, while she steeled herself for the first day of college. And she didn’t see that minutes had become seconds when she felt the driver’s spike of panic and flung out both hands to snatch the tall, dark stranger back from the oncoming truck.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

His eyes were whiskey brown, and she couldn’t stop herself paling at the darkness that lurked within them.